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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Cry in the Wilderness, by Mary E. Waller
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Cry in the Wilderness
+
+Author: Mary E. Waller
+
+Illustrator: Arthur I. Keller
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2011 [EBook #34396]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "What a wilderness was this Seigniory of Lamoral! and
+yet--I liked it." Frontispiece. _See Page 92_.]
+
+
+
+
+A CRY IN
+
+THE WILDERNESS
+
+
+BY
+
+MARY E. WALLER
+
+
+Author of "The Wood-carver of 'Lympus," "Flamsted Quarries," "A Year
+Out of Life," etc.
+
+
+
+WITH FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR BY
+
+ARTHUR I. KELLER
+
+
+
+
+TORONTO
+
+MCCLELLAND & GOODCHILD
+
+LIMITED
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1912,_
+
+BY MARY E. WALLER.
+
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+Published, October, 1912
+
+
+
+THE COLONIAL PRESS
+
+C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+THE JUGGERNAUT
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+THE SEIGNIORY OF LAMORAL
+
+
+BOOK THREE
+
+FINDING THE TRAIL
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+THE JUGGERNAUT
+
+
+
+
+A Cry in the Wilderness
+
+
+
+I
+
+"You Juggernaut!"
+
+That's exactly what I said, and said aloud too.
+
+I was leaning from the window in my attic room in the old district of
+New York known as "Chelsea"; both hands were stemmed on the ledge.
+
+"You Juggernaut of a city!" I said again, and found considerable
+satisfaction in repeating that word. I leaned out still farther into
+the sickening September heat and defiantly shook my fist, as it were
+into the face of the monster commercial metropolis of the New World.
+
+I felt the blood rush into my cheeks--thin and white enough, so my
+glass told me. Then I straightened myself, drew back and into the
+room. The quick sharp clang of the ambulance gong, the clatter of
+running hoofs sounded below me in the street.
+
+"And they keep going under--so," I said beneath my breath; and added,
+but between my teeth:
+
+"But _I_ won't--I _won't_!"
+
+Turning from the window, I took my seat at the table on which was a
+pile of newspapers I kept for reference, and searched through them
+until I found an advertisement I remembered to have seen a week before.
+I had marked it with a blue pencil. I cut it out. Then I put on my
+hat and went down into the city that lay swooning in the intense,
+sultry heat of mid-September.
+
+The sun, dimmed and blood red in vapor, was setting behind the Jersey
+shore. The heated air quivered above the housetops. Wherever there
+was a stretch of asphalt pavement, innumerable hoof-dents witnessed to
+the power of the sun's rays. The shrivelled foliage in the parks was
+gray with dust.
+
+I knew well enough that on the upper avenues for blocks and blocks the
+houses were tightly boarded as if hermetically sealed to light and air;
+but I was going southward, and below and seaward every door and window
+yawned wide. To the rivers, to the Battery, to the Bridge, the piers,
+and the parks, the sluggish, vitiated life of the city's tenement
+districts was crawling listless. The tide was out; and I knew that
+beneath the piers--who should know better than I who for six years had
+taken half of my recreation on them?--the fetid air lay heavy on the
+scum gathered about the slime-covered piles.
+
+The advertisement was a Canadian "want", and in reading it an
+overpowering longing came upon me to see something of the spaciousness
+of that other country, to breathe its air that blows over the northern
+snow-fields. I had acted on an impulse in deciding to answer it, but
+that impulse was only the precipitation of long-unuttered and unfilled
+desires. I was realizing this as I made my way eastward into one of
+the former Trinity tenement districts.
+
+I found the flag-paved court upon which the shadows were already
+falling. It was not an easily discoverable spot, and I was a little in
+doubt as to entering and inquiring further; I didn't like its look. I
+took out the advertisement; yes, this was the place: "No. 8 V----
+Court."
+
+"Don't back down now," I said to myself by way of encouragement and,
+entering, rang the bell of an old-fashioned house with low stoop and
+faded green blinds close shut in sharp contrast to the gaping ones
+adjoining. The openly neglected aspect of its neighbors was wanting,
+as was, in fact, any indication of its character. Ordinarily I would
+have shunned such a locality.
+
+The door was opened by a woman apparently fifty. Her strong
+deeply-lined face I trusted at once.
+
+"What do you want?" The voice was business-like, neither repellent nor
+inviting.
+
+"I 've come in answer to this," I said, holding out the clipping. The
+woman took it.
+
+"You come in a minute, till I get my glasses."
+
+She led the way through a long, unlighted hall into a back room where
+the windows were open.
+
+"You set right down there," she said, pushing me gently into a
+rocking-chair and pressing a palm-leaf fan into my hand, "for you look
+'bout ready to drop."
+
+She spoke the truth; I was. The sickening breathlessness of the air,
+nine hours of indoor work, and little eaten all day for lack of
+appetite, suddenly took what strength I had when I started out.
+
+As the woman stood by the window reading the slip in the fading light,
+my eyes never left her face. It seemed to me--and strangely, too, for
+I have always felt my independence of others' personal help--that my
+life itself was about to depend on her answer.
+
+"Yes, this is the place to apply; but now the first thing I want to
+know is how you come to think you 'd fit this place? You don't look
+strong."
+
+"Oh, yes, I am;" I spoke hurriedly, as if a heavy pressure that was
+gradually making itself felt on my chest were forcing out the words;
+"but I haven't been out of the hospital very long--"
+
+"What hospital?"
+
+"St. Luke's."
+
+"What was the matter with you?"
+
+"Typhoid pneumonia with pleurisy."
+
+"How long was you there?"
+
+"Ten weeks, to the first of July; I've been at work since--but I want
+to get away from here where I can breathe; if I don't I shall die."
+
+There was a queer flutter in my voice. I could hear it. The woman
+noticed it.
+
+"Ain't you well?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I am, and want work--but away from here."
+
+There must have been some passionate energy left in my voice at least,
+for the woman lifted her thick eyebrows over the rim of her spectacles.
+
+"H'm--let's talk things over." She drew up a chair in front of me. "I
+won't light up yet, it's so hot. I guess we 'll get a tempest 'fore
+long."
+
+She sat down, placing her hands on her knees and leaning forward to
+look more closely at my face. I seemed to see her through a fog, and
+passed my hand across my eyes to wipe it away.
+
+"There 's no use beating 'round the bush when it comes to business,"
+she said bluntly but kindly; "I 've got to ask you some pretty plain
+questions; the parties in this case are awful particular."
+
+"Yes." I answered with effort. The fog was still before my eyes.
+
+"You see what it says." She began to read the advertisement slowly:
+"'Wanted: A young girl of good parentage, strong, and country raised,
+for companion and assistant to an elderly Scotchwoman on a farm in
+Canada, Province of Quebec. Must have had a common school education.
+Apply at No. 8 V---- Court, New York City.' You say you 've been in
+St. Luke's?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you know the one they call Doctor Rugvie there? He 's the great
+surgeon."
+
+"No, I don't know him; but I 've heard so much of him. He was pointed
+out to me once when I was getting better."
+
+"Well, by good rights you ought to be applying for this place to him."
+
+"To him?" I asked in surprise. I could n't make this fact rhyme in
+connection with this woman and Canada.
+
+"Yes, to him; I'm only a go-between he trusts. He 's in Europe now and
+is n't coming home till late this year, so he left this with me," she
+indicated the advertisement, "and told me not to put it in till a week
+ago. I ain't had many applications. Folks in this city don't take to
+going off to a farm in Canada, and those I 've had would n't have
+suited. But, anyway, Doctor Rugvie is reference for this place that's
+advertised, and I guess he 's good enough for anybody. I thought I 'd
+tell you this to relieve your mind. 'T ain't every girl would come
+down here to this hole looking for a place.-- Where was you born?"
+
+"Here in New York, but I have lived most of my life in the country,
+northern New England, just this side of the Canada line. I 've been
+here seven years, five in the Public Library; that's my reference."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Twenty-six next December--the third."
+
+"I would n't have thought it. Mother living?"
+
+"No; she died when I was born."
+
+"Any father?"
+
+"I--I don't know whether my father is living or not."
+
+I began to wish I had n't come here to be questioned like this; yet I
+knew the woman was asking only what was necessary in the circumstances.
+I feared my answers would seal my fate as an applicant.
+
+"What was your father's name?"
+
+"I don't know." Again I caught the sound of that strange flutter in my
+voice. "I never knew my father."
+
+"Humph! Then your mother wasn't married, I take it."
+
+The statement would have sounded heartless to me except that the
+woman's voice was wholly businesslike, just as if she had asked that
+question a hundred times already of other girls.
+
+"Oh, yes--yes, she was."
+
+"Before you was born?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What was her husband's name then?"
+
+"Jackson."
+
+"Christian name?"
+
+"George."
+
+"Jackson--Jackson--George Jackson." The woman repeated the name,
+dwelling upon it as if some memory were stirred in the repetition.
+"And you say you don't know who your father was?"
+
+"No--". I could n't help it--that word broke in a half hysterical sob.
+I kept saying to myself: "Oh, why did I come--why did I come?"
+
+"Now, look here, my dear," and it seemed as if a flood of tenderness
+drowned all those business tones in her voice, "you stop right where
+you are. There ain't no use my putting you into torment this way,
+place or no place--Doctor Rugvie wouldn't like it; 't ain't human. If
+you can tell me all you know, and want to, just you take your own
+time,"--she laid a hand on my shoulder,--"and if you don't, just set
+here a while till the tempest that's coming up is over, and I 'll see
+you safe home afterwards. You ain't fit to be out alone if you are
+twenty-six. You don't look a day over twenty. There 's nothing to
+you."
+
+She leaned nearer, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting in her
+palms. I tried to see her face, but the fog before my eyes was growing
+thicker, the room closer; her voice sounded far away.
+
+"See here--will it make it any easier if I tell you I 've got a girl
+consider'ble older than you as has never known her father's name
+either? And that there ain't no girl in New York as has a lovinger
+mother, nor a woman as has a lovinger daughter for all that?"
+
+I could not answer.
+
+A flash of red lightning filled the darkening room. It was followed by
+a crash of thunder, a rush of wind and a downpour as from a
+cloud-burst. I saw the woman rise and shut both windows; then for me
+there was a blank for two or three minutes.
+
+She told me afterwards that when she turned from the window, where she
+stood watching the rain falling in sheets, she saw me lying prone
+beside her chair. I know that I heard her talking, but I could not
+speak to tell her I could.
+
+"My gracious!" she ejaculated as she bent over me, "if this don't beat
+all! Jane," she called, but it sounded far away, "come here quick.
+Here, help me lift this girl on to the cot. Bring me that camphor
+bottle from the shelf; I 'll loosen her clothes.--Rub her hands.--She
+fell without my hearing her, there was such an awful crash.--Light the
+lamp too...
+
+"There now, she's beginning to come to; guess 't was nothing but the
+heat after all, or mebbe she 's faint to her stomach; you never can
+tell when this kind 's had any food. Just run down and make a cup of
+cocoa, but light the lamp first--I want to see what she 's like."
+
+I heard all this as through a thick blanket wrapped about my head, but
+I could n't open my eyes or speak. The woman's voice came at first
+from a great distance; gradually it grew louder, clearer.
+
+"Now we 'll see," she said.
+
+She must have let the lamplight fall full on my face, for through my
+closed and weighted lids I saw red and yellow. I felt her bend over
+me; her breath was on my cheek. Still I could not speak.
+
+"She 's the living image," I heard her say quite distinctly; "I guess I
+'ve had one turn I shan't get over in a hurry."
+
+I found myself wondering what she meant and trying to lift my eyelids.
+She took my hand; I knew she must be looking at the nails.
+
+"She 's coming round all right--the blood 's turning in her nails."
+She took both my hands to rub them.
+
+I opened my eyes then, and heard her say: "Eyes different."
+
+Then she lifted my head on her arm and fed me the cocoa spoonful by
+spoonful.
+
+"Thank you, I 'm better now," I said; my voice sounded natural to
+myself, and I made an effort to sit up. "I 'm so sorry I 've made you
+all this trouble--"
+
+"Don't talk about trouble, child; you lay back against those pillows
+and rest you. I 'll be back in a little while." She left the room.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+When she returned, shortly after, I had regained my strength. She
+found me with my hat on and sitting in the rocking-chair. The woman
+drew up her own, and began in a matter-of-fact voice:
+
+"Now we 'll proceed to business. I 've been thinking like chain
+lightning ever since that clap of thunder, and I can tell you the storm
+'s cleared up more 'n the air. I ain't the kind to dodge round much
+when there 's business on hand. Straight to the point is the best
+every time; so I may as well tell you that this place,"--she held out
+the advertisement,--"is made for you and you for the place, even if you
+ain't quite so strong as you might be."
+
+I felt the tension in my face lessen. I was about to speak, but the
+woman put out her hand, saying:
+
+"Now, don't say a word--not yet; let me do the talking; you can have
+your say afterwards, and I 'll be only too glad to hear it. But it's
+laid on me like the Lord's hand itself to tell you what I 'm going to.
+It 'll take long in the telling, but if you go out to this place, you
+ought to know something why there is such a place to go to, and to
+explain that, I 've got to begin to tell you what I 'm going to. You
+'re different from the others, and it's your due to know. I should
+judge life had n't been all roses for you so far, and if you should
+have a few later on, there 'll be plenty of thorns--there always is.
+So just you stand what I 'm going to tell you. This was n't in the
+bargain when I told Doctor Rugvie I 'd see all the applicants and try
+to get the right one,--but I can make it all right with him. It's a
+longer story than I wish 't was, but I 've got to begin at the
+beginning.
+
+"And begin with myself, too, for I was country raised. Father and
+mother both died when I was young, and I brought myself up, you might
+say. I come down here when I was nineteen years old, and it wasn't
+more 'n a year 'fore I found myself numbered with the outcasts on this
+earth--all my own fault too. I 've always shouldered the blame, for a
+woman as has common sense knows better, say what you 've a mind to; but
+the knowledge of that only makes green apples sourer, I can tell you.
+
+"I mind the night in December, thirty years ago, when I found myself in
+the street, too proud to beg, too good to steal. There was n't nothing
+left--nothing but the river; there 's always enough of that and to
+spare. So I took a bee line for one of the piers, and crouched down by
+a mooring-post. I 'd made up my mind to end it all; it did n't cost me
+much neither. I only remember growing dizzy looking down at the foam
+whirling and heaving under me, and kinder letting go a rope I 'd
+somehow got hold of...
+
+"The next thing I knew I was hearing a woman say:
+
+"'You leave her to me; she'll be as quiet as a lamb now.' She put her
+arms around me. 'You poor child,' she said, 'you come along with me.'
+And I went.
+
+"Well, that woman mothered me. She took in washing and ironing in two
+rooms on Tenth Avenue. She never left me night or day for a week
+running till my baby come. And all she 'd say to me, when I got sort
+of wild and out of my head, was:
+
+"'You ain't going to be the grave of your child, be you?' And that
+always brought me to myself. I was so afraid of murdering the child
+that was coming. That's what she kept saying:
+
+"'You ain't going to be so mean as not to give that innercent baby a
+chance to live! Just you wait till it comes and you 'll see what life
+'s for. 'T ain't so bad as you think, and some folks make out; and
+that child has a right to this world. You give it the right, and then
+die if you think it's best.' So she kept at me till my baby come, and
+then--why, I got just fierce to live for its sweet little sake.
+
+"'Bout six months after that I got religion--never mind how I got it; I
+got it, that's the point, and I 've held on to it ever since. And when
+I 'd got it, the first thing I did was to take my baby in my arms and
+go down to that pier, clear out to the mooring-post, and kneel right
+down there in the dark and vow a vow to the living God that I 'd give
+my life to saving of them of His poor children who 'd missed their
+footing, and trying to help 'em on to their feet again.
+
+"And I 've kept it; brought my girl right up to it too. She 's been my
+mainstay through it all these last ten years. I took in washing and
+ironing in the basement of this very house,--my saving angel helped me
+to work,--and when it was done, late at night between eleven and
+twelve, I 'd go down to the rivers, sometimes one, sometimes t' other,
+and watch and wait, ready to do what come in my way.
+
+"At first the police got on to my track thinking something was wrong;
+but it took 'bout two words to set 'em right, as it did every other man
+that come near me; and soon I went and come and no questions asked.
+
+"One night I 'd been down to one of the North River piers. It was in
+December, and a howling northeaster had set in just before sundown. It
+was sleeting and snowing and blowing a little harder than even I could
+stand. I had just crossed the street from the pier and was thanking
+God, as I covered my head closer with my shawl, that, so far as I knew,
+no one of His children was tired of living, when something--I did n't
+see what for I was bending over against the wind--went by me with a
+rush, and I thought I heard a groan. I turned as quick as a flash, and
+see something dark running, swaying, stumbling across the street,
+headed for the pier. That was enough for me.
+
+"I caught up my skirt and give chase. How the woman, for it was one,
+could get over the ground so fast was a mystery, except that she was
+running with the wind. She was on to the pier in no time. I cried
+'Stop!' and 'Watch!' I don't think she heard me. Once she nearly
+fell, and I thought I had her I was so close to her; but she was up and
+off again before I could lay hand on her. Then I shouted; and the Lord
+must have lent me Gabriel's trump, for the woman turned once, and when
+she see me she threw out her hands and fairly flew.
+
+"The Sound steamer had n't gone out, the night was so thick and bad,
+and the cabin lights alongside shone out bright enough for me to mark
+her as she dodged this way and that trying to get to the end of the
+pier.
+
+"She knew I was after her, and I was n't going to give up. But when I
+see the make-fast, and all around it the yeasting white on water as
+black as ink, and she standing there with her arms up ready to jump, my
+knees knocked together. Somehow I managed to get hold of her
+dress--but she did n't move; and all of a sudden, before I could get my
+arms around her, she dropped in a heap, groaning: 'My child--my child--'
+
+"I 've always thought 't was then her heart broke.
+
+"A deck-hand on the steamer heard me screech, and together we got her
+on the floor of the lower deck. We did what we could for her, and when
+she 'd come to, they got me a hack and I took her home, laid her on my
+bed, and sent the hackman for Doctor Rugvie. He 's been my right-hand
+man all these years. He stayed with her till daylight. He told me she
+'d never come through alive; the heart action was all wrong.
+
+"After he 'd gone, she spoke for the first time and asked for some
+paper and a pencil. I propped her up on the pillows, and all that day
+between her pains she was writing, writing and tearing up. Towards
+night she grew worse. I asked her name then, and if she had any
+friends. She looked at me with a look that made my heart sink; but she
+give me no answer. About six, she handed me a slip of paper--'A
+telegram,' she said, and asked me if I would send it right off. I
+could n't leave her, but when the Doctor come about eight, I slipped
+out and sent it. The name on it was the one you say was your mother's
+husband's and the message said:
+
+"'I am dying and alone among strangers. Will you come to me for the
+sake of my child,' and she give me the address.
+
+"Come here, my dear," said the woman suddenly to me. I was staring at
+her, not knowing whether I drew breath or not; "come here to me."
+
+I rose mechanically. The woman drew me down upon her knee and put her
+two strong arms about me. I knew I was in the presence of revelation.
+
+"At midnight her child, a girl, was born--the third of December just
+twenty-six years ago. Doctor Rugvie fought for her life, but he could
+n't save her. At one she died--of a broken heart and no mistake, so
+the Doctor said. She refused to give him her name and he left her in
+peace--that's his way. But before she died she give him an envelope
+which she filled with some things she 'd been writing in the afternoon,
+and said:
+
+"'Keep them--for my daughter. I trust you.'
+
+"Oh, my dear, my dear, the sorrow in this God's earth! I ain't got
+used to it yet and never shall. That dying face was like an angel's.
+Doctor Rugvie said he 'd never seen the like before. She spoke only
+once to him in all her agony, then she said: 'The little life that is
+coming is worth all this--all--all.'
+
+"The next morning there come a telegram from somewhere in New
+England--I forget where--'Will be with you at two.'
+
+"And sure enough, a little after two, a young feller come to the door.
+He did n't look more 'n twenty, but it seemed from his face as if those
+twenty years had done something to him 't would generally take a man's
+lifetime to do, and said he 'd come to claim her who was his wife.
+That's just what he said, no more, no less: 'I've come to claim her who
+was my wife. Where is she?' And he give me the telegram.
+
+"It was 'bout the hardest thing I 've ever had to do, but I had to tell
+him just as things was. I thought for a minute he was going to fall he
+shook so; but he laid hold of the door-jamb and, straightening himself,
+looked me square in the eye just as composed as Doctor Rugvie himself,
+and says:
+
+"'In that case I have come to claim the body of her who was my wife.'
+
+"Those are his very words. I took him into the back room and left 'em
+alone together. I did n't dare to say a word for his face scairt me.
+
+"When he come out he said he would relieve me of all further
+responsibility, which I took pains to inform him included a day-old
+baby, thinking that would fetch some explanation from him. But he did
+n't seem to lay any weight on _that_ part of it. He made all the
+arrangements himself, and I took a back seat. I see I was n't any more
+necessary to him than if I had n't been there. He went out for an hour
+and come back with a nurse; and at six that afternoon he drove away in
+a hack with her and the baby, an express cart with the body following
+on behind.
+
+"I told him the last thing 'fore he went that his wife had given an
+envelope with some papers to Doctor Rugvie, and that they were for his
+child. He turned and give me a look that was beyond me. I never could
+fathom that look! It said more 'n any living human being's look that I
+ever see--if only I could have read it! But he never spoke a word, not
+even a word of thanks--not that I was expecting or wanted any after
+seeing his face as he stood hanging on to the door-jamb. I knew then
+he did n't really see me nor anything else except the body of his wife
+somewhere in that basement. He did everything as if he 'd been a
+machine instead of a human being; and when I see him drive off I did
+n't know much more 'n I did when I took the woman in, except that she
+was married."
+
+She was silent. I drew a long breath.
+
+"Is that all you know?" I felt I could not be left so, suspended as it
+were over the abyss of the unknown in my life.
+
+She sighed. "My dear, this great city is full of just such mysteries
+that no human being can fathom. I, for one, don't try to. I can only
+lend a helping hand, and ask no questions; 't ain't best. Well, I 've
+been talking a blue streak for a half an hour, but I 've had to. When
+you laid there on the cot, you was the living image of that other, only
+thinner, smaller like. You told me you was born in this city
+twenty-six years ago come the third of next December; that you did n't
+know who your father was, but that your mother was married. Her
+husband's name was the same as the one on the telegram. I 've put two
+and two together, and perhaps I 've made five out of it. Anyway it's
+your right to know. I 'm sure Doctor Rugvie will back me up in this."
+
+For a moment I made no answer. Then I spoke:
+
+"Are you sure there is no more? You can't recall anything that Doctor
+Rugvie said about that paper in the envelope?"
+
+"Well, yes, I can; a little more. After all, it's what will help you
+most--and yet I ain't sure--"
+
+"Tell me, do--do." My hands clasped each other nervously.
+
+"Why, it's just this: Doctor Rugvie was called away out of the city on
+a case as soon as he 'd got through here, and meantime the young feller
+had come and gone. When the Doctor come back I told him what had been
+going on while he was away, and I give him the envelope. He told me he
+found her marriage certificate in it--but not to the man whose name was
+on the telegram. I never could make head nor tail of it."
+
+"Married--my mother married--" I repeated. I drew away from the
+woman's restraining arms and slipping to my knees beside her, buried my
+face in her lap and began to sob. I could not help it. I was broken
+for the time both physically and mentally by the force of my unpent
+emotion.
+
+The woman laid her hand protectingly, tenderly on my quivering
+shoulders, and waited. She must have seen spring freshets before, many
+a one during the past thirty years, and have known both their benefit
+and injury to the human soul. Gradually I regained my control.
+
+"Oh, you don't know what this means to me!" I exclaimed, lifting my
+face swollen with weeping to the kindly one that looked down into mine.
+"You don't know what this means to me--it has lifted so much, so
+much--has let in so much light just at a time when I needed it so--when
+everything looked so black. Sometime I will tell you; but now I want
+to know when, where, how I can get hold of that marriage certificate.
+It belongs to me--to me."
+
+I rose with an energy that surprised the woman and, stooping, took her
+face between my hands and kissed her. I smiled down into that face.
+She sat speechless. I smiled again. She passed her hand over her eyes
+as if trying to clear her mind of confusing ideas. I spoke again to
+her:
+
+"The tempest is over; why should n't we look for a bright to-morrow?"
+I could hear the vibrant note of a new hope in my voice. The woman
+heard it too. She continued to stare at me. I drew up my chair to
+hers and, laying my hand on her knee, said persuasively:
+
+"Now, let's talk; and let me ask some questions."
+
+"To be sure; to be sure," the woman replied. I know she was wondering
+what would be the next move on the part of her applicant.
+
+"Don't you want to know my name?" I said. "That's rather an important
+matter when you take a new position; and you said the place was mine,
+didn't you?"
+
+The woman smiled indulgently. "To be sure it's yours; and what is your
+name?" she asked, frankly curious at last.
+
+"Marcia Farrell, but I took my great-grandmother's maiden name. There
+are none of the family left; I 'm the last."
+
+"What was you christened?"
+
+"I never was christened. And what is your name?"
+
+"Delia Beaseley."
+
+"And your daughter's?"
+
+"Jane."
+
+"And when does Doctor Rugvie return?"
+
+"The last of November. You want that certificate?"
+
+"I must have it; it is mine by right." I spoke with decision.
+
+"Well, you 'll get it just as soon as the Doctor can find it; like
+enough it's locked up in some Safe Deposit with his papers; you mustn't
+forget it's been nearly twenty-six years since he's had it.--I can't
+for the life of me think of that name."
+
+"Never mind that now; tell me about the place. Where is it? Who are
+the people? Or is there only one--it said 'an elderly Scotchwoman'.
+Do you know her?"
+
+"No, my dear, I don't know any one of them, and Doctor Rugvie does n't
+mean I should; that's where he trusts me. I can tell you where the
+place is: Lamoral, Province of Quebec; more 'n that I don't know."
+
+"But," I spoke half in protest, "does n't Doctor Rugvie think that any
+one taking the position ought to know beforehand where she is going and
+whom she 's going to live with?"
+
+"He might tell you if he was here himself, and then again he mightn't.
+You see it's this way: he trusts me to use my common sense in accepting
+an applicant, and he expects the applicant to trust his name for
+reference to go to the end of the world if he sends her there, without
+asking questions."
+
+"Oh, the old tyrant!" I laughed a little. "What does he pay?" was my
+next question.
+
+"Doctor Rugvie! You think _he_ pays? Good gracious, child, you _are_
+on the wrong track."
+
+"Then put me on the right one, please." I laid my hand on the hard
+roughened one.
+
+"I s'pose I might as well; I don't believe the Doctor would mind."
+
+"Of course he would n't." I spoke with a fine, assumed assurance.
+Delia Beaseley smiled.
+
+"You know I told you that young feller who come here went away without
+saying so much as 'Thank you'?"
+
+I merely nodded in reply. That question suddenly quenched all the new
+hope of a new life in me.
+
+"Along the first of the New Year, that was twenty-five years ago, I got
+a draft by mail from a national bank in this city; the draft was on
+that bank; it was for five hundred dollars. And ever since, in
+December, I have had a check for one hundred in the same way. I always
+get Doctor Rugvie to cash them for me, and he says no questions are
+answered; after the first year he did n't ask any. The Doctor 's in
+the same boat. He 's got a draft on that same bank for five hundred
+dollars every year for the last twenty-five years. He says it's
+conscience money; and he feels just as I do, that it comes either from
+the man who claimed to be the woman's husband, or from that other she
+was married to according to the certificate.--I can't think of that
+name!
+
+"He don't care much, I guess, seeing the use he 's going to put the
+money to. He 's hired a farm for a term of years, up in the Province
+of Quebec, somewhere near the St. Lawrence, with some good buildings on
+it; and when he knows of somebody that needs just such a home to pick
+up in he is going to send 'em up there. And the conscience money is
+going to help out. This is the place where you 're to help the
+Scotchwoman, as I understand it. Now that's all I can tell you, except
+the wages is twenty-five dollars a month besides room and keep. I
+s'pose you 'll go for that?"
+
+"Go! I can't wait to get away; I 'd like to go to-morrow, but I must
+stay two or three weeks longer in the library. But, I don't
+understand--how am I to accept the place without notification? And you
+don't know even the name of the Scotch-woman?"
+
+"I 'll tend to that. My girl writes all the letters for me, and the
+letters to this place go in the care of the 'Seigniory of Lamoral',
+whatever that may mean. They get there all right. You come round here
+within a week, and I 'm pretty sure that the directions will be here
+with the passage money."
+
+I felt my face flush from my chin to the roots of my hair; and I knew,
+moreover, that Delia Beaseley was reading that sign with keen
+accustomed eyes; she knew there was sore need for just that help.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Do you who are reading these life-lines know what it is to be alone in
+a world none too mindful of anyone, even if he be somebody? Never to
+experience after the day's work the rest and joy of home-coming to
+one's own?
+
+Do you know what it is to acknowledge no tie of blood that binds one
+life to another and makes for a common interest in joy or sorrow? To
+ask yourself: Do I belong here? To wonder, perhaps, why, in fact, you
+are here? To feel your isolation in a crowded thoroughfare, your
+remoteness in the midst of an alien family life? To feel, in truth, a
+stranger on this earth?
+
+If you have known this, if you have experienced this, or, even if, at
+times, you have been only dimly conscious of this for another, then you
+will understand these my life-lines, and it may be they will interpret
+something of yourself to yourself.
+
+
+Delia Beaseley walked with me as far as the Bowery. There I insisted
+on her leaving me. I assured her I was used to the streets of New York
+in the evening. However, she waited with me for the car.
+
+When I said good night to the woman, who twenty-six years ago saved
+another woman, "one who had missed her footing",--those words seem to
+ring constantly in my ears,--in order that I, Marcia Farrell, that
+stranger's child, might become the living fact I am, I began to realize
+that during the last hour I had been acting a part, and acting it well;
+that, without sacrificing the truth at any stage of the evening's
+developments, I had been able to obtain all this information, which
+pointed to a crisis in my life, yet had given but little return in
+kind. I felt justified in withholding it.
+
+Now, as soon as I had left her and entered the car, there was a
+reaction from the intensity of my emotion. I felt a strange elation of
+spirit, a rising courage to face the new conditions in that other
+country, and a consequent physical recuperation. The lassitude that
+had burdened me since my long illness seemed to have left me. My mind
+was alert. I felt I had been able to take advantage of a promising
+circumstance and, in so doing, the mental inertia from which I had been
+suffering for three months was overcome.
+
+Without being able to find any special reason for it, my life began to
+assume importance in my thoughts. I suppose this is the normal
+condition of youth; only, I never felt that I had had much youth. With
+the thought of this new future, unknown, untried as it was, opening
+before me, I experienced an unaccountable security, an unwonted
+serenity of existence. All these thoughts and feelings crowded upon me
+as I rode up through the noisy Bowery.
+
+All my life hitherto had been undefined to me on the side of expansion;
+only its limitations impressed me as being ever present, sharply
+outlined, hedging me in with memories that gave no scope for
+anticipation. Sometimes it seemed to me as if I had always been old;
+the seven years in New York, my daily encounter with metropolitan life
+and its problem of "keep" had intensified this feeling.
+
+When I came down to the city to look for work I was nearly twenty. I
+had left what to me was a makeshift for a home--and I regretted
+nothing. I had done my whole duty there in caring for my grandfather,
+imbecile for years, and my aunt, the last of my family, until they
+died. Then I was free.
+
+After paying all the debts, I found I had just thirty dollars of my
+own. With these I started for the city. On my arrival this amount was
+diminished by nine.
+
+At twenty I was facing life for the first time alone, unfriended, in
+new conditions; poor, too, but that I had always been. I knew that
+money must be had somehow, must be forthcoming in a few days at most.
+But at that time my spirit was indomitable, my courage high. I was my
+own mistress; and my only feeling, as I sat in the Grand Central
+Station on that morning of my arrival, reading through the various
+columns of "wants" in the early newspapers, was that I had escaped, at
+last, from all associations that were hateful to me.
+
+I was thinking of all this as the car passed with frequent haltings
+along the noisy Bowery, and of that first experience of this city: its
+need-driven herds of human beings, the thoroughfares crowded with
+traffic, its nightmare crossings, the clank and deafening roar of the
+overhead railroad, when, suddenly, mingled with the steam rising from
+the pavements, that were cooling rapidly after the recent shower, I
+smelt the acrid heaviness of fresh printer's ink. That smell
+visualized for me the column of leaded "Wants," the dismal
+waiting-room, the uncompromising daylight that spared no wrinkle, no
+paint, no moth-spot on the indifferent faces about me. That was nearly
+seven years ago--and now--
+
+I found I was at Union Square, and got out; walked a block to Broadway
+and waited on the corner for an uptown car. During that minute of
+waiting, a woman spoke to me:
+
+"If I take a car here can I get up to West Sixty-first street?"
+
+"Yes." My answer was short and sharp. I had heard the kind of
+question put in that oily voice too many times to pay any further heed
+to it. I stepped out into the street to take the car.
+
+"If you 're going up that way I might as well go 'long too. I like
+comp'ny," said the woman, keeping abreast of me and nudging me with an
+elbow.
+
+The car was nearly full, and the crowd waiting for it made a running
+assault upon the few vacancies. Just before it stopped I saw some one
+leave the seat behind the motor-man; I made a rush to secure the place.
+As I sat down the woman mounted the step.
+
+"You don't get rid of me so easy, duckie," she said with a leer.
+
+I turned squarely to her, looking beneath the wide brim of the tawdry
+bedraggled hat to find her eyes; her gin-laden breath was hot on my
+cheek.
+
+"You go your way and I 'll go mine," I said in a low hard voice.
+
+With a curse the woman swung off the step just as the two signal bells
+rang.
+
+I took off my hat. The night was cooling rapidly after the tempest.
+The motion of the car created a movement of air against my face. It
+was grateful to me. I drew a long breath of relief; these evening
+rides in the open cars were one of my few recreations.
+
+As the car sped along the broad thoroughfare, now so long familiar to
+me, so wonderful and alluring to my country eyes in those early years,
+so drearily artificial and depressing in the later ones, I found myself
+dwelling again on that first experience in this city; I recalled the
+first time I was accosted by a woman pander. It was when I was reading
+the wants that morning of my arrival. I looked up to find her taking a
+seat beside me--a woman who tried by every dives' art of which she was
+possessed to entice me to go with her on leaving the station. Oh, she
+was awful, that woman! I never knew there were such till then.
+
+The searchlight of memory struck full upon my thought at that time: And
+they said my mother was like this!
+
+That thought, horrible as it was to me, was my safeguard then and has
+been ever since. Such as they said my mother was, I would never be.
+Nor am I aware that any moral factor was the lever in this decision.
+Rather it was my pride that had been scourged for many years by a
+girl's half knowledge of her mother's career, my sensitiveness that was
+ever ready at the least outside touch to make me close in upon myself,
+the horror of thinking it might be possible that my name could be used
+as I had heard my mother's, that had panoplied my nature and warped it
+until that nature had narrowed to its armor. I was proud, sensitive,
+cold, or thought I was--and I was glad of it.
+
+It had come to a point, at last, now when I was nearly twenty-six, that
+in what I termed my strength, lay my weakness. But of this I was, as
+yet, unaware.
+
+I shut my eyes as the car sped onwards that I might not see the swift
+succession of glaring lights--the many flashing, changing,
+nerve-tormenting electric signs and advertisements, the brilliant
+globes, stars, and whirligigs of all kinds. How they tired me now!
+And the summer theatre throngs streaming in under the entrance arches
+picked out in glowing red and white, the saloons flashing a well-known
+signal to customers--I knew it all and was glad to close my eyes to it
+all. Now and then I caught a strain of music from the orchestra of
+some roof-garden.
+
+At Seventy-second Street I changed for Amsterdam Avenue. I wanted to
+get away to the heights. The air was becoming fresher and I needed
+more of it. Another twenty minutes and the car stopped near the brow
+of the hill. I left it and walked a cross block till I came to
+Morningside Heights, the small, irregular, but beautiful promenade
+behind St. Luke's.
+
+I leaned on the massive stone coping that crowns the wall of the
+escarpment; below me the hill sloped sharply to the flats of the
+Harlem. I looked off over the city.
+
+East, and north-east in the direction of the Sound, great cloud masses,
+the wrack of the tempest, were piled high towards the zenith; but
+beneath them there was a clear zone near the city's level. A moon
+nearly two thirds to the full, was heralding its appearance above them
+by lighted rifts, bright-rimmed haloes, and the marvellous play of
+direct shaft light that struck downwards behind the clouds into the
+clear space above the city and shot white radiance upon its roofs. The
+sky, also, while yet the moon was invisible, was radiant, but with
+starlight.
+
+Against this background, I watched the glow-worm lights of the elevated
+trains winding along the high invisible trestle-work. Beneath me lay
+Morningside Park, the foliage and its shadows blackened in masses
+beneath the glaring white of the arc-lights; and beyond, in seemingly
+interminable perspective, the long converging lines of parallel street
+lights led my gaze across the city to some large, unknown, uncertain
+flarings somewhere near the East River shore.
+
+And from all this wide-stretching housing-place of a vast population,
+there rose into my ears a continuous, dull, peculiar sound, as of the
+magnified stertorous breathing of a hived and stifled humanity.
+
+I had come here many times in the last four years, at all seasons, at
+all times. I drew strength and inspiration from this view in all its
+aspects, until my almost fatal illness in the late spring. After that
+there came upon me a powerful longing for change. I wanted to get away
+from this city, its sights and sounds; to escape from the conditions
+that were sapping my life. And the way was, at last, opened. How I
+exulted in this thought!
+
+There were others on the promenade, and I was withdrawn from thought of
+myself by hearing voices, a man's and a woman's, below me on the
+winding walk that leads down the slope past the poplars to the level of
+the Harlem streets. The woman's was pleading, strident from
+excitement; it broke at last in a dry hard sob. The man's was hateful;
+the tones and accents like a vicious snarl.
+
+I turned away sickened, indignant.
+
+"It's always so in this city!" I said to myself while I walked rapidly
+towards the hospital. "If I get a chance for a breath of fresh air, or
+if I take a walk in the park, or have an outlook that, for a moment, is
+free from all suggestions of crime and horror--then beware! For then I
+have to shut my ears not to hear the fatal sounds of human brutishness;
+or I hear a shot in the park, and a life goes out in some
+thick-foliaged path; or I have to turn away my eyes from a sight in the
+gutter that offends three of my senses--and so my day is ruined. It's
+merciless, merciless--and I loathe it!" I cried within myself as I
+passed the hospital.
+
+I lifted my eyes to the massive purity of noble St. Luke's, the windows
+rising tier upon tier above me. A light showed here and there. At the
+sight my mood softened.
+
+"Oh, I know it is merciful too--it is merciful," I murmured; then I
+stopped short and turned back to the entrance. I entered the main
+vestibule, mounted the marble steps that lead to the chapel, opened the
+noiseless heavily-padded doors, and sat down near the entrance.
+
+The air was close and hot after the outer freshness; the lights few.
+The stained-glass window behind the altar was a meaningless confused
+mass of leaded opacity. I knew that the daylight was needed to ensoul
+it, to give to the dead unmeaning material its spiritual symbolism.
+And because I knew this, I realized, as I sat there, what a long
+distance in a certain direction I had travelled since that morning in
+the Grand Central Station, seven years ago.
+
+But the air was very close. I felt depressed, disappointed, that the
+time and the place yielded me nothing. I was faint, too; I had taken
+nothing but the cocoa since noon. Without realizing it, another
+reaction from that strange elation of spirit was setting in. I knew I
+ought to be in the attic room in Chelsea rather than where I was. It
+was already nine, and an hour's ride before me on the surface car.
+
+I went out to Amsterdam Avenue. No car was in sight. I walked on down
+the hill, knowing that one would soon overtake me.
+
+A man and woman were just behind me talking--at least, the woman was.
+I recognized her voice as one of those I had heard on the winding path
+by the poplars. A moment after, they passed me in a noticeably
+peculiar fashion: the man sauntering by on my right, the woman hurrying
+past on my left. At the same moment I heard the car coming down the
+hill. I turned at once, but only to see the man, who had passed me,
+running swiftly along the pavement and up the hill to meet it; the
+woman was running after him.
+
+I saw that the car was over full. The platform and steps were black
+with human beings clinging to the guard rails like swarming bees
+alight. I saw the man struggle madly to catch the guards and gain a
+footing on the lower step, the woman still running beside him and
+holding him by the coat. Then I was aware of a sudden sweeping
+movement of the man's free arm, the roar of the car as it sped down the
+incline, and of the woman lying, hatless from the force of the man's
+blow, on the pavement beside the track. He had freed himself so!
+
+Before I could reach her the woman was up and off again, running
+hatless after the quickly receding car. Only one cry, no scream,
+escaped her.
+
+I shivered. There was nothing to be done with such as these, no rescue
+possible. A sudden thought half paralyzed me; I stood motionless: Had
+my own mother ever been cast off like this? Had such treatment been
+the cause of her seeking the river? Had I, Marcia Farrell, been
+fathered by such a brute?
+
+For the second time in my life, I felt my hardness of heart towards the
+mother I had never known soften with pity; a sob rose in my throat. I
+shook my shoulders as if freeing them from some nightmare clutch, and
+hurried to the next corner to meet the car that was following the other
+closely.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+I unlocked my attic room in the fourth storey of the old Chelsea house
+and lighted the lamp. In contrast to what both ear and eye had been
+witness during the evening: Delia Beaseley's account of my mother's
+rescue and death, and that scene of life's brutality on Columbia
+Heights, the sight of the small plain interior gave me, for the first
+time in all the seven years, a home-sense, a feeling of welcome and
+refuge.
+
+I looked at the cretonne-covered cot, the packing boxes curtained with
+the same, the white painted hanging box-shelves, the one chair--a flour
+barrel, cut to the required form, well padded and upholstered; all
+these were the work of my hands in free hours. And I was about to
+exchange the known for the unknown! This thought added to my
+depression.
+
+I put out the lamp and sat down by the one window. The night air was
+refreshingly cool. The many lights on the river gleamed clear; the
+roar in the streets was subdued. Gradually, my antagonism to the
+physical features of the metropolis, to its heedless crowds, its
+overpowering mechanism, its thoroughfares teeming with human beings who
+passed me daily, knowing little of their own existence and nothing of
+mine, its racial divergencies, grew less intense; in fact, the whole
+life of this city, in its aspect of mere Juggernaut, was being
+unconsciously modified for me as I realized I was about to go forth
+into a strange country.
+
+I was recalling those ten weeks of mortal weakness and suffering at St.
+Luke's, the kindness of nurses and physicians. No matter if I had paid
+my way; theirs was a ready helpfulness, a steady administration of the
+tonic of human kindness that never could be bought and paid for in the
+Republic's money. I thought of Delia Beaseley and her noble work among
+those "who had missed their footing". I relived in imagination that
+rescue of my own mother, with all of the horror and all of the merciful
+pity it entailed. I found myself wondering if Doctor Rugvie would be
+able to lay his hand on those papers immediately after his arrival. I
+dwelt upon the many kindly advances from my co-workers in the Library;
+few of these women I had met, for I felt strangely old, apart from
+them, and the struggle to live and at the same time accomplish my
+purpose had been so hard. My landlady, too, came in for a share of my
+softening mood; exacting, but scrupulously honest, she had lodged under
+this same roof a generation of theological students, yet her best dress
+remained a rusty alpaca. I thought of the various types of students
+for the ministry--
+
+I smiled at that thought, a smile that proved the latent youth in me
+was sufficiently appreciative, at least of that phase of life.
+
+I left the window and, after closing the lower half of the inside
+shutters, partly undressed and relighted the lamp. Then I took two
+paper-covered blank books from my trunk. I sat down in my one easy
+chair of home manufacture and, resting my feet on the cot, began to
+read.
+
+These two books were my journal, my confidante, my most intimate
+companion for seven years. I had written in them intermittently only,
+and, as I turned a page here and there, my eye dwelt longest, not on
+the few high lights, as it were, in my uneventful life of work and
+struggle, but on the many shadows they deepened and emphasized.
+
+
+Nov. 4, 1902. My first day in New York. I took a hack from the
+station to this house in the old "Chelsea district" they call it. My
+first hack-ride; it was pretty grand for me, but I was afraid to try
+the street cars after a horrid woman had tried her best to get me to go
+with her after I left the station--oh, it was awful! I never knew
+there could be such women before--not that kind. I shall look for work
+to-morrow.
+
+Nov. 5. I have to pay a dollar and a half for this room in the attic.
+There isn't any heat, and there is no gas in it. I have to furnish it
+myself. My landlady is a queer little old woman, Mrs. Turtelot, who
+has kept lodgers here for thirty years. She has her house filled with
+the students from the Theological Seminary near by. It's lucky I have
+this place to come to. I wondered to-day how girls ever get on in this
+city, without having someone to go to they know is all right. She
+seems like a Frenchwoman, perhaps a French Canadian. I think she must
+be, for her mother used to work at Seth White's tavern up home; it was
+through his neighbors I got her address. She says the students have to
+furnish their own bed clothes and towels. I 'm glad I brought mine
+with me. It's awfully cold here to-night, but Mrs. Turtelot has given
+me a lamp, till I can get one, and that warms up some. Anyway, I feel
+safe here from that other kind. I 'll soon earn enough to fix up a
+little.
+
+Nov. 6. I 've been tramping about all day answering advertisements.
+Mrs. Turtelot told me not to go into any strange place, like up stairs,
+and not to go over a door sill. I have n't found that so easy.
+
+I 've been afraid all day of getting lost, but she told me to-night to
+ask every time for West Twenty-third Street and follow it to the river;
+then I could always find my way here.
+
+I slept in her room on the sofa the first night; she says I can sleep
+with her for a few nights till I can get a cot. A student is leaving
+here in a few days and he will sell his second hand. But I don't want
+to sleep with her, and I asked her as a favor to let me have two
+pillows. She didn't have any extra ones, but let me have hers; so I
+have a good bed on the floor. Could n't find work.
+
+Nov. 8. Mrs. T. told me to-day that it is a bad time of year to find
+work. It is late in the season and help is being turned off, and,
+besides, it is going to be a hard winter, so everybody says. What do
+the turned-off ones do, then, for a living?-- No job yet! But I won't
+go out to service in a private family unless I have to. I 've had
+enough of that in the past.
+
+Nov. 9. Since I came here I have answered fifty-two advertisements. I
+get the same answer every time: "You have n't been trained and you have
+n't had any experience." How am I to get training and experience if I
+don't have the chance? That's what I want to know.
+
+Nov. 10. I 've bought the cot and the mattress. I paid four dollars
+for them. There is a small stove hole in the chimney on one side of my
+room; when I get to earning, I 'm going to have a little stove here and
+do my own cooking. Thank fortune, I can cook as well as chop wood if I
+have to! So far I 've heated my things on Mrs. T.'s stove. She lives,
+that is, cooks, eats, sleeps, and washes in her back basement; the
+front one she rents to a barber. He makes his living from the students
+round here and the professors at the Seminary. She says the students
+cook most of their meals in their rooms on their gas stoves. I wish I
+had one.
+
+Nov. 13. A bad lot of a date! No work yet, and I 've tramped all day
+in the slush and snow. I dried my things down in Mrs. T.'s room. I
+did n't dare to spend any more in car fares, for I must have a stove.
+
+I know to a cent just what I 've spent since I came, but I 'm going to
+put it down so I can see the figures; it will make me more cautious
+about spending. The car fare is more than I meant it should be, but,
+to save it, I walked the first three days from Eighty-sixth Street and
+Fourth Avenue--a bakery that advertised for a woman to sell the early
+morning bread in the shop; three hours of work only, at twenty cents an
+hour--down as far as the Washington Market where they wanted a girl to
+sell flowers in a sidewalk booth, for two weeks before Christmas. I
+found then that the soles of my boots were beginning to wear and that
+it saves something to ride.
+
+ Car fare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ .75
+ Bread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
+ Cheese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
+ 1 tin pail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
+ 6 eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
+ 1 can baked beans . . . . . . . . . . . .17
+ 2 pints soup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
+ Oil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
+ Tin lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
+ Cot and mattress . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.00
+ Room rent, two weeks in advance . . . . 3.00
+ Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $9.51
+
+
+And I have ten dollars and ninety-three cents left. I can hold the
+fort another two weeks on this.
+
+Nov. 15. No work yet. I 'm going to keep a stiff upper lip and find
+work, or starve in doing it. This city _sha'n't_ beat _me_, not if I
+can use my two arms and hands and legs, two eyes, one tongue and a
+brain! No!
+
+Nov. 17. I scrubbed down the three flights of stairs for Mrs. T.
+to-day. She has the rheumatism in her wrists, and I was glad to do it
+for her to help pay for her loan of the pillows and for letting me heat
+my things on her stove. I must buy my own to-morrow. I feel ashamed
+to ask favors of her any longer, for I have put off the buying of it
+till I could get work.
+
+Friday. Now I have just four dollars left; for I bought it to-day and
+set it up myself. A little second hand one with one hole on top--and
+no coals to put in it! I don't dare use the last four dollars, for the
+rent is due soon and I have to pay in advance. I suppose it's all
+right to secure herself, but it's hard on me.
+
+Nov. 30. I believe I 'm hungry, and I don't remember to have been
+hungry before in all my life, without having enough ready to fill my
+stomach. But I don't dare to spend another cent till I get work. It
+must come, _it must_--
+
+I 've lived three days on a half a pound of walnuts, half a pound of
+cheese and a loaf of bread--and walked my feet sore looking for a
+place. I know I could have had two places, but I dared not engage to
+the women. That woman in the Grand Central Station haunts me; these
+two women had a look of her! One wanted me in private manicure rooms
+to learn the trade; she said I had the right kind of fingers after the
+rough had worn off. The other wanted me to show rooms to rent in a
+queer looking house. Mrs. T. told me to keep away from it and all like
+it.
+
+Dec. 1. I 'm not only hungry, I 'm cold too. I bought two pails of
+coals, and paid high for them so Mrs. T. says. They say there is going
+to be a coal famine from the great strike. It makes me mad that it
+should all pile up on me in this way! Why can't I have work? Why,
+when I am willing, can't I find a place?
+
+An awful feeling comes over me sometimes, when I am turned down at a
+place I 've applied for: I want to throttle the first well-dressed man
+or woman I meet and say, "Give me work or I 'll make it the worse for
+you!" Then I turn all dizzy and sick after that feeling, and hate
+myself for the thought; it's so unjust.
+
+Dec. 10. I asked Mrs. T. if I might n't pay by the week and at the end
+of each week. I think she knew what the trouble was. She hesitated
+for a minute, and that was enough for me.
+
+"Oh, I _can_ pay you," I said, "only it's a little more convenient."
+
+"Then I 'd like you to," she said in her queer dry voice.
+
+I hated her at that moment. I went up stairs to my bare room and took
+off the knit woollen petticoat I made for myself at home, just before
+coming down; I took that and a set of gold beads, that were my
+grandmother's, and went out with them to a pawnbroker's just around the
+corner on the avenue. I got eight dollars for the two of them, and
+made the time in which to redeem them one month. Then I went back to
+the house and paid her. She looked surprised, but her skinny hand
+closed upon the money as if she, too, had no more for the morrow. I
+don't know that she has. The students come and go.
+
+Dec. 14. I stood on Twentieth Street near Broadway to-day, watching
+the teamsters unload the heavy drays at the back of a department store.
+I found myself envying them--they had work.
+
+Dec. 15. I am not up to date with my clothes, and I have no money to
+make myself so. I find it is for this reason I am "turned down" at so
+many places where I apply. I read it in men's eyes, in the women's
+hard stare.
+
+Dec. 17. A man offered to clothe me for a position in a shop, if I
+would--
+
+I know I looked at him; I think I saw him, or perhaps the beast that
+was in him. Then I saw queer lights before me, red and yellow--if I
+had been a man I would have taken him by the throat. When, at last, I
+could see again, the man was gone. Good riddance! There is such a
+thing as day nightmare.
+
+Dec. 19. I am beginning to understand how it is done; how the fifteen
+dollar waists, the diamond rings, the theatre, and the suppers after,
+can be had without work.
+
+Dec. 20. The strike is on. I should have to do without coals, strike
+or no strike, for I have nothing to buy them with. Mrs. Turtelot
+offered to let me heat my food on her stove--my food! I 've lived on
+one loaf of bread and a can of baked beans for seven days--and to-day I
+'ve been down to the Washington Market just to smell the evergreens
+that, for all I have no home, give me a homesick longing for the
+country. But I will not go back; I 'll starve here first.
+
+Afterwards I walked up to Twenty-third Street, and lost myself there in
+the holiday crowds. What throngs!--jostled, pushed, beset by vendors,
+loaded with bundles, yet so good natured! No one looked hungry. I
+stood on the kerb to watch the men selling toys and birds; to listen to
+the strange cries, the shrilling of the wooden canaries and the trill
+of the real ones; to peep into the rabbit hutch, and the basket of
+kittens; to stroke an armful of sleeping puppies; to smell the
+fragrance of roses and violets and carnations; to smile a little at the
+slow-moving turtles, the leaping frogs, the Jack-in-the-box, the
+mechanical toys of all kinds that performed on the sidewalk, each the
+centre of a small crowd. Then, at twilight, the flare from the
+chestnut vendor's stand, the little electric lights of the Punch and
+Judy sidewalk show, the electric torches that the children were
+carrying, the brilliant whirligigs for advertisements, gave to the
+whole scene a strange unreal appearance. Men, women, children,
+Christmas trees, dogs, birds, electric cars, rabbits, kittens, a goat,
+cabs, automobiles, express carts, surged into the flare and glare,
+first of one light then of another, till what was shadow and what was
+substance I failed to make out.
+
+Dec. 21. At last, oh, at last, there is work for me,--for me, too,
+among all these millions! But it makes me sick to know there must be
+some who are trying and never find.
+
+I have taken a place in a small writing-paper factory. It's down near
+Barclay Street, in the loft of a crazy old building, three wooden
+flights from the street. The loft is lighted at both ends by windows
+and in the top by skylights. It is heated by a large cylinder stove in
+the centre, and a small glue box-pot at one end. The air is close, but
+I don't care much, for it is so warm. I get four dollars a week.
+
+I can manage to live, at least, on this. I can think about nothing
+else to-night.
+
+Jan. 15, 1903. The coal strike is on. It is cold in the loft, for we
+have to be saving of fuel. It takes all I can save to buy three
+pailfuls of coal a week for my little stove. I kindle my fire at
+night, heat water, cook my cereal, or bean soup, and am comfortable
+till morning; the room is decently warm to dress in. I am off to work
+at seven. Fuel and rent and some necessary underclothes leave little
+for food. I cannot redeem my petticoat, and gold beads which my
+grandmother had from her mother, Marcia Farrell.
+
+July 6. Hot, hotter, hottest in the old fire-trap of a loft. The sun
+beats down through the skylights till we get sick. Two of the girls
+fainted this afternoon.
+
+Aug. 4. I discovered the Public Library to-day! It means so much to
+me that I simply can't write a word about it.
+
+Nov. 4. Just a year ago to-day since I came here. I am able to draw a
+free breath for the first time, to look about me and plan a little for
+my future. I 've made up my mind to study for the examinations for a
+place in the Public Library. My district school was no bad training,
+after all, for this work. It taught me one lesson: to put my mind on
+what was given me to do--and I have not forgotten it.
+
+The extra time for study at night will take more fuel and oil, but I
+can make that up by living a few more days every week on bean soup. I
+'ve made living on four dollars a week an art this last year. An art?
+Yes, rather than a science; and, like an art, it accomplishes
+surprisingly satisfactory results--results that science, with all its
+proven facts, from which it deduces laws of hygiene, fails to produce.
+
+I honestly believe that I 'm better fed than half the theological
+students. They scrimp and save--for a theatre ticket! They're a queer
+lot! I 've asked half a dozen to tell me what they 're aiming at, and
+not one of the six could give me a sensible answer. If they had said
+right out--"It's an easy way to get a small living," I would have
+respect for them. We all have to earn our living in one way or another.
+
+March, 1904. Desk assistant in a branch of the Library--at last!
+
+October, 1906. When I came down here I made a vow to put everything
+behind me; forget what I had left in New England, the memories of those
+hard-worked years, and start afresh; cut loose from all the old
+associations. I have succeeded fairly well. This new life of books is
+a wonderful one. I like my work as desk assistant in the Library, and
+I get nine dollars a week. This is wealth for me; I am saving. I have
+so much besides: the river and the ferries for a change; one trip up
+the Hudson--a thing to live on for years until I get another. Sometime
+I mean to travel--sometime! Meanwhile, I go on saving in every
+possible way.
+
+Jan. 8, 1907. What luck for me! I don't have to buy a book. The
+whole Library is mine for the asking. How I have read these last three
+years! As if I could never read enough; read while I 've been standing
+and eating; read before getting up and long after I have been in bed.
+It has been a hunger and thirst for this kind of food--and there has
+been enough of _this_! Enough!
+
+Feb. 1908. I am studying French now daily, and beginning Latin by
+myself, for I want to take the higher examinations for the cataloguing
+department. That will mean more pay and the prospect of a vacation
+sometime.
+
+March 16, 1908. How I gloat like a miser over my savings-bank book!
+Just one hundred and seventy-five dollars to my credit. I have visions
+of--oh, so much in ten years!
+
+May, 1908. I was at the Metropolitan this morning. I feel rich when I
+realize that all this treasure-house is open to me--is mine for the
+entering. I am taking the whole museum, room by room. A year's work
+on Sundays.
+
+August, 1908. I have not seen fit to change my method of expenditure
+since I entered the Library; I have continued to spend as I spent when
+I had four dollars a week, with the exception that I allow,
+necessarily, a little more for clothing.
+
+For housing:--
+
+ Room, $1.50 a week.
+ Fuel and oil in winter, $ 0.75
+ Oil in summer, .26
+
+
+Now for my art:--
+
+I have allowed for my food exactly one dollar a week and allow the same
+now. I go down to the Washington Market early in the morning. I revel
+in the sight of the fresh vegetables, of the flowers and fruits. The
+market-people know me now, and many a gift-flower I have brought back
+with me to my room, and several times a pot of herbs or spring bulbs;
+now and then a few sprays of parsley or thyme. These I look upon as my
+commission! Without leaving the market, I buy a loaf of bread for ten
+cents; a knuckle of veal, or a beef bone, a pound and a half of
+sausages, or a pound of salt pork, for fifteen cents; I vary my
+purchases from time to time that I may have variety. Ten cents for
+vegetables--I vary these, also, as much as possible; these, with a
+pound of rice, nine cents, a half a pound of butter, eighteen cents,
+and a quart of beans for another ten cents, give me satisfying
+combinations. When eggs are cheap I vary this diet with them, lettuce
+and bacon. I buy things that are cheapest in their season. In summer,
+I drop out all meat and substitute milk. I allow myself one pound of
+sugar a week; no tea, no coffee; the city water is the only thing of
+which I can have enough free. With what is left of my hundred
+cents,--for in my art it is the cents with which I reckon, not
+dollars,--I buy fruit in its season, a bit of cheese, sometimes even a
+Philadelphia squab! At times, they are cheaper than meat in the
+Market. In the season I can get one for ten cents.
+
+I have an extra treat when I buy that last, for the old man at the
+poultry stall, who draws the chickens and various fowl, is a model from
+the old Italian masters. An Italian himself, he speaks little English,
+wears a skull cap and, to my delight, looks like one of Fra Angelico's
+saints. I learn all this from the Metropolitan Museum, and apply it in
+the Washington Market!
+
+At times I haunt the fish stalls, select good sea food for a change,
+and am rewarded by the play of color on the zinc counters--the mottled
+green of live lobsters, the scarlet of boiled ones, the silver and rose
+of pompano, the pomegranate of salmon. I have stood by the half hour
+to watch the slow-moving turtles, the scuttling crabs in the tanks. I
+have good friends throughout the Market--men and women. They confide
+in me at times, like the cod-and-hake man, dealer in dried fish, who
+told me he had "a girl once down on Cape Cod". He seemed relieved by
+this confession. He was serving me at the time, and his two hundred or
+more pounds, his red face and his cordiality were delightful. My
+butter-egg-and-cheese man also confides to me that he is a commuter;
+has purchased a home on the instalment plan; has three children, and
+his wife runs a private laundry.
+
+What remains of the four dollars after the weekly bills are paid, I lay
+aside for clothes. I make my own shirt waists. It took me eleven
+months to earn a good skirt of brown Panama cloth; but it has lasted me
+four years.
+
+I think I live well, _considering_; but, in living thus, there is no
+denying I cross the bridge of mere sustenance every day, and am obliged
+to burn my bridge behind me! I don't like it--but am thankful for
+work. I 'm not beneath adding to my reserve fund five cents at a time.
+
+Dec. 18, 1908. They 're nice boys, the theological students--but
+queer, some of them. I 've watched different sets of them come and go
+during these six years. Two or three have attempted to make a little
+love to me; a few have adopted me--so they said--for their sister. I
+'m forgotten with their graduation and their flitting! One or two are
+really friends; they 're younger than I, of course, and I can patronize
+and quiz them.
+
+Johnny is my favorite. There is little theological nonsense about him,
+and there is an inquisitive disposition to see New York and make the
+most of his time here. He 's from the north part of the state; likes
+books, likes people, likes a good time, whenever he can get it, on his
+limited income to which he adds by helping the basement barber two days
+in the week, canvassing for books in the summer, and on Saturdays
+waiting on the patrons of a book stall in a corridor of one of the big
+hotels.
+
+Taken altogether, Johnny is a man who has not as yet found his calling,
+although he is anchored for the present, through affection for his
+father, to "Chelsea" and a career that, at times, irks him. We 've had
+many a good talk about this matter. I tell him he 's not dragging
+anchor, but weighing it.
+
+I like to see New York through Johnny's eyes--Adirondack eyes, keen,
+honest, and blue; they take in all the metropolitan sights, from the
+Hippodrome, to the Bowery vaudevilles and the Cathedral of St. John.
+
+It's fun to "do" the city with him, with no expense except car fares.
+
+Jan. 1909. Johnny and I stood outside the Metropolitan Opera House
+this evening, to see the hodge-podge of carriages and automobiles
+arrive with their contents: the women who toil not, neither do they
+spin anything except financial webs for men's undoing. It was a queer
+sight! Hundreds of women passed me. As I looked at them, I saw the
+same long, pointed, manicured nails, the same jewelled fingers, the
+incurving fronts, the distorted busts, the lined and rouged faces--like
+those I loathed so when I first came to this city. I asked myself,
+"What's the difference between the two kinds? Is it money alone that
+makes it?"
+
+"But are there two kinds?" I was asking myself again, when Johnny, who
+has an eye for good clothes on man and woman, called my attention to a
+woman's opera cloak. It was worth a man's ransom. From a deep yoke of
+Russian sable depended the long cape of pale green satin covered with
+graduated flounces, from eight to fourteen inches deep, of Venetian
+point. And taking in all this, I saw--
+
+Well, I don't know that I dare to set down in words, even for my own
+enlightenment, what I saw in that Vision. But, suddenly, all the rich
+robings, opera cloaks, clinging gowns of silk, velvet and chiffon, the
+diamond tiaras, the jewelled necklaces, the French lingerie even--all
+dropped from every one in that procession; and there, on a New York
+sidewalk, in the harsh glare of electric lights, amidst the hiss and
+cranking of their automobiles, the clank of silver-mounted harness and
+the champing of bits, the shouts and calls and myriad city noises, I
+saw them for what they really are:--women, like unto all other women;
+women made originally for the mates of men, for mothers, for
+burden-bearers, with prehensile hands to grasp, then lead and uplift,
+and so aid in the work of the world.
+
+And what more I saw in the Vision I may scarcely write down; for,
+therein, I was shown for these same women both unfathomable depths and
+scarce attainable heights, both degradation and transfiguration, the
+human bestial and the humanly divine--the Vampire, the Angel.
+
+And I was shown in that Vision the Calvaries of maternity common to
+all, whether the conception be immaculate, so-called if within the law,
+or maculate, so-called if without the law. I saw, also, the
+Gethsemanes of motherhood common to all. I saw, moreover, the three
+Dolorous Ways which their feet--and the feet of all women, because
+women--are treading, have ever trod, must ever tread, that the seed
+which shall propagate the Race may be trodden deep for germination.
+
+Moreover, I saw in that Vision the women treading the seed in the Ways.
+One of the Ways was stony, and those therein walked with bleeding feet
+for their labor was in vain; the land was sterile. And the second was
+deeply rutted with sand, and those therein labored heavily with sweat
+and toil; the fruition was but for a day. And the third Way was heavy
+with deeply-furrowed fertile soil, and those that trod it toiled long
+and late that the seed might not fail of abundant harvest.
+
+Furthermore, I saw that every woman was treading one of these three
+Ways; and silk, and chiffon, or velvet gown, opera cloaks of sable and
+satin, diamond tiaras and jewelled necklaces could avail them naught.
+Trammelled by these or by rags--it matters not which--they must tread
+the Ways.
+
+I pressed my hand over my eyes to clear them of this Vision; for, at
+last, I understood. I knew that I, too, being a woman, must tread one
+of the three Dolorous Ways even as my mother had trodden one before me.
+But which?
+
+I could bear it no longer. "Come away, Johnny," I said abruptly.
+
+April, 1909. I am beginning to be so tired of the confusion of the
+streets. The work at the Library has become irksome. I am tired of
+reading, too, and feel as if my last prop had been taken from under me,
+when I have no longer the desire to read.
+
+I handle the books, place them, record dates, handle books again, place
+them, record dates, handle books again--the very smell of the booky
+atmosphere is sickening to me.
+
+I suppose I need rest. But how can I rest when I have my daily living
+to earn? I won't touch those hundred and seventy-five dollars if I
+never have a vacation. I should lose all my courage if I had to spend
+a dollar of that money, except for the final end--nine years hence.
+Even the thought of stopping work makes me feel weary.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+July 1. So the money is gone! I have been trying to face this fact
+the last hour. The long sickness of ten weeks has taken it all, for I
+was too proud to go to the hospital without paying my way. I let no
+one know how matters stood with me. I have come out of St. Luke's
+feeling so weak, so indifferent to life, to everything I thought made
+my own small life worth living.--And it is so hot here! So breathless!
+A great longing has come upon me to get away somewhere. Since I have
+been so sick things look different to me. The energy of life seems to
+have gone out of me, and I want to creep away into some place far, far
+away from this city, where I can live a more normal life.
+
+But how can I make the break? Where can I go? How begin all over
+again in this awful struggle to get work, and succeed in anything? My
+courage has failed me.
+
+
+I closed the books. I was wondering if I should destroy them and in
+this fashion burn all my bridges behind me.
+
+"No," I spoke aloud; "I 'll save them, but I will never keep another
+journal."
+
+I opened to a blank page, took pen and ink and wrote on it:
+
+September 18th, 1909. I have decided to accept a place at service (at
+last!) on a farm in Canada, Province of Quebec, Seigniory of Lamoral
+(?). Wages twenty-five dollars a month, besides room and board.
+
+And underneath:
+
+12 midnight. My last word in this book. Within the past six hours I
+have experienced something of what I call "heaven and hell". I have
+travelled a long road since I came to this city on November 4, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+A few evenings afterwards Delia Beaseley came up to see me. She
+brought the passage money and a note of instruction. It was directly
+to the point: I was to take a sleeping car on the Montreal express;
+then the day local boat down the St. Lawrence to Richelieu-en-Bas. At
+the landing I was to enquire for Mrs. Macleod, and someone would be
+there to meet me. A time-table was enclosed. The note was signed
+"Janet Macleod ".
+
+"This must be the 'elderly Scotchwoman,' Delia," I said after reading
+the note twice.
+
+"I'm thinking it's her--but then you never can tell."
+
+"How did she send the passage money?"
+
+"By post office order. It would n't have hurt her to send a bit of a
+welcome word, to my thinking." She spoke rather grimly.
+
+"I 'm not going for the welcome, you know; it's work and a change I
+want--and right thankful I am to get the chance."
+
+"Well you may be, my dear, in these times," she said, softening at once.
+
+"I shall write you, Delia, all about everything; you know you want to
+hear all about things."
+
+"Would I own to being a woman if I did n't?" She laughed her hearty
+laugh; then, with a little hesitancy: "And, my dear, I 'd think kindly
+of you for writing me, and I 'd like to know that all is going well
+with you, but you know there's Doctor Rugvie to reckon with, and he
+won't hold to much correspondence, I 'm thinking, between me
+and--what's the name of that place? I can't pronounce it--"
+
+"Richelieu-en-Bas."
+
+"Rich--I can't get the twist of it round my English tongue; say it
+again, and may be I 'll catch it."
+
+I repeated it twice for her, but her results were not equal to her
+efforts. We both laughed.
+
+"Never mind, Delia; and don't tell me Doctor Rugvie is going to say to
+whom I shall write or to whom I shan't--especially if it's my friend,
+Delia Beaseley."
+
+"Well, I can't say, my dear; but I 'll speak to him about it when he
+gets home--"
+
+"Now, no nonsense from a sensible woman, Delia Beaseley; I should think
+I was going into a land of mysteries to hear you talk."
+
+She laughed again. "I don't say as it's a mystery, but I can't help
+thinking he wants to keep the matter quiet like, you see."
+
+"But I don't see--and I don't intend to," I said obstinately.
+
+Delia changed the subject. "It's well you 've got your passage money.
+It's quite dear travelling that way."
+
+"Never was in a Pullman in my life, Delia, but you may believe I shall
+enjoy it."
+
+She beamed on me. "That's right, my dear, take all the pleasure you
+can, and, of course, if Doctor Rugvie did n't mind--well, I must own up
+to it that I 'd like to hear from you, and what you make of it up
+there."
+
+"So you shall, Delia; no secrets between you and me; there can't be; we
+'ve known each other too long--ever since I was born into the world."
+
+She looked a little mystified at my statement, but accepted it
+evidently with appreciation.
+
+"Jane or me 'll be down to the station to see you off," she said as she
+bade me good night.
+
+During the next two weeks and at odd times, I did a good bit of
+reference work on my own account in looking up the histories of the
+Canadian "Seigniories"; but at the end of that time I was ready to set
+out for that other country only a little wiser for my research.
+
+A week later, Delia Beaseley was at the Grand Central to see me start
+on my journey northwards.
+
+"I feel as if I were setting out on a real series of adventures,
+Delia!" I exclaimed when I met her. I took both her hands in mine.
+"If only I were a man I should take stick and knapsack and find my way
+on foot. I 'd camp on the shore of the Tappan Zee, wander through the
+Catskills, and stop over night at the old Dutch farmhouses, follow the
+shores of Lake Champlain and cross the border high of heart, even if
+footweary!"
+
+Delia smiled indulgently upon me.
+
+"Such fancies will help you out a good bit, my dear; it's well you have
+a word or two of French to get along with. I used to hear it when I
+was a girl in Cape Breton."
+
+I caught the shadow of a memory settle in her eyes. We were at the
+gate. The train was made up.
+
+"I must say goodby here, my dear; they won't let me in to the train."
+
+I took both her hands again. "Goodby, Delia Beaseley," I began; then
+something choked me. I so wanted to thank her for all her goodness to
+me. "I wish I knew what to say--how to thank--"
+
+"There, there, my dear, I 'm the one to be thankful. I 've been
+reaping a harvest just from one little seed I sowed near twenty-six
+years ago--and I never thought to see so much as a blade of grass!
+That's all. I 'm wonderful grateful it's been given me to see such a
+harvest."
+
+"Oh, Delia, if I only amounted to something, so that you could be proud
+of your little harvest--"
+
+"Now, don't, my dear, don't; don't say nothing more, but just go
+straight forward with God's blessing, which is the same as mine this
+time, and--don't forget me if ever you need a friend."
+
+My eyes filled with unaccustomed tears. A curious thought: New York,
+the Juggernaut, the fetich of millions, just when I was ridding myself
+of the horror of its awful presence, was about to bind me to it through
+this new-old friend!
+
+I caught her rough toil-worn hand in both mine and pressed my lips to
+it; then I dropped it, and walked rapidly down the platform to the
+train. Not once did I look behind me.
+
+
+For a little while after entering the luxurious sleeping car, I felt
+awkward, uncomfortable; I had never been in one before. But when I was
+settled in my ample, high-backed section, and the train began to move
+slowly out of the station and through the tunnel, I felt more at ease.
+After that, with every mile that the train, moving more and more
+swiftly, put between me and the city's sights and sounds, I felt a
+rising of spirits, an ease of mind and body I had never before
+experienced.
+
+Within an hour all depression had vanished; hopes and anticipations for
+the new environment filled the foreground of my thoughts. Without
+adequate reason, I believed that the change I was making was for my
+good; that with new faces about me, with new and closer interests
+which, alone as I was in the world, I must substitute for a home, I was
+about to escape from all former associations and the memories they
+fostered.
+
+Only one thought troubled me, that was the connection by Delia Beaseley
+of Doctor Rugvie's name with that of George Jackson--my mother's
+husband. I had hoped never to hear that name again.
+
+For an hour I peered at the dark Hudson, the shadowed hills; the night
+fell, blotting out the landscape wholly and shutting me into the warm
+brilliantly lighted car with a sense of cosy security.
+
+I looked at the few people I could see over the high sections. Three
+women were opposite to me, two of them young. I found myself
+calculating the cost of their dresses and accessories, their furs and
+hats. I reckoned the amount to be something like my wages on the farm
+for six years. How easily and unconsciously they wore their good
+clothes! One of the two younger held my attention. She was fair,
+slender, long-throated, and carried herself with noticeable erectness.
+I caught bits of their conversation carried on in low pleasing voices:
+
+"It will be such a surprise to them."
+
+"... the C. P. steamer--"
+
+"Oh, fancy! They must have known--"
+
+"... you know I am glad to be at home this winter..."
+
+"Where is it? ..."
+
+"Somewhere in Richelieu-en-Bas--"
+
+I was all ears. Richelieu-en-Bas was my destination. Their voices
+were so low I could catch but little more.
+
+"Just fancy! But you would never know from him--"
+
+"When is Mr. Ewart coming over?"
+
+"Bess!" The fair one held up a warning finger; "your voice carries
+so." She rose and reached for her furs from the hook. "Let's go into
+the forward car and see the Ellwicks."
+
+The others rose too; shook themselves out a little; patted hair rolls,
+changed a hairpin, took down their furs and left the car--tall graceful
+women, all of them.
+
+Since my illness I had squeezed out from my earnings enough for the
+passage money, fourteen dollars, and eight besides. I did n't want to
+begin by being indebted to any one in the Seigniory of Lamoral for that
+amount; and I did n't want it deducted from my first wages. I pleased
+myself with the fancy that, soon after my arrival, I should give the
+money into some one's hands with an appropriate word or two, to the
+effect that I had chosen to pay my own travelling expenses. That
+sounded better than passage money which was reminiscent of the steerage.
+
+They should understand that if I were at service, I had a little
+moneyed independence of my own--the pitiful eight dollars with which to
+go out into the new country. Immigrants have come in with less than
+this--nor been deported. Well, I ran no risk of being deported from
+Canada.
+
+I asked the porter to make my berth early. About nine I lay down,
+tired and worn out with the excitement of the past three weeks. I drew
+the curtains close to shut out the night, and lay there passively
+content, listening to the steadily accented _clankity-clank-clank_ of
+the Montreal night express.
+
+I liked the sound; it soothed me. This swift on-rush into the night
+towards Canada, the even motion, began to rest the long over-strained
+nerves. During these hours, at least, I was care free. I slept.
+
+For the first time for months that sleep was long, unbroken, dreamless.
+I awoke refreshed, strengthened. Drawing the window curtains aside, I
+looked out upon a world newly bathed in the early morning lights.
+
+At the sight, my enthusiasm, which I thought quenched forever in the
+overwhelming flood of adverse circumstance, was rekindled; my
+imagination stimulated. Dawn was breaking clear and golden behind the
+mountains across Lake Champlain. Green those mountains are in the
+October sunlight, green and yellow and frost-wrought crimson; but now
+they loomed dark against the horizon's deepening gold. A few small
+dawn clouds of pure rose and one, gigantic, high-piled, of smoke gray,
+hung motionless above the mist-veiled waters of the lake.
+
+I watched the coming of this day with charmed eyes. The sun rose
+clear, undimmed over the shadowed mountains. The lake mists felt its
+beams; dispersed suddenly in silver flocculence; and the path across
+the blue waters was free for the morning glory that was advancing apace.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+THE SEIGNIORY OF LAMORAL
+
+
+
+I
+
+"Richelieu--Richelieu-en-Bas."
+
+The captain of the local freight and passenger boat, that had taken six
+hours to make its trip down the St. Lawrence from Montreal, pointed
+encouragingly to the low north bank of the river. I looked eagerly in
+that direction.
+
+"Richelieu-en-Haut is back there," with a sweep of his hand northwards,
+"six miles back on the railroad."
+
+The little steamer was running, at that moment, within twenty feet of
+the low bank which, I saw at once, had been converted into a meandering
+village street, built up only on one side. A double row of trees
+shaded both houses and highway. We were within confidential speaking
+distance of the few people I saw in the street, and apparently on
+intimate terms with the front rooms of the tiny houses. We sailed past
+the market-place square, past the long low inn with double verandas,
+past the post office, and drew to the landing-place which the steamer
+saluted.
+
+This salute was the signal for the appearance of what appeared to me
+the entire population of the place. There were people under the
+lindens, people at the doors and open windows, people in boats rowing
+towards us; one man was poling a scow in which were a cow and two
+horses. There were men with handcarts, boys with baskets, old women
+and young girls, all talking, gesticulating freely.
+
+The handcarts were drawn up to the landing-place; the steamer was made
+fast to an apology for a mooring-post; the gangway heaved up. Several
+sheep on the lower deck were run down it by a forced method of
+locomotion, their keepers hoisting their hind legs, and steering them
+wheelbarrow fashion into the street where some children attempted to
+ride them. All about me I heard the chatter of Canadian French, not a
+word of which I understood.
+
+A ponderous antiquated private coach, into which were harnessed two
+fine shaggy-fetlocked horses,--I learned afterwards these were
+Percherons, with sires from Normandy,--stood in the street directly
+opposite the boat; a small boy was holding their heads. I wondered if
+that were my "Seigniory coach"!
+
+My trunk was literally shovelled out down the gangway, and I followed.
+I stood on the landing-place and looked about me. I was, in truth, in
+that other country for, oh, the air! It was like nothing I had ever
+known! So strong, so free, so soft, as if it were blowing straight
+from the great Northland, over unending virgin plains, through primeval
+unending forests, that the dwellers on this great water highway might
+enjoy something of its primal purity and strength.
+
+I was filling my lungs full of it and thinking of my instructions to
+ask for Mrs. Janet Macleod, when a tall man, loosely jointed but
+powerfully built, made his way to me through the crowd.
+
+"I take it you 're the gal Mis' Macleod 's lookin' fer?"
+
+It was simply the statement of a foregone conclusion, but the drawling
+nasal intonation, the accent and manner of speech, told me that it was
+native to my northern New England, where I have lived two-thirds of my
+life; it was the speech of my own people. I laughed; I could not have
+helped it. It was such a come-down from my high ideas of "Seigniory
+retainers" of foreign birth, with which romance I had been entertaining
+myself ever since I had fed my fancy on what the New York Public
+Library yielded me.
+
+"Yes, I 'm the one, Marcia Farrell. Is this our coach?"
+
+The man gave me a keen glance from under his bushy eyebrows; indeed, he
+looked sharply at me a second time. If he thought I was quizzing him
+he was much mistaken.
+
+"Yes, that's our'n,"--I noticed he placed an emphasis on the
+possessive,--"and we 'd better be gettin' along 'fore dark; the
+steamer's late. You and the coach ain't just what you 'd call a
+perfect fit--nor I could n't say as you was a misfit," he added, as he
+opened the door for me to get in. "Guess Mis' Macleod was expectin'
+somebody with a little more heft to 'em; you don't look over tough?"
+The statement was put in the form of a question. "But your trunk 'll
+fill up some."
+
+He hoisted it endwise with one hand on to the front seat; took his
+place beside it; gathered up the reins, and said to the boy:
+
+"Let 'em go, Pete. You get up behind."
+
+But the horses did not go. They snorted, threw up their heads,
+flourished their long tails, one of them showed his heels, and both
+cavorted to the wild delight of the assembled crowd.
+
+Some emphatic words from the coachman, and judicious application of the
+whiplash, soon showed the young thoroughbreds what was wanted of them,
+and they trotted slowly, heavily, but steadily, down the road beside
+the river, Pete, who was behind on a curious tail extension, shouting
+to the small boys as he passed them.
+
+After the horses had settled down to real work, my driver turned to me.
+
+"Did you come through last night clear from New York?"
+
+"Yes, and I 'm glad to get here; this air is wonderful."
+
+"Thet 's what they all say when they strike Canady fer the fust time.
+I take it it's your fust time?"
+
+"Yes, I 'm a stranger here."
+
+"Speakin' 'bout air--I can't see much difference 'twixt good air most
+anywheres. Take it, now, up in New England, up north where I was
+raised, you can't get better nowheres. Thet comes drorrin' through the
+mountains and acrosst the Lake, an' it can't be beat."
+
+I made no reply for I feared he would ask me if I knew "New England up
+north".
+
+He turned to look at me, evidently surprised at my short silence. He
+saw that I was being jolted about on the broad back seat, owing to the
+uneven road.
+
+"Sho! If I did n't have the trunk, I 'd put you here on the front seat
+'longside of me to kinder steady you."
+
+"How far is it to the Seigniory of Lamoral, Mr.--?" I ventured to ask,
+hoping for a flood of information about the Seigniory and its occupants.
+
+"Call me Cale," he said shortly; "thet 's short fer Caleb, an' what all
+the Canucks know me by. Mis' Macleod, she ain't but jest come to it;
+she balked consider'ble at fust, but it rolls off'n her tongue now
+without any Scotch burr, I can tell you! You was askin' 'bout the
+Seigniory of Lamoral--I dunno jest what to say. The way we 're
+proceedin' now it's 'bout an hour from here, but with some hosses it
+might take a half, an' by boat you can make it as long as you 're a
+mind ter."
+
+"It's a large place?"
+
+"Thet depends on whether you 're talkin' 'bout the old manor or the
+Seigniory; one I can show you in ten minutes, t' other in about three
+days." He turned and looked at me again with his small keen gray eyes.
+
+"Where was _you_ raised?" He spoke carelessly enough; but I knew my
+own. He was simulating indifference, and I put him off the track at
+once.
+
+"I was born in New York City."
+
+"Great place--New York."
+
+He chirrupped to the colts, and we drove for the next fifteen minutes
+without further conversation.
+
+The boat, owing to heavy freight, was an hour late in leaving Montreal,
+and two hours longer than its usual time, in discharging it at a dozen
+hamlets and villages along the St. Lawrence. In consequence, it was
+sunset when we left the landing-place, and the twilight was deepening
+to-night, as we turned away from the river road and drove a short
+distance inland. Once Caleb drew rein to light a lantern, and summon
+Pete from the back of the coach to sit beside him and hold it.
+
+It grew rapidly dark. Leaning from the open upper half of the coach
+door, I could just see between the trees along the roadside, a sheet of
+water.
+
+"Hola!" Cale shouted suddenly with the full power of his lungs.
+"Hola--hola!"
+
+It was echoed by Pete's shrill prolonged "Ho--la-a-a-a-a!"
+
+"Ho-la! Ho!" came the answer from somewhere across the water. Cale
+turned and looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Thet 's the ferry. We ferry over a piece here; it's the back water of
+a crick thet makes in from the river 'long here, fer 'bout two mile."
+He turned into a narrow lane, dark under the trees, and drove to the
+water's edge.
+
+By the flare of the lantern I could see a broad raft, rigged with a
+windlass, slowly moving towards us over the darkening waters. Another
+lantern of steady gleam lighted the face of the ferryman. It took but
+a few minutes to reach the bank; the horses went on to the boards with
+many a snort and much stamping of impatient hoofs. Pete took his place
+at their heads.
+
+"_Marche!_"
+
+We moved slowly away towards the other bank. There was no moon; the
+night air was crisp with coming frost; an owl hooted somewhere in the
+woods.
+
+We were soon on the road again, as ever beneath trees. It seemed to me
+as if we were turning to the river again. I asked Cale about it.
+
+"You 've hit it 'bout right, in the dark too. We foller back a quarter
+of a mile, an' then we 're there."
+
+That quarter of a mile seemed long to me.
+
+"Here we are," said Cale, at last.
+
+I looked out. I could see the long low outlines of a house showing
+dimly white through the trees, for there were trees everywhere. A
+flaring light, as from a wood fire, illumined one window.
+
+We drew up at a broad flight of low steps. A door into a lighted
+passageway was opened. I saw there were at least four people in it;
+one, a woman in a white cap, came out on the upper step.
+
+"Have you brought Miss Farrell, Cale?" she said.
+
+"Yes, Mis' Macleod, fetched her right along; but the boat was good
+three hours late.--Pete, open the door; I 'll hold the hosses."
+
+I went up the steps, not knowing what to say, for the mere inflection
+of her voice, the gentle address, the prefix "Miss" to my name, told me
+intuitively that I was with gentle people, and my service with them was
+to be other than I fancied.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+"I hope you will soon feel at home in the old manor." With these words
+I was made welcome. Mrs. Macleod led the way into the house.
+
+"Jamie," she said to a young man, or youth, I could not tell which,
+"this is Miss Farrell. My son," she added, turning to me.
+
+"Call me Marcia," I said to her. She smiled as if pleased.
+
+"You will be feeling very tired after your long journey--and I 'm
+thinking jolly hungry after coming up in the old boat; that was
+mother's doings."
+
+"Now, Jamie--!" she spoke in smiling protest.
+
+O Jamie, Jamie Macleod! Your thin bright eager face was in itself a
+welcome to the old manor of Lamoral.
+
+"I 'm not tired, but I confess to having a good appetite; this Canada
+air would make an angel long for manna," I said laughing.
+
+"Wouldn't it though--oh, it's great!" he responded joyfully.
+"Angélique, here, will help you out in that direction--she's our cook;
+Angélique, come here." He gave his command in French.
+
+The short thickset French Canadian of the black-eyed-Susan type, came
+forward, with outstretched hand, from the back of the passageway; there
+was good friendship in her hearty grip.
+
+"And Marie will take charge of you till supper time," said Mrs.
+Macleod, smiling; "Jamie is apt to run the house at times because he
+can speak with the servants in their own tongue."
+
+"Now, mother!" It was Jamie's turn to protest.
+
+Mrs. Macleod spoke to the little maid, who was beaming on me, in
+halting French.
+
+"Do you speak French?" she asked me.
+
+"No, I can read it, that 's all."
+
+"Oh, well, with that you can soon understand and speak it; my Scotch
+tongue is too old to be learning new tricks; fortunately I understand
+it a little. Marie will take you to your room."
+
+Marie looked on me with an encouraging smile, and led the way up stairs
+through a wide passageway, down three steps into another long corridor,
+and opened a door at the end. She lighted two candles and, after some
+pantomime concerning water, left me, closing the door behind her.
+
+And this was my room. I looked around; it took immediate possession of
+me in spirit--a new experience for me and a wholly pleasing one.
+
+There were two windows in one end; the walls were sloping. I concluded
+it must be in the gable end of some addition to the main building. The
+walls were whitewashed; the floor was neatly laid with a woven rag
+carpet of peculiar design and delicate coloring; the cottage bedroom
+set was painted dark green. There was a plain deal writing table with
+writing pad and inkstand, and a dressing table on which stood two white
+china candlesticks. Counterpane, chair cushions, and window hangings
+were of beautiful old chintz still gay with faded paroquets and vines,
+trees, trellises, roses and numerous humming-birds, on a background of
+faded crocus yellow.
+
+There was a knock at the door. On my using one of the few words in
+French at my command, "Entrez," Marie burst in with delighted
+exclamations and a flood of unintelligible French. But I gathered she
+was explaining to me Pierre who followed her, cap in one hand, and in
+the other, the handle of my trunk which he was dragging behind him.
+This was evidently Pierre, father, in distinction from Pierre, son.
+
+"Big Pete and little Pete," I translated for their benefit; whereupon
+Marie clapped her hands and Peter the Great came forward man fashion to
+shake hands before he placed my trunk. As the two spoke together I
+heard the name "Cale".
+
+"What a household!" I said to myself after they had gone, and while I
+was doing over my hair. "I wonder if there are any other members? And
+what is my place in it going to be?"
+
+It kept me guessing until I had made myself ready for supper.
+
+Soon there was another knock. Marie's voice was heard; her tongue
+loosed in voluble expression of her evident desire to conduct me down
+stairs to the dining-room.
+
+"Here are more of us!" was Jamie Macleod's exclamation, as I entered
+the long low room. Four fine dogs--he told me afterwards they were
+Gordon setters--rose slowly from the rug before the fireplace. "But
+they 're Scotch and need no introduction. Come here, comrades!"
+
+The four leaped towards me; snuffed at me with evident curiosity;
+licked my hands and were about to spring on me, but a word from their
+master sent them back to the rug.
+
+He showed me my place at the long narrow table; drew out the chair for
+his mother and, when she was seated, spoke to the dogs who, with
+perfect decorum, sedately settled themselves on their haunches in twos,
+one on each side of Mrs. Macleod at the head of the table, one on each
+side of her son at her right. They looked for all the world like the
+Barye bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum! After all, I could not get
+rid of all the associations, nor did this one bring with it anything
+but pleasure, that the great city had yielded me this much of
+instruction.
+
+I was looking at the dogs and about to speak, when I noticed that Mrs.
+Macleod had bent her head and folded her hands. I caught Jamie looking
+at me out of the corner of his eye. For the first time in my life I
+heard "grace" said at a table. I felt myself grow red; I was
+embarrassed. Jamie saw my confusion and began to chat in his own
+bright way.
+
+"I asked mother if she had written definitely what we 'd asked you up
+here for into the wilds of Canada."
+
+"Now, Jamie! You will be giving Miss--Marcia," she corrected herself,
+"to understand I asked her here under false pretence. To tell the
+truth, I did n't quite see how to explain myself at such a distance."
+She spoke with perfect sincerity. "Moreover, Doctor Rugvie told me
+that Mrs. Beaseley was absolutely trustworthy, and I relied on her--but
+you don't know Doctor Rugvie?"
+
+"Of him, yes; I saw him once in the hospital."
+
+"So you 've been in the hospital too?"
+
+It was Jamie who put that question, and something of the eager light in
+his face faded as he asked it.
+
+"Yes, last spring; I was there ten weeks."
+
+"Then you know," he said quite simply, and looked at me with inquiring
+eyes.
+
+Why or how I was enabled to read the significance of that simple
+statement, I cannot say; I know only in part. But I do know that my
+eyes must have answered his, for I saw in them a reflection of my own
+thought: We both, then, have known what it is, to draw near to the
+threshold of that door that opens only outward.
+
+"You don't indeed look strong; I noticed that the first thing," said
+Mrs. Macleod.
+
+"Oh, but I am," I assured her; "you will see when you have work for me.
+I can cook, and sew--and chop wood, and even saw a little, if
+necessary."
+
+Mrs. Macleod looked at me in absolute amazement, and Jamie burst into a
+hearty laugh. It was good to hear, and, without in the slightest
+knowing why, I laughed too--at what I did not know, nor much care. It
+was good to laugh like that!
+
+"And to think, mother, that you told me to come down heavy on the
+'strong and country raised'! Oh, this is rich! I wrote that
+advertisement, Miss Far--"
+
+"Please call me Marcia."
+
+"May I?" He was again eager and boyish.
+
+"Why not?" I said. He went on with his unfinished sentence.
+
+"--And I pride myself that I rose to the occasion of mother's command
+to make it 'brief but explicit'."
+
+"Poor girl, you 've had little chance to hear anything explicit from me
+as yet." Mrs. Macleod smiled, rather sadly I thought. "But you shall
+know before you go to bed. I could n't be so thoughtless as to keep
+you in suspense over night."
+
+"Oh, I can wait," I said; "but what I want to know, Mr. Macleod--"
+
+"Please call me Jamie," he said, imitating my voice and intonation.
+
+"May I?" I replied, mimicking his own. Then we both fell to laughing
+like two children, and it seemed to me that I felt what it is to be
+young, for the first time in my life. The four dogs wagged their
+tails, threshing the floor with them like flails and keeping time to
+our hilarity; Mrs. Macleod smiled, almost happily, and Marie came in to
+see what it was all about.
+
+"What do you want to know?" he said at last, mopping the tears from his
+eyes with his napkin.
+
+"Why you advertised your mother as 'an elderly Scotchwoman'?"
+
+"Because that sounded safe."
+
+Again we laughed, it seemed at almost nothing. The dogs whined as if
+wanting to join in what fun there was; the fire snapped merrily on the
+hearth, and the large coal-oil lamp, at the farther end of the long
+table, sent forth a cheerful light from under its white porcelain
+shade, and showed me the old room in all its simple beauty.
+
+Overhead, the great beams and the ceiling were a rich mahogany color
+with age. The sides were panelled to the ceiling with the same wood.
+Between the two doors opening into the passageway, was a huge but
+beautifully proportioned marble chimney-piece that reached to the beams
+of the ceiling. The marble was of the highest polish, white, pale
+yellow, and brown in tone. Above the mantel, it formed the frame of a
+large canvas that showed a time-darkened landscape with mounted
+hunters. The whole piece was exquisitely carved with the wild grape
+vine--its leaves and fruit.
+
+On each side were old iron sconces. Above the two doors were the
+antlers of stags. The room was lighted by four windows; these were
+hung with some faded chintz, identical in pattern and color with that
+in my bedroom; they were drawn. I wondered, as I looked at this beauty
+of simplicity, what the other rooms in the house would show. I noticed
+there was no sideboard, no dresser; only the table, and heavy chairs
+with wooden seats, furnished the room.
+
+The food was wholesome and abundant. I found myself wondering that I
+could eat each mouthful without counting the cost.
+
+"I 'll stay here with the dogs and smoke," Jamie said, as we left the
+table.
+
+We crossed the passageway, which I noticed was laid with flagging and
+unheated, to the room opposite the dining-room.
+
+Here again, there were the wood ceilings and panelled walls, the latter
+painted white. The great chimney-piece was like its fellow in the
+dining-room; only the carvings were different: intricate scrollwork and
+fine groovings. There was a canvas, also, in the marble frame, but it
+was in a good state of preservation; it showed a walled city on a
+height and a river far below. I wondered if it could be Quebec.
+
+The room was larger than the other, but much cosier in every way.
+There were a few modern easy chairs, an ample old sofa--swans carved on
+the back and arms--a large library table of black oak with bevelled
+edges, also beautifully carved; and around the walls of the room, in
+every available space, were plain low bookshelves of pine stained to
+match the table. On the floor were the same woven rugs of rag carpet,
+unique of design and beautiful in coloring--dark brown, pale yellow,
+and white, with large squares marked off in narrow lines of rose. The
+furniture, except for the sofa which was upholstered in faded yellow
+wool damask, was covered with flowery chintz like that in the
+dining-room, and at the windows were the same faded yellow hangings. A
+large black bear skin rug lay before the hearth. There were no
+ornaments or pictures anywhere. On the mantel were two pots of
+flourishing English ivy. A stand of geraniums stood before one of the
+four windows.
+
+There were sconces on each side of the chimney-piece, but of gilt
+bronze. Each was seven-branched, and it was evident that Marie had
+just lighted all fourteen candles.
+
+Mrs. Macleod drew her chair to the hearth, and I took one near her.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"It is a good time to speak of some matters between ourselves; Jamie
+will not be coming in for an hour at least." She turned and looked at
+me steadily.
+
+"I don't know how much or how little you know of this place, and
+perhaps it will be best to begin at the beginning. Mrs. Beaseley wrote
+me you were born in the city of New York."
+
+"Yes; twenty-six years ago next December."
+
+"So Mrs. Beaseley wrote, or rather her daughter did for her. She said
+you were an orphan."
+
+"Yes." I answered so. How could I answer otherwise knowing what I
+did? But I felt the blood mount to my temples when I stated this half
+truth.
+
+"You say you do not know Doctor Rugvie?"
+
+"No; only of him."
+
+"I wish you did." (How could she know that my wish to see him and know
+him must be far stronger than hers!)
+
+"He will be coming out here later on in the winter--are you cold?" she
+asked quickly, for I had shivered to cover an involuntary start.
+
+"No, not at all; but I think it must be growing colder outside."
+
+"It is. Cale said we might have heavy frost or snow before morning.
+You will find the changes in temperature very sudden and trying here in
+spring and autumn. About Doctor Rugvie; he is a good man, and a great
+one in his profession. We made his acquaintance many years ago in
+Scotland, in my own home, Crieff. He had lodgings with us for ten
+weeks, and since then he has made us proud to be counted among his
+friends."
+
+She rose, stirred the fire and took a maple stick from a large
+wood-basket.
+
+"Let me," I said, taking it from her.
+
+"You really don't look strong enough."
+
+"Oh, but I am; you 'll see."
+
+"By the way, don't let my son do anything like this. He is often
+careless and over confident, and he must not strain himself--he is
+under strict orders." She was silent for a moment then went on:
+
+"My son is not strong, as you must see." She looked at me appealingly,
+as if hoping I might dispute her statement; but I could say nothing.
+
+"A year ago," she spoke slowly, as if with difficulty, "he was in the
+Edinboro' Hospital for five months; he inherits his father's
+constitution, and the hemorrhages were very severe. Doctor Rugvie came
+over to see him, and advised his coming out here to Canada to live as
+far as possible in the pine forests. He has been away all summer. He
+is to go away again next year with one of the old guides.
+
+"I want you to remain with me as companion and assistant here in the
+house; the service is large and, as you will soon find," she added with
+a smile, "extremely personal. They are interested in us and our
+doings, and we are expected to reciprocate that interest. It will be a
+comfort to Jamie to know you are with me, and that I am not alone in
+this French environment." She interrupted herself to say:
+
+"Did Mrs. Beaseley tell you anything about this place? You can speak
+with perfect freedom to me. We have no mysteries here." She smiled as
+if she read my thoughts.
+
+"She told me she knew nothing of the place, except that Doctor Rugvie
+had hired a farm in Canada with some good buildings on it, and that he
+intended to use it for those who might need to be built up in health."
+
+"She has stated it exactly. My son and I are the first
+beneficiaries--only, this is not the farm."
+
+"Not the farm!" I exclaimed. She looked amused at my surprise. "What
+is it then? Do tell me."
+
+"There is very little to tell. A friend of Doctor Rugvie's, an
+Englishman who was with him for a week in Scotland while he was with
+us, is owner of the Seigniory of Lamoral; it is his, I think, by
+inheritance, although I am not positive; and this is the old manor
+house. The estate is very large, but has been neglected; I have
+understood it is to be cultivated; some of it is to be reforested and
+the present forest conserved. He will be his own manager and will make
+his home here a great part of the year. Mean while, he has installed
+us here in his absence, through Doctor Rugvie, of course, and given
+over the charge of house and servants to Jamie and me."
+
+"And what is the owner's title?"
+
+"He has none that I know of. The real 'Seignior' and 'Seignioress'
+live in Richelieu-en-Bas in the new manor house--I say 'new', but that
+must be seventy-five years old. This is only a part of the original
+seigniory."
+
+"I don't understand these seigniories, and I tried to read up about
+them before I came here."
+
+"It is very perplexing--these seigniorial rights and rents and
+transferences. I don't make any pretence of understanding them."
+
+"Are the farm buildings occupied now?"
+
+"No; Doctor Rugvie wants to attend to those himself. It is his
+recreation to make plans for this farm, and he will be here himself to
+see that they are begun and carried out right. He tells me he has
+always loved Canada."
+
+"And what am I to do for you? I want to begin to feel of a little
+use," I said half impatiently.
+
+"You are doing for me now, my dear." (How easily Delia Beaseley's name
+for me came from the "elderly Scotchwoman's" lips!) "Your presence
+cheers Jamie; the young need the young, and belong to the young--"
+
+"But," I protested, "I am not young; I am twenty-six."
+
+"And Jamie is twenty-three. But when you laughed together to-night,
+you both might have been sixteen. It did me good to hear you; this old
+house needs just that--and I can't laugh easily now," she added. I
+heard a note of hopelessness in her voice.
+
+How lovely she was as she sat by the fire in the soft radiance of
+candle light! "Elderly"!--She could not be a day over fifty-seven or
+eight. The fine white cap rested on heavy, smoothly parted hair; the
+figure was round to plumpness; the dress, not modernized, became her;
+her voice was still young if a little weary, and her brown eyes bright,
+the lids unwrinkled.
+
+"Do you know Delia Beaseley well? Doctor Rugvie says she is a fine
+woman."
+
+"She is noble," I said emphatically; "I feel that I know her well,
+although I have seen her only a few times."
+
+"Is she a widow?"
+
+The door opened before I could gather my wits to answer. I felt
+intuitively that I could not say to this Scotchwoman, that Delia
+Beaseley was neither widow nor wife. I welcomed the sudden inrush of
+all four dogs and Jamie behind them, with the smell of a fresh pipe
+about him.
+
+"I positively must have my second short pipe here with you. I kept
+away in deference to the new member of the family." He flourished his
+pipe towards me. "I always smoke here, don't I, mother?"
+
+"In that case, I will stay in my room after supper unless you continue
+to smoke your first, second, and third--"
+
+"Only two; Doctor Rugvie won't allow me a third--"
+
+"Doctor Rugvie is a tyrant, and I 've said the same thing before," I
+declared firmly.
+
+"Now, look here, Marcia," he said solemnly, "we will call a halt right
+now and here." He settled his long length in the deep easy chair on
+the other side of the hearth, refilled and relighted his pipe. "Doctor
+Rugvie is my friend, my very special friend; whoever enters this house,
+enters it on the footing of friendship with all those who are my
+friends--"
+
+"Hear, hear! Another tyrant," I said, turning to his mother who was
+enjoying our chaff.
+
+"--Whose name is legion," he went on, ignoring my interruption. "I'll
+begin to enumerate them for your benefit. There are the four dogs,
+Gordon setters of the best breed--and Gordon's setters in fact." He
+made some pun at which his mother smiled, but it was lost on me. "They
+'re not mine, they 're my friend's, and that amounts to the same thing
+when he 's away."
+
+"And who is this friend of dogs and of man?"
+
+"He? Guy Mannering, hear her! Why there's only one 'he' for this
+place and that's--"
+
+"Doctor Rugvie?"
+
+"Doctor Rugvie!" he repeated, looking at me in unfeigned amazement;
+then to his mother:
+
+"Have n't you told her yet, mother?"
+
+"I doubt if I mentioned his name--I had so many other things to say and
+think of." She spoke half apologetically.
+
+"The man who owns this house, Miss Farrell,"--he was speaking so
+earnestly and emphatically that he forgot our agreement,--"the man who
+owns these dogs, the lord of this manor, such as it is, and everything
+belonging to it, lord of a forest it will do your eyes and lungs and
+soul good to journey through, the man who is master in the best sense
+of Pete and little Pete, of Angélique and Marie, of old Mère
+Guillardeau, of a dozen farmers here on the old Seigniory of Lamoral,
+my friend, Doctor Rugvie's friend and friend of all Richelieu-en-Bas,
+is Mr. Ewart, Gordon Ewart--and you missed my pun! the first I've made
+to-day!--and I hope he will be yours!"
+
+"Well, I 'll compromise. If he will just tolerate me here for your
+sakes, I 'll be his friend whether he is mine or not--for I want to
+stay."
+
+I meant what I said; and I think both mother and son realized, that
+under the jesting words there was a deep current of feeling. Mrs.
+Macleod leaned over and laid her hand on mine.
+
+"You shall stay, Marcia; it will not depend on Mr. Ewart, your
+remaining with us. When the farm is ready, Doctor Rugvie will place us
+there, and then I shall need your help all the time."
+
+Again, as at the station with Delia Beaseley's blessing ringing in my
+ears, I felt the unaccustomed tears springing in my eyes. Jamie leaned
+forward and knocked the ashes from his pipe; he continued to stare into
+the fire.
+
+"And who are the others?" I asked unsteadily; my lips trembled in spite
+of myself.
+
+"The others? Oh--," he seemed to come back to us from afar, "there is
+André--"
+
+"And who is André?"
+
+"Just André--none such in the wide world; my guide's old father, old
+Mère Guillardeau's brother, old French voyageur and coureur de bois; it
+will take another evening to tell you of André.-- Mother," he spoke
+abruptly, "it's time for porridge and Cale."
+
+"Yes, I will speak to Marie." She rose and left the room by a door at
+the farther end.
+
+"Remark those fourteen candles, will you?" said Jamie, between puffs.
+
+"I have noticed them; I call that a downright extravagance."
+
+"I pay for it," he said sententiously; then, with a slight flash of
+resentment; "you need n't think I sponge on Ewart to the extent of
+fourteen candles a night."
+
+I laughed a little under my breath. I knew a little friction would do
+him no harm.
+
+"And when those fourteen candles burn to within two inches of the
+socket, as at present, it is my invariable custom, being a Scotsman, to
+call for the porridge--and for Cale, because he is of our tongue, and
+needs to discourse with his own, at least once, before going to bed. I
+say a Scotsman without his nine o'clock porridge is a cad."
+
+"Any more remarks are in order," I said to tease him.
+
+"You really must know Cale--"
+
+"I thought I made his acquaintance this afternoon."
+
+He laughed again his hearty laugh. "I forgot; he drove you out. We
+did n't send Pete because we thought you might not understand his
+lingo. But you must n't fancy you know Cale because you 've seen him
+once--oh, no! You 'll have to see him daily and sometimes hourly; in
+fact, you will see so much of him that, sometimes, you will wish it a
+little less; for you are to understand that Cale is omnipresent, very
+nearly omnipotent here with us, and indispensable to _me_. You will
+accept him on my recommendation and afterwards make a friend of him for
+your own sake."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Cale?--He 's just Cale too. His name is Caleb Marstin; 'hails', as he
+says, from northern New England. I have noticed he does n't care to
+name the locality, and I respect his reticence; it's none of my
+business. He says he has n't lived there for more than a quarter of a
+century and has no relations. He can tell you more about forests,
+lumber and forestry, in one hour than a whole Agricultural College. He
+has been for years lumbering in northern Minnesota and across the
+Canadian border. He 's here to help reforest and conserve the old
+forest to the estate; he 's--in a word, he 's my right hand man."
+
+"Is Mr. Ewart lord of Cale too?"
+
+At my question, Jamie's long body doubled up with mirth.
+
+"Have n't seen each other yet and don't know each other. Gordon Ewart
+is n't apt to acknowledge any one as his master, especially in the
+matter of forestry, and Cale never does; result, fun for us when they
+do know each other."
+
+"How did you happen to get him here?"
+
+"Oh, a girl I know, who visits in Richelieu-en-Bas, said her father,
+who is a big lumber merchant on the States' border, knew of good men
+for the place. Ewart had told me that this was my first business, to
+get a man for the place; so I wrote to him, and he replied that Cale
+was coming east in the spring and he had given him my name. That's
+how."
+
+Mrs. Macleod came in, followed by Marie with steaming porridge, bowls
+and spoons on a tray; Cale was behind her. Jamie looked up with a
+smile.
+
+"Cale, this is Miss Farrell, the new member of our Canadian settlement.
+I take it you have spoken with her before."
+
+There was no outstretched hand for me; nor did I extend mine to him.
+We were of one people, Cale and I: northern New Englanders, and rarely
+demonstrative to strangers. We are apt to wait for an advance in
+friendship and then retreat before it when it is made, for the simple
+reason that we fear to show how much we want it! But I smiled up at
+him as he took his stand by the mantel, leaning an elbow on it.
+
+"Yes, Cale and I have made each other's acquaintance." I noticed that
+when I looked up at him and smiled, he gave an involuntary start. I
+wondered if Jamie saw it.
+
+"Yes, we had some conversation, such as 'twas, on the way. 'T ain't
+every young gal would ride out inter what you might call the
+unbeknownst of a seigniory in Canady with an old feller like me."
+
+A slow smile wrinkled his gaunt whiskered cheeks, and creased a little
+more deeply the crowsfeet around the small keen grey eyes that, I
+noticed, fixed themselves on me and were hardly withdrawn during the
+five minutes he stood by the mantel gulping his porridge.
+
+After finishing it, he bade us an abrupt good night and left.
+
+"What's struck Cale, mother?" Jamie asked as soon as he had left the
+room; "this is the first time I 've ever known his loquacity to be at a
+low ebb. It could n't be Marcia, could it?"
+
+"I don't think Marcia's presence had anything to do with it; he is n't
+apt to be minding the presence of any one. I think he has something on
+his mind."
+
+"Then he 'd better get it off; I don't like it," said Jamie brusquely;
+"here they come--"
+
+In came Angélique and Marie, Pierre the Great, and Pierre the Small, to
+bid us good night; it was their custom; and after the many
+"bonne-nuits" and "dormez-biens", they trooped out. We took our
+lighted candlesticks from the library table where Marie had placed
+them; Jamie snuffed out the fourteen low-burning lights in the sconces,
+drew ashes over the embers, put a large screen before the fire, and we
+went to our rooms.
+
+Mine greeted me with an extra degree of warmth. Marie had made more
+fire; the air was frosty. I drew apart the curtains and looked out.
+There was only the blackness of night beyond the panes. I drew them to
+again; unlocked my trunk to take out merely what was necessary for the
+night, undressed and went to bed.
+
+I must have lain there hours with wide open eyes; there was no sleep in
+me. Hour after hour I listened for a sound from somewhere; there was
+absolute silence within the manor and without. I had opened my window
+for air, and, as I lay there wide awake, gradually, without reason, in
+that intense silence, the various nightly street sounds of the great
+city, five hundred miles to the southward, began to sound in my ears;
+at first far away, then nearer and nearer until I heard distinctly the
+roar of the elevated, the multiplied "honk-honk" of the automobiles,
+the rolling of cabs, the grating clamor of the surface cars, the clang
+of the ambulance, the terrific clatter of the horses' hoofs as they
+sped three abreast to the fire, the hoarse whistle of tug and ferry;
+and, above all, the voices of those crying in that wilderness.
+
+Again I felt that awful burden, that blackness of oppression, which was
+with me for weeks in the hospital--the result of the intensified life
+of the huge metropolis and the giant machinery that sustains it--and,
+feeling it, I knew myself to be a stranger even in the white walled
+room in the old manor house of Lamoral.
+
+It must have been long, long after midnight when I fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+There was a soft white light on walls and ceiling when I awoke. I
+recognized it at once: the reflection from snow. I drew aside both
+curtains and looked out.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful!" I exclaimed, drawing long deep breaths of the fine
+dry air.
+
+It was the so-called "feather-snow" that had fallen during the night.
+It powdered the massive drooping hemlock boughs, the spraying
+underbrush, the stiff-branched spruce and cedars that crowded the tall
+pines, overstretching the steep gable above my windows.
+
+Just below me, about twenty feet from the house, was the creek, a
+backwater of the St. Lawrence, lying clear, unruffled, dark, and
+mirroring the snow-frosted cedars, hemlocks, and spraying underbrush.
+Across its narrow width the woods came down to the water, glowing
+crimson, flaunting orange, shimmering yellow beneath the light snow
+fall. Straight through these woods, and directly opposite my windows,
+a broad lane had been cut, a long wide clearing that led my eyes
+northward, over some open country, to the soft blue line of the
+mountains. I took them to be the Laurentides.
+
+From a distance, in the direction of the village, came the sudden
+muffled clash of bells; then peal followed peal. The sun was fully an
+hour high. As I listened, I heard the soft _drip_, _drip_, that
+sounded the vanishing of the "feather-snow".
+
+I stood long at the window, for I knew this glory was transient and
+before another snowfall every crimson and yellow leaf would have fallen.
+
+While dressing, I took myself to task for the mood of the night before.
+Such thoughts could not serve me in my service to others. I was a
+beneficiary--Mrs. Macleod's word--as well as Jamie and his mother, and
+I determined to make the most of my benefits which, in the morning
+sunshine, seemed many and great. Had I not health, a sheltering room,
+abundant food and good wages?
+
+I could not help wondering whose was the money with which I was to be
+paid. Had it anything to do with Doctor Rugvie's "conscience fund"?
+Did Mrs. Macleod and Jamie bear the expense? Or was it Mr. Ewart's?
+
+"Ewart--Ewart," I said to myself; "why it's the very same I heard in
+the train."
+
+Then and there I made my decision: I would write to Delia Beaseley
+that, as Mrs. Macleod said Doctor Rugvie would be here sometime later
+on in the winter, I would wait until I should have seen him before
+asking him for my papers.
+
+"I shall ask her never to mention my name to him in connection with
+what happened twenty-six years ago; I prefer to tell it myself," was my
+thought; "it is an affair of my own life, and it belongs to me, and to
+no other, to act as pioneer into this part of my experience--"
+
+Marie's rap and entrance with hot water, her voluble surprise at
+finding me up and dressed, and our efforts to understand each other,
+diverted my thoughts. I made out that the family breakfasted an hour
+later, and that it was Marie's duty to make a fire for me every
+morning. I felt almost like apologizing to her for allowing her to do
+it for me, who am able-bodied and not accustomed to be waited on.
+
+I took rain-coat and rubbers, and followed her down stairs. She
+unbolted the great front door and let me out into the early morning
+sunshine. I stood on the upper step to look around me, to take in
+every detail of my surroundings, only guessed at the night before.
+
+Maples and birch mingled with evergreens, crowding close to the house,
+filled the foreground on each side. In front, an unkempt driveway
+curved across a large neglected lawn, set with lindens and pines, and
+lost itself in woods at the left. Between the tree trunks on the lawn,
+at a distance of perhaps five hundred feet, I saw the broad gleaming
+waters of the St. Lawrence broken by two long islands. Behind the
+farther one I saw the smoke of some large steamer.
+
+I looked up at the house. It was a storey and a half, long, low,
+white. The three large windows on each side of the entrance were
+provided with ponderous wooden shutters banded with iron. There were
+four dormers in the gently sloping roof and two large central chimneys,
+besides two or three smaller ones in various parts of the roof. Such
+was the old manor of Lamoral.
+
+A path partly overgrown with bushes led around the house; following it,
+I found that the main building was the least part of the whole
+structure. Two additions, varying in length and height, provided as
+many sharp gables, and gave it the inconsequent charm of the unexpected.
+
+Beyond, in a tangle of cedars and hemlocks, were some low square
+out-buildings with black hip-roofs. Still following the path, that
+turned to the left away from the outbuildings, I found myself in the
+woods that from all sides encroached upon the house. It was a joy to
+be in them at that early hour. The air was filled with sunshine and
+crisp with the breath of vanishing snow. The sky was deep blue as seen
+between the interlocking branches, wet and darkened, of the crowding
+trees.
+
+Before me I saw what looked to be another out-building, also white, and
+evidently the goal for this path through the woods. It proved to be a
+small chapel, half in ruins; the door was time-stained and barred with
+iron; the window glass was gone; only the delicate wooden traceries of
+the frame were intact. I mounted a pile of building stone beneath one
+of the windows, and by dint of standing on tiptoe I could look over the
+window ledge to the farther end of the chapel. To my amazement I saw
+that it had been, in part, a mortuary chapel. Several slabs were lying
+about as if they had been pried off, and the deep stone-lined graves
+were empty. The place fairly gave me the creeps; it was so unexpected
+to find this reminder in the hour of the day's resurrection.
+
+What a wilderness was this Seigniory of Lamoral! And yet--I liked it.
+I liked its wildness, the untrammelled growth of its trees, underbrush
+and vines; the dignified simplicity of its old manor that matched the
+simple sincerity of its present inmates. I felt somehow akin to all of
+it, and I could say with truth, that I should be glad to remain a part
+of it. But I recalled what Mrs. Macleod said about our removal to the
+farm, and that remembrance forbade my indulging in any thoughts of
+permanency.
+
+"Stranger I am in it, and stranger I must remain to it, and at no
+distant time 'move on,' I suppose." This was my thought.
+
+A noise of soft runnings-to-and-fro in the underbrush startled me. I
+jumped down from the pile of stones and started for the house, but not
+before the dogs found me and announced the fact with continued and
+energetic yelpings. Jamie greeted me from the doorway.
+
+"Good morning! You 've stolen a march on me; I wanted to show you the
+chapel in the woods. You will find this old place as good as a two
+volume novel."
+
+"What a wilderness it is!"
+
+"That's what Cale is here for. He is only waiting for Ewart to come to
+bring order out of this chaos. I hope you noticed that cut through the
+woods across the creek?"
+
+"Yes, it's lovely; those are the Laurentians I see, are n't they?"
+
+"You 're right. The cut is Cale's doing. He said the first thing
+necessary was to let in light and air, and provide drainage. But he
+won't do much more till Ewart comes--he does n't want to."
+
+"When is Mr. Ewart coming?"
+
+"We expect him sometime the last of November. He was in England when
+we last heard from him--here's Marie; breakfast is ready." He opened
+the door to the dining-room and Mrs. Macleod greeted me from the head
+of the table.
+
+I loved the dining-room; the side windows looked into a thicket of
+spruce and hemlock, and from the front ones I could see under the
+great-branched lindens to the St. Lawrence.
+
+After breakfast Mrs. Macleod showed me what she called the "offices",
+also the large winter kitchen at the end of the central passageway, and
+the method by which both are heated: a range of curious make is set
+into the wall in such a way that the iron back forms a portion of the
+wall of the passageway.
+
+"We came out here early in the spring and found this arrangement
+perfect for heating the passageway. Angélique has moved in this
+morning from the summer kitchen; she says the first snowfall is her
+warning. I have yet to experience a Canadian winter."
+
+She showed me all over the house. It was simple in arrangement and
+lacked many things to make it comfortable. Above, in the main house,
+there were four large bedrooms with dormer windows and wide shallow
+fireplaces. The walls were whitewashed and sloping as in my room. The
+furniture was sparse but old and substantial. There were no bed
+furnishings or hangings of any kind. All the rooms were laid with rag
+carpets of beautiful coloring and unique design.
+
+"Jamie and I have rooms in the long corridor where yours is," said Mrs.
+Macleod; "it's much cosier there; we actually have curtains to our
+beds, which seems a bit like home."
+
+I was looking out of one of the dormer windows as she spoke, and saw
+little Pete on the white Percheron, galloping clumsily up the driveway.
+He saw me and waved a yellow envelope. I knew that little yellow flag
+to be a telegram. A sudden heart-throb warned me that it might bring
+some word that would shorten my stay in this old manor, and banish all
+three to Doctor Rugvie's farm.
+
+A few minutes afterwards, we heard Jamie's voice calling from the lower
+passageway:
+
+"Mother, where are you?--Oh, you 're there, Marcia!" he said, as I
+leaned over the stair rail. "Here 's a telegram from Ewart, and news
+by letter--no end of it. Come on down."
+
+"Come away," said Mrs. Macleod quickly. I saw her cheeks flush with
+excitement. On entering the living-room we found Jamie in high
+feather. He flourished the telegram joyously.
+
+"Oh, I say, mother, it's great! Ewart telegraphs he will be here by
+the fifteenth of November and that Doctor Rugvie will come with him.
+And here 's a letter from him, written two weeks ago, and he says that
+by now all the cases of books should be in Montreal, plus two French
+coach horses at the Royal Stables. He says Cale is to go up for them.
+He tells me to open the cases, and gives you free hand to furbish up in
+any way you see fit, to make things comfortable for the winter."
+
+"My dear boy, what an avalanche of responsibility! I don't know that I
+feel competent to carry out his wishes." She looked so hopelessly
+helpless that her son laughed outright.
+
+"And when and where do I come in?" I asked merrily; "am I to continue
+to be the cipher I 've been since my arrival?"
+
+"You forgot Marcia, now did n't you, mother?"
+
+"I think I did, dear. Do you really think you can attempt all this?"
+she asked rather anxiously.
+
+"Do it! Of course I can--every bit, if only you will let me."
+
+"Hurrah for the States!" Jamie cried triumphantly; "Marcia, you're a
+trump," he added emphatically.
+
+Mrs. Macleod turned to me, saying half in apology:
+
+"I really have no initiative, my dear; and when so many demands are
+made upon me unexpectedly, I simply can do nothing--just turn on a
+pivot, Jamie says; and the very fact that I am a beneficiary here would
+be an obstacle in carrying out these plans. It is so different in my
+own home in Crieff."
+
+I heard the note of homesickness in her voice, and it dawned upon me
+that there are others in the world who may feel themselves strangers in
+it. My heart went out to her for her loneliness in this far away land
+of French Canada.
+
+"Well, so am I a beneficiary; so is Cale and the whole household; and
+if only you will let me, I 'll make Mr. Ewart himself feel he is a
+beneficiary in his own house," I retorted gayly. "And as for Doctor
+Rugvie, we 'll see whether his farm will have such attractions for him
+after he has been our guest."
+
+Mrs. Macleod laid her hand on my shoulder and smiled, saying with a
+sigh of relief:
+
+"If you will only take the generalship, Marcia, you will find in me a
+good aide-de-camp."
+
+Jamie said nothing, but he gave me a look that was with me all that day
+and many following. It spurred me to do my best.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+How I enjoyed the next three weeks! Jamie said the household activity
+had been "switched off" until the arrival of the letter and telegram
+from Mr. Ewart; these, he declared, made the connection and started a
+current. Its energy made itself pleasurably felt in every member of
+the household. Cale was twice in Montreal, on a personally conducted
+tour, for the coach horses. Big Pete was putting on double windows all
+over the house, stuffing the cracks with moss, piling cords of winter
+wood, hauling grain and, during the long evenings, enjoying himself by
+cutting up the Canadian grown tobacco, mixing it with a little
+molasses, and storing it for his winter solace. Angélique was making
+the kitchen to shine, and Marie was helping Mrs. Macleod.
+
+For the first week Jamie and I lived, in part, on the road between
+Lamoral and Richelieu-en-Bas. With little Pete for driver, an old
+cart-horse and a long low-bodied wagon carried us, sometimes twice a
+day, to the village. We spent hours in the one "goods" shop of the
+place. It was a long, low, dark room stocked to the ceiling on both
+walls and on shelves down the middle, with all varieties of cotton,
+woolen and silk goods, some of modern manufacture but more of past
+decades. In the dim background, a broad flight of stairs, bisecting on
+a landing, led to the gallery where were piled higgledy-piggledy every
+Canadian want in the way of furnishings, from old-fashioned bellows and
+all wool blankets, to Englishware toilet sets that must have found
+storage there for a generation, and no customer till Jamie and I
+appeared to claim them. There, too, I unearthed a bolt of English
+chintz.
+
+In a tiny front room of a tiny house on the marketplace, I found an old
+dealer in skins. He and his wife made some up for me into small
+foot-rugs for the bedrooms. Acting on Angélique's suggestion, I
+visited old Mère Guillardeau's daughter. I found her in her cabin at
+her rag carpet loom, and bought two rolls which she was just about to
+leave with the "goods" merchant to sell on commission. I wanted them
+to make the long passageways more comfortable.
+
+I revelled in each day's work which was as good as play to me. I
+gloried in being able to spend the money for what was needed to make
+the house comfortable, without the burden of having to earn it; just as
+I rejoiced in the abundant wholesome food that now nourished me,
+without impoverishing my pocket. There were times when I found myself
+almost grateful for the discipline and denial of those years in the
+city; for, against that background, my present life seemed one of
+care-free luxury. I began to feel young; and it was a pleasure to know
+I was needed and helpful.
+
+The shortening November days, the strengthening cold, that closed the
+creek and was beginning to bind the river, the gray unlifting skies, I
+welcomed as a foil to the cosy evenings in the dining-room where Mrs.
+Macleod and I sewed and stitched, and planned for the various rooms,
+Jamie smoked and jeered or encouraged, and the four dogs watched every
+movement on our part, with an ear cocked for little Pete who was
+cracking butternuts in the kitchen.
+
+The life in the manor was so peaceful, so sheltered, so normal. Every
+member of the household was busy with work during the day, and the
+night brought with it well-earned rest, and a sense of comfort and
+security in the flame-lighted rooms.
+
+Often after going up to my bedroom, which Marie kept acceptably warm
+for me, I used to sit before the open grate stove for an hour before
+going to bed, just to enjoy the white-walled peace around me, the night
+silence without, the restful quiet of the old manor within. At such
+times I found myself dreading the "foreign invasion", as I termed in
+jest the coming of the owner of Lamoral and Doctor Rugvie. To the
+first I gave little thought; the second was rarely absent from my
+consciousness. "How will it all end?" I asked myself time and time
+again while counting off the days before his arrival. What should I
+find out? What would the knowledge lead to?
+
+"Who am I? Who--who?" I said to myself over and over again during
+those three weeks of preparation. And at night, creeping into my
+bed--than which there could be none better, for it was in three layers:
+spring, feather bed and hair mattress--and drawing up the blankets and
+comforter preparatory for the sharp frost of the early morning, I cried
+out in revolt:
+
+"I don't care a rap who I may prove to be! If only this peaceful sense
+of security will last, I want to remain Marcia Farrell to the end."
+
+But I knew it could not last. I hinted as much to Jamie Macleod only
+three days before the fifteenth of November. We were making our last
+trip to the village for some extra supplies for Angélique. We were
+alone, and I was driving.
+
+"Jamie," I said suddenly, after the old and trustworthy cart-horse,
+newly and sharply shod for the ice, had taken us safely over the frozen
+creek, "I wish this might last, don't you?"
+
+He looked at me a little doubtfully.
+
+"You mean the kind of life we 're living now? Yes,"--he
+hesitated,--"for some reasons I do; but there are others, and for those
+it is better that the change should come."
+
+"What others?" I was at times boldly inquisitive of Jamie; I took
+liberties with his youth.
+
+"You would n't understand them if I told you. Wait till the others
+come and you 'll see, in part, why."
+
+"Do you know," I continued, my words following my thought, "that you
+'ve never told me a thing about Doctor Rugvie and Mr. Ewart?"
+
+"Not told you anything? Why, I thought I 'd said enough that first
+evening for you to know as much of them as you can without seeing them."
+
+"No, you have n't; you 've been like a clam so far as telling me
+anything about their looks, or age, or--or anything--"
+
+"Oh, own up, now; you mean you want to know if they 're married or
+single?" He was beginning to tease.
+
+"Of course I do. This old manor has had a good many surprises for me
+already in these three weeks, you, for one--"
+
+He threw back his head, laughing heartily.
+
+"--And the 'elderly Scotchwoman', and Cale for a third; and if you
+would give me a hint as to the matrimonial standing of the two from
+over-seas, I should feel fortified against any future petticoat
+invasion of their wives, or children, or sweethearts."
+
+Jamie laughed uproariously.
+
+"Oh, Guy Mannering, hear her! I thought you said you saw Doctor Rugvie
+in the hospital."
+
+"So I did; but it was only a glimpse, and a long way off, as he was
+passing through another ward."
+
+He turned to me quickly. "It's Doctor Rugvie you want to know about
+then? Why about him, rather than Ewart?"
+
+"Because,--('Be cautious,' I warned myself),--I happen to have known of
+him."
+
+"Well, fire away, and I 'll answer to the best of my knowledge. I
+believe a woman lives, moves and has her being in details," he said a
+little scornfully.
+
+"Have you just found that out?" I retorted. "Well, you have n't cut
+all your wisdom teeth yet. And now, as you seem to think it's Doctor
+Rugvie I 'm most interested in, we 'll begin with your Mr. Ewart." I
+changed my tactics, for I feared I had shown too much eagerness for
+information about Doctor Rugvie.
+
+"My Mr. Ewart!" He smiled to himself in a way that exasperated me.
+
+"Yes, your Mr. Ewart. How old is he? For all you 've told me he might
+be a grandfather."
+
+"Ewart--a grandfather!" Again he laughed, provokingly as I thought. I
+kept silence.
+
+"Honestly, Marcia, I don't know Ewart's age, and"--he was suddenly
+serious--"for all I know, he may be a grandfather."
+
+"For all you know! What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean I never seriously gave Gordon Ewart's age a thought. When I am
+with him he seems, somehow, as young as I--younger in one way, for he
+has such splendid health. But I suppose he really is old enough to be
+my father--forty-five or six, possibly; I don't know."
+
+"Is he married?"
+
+Jamie brought his hand down upon his knee with such a whack that the
+old cart-horse gave a queer hop-skip-and-jump. We both laughed at his
+antic.
+
+"There you have me, Marcia. I 'm floored in your first round of
+questions. I don't know exactly--"
+
+"Exactly! It seems to me that, marriage being an exact science, if a
+man is married why he is--and no ifs and buts."
+
+"That's so." Jamie spoke seriously and nodded wisely. "I never heard
+it put in just those words, 'exact science', but come to think of it,
+you 're right."
+
+"Well, is he?"
+
+"Is he what?"
+
+"Married. Are we to expect later on a Mrs. Ewart at Lamoral?"
+
+"Great Scott, no!" said Jamie emphatically. "Look here, Marcia, I hate
+to tell tales that possibly, and probably, have no foundation--"
+
+"Who wants you to tell tales?" I said indignantly. "I won't hear you
+now whatever you say. You think a woman has no honor in such things."
+
+"Oh, well, you 'll have to hear it sometime, I suppose, in the
+village--"
+
+"I won't--and I won't hear you either," I said, and closed my ears with
+my fingers; but in vain, for he fairly shouted at me:
+
+"I say, I don't know whether he 's married or not--"
+
+"And I say I don't care--"
+
+"Well, you heard that anyway," he shouted again diabolically; "here 's
+another: they say--"
+
+"Keep still; the whole village can hear you--"
+
+"We 're not within a mile of the village; take your fingers out of your
+ears if you don't want me to shout."
+
+"Not till you stop shouting." He lowered his voice then, and I
+unstopped my ears.
+
+"I say, Marcia, I believe it's all a rotten lot of damned gossip--"
+
+"Why, Jamie Macleod! I never heard you use so strong an expression."
+
+"I don't care; it's my way of letting off steam. Mother is n't round."
+
+We both laughed and grew good-humored again.
+
+"I never thought a Scotsman, who takes porridge regularly at nine
+o'clock every evening, could swear--"
+
+"Oh, did n't you! Where are _your_ wisdom teeth? Live and learn,
+Marcia."
+
+"Quits, Jamie." He chuckled.
+
+"Honestly, Marcia, I could n't answer you in any other way. Ewart has
+never opened his lips to me about his intimate personal life; he has no
+need to--for, of course, there is a great difference in our ages even
+if he is such a companion. And then, you know, I only saw him that one
+week in Crieff when he was with us, and I was a little chap--it was
+just after father left us--and he was no end good to me. And the
+second time was this year in June when he stayed a week here and then
+took me up to André. He was with us a month in camp; that is where I
+came to know him so well. He 's an Oxford man, and that's what I was
+aiming at when--when my health funked. He seems to understand how hard
+it is to me to give it all up. I don't object to telling you it was
+Doctor Rugvie who was going to put me through."
+
+"Oh, Jamie!" It was all I could say, for I had known during our few
+weeks of an intimacy, which circumstances warranted, that some great
+disappointment had been his--wholly apart from his being handicapped by
+his inheritance.
+
+"About Ewart," he went on; "you know a village is a village, and a dish
+of gossip is meat and drink for all alike. It's only a rumor anyway,
+but it crops out at odd times and in the queerest places that he was
+married and divorced, and that he has a son living whom he is educating
+in Europe. I don't believe one bally word of it, and I don't want you
+to."
+
+"Well, I won't to please you."
+
+"Now, if you want to know about Doctor Rugvie, I can tell you. He
+lives, you might say, in the open. Ewart strikes me as the kind that
+takes to covert more. Doctor Rugvie is older too."
+
+"He must be fifty if he 's a day."
+
+"He 's fifty-four--and he is a widower, a straight out and out one."
+
+"I know that."
+
+"Oh, you do! Who told you?"
+
+"Delia Beaseley."
+
+"Is she a widow?" Jamie asked slyly.
+
+"Now, no nonsense, Jamie Macleod." I spoke severely.
+
+"Nonsense! I was only putting two and two together logically; you said
+the Doctor trusted her--"
+
+"And well he may. No, she is n't a widow," I said shortly.
+
+"That settles it; you need n't be so touchy about it."
+
+"Has he any children?" I asked, ignoring the admonition.
+
+"No; that's his other great sorrow. He lost both his son and daughter.
+Do you know, I can't help thinking he 's doing all this for them?"
+
+"You mean the farm arrangement?"
+
+"Yes, and us--he 's been such a friend to mother and me. Oh, he 's
+great!" He was lost suddenly in one of his silences. I had already
+learned never to permit myself the liberty of breaking them.
+
+We drove into the village, and, while Jamie was with the grocer,
+"stoking ", as he put it for the coming week, I was wondering what to
+make of Delia Beaseley's theory about the "conscience money" and its
+connection with the farm. Was it to aid in carrying out the Doctor's
+plans for helpfulness? From what Jamie Macleod had told me, I came to
+the conclusion that neither he nor his mother knew anything of _that_
+financial source. How strange it seemed to know of this tangled skein
+of circumstance, the right thread of which I could not grasp!
+
+While thinking of this, I became aware of the noise of a cheap
+graphophone carrying a melody with its raucous voice; the sounds came
+from a cabaret just below the steamboat landing-place. I listened
+closely to catch the words; the melody, even in this cheap
+reproduction, was a beautiful one.
+
+"_O Canada, pays de mon amour_--"
+
+I caught those words distinctly, and was amusing myself with this
+expression of patriotism when Jamie came out of the shop.
+
+"What's up?" he asked, noticing my listening attitude.
+
+"Hark!" He listened intently.
+
+"Oh, that!" he said with a smile of recognition as he stepped into the
+wagon; "you should hear Ewart sing it. I 've heard him in camp and
+seen old André fairly weep at hearing it. I see you are discovering
+Richelieu-en-Bas; but you should make acquaintance with the apple-boat."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"It's a month too late now for it; it moors just below the cabaret by
+the lowest level of the bank. It's a fine old sloop, and the hull is
+filled with the reddest, roundest, biggest apples that you 've ever
+seen. I come down here once a day regularly while she is here, just to
+get the fragrance into my nostrils, to walk the narrow plank to her
+deck, and touch--and taste to my satisfaction. We put in ten barrels
+at the manor."
+
+I could see that picture in my mind's eye: the old apple-boat, the
+heaped up apples, the hull glowing with their color, the green river
+bank, the blue waters of the St. Lawrence, the islands for a
+background--and the October air spicy with the fragrance of Pomona's
+blessed gift!
+
+We put the old cart-horse through his best paces in order to be at home
+before sunset. We had all the books to arrange in the next two days
+for we had left them until the last. Pete was opening the boxes when
+we came away.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+After supper we went over the house to see the various furnishings by
+firelight. Pete had built roaring fires in each bedroom to take off
+the chill, and was to keep them going till the rooms should be occupied
+on the night of the fifteenth; this was necessary against the
+increasing cold.
+
+I confess I had worked to some purpose, and Mrs. Macleod and every
+member of the household seconded me with might and main. Now, in a
+body, the eight of us trooped from room to room, to enjoy the sight of
+the labor of our hands. Angélique was stolidly content. Marie was
+volubly enthusiastic. Cale, his hands in his pockets, took in all with
+keen appreciative eyes, and expressed his satisfaction in a few words:
+
+"'T ain't every man can get a welcome home like this."
+
+"You 're right, Cale," said Jamie, "and there are n't so many men it's
+worth doing all this for."
+
+We stood together, admiring,--and I was happy. I had spent but
+eighty-seven dollars, "_pièces_", and the rooms did look so inviting!
+The windows and beds were hung with the English chintz, which was old
+fashioned, a mixture of red and white with a touch of gray. I had sent
+to Montreal for fine lamb's wool coverlets for every bed. The village
+furnished plain deal tables for writing. Jamie stained them dark oak,
+and I put on desk pads and writing utensils. Two easy chairs cushioned
+with the chintz were in each room. The old English-ware toilet sets of
+white and gold looked really stately on the old-fashioned stands. Mrs.
+Macleod sewed, with Marie's help, until she had provided every window
+with an inner set of white dimity curtains, every washstand, every
+bureau and table with a cover. She made sheets by the dozen which
+Angélique and Marie laundered. Pete had polished the fine old brass
+andirons, that furnished each fireplace, till they shone. My bedroom
+foot-rugs were pronounced a success, and graced the rag carpets beside
+each bed; they were of coarse gray and white fur. Marie had found in
+the garret some long-unused white china candlesticks of curious design,
+like those in my room; a pair stood on each bureau.
+
+We were standing about in the Doctor's room, admiring. The firelight
+played on the white walls, deepened the red in the hangings to crimson,
+shone in the ball-topped andirons, and lighted the pleased satisfied
+faces about me. A sudden thought struck a chill to my heart:
+
+"What a contrast between this room and that poor basement in V----
+Court where, twenty-six years ago, the man who is going to enjoy this
+comfort fought for my mother's life, and succeeded in giving me mine!"
+
+I left the room abruptly. Jamie called after me:
+
+"Where are you going, Marcia?"
+
+"Down stairs to begin with the books."
+
+"Hold on till I come; you can't handle them alone. Cale, put the
+screens before the fires. Come on down, mother."
+
+The passageway was stacked high with books along the walls. Cale had
+brought them in, and these were not the half. I was looking at them
+when the others came down.
+
+"You took them out, Cale, how many do you think there are?"
+
+"I cal'lated 'bout three hundred in a box. We 've opened five, and
+there 's two we ain't opened."
+
+Jamie started to gather up an armful, but Cale took them from him. His
+tenderness and care of him were wonderful to see.
+
+"No yer don't! If there 's to be any fetchin' and carryin', I 'm the
+one ter do it."
+
+"And I 'm the one to place and classify. I want to prove that I did
+n't work five years in the New York Library for nothing." I stayed
+with Cale while he was gathering up the books.
+
+"I cal'late you was paid a good price fer handlin' other folks'
+brains." Cale spoke tentatively, and I humored him; I like to give
+news of myself piece-meal.
+
+"Of course, I did, Cale; I had nine dollars a week."
+
+"Hm--pretty small wages fer a treadmill like thet!" He spoke almost
+scornfully.
+
+"Oh, that was better than I had in the beginning. What would you say
+to four dollars a week, Cale?"
+
+"With room and keep?"
+
+"Not a bit of it; board and room and clothes had to come out of that."
+
+"Hm--". He looked at me keenly, but made no reply. "You tend ter
+putting 'em on the shelves, an' I 'll take 'em all in. 'T ain't fit
+work fer women, all such liftin'; books has heft, if what's in 'em is
+pretty light weight sometimes."
+
+"What would you say about the owner of all these books, Cale? Let's
+guess what he 's like," I said, laughing, as I lingered to hear what he
+would say. But he was non-committal.
+
+"I could n't guess fer I ain't seen the insides. I 'm glad he 's
+coming, though; I want ter get down to some real work 'fore long. Wal,
+we 'll see what he 's like in two days now. Pete an' I have got to
+drive over ter Richelieu-en-Haut--durn me, if I can see why they don't
+call it Upper Richelieu!--an' meet the Quebec express."
+
+"They won't get here till long after dark, then."
+
+"No.--Here, jest put a couple more on each arm, will you?"
+
+I accommodated him, and we went into the living-room. Jamie looked
+rather glum. Sometimes, I know, he feels as if he had no place in all
+this preparation.
+
+"Now, Jamie, let me plan--" I began, but he interrupted me:
+
+"Maîtresse femme," he muttered; then he smiled on me, but I paid no
+heed.
+
+"You sit at the library table; Cale will bring in the books and pile
+them round it; you will sort them according to subject, and I will put
+them on the shelves."
+
+"Go ahead, I 'm ready."
+
+To help us, we pressed Angélique and Marie into service. In a little
+while we had five hundred books piled about the table. These were as
+many as Mrs. Macleod and I could handle for the evening, so we
+dismissed the others.
+
+It was pleasant work, filling the empty shelves; moreover, I was in my
+element. It was good to see books about again; I owed so much to them.
+
+"This is what the room needed," I said, placing the last of the
+historical works on a lower shelf.
+
+"Yes; what a difference it makes, doesn't it? Oh, I say, mother, here
+'s one of your late favorites!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Memoirs of Doctor Barnardo."
+
+"I must read them again."
+
+"Who was Doctor Barnardo?" I asked; I was curious.
+
+"If you don't know of him and his London work, then you have a treat
+before you in this book." Mrs. Macleod spoke with unusual enthusiasm.
+
+"And he was Ewart's friend too. I might have known I should find this
+among his books. It always seems to me as if it were 'books and the
+man'. Show me what books are a man's familiars, and I 'll tell you his
+characteristics."
+
+"No, really, can you do that?" I asked, surprised at this dictum from
+such youthful lips.
+
+"Yes, in a general way I can. Look at this for instance." He held out
+a volume. "The man who has this book for an inner possession, and also
+on his shelves, is a thinker, broad-minded, scholarly, human to an
+intense degree--"
+
+"What is it?" I said, impatient to see.
+
+"Something you don't know, I 'll wager; it is n't a woman's book."
+
+"Now, Jamie Macleod, read your characteristics of men, if you can, by
+the books they read and love, but, please, please, keep within your
+masculine 'sphere of influence', and don't presume to say what is or
+what is n't a woman's book. I know a good deal more about those than
+you do--what is the book anyway?" I confess his overbearing ways about
+women provoke me at times. But he paid no heed to my little temper.
+
+"It's dear old Murray's 'Rise of the Greek Epic'--it comes next to the
+Bible. It's an English book; you would n't be apt to read it."
+
+"Oh, would n't I?" I exclaimed, and determined another forty-eight
+hours should not pass without my having made myself familiar with the
+rise of the Greek epic, and the fall of it, for that matter. I
+swallowed my indignation, for the truth was I had not heard of it.
+
+"And here 's another--American, this time, and right up to date. I 'll
+wager you never heard of this either. Would n't I know just by the
+title it would be Ewart's!"
+
+"How would you know?"
+
+"Oh, because any man of his calibre would have it."
+
+And I was no wiser than before. I was beginning to realize that there
+was a whole world of experience of which I knew nothing; that, in my
+struggle to exist in the conditions of the city so far away, I had
+grown self-centered and, in consequence, narrow, not open to the world
+of others. Jamie Macleod, with his twenty-three years, was opening my
+inward eye. I can't say that what I saw of myself was pleasing.
+
+"What is the book?" I asked, after a moment's silence in which Mrs.
+Macleod was busy with the "Memoirs", and Jamie was looking over titles.
+
+"'The Anthracite Coal Industry'."
+
+"Well, give it to me; I 'll classify it with 'Economics and Sociology'.
+There will be more of this kind, I 'm sure. Let's go on with the work
+or we shan't be through before midnight. Look up the 'Lives' and
+'Letters', and 'Autobiographies' next. I want to put them on the upper
+shelf--"
+
+"I know;" he nodded approvingly; "so they will be at your elbow when,
+of a winter's evening, you want to reach out your hand, without much
+trouble, and find a companion. Well, give me a little time to look
+them over."
+
+I watched him for a few minutes, as he took up book after book,
+examined the title, sometimes turned the leaves rapidly, and again
+opened to some particular page and lost himself for a moment. Jamie
+was showing me another side than that to which I had grown accustomed
+in our daily intercourse. I sat down while I was waiting, for I was
+tired. Mrs. Macleod was reading.
+
+"Are you ready now?" I asked, after waiting a quarter of an hour, and
+still no sound from behind the pile of books across the table.
+
+"M-hm, in a minute."
+
+His mother looked up, and we both saw that he was absorbed in
+something. Mrs. Macleod smiled indulgently.
+
+"That's always his way with a book--lost to everything around him. He
+would n't hear a word we said if we were to talk here for an hour."
+
+"I 'll make him hear." I spoke positively, and again Mrs. Macleod
+smiled.
+
+"Jamie--I would like a few books, the 'Lives' and 'Letters'."
+
+For answer he burst into a roar that roused the dogs under the table.
+He slapped his hand on his knee, threw his leg over the arm of the easy
+chair, and settled into an attitude that indicated, there would be no
+more work gotten out of him for the rest of the evening. Suddenly he
+shouted again.
+
+"Here 's a man for you!" he said joyfully.
+
+"Who?" I demanded, but might have spared myself the question. There
+was another interval of silence, followed by an uproarious outburst:
+
+"Oh, I do love Stevenson's 'damns'! They 're great! Hear this--"
+
+He read a portion of a letter which included a choicely selected
+expletive.
+
+"Jamie!" It was a decided protest on his mother's part; but I laughed
+aloud, for I, too, knew what he meant. I, too, loved the varied and
+picturesque "damns" of those letters that had been so much to me in the
+past few years. As I looked at Jamie, another Scotsman, with the thin
+bright eager face, I knew at once that, without realizing it, I had
+connected his appearance with that of Robert Louis Stevenson, his
+countryman. And how like the two spirits were!
+
+"I wonder," I said to myself, "I wonder if this same Jamie Macleod also
+has the inner impulse to write!" And, having said that in thought, I
+looked at Jamie Macleod through different glasses.
+
+We let him mercifully alone; but I went on with my work, reading
+titles, classifying, placing, finding genuine pleasure in speculating
+on the "calibre" of the owner.
+
+At nine, Marie entered with the porridge; Cale followed her.
+
+"Here endeth the first chapter," I said to Cale. "We 'll try to get
+all the books on the shelves to-morrow; then we can have one day of
+rest before they come."
+
+"You kinder speak as if two extra men in the fam'ly would make some
+difference," said Cale, smiling down at me from his place by the mantel.
+
+"It will make a difference I shall not like, Cale. There 'll be no
+more cosy evening-ends with porridge, after the lord of the manor
+comes."
+
+"What's that you say?" Jamie was roused at last. I thought I could do
+it.
+
+"Nothing in particular; only Cale and I were saying how different it
+would be when Mr. Ewart comes."
+
+"You bet it will!" said Jamie emphatically. "You won't know this
+house,"--he took up his porridge,--"and Ewart won't know it either
+since you 've had your hand on it, Marcia." This I perceived to be a
+sop.
+
+"Thet's so," said Cale, with emphasis. "I never see what a difference
+all thet calico an' fixin's has made; an' my room looks as warm with
+them red blankets and foot-rugs! It beats me how a woman can take an
+old house like this, an' make it look as if it had been lived in
+always. I thank _you_," he said, looking hard at me, "fer all the
+comfort you 've worked inter my room."
+
+"You have n't thanked me the way I want to be thanked, Cale," I said,
+smiling up at him.
+
+"I done the best I could," he replied with such a crestfallen air that
+we laughed.
+
+"The only way you can thank me is to call me 'Marcia'. I 've wanted to
+ask you to, ever since our first drive together up from the steamboat
+landing."
+
+"Sho!--Have you?"
+
+He looked at me intently for a minute; then he spoke slowly and we all
+knew with deep feeling: "You 're name 's all right; but you've made
+such a lot of happiness in this house since you come, I 'd like ter
+have my own name fer you--"
+
+"What's that?" I said.
+
+"I 'd like ter call you 'Happy', if you don't mind."
+
+I know I turned white, but I controlled myself. Was it possible he
+knew! It could not be. I dared not assume that he knew and refuse
+him. I made an effort to answer in my usual voice:
+
+"Of course I don't, Cale--only, I hardly deserve it; all I 've done is
+just in 'the day's work', you know."
+
+"Not all," he said, putting down his emptied bowl and turning to the
+door; "no wages thet I ever heard of will buy good-will an' the
+happiness you 've put inter all this work."
+
+"Oh, Cale, I don't deserve this--" But he was gone without the usual
+good night to any of us.
+
+"You do too," said Jamie shortly, and, reaching for his pipe, went off
+into the dining-room.
+
+Mrs. Macleod laid her hand on my shoulder. "They mean it, Marcia; good
+night, my dear."
+
+For the first time she leaned over and kissed me. I ran up to my room
+without any good night on my part. I needed to be alone after what
+Cale had said. Did he know? _Could_ he know? Or was it merely chance
+that he chose that name? Over and over again I asked myself these
+questions--and could find no answer.
+
+Late at night I made ready for bed. I drew the curtains and looked
+out. The window ledge was piled two inches high with snow; against the
+panes I saw the soft white swirl and heard the hushed, intermittent
+brushing of the drifting storm.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+The snow fell lightly but steadily all night and the next day. Just
+after sunset the leaden skies cleared, and the starred firmamental blue
+of a Canadian winter night replaced them. Before six, Cale and Peter
+were off on their nine mile drive to Richelieu-en-Haut to meet the
+Quebec express. They drove in a low comfortable double "pung", lined
+with fur rugs and piled with robes; a skeleton truck trailed behind for
+luggage. The yoke of bells jangled cheerfully in the dry crisping air,
+for the Percherons were lively--the French coach horses were not ready
+for the northern snows--and freely tossed their heads as they played a
+little before plunging into the light drifts.
+
+After supper I went to my room, making the excuse that I had a bit of
+work to finish. All my thoughts centered on Doctor Rugvie whose coming
+was so momentous to me. While I sewed, I made a dozen plans for
+approaching him on the subject of the papers, and rejected each in turn
+as not serving my purpose. Finally, my work being finished, I sat
+quiet, with a tensity of quietness that showed itself in my listening
+attitude and tightly clasped hands. It was nearly time for the sound
+of the returning bells. At last,--it was nearly nine,--I heard them
+close to the house and, hearing them, I knew intuitively that my life,
+hitherto so detached from others, was about to be linked through
+strange circumstance--the Doctor's coming--to some unknown personality
+in the past. I knew this; how I knew, I cannot say.
+
+I heard Jamie calling to me from the lower passageway. I opened my
+door but did not cross the threshold. I stood listening.
+
+Suddenly the dogs went mad with joy. I heard Jamie's voice in joyous
+greeting. I heard men's voices, Cale's loudest in giving some order to
+Peter; then Mrs. Macleod's. The confusion grew apace when Angélique
+and Marie joined their French welcome to the English one. Listening
+so, I felt shut out from it all; felt myself a stranger again in the
+environment to which I had so soon wonted myself. Then I heard Jamie's
+voice calling:
+
+"Marcia, Marcia Farrell, where are you?"
+
+He was at the foot of the stairs looking up at me as I came down, and
+scarcely waited for me to reach the last step before saying:
+
+"Ewart, this is Miss Farrell; Marcia--my friend, the 'lord of the
+manor'." He spoke with such teasing emphasis that I could have boxed
+his ears.
+
+I think the "lord of the manor" intended to shake hands with me; at
+least, his hand was promptly extended; but before I could take it, it
+dropped at his side, for Jamie was claiming me for the second
+introduction:
+
+"Allow me to present to you the result of the advertisement, Doctor!"
+
+"What?" The pleasant voice held a note of surprised interrogation. My
+hand was taken in a firm professional clasp, and I looked up into the
+face of the great surgeon who had troubled himself with me so far as to
+give me the chance to exist. For the life of me, I could not find the
+right word of welcome in these circumstances, and the only result of
+the instantaneous mental effort to find it was, that those words of
+Delia Beaseley's, which I heard as I was regaining consciousness in
+V---- Court: "She's the living image", flashed into my consciousness
+with the illuminating suddenness of a re-appearing electric signboard.
+And, seeing them, rather than hearing them, I looked up into the fine
+homely face and smiled my welcome. It was the only one I had at my
+command just then.
+
+Something indefinable, intangible, perhaps best expressed as the
+visible diffused wave-current of consciousness' wireless telegraphy,
+showed in his face. Puzzled, concentrated thought was evident from the
+sudden contraction of the forehead. Nor did the look "clear up"; it
+remained as he greeted me--and I knew he had not the key to interpret
+the message, sent thus to him across an interval of twenty-six years.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Macleod, it's surely a success," he said, releasing my hand.
+
+"Success? Oh, no end!" Jamie interrupted him in his joyous
+excitement. "You 'll see!"
+
+"Come, Boy, give your mother a chance," said the Doctor, laughing.
+
+"We have practical witness that Marcia is all that Jamie claims she
+is." Mrs. Macleod spoke enthusiastically for her, and to cover my
+embarrassment I suggested that the Doctor should go at once to his room.
+
+"Oh, she 's canny! She wants you to see the improvements," Jamie
+cried, as he rushed upstairs two steps at a time after Mr. Ewart who,
+attended by the dogs, was investigating the region of the bedrooms. I
+think he doubted their comfort. The Doctor followed, and soon I heard
+his voice praising everything, with Jamie's lending a running
+accompaniment of jesting comment. It occurred to me then, that I had
+not heard the "lord of the manor" utter a word. Cale and Peter came in
+with the trunks, chests, gun-cases, with bags of ice-hockey sticks,
+kits, snow-shoes and skis--indeed, all the sporting paraphernalia for a
+Canadian winter.
+
+Within ten minutes, my clean passageway, laid with the brand-new rag
+carpet, was piled high with these masculine belongings, and the snow
+from eight masculine boots was melting and wetting the pretty strip
+into dismal sogginess! I began to understand why the passageways in
+the manor were laid with flagging, and I determined I would have the
+lower carpet taken up in the morning, that Jamie might not laugh at me.
+
+As Cale set down the last chest, he must have taken note of my despair,
+for he spoke encouragingly:
+
+"Makes a lot of difference in a house havin' so many men folks round."
+
+"I should think so, Cale, look at that carpet!"
+
+"Sho! It don't look more 'n fit for mop-rags, an' they in the house
+scurce ten minutes. Guess 't 'll have ter come up ter-morrer, an' I
+'ll see that 't is up."
+
+"And it will stay up; but it did look so neat and cosy--and now see
+that!" I included in a glance the entire mass of luggage and sporting
+outfit.
+
+"Good deal of truck for one man, but I guess he can handle it all;
+seems a likely enough sort of feller. I had to introduce myself, you
+might say, for he an' Pete was talkin' so fast in French that I could
+n't get in a word edgewise at furst. You 'd have thought the old manor
+barns was afire, and they was trying to get the hosses out. I managed
+to have my say, though, 'fore we struck the river road."
+
+"I have n't had a good look at him--Jamie did n't give me the chance."
+
+"Wal, I can't say as I have neither. He 's pretty quiet, but I noticed
+he hit the nail on the head every time he did speak. The one they call
+Doctor Rugvie is some different; he was like a schoolboy let loose when
+he got into the pung. Guess Mr. Ewart won't wait long 'fore he 'll
+have a sleigh, as is a sleigh, to match the French coach hosses, from
+what I heard. The Doctor had his little joke about a pung for a manor
+house. I 've got to go over again ter-morrer to get the rest of the
+truck."
+
+"Oh, Cale, more!"
+
+He nodded, and, with a significant upward motion of his thumb, made his
+exit at the kitchen end. I slipped into the dining-room to see that
+all was in readiness for the extra supper. I actually did not know
+what to do with myself, what was my place, or where I belonged in the
+household, now that the owner of Lamoral and his friend were here. I
+looked about: the flames from the pine cones were leaping in the
+fireplace, the curtains were drawn close, the room was filled with a
+resinous forest fragrance, for I had placed large branches of white
+pine in some antiquated milk jugs of glazed red clay, which I found in
+one of the unused dairy rooms, and set them on each end of the mantel.
+
+When I heard Jamie and the Doctor on the stairs, I left by way of the
+kitchen and, passing through that and the bare offices between it and
+the living-room, slipped into the latter to inspect it. Here also the
+fire was blazing, the wax candles in the sconces were lighted. The
+yellow sofa was drawn in front of the fireplace, but good eight feet
+from it. At either end were the easy chairs, and at the right of the
+chimney, nearest the door into the kitchen offices, was a low ample tea
+table covered with a white linen cloth, set with plain white china, a
+nickel-plated tea-kettle and lamp. Behind the sofa, along the length
+of its straight long back, stood the library table furnished with
+writing pad and inkstand, a wooden bookrack filled with Jamie's
+favorites and mine, and a bowl of red geranium blossoms. I was
+satisfied with my work.
+
+Around the room, even between the windows, the more than two thousand
+books in their cases formed a rich dado of finely blended colors--the
+deep royal blue and dark reds in morocco, the yellow-white imitation of
+parchment,--parchment itself in several instances,--the light faun and
+reddish brown of half calf; even shagreen was there, and the limp
+bronze-gilt leather of Chinese bindings. Jamie told me that many of
+the editions were rare.
+
+It seemed to me in my ignorance, that there could be no more beautiful
+room than this simple, book-lined, wood-panelled parlor in the old
+manor of Lamoral. I felt an ownership in it, for I had helped in part
+to create the intimate atmosphere that I knew must be like
+home,--something I had dreamed of, but never expected to make real.
+The owner, whose voice I heard for the first time talking to the dogs
+as he came down stairs, presented himself to me at that moment as an
+outsider, an intruder. I waited until I heard him close the
+dining-room door; then I went up stairs again to my own room.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+I did not light the candles. The firelight showed through the mica in
+the stove grate. I sat down by the window and looked out. A full moon
+shone high and clear above the dark irregular outline of the massed
+treetops in the woods across the creek, now covered with ice and
+blanketed with white. The great hemlock branches, crowding close to
+the house, were drooping, snow-laden. The moonlight, reflected in
+them, flashed diamond dust from the upper branches; beneath the lower
+ones it cast violet shadows on the snow.
+
+"What next?" I was thinking, and might have spared myself the trouble
+of that thought, for just then Mrs. Macleod knocked at the door and
+came in.
+
+"In the dark? Marcia, my dear, we need you down stairs."
+
+"Of course I 'll come, Mrs. Macleod, if you wish me to, but I don't
+quite see how, as your companion and assistant, I am needed now down
+stairs. I shall feel as if I were not earning my salt, just playing
+lady."
+
+Now, can any one tell me why the spirit of revolt at the change in my
+position in this house, through the coming of the owner and his friend,
+should have materialized in just this ungracious speech? I was ashamed
+of myself the moment I had given it utterance. Such a mean sentiment!
+Not worthy of a woman of twenty-six. I was thankful she could not see
+my face.
+
+She hesitated before replying. When she spoke I heard a note of
+displeasure in her voice.
+
+"I need you now, perhaps, more than before. With these guests in the
+house, there is more responsibility than during the last three weeks."
+
+"If only they _were_ guests!" The perverse spirit was still at work
+within me. "But we are the guests now, and I don't quite see what my
+work is to be; my position seems to be an anomalous one."
+
+"It may seem so to you," she replied quietly. I knew by the tone of
+her voice she was exercising great self control, and that had the
+candles been lighted I should have seen her cheeks flush a deep pink;
+"but evidently it is perfectly clear to Doctor Rugvie. The position is
+his creation. I think you can trust him.-- Are you coming?"
+
+The rebuke was well deserved, and, in accepting it, my respect for her
+was doubled.
+
+"Just let me get my work," I said, fumbling in my basket for some petty
+crochet. She said nothing, and in silence we went down stairs
+together, she little realizing that, in referring to Doctor Rugvie as
+the one to whom I was indebted for being here, she twisted some fibre
+in my mental make-up and caused it to vibrate painfully. Had I but
+known it, I had been keyed to this moment ever since hearing Delia
+Beaseley's account of my mother's death--keyed too long and at too high
+a pitch. Something had to give way; hence my mood of apparent revolt,
+because I could not live in unchanged circumstances in this manor of
+Lamoral.
+
+As we entered the living-room the three pipes were in full blast.
+
+"Permitted?" said the Doctor, waving his towards us as he rose. Mr.
+Ewart, also, rose and came towards us. In the manner of his action I
+saw that, already, he had taken his rightful place as host. He held
+out his hand in greeting, and I took it.
+
+"Sit here, Miss Farrell, by me," he motioned to the corner of the sofa
+next his easy chair, "and tell me how you have managed to accomplish a
+home--in three weeks. Mrs. Macleod and Jamie have been giving you all
+the credit for this transformation. How did you do it?"
+
+He put me at ease at once, for what he said sounded both cordial and
+sincere. The tone of voice challenged me instantly to be as sincere
+with him.
+
+"Perhaps it's because I never have had the chance to make what you call
+a 'home' before, and besides," I looked up from my sofa corner and
+dared to say the truth, "it was such a pleasure to spend some money
+that I did n't have to earn by hard work; this was play for me. But,
+truly, Mrs. Macleod and Jamie are not fair to themselves; they not only
+helped, but inspired me."
+
+"Oh, woman, woman!" said the Doctor, laughing; "shopping is the
+characteristic symptom of the sex!"
+
+"Talk about inspiration," said Jamie; "Marcia put mother and me through
+our best paces. I can tell you we conjugated: I must hustle, Thou must
+hustle, He must hustle, We must hustle, You must hustle, They must
+hustle, for three weeks," he said emphatically.
+
+"You seem to have thriven on it," said the Doctor.
+
+"Your work was in the New York Library, Miss Farrell?" It was Mr.
+Ewart who spoke.
+
+"Yes, in a branch; I was there for five years."
+
+"Who told you that, Gordon?" Jamie demanded.
+
+"Who?--Who but Cale?"
+
+Mrs. Macleod laughed outright at that, and Jamie and I joined her; we
+could not help it. The mere inflection of Mr. Ewart's voice, told us
+he had succumbed on the way over to our omniscient One. I saw that,
+quiet as he was, he had a keen sense of humor.
+
+"Yes," he continued, "Cale made my acquaintance on the platform, and
+half way on the road he took occasion to give me some information
+concerning my household."
+
+"Oh, I know that too," I said, "for Cale confided to me immediately on
+his arrival that, to use his own expression, he could n't get in a
+'word edgewise', on account of the rapidity with which you and Peter
+were carrying on a conversation in French. I think he is jealous of
+every tongue but his own."
+
+"We had better compare notes, Miss Farrell. I concluded that Cale was
+a firm friend of yours from his remarks."
+
+"What did he say? Do tell me."
+
+"I will--if you 'll agree to tell me his comments on my talk with
+Pierre. I believe Pierre's words fell over themselves, he had so much
+to tell me."
+
+"Hear--hear!" This from Jamie.
+
+"I agree; tell me, please."
+
+"I think it was just before we entered the river road--"
+
+"I know it was, for he told me so," I said, enjoying the fun.
+
+"Oh, he did! Well, perhaps you will be so good as to tell me, if he
+told you what he told me you told him?"
+
+"You would n't ask that if you knew Cale," said Jamie, shaking his head
+dubiously.
+
+"No, he did n't," I said. "Cale is a genuine Yankee. What did he say?"
+
+"You hear that, Ewart? What did I tell you?"
+
+"Oh, you've been telling, too, have you, Jamie Macleod? He gave me to
+understand that it was he who brought you from the steamboat to the
+house; that you were born in New York; that you had been in the Public
+Library of that city; that in consequence what you did n't know about
+books was, in his estimation, not worth knowing; that you were just as
+handy with hammer and tacks as you were with books, and that you had
+been 'fixin' up' the old manor till it shone. I gathered further, that
+he expected me to be properly appreciative of the benefits conferred
+upon me in this matter. As, up to that time, I had heard nothing of
+your arrival in Richelieu-en-Bas, and as my friend here, Doctor Rugvie,
+was likewise in the dark in regard to your personality, you may imagine
+our curiosity; in fact, he wanted to rouse it, and took the best way to
+do it."
+
+"He can do that," said Mrs. Macleod, smiling at this description of
+Cale's powers; "but he rarely satisfies us in regard to himself. Of
+course, Jamie and I respect his reticence, but I should like to know if
+he has been married. He is such a character! I should like to know
+more of his life."
+
+"I must take a good look at him to-morrow," said the Doctor, filling
+his pipe.
+
+"I should n't know him if I met him on the road," said Mr. Ewart; "for
+his cap was drawn over his forehead, and his beard and side whiskers
+were a mask. Won't he come in with us for a few minutes, Jamie?-- By
+the way, you say that he is always with you at porridge, a custom I
+hope you will not depart from, now I am here, Mrs. Macleod."
+
+"I shall want some too," said the Doctor, whimsically; "it will be like
+those never-to-be-forgotten days in Crieff fifteen years ago."
+
+Mrs. Macleod said nothing; but she turned to him with such an indulgent
+smile, that I knew she would give the great man anything in reason or
+unreason for what he had been, and was, to her son and to herself.
+
+Jamie jumped up impulsively.
+
+"Tell me what he said, Marcia, about Gordon's talk with Pierre, and
+then I 'll go and have him in--without the porridge, though, for it's
+too late to-night."
+
+"He said that if the old manor barns had been 'afire', and Mr. Ewart
+and Pierre had been trying to get the horses out, they could n't have
+talked faster."
+
+"That's one on you, Ewart," said Jamie, gleefully. Mr. Ewart laughed.
+"I hope to make a friend of Cale; I like him."
+
+Jamie left the room, and the talk drifted to other things.
+
+"Have you seen Mère Guillardeau lately?" Mr. Ewart asked of Mrs.
+Macleod.
+
+"Not since the last of October; but Marcia has seen her recently."
+
+He looked at me inquiringly.
+
+"I bought the rag carpet strips of her daughter."
+
+"Is the old woman well?"
+
+"Yes, she is wonderful for her age."
+
+"Ninety-nine next year," said Mr. Ewart. "What a century she has
+lived!"
+
+"André père must be ninety, then," said Doctor Rugvie. "How well I
+remember him! He is Mère Guillardeau's brother, as perhaps you know,"
+he said turning to me. "Jamie must have told you of André."
+
+"Yes, of André father and André son; you know them both?"
+
+It was the first time I had spoken directly with the Doctor, although
+he was the one in the room upon whom all my thoughts centered.
+
+"For many years; I saw him first in Tadoussac, just after the Columbian
+Exposition in Chicago. Afterwards, for six consecutive summers I was
+in camp with him and his son on the Upper Saguenay. There 's none like
+him. By the way, Miss Farrell, has Jamie ever told you how the old
+guide André went to the World's Fair at Chicago?"
+
+"No."
+
+"We 'll get him to tell you--and us; I can never hear it too many
+times. It's unique, and it takes Jamie to tell it well. André told me
+years ago, and last summer he told Jamie and Mr. Ewart. Jamie wrote me
+about it."
+
+"I shall never forget that night," said Mr. Ewart.
+
+He laid his pipe on the mantel and stood back to the fireplace, his
+hands clasped behind him. He was not so tall as Jamie or Doctor
+Rugvie; not so thin as the former, nor stout like the latter. He had
+kept his body in good training for, as he stood there, despite the few
+gray hairs on the temples, he looked like a man of thirty, rather than
+one who might be father to Jamie.
+
+Jamie came in at this moment, looking thoroughly cross as well as
+crestfallen.
+
+"He won't come," he announced bluntly, taking his seat and leaning
+forward to the fire, his long arms resting on his knees, his hands
+clasped and hanging between them. He glared at the andirons.
+
+"What's the matter, Jamie?" I asked; I knew something had gone wrong.
+
+"He says he does n't belong here, and all that rot. Confound it all!
+When you come up against Cale's crotchets you might as well go hang
+yourself for all you can move him."
+
+I looked at Mr. Ewart. I saw the gray eyes flash suddenly.
+
+"We must change all that, Jamie. Just give him leeway till I 've
+looked about a bit and struck root into my--home." I noticed the
+slight hesitation before the word "home". "By the way, it's early yet."
+
+"Early!" Jamie was rousing himself from his private sulk. "You might
+like to know that generally we have porridge at nine and are in bed by
+half-past."
+
+"We 'll change all that too, Mrs. Macleod--with the Doctor's
+permission, of course," he said, sitting down beside her. "We 're not
+going to lose the pleasure of these long winter evenings. After
+porridge, we 'll have grand bouts of chess, Jamie, and a little
+music--I see that Miss Farrell has not included a piano in her
+furnishings--"
+
+"Not for eighty-seven dollars," I said, hoping he would appreciate the
+financial fact; but he only looked a little mystified, and went on:
+
+"--And hours with the books, and some snowshoeing on fine moonlight
+nights; you 'll see that the winter is none too long in Canada--_O pays
+de mon amour_!" he said smiling. Clasping his hands behind his head,
+he looked steadily at the leaping flames.
+
+The tone in which he said all this would have heartened a confirmed
+pessimist; upon Jamie Macleod it acted like new wine. His face grew
+radiant, and the look he gave his friend held something of worship in
+it.
+
+Doctor Rugvie groaned audibly as he laid aside his pipe.
+
+"What is it, _mon vieux_?" said Mr. Ewart.
+
+"You make me envious," he said, rising and putting on another log; "but
+if I can be with you only one week, I 'm going to make the most of it.
+No turning in before eleven-thirty while I 'm here."
+
+"I 'll make it one with you any time you say, John." Underneath the
+banter we heard the undercurrent of deep affection. "You 'll be up
+here two or three times during the winter, and next summer you 've
+promised to camp with Jamie and the Andrés, father and son, and me, for
+two months on the Upper Saguenay. Speaking of André, père, Jamie, have
+you redeemed the promise you gave me last summer?"
+
+Jamie twisted his long length in his chair before answering. "Yes, in
+a way."
+
+"What does 'in a way' mean? What promise?" asked the Doctor eagerly.
+Mr. Ewart answered for him.
+
+"It was about André--old André's story of his voyage to the Columbian
+Exposition in 'ninety-three. Have you written it up?"
+
+"In a way I have, yes."
+
+"Well, Jamie Macleod," I exclaimed, half impatiently, "for lack of
+originality, commend me to you to-night!"
+
+I was afraid I should not hear the story. I exulted in the thought
+that my intuition concerning a second R. L. Stevenson in Jamie Macleod,
+was to prove correct. Jamie looked over at me and smiled provokingly.
+
+"Come on, Boy, out with it!" said the Doctor encouragingly. "I 'm
+willing to be bored with your literary style for the sake of hearing
+dear old André's story rehashed by a young aspirant for honors."
+
+"Have you seen anything of this?" Mr. Ewart turned to Mrs. Macleod.
+
+"I 've neither seen nor heard anything of this kind," she replied with
+an amazed look at her son. Jamie smiled again, this time quizzically.
+
+"What's this you 've been keeping from your mother, Boy?"
+
+"Oh, Jamie, do read it to us!" I begged.
+
+Jamie laughed aloud then, much to the two men's delight, as I could
+see, and said--tease that he is:
+
+"I 've been waiting for Marcia to ask me; she is n't apt to ask favors
+of any one; but I say,--" he looked half shamefacedly at his
+friends,--"it's rough on me to read anything of mine before such
+critics as you and Gordon, Doctor Rugvie."
+
+"Do you good," growled the Doctor; "get you used to publicity. If we
+have a genius in the family, it's best he should sprout his pin
+feathers in our presence before he becomes a full-fledged Pegasus. We
+could n't hold you down then, you know."
+
+"You 've had a lot of faith in me, Doctor--you and Ewart; after all,
+Oxford mightn't have done what that has for me. I 'll read it--but I
+shall feel like a fool, I know."
+
+"It won't hurt you to feel that way once in a while at twenty-three;
+it's educative," said the Doctor dryly.
+
+In the general laughter that followed, Jamie left the room. He was
+gone but a minute. When he came in, I saw he was nervous. He cleared
+his throat once or twice, after taking his seat at the left of the
+fireplace, and glanced anxiously at the candles; but they were fresh at
+nine, and good for two hours longer. Doctor Rugvie looked at his watch.
+
+"Half-past ten; I 'll keep time, Jamie."
+
+"What do you call it, Jamie?" Mr. Ewart asked, to ease the evident
+embarrassment in which the young Scotsman found himself.
+
+"'André's Odyssey'."
+
+"Good! I like that," said the Doctor; "that's just what it was.
+Nothing like a good title to work up to."
+
+"Of course, I embellished a little here and there, but I stuck to the
+facts and in many places to André's words; and I tried to make the
+whole in André's spirit."
+
+"Intentions all right, Boy--let us judge of the result," said the
+Doctor. He settled comfortably in his chair, leaned his head on the
+back and gazed steadily at the wooden ceiling; but I think he managed
+to keep an eye on Jamie.
+
+And, oh, that bright eager face, the firelight enhancing its
+brightness! The hand that trembled despite his effort at control, the
+slight flush on the high cheek bones from which the summer's tan had
+not yet house-worn! The expressive unsteady voice that gradually
+steadied itself as, in the interest of reading, self-consciousness was
+forgotten!
+
+I bent low over my crochet; I did not want to look again at him, for I
+was glad, so glad for him, for his mother, for his two friends, who had
+had such faith in him, for myself that I could count him as a friend.
+This was, indeed, the beginning of fulfilment.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+For five and twenty years no man had seen in Tadoussac old André's face
+nor heard his voice upon the river's lower course. Both long and late
+within their icy caves the winters dwelt. The spring-tides, messaging
+the wild emancipated water's glee, rushed down to meet the short-lived
+summer joy, and autumn after autumn fled with torch of flaming leaf,
+reversed, death-heralding, far up the Saguenay's dark winding
+gorge--yet André came no more in all that time.
+
+And now, behold them both, in Tadoussac! old André and his dog, Pierre,
+le brave, or was it Pierre's son?--lean-ribbed, thin-haunched and
+tragic-eyed, with fell of wolf, Pierre! How well they all remembered
+him, le brave! The frosts were in his bones, oh, long ere this; so
+Pierre's offspring, then?--as large as life! And André, too, old guide
+and voyageur!
+
+Of notches six times ten had André cut within the shaft of one great
+pine that sings above that wonderful caprice of pool, and quiet river
+reach, and torrent wild, men long have called the Upper Saguenay. That
+very day when his boy's heart beat wild to suffocation, as upon the
+bank he landed his first salmon--nom de Dieu, no sunset glow e'er
+equalled in his eyes that palpitant and silver-scalèd mass of vibrant
+rose!--the sap from that first notch had oozed; and now they said in
+Tadoussac that André never knew his age!
+
+Oh, fools! What matter of a few years more or less? He counted all
+his years by his heart's youth, as here he was in Tadoussac to prove.
+
+"And whither away?"--"To see Mère Guillardeau?"--"To visit once again
+in Richelieu-en-Bas?"--"Or else Trois Rivières where long ago the
+maskinonge leaped for him?" "To see the Seigniory of Lamoral where
+lived his grandpère's seignior, lived and died?"--"A pilgrimage?
+Sainte Anne de Beaupré, then?"--"Or Indian Lorette just by Quebec?"
+The questions multiplied. "Come, tell us all." And André told them
+all.
+
+"'Tis true," he said, "that there upon the Upper Saguenay strange tales
+are rife. From o'er the distant sea the English came to camp within
+the wilds, and I was guide. I listened to their tales whene'er the
+camp-fire crackled and the snow, the feather-snow that melted from the
+pines, fell hissing on the glowing arch of logs."
+
+How André loved that sound! How dear to him was that one time in all
+the year's full round, when freeze the nights, the sap grows chill and
+numb; when warms the rising sun at early dawn and that sweet ichor
+runs! It kept him young; within him stirred his youthful forest hopes
+and joys with that first mounting life. And loud he laughed, nor gave
+the secret of his youth, his woodsman's lasting joys.
+
+He told them how with mien impassive he had listened well, reflected
+long on what the English said, till May clouds, mirrored in the
+darkling pools, foreshadowed substance for those haunting dreams of
+glories human eyes had never seen; for far away upon the Lake there
+stood a city marvellous, the English said,--and they to André never yet
+had lied,--and who beheld it saw with naked eye the glories of the New
+Jerusalem.
+
+And André, marking how the little runs were earlier loosened from their
+icy chains, how soft beneath the black and sodden leaves the water
+trickled free with here and there a bubble rising, proving spring had
+come--old André, listening so, the echo caught of that far song of
+storm-tossed Michigan as its wild waters, mingling with the rest,
+pursued their steady seaward course and swept with undertones enticing
+past the gorge of Saguenay and sang in André's ear:
+
+ "Viens, viens, tu trouveras
+ Là bas, là bas,
+ Le royaume cher et merveilleux
+ Du bon Dieu."
+
+
+What wonder that his simple woodsman's heart was moved to quick
+response! That ere one moon had waxed and waned his dugout was
+prepared for its long journey inland, west by south, along the waterway
+of two great Lands! He showed it now in Tadoussac with pride: this
+fruit of two Canadian winters' toil. Its ample hull was shiny black
+with age. Its prow sharp-nosed and long to cleave, pike-like, the
+rapids' wave, capricious, treacherous. Its stern was truncated like
+tail of duck, the waters never closed but on it pressed, and sped it on
+the river's lower course.
+
+For twenty years he watched the sturdy growth of one great tree that
+towered above its mates; and when the noble bole, both straight and
+strong, was grown to such proportions that he deemed it fit to brave
+the rapids, such its curve, he laid the monarch low, and hewed, and
+shaped, and burned, and thickly overlaid with pitch, and launched it on
+the Lower Saguenay--a fine, well-balanced craft, his floating camp; and
+this was thirty years or more agone.
+
+His destination now made known, upon the river bank a crowd eyed him
+agape. With pride he showed to wondering Tadoussac how he had made
+provision for his voyage.
+
+Along one side was lashed a sapling pine with seamless sail,
+three-cornered and close furled; 'twas fashioned from the stout flap of
+a tent. Along the other stretched two pockets strong of moose skin,
+hair side out to shed the rain. The topmost one he filled with ample
+store of salmon smoked on his own spit of ash, and good supply of that
+brown wrinkled leaf whose qualmy fragrance, issuing from the bowl of
+his loved pipe, had ever proved in camp and wild the solace of his
+lonely life.
+
+Within the other pocket he had placed his comrade-breadwinner, his
+trusted gun. Its shining barrel glistened cunningly from out the soft
+black depths, and knowingly, for many a wingèd voyager of the air would
+it bring low to beat the lucent wave to crimson froth before the voyage
+were done. Both oars and paddles of well-seasoned ash he laid within
+the dugout's ample hulk.
+
+Then he was ready to set out, and seek that shining wonder-city by the
+Lake--a "New Jerusalem", the English said, and they to André never yet
+had lied. His old-time friends were gathered at the pier to bid him on
+his quest "God Speed". They cast the painter loose.
+
+"Adieu--adieu," a hand clasp here and there, and then again: "Adieu!"
+
+Pierre, with forepaws stemmed against the prow, bayed musical farewell.
+Old André turned and murmuring, "Adieu," broke forth exultantly in
+joyous song:
+
+ "Je chercherai
+ Là bas, là bas
+ La ville de Dieu, la merveilleuse;
+ Si je la trouve, quand je serai
+ De mon retour,
+ Elle chante toujours, mon âme joyeuse,--
+ Les gloires de Dieu, les gloires de Dieu."
+
+
+So aged André, guide and voyageur, his parchment face alight with
+inward joy, fared forth to seek that City in the West.
+
+
+For you who love the sunlight on the wave, who hail with joy the
+sunrise ever new; for you to whom the starlight brings a thought of
+that high peace that guides the wanderer; for you who watch the coming
+of the day with eyes that see the miracle of life; for you who share in
+all the fair delights of sunlight, moonlight, starlight, twilight,
+dawn, and feel their charm in every mood and tense of nature's
+perfecting--for you alone I sing this voyage over inland seas.
+
+
+By sunlight, moonlight, starlight, André fared along the river called
+"the Queen's Highway"; and soon there frowned upon him, dark, superb,
+the crested towering headland of Tourmente that signals to the Plains
+of Abraham. And ever westwards, west by south, he fared until he saw
+the shipping of Quebec like some huge cobweb outlined intricate in
+black against the golden gleaming west.
+
+The sunset gun resounded in mid-air as André anchor dropped below the
+town. The man-of-war's huge bulk belched answering flame, and ere the
+cannon's echoing roar had ceased, a sharp report was heard, a pigmy
+sound that woke its pigmy echo from the Rock. So André fired salute
+and quickly ran aloft his tiny Union Jack. 'Twas seen along the quays;
+the sailors cheered and cheered, until Pierre bayed musical response.
+
+Then André, when the moon had fully risen, stretched out along the
+stern and smoked his pipe, Pierre at his feet, and watched the Rock
+that, like a jewel many facetted, now held, now flashed at every point
+the lights along the Terrace in the Upper Town. He heard a merry song,
+a peal of bells, a strain of distant music, plash of oars--then
+silence. One by one the lights went out; the moon was riding high and
+full above the scarp and ramparts of the Citadel; beneath, the river
+rolled its silvered flood.
+
+
+Then onwards, ever onwards toward the West fared steadily this old
+French voyageur, and as he passed the dreaded Raven Cape he trolled a
+catch, "_Un noir corbeau_", to ward all ill and evil from his sturdy
+craft. So sped unharmed, swift-paddling toward the broad and sunlit
+shallows of Saint Peter's lake, and ever westwards to the Royal Isle
+where Montreal's green height looks down upon its shadowy reflex in
+Saint Lawrence's wave.
+
+On, on he sped and ever to the West, land-locked at times in
+prairie-bound canals; then pulling vigorously, the rapids past, along
+the River's narrowing polished curve, with oar stroke, swift and
+sweeping, keeping time to hit of merry raftsmen on the Sault.
+
+Fresh-hearted André! All the wholesome joys to which his simple life
+was consecrate were his as on he voyaged; his eventide brought joy and
+calm and light-of-evening peace. But once he would have tarried--as
+alights a wearied sea-mew on some lonely isle--when, paddling slow and
+noiselessly he steered his craft among the leafy waterways of that
+Arcadian Venice of our North: the Thousand Isles. His woodsman's heart
+beat high when, gliding silently past sunny glades and darkling glens,
+he heard the wavelets lap the crinkling sands and saw the water glint
+against the slopes fringed deep with June's lush green.
+
+At times he paused, the paddle braced, and leaned thereon his weight;
+the while, his lungs inflate, he drew deep breaths of fragrance
+balsamic that flowed in counter currents, sensate, warm, from out the
+depths of cedar thickets gray, and red, and white. And then away, away
+he sped past gardens gay with summer blooms, past emerald lawns set
+round by sapphire waves. And here and there an islet laughed at him--a
+tiny patch of verdure overhung by one white birch that glistered in the
+sun.
+
+And every night a strange enchantment wrought upon his spirit when,
+beneath the stars, on some long reach that narrowed suddenly, embraced
+by banks converging, forest clad, the dugout drifted 'twixt two
+firmaments. Then André dreamed of pool and river reach and ancient
+pine o'er-hanging torrents wild, far distant on the Upper Saguenay; and
+summer dwellers on those Fortunate Isles were ware at midnight of a
+singing voice and fragment of a song, like some last chord drawn
+lingeringly across responsive strings:
+
+ "Je cherche, je cherche, là bas, là bas,
+ La ville de Dieu, la merveilleuse;
+ Si je la trouve, quand je serai
+ De mon retour je chante toujours
+ Les gloires de Dieu, les gloires de Dieu."
+
+
+Ontario, Ontario, all hail thou lovely Lake that in thy breast doth
+hide the many secrets of Niagara! Upon thy waves, soft thrilling
+joyously with rush of thunderous waters from afar, see, like a gull,
+the white three-cornered sail dip lightly to the fair breeze from the
+North!
+
+"Là bas, là bas," sang André o'er and o'er, and e'en Pierre bayed long
+into the West, awoke shrill echoes from the border farms at early dawn,
+and told his nightly tale to waning summer moons till cliff and shore
+gave back the sound in echoes manifold.
+
+And what of nights within some sheltered cove when storm and darkness
+claimed both sea and sky? And what of days when furious cross-winds
+rose, and smote the lake that hissed and writhed and roared beneath the
+scourge that welted its white breast? Then André crossed himself and
+told his beads; Pierre crouched low adown within the hull; the dugout
+rocked safe moored within the cove or, drawn up on a strip of pebbly
+beach, with softly-grating keel in rhythmic beats told off the lapsing
+surges till the West translucent 'neath the lifting cloud mass gleamed,
+and in the sedges near the shore he heard the reed birds whistle
+plaintively and low.
+
+
+Three moons had waxed and waned since, far away upon the Upper
+Saguenay, the pools foreshadowed substance of those haunting dreams of
+glories human eye had never seen--thrice thirty days ere André neared
+his goal. At last, emerging from the narrow strait of savage Mackinac,
+he set his sail and voyaged ever southwards day by day with many a tack
+cajoling every breeze. The white fish leaped within the dugout's wake;
+the gulls' harsh cry was heard above the mast; at times a passing
+steamer's paddles throbbed an hour and broke the dead monotony of sea
+and sky on lonely Michigan.
+
+On silent sea, neath silent skies he voyaged, till lo! one silent morn
+ere rise of sun, the light mists, veiling yet disclosing, crept
+slow-curling o'er the surface of the Lake to meet the brightening east,
+and there dissolved in sudden glory, leaving André rapt, with dripping
+oars suspended and with eyes intent upon a vision marvellous!--The
+softened radiance of breaking day shone clear, subdued, on dome and
+tower and arch, on rich facade and many-columned gate of that ethereal
+Wonder-City white, the fundaments of which in amethyst and chrysopras
+were seen deep down beneath the surface of the Lake that, motionless,
+reflected heaven on earth and earth in heaven!
+
+And André, gazing so, bared his gray head, the slow tears coursing down
+his furrowed cheeks, and, folding on his breast his calloused hands,
+prayed low and fingered o'er his wellworn beads.
+
+
+Old André moored his dugout to the pier, and leaving tragic-eyed Pierre
+within as sentinel, slow-blinking towards the east, he turned his steps
+to that high-columned gate, the prototype of heaven on this our earth,
+and passed beneath the portal as the sun rose o'er the Lake in gorgeous
+crimson state.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+I can still hear in memory the sudden hiss from a bursting air-pocket
+in the forelog; it broke the silence which followed Jamie's reading.
+At the sound, it seemed as if we drew a freer breath.
+
+Was it Jamie Macleod who was sitting there with flushed cheeks, bright
+eyes, dilated pupils, and eager inquiring look which asked of his
+friends their approval or criticism? Or was it some changeling spirit
+of genius that for the time being had taken up its abode in the frail
+tenement of his body?
+
+His mother leaned to him and laid her hand on his shoulder.
+
+"My dear boy," was all she said, for they were rarely demonstrative
+with each other; but, oh, the pride and affection in her voice! I saw
+Jamie's mouth twitch before he smiled into her eyes.
+
+"You 've made us live it, Boy," said the Doctor quietly and with deep
+feeling; "but I never thought you could do it--not so, for all the
+faith I 've had in you."
+
+Jamie drew a long breath of relief; he spoke eagerly:
+
+"It was the trial trip, Doctor, and I did hope it would stand the test
+with you and Ewart."
+
+Mr. Ewart rose and crossed the hearth to him. He held out his strong
+shapely hand. Jamie's thin one closed upon it with a tense nervous
+pressure, as I could see.
+
+"I congratulate you, Macleod." The tone of his voice, the address as
+man to man, expressed his pride, his love, his admiration.
+
+Jamie smiled with as much satisfaction as if for the first time there
+had been conferred upon him manhood suffrage, the freedom of the city
+of London, and a batch of Oxford honors. Then, satisfied, he turned to
+me. I spoke lightly to ease the emotional tension that was evident in
+all the rest of us:
+
+"You 've imposed upon me, Jamie Macleod. You 're classed henceforth
+with frauds and fakirs! How could I know when you were scrapping with
+me the last three weeks over such prosaic things as rag carpets, toilet
+sets and skins, that you were harboring all this poetry!"
+
+"Then you think it's poetry? You 've found me out!" Jamie said,
+showing his delight. "Honestly, Marcia, you like it? I want you to,
+though I say it as should n't."
+
+"Yes, I do," I answered earnestly; "I can understand the song the
+better for it."
+
+"What song?" the Doctor asked, before Jamie could speak.
+
+"'_O Canada, pays de mon amour_'," I quoted.
+
+"You know that?" Mr. Ewart spoke quickly.
+
+"Only as I have heard it through the graphophone, in the cabaret below
+the steamboat landing."
+
+"I say, Marcia, that's rough on the song!--Gordon," he exclaimed, "do
+you sing it for us, do; then she 'll know how it ought to sound."
+
+"It's the only possible epilogue for the 'Odyssey'--what a capital
+title, Boy! Sing it, Ewart."
+
+"Wait till I have a piano."
+
+"You don't need it. You used to sing it in camp."
+
+"But I had André's violin."
+
+"I have it! Pierre will fiddle for you." Jamie jumped to his feet.
+"Hark!"
+
+We listened. Sure enough, from some room behind the kitchen offices,
+probably in the summer kitchen, we could hear the faint but merry
+sounds of a violin.
+
+"They 're celebrating your home-coming, Ewart! I knew they were up to
+snuff when Angélique gave me an order for a half a dozen bottles of the
+'vin du pays', you remember, Marcia? They 're at it now. I might have
+known it, for they have n't come in to say good night."
+
+"Let's have them all in then," said Mr. Ewart. "They 'll stay up as
+long as we do."
+
+"Will you sing for them?" Mrs. Macleod put the question directly to
+her host.
+
+"For you and them, if you wish it," was the cordial reply. "Jamie, you
+'re master of ceremonies and have had something up your sleeve all this
+evening; I know by your looks. Bring them in."
+
+Jamie laughed mischievously. "Oh, I 'll bring them in," he said. I
+knew then that, unknown to his mother and me, he had planned a surprise.
+
+"Get Cale in, if you can," Mr. Ewart called after him.
+
+"Oh, Cale 's abed before this; _he_ does n't acknowledge you as his
+lord of the manor, not yet."
+
+"That was remarkable, Gordon," said the Doctor, as soon as the door
+closed on Jamie.
+
+"Yes, he has given me a surprise. Of course you realized that whole
+description was in metre?"
+
+"I was sure of it after the first page or two, but I could scarcely
+trust my ears. What the boy has done is to make of it a true Canadian
+idyl. I wish Drummond might have heard it."
+
+"I believe Jamie knows 'The Habitant' book of poems by heart. Have you
+ever read it, Miss Farrell?"
+
+"Yes, in New York; and Jamie has promised to give me a copy for a
+Christmas remembrance."
+
+"I 'll add one to it," said the Doctor, "'The Voyageur,' then you will
+probe a little deeper into Ewart's love and mine for Canada."
+
+"Oh, thank you; these two will be the beginning of my private library."
+
+"I 'll give you an autograph copy of 'Johnnie Courteau,' if you like; I
+knew Drummond," said Mr. Ewart.
+
+To say I was pleased, would not express the pleasure those two men gave
+me in just thinking of me in this way. I thanked them both, a little
+stiffly, I fear, for I am not used to gifts; but my face must have
+shown them how genuine was my feeling for the favors. They both saw my
+slight confusion and interpreted it, for Mr. Ewart said, smiling:
+
+"If you don't mind I will add to the unborn library Drummond's other
+volume; I 'm going to try to live up to Cale's expectation of me
+concerning your connection with books. They will help you to remember
+this evening."
+
+"As if I needed anything to remember it!" I exclaimed, at ease again.
+"It's like---it's like--"
+
+"Like what, Marcia?" Mrs. Macleod put this question.
+
+"Tell us, do," the Doctor added; "don't keep me in suspense; my
+temperament can't bear it." He looked at me a little puzzled and
+wholly curious. I was glad to answer both Mrs. Macleod and him
+truthfully:
+
+"Like a new lease of life for me." My smile answered the Doctor's, and
+I was interested to see that the same wireless message I was
+transmitting again across the abyss of time, failed again of
+interpretation. I turned to Mrs. Macleod.
+
+"I think I may be needed in the kitchen." I rose to leave the room.
+
+"Are you in the secret too?" Mr. Ewart asked.
+
+"No, but I 've been recalling certain commissions Angélique gave
+me--extra citron, pink coloring for cakes, and powdered sugar for
+which, as yet, we have had no use in the house. But I want to be in
+the secret, for Jamie--"
+
+The sentence remained unfinished, for Jamie flung open the door with a
+flourish, and stout Angélique, flushed with responsibility and the "vin
+du pays", entered carrying a huge round platter, whereon was a cake of
+noble proportions ornamented with white frosting in all sorts of
+curlycues and central "_Félicitations_" in pink. Behind her came Marie
+with a tin tray, laid with an immaculate napkin--one of our new
+ones--filled with pressed wine-glasses and decanters of antiquated
+shape. Following her was little Pete, carrying on each arm an enormous
+wreath of ground pine and bittersweet. Big Pete brought up the rear,
+his face glowing, his black eyes sparkling, his earrings twinkling. He
+was tuning his violin.
+
+All rose to greet them; but ignoring us, with intense seriousness, they
+ranged themselves in a row near the door. They still held their
+offerings. Pierre, drawing his bow across the strings, nodded his
+head. Thereupon they began to sing, and sang with all their hearts and
+vocal powers to the accompaniment of the violin:
+
+"_O Canada, pays de mon amour!_"
+
+With the first words, Mr. Ewart's voice, full, strong, vibrant with
+patriotism, joined them; his fine baritone seemed to carry the melody
+for all the others. The room rang to the sound of the united voices.
+I saw Cale at the door, listening with bent head. Jamie stood beside
+him, triumphant and happy at the success of his surprise party.
+
+How Angélique sang! Her stout person fairly quivered with the
+resonance of her alto. Marie's shrill treble rose and fell with
+regular staccato emphasis. Pierre, father, roared his bass in harmony
+with Pierre, son's falsetto, and beat time heavily with his right foot.
+
+At the finish, the Doctor started the applause in which Jamie and Cale
+joined. With a sigh of absolute satisfaction, Angélique presented her
+cake to Mr. Ewart who, taking it from her with thanks, placed it on the
+library table and paid her the compliment of asking her to cut it.
+Marie passed around the tray and decanted the "vin du pays". Little
+Peter, following instructions given him in the kitchen, hung a wreath
+from each corner of the mantel. Compliments and congratulations on the
+cake, the wine, the wreaths, the song, the master's home-coming, the
+refurbished manor house, were exchanged freely, and we all talked
+together in French and English. My broken French was understood
+because they were kind enough to guess at my meaning--the most of it.
+
+Then the healths were drunk, to Mr. Ewart, to the Doctor, to Jamie,
+Mrs. Macleod and me; and we drank theirs. Finally, Mr. Ewart went to
+Cale, whom Jamie had persuaded to step over the threshold, and gave his
+health, touching glasses with him:
+
+"To my fellow laborer in the forest." He repeated it in French for the
+benefit of the French contingent.
+
+Cale, touching glasses, swallowed his wine at one gulp and abruptly
+left the room. He half stumbled over little Pierre who was sitting in
+the corner by the door, supremely happy in the remains of his huge
+piece of cake, which at his special request was cut that he might have
+the pink letters "Félici", and in the two lumps of white sugar which
+Mr. Ewart dropped into a glass of wine highly diluted with water.
+
+Oh, it was good to see them! It was good to hear their merry chat; to
+be glad in their rejoicing over the return and final settlement of Mr.
+Ewart among them, their "lord of the manor", as they persisted in
+calling him to his evident disgust and amusement. But their joy was
+genuine, a pleasant thing to bear witness to in these our times.
+
+And if Father Pierre in his exuberance of congratulation repeated
+himself many times; if Angélique asked Mr. Ewart more than once if the
+cake was exactly to his taste; if Marie grew doubly voluble with her
+"Dormez-biens", and little Pierre was discovered helping himself
+uninvited to another piece of cake--an act that roused Angélique to
+seeming frenzy--Mr. Ewart closed an eye to it all, for, as they
+trooped, still voluble, out of the room, he knew as well as we that
+their measure of happiness was full, pressed down and running over.
+Oh, their bonhomie! It was a revelation to me.
+
+The embers were still bright in the fireplace but the candles were
+burning low in the sconces; it was high time at half-past eleven for
+the whole household to say good night.
+
+"A home-coming to remember, Gordon," I heard Doctor Rugvie say, as I
+left the room.
+
+"I can't yet realize it; but I 've dreamed--"
+
+I caught no more, for the door closed upon them.
+
+The two men must have talked together into the morning hours, for I
+heard them come upstairs long after I was in bed. Not until the house
+was wholly quiet could I get to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+I was up betimes the next morning, but Cale had been before me and
+taken up the offending rag carpet from the passageway. When I went
+into the kitchen, Angélique told me that the seignior--she persisted in
+calling him that--and the Doctor had had their coffee and early
+doughnuts and were off in the pung, the seignior driving; that they
+said they would be at home for dinner. I found Cale and Pierre, acting
+under orders in the early morning, taking the trunks up to the
+bedrooms, placing the guns in the racks, removing the various sporting
+implements to a room behind the kitchen, and the chests to a storeroom.
+At breakfast we three were alone together as usual. The four dogs were
+absent.
+
+Mrs. Macleod and I spent the entire forenoon bringing order again into
+the various rooms. In the meantime, Jamie was dreaming and reading in
+the living-room. I had been there just a month and a day, and could
+not help wondering who would pay me! I needed the money for some
+heavier clothing.
+
+The two friends appeared promptly for dinner and brought with them
+appetites sharpened by the increasing cold. They had been in
+Richelieu-en-Bas and arranged for a telephone for the manor, called on
+some English friends visiting at the new manor house in the village,
+and stopped at some of the seigniory farmhouses on the way home. I
+found Mère Guillardeau had been remembered at this early date.
+
+"Are you busy this afternoon, Miss Farrell?" said the Doctor, as we
+rose from our first meal together and went into the living-room.
+
+"Not unless Mrs. Macleod needs me?" I looked at her inquiringly.
+
+"No, there is nothing more, Marcia; you did a good day's work in a few
+hours this morning," she replied in answer to my look.
+
+"Can I be helpful to you in any way?" I said, turning again to the
+Doctor.
+
+"Yes--I think you can." He smiled quizzically, looking down upon me
+from his substantial height. "You may not know--of course you don't,
+how could you know, never having heard much of an old fellow like me--"
+
+"Oh, have n't I?"
+
+"Have you? Then the Boy here has been giving me away. Has he ever
+told you I am something of a whip?"
+
+"No, not that."
+
+"Well, then, I am going to prove it to you. I propose to show the two
+French coach horses how to draw a pung,--Ewart does n't yet own a
+sleigh, you know in Canada,--and I wish you would lend me your company
+for an hour or so."
+
+If the Doctor expected an enthusiastic response he must have been
+disappointed. Not that I did n't want the ride in the pung, but it
+occurred to me that here was my opportunity, offered without my seeking
+it, to ask of him all that I had been planning to ask during many
+weeks. As this door of opportunity was so suddenly opened to me, I
+felt the chill of the unknown creeping towards me over its threshold.
+I answered almost with hesitation:
+
+"Certainly, I will go, unless Mrs. Macleod--"
+
+"Mrs. Macleod says she does n't need you." He spoke quickly, his keen
+eyes holding mine for a moment.
+
+"I say, that's a jolly cool way you have at times, Marcia!" Jamie
+exploded in his usual fashion when he is ruffled. "But you 'll get
+used to it, Doctor--I have."
+
+"A martyr, eh, Boy?" The Doctor looked amused.
+
+"Well, rather--at times."
+
+"Don't mind Jamie's martyrdoms, Doctor Rugvie; tell me when you want me
+to be ready."
+
+"In half an hour. I don't want to start too late; be sure to take
+enough wraps."
+
+I left them to go upstairs, wondering on the way what wraps I should
+take--I, who possessed only sufficient clothing to help out a New York
+winter, but no furs, no fur coat, no warm moccasins, no mittens, only
+an unlined gray tweed ulster that with a grey sweater had done duty for
+four years.
+
+"I want my pay more than I want a pung ride," I growled, as I was
+trying to make the one thick veil I owned do double duty for head and
+ears protector. I folded a square of newspaper and laid it over my
+chest under my sweater; I put on two pairs of stockings. Thus
+fortified against the Canadian cold, I went downstairs promptly on time.
+
+Mr. Ewart came out into the passageway; the Doctor was talking with
+Mrs. Macleod in the living-room.
+
+"Why, Miss Farrell," he exclaimed, "I see you don't realize our
+climate; you can't go without more wraps--"
+
+He hesitated, grew visibly embarrassed. I knew by his manner he had
+unwittingly probed my poverty to the quick, and I crimsoned with shame;
+yes, I was ashamed that my lack should thus be made known to
+him--ashamed as when Delia Beaseley's keen eyes read my need of money.
+
+"Oh, I don't need to bundle up--I have been accustomed to go without
+such heavy clothing," I said, with ready lie to cover my confusion.
+
+The Doctor came out and took his fur-lined coat from a wooden peg under
+the staircase. Mr. Ewart turned abruptly and reached for something on
+an adjoining peg; it was a fur coat of Canadian fox, soft and fine and
+warm.
+
+"You are to wear this, otherwise the Doctor won't let you go," he said
+quickly, decidedly, shaking it down and holding it ready for me to slip
+in my arms.
+
+For a second, a second only, I hesitated, searching for some excuse to
+give up the drive and so avoid acceptance of this favor; then I slipped
+into it, much to Jamie's delight who, appearing at the living-room
+door, cried out:
+
+"My, Marcia, but you 're smart in Ewart's togs! We 'll have some of
+our own if this is the kind of weather they treat us to in Canada. I
+'ve been hugging the fire all the morning."
+
+He saved the situation for me and I was grateful to him; but Mr. Ewart
+looked at him, almost anxiously, saying:
+
+"I should have been getting the heater put up this forenoon, instead of
+rushing off the first thing this morning. A poor host thus far, Jamie,
+but I 'll make good hereafter."
+
+The Doctor looked me over carefully.
+
+"You 're safeguarded with that; the sleeves are so long and ample they
+are as good as a modern muff--go back, Boy,"--he spoke brusquely, as he
+opened the outer door,--"this is no place for you."
+
+Cale vacated the pung, and the Doctor and I filled it. He took the
+reins; the beautiful creatures rose as one in the exuberance of life;
+shook their heads, and the bells with them, as they poised a moment on
+their hind feet; then they planted their hoofs in the crisping snow,
+and we were off.
+
+"Your ears must have burned more than a little this forenoon, Miss
+Farrell," he said, after driving in silence for ten minutes during
+which time he proved conclusively to the French horses that he was a
+"whip" of the first order, and to be respected henceforth as such. It
+was a pleasure to see his management of the high-lifed animals.
+
+"Mine? I was n't conscious of anything unusual about them."
+
+"We were speaking of you and your evident executive ability, and we
+took the time on our drive to try to settle a little business matter
+that concerns you. ("Ah, wages," I thought with satisfaction.) We
+tried to agree but we failed; and although we did not come to blows
+over the question, it was not settled to my satisfaction, at least.
+You don't mind my speaking very frankly?"
+
+"No, indeed; I wish you would." I looked up at him over the turned-up
+fur collar of Mr. Ewart's fox skins--"pelts" is our name for them in
+New England--and smiled merrily. I was right glad to get down, at
+last, to some business basis and know where I stood. Again I saw the
+perplexed look in his eyes.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, naturally, you know, I look for pay day to help out."
+
+"Naturally," he repeated gravely; then laughed out, a hearty,
+good-comrade laugh. "Just how long have you been here?"
+
+"A month yesterday."
+
+"And wages overdue!"
+
+I nodded emphatically. I felt as if I could tell this man beside me,
+with his wide experience of humankind, about the pitiful sum of
+twenty-two dollars I had saved from my wreck of life in New York; about
+my scrimpings; even of the two pair of stockings, and the square of
+newspaper reposing at that very minute on my chest and crackling
+audibly when I drew a deeper breath. There was no feeling of
+soul-shame on account of my poverty with him, any more than I should
+have felt physical shame at the nakedness of my body if subject to one
+of his famous surgical operations. Had not this man helped to bring me
+into the world? Should I have been here but for him? Had he not known
+me as an entity before I knew anything of the fact of life? This idea
+of him disarmed my pride.
+
+"H'm," he said at last, thoughtfully, "I must live up to my reputation
+of owing no man or woman over night. You shall have it so soon as we
+get back to the house--and well earned too," he added; "I had no idea
+an advertisement could bring about such a satisfactory result."
+
+"Do you mean me or the refurbished house?"
+
+"I mean you. And now that we 're alone, do you mind telling me
+something of how it came about? I 'll own to asking you to come with
+me that we might have a preliminary chat together."
+
+"I thought so."
+
+"Oh, you did! Well, commend me to one of my compatriots to ferret out
+my intentions. I heard Cale say you were born in New York."
+
+"Yes, twenty-six years ago, but I have lived most of my life in the
+country, in northern New England."
+
+"Wh--?" he caught himself up in his question, and I ignored it.
+
+"That climate is really just as severe as the Canadian, so I feel quite
+at home in this."
+
+"May I ask if your parents are living?"
+
+"No, they 're not living; my mother died when I was born. I told Delia
+Beaseley so when I applied for this place."
+
+("Now is my time; courage!" I exhorted myself in thought.)
+
+"I 'm glad you know Delia Beaseley, she 's a fine woman."
+
+"A noble one," I said, heartily.
+
+"Yes, noble--and good."
+
+"And good," I repeated.
+
+"I think I 'll tell you a little how good."
+
+"I think I know."
+
+"You do?" He looked surprised.
+
+"Yes, she told me something of her life." He turned squarely to me
+then.
+
+"How came she to?" He asked bluntly.
+
+"Now, courage, Marcia Farrell, out with it," I said to myself, but
+aloud:
+
+"She said I resembled some one whom she knew years ago--some one who,
+she said, had 'missed her footing'."
+
+"She said that?"
+
+I nodded. "Then she spoke of her own life and what came of it--how she
+had tried to save others; and one thing led on to another until I felt
+I had always known her."
+
+He turned again to look at me, and it was given me to read his very
+thought:--Have you ever come near missing your footing? Did Delia
+Beaseley save you from any pitfall?
+
+I answered his unspoken thought:
+
+"Oh, you may take my word for it I am wholly respectable--always have
+been. I could n't have answered your advertisement if I had n't been."
+
+"The deuce you are! Well, young lady, I 'll ask you not to answer a
+man's thoughts again before he has given them expression; it's
+uncanny." He was growling a little.
+
+I laughed aloud, for it delighted me to puzzle him a bit, especially
+with the revelation of my identity in prospect. I was enjoying the
+pung ride too. We were on the river road. The black tree trunks,
+standing out against the white snow-covered expanse of the St.
+Lawrence, seemed to speed past us. The sharp bits of ice-snow flew
+from the fleet horses' hoofs, and now and then one stung my cheek.
+
+"Cale informed me that you worked in the New York Library; may I ask
+how you happened to answer the advertisement?"
+
+"I wanted to get away from the city--far away."
+
+"Tired of it--like the rest of us?"
+
+"Yes--and I was ill." He gave me a look that was suddenly wholly
+professional.
+
+"Long?"
+
+"Ten weeks."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"Typhoid pneumonia with pleuri--"
+
+"And you were going to come out with me for a spin in that ulster!"
+
+He roared so at me that the horses, taking fright at the sound of his
+voice, plunged suddenly and gave him plenty to do to calm them into a
+trot again. I enjoyed the equine gymnastics so promptly provided for
+his diversion.
+
+"I was at St. Luke's." I volunteered this information when he was free
+to receive it.
+
+"St. Luke's, eh? That's where you heard of this old curmudgeon."
+
+"Yes, there; and from Delia Beaseley, and Jamie, and Mrs. Macleod."
+
+"By the way, you and Jamie seem to be great friends."
+
+"I love him," I said emphatically.
+
+"H'm, lucky dog; better not tell him so."
+
+"Why not?" I asked, at once on the defensive.
+
+The Doctor compressed his lips in a fashion that said as plainly as if
+he had spoken, "Unsophisticated at twenty-six; I don't believe her!"
+
+"I love Cale, too, and he is my own kind."
+
+"Cale 's all right; I 'm going to know him better before the week is
+out. And how about Mrs. Macleod?"
+
+"Mrs. Macleod is Jamie's mother, and I like her and respect her--but
+she 's not easy to love."
+
+"That's true--she is not easy to love. About the salary," he said
+changing the subject; "I intended to pay it myself until you were
+installed on the farm; it is a favor to me to be allowed to help out
+Mrs. Macleod. I knew from private sources that she needed someone to
+cheer her here in this Canadian country; it's a great change from her
+home in Crieff, and then she carries Jamie on her heart all the time.
+I insisted this morning on taking charge of the whole business, you
+included," he smiled ruefully, "but Ewart would n't hear to it. He
+argues that so long as you are in his house, and your work is--well, we
+'ll call it home-making, he, being the beneficiary has the sole right
+to pay for his benefits."
+
+"That's just what I told Mrs. Macleod and Jamie I would try to make of
+you and him--"
+
+"The dickens you did! A beneficiary of me, eh?"
+
+"Yes, and I shall try to," I said earnestly. The Doctor grew serious
+at once.
+
+"It will not be a hard task, Miss Farrell; I begin to dream of what the
+farm will be like with you to help make it a home for me and, in time,
+many others, as I hope."
+
+"Doctor Rugvie, would you mind calling me by my first name?"
+
+"Yes, I should mind very much, because it's exactly what I have wanted
+to do, but did not feel at liberty to."
+
+"In my position it is better that all in the house should call me
+Marcia."
+
+"Your position?" He looked around at me with a queer twist of his
+upper lip. "What is your position?"
+
+"According to the advertisement it was for service on a farm in Canada."
+
+"And now you find yourself in an anomalous one? Is that the trouble?"
+
+"Yes, just it. I don't know what is to be required of me--I really
+don't see how I am to earn my salt."
+
+"Don't bother yourself about that." He frowned slightly. "I confess
+this insistence on Ewart's part to pay you, complicates matters a
+little. _I_ wanted to be boss this time."
+
+"And I hoped you would be mine, anyway," I said mutinously. "I am far
+from satisfied to have my business dealings with Mr. Ewart, a stranger
+and an alien."
+
+"It will be only for a time; I am going to tell you, all of you, about
+my farm plans this evening. I have n't spoken yet to Ewart very freely
+about them."
+
+The horses were turned homewards, and I felt that little time was left
+me to ask any intimate questions of the Doctor concerning myself. I
+could not find the right word--and I knew I was not trying with any
+degree of earnestness. "I 'll put it off till the last of the week," I
+said to myself; then I began to speak of that self, for I knew the
+Doctor was waiting for this and, wisely, was biding my time. I was
+grateful to him.
+
+I told him of my hard-worked young years and my longing to get away to
+independence. I entered into no family details; it was not necessary.
+I told him something of my struggle in New York and of my place in the
+Branch Library; of my long illness and how it had left me: tired out,
+listless, practically homeless and in need of immediate money. I told
+him how I sought Delia Beaseley on the strength of the advertisement;
+how she helped me; how I felt I had found release from the city and its
+burden of livelihood, and how happy I was with my new duties in the old
+manor house; how the fact that it was an old manor fed the vein of
+romance in me which neither hard work nor illness had been able to work
+out; how I enjoyed Jamie and Mrs. Macleod, Angélique, and Pierre and
+all the household--and how I had dreaded his coming, yet longed for it,
+because it would unsettle my future which was not to be in the manor
+house of Lamoral.
+
+I told him all this, freely; but to speak of my mother, of my birth, of
+the papers, and of what I wanted them for, was beyond me. The secret
+of the Past, projected on the possible Future, loomed gigantic,
+threatening. I would let well enough alone.
+
+"You poor child," he said, when I finished. That was all; but I knew
+that henceforth I should have a friend in Doctor Rugvie. He drove the
+rest of the way in silence.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+When I joined them an hour after supper, they were talking about the
+heater that had been put up in the living-room while we were away. The
+warmth from it was delightful, but the blazing fire in the fireplace
+gave the true cheer to the room, added charm for the eye. The Doctor
+looked up as I came in.
+
+"Have you ever seen a stove like this--Marcia?" There was a twinkle
+both in his voice and his eye, as he called me for the first time by my
+Christian name. He was tease enough to try it in the presence of the
+rest of the household.
+
+"Oh, yes, my grandfather had two in his farmhouse. There is nothing
+like them for an even heat; it never burns the face. The top is a
+lovely place to fry griddlecakes."
+
+"You seem to know this species root and branch, Miss Farrell," said Mr.
+Ewart. "After that remark may I challenge you to make a few for us
+some night for supper?"
+
+"You won't have to challenge, for I like them myself; and if you 'll
+trust me we 'll have a griddlecake party here in this room some
+evening."
+
+"My first innings, Marcia!" cried Jamie.
+
+"I 'll have to let that go unchallenged, Macleod, seeing I 'm host; but
+you took unfair advantage of me. I 'll get even with you sometime."
+
+"Where did you get your idea, Gordon?" The Doctor turned to his friend.
+
+"I was born with it, you might say. I don't remember the time when we
+did n't have two or three in my father's house, and I 've never found
+anything equal to them for heating. They 're all out of date now;
+there is no manufactory for them. I had trouble in finding these, but
+I unearthed three last spring when I was in northern Vermont. I knew
+we should need them, and they keep all night, you know. I 'm going to
+have one put up in the bathroom--these oil stoves are an abomination."
+
+"Amen," said the Doctor.
+
+"So say we all of us.-- Hark, hear that wind!" said Jamie.
+
+The stove was of soapstone, square, with hinged top that, opening
+upward, gave room for the insertion of a "chunk"--a huge, unsplittable,
+knotty piece of maple, birch, or beech. Cale came in with one while we
+were listening to the roar of the gale; it was a section of a maple
+butt.
+
+"There, thet 'll last all night an' inter the forenoon," he said,
+lowering it carefully into the glowing brands in the box. "I 'll shet
+up the drafts, an' you 'll have a small furnace with no dust nor dirt
+to bother with; an' the ashes is good fertilizer--can't be beat for
+clover."
+
+"Let's take a household vote on the subject of modern improvements for
+the manor," said Mr. Ewart, helping himself to a cigar and then passing
+the box to Cale who had turned to leave the room.
+
+Cale took one with an "I thank _you_" this being a habit of speech to
+emphasize the last word, and was about to go out.
+
+"Stay a while with us, Cale," said Mr. Ewart, speaking as a matter of
+course; "I want the opinion of every member of my household--my
+Anglo-Saxon one, I mean."
+
+The two men stood facing each other, and between them I saw a look pass
+that bespoke mutual confidence. I thought they must have made rapid
+progress in one short day.
+
+"Wal, I don't mind if I do. It's flatterin' to a man, say what you 've
+a mind ter, ter have his advice asked on any subject--let alone what
+interests him."
+
+"That's a fine back-handed compliment for you, Ewart," said Jamie,
+whose delight in Cale's acquiescence was very evident.
+
+"I took it so," said Mr. Ewart quietly, drawing up a chair beside his
+and motioning to Cale who, after a slight hesitation, sat down.
+
+How cosy it was around the fire! Since our return from the pung ride,
+the wind had risen, keen and hard in the northwest and, crossing the
+Laurentians, was swooping down upon the river lands, swaying the great
+spruces in the woods all about us till it seemed as if ocean surf were
+breaking continuously just without the walls of the manor and, now and
+then, spending its force upon them until the great beams quivered under
+the impact. Every blast seemed to intensify our comfort within.
+
+"The telephone will be a great convenience," Mrs. Macleod remarked from
+the corner of the sofa, looking up from her knitting; "it will save so
+many trips to the village in weather like this."
+
+"Is it a long distance one, Gordon?" said Jamie who was lolling on the
+other end.
+
+"Yes; I thought we might as well connect with almost anywhere. Our
+household is rather cosmopolitan. Does this suit you?"
+
+"Suits me to a dot. I can talk with my 'best girl', as they call her
+in the States, when she is on the wing--as she is now."
+
+"Oh, ho, Boy! Has it come to this so soon?" The Doctor sighed
+audibly, causing us to laugh.
+
+"Jamie's 'best girl' changes with the season and sometimes the
+temperature, Doctor," said Mrs. Macleod, smiling at some remembrance.
+"Do you recall a little girl who with her mother had lodgings at
+Duncairn House, just opposite ours in Crieff?"
+
+The Doctor nodded. "Yes, and how Jamie Macleod enticed her away one
+summer afternoon to the meadows and banks of the Earn just below the
+garden gate, and the hue and cry that was raised when the two failed to
+make their appearance at supper time? Somebody--I won't say who--went
+to bed without porridge that night. What was her name, Boy?"
+
+I saw, we all saw, just the least hesitation on Jamie's part to answer
+with his usual assurance. We saw, also, the touch of red on his high
+cheek bones deepen a little.
+
+"Bess--Bess Stanley."
+
+"There is a Miss Stanley who visited at the new manor last summer--any
+relation, do you know?" asked Mr. Ewart.
+
+"Same," Jamie answered concisely, meanwhile puffing vigorously at his
+pipe.
+
+"The plot thickens, Mrs. Macleod," said the Doctor dubiously.
+
+"Is she tall and slender and fair, Jamie?" I put what I considered an
+opportune question; I knew it would both surprise and irritate him as
+well as rouse his curiosity of which he has an abundance. I really
+spoke at a venture because the name recalled to me the two girls in the
+sleeping-car and their destination: Richelieu-en-Bas.
+
+He turned to me with irony in his look. "She is all you say. May I
+make so bold as to enquire of you whether you speak from knowledge, or
+if you simply made a good guess?"
+
+"From knowledge--first hand, of course," I said with assurance.
+
+He sat up then, eyeing me defiantly, much to the others' amusement.
+
+"Perhaps you can give me further information about the young lady--all
+will be gratefully received."
+
+"No, nothing--except that I believe it was she through whom you
+obtained Cale, was n't it?" I heard Cale chuckle.
+
+"Look here, Marcia," he began severely enough, then burst into one of
+his hearty laughs that dissolves his irritation at once; "you 'll be
+telling me what she wrote me in my last letter if you 're such a mind
+reader. I say," he said, settling himself into a chair beside me, "let
+up on a man once in a while in the presence of such a cloud of
+witnesses, won't you? Take me when I 'm alone. The truth is, Ewart,
+Marcia gives herself airs because she is three years my senior. She
+takes the meanest kind of advantage; and I can't hit back because she
+'s a woman. But about that telephone, Ewart; are they going to run it
+on the trees."
+
+"It's the only way at this season."
+
+"Could n't it remain so the year round?" I asked.
+
+"Why?" said Mr. Ewart.
+
+"Because the poles will just spoil everything; as it is, it is--"
+
+"Is what, Marcia? Out with it," said Jamie encouragingly.
+
+"Perfect as it is," I said boldly, willing they should know what I
+thought of this wilderness of neglect that surrounded us in the heart
+of French Canada.
+
+"Guess we can keep it perfect, as you say, Marcia, 'thout havin' to rub
+the burrs off'n our coats every time we go round the house," said Cale.
+"We 're going to do some pretty tall cuttin' inter some of this
+underbrush and dead timber next week if the snow ain't too deep."
+
+"Oh, Cale, it will spoil it!"
+
+"Wal, thet 's as you look at it; but 't ain't good policy to keep a
+fire-trap quite so near to a livin'-place; makes insurance rates
+higher."
+
+"How would you feel then about having a modern hot water heater put
+into the old manor, Miss Farrell?" Mr. Ewart put the question to me.
+
+"Put it to a vote," I replied.
+
+"All in favor, aye," he continued.
+
+There was silence in the room except for one of the dogs that, asleep
+under the table, stirred uneasily and whined as if rousing from a dream
+of an unattainable bone.
+
+"It's a vote against. How about piping in gas?"
+
+"No!" we protested as one.
+
+"Settled," he said smiling. We saw that our decision pleased him.
+
+"Confess, now, Gordon, you did n't want any such innovations yourself,"
+said the Doctor.
+
+"I did n't, for I like my--home, as it is," he said simply.
+
+"I like to hear you use that word 'home', Gordon," said the Doctor,
+looking intently into the fire; "as long as I 've known you, I think I
+'ve never heard you use it."
+
+"No." The man on the opposite side of the hearth spoke decidedly, but
+in a tone that did not invite further confidence. "I 've never
+intended to use it until I could feel the sense of it."
+
+"Another who has felt what it is to be a stranger in this world," I
+thought to myself. And the fact that there were others, made me, for
+the moment, feel less a stranger. I was glad to hear him speak so
+frankly.
+
+The Doctor looked up, nodding understandingly.
+
+"Now I want some advice from all this household," he said earnestly,
+and I thought to change the subject; "it's about the farm I 've hired
+and the experiment with it. Give it fully, each of you, and, like
+every other man, I suppose I shall take what agrees with my own way of
+looking at it. My plans were so indefinite when I wrote to you to hire
+it, Gordon, that I went into no detail; and I 'm not at all sure that
+they are so clear to me now. Here 's where I want help."
+
+"That's not like you, John; what's up?" said his friend.
+
+"I want to start the thing right, and I 'm going to tell you just how I
+'m placed; a deuce of a fix it is too."
+
+Cale put on a log and left the room, saying good-night as he passed
+out. I gathered up my sewing--I was hemming some napkins--and made a
+motion to follow him.
+
+The Doctor rose. "Marcia,"--he put out a hand as if to detain me; he
+spoke peremptorily,--"come back. There are no secrets among us, and I
+want you to advise with."
+
+There seemed nothing to do but to obey, and I was perfectly willing to,
+because I wanted to hear all and everything about the farm project that
+threatened to break up my pleasant life in the manor.
+
+I took up my work again.
+
+"Put down your work, Marcia; fold your hands and listen to me. I want
+your whole attention."
+
+I obeyed promptly. Jamie gleefully rubbed his hands.
+
+"It takes you, Doctor, to make Marcia mind."
+
+"I 'm a man of years, Boy," the Doctor retorted, thereby reducing Jamie
+to silence.
+
+We sat expectant; but evidently the Doctor was in no hurry to open up
+his subject. After a few minutes of deep thought, he spoke slowly,
+almost as if to himself:
+
+"I'm wondering where to begin, what to take hold of first. The
+ordering of life is beyond all science--we 've found that out, we
+so-called 'men of science'. The truth is, I believe I have a
+'conscience fund' in the bank and on my mind. I know I am speaking
+blindly, and perhaps reasoning blindly, and it's because I want you to
+see things for me more clearly than I do, and through a different
+medium, that I am going to tell you, as concisely as I can--and without
+mentioning names--of an experience I had more than a quarter of a
+century ago. I 've had several of the kind since, they are common in
+our profession--but the result of this special experience is unique."
+He paused, continuing to look steadfastly into the fire.
+
+In the silence we heard the sweep of the wind through the woods, now
+and then the scraping swish of a pine branch brushing the roof beneath
+it.
+
+"I recall that it was in December. I was twenty-nine, and had just got
+a foothold on the first round of the professional ladder. Near
+midnight I was called to go down into one of the slum districts--I
+don't intend to mention names--of New York. There in a basement, I
+found a woman who had just been rescued from suicide."
+
+He paused, still keeping his gaze fixed intently on the fire. And I?
+
+At the first words a faint sickness came upon me. Was I to hear this
+again?--here, remote from the environment from which I had so recently
+fled? Could it be possible that I was to hear again that account of my
+mother's death? I struggled for control. They must not know, they
+should not see that struggle. Intent on keeping every feature passive,
+hoping that in the firelight whatever my face might have shown would
+pass unnoticed, I waited for the Doctor's next word.
+
+"It seems unprofessional, perhaps, to enter into any detail, but we are
+far away from that environment now--and in time, too, for it was over a
+quarter of a century ago. She was very young, nineteen perhaps, and
+about to become a mother. I remained with her till morning. I knew
+she would never come through her trial alive. I went again in the
+evening and stayed with her till her child was born and--to the end
+which came an hour afterwards. During all those twenty-four hours she
+spoke but twice. She gave me no name, although I asked her; no name of
+friends even--God knows if she had any, or why was she there?
+
+"Now, here is my dilemma: in the morning, I signed the death
+certificate and then went out of the city on a case that kept me
+forty-eight hours. On my return, the woman, who had rescued this poor
+girl,--a woman who took in washing and ironing in that basement--told
+me a man had appeared at the house to claim the body he said was his
+wife's. She gave me the man's name, but the name of this man was not
+the name of the husband according to a marriage certificate which I
+found in an envelope the young woman entrusted to me for her child. At
+any rate, he had claimed the body and taken it away.
+
+"Now, ordinarily the living waves of existence close very soon over
+such an episode--all too common; and, so far as I am concerned, in such
+and other similar cases I forget; it is well that I can. But I 've
+never been permitted to forget this!"
+
+He made this announcement emphatically, looking up suddenly from the
+fire, and glancing at each of us in turn.
+
+"And, moreover, I don't believe I am ever going to be permitted to
+forget. Some one intends I shall remember!
+
+"With me it was merely a charity case--one, it is true, that called
+forth my deepest sympathy. The circumstances were peculiar. The woman
+was young, rarely attractive in face, refined, well dressed. Her
+absolute silence concerning herself during all that weary time; her
+heroic endurance and, I may say, angelic acceptance of her
+martyrdom--and all this in such an environment! How could it help
+making a deep impression? Still, I am convinced I should have
+forgotten it, had it not been for a constant reminder.
+
+"In the first week of the next February, I received a notification from
+a national bank in the city that five hundred dollars had been
+deposited to my credit. The woman who lived in that basement received
+during the first week of the New Year a draft on that bank--and mailed
+by the bank--for the same amount. She consulted me about accepting it.
+When I attempted to investigate at the bank, I found that no
+information would be given and no questions answered--only the
+statement made that the money was mine to do with what I might choose.
+Next December, and a year to a day from the death of that young woman,
+I received a similar notification, and the woman a draft for one
+hundred. Since that time, now over twenty-five years ago, no December
+has ever passed that the regular notification has not been mailed to me
+and to the woman. I wrote to the man who had claimed the body, and
+whose name and address the woman, who lived in the basement,
+remembered. The letter was never answered. I waited a year, and wrote
+the second time. The letter came back to me from the dead letter
+office. I invested the increasing amount after two years and let it
+accumulate at compound interest. As you will see, these donations have
+amounted now to a tidy sum. I believe it to be 'conscience
+money'--either from the man who claimed the body as that of his wife,
+or from the woman's husband according to the marriage certificate. Or
+are both men one and the same?
+
+"I hired the farm of you, Gordon, merely telling you it was one of my
+many philanthropic plans that, thus far, I have been unable to carry
+out. As yet I have not used that money for any benefactions. Would
+you hold it longer, or would you apply it to my farm project which is
+to provide a home for the homeless, and for those whose home does not
+provide sufficient change for them? I have thought sometimes I would
+limit the philanthropy to those who need up-building in health.-- What
+do you say, Gordon?"
+
+He looked across the hearth to his friend who was leaning back in his
+chair, his arm resting on the arm, his hand shading his eyes from the
+firelight.
+
+"I should like to think it over, John; it is a peculiar case. Have you
+ever thought of the child? Do you know anything about it? Was it a
+boy or a girl?"
+
+"A girl. No, I never thought of the child--poor little bit of life's
+flotsam. We don't get much time to think of all those we help to float
+in on the tide. Now this is what I am getting, by looking at the
+matter through others' eyes--you mean she should be looked up, and the
+money go to her?"
+
+"That was my first thought, but, as I said, I must think it over. The
+two men, at least, the two names of possibly the same man, complicate
+matters."
+
+"That's what puzzles me," said Jamie. The Doctor turned to him.
+
+"How do you look at it, Boy, you, with your twenty-three years? The
+world where such things happen is n't much like that world of André's
+Odyssey, is it?"
+
+Jamie answered brightly, but his voice was slightly unsteady:
+
+"Yes, it's the same old world; it's a wilderness, you know, for all of
+us, only there are so many paths through it, across it, and up and down
+it--paths and trails and roads that cross and recross; so many that end
+in swamp and bog; so many that lead nowhither; so many that are lost on
+the mountain. And so few guideposts--I wish there were more for us
+all! You may bet your life that man--whether the girl's husband or
+lover--has had to tread thorns until his feet bled before he could
+clear his way through. Those five hundred dollars, in yearly deposits,
+he intends shall be guideposts, and he trusts you to put them up in the
+wilderness where they will do the most good.--I 'd hate to be that man!
+Would you mind telling me, Doctor, how she attempted to make way with
+herself?"
+
+"Tried to drown herself from one of the North River piers."
+
+"And her child too," said Jamie musingly; "there came near being two
+graves in _his_ wilderness." He thought a moment in silence. "Make
+the home on the farm with the money, Doctor Rugvie; use the interest in
+helping others who have lost their way in the wilderness."
+
+"Good advice, Boy, I 'll remember to act on it." The Doctor spoke
+gratefully, heartily. His glance rested affectionately upon the long
+figure on the sofa. Was he wondering, as I was, how Jamie at
+twenty-three could reach certain depths which his particular plummet
+could never have sounded? I intended to ask him what he thought of
+Jamie's outlook on life, sometime when we should be alone together.
+
+"Mrs. Macleod," he said, "do you think with your son?"
+
+She hesitated. It is her peculiarity that a direct question, the
+answer to which involves a decision, flusters her painfully.
+
+"I shall have to think it over, like Mr. Ewart," she replied.
+
+"And you, Marcia," he turned to me. Out of my knowledge I answered
+unhesitatingly:
+
+"It's not of the child I 'm thinking; she could n't accept the money
+knowing for what it is paid. Nor am I thinking about those women who
+need 'guide-posts', Jamie. I 'm thinking of that other woman who lived
+in the basement and took in washing and ironing, the one who rescued
+that other from her misery and cared for her with your help, Doctor
+Rugvie--should n't she be remembered? She, who is living? If I had
+that money at my disposal, I would found the farm home and put that
+woman at the head of it. You may be sure she would know how to put up
+the guideposts--and in the right places too."
+
+I spoke eagerly, almost impulsively.
+
+The Doctor looked at me comprehendingly--he knew that I knew that it
+was of Delia Beaseley he had been speaking--and smiled.
+
+"Another idea, Marcia, also worth remembering and acting upon with
+Jamie's."
+
+I turned suddenly to Mr. Ewart, not knowing why I felt impelled to;
+perhaps his silence, his noticeable unresponsiveness to his friend's
+proposition, impressed as well as surprised me; at any rate I looked up
+very quickly and caught the look he gave me. It half terrified me.
+What had I said to offend him? The steel gray eyes were almost black,
+and the look--had it possessed physical force, I felt it would have
+crushed me. It was severe, indignant, uncompromising. I was
+mystified. The look was more flashed at me than directed at me for the
+space of half a second--then he spoke to Jamie.
+
+"You are right, Jamie, about the wilderness; we 'll talk this matter
+over sometime together before John goes,"--I perceived clearly that
+Mrs. Macleod and I were shut out of future conferences,--"and I know we
+can make some plan satisfactory to him and to us all. Count on me,
+John, to help you in carrying out the best plan whatever it may be. In
+any case, it will mean that we are to have more of your company, and
+that's what I want." He spoke lightly.
+
+Doctor Rugvie smiled, then his features grew earnest again.
+
+"Gordon, I want to put a question to you, and after you to Jamie."
+
+"Yes; go ahead."
+
+"I have given you the mere outlines of a bare and ugly episode of New
+York city. That man, or those two men, or that dual entity, has never
+ceased to perplex me. How does it look to you, knowing merely the
+outlines?"
+
+"As if the woman had been dealing with two different men," he replied
+almost indifferently.
+
+The Doctor looked at him earnestly, and I saw he was puzzled by his
+friend's attitude. "That may be--one never can tell in such cases," he
+answered quietly; but I could feel his disappointment.
+
+"That's queer, Ewart," said Jamie, gravely; "to me it looks as if two
+men had done a girl an irreparable wrong." Perhaps we all felt that
+the conversation had been carried a little too far in this direction.
+The Doctor turned it into other channels, but it lagged. I felt
+uncomfortable, and wished I had insisted upon going up to my room when
+the subject of the farm was broached. After all, we had come to no
+decision, and I doubted if the Doctor was much the wiser for all our
+opinions.
+
+Marie's entrance with the porridge relieved the tension somewhat, and I
+was glad to say good night as soon as I had finished mine.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Doctor Rugvie had opened an easy way of approach for me to ask him what
+I would, but that question put by Mr. Ewart in regard to the child,
+whether it was a boy or a girl, seemed to block the way, for a time at
+least, impassably. If I were to make inquiry now of the Doctor
+concerning my identity and ask the name of my father, naturally he
+would infer, after Mr. Ewart's remark, that the question of the
+property was my impelling motive. My reason told me the time was ripe
+to settle this personal question, but something--was it intuition? I
+believe in that, if only we would follow its lead and leave reason to
+lag in chains far behind it--seemed to paralyze my power of will in
+making any move to ascertain my paternal parentage. And yet I had
+dared to respond to that demand in Jamie's advertisement "of good
+parentage"!
+
+"Well, I am myself," I thought, half defiantly, "and after all, it's
+not what those who are dead and gone stood for that counts. It's what
+I stand for; and what I am rests with my will to make. They 'll have
+to accept me for what I am."
+
+I was in the kitchen, concocting an old-fashioned Indian pudding and
+showing Angélique about the oven, as these thoughts passed through my
+mind. At that moment Jamie opened the door and looked in.
+
+"I say, Marcia--awfully busy?"
+
+"No, not now; what do you want?"
+
+"You--I 'm lonesome. Come on into the living-room--I 've built up a
+roaring fire there--and let's talk; nobody 's around."
+
+"Where 's Doctor Rugvie?"
+
+"Gone off with Cale to the farm. He 'll get pneumonia if he does n't
+look out; the place is like an ice-house at this season."
+
+I slipped the pudding into the oven. "Now look out for it and keep
+enough milk in it till it wheys, Angélique." I turned to Jamie.
+"Where's Mr. Ewart?"
+
+"Oh, Ewart's off nosing about in Quebec for some old furniture for his
+den. Pierre drove him to the train just after breakfast. He told
+mother he would be back in time for supper."
+
+"That's queer," I said, following him through the bare offices, one of
+which was to be the den, into the living-room where stale cigar smoke
+still lingered. "Whew! Let's have in some fresh air."
+
+I opened the hinged panes in the double windows; opened the front door
+and let in the keen crisp air.
+
+"There, now," I closed them; "we can 'talk' as you say in comfort. I
+did n't air out early this morning, for when I came in I found Mr.
+Ewart writing. He looked for all the world as if he were making his
+last will and testament. I beat a double-quick retreat."
+
+"I 'll bet you did. I 'd make tracks if Ewart looked like that." He
+drew up two chairs before the fire. "Here, sit here by me; let's be
+comfy when we can. I say, Marcia--"
+
+He paused, leaning to the fire in his favorite position: arms along his
+knees, and clasped hands hanging between them. He turned and looked at
+me ruefully.
+
+"We all got beyond our depth, did n't we, last night?"
+
+"I thought so."
+
+"The Doctor 's a dear, is n't he?"
+
+"He 's the dearest kind of a dear, and I could n't bear to see him
+snubbed by your lord of the manor."
+
+Jamie nodded. "That was rather rough. I don't understand that side of
+Ewart--never have seen it but once before, and I would n't mind, you
+know, Marcia," he lowered his voice, "if I never saw it again. It made
+no end of an atmosphere, did n't it?"
+
+"Thick and--muggy," I replied, searching for the word that should
+express the mental and spiritual atmospheric condition, the result of
+Mr. Ewart's attitude in last evening's talk. "And it has n't wholly
+cleared up yet."
+
+He nodded. "I believe that's why he took himself out of the way this
+morning. Look here--I 've a great overpowering longing to confide in
+you, Marcia." He laughed.
+
+"Confide then; I 'm a regular safe deposit and trust company. Tell me,
+do; I'm dying to talk."
+
+"Oh, you are!" He turned to me with his own bright face illumined.
+"Is n't it good that we 're young, Marcia? I feel that forcibly when I
+am with so many older men."
+
+"I 'm just beginning to feel young, Jamie; to see my way through that
+wilderness you spoke of."
+
+I knew his sympathy, his understanding, not of my life but of the
+condition of mind to which that life had brought me. It is this quick
+understanding of another's "sphere", I may call it, that makes the
+young Scotsman so wonderfully attractive to all who meet him.
+
+"You know what the Doctor said about the world of which he told us last
+night and of André's world?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Well, one night in camp--last summer, you know, it was just before
+Ewart left me there--old André told us what happened years ago up there
+in the wilds of the Saguenay. He said one day two Indian guides,
+Montagnais, came to his camp. The oldest, Root-of-the-Pine, a friend
+of André's, brought him word from old Mère Guillardeau, André's
+sister--you know her--who is living here in Lamoral. She told him to
+receive two of the English, a man and a woman, as guests for a month.
+The Indian told André they were waiting across the portage.
+
+"André said he went over to meet them, and they stayed with him not
+only one month, but four. He told us the girl had a voice as sweet as
+the nightingale's; that her eyes were like wood violets, her laugh like
+the forest brook. He said they loved each other madly, so madly that
+even his old blood was stirred at times. He was alone with them there
+in that wilderness for all those months, caring for them, fishing,
+hunting, picking the mountain berries, till the first snow flew. Then
+they took their flight.
+
+"Mère Guillardeau had sent in her message: 'Ask no questions. You can
+confess and be shriven when you come to Richelieu-en-Bas.' He obeyed
+to the letter.
+
+"He knew, he said, that they were not married, but he caught enough of
+their English to know they were looking forward to being married when
+it should be made possible for them. Whence they came, he never knew;
+whither they went, he never asked. They came, as birds come that mate
+in the spring; they went, as the late birds go after the mating season
+is over, with the first snow-fall; but, Marcia--"
+
+"Yes, Jamie."
+
+"You won't mind my speaking out after what was said last evening?"
+
+"I mind nothing from you."
+
+"André told us that before they left he knew a nestling was on its way;
+the slender form, like a willow shoot, as he expressed it, was rounder,
+and the face of the girl was the face of a tender doe. You should have
+heard him tell it--there in the setting of forest, lake and mountain!
+
+"'All this happened long, long ago,' he said, 'but still I hear her
+voice in the forest; still I see her eyes in the first wood violets;
+see her smile that made sunshine in the darkest woods. Still I hear
+her light steps about the camp and follow her still in thought across
+the last portage when we carried her in our arms; still see her waving
+her hand to me from the canoe that floated like a brown leaf on the
+blue lake waters. Wherever she may be, may the Holy Virgin, Our Lady
+of the Snows, guard her--and her child! I have waited all these years
+for her to come again.'
+
+"Marcia--André called their love 'forest love'. Sometimes I think he
+spoke truly; untaught, he knew the difference."
+
+I listened, caught by the pathos of the tale, the charm of old André's
+words; but in love I was untaught. I wondered how Jamie could know the
+"difference".
+
+"But now to my point. Of course I listened all eyes and ears to André.
+When he finished, the camp fire was low. The full moon had risen above
+the waters of the lake and lighted the tree-fringed shore. I turned to
+Ewart, and caught the same look on his face that I saw last night when
+the Doctor was telling his story: the look of a man who is seeing
+ghosts--more than one. For three days I scarce got a decent word when
+he was with me, which was seldom; he was off by himself in the forest.
+So you see _this_, last night's occurrence, does not wholly surprise
+me."
+
+We sat for a while without talking. Jamie took his pipe, filled and
+lighted it with a glowing coal.
+
+"Jamie," I said at last. He nodded encouragingly.
+
+"You know you told me about that queer rumor that crops out at such odd
+times and places--about Mr. Ewart's having been married and divorced,
+and the boy he is educating, 'Boy or girl?' you know he said--"
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"Might n't it be--I know you did n't believe it, but would n't it be
+possible that there is some truth in that, distorted, perhaps, but
+enough to make him suffer when there is any reference to love that has
+brought with it misery and suffering?"
+
+"It may be you 're right; I had n't thought of it in that light. Of
+course, I never heard of the rumor till I came back from camp in
+September; then it seemed to be in the air. I wonder if the Doctor has
+ever heard anything."
+
+"Probably his coming home so soon and making his home here started the
+gossip. Jamie--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You said he never spoke much to you about his personal affairs--that
+you don't know so very much of his intimate personal life. Does n't
+that prove that he has had some trouble, some painful experience?"
+
+"Woman's logic, but I suppose he has. Most men have been through the
+wilderness, or been lost in it, by the time they are forty. I should
+think if--mind you, I say 'if'--he was ever married, ever divorced,
+ever had a child somewhere, he might find his special trail difficult
+at times; but he has n't lost it! Ewart does not lose a trail so
+easily! Look at his experience--Oxford, London, Australian
+sheep-ranchman, forester here in Lamoral! And he 's so tender with
+everything and everybody. That's what makes him so beloved here in
+this French settlement."
+
+"Except towards the Doctor last night."
+
+"That's so; but he is tender just the same. I 've seen that trait in
+him so many times."
+
+"I should think he might be--and like adamant at others," I said, and
+began to put the room to rights.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+"We shall miss the Doctor no end," said Jamie ruefully.
+
+We caught the last wave of his hand; the pung's broad fur-behung back
+could no longer be seen; the jingle of the bells grew fainter; soon
+there was silence.
+
+"He promised to come again in February. And, now, what next?" I
+turned to Mrs. Macleod who was standing with Jamie at the window.
+
+"There does n't seem to be any 'next'?" she answered with such evident
+dejection that Jamie and I laughed at her.
+
+"Take heart, mither," her son admonished her, using for the first time
+in my presence the softer Scotch for mother.
+
+"It's been such a pleasant week for us--and I find Mr. Ewart so
+different; not that I mean to criticize our host," she added hastily
+and apologetically. She seemed to take pleasure in refusing to be
+comforted for the loss of the Doctor's cheering presence.
+
+"Of course he 's different; there can't be two Doctor Rugvies in this
+needy world; but you wait till you know Ewart better, mother. Talk
+about 'what next'! You 'll find as soon as Ewart sets things humming
+here there 'll be plenty of the 'next'; Cale can give you a point or
+two on that already. By the way, he seems to have sworn allegiance to
+Ewart; he does n't have time for me now."
+
+"But what are we women to do here?" I exclaimed half impatiently. My
+busy working life in the city, with the consequent pressure that made
+itself felt every hour of the day, and burdened me at night with the
+dreadful "what next if strength and health should fail?", had unfitted
+me in part for the continued quiet of domesticity. I found myself
+beginning to chafe under it, now that the house was settled. I wanted
+more work to fill my time.
+
+"Better ask Ewart," said Jamie to tease me.
+
+"I will." I spoke decidedly and gave Jamie a surprise. "I 'll speak
+to him the very first time I get the chance. He has n't given me one
+yet."
+
+"You 're right there, Marcia. I noticed you and the Doctor were great
+chums from the first, but Ewart has n't said much to you--he is so
+different, though, as mother says. It takes time to know Ewart, and
+sometimes--"
+
+"What 'sometimes'?"
+
+"Sometimes when I think I know him, I find I don't. That interests me.
+You 'll have the same experience when you get well acquainted with him."
+
+"There is no monotony about that at any rate."
+
+"I should say not." He spoke emphatically.
+
+Mrs. Macleod turned to me.
+
+"I 'm sure I feel just as you do, Marcia, about the 'what next'. I
+don't know of anything except to keep house and provide for the meals--"
+
+"That's no sinecure in this climate, mother. Such appetites! Even
+Marcia is developing a bank holiday one."
+
+"And gaining both color and flesh," said Mrs. Macleod, looking me over
+approvingly. I dropped her a curtsey which surprised her Scotch
+staidness and amused Jamie.
+
+"Are you _sure_ you are twenty-six?" He smiled quizzically.
+
+"As sure as you are of your three and twenty years."
+
+Jamie turned from the window, took a book and dipped into it. I
+thought he was lost to us for the next two hours. Mrs. Macleod left
+the room.
+
+"Sometimes I feel a hundred." Jamie spoke thoughtfully.
+
+"And I a hundred and ten." I responded quickly to his mood.
+
+"You 're bound to go me ten better. But no--have you, though?"
+
+I nodded emphatically.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Oh, in New York."
+
+"Why in New York?"
+
+"You don't know it?"
+
+"No; but I mean to."
+
+"I wish you joy."
+
+"Tell me why in New York."
+
+"You would n't understand."
+
+"Would n't I? Try me."
+
+I looked up at him as he stood there thoughtful, his forefinger between
+the leaves of the book. _He_ had no living to earn. _He_ had not to
+bear the burden and heat of an earned existence. How could he
+understand? So I questioned in my narrowness of outlook.
+
+"I felt the burden," I answered.
+
+"What burden?"
+
+"The burden of--oh, I can't tell exactly; the burden of just that
+terrible weight of life as it is lived there. Before I was ill it
+weighed on me so I felt old, sometimes centuries old--"
+
+Jamie leaned forward eagerly, his face alive with feeling.
+
+"Marcia, that's just the way I felt when I was in the hospital. I was
+bowed down in spirit with it--"
+
+"You?" I asked in amazement.
+
+"Yes, I; why not? I can't help myself; I am a child of my time. Only,
+I felt the burden of life as humanity lives it, not touched by locality
+as you felt it."
+
+"But you have n't really lived that life yet, Jamie."
+
+"Yes, I have, Marcia."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I wonder now if _you_ will understand? I get it--I get all that
+through the imagination."
+
+"But imagination is n't reality."
+
+"More real than reality itself sometimes. Look here, I 'm not a
+philanthropic cad and I don't mean to say too much, but I can say this:
+when a thinking man before he is twenty-five has run up hard against
+the only solid fact in this world--death, he somehow gets a grip on
+life and its meaning that others don't."
+
+I waited for more. This was the Jamie of whom the depth of simplicity
+in "André's Odyssey" had given me a glimpse.
+
+He straightened himself suddenly. "I want to say right here and now
+that if I have felt, and feel--as I can't help feeling, being the child
+of my time and subject to its tendencies--the burden of this life of
+ours as lived by all humankind, thank God, I can even when bowed in
+spirit, feel at times the 'rhythm of the universe' that adjusts,
+coordinates all--" He broke off abruptly, laughing at himself. "I 'm
+getting beyond my depth, Marcia?"
+
+I shook my head. He smiled. "Well, then, I 'll get down to bed rock
+and say something more: you won't mind my mooning about and going off
+by myself and acting, sometimes, as if I had patented an aeroplane and
+could sustain myself for a few hours above the heads of all humanity--"
+
+I laughed outright. "What do you mean, Jamie?"
+
+"I mean that as I can't dig a trench, or cut wood, or run a motor bus,
+or be a member of a life-saving crew like other men, I 'm going to try
+to help a man up, and earn my living if I can, by writing out what I
+get in part through experience and mostly through imagination. There!
+Now I 've told you all there is to tell, except that I 've had
+something actually accepted by a London publisher; and if you 'll put
+up with my crotchets I 'll give you a presentation copy."
+
+"Oh, Jamie!"
+
+I was so glad for him that for the moment I found nothing more to say.
+
+"'Oh, Jamie,'" he mimicked; then with a burst of laughter he threw
+himself full length on the sofa.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" I demanded sternly.
+
+"At what Ewart and the Doctor would say if they could hear us talking
+like this so soon as their backs were turned on the manor. I believe
+the Doctor's last word to you was 'griddlecakes', and Ewart's to me:
+'We 'll have dinner at twelve--I 'm going into the woods with Cale'.
+Well, I 'm in for good two hours of reading," he said, settling himself
+comfortably in the sofa corner. I had come to learn that this was my
+dismissal.
+
+Before Mr. Ewart's return, I took counsel with myself--or rather with
+my common-sense self. If I were to continue to work in this household,
+I must know definitely what I was to do. The fact that I was receiving
+wages meant, if it meant anything, that I received them in exchange for
+service rendered. The Doctor left the matter in an unsatisfactory,
+nebulous state, saying, that if Ewart insisted on paying my salary it
+was his affair to provide the work; and thereafter he was provokingly
+silent.
+
+I had been too many years in a work-harness to shirk any responsibility
+along business lines now, and when, after supper, I heard Jamie say
+just before we left the dining-room: "I'm no end busy this evening,
+Gordon, I 'll work in here if you don't mind; I 'll be in for
+porridge," I knew my opportunity was already made for me. I told Mrs.
+Macleod that, as she could not tell me what was expected of me, I
+should not let another day go by without ascertaining this from Mr.
+Ewart. Perhaps she intentionally made the opening for my opportunity
+easier, for when I went into the living-room an hour later, I found Mr.
+Ewart alone with the dogs. He was at the library table, drawing
+something with scale and square.
+
+"Pardon me for not rising," he said without looking up; "I don't want
+to spoil this acute angle; I 'm mapping out the old forest. I 'm glad
+you 're at liberty for I need some help."
+
+"At liberty!" I echoed; and, perceiving the humor of the situation, I
+could not help smiling. "That's just what I have come to you to
+complain of--I have too much liberty."
+
+"You want work?"
+
+It was a bald statement of an axiomatic truth, and it was made while he
+was still intent upon finishing the angle. I stood near the table
+watching him.
+
+"Yes." I thought the circumstances warranted conciseness, and my being
+laconic, if necessary.
+
+"Then we can come to an understanding without further preliminaries."
+He spoke almost indifferently; he was still intent on his work. "Be
+seated," he said pleasantly, looking up at me for the first time and
+directly into my face.
+
+I did as I was bidden, and waited. I am told I have a talent for
+waiting on another's unexpressed intentions without fidgetting, as so
+many women do, with any trifle at hand. I occupied myself with looking
+at the man whom Jamie loved, who "interested" him. I, too, found the
+personality and face interesting. By no means of uncommon type,
+nevertheless the whole face was noticeable for the remarkable moulding
+of every feature. There were lines in it and, without aging, every one
+told. They added character, gave varied expression, intensified
+traits. Life's chisel of experience had graven both deep and fine; not
+a coarse line marred the extraordinary firmness that expressed itself
+in lips and jaw; not a touch of unfineness revealed itself about the
+nose. Delicate creases beneath the eyes, and many of them, mellowed
+the almost hard look of the direct glance. Thought had moulded; will
+had graven; suffering had both hardened and softened--"tempered" is the
+right word--as is its tendency when manhood endures it rightly. But
+joy had touched the contours all too lightly; the face in repose showed
+absolutely no trace of it. When he smiled, however, as he did, looking
+up suddenly to find me studying him, I realized that here was great
+capacity for enjoying, although joyousness had never found itself at
+home about eyes and lips. He laid aside the drawing and turned his
+chair to face me.
+
+"Doctor Rugvie--and Cale," he added pointedly, "tell me you were for
+several years in a branch of the New York Library. Did you ever do any
+work in cataloguing?"
+
+"No; I was studying for the examinations that last spring before I was
+taken ill."
+
+"Then I am sure you will understand just how to do the work I have laid
+out for you. I have a few cases still in storage in Montreal--mostly
+on forestry. Before sending for them, I wanted to see where I could
+put them."
+
+"Cut and dried already! I need n't have given myself extra worry about
+my future work," I thought; but aloud I said:
+
+"I 'll do my best; if the books are German I can't catalogue them. I
+have n't got so far."
+
+"I 'll take care of those; there are very few of them. Most of them
+are in French; in fact, it is a mild fad of mine to collect French
+works, ancient and modern, on forestry. I 'll send for the books after
+the office has been furnished and put to rights. I am expecting the
+furniture from Quebec to-morrow. And now that I have laid out your
+work for you for the present, I 'll ask a favor--a personal one," he
+added, smiling as he rose, thrust his hands deep into his pockets and
+jingled some keys somewhere in the depths.
+
+"What is it?" I, too, rose, ready to do the favor on the instant if
+possible, for his wholly businesslike manner, the directness with which
+he relied upon my training to help him pleased me.
+
+"I 'd like to leave the settling of my den in your hands--wholly," he
+said emphatically. "You have been so successful with the other rooms
+that I 'd like to see your hand in my special one. How did you know
+just what to do, and not overdo,--so many women are guilty of
+that,--tell me?"
+
+He spoke eagerly, almost boyishly. It was pleasant to be able to tell
+him the plain truth; no frills were needed with this man, if I read him
+rightly.
+
+"Because it was my first chance to work out some of my home ideals--my
+first opportunity to make a home, as I had imagined it; then, too,--"
+
+I hesitated, wondering if I should tell not only the plain truth, but
+the unvarnished one. I decided to speak out frankly; it could do no
+harm.
+
+"I enjoyed it all so much because I could spend some
+money--judiciously, you know,"--I spoke earnestly. He nodded
+understandingly, but I saw that he suppressed a smile,--"without having
+to earn it by hard work; I 've had to scrimp so long--"
+
+His face grew grave again.
+
+"How much did you spend? I think I have a slight remembrance of some
+infinitesimal sum you mentioned the first evening--"
+
+"Infinitesimal! No, indeed; it was almost a hundred--eighty-seven
+dollars and sixty-three cents, to be exact."
+
+"Now, Miss Farrell!" It was his turn to protest. He went over to the
+hearth and took his stand on it, his back to the fire, his hands
+clasped behind him. "Do you mean to tell me that you provided all this
+comfort and made this homey atmosphere with eighty-seven dollars and
+sixty-three cents?--I'm particular about those sixty-three cents."
+
+"I did, and had more good fun and enjoyment in spending them to that
+end, than I ever remember to have had before in my life. You don't
+think it too much?"
+
+I looked up at him and smiled; and smiled again right merrily at the
+perplexed look in his eyes, a look that suddenly changed to one of such
+deep, emotional suffering that my eyes fell before it. I felt
+intuitively I ought not to see it.
+
+"Too much!" he repeated, and as I looked up again quickly I found the
+face and expression serene and unmoved. "Well, as you must have
+learned already, things are relative when it comes to value, and what
+you have done for this house belongs in the category of things that
+mere money can neither purchase nor pay for."
+
+"I don't quite see that; I thought it was I who was having all the
+pleasure."
+
+His next question startled me.
+
+"You are an orphan, I understand, Miss Farrell?"
+
+"Yes." Again I felt the blood mount to my cheeks as I restated this
+half truth.
+
+"Then you must know what it is to be alone in the world?"
+
+"Yes--all alone."
+
+"Perhaps to have no home of your own?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To feel yourself a stranger even in familiar places?"
+
+"Oh, yes--many times."
+
+"Surely, then, you will understand what it means for a lonely man to
+come back to this old manor, which I have occupied for years only at
+intervals, and more as a camping than an abiding place, and find it for
+the first time a home in fact?"
+
+"I think I can understand it."
+
+"Very well, then," he said emphatically and holding out his hand into
+which I laid mine, wondering as I did so "what next" was to be expected
+from this man, "I am your debtor for this and must remain so; and in
+the circumstances," he continued with an emphasis at once so frank and
+merry, that it left no doubt of his sincerity as well as of his
+appreciation of the situation, "I think there need be no more talk of
+work, or wages, or reciprocal service between you and me as long as you
+remain with us. It's a pact, is n't it?" he said, releasing my hand
+from the firm cordial pressure.
+
+"But I want my wages," I protested with mock anxiety. "I really can't
+get on without money--and I was to have twenty-five dollars a month and
+'board and room' according to agreement."
+
+He laughed at that. I was glad to hear him.
+
+"Oh, I have no responsibility for the agreement or what the
+advertisement has brought forth; it was one of the great surprises of
+my life to find you here. By the way, I hear you prefer to receive
+your pay from the Doctor?"
+
+"Did he tell you that?" I demanded, not over courteously.
+
+"Professionally," he replied with assumed gravity. "I insisted on
+taking that pecuniary burden on myself, as I seemed to be the first
+beneficiary; but I 've changed my mind, and, hereafter, you may apply
+to the Doctor for your salary. I 'll take your service gratis and tell
+him so. Does this suit you?"
+
+"So completely, wholly and absolutely that--well, you 'll see! When
+can I take possession of the office? It needs a good cleaning down the
+first thing." I was eager to begin to prove my gratitude for the
+manner in which he had extricated me from the anomalous position in his
+household.
+
+"From this moment; only--no manual labor like 'cleaning down'; there
+are enough in the house for that."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" I replied, laughing at such a restriction. "I 'm used
+to it--
+
+"I intend you to be unused to it in my house--you understand?"
+
+There was decided command in these words; they irritated me as well as
+the look he gave me. But I remembered in time that, after all, the old
+manor of Lamoral was his house, not mine, and it would be best for me
+to obey orders.
+
+"Very well; I 'll ask Marie and little Pete to help me."
+
+Marie appeared with the porridge, a little earlier than usual on
+Jamie's account, and Mr. Ewart asked her to bring a lighted candle.
+
+"Come into the office for a moment," he said, leading the way with the
+light.
+
+He stopped at the threshold to let me pass. The room was warm; the
+soapstone heater was doing effective work. The snow gleamed white
+beneath the curtainless windows, and the crowding hemlocks showed black
+pointed masses against the moonlight. There was some frost on the
+panes.
+
+"It looks bare enough now," he said, raising the candle at the full
+stretch of his arm that I might see the oak panels of the ceiling; "I
+leave it to you to make it cheery. Here 's something that will help
+out in this room and in the living-room."
+
+He took a large pasteboard box from the floor, and we went back into
+the other room. Jamie and Mrs. Macleod were there.
+
+"Now, what have you there, Gordon?" said the former, frankly showing
+the curiosity that is a part of his make-up.
+
+"Something that should delight your inner man's eye," he replied.
+Going to the table, he opened the box and took from it some of the
+exquisite first and second proofs of those wonderful etchings by Meryon.
+
+We looked and looked again. Old Paris, the Paris of the second
+republic, lay spread before us: bridges, quays, chimney-pots, roofs,
+river and the cathedral of Notre Dame were there in black and white,
+and the Seine breathing dankness upon all! I possessed myself of one,
+the Pont Neuf, and betook myself to the sofa to enjoy it.
+
+"You know these, Miss Farrell?"
+
+"Only as I have seen woodcuts of them in New York."
+
+"They are my favorites; I want nothing else on my walls. Will you
+select some for this room and some for the den? I will passepartout
+them; they should have no frames."
+
+"You 're just giving me the best treat you could possibly provide," I
+said, still in possession of the proof, "and how glad I am that I 've
+had it--"
+
+"What, Marcia?" This from Jamie.
+
+"I mean the chance to extract a little honey from the strong."
+
+Mrs. Macleod and Jamie looked thoroughly mystified, not knowing New
+York; but Mr. Ewart smiled at my enthusiasm and scripture application.
+He understood that some things during the years of my "scrimping" had
+borne fruit.
+
+"I believe you 're more than half French, Ewart," said Jamie, looking
+up from the proof he was examining; "I mean in feeling and sympathy."
+
+"No, I am all Canadian."
+
+"You mean English, don't you?"
+
+"No, I mean Canadian."
+
+This was said with a fervor and a decision which had such a snap to it,
+that Jamie looked at him in surprise. Without replying, he continued
+his examination of the proof, whistling softly to himself.
+
+Mr. Ewart turned to Mrs. Macleod and said, smiling:
+
+"I want all members of my household to know just where I stand; in the
+future we may have a good many English guests in the house.--Please,
+give me an extra amount of porridge, Mrs. Macleod."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+With the coming of the furniture and the furnishing of the office, my
+hands were full for the next week. During the time, Mr. Ewart was in
+Ottawa on business, and I worked like a Trojan to have everything in
+readiness on his return. I was determined he should be the first to
+see the transformation of his special room, and forbade Jamie to open
+the door so much as a crack that might afford him a peep.
+
+"It does n't seem much like the manor with Ewart away and you invisible
+except at meals," he growled from the arm-chair he had placed just
+outside the sill of the office door. He begged me to leave the door
+open just a little way, enough to enable him to have speech with me--a
+privilege I granted, but reluctantly, for I was putting the books on
+the shelves and giving the task my whole attention. The last day of
+the week was with us, and Mr. Ewart was expected in a few hours. I
+stopped long enough, however, to peep at him through the inch-wide
+opening. He was drawing away at a cold pipe and looked wholly
+disconsolate.
+
+"A new version of Omar Khayyàm," I said.
+
+ "'A pipe, you know ... and Thou
+ Beside me, chatting in the wilderness.'"
+
+
+"I suppose you 'll let me in when Ewart comes."
+
+"I 've nothing to say about that; it is n't my den."
+
+"I was under the impression it was wholly yours, judging from your
+possession of it."
+
+"Now, no sarcasm, Jamie Macleod; work is work, and there 's been a lot
+to do in here--not but what I 've taken solid comfort in putting this
+room into shape."
+
+"Oh, yes, we have seen that; even Cale remarked to me the other night
+that he 'guessed' Mr. Ewart knew a good thing when he saw it, as he had
+a general furnisher and library assistant all in one, who was working
+for his interest about as hard as she could."
+
+"Good for Cale, he is a discerning person. But he seems to be
+following suit pretty closely along his lines."
+
+"I hear you 're to catalogue the books that are in the den."
+
+"That is my order."
+
+"Don't you want me to help you? Old French is n't so easy sometimes,"
+he asked, coaxing.
+
+"Oh, no; I 've help enough in Mr. Ewart. He knows it a good deal
+better than you do."
+
+"'Sass'," was Jamie's sole reply, a word he had borrowed from Cale's
+vocabulary; he used it to characterize my attitude towards his
+acquirements.
+
+I worked on in silence till the books were housed; then I drew a long
+breath of satisfaction.
+
+"What's that sigh for?" was the demand from the other side of the door.
+
+"For a noble deed accomplished, my friend."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"Now move away your chair, I 'm coming out."
+
+"Come on."
+
+There was no movement of the chair, and, to punish him, I locked the
+door on the inside and went out through the kitchen up to my room.
+
+I recall that afternoon: the heavy first-of-December skies; the
+gray-black look on the hemlocks; the faded trunks of the lindens; the
+dullness of the unreflecting snow; the intermittent soughing of the
+wind in the pines. All without looked drear, jaded, almost lifeless;
+the cold was penetrating. I determined that all within should be
+bright with home cheer on the master's return. Did he not say I had
+made a home of the old manor?
+
+I recall dressing myself with unusual care and wishing I had some
+light-colored gown to help brighten the interior for him.
+
+For him! I was looking in the mirror and coiling my hair when I
+realized my thought; to my amazement my own face seemed to me almost
+the face of a stranger. I saw that its thin oval had rounded, the
+cheeks gained a faint color; animation was in every feature, life
+anticipant in the eyes.
+
+"That's what the change has done so soon; pure air, home life, good
+food and an abundance of it."
+
+I failed to read the first sign.
+
+There was nothing for it but to put on the well-worn skirt of brown
+panama serge, a clean shirt waist and a white four-in-hand. I promised
+myself not only a warm coat out of the first month's wages, but a
+light-colored inexpensive dress that would harmonize with the general
+feeling of youthfulness of which my inner woman was now aware. I sat
+down at the window to wait for the sound of the pung bells. Soon there
+was a soft tap at my door.
+
+"Come in." Jamie made his appearance with a bunch of partridge berries
+in his hand.
+
+"With Cale's compliments; he found them under the snow in the woods,
+and hopes you will do him the honor to wear them in your hair. He left
+them with me just before he went to meet Ewart; I had them under the
+arm-chair to present to you formally when you should come out of the
+den; instead of which, you ignominiously--"
+
+"Please, don't, Jamie--no coals of fire; give me the lovely things."
+
+"But, remember, you are to wear them in your hair, so Cale says."
+
+"It's perfectly absurd--but I must do it to please him. Who would
+credit him with such an attention?"
+
+"May I stay while you put them in?" he asked meekly.
+
+"Of course you may, you sisterless youth."
+
+I parted the bunch, and pinned a spray on each side, in the coils and
+plaits of my over heavy hair. Jamie said nothing till this finishing
+touch had been put to my toilet.
+
+"I say, it's ripping, Marcia. Cale will be your abject slave from
+henceforth. By the way, I 've never heard him call you 'Happy', as he
+proposed to do."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"I wonder what's the reason? Perhaps he thought he had been too fresh,
+and he does n't dare--There 's Ewart!" He was off on a run.
+
+I thought I would wait for the various greetings to be over before
+going down. I felt sure I should not see his hand withdrawn this time,
+as on the occasion of his first home-coming. When I heard his voice
+below in the hall, I was aware of a warm thrill of delight, a joyous
+expectancy of good, a feeling as if the home-coming were my own; for
+never in my life had I been welcomed as he was, with a shout from
+Jamie, an outburst from the dogs, and joyful ejaculations from
+Angélique and Marie.
+
+I went down, my cheeks glowing, my heart warm with the home-sense,
+and--I wondered at myself--my hand outstretched to his. When his
+closed upon it with the same cordial pressure of the week before, I
+knew for the first time in my life the joy of being "at home".
+
+And I failed to read the second sign.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+It was a busy winter and a joyous one for me; a short and happy one for
+Jamie, so he said. He was correcting proof for the first venture and
+collecting data for the second; trying his hand at a chapter here and
+there; alternately despairing, rejoicing, appealing to Mr. Ewart or me
+for criticism--something we were unable to give him, as from disjointed
+portions of his work we did not know the trend of his ideas; protesting
+one day that he could write nothing worth reading, then on the next
+proclaiming to the household, including Cale, his temporary triumph of
+mind over material. We enjoyed his moods, all of them, whether of
+despair or enthusiasm, guying him in the one and encouraging him in the
+other.
+
+The cataloguing took me well into the first week in January. Mr. Ewart
+was often in the den with me of an afternoon, and I was glad to take
+advantage of his knowledge of the language in translation, and the use
+of obsolete words. His own time seemed over full for those first few
+months. On Tuesday and Saturday mornings, he was always in the office
+to see the farmers on the estate and talk with them about his plans for
+future development. On other week-days, when weather permitted, he and
+Cale were much in the woods.
+
+I found that Mr. Ewart did not intend it should be all work and no play
+for me. Twice in December he drove me in the pung--no sleigh had as
+yet been purchased, although a piano filled a corner of the
+living-room; once, early in the morning, before the sun had a chance to
+warm and partly melt the ice-crystals that encased every branch, every
+twig and twiglet. On that morning, we drove without speech for miles
+behind the swiftly trotting French coach horses; the beauty about us
+was indescribable, and silence was the best appreciation. We sped
+through the woods'-road, a prismatic arcade of interlaced crystals;
+along the river bank beside the vast frozen expanse of the St.
+Lawrence, gleaming and glittering with blinding reflected radiance. It
+was so brilliant, that against it the trees by the roadside, laden as
+they were with ice, stood out black and gaunt. Then into
+Richelieu-en-Bas, where every roof, every fence, every post and rivet,
+looked to be pure rock crystal. Window-frames, eaves, doors, the old
+pump in the marketplace were behung with icicles. The world about us
+that morning was another world than the work-a-day one to which I was
+accustomed. I had seen this special condition of ice in northern New
+England, but never in such beauty and grandeur.
+
+We drove home before the ice began to soften. Afterwards, I sat for an
+hour at my open window, listening to the musical tinkle and metallic
+clink of the falling ice from the trees in the woods across the creek.
+
+With the reason given that Jamie and I needed exercise in the open
+every day,--our occupations being of the sedentary kind, as he
+said,--Mr. Ewart bade us fare forth with him to learn the art of
+snowshoeing. He was past master in it and a good teacher. By the
+middle of January we were well on our feet and independent of any help
+from him.
+
+Oh, the joy of the fleet tracks over the unbroken white! Oh, the
+coursing of the blood, the deep, deep breaths of what Mr. Ewart called
+the "iced wine" air! Oh, the blessed hunger that was satisfied with
+wholesome food after the invigorating exercise! Oh, the refreshing
+sleep, with the temperature at zero and the still air touching my
+cheeks under the fur robe across my bed! And with it all the sense of
+security, the sense of peace, of rest!
+
+In this atmosphere, the remembrance of the weary years in the great
+city grew dim. I rejoiced at it.
+
+I was beginning, also, to make myself easily understood with the
+French. Their language I loved; their literature I cultivated. It was
+a delight to be able to visit the tiny homes in the village, whither I
+was sent on one errand or another by Mr. Ewart, so getting extra rides
+in the pung and longer hours in the bracing air. It was an education
+to make the acquaintance of various families, learn the names of every
+member of the households, their interests and occupations. They were
+such tiny homes, made so high of stoop to avoid the rising spring flood
+that the great river is apt to send far and wide and deep into the
+village streets, covering the noble park and flooding first floors,
+respecting neither twin-towered church nor manor house; so low in the
+walls, few-windowed, and those double and packed with moss.
+
+And such expansive souls as I found in the tiny homes: the hostess of
+the inn, Mrs. Macleod's dressmaker who lived beneath the shadow of the
+great twin-towered church; the furrier and his wife on the
+market-square; from them I bought my warm coat; ancient Mère
+Guillardeau and her old daughter, weaver of rag carpets, and some of
+her friends who followed the same calling and showed me, during the
+short winter days, how to weave them on their rough looms.
+
+Of the three or four English families, with the exception of the
+postmistress, I knew nothing, or knew of them only through Mr. Ewart
+and Jamie. The "Seignior" and "Seignioress", so-called although
+English, were in Montreal for the winter. The old General and his wife
+were housed through infirmities. Now and then I saw a bevy of
+red-cheeked English girls, driving over from their home-school in Upper
+Richelieu for a jolly lark on their half-holiday. Of other English I
+heard nothing; there were none in Richelieu-en-Bas.
+
+As the season advanced and I was firm on my winter feet, I made many a
+snow-shoe call on the farmers' families who lived on the old seigniory
+lands. It was good to hear them tell their hopes and anticipations;
+for Mr. Ewart's plan to do away with the old seigniorial rents and
+leases, and make of each farmer, at present paying rent, a freeholder,
+was welcomed, with almost passionate enthusiasm, in this community,
+where, generally, change is looked at askance. It was not long before
+I discovered that, on entering these homes, I found myself anticipating
+some word of praise, some expression of loyalty and devotion to the man
+who was to give them a new outlook on life. I listened with willing
+ears and led them, many times of my own accord, to speak of him.
+
+In the long winter evenings I read thoroughly into the history of
+French Canada. It took me far afield, into English as well; into
+biography and the work of pioneers. It showed me the flaming
+enthusiasm of the fanatic, the faith of the apostle, the courage of
+high adventure, the chivalry of noble lives, the loyalty and devotion
+of the humble. It showed me, also, the cruelty of man to man, the
+divergence of race, the warring of nations, the battlefields, the
+conquests, the heavy hand of the conqueror, the red man's friendship,
+the red man's enmity, fire, sword, torture. But in and through and
+above all, it opened to me the high heart of the Canadian, the
+undaunted faith in established principles, and the patriotism that is a
+veritable passion.
+
+"O Canada, my Canada!" an old French Canadian once exclaimed to me as
+we sat by the box-stove in his little "cabin". "There is no land like
+it; no land where they live at peace as we do here; no land where they
+are so content by their own fireside." And he spoke the truth.
+
+I began to understand, through my intercourse with our neighbors on the
+estate and the village people, those words of Drummond--Drummond who
+has shown us the hearts of Canada's children:
+
+ "Our fathers came to win us
+ This land beyond recall--
+ And the same blood flows within us
+ Of Briton, Celt and Gaul--
+ Keep alive each glowing ember
+ Of our sireland, but remember
+ Our country is Canadian
+ Whatever may befall.
+
+ "Then line up and try us,
+ Whoever would deny us
+ The freedom of our birthright,
+ And they 'll find us like a wall--
+ For we are Canadian, Canadian forever,
+ Canadian forever--Canadian over all!"
+
+
+One night in February, just before the Doctor's mid-winter visit, a
+friend of the dead poet passed a night beneath the roof of the old
+manor house as Mr. Ewart's guest. After the yellow chintz curtains
+were close drawn, so shutting out the wintry night, and while the
+backlog was glowing, he read to us from those poems that at the
+author's will exact tears or smiles from their hearers. After the
+reading of "The Rossignol", Jamie took his seat at the piano and played
+softly that exquisite old French Canadian air "_Sur la montagne_".
+
+Mr. Ewart rose and, taking his stand beside him, sang the words of the
+poem which have been set to this music.
+
+ "Jus' as de sun is tryin'
+ Climb on de summer sky
+ Two leetle birds come flyin'
+ Over de mountain high--
+ Over de mountain, over de mountain,
+ Hear dem call,
+ Hear dem call--poor leetle rossignol!"
+
+They recalled to me that twin song of Björnson's which, despite its
+joyous note of anticipation, holds the same pathos of unsatisfied
+longing.
+
+The last note had scarcely been struck when Jamie broke into the jolly
+accompaniment to
+
+ "For he was a grand Seigneur, my dear,
+ He was a grand Seigneur."
+
+
+And, listening so to poems and music and the talk of these men of fine
+mind and high aspirations, to their hopes for Canada as a whole, to
+their expression of pride in her marvellous growth and their faith in
+her future, I said to myself:
+
+"Am I the girl, or rather woman now, who a few years ago made her way
+up from the narrow thoroughfares about Barclay Street to her attic room
+in 'old Chelsea'--up through the traffic-congested streets of New York,
+in the dark of the late winter afternoon, the melting snow falling in
+black drops and streams from the elevated above her; the avenues
+running brown snow-water; the rails gleaming; the steaming horses
+plashing through slush; the fog making haloes about the dimmed
+arc-lights; the hurrying, pressing tide of humanity surging this way
+and that and nearly taking her off her feet at the crossings; the whole
+city reeking with a warm-chill mist, and the shrieking, grinding,
+grating, whistling, roaring polyglot din of the metropolis half
+deafening her?"
+
+Thinking of this as I stared into the fire, listening to the good talk
+on many subjects, something--was it the frost of homelessness?--melted
+in my heart. The feelings and emotions that had been benumbed through
+the icy chill of circumstance, thawed within me. The tears, usually
+unready, filled my eyes. I bent my head that the others might not see,
+but they fell faster and faster. And with every one that plashed on my
+hands, as they lay folded in my lap, I felt the unbinding from my life
+of one hard year after another, until the woman who rose to bring in
+the porridge, in order to cover her emotion, was one who rose free of
+all thwarting circumstance. I had come into my own--a woman's own.
+
+But I failed to read the third sign.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+Doctor Rugvie's visit! It was fruitful of much, little as I
+anticipated that.
+
+I wrote regularly every month to Delia Beaseley telling her all that I
+knew would be of interest to her about my life at Lamoral, and assuring
+her that my lines had fallen in pleasant places. She wrote, at first,
+to tell me that my wish, in regard to keeping my identity from Doctor
+Rugvie for the present, would be respected; but in a later letter she
+urged me to make it known to him; to ascertain all the facts possible
+about my parentage. I replied that I preferred to wait.
+
+And why did I prefer to wait? I asked myself this question and found
+no answer. When the answer came, it was unmistakable in its leadings.
+
+"A letter from Doctor Rugvie; he is coming Monday!" I cried joyfully,
+flourishing the sheet in Jamie's face when he appeared at the door to
+ask for his mail.
+
+I was sitting on the floor by the shelves in the living-room, for I was
+busy cataloguing the books in the general and mixed collection, and
+searching for allied subjects. This work Mr. Ewart assigned to me
+after I had finished the "forestry" cataloguing.
+
+"Where 's mine?"
+
+"You have n't any, nor Mr. Ewart--from the Doctor, I mean."
+
+"You seem to be particularly elated over the fact."
+
+"Jamie, my friend, feel--" I held up the envelope to him; he took it
+and fingered it investigatingly.
+
+"What's this in it?"
+
+"That is an object which in international currency exchange we call a
+draft--the equivalent of my wages, Jamie; in other words, payment for
+industrial efficiency; do you hear?"
+
+"My, but you are a mercenary woman! One of the kind we read of in the
+States," he retorted.
+
+"Wait till you get your first check for royalties from London, then use
+that word and tone to me again if you dare."
+
+Mr. Ewart opened the door of the office.
+
+"What's this I hear about the Doctor and mercenary tendencies--the two
+don't go together as I happen to know." He spoke from the threshold.
+
+Jamie showed him the envelope, holding it high above my head.
+
+"This, Ewart, is the compensation for sundry days of so-called labor on
+the part of Miss Farrell--drives, snow-shoeing, tobogganing with Cale
+not discounted, of course. Shall I read it, Marcia?"
+
+"For all I care."
+
+Mr. Ewart looked on smiling at our chaff.
+
+"It's on the First National Bank of New York, Ewart, for the amount of
+fifty-two dollars and eighty-seven cents--how 's that about the cents,
+Marcia?"
+
+"Because the Doctor insists on paying me every two months and seems to
+call thirty days a month--why every two, I don't know, do you?" I said
+laughing, and looking up, questioning, into Mr. Ewart's face. What I
+saw there, what I am sure Jamie saw, was not encouraging for more
+jesting on Jamie's part or mine. He turned away abruptly and sat down
+at his desk before he spoke:
+
+"The Doctor wired me this afternoon that he would be here to-night
+instead of Monday, as he can get in an extra day. I can't say how
+sorry I am it has happened so, for I made arrangements to be in Quebec
+to-night and in Ottawa to-morrow night. I return Monday. Well, I must
+leave him in your hands--he won't lack entertainment. I wish, Jamie,
+it were possible for you to risk it and meet him with me this evening;
+but I suppose this night air is too keen--it's ten below now. I shall
+take the train he comes on and may not have time for a word of welcome."
+
+"I suppose it would be risking too much." Jamie spoke with something
+that sounded like a sigh. "I don't want the Doctor to roar at me the
+first thing because I am indiscreet--not after what he and his advice
+and kindness have done for me already."
+
+Mr. Ewart laid a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"You 're another man, Macleod, since coming here. We won't make any
+back tracks into that wilderness, will we?" He spoke so gently, so
+affectionately, that Jamie turned suddenly to him, exclaiming
+impulsively:
+
+"Gordon, if you were a woman I 'd kiss you for saying that."
+
+I knew what courage it gave him to hear this from his friend; and I
+wondered what kind of a man this might be who, one moment, could look
+stern and unyielding at our half childish chaffing, and in the next be
+all affectionate solicitude for this younger man who, at times, was all
+boy.
+
+"Then, Miss Farrell," he turned to me, "won't you come? Cale will
+drive me over in the double pung."
+
+There was no hesitation in my giving an affirmative answer.
+
+"We 'll have supper within an hour, please, Mrs. Macleod," he said, as
+she entered the room. He looked at the pile of books on the floor
+beside me.
+
+"It's too late for you to work any more." He stooped and, gathering up
+an armful, began to place them. "Will you be so kind as to speak to
+Marie and tell her to have four soapstones thoroughly heated, and ask
+Cale to warm the robes? It will be twenty below before you get back."
+
+"Just what I 've wanted to do all winter," I exclaimed; "a drive on
+such a clear, full-moon night to Richelieu-en-Haut will be something to
+remember."
+
+"I hope to make it so; for it's a typical Canadian midwinter night--a
+thing of splendor if seen with seeing eyes."
+
+"Then you won't expect me to talk much, will you?"
+
+"No,"--he smiled genially, and Jamie audaciously winked at me behind
+his back,--"it's apt to make my teeth ache, and although yours are as
+sound as mine, I don't believe they can stand prolonged exposure to
+severe cold any better. But how about Cale? There is no ice embargo
+on his flow of speech."
+
+Jamie burst into a laugh. "You 're right, Gordon, he 'll do all the
+talking for both, and for the Doctor too. By the way, mother," he
+said, turning to Mrs. Macleod and at the same time holding out a hand
+to help me up from the floor--an attention I ignored to save his
+strength--"something Cale said the other day, but casually, led me to
+think he may be a benedict instead of a bachelor; you have n't found
+out yet?"
+
+"No, but sometime it will come right for me to ask him. He has
+consideration for women in just those little things that would lead me
+to believe that he has been married--"
+
+"Oh, I say, mother, that's rough on Ewart and me. Give us a point or
+two on the 'little things', will you?"
+
+"Stop teasing, Jamie; I still think, as I thought from the first, that
+he has been--"
+
+"Perhaps more than once, mother! Perhaps he 's a widower, or even a
+grass widower--I 've heard of such in the States--or he might be a
+divorcé, or a Mormon, or a swami gone astray--"
+
+"Havers!" she exclaimed, with a show of resentment which caused her son
+to rejoice, for it was only when thoroughly out of patience with him
+that she used the Scotch.
+
+"You 're too absurd," I said with a warning look.
+
+"Mother is for stiff back-boned unrelentingness in such things," he
+remarked soberly, after she and Mr. Ewart left the room; "and I 've put
+my foot into it too," he added dolefully. "Why, the deuce, did n't you
+stop me in time?"
+
+"How did I know how far your nonsense would lead you?"
+
+"Well, I don't care--much; I can't step round on eggs just because of
+what I 've heard--"
+
+"If only you had n't said anything about 'grass widower'!"
+
+"Don't rub it in so," he said pettishly, and by that same token I knew
+he was repentant because, without intention, he might have spoken in a
+way to hurt momentarily his friend.
+
+
+"Beats all how dumb critters scent a change," said Cale, just after
+supper. He was loaded with the robes he had been warming. Pierre was
+waiting in the pung, having brought the horses around a little early.
+Little Pete with a soapstone was following Cale. "They begun to be
+uneasy 'bout two hours ago; I take it they heard Mr. Ewart say he was
+leavin' on the night express, and begun to get nerved up."
+
+"So they did, Cale; they were in the office, all four of them, and
+heard every word. Look at them!"
+
+Cale stopped on his way to the front door and looked up the stairway.
+Mr. Ewart was coming down, a dog on each side of him, and two behind
+fairly nosing his heels. They made no demonstration; were not
+apparently expectant; but, as Cale remarked 'they froze mighty close to
+him', sneaking down step by step beside and behind him, ears drooping,
+tails well curled between their legs--four despairing setters!
+
+We watched them. Mr. Ewart paid no heed to them. They heeled along in
+the passageway almost on their bellies when he took his fur coat from
+the hook. He had another on his arm which he held open for me.
+
+"I really am warmly enough dressed," I said.
+
+"I don't doubt it--for now; but you 'll be grateful enough to me three
+hours later for insisting on your wearing it--in with you!" He moved a
+dog or two from under his feet, gently but forcibly with the tip of his
+boot; whereupon they literally crawled on the floor.
+
+"If you don't mind, Cale,"--he spoke purposely in a low monotone, but
+with a look of amusement,--"if you don't mind having the dogs in with
+you under the robes on the front seat, I 'm willing to have them go,
+but I don't want them to run with the pung."
+
+I noticed no movement on the part of the dogs except an intense
+quivering of the whole body. One who does not understand doghood might
+have fancied they were shivering at the prospect of the eighteen-mile
+drive in the cold.
+
+"I ain't no objection," said Cale; "the fact is there ain't no better
+foot-warmer 'n a dog on a cold night, an' I was goin' ter ask if I
+could n't have the loan of one of 'em fer ter-night."
+
+"Well, they can all go--"
+
+The last word was drowned in a chaos of frantically joyous barks. They
+leaped on him, caressed him, stood up with their forepaws stemmed on
+the breast of his fur coat, licked his boots, his hands, and attempted
+his face--but of that he would have none.
+
+"Be still now--and come on, comrades!" he said. The four made a mad
+but silent rush for the door. Cale gave them right of way; Pierre
+swore great French oaths wholly disproportionate to the occasion, for
+the outrush of the dogs caused the French coach horses to plunge only
+twice. At last we were in--the dogs in front with Cale, and Mr. Ewart
+and I on the back seat, so muffled in furs, fur robes, fur caps, coats
+and mittens, that we humans were scarce to be distinguished from our
+canine neighbors.
+
+We no longer used the frozen creek for a crossing, but drove a mile up
+the road to the highroad bridge. The night was very cold. The moon
+had not yet risen. The stars shone with Arctic splendor. Cale drove
+us rapidly over the dry, hard-packed snow--to my amazement in silence.
+Through the woods, down the river road we sped, and on through
+Richelieu-en-Bas. The light in the cabaret by the steamboat landing
+shone dimly; the panes were thick with frost. Here and there a bright
+lamp gleamed from some window, but, as a whole, the village was dark.
+We drove on to the open country towards Richelieu-en-Haut six miles
+away, sometimes through a short stretch of deep woods where the horses
+shied at the misshapen stumps, snow-covered. Then out into the open
+again, the flat expanse of white seemingly unbroken. Here and there,
+far across the snow-fields, I caught a glimpse of a light from some
+farmhouse. Once we heard the baying of a hound, at which all four
+setters came suddenly to life from beneath the robes and barked
+vindictive response.
+
+To the north the sky was dark and less star-strewn than above.
+Suddenly I was aware of a wondrous change: the stars paled; the north
+glowed with tremulous light, translucent yellow that deepened to
+gold--an arc of gold spanning twenty degrees on the horizon. The glory
+quivered; ran to and fro; fluctuated from east to west, unstable as
+liquid, ethereal as gas; paled gradually; then, in the twinkling of an
+eye, dissolved, and in its dissolution sent streamer after streamer,
+rose, saffron, pale crocus and white, rapidly zenithward, rising,
+sinking, undulating, till the heavens were filled with marvellous
+light. Cale reined in the horses for a moment.
+
+"Guess this can't be beat by the biggest show on earth," he remarked
+appreciatively.
+
+"Look to the right--the east, Miss Farrell," said Mr. Ewart.
+
+I leaned forward to look past him. Over the white expanse, lightened
+in the rays of the northern aurora, the moon, nearly full, showed the
+half of its red-gold disk.
+
+The glory faded from the heavens; the moon, rising rapidly, sent its
+beams over the fields; the horses saw their shadows long on the off
+side. Cale chirruped to them, and we sped onwards to the station.
+
+I was happy! If Cale had called me by that name at this time I would
+have welcomed it. It applied to me. It was good to be alive; good to
+be out in such a world of natural glory; good to have, in the night and
+the silence, such companionship that understood my own silence of
+enjoyment.
+
+I was happy at the prospect of the Doctor's coming. The thought of the
+future removal to the farm no longer filled me with misgivings. "I
+shall still be near the manor, it will not be banishment in any sense."
+So I comforted myself.
+
+I turned to get a look over the ridge of fur at the man beside me. He
+had spoken but once, to ask if I were comfortable. I wondered if he
+were enjoying all this as much as I? He must have read my thought for
+he turned his face to me, saying:
+
+"I am enjoying all this on my own behalf, and doubly because your
+enjoyment of it is so evident."
+
+"How evident? You can't see that, and I have n't said a word."
+
+"Perhaps for that very reason."
+
+He leaned over and drew the robe farther about my exposed shoulder. I
+felt the strength of his arm as he pulled at the heavy pelt, the
+gentleness of his touch as he tucked it behind my back. So little of
+this thoughtfulness and care had been mine! Almost nothing of it in my
+life! No wonder that other women who are cared for, carried on loving
+hands, protected by the bulwark of a man's love, cannot understand what
+the simple adjustment of that robe around a chilled shoulder meant to
+me, Marcia Farrell!
+
+He was always doing something in general for my comfort and pleasure,
+but never anything special. Even this drive I owed to Jamie's physical
+inability to accept his friend's invitation. But this fact did not
+quench my joy.
+
+"Are you comfortable--feet warm?" he asked for the second time.
+
+"As warm as toast."
+
+What was it that I felt as I continued to sit silent by this man's
+side?--an alien, I had called him to the Doctor; fool that I was! I
+felt a peculiar sense of perfect physical rest I had never before
+experienced, a consciousness of happy companionship that needed no word
+to make itself understood. This sense of companionship, this rest of
+soul and body during the two hours I passed at this man's side--I
+enjoyed them to the full. The feelings and emotions of the woman who,
+only a few evenings before, had thrown off the yoke of burdening
+circumstance, who had broken, to her own physical benefit, with past
+associations and memories, found scope, in the protecting night and the
+silence, for perilous nights of imagination. Thoughts undreamed of
+hitherto, desires I had never supposed permissible in my narrow walk of
+life, proved their power over me at this hour. Hopes unbounded, if
+wholly unfounded,--for what had this man ever said to me since his
+home-coming that he had not said a dozen times to every member of his
+household?--imagined joys of another, a dual life--
+
+"Yes," I said to myself, giving rein to pleasing fantasy, "a dual life
+in one--our lives, his and mine, one and inseparable; why not, Marcia
+Farrell? Why should n't I grasp with both hands outstretched at all
+life may have to give me? Why not hold it fast even if it have thorns?"
+
+Imagination was carrying me out of myself. I called a halt to all this
+frenzy, as it at once appeared to me by the cold light of the moon, and
+brought myself down to earth and common sense with a jolt. I moved
+uneasily.
+
+"Are you cold?" Mr. Ewart asked, evidently noticing the movement.
+
+"No; but too much aurora, I 'm afraid."
+
+"Did you feel that too? I thought I would n't mention it, but
+something affected me powerfully for the moment, and there has been an
+aftermath of sensation since. If this display is wholly electrical, it
+may easily be that some human machines are tuned like the wireless to
+catch certain vibrations at certain times."
+
+I sat down hard, metaphorically, on eight feet of frozen earth upon
+hearing this explanation. "You little fool," I said to myself, but
+aloud:
+
+"Whatever it was, it was effectual; I have never experienced anything
+like it."
+
+"Never?"
+
+"No; have you?"
+
+The answer seemed long in coming.
+
+"Yes, many years ago; and it was here in this northern country too.
+Sometime I would like to tell you about it.--Cale," he spoke quickly,
+abruptly, "I hear the train. Keep the horses in the open roadway
+behind the station, then if they bolt at the headlight you can have
+free rein and a clear road. They 've never seen that light. We 'll
+get out here," he said, throwing off the robes as Cale drew rein at the
+edge of the platform, "and you can welcome the Doctor for me if I miss
+him."
+
+He whisked me out of the pung, giving me both hands as aid, and
+replaced the robes.
+
+"Keep the horses head on, and don't let the dogs run," were his last
+words to Cale.
+
+The Quebec express whistled at the curve an eighth of a mile distant
+from the junction; the sound fell strangely flat in the intense cold.
+Cale braced himself to handling the horses. I followed Mr. Ewart to
+the front of the platform.
+
+The engine was thundering past us, and the train drawing to a stop of
+fifteen seconds.
+
+"Take off your mitten," he said abruptly; I pulled it off with a jerk.
+He held out his ungloved hand, and I laid mine within it. The two
+palms, warm, throbbing with coursing life, met--
+
+"Goodby till Monday--and thank you for coming. There he is!"
+
+He had just time to see the Doctor appear on the platform at the other
+end of the car. Mr. Ewart called to him as he swung himself on to the
+already moving train:
+
+"John, look out for Miss Farrell--"
+
+The dazed Doctor failed to grasp the situation. Mr. Ewart waved his
+hand as he passed him; "Till Monday--Miss Farrell will explain."
+
+"Miss Farrell, eh?" The Doctor turned to me who was at his side by
+means of an awkward skip and a jump, cumbered as I was with the long
+coat. "Br-r-rre! Is this the weather you give me as a greeting?"
+
+"Why don't you say rather: 'Is this the weather you brave to meet me
+in?' Would n't that sound more to the point? Come on to the pung; the
+soapstones are fine."
+
+"Ah--that sounds more like Canadian hospitality. Come on yourself,
+Marcia Farrell; where's the pung?"
+
+"Behind the station, that is, if the horses have n't bolted with Cale
+and the four dogs. Here he is."
+
+Four canine noses were visible above the robes; eight delicate nostrils
+were flaring after the departing train. At the sound of the Doctor's
+voice a concerted howl arose from among the robes on the front seat--a
+howl expressive of disappointment, of betrayal by their master: "He is
+gone, we are left behind."
+
+"Shut up," said Cale shortly, with a significant movement of his foot
+beneath the robes.
+
+"Oh, Cale!" I made protest, for at that moment I sympathized. I should
+have felt the same had I been a dog; as it was--
+
+I looked after the swiftly receding train, a bright beaded trailing
+line of black in the white night. The Doctor was opening the robes.
+
+"In with you, and then we can talk; there 's no wind to prevent."
+
+As soon as he was seated beside me and the horses' heads turned
+homewards, he began to chat in his cheery way, he asking, I answering
+the many questions; he telling of Delia Beaseley and his delight to be
+in Canada again, I inquiring, until we found ourselves passing through
+Richelieu-en-Bas. And during all the time I was listening to his merry
+chat and chaffing, to his kindly expressed interest in all that
+pertained to my small doings at the manor, I was hearing the on-coming
+thunder of the engine and those last words: "Take off your
+mitten--Good-by till Monday--thank you for coming."
+
+
+During that hour and a half of our homeward drive, I gave no heed to
+the perfect Canadian night, its silver radiance, its snow gleam and
+sparkle enhancing the violet shadows. I was seeing only that
+long-stretching waste of white beyond the junction, that bright beaded
+trailing line of black, narrowing and foreshortened as it receded
+swiftly into the night.
+
+And where was the sense of physical rest? Why had this unrest I was
+experiencing taken its place? I was sitting beside as good a man, as
+fine a man, one more than that other's equal in achievement, as the
+world counts achievement. I was groping for a solution when the Doctor
+exclaimed: "There's the manor!"
+
+The white walls and snow-covered roof stood out boldly against the
+black massed background of spruce, hemlock and pine. The yellow chintz
+curtains were drawn apart, showing us both the gleam of lamplight and
+the leaping firelight. At the windows in the living-room were Jamie
+and his mother; at those of the dining-room both Angélique and Marie
+were visible for a moment. The Pierres, father and son, were at the
+steps to lend a helping hand.
+
+"We are at home again, Marcia," the Doctor spoke significantly. I
+responded, simulating joyousness:
+
+"Yes, and does n't it give us a warm cheery welcome?"
+
+But even as I replied, I was conscious that the old manor of Lamoral
+without its master would never be home for me.
+
+I went up the steps answering gayly to Jamie's "Is he here?" But by
+the emptiness of heart, by the emptiness of the passageway, by the
+empty sound of the various greetings, joyous and hearty as they in
+truth were, I knew I needed no fourth sign to interpret myself to
+myself.
+
+My woman's hour had struck--and with no uncertain sound.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+"And what next?" I asked myself after my head was on the pillow and
+while staring hour after hour at the opposite wall. Surely I had read
+enough of love! I had imagined what it might be like, even if I had
+never experienced it, even if I had thought little enough about it in
+connection with myself. I did not know it on what might be called the
+positive side, but I seemed to have some knowledge of it negatively. I
+knew it could be cruel, cruel as death; my own mother was a dead
+witness to that. I knew it could be brutal when passion alone means
+love; I was eye witness to this on Columbia Heights not so very long
+ago. I knew, or thought I knew, that it could be killed, or rather
+worn to a thread by the slow grinding of adverse circumstance. I
+recalled my own lack of affection after the years of sacrifice for the
+imbecile grandfather, my shiftless aunt.
+
+And now, in the face of such knowledge, to have this revelation! This
+sudden absorption in another of my humankind; all my thought at once,
+without warning, transferred to that other wherever he might be; all
+interest in life centering with the force of gravity in that other's
+life; "at home" only in that other's presence; at rest only by his
+side--
+
+"Now, look here, Marcia Farrell, don't you be Jane Eyrey," I said to
+myself in a low but stern voice. I sat up in bed and drew the extra
+comforter about my shoulders. "No nonsense at your age! You accept
+the fact that you love this man,--and you will have to whether you want
+to or not,--a man who has never spoken a word of love to you, who has
+treated you with the consideration, it is no more, no less than that,
+which he shows to every member of his household. Now, make the most of
+this fact, but without showing it. Don't make the youthful mistake,
+since you are no longer a girl, of fancying he is reciprocating what
+you feel, feeling your every feeling, thinking your every thought.
+And, above all, don't betray your self at this crisis of your life, to
+him or any member of his household--not to Delia Beaseley, not to
+Doctor Rugvie. Rest in his presence when you can. Rejoice to be near
+him--but inwardly, only, remember that!--when you shall find
+opportunity, but don't make one; discipline yourself in this, there
+will be need enough for it. 'Stick to your sure trot'; give full
+compensation in work for your wages--and enjoy what this new life may
+offer you from day to day. This new joy is your own; keep it to
+yourself. Now lie down for good and all, and go to sleep."
+
+Thereupon I snugged down among the welcome warmth of the bed-clothes,
+saying to myself:
+
+"I don't care 'what next'. I am so happy--happy--happy--"
+
+But, even as I spoke that word softly--oh, so softly!--laying the palm
+of my right hand, that still felt the strong throbbing of his, under my
+cheek, I remembered that Cale had never once called me by the name he
+had proposed, "Happy"; that Jamie noticed the omission and remarked on
+it.
+
+And what did Cale know? What could he know? There used to be a family
+of Marstins in our town before I was born. My aunt told me once that
+her sister married into the family; that, too, was before I was born.
+I never knew any one of the name, and I never cared to look at the old
+family headstones. The churchyard, because it held my mother, was
+hateful to me.
+
+And I? I was too cowardly to ask Cale why he omitted to call me by his
+chosen name; for by that name my mother was known among her own, so I
+was told--that mother whom I never knew, whose memory I never loved, of
+whom I was ashamed because people said she had belied her womanhood.
+
+But ever since Delia Beaseley opened my eyes to a portion of the truth
+concerning her, I had felt great pity for her. Now, at the thought of
+her, dying for love, for this very thing that had come to me like
+lightning out of the blue, dying without friends in that dull basement
+in V---- Court, my heartstrings contracted, literally, for I
+experienced a feeling of suffocation.
+
+"Mother, oh, mother," I cried out under my breath, "was it for this,
+that I know to be love, you gave your all, even life itself? Oh, I
+have understood so little--so little; I have been so hard, mother. I
+did n't know--forgive me, mother--forgive, I never knew--"
+
+It eased me to speak out these words, although I knew that in giving
+utterance to them my ears were the only ones the sound of my pleading
+could reach. Those ears, on which the word mother would have fallen so
+blessedly, would never hear, could never hear. Not so very far away,
+in northern New England, the snows lay white and deep, as white and
+deep as in Canada, on her neglected grave.
+
+Something Delia Beaseley quoted from my mother in her hour of trial
+flashed again into consciousness: "The little life that is coming is
+worth all this." And my mother must have said it knowing all the joy,
+the bliss, the suffering, both of body and of soul, that this love must
+in due time bring to her daughter, because she was a woman-child.
+
+What a Dolorous Way my mother must have trodden, must have been willing
+to tread for _this_!
+
+There are minutes, rare in the longest lives, when life becomes so
+intensified that vision clears almost preternaturally, sees through
+telescopic lenses, so to speak. At such moments, the soul becomes so
+highly sensitized that it may photograph for future reference the birth
+or passing of Love's star.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+"It's my innings now, while Ewart is away," said the Doctor; "Marcia,
+will you go skiing to-morrow with me and Cale?"
+
+"Did n't I promise you I would wait till you came?"
+
+"I know you did; but possession, you know, is nine tenths of the law,
+and Ewart has been having it all his own way here with you since I
+left. He did, however, give me a parting word to look out for you. I
+don't see that you need much looking after; a young lady perfectly able
+to look out for herself, eh, Mrs. Macleod?"
+
+"Perhaps the circumstances warranted some sort of chaperonage, Doctor,"
+said Mrs. Macleod, entering into his fun and frolic as into no one's
+else. "As Marcia sets it forth, she was alone, except for you, on the
+platform of the junction nine miles from home, with Cale braced in the
+pung on the highroad, ready for the horses to bolt."
+
+"Yes," said the Doctor, musing, "the circumstances were slightly out of
+the ordinary.--A full bowl, if you please, Marcia."
+
+We were sitting around the hearth in the livingroom on the following
+Sunday evening. Porridge had just been brought in and I was dispensing
+it. Mr. Ewart's insistence upon Cale's joining us at this hour every
+evening, and remaining with us when no guest was present--the Doctor we
+counted one of us--had for result that, many an evening, we listened
+delighted and interested to his stories of adventure in the new
+Northwest. He was, in truth, a man of the woods, a man also of their
+moods, and like them showing track and trail, leafy underbrush,
+primeval forest trees, and the darling flowers of the forest as well;
+but, also, like them, withholding from our eyes the secret springs of
+his life. We often wondered if ever he would disclose any one of them.
+
+"A Yankee brother to old André," was Jamie's definition of him. He
+seldom spoke of matters personal to himself, so seldom that Jamie's
+great joke, perpetrated in his mother's presence and mine, was to the
+effect that "Ewart and Cale and Marcia are all enlisted in the
+reserves, mother; and only you, the Doctor, and I are able to fight in
+the open." The full significance of which good-natured raillery I
+understood, and answered him accordingly:
+
+"All in good time, Jamie. There is so little to tell, it's worth while
+to keep you guessing."
+
+I was serving Cale with his portion of porridge when he spoke,
+answering the question put by the Doctor to _me_. Cale had been
+gradually appropriating me since my coming, and I had no cause to
+resent his right of proprietorship.
+
+"Guess 'twill take two ter hold her up the fust few times; but Marcia's
+nimble on her feet; she 'll outstrip us soon. She 's a mighty good one
+on snowshoes."
+
+"Ewart taught you, did n't he?" said the Doctor, turning to me and
+holding out his bowl the second time. "Just a spoonful more, if you
+please. I take it this oatmeal came direct from Scotland, did n't it,
+Mrs. Macleod?" She nodded a pleased affirmative.
+
+"Yes, and a fine teacher he is too," I responded heartily. I was
+determined the Doctor should not find me backward or awkward when his
+friend's name was mentioned. With the thought that to-morrow that
+friend would be with me--us--again, I found my spirits rising. It was
+hard to repress them. Perhaps the Doctor's keen eye noticed something
+in my manner, for he spoke with emphasis:
+
+"Well, something has made you over; there 's no exercise like it in
+this northern climate."
+
+"I guess 't ain't all snow-shoeing," said Cale sententiously.
+
+"You 're right, Cale," I said.
+
+"Account for it then, Cale; I 'd like to hear."
+
+"We 'll give Doctor Rugvie the recipe for all the future farm-folks,
+won't we?" I nodded understandingly at Cale.
+
+"So we will--so we will," he replied thoughtfully. "Out with it, Cale.
+What is it has changed Marcia so?"
+
+"Wal, if you want to know I can give it ter you--a reg'lar tonic to be
+taken daily in big doses. It's old-fashioned, mebbe, but genu_ine_,"
+he said with so comical an emphasis and inflection that we laughed.
+"It can't be beat, you 'll see. Take equal parts of dry clean air, so
+bracin' thet sometimes a man feels as if he was walkin' on it, good
+food and plenty of it, good comp'ny. Shake 'em well together to get
+out the lumps, and mix well in--a good home. I take it thet's about
+it, Doctor?"
+
+"Cale, you old Hippocrates," said the Doctor, delighted at Cale's gift
+of speech, for he had heard him discourse only on "hosses" when he was
+with us the first time, "you 'd be worth three thousand dollars a year
+to me as consulting hygienist. Do you want the job?"
+
+"No." He spoke decidedly. "This job 's good enough fer me. I hope 't
+will be for life now."
+
+"Ewart's colors again, eh, Jamie?" He turned to Jamie with a lift of
+his eyebrows.
+
+"Winning all along the course, Doctor."
+
+"How do you know all that, Cale?" The Doctor dropped his chaffing and
+looked over earnestly at Cale beside the chimney-piece.
+
+"Know what?"
+
+"The fact that those special ingredients must be mixed in a good home
+to prove so effectual as in Marcia's case?" He turned to examine me.
+
+"How do I know it?" He spoke slowly, almost with hesitation, and
+beneath his bushy eyebrows I thought I saw a suspicious glitter in his
+small keen gray eyes, but it may have been imagination. "I have n't
+always been a lonely man, you know--"
+
+"That's just what I don't know, Cale." The Doctor spoke with the
+encouragement of good fellowship, not as one willing or wanting to ask
+his confidence, but as one hoping in friendship to receive it. I am
+sure we all felt with the Doctor at this moment, for Cale's reticence
+had been a matter of concern to Jamie and Mrs. Macleod. But Jamie had
+respected his silence.
+
+Cale set his emptied bowl on the tray and sat down again, making
+himself comfortable by crossing his legs. He heaved a sigh of
+satisfaction. Mrs. Macleod, Jamie and I read that sign; Cale was ready
+to expand a little more in the cheerful atmosphere of friends and
+fireside. We three knew that what he had to retail would be well worth
+hearing. Jamie settled himself in the sofa corner as usual. The
+Doctor insisted on carrying the tray to the kitchen.
+
+"Ah, this is good," he said, seating himself by me and spreading his
+hands to the blaze. "We shan't be interrupted, and the rest of the
+evening is ours. It's a bitter night, too, which, by contrast, makes
+this comfort delectable."
+
+We waited, expectant, for Cale.
+
+"You 've been wonderin' now fer 'bout six months, Mis' Macleod, you an'
+Jamie, whether I was a married man or not, now, hain't you?" He smiled
+as he spoke, the creases about his eyes deepening slowly.
+
+Mrs. Macleod, with an embarrassment we all enjoyed seeing, moved to a
+seat beside him; saying gently, if deprecatingly:
+
+"Yes, I could n't help it, Cale."
+
+"How could you, bein' a woman?" he replied as gently. "An' you too,
+Marcia?"
+
+"Of course; don't I belong to the weaker sex? But here is Jamie,
+although a man--"
+
+"Oh, I say, Marcia, that's not playing fair," Jamie growled at me as if
+indifferent; but I knew his curiosity was at the flood, and Cale knew
+it too. I feared he might tease without satisfying.
+
+"Yes, I 'm married, Mis' Macleod, an' it seems as if I 'd always been
+married."
+
+Jamie's recent remark about Cale's being a widower, grass-widower,
+divorcé, Mormon, etc., came back to me, and I could hardly keep from
+laughing aloud at Mrs. Macleod's look of dismay and amazement.
+
+"I say I'm married, fer you see that once married is always married
+with _me_," he repeated emphatically.
+
+The Doctor nodded approvingly. "No uncertain note about that, Cale."
+
+"No sir--_ee_," Cale nodded understandingly at him in turn, much to
+Jamie's delight. "A marriage when it _is_ a marriage--'fore God an'
+men, an' 'fore the altar of two lovin' hearts, is fer good--fer this
+world anyway, an' fer the next if there is one. 'T ain't often you can
+come acrosst 'em now-a-days. I guess some men, put it to 'em on a
+sudden, could n't say under oath whether they was married or single,
+seein' this divorce business mixes things up worse 'n a progressive
+euchre party. I 'm only speakin' fer myself, mind you, an' I don't set
+up fer judgin' others."
+
+"Good for you, Cale! Those are my sentiments," said the Doctor
+laughing heartily at Cale's idea of the "progressive euchre party".
+
+"It's what keeps me young," Cale continued earnestly; "fer jest the
+thought of the one woman I loved, an' love now with all the love thet
+'s in me, warms me jest as this blaze would thaw freezin' sap; it keeps
+me, as you might say, kinder thawed out with folks, an' a durned cussed
+tough world."
+
+He paused a moment and, leaning forward, clasped his hands around his
+crossed knees. I had seen him do this only when he was bracing himself
+to say something of deep significance. He faced me squarely, with the
+same keen look that I detected on the first night of my arrival.
+
+"I 've been wonderin', Marcia, if you did n't hail from somewheres near
+my place, Spencerville, in northern New England, jest over the
+line--though come ter think of it, you said you was born in New York,
+did n't you?"
+
+Brought to bay by this question, put to me suddenly without warning, I
+brought all my self control to bear on my voice and answered:
+
+"Yes, I was born there, but my home for two thirds of my life was in
+the vicinity of Spencerville."
+
+"I thought so," said Cale almost indifferently. "You had a way with
+you like the folks round there--not that I know any of your
+generation," he added hastily. "I left there over a quarter of a
+century ago. Only, now and then, your ways take me back into another
+generation where my wife belonged," he said, as if explaining why he
+had taken the liberty to approach me with the direct question. I
+forced myself to put on a bold front and ask:
+
+"Who was your wife, Cale? I may know of the family."
+
+"I have my doubts about _thet_," he said with considerable emphasis.
+"Girls of your age ain't apt to know of folks thet lived, an' loved,
+an'--I was goin' to say 'lost', but she ain't never thet to me, 'fore
+they was born. My wife's name, Marcia, was Morey, Jemimy Morey--one of
+three--"
+
+"Triplets? Yes _marm_," he said, in reply to Mrs. Macleod's look of
+surprise. "Job Morey, her father, was a poor man, poor, as we used ter
+say, as Job's turkey. He 'd had a hard time, no mistake. He 'd had
+five boys ter raise on a farm thet was half rocks. Then come the war
+an' the two oldest had ter go. The third an' fourth was drafted an'
+Job hired the money to pay bounty; but the cuss turned bounty jumper
+an' they had ter go. Thet was the year when there was a bleedin' heart
+an' a rag of crape in most every house in the village. Two on 'em come
+home ter die, an' the t' other two was never heard from; it most killed
+Aunt Sally. They 'd had poor luck with four boys, an', by George,
+after the youngest of them five was fifteen if Aunt Sally did n't have
+triplets--gals all on em!
+
+"Mother said half the women in the village was there ter help. She
+said she was out in the woodshed cuttin' up some kindlin'--Job never
+was known ter be forehanded in anythin'--an' Job come out the kitchen
+end without seein' her. She heard him give a groan an' say, all to
+himself he s'posed, as plain as could be: 'O Lord, three more mouths
+ter fill, an' so little ter fill 'em with!' Then, turnin' an' seeing
+mother, he smiled as well as he could in the circumstances, an' tried
+ter put a good face on it by sayin':
+
+"'Well, Aunt Marthy, I ain't got all the material goods thet Old
+Testament Job had, but I 've got one of his latter day blessings, three
+daughters, an' I guess, if Sally don't mind, I 'll name 'em after 'em.'
+
+"Thet 'show they come by their names: Keziah, Jemimy, and
+Keren-happuch, which was the most outlandish name fer about the
+prettiest baby, mother said, thet ever she 'd set eyes on. They
+shortened it to 'Happy' mighty quick.
+
+"Aunt Sally who 'd never been strong sence the girls was born, broke
+right down under her trouble, when she lost her last boy, and never
+rallied. She died when the girls was n't more 'n ten year old, an'
+after thet, those six little hands worked early an' late to keep the
+house for their father. An' they kept it well too.
+
+"Many 's the time after chores was done, I 'd sly over to Job's to
+fetch wood an' carry water for the sake of gettin' a smile from my pet,
+thet was Jemimy--a fair-skinned, blue-eyed little thing thet looked as
+if a breath of wind would blow her over. I watched her grow up like
+one of them pink-and-white wind-flowers thet come so early in spring,
+an' I used ter pull whole basketfuls for her, jest ter see her flush up
+so pleased like, an' get a kiss for my pains.
+
+"I was ten years older than her--old enough ter know what would happen
+when Jemimy was ten years older too. She growed right inter my life,
+an' I growed right inter hers, so 't was nat'ral enough when she was
+seventeen for us ter say we belonged to one another.
+
+"Job never could get ahead, and the farm was mortgaged clear up to the
+handle. I had n't much neither, for I had mother ter support and
+worked out by the month, an' Jemimy said 't was no time ter think of
+gettin' married; we 'd better wait till we could get a little ahead.
+She said she 'd heard of a place in the mills down Mass'chusetts way,
+an' although I stood out against it, she had set her heart on goin' an'
+earnin' a little extra, an' I let her have her way. Keziah married
+jest 'bout thet time a poor shote of a feller, an' went out West with
+him on ter some gov'ment lands. Happy was ter keep the house.
+
+"Jemimy promised faithfully ter write, an' so she did, though 't was
+hard work after mill hours, she said, for she was so tired; but she
+loved me too well to have me fret an' worry, so she wrote pretty
+reg'lar every two weeks.
+
+"She 'd been away 'bout seven months an' Job was lookin' like a man
+with some backbone in him, for half of Jemimy's pay kept comin' reg'lar
+an' Happy made everything she come nigh like sunshine, when one evenin'
+Job come over an' asked me how long it had been sence I heard from
+Jemimy. 'Goin' on four weeks,' says I. 'She told me not to expect
+much this month she 's so busy.'
+
+"'We ain't heard for six weeks,' says Job, 'an' t'other night I had a
+dream; 't war n't much of a dream neither--only I can't get rid of it,
+work it off nor sleep it off, neither. S'posin' you write.'
+
+"You may be pretty sure I did, an', not gettin' an answer, I drove down
+ter the nearest station an' sent a telegram, an' thet not gettin' an
+answer neither, I jest put myself aboard the next train for Lowell.
+Fust time I 'd been on the cars too, but they could n't go fast enough
+for me.
+
+"I went straight ter the mill she 'd been workin' in, an' asked fer the
+boss. Then I put the question thet had been hangin' round me like a
+nightmare for twenty-four hours back.
+
+"'Can you tell me where ter find Jemimy Morey?'
+
+"There was a cur'ous sort er smile went curlin' round the man's lips as
+he opened a great ledger, an' read an entry thet made me set down on a
+chair handy, feelin' weak as water:
+
+"'Entered February 2.--Left July 19.'
+
+"Thet was all, but 't was enough.
+
+"'Where 's she gone ter?' says I.
+
+"'We don't keep run of the hands after they 've left unless they go ter
+another mill, an' she ain't,' says he, clappin' to the ledger with a
+bang thet said plain as could be, 'Time 's up.'
+
+"'I guess you 'll have ter let me see the women, fer it's a life an'
+death matter ter me', says I, fer his drivin' ways madded me, an' I was
+pretty green an' did n't know as much as I might have.
+
+"The strength seemed ter come floodin' right in ter me when I 'd said
+thet, and I guess there must have been a kinder 'knock-yer-down' look
+in my eyes, fer the feller sort o' winced--there war n't but us two in
+the office--an' said:
+
+"'It's against the rules an' 't won't do no good, but if you 'll feel
+any better you can this time.'
+
+"You see I thought if I could see the women, I 'd ask 'em, an' p'raps
+they 'd know 'bout her. But, Lord! when I see thet great room
+stretchin' away ter nothin', an' them hundreds of girls and women
+a-workin', tendin' them looms as if their life depended on them wooden
+bolts shovin' back'ards an' for'ards like lightnin', I jest set down on
+the first bench I come ter sicker 'n death.
+
+"A great wave of black an' a wave of green went through the room. My
+pulses kept time to the _rick-rack_ of the flyin' shuttles, an' my head
+swum with the dizzyin' of the wheels an' the pumpin' of the shafts.
+
+"'Good God,' I thought, 'is this the place she 's been breathin' out
+her sweet life in!'
+
+"I tried ter think, but could n't, the floor jarred so with the rumble
+of the great machines; an' the air grew as thick with dust as a barn
+floor in threshin' time; an' right through it all, a scorchin' August
+sun burned in great quiverin' furrers; an' from outside where it
+slanted on the river rushin' through the mill-sluices, it sent a
+blindin' reflection whirlin' an' eddyin' along the glarin' white
+ceilin's till I felt like a drownin' man bein' sucked under...
+
+"I got out somehow, fer I found myself on the street. I went ter every
+mill in the place--an' might have spared myself the trouble.
+
+"Then I took the houses by rote, askin' at each one for Jemimy Morey.
+Up one street, down another, I went, the little red brick boxes lookin'
+as like as one honeycomb ter another; most of 'em was empty--all at the
+mills except the old women and babies; the fust could n't give me no
+kind of an answer, an' the second I stumbled over.
+
+"It was gettin' towards six, an' I war n't no nearer findin' what I 'd
+come fer than when I started, when I heard a factory bell ringin' an'
+asked what it meant. They told me a quarter ter six an' shuttin' off
+steam. I started on a dead run fer the little footbridge thet led from
+the canal alongside, to the mill gates. There I took my stand jest as
+the six o'clock whistle blew and the great mill gates was hoisted, an'
+the women an' children come flockin' out an' over the bridge.
+
+"I asked every squad of 'em--they could n't get by me without answerin'
+me fer 't was only a foot-bridge--if they knew a mill hand by name
+Jemimy Morey?
+
+"For five minutes I got pretty much the same answer, then a little slip
+of a gal no higher'n my elbow says: 'What d' you want of her? You
+can't see her for she 's up at Granny's sick of the fever, an' nobody
+dass n't go near her.'
+
+"There 's no use my tellin' you how I found her nor what we said--only
+'t war n't exactly what I 'd planned all through hayin' time when,
+noonin's, I 'd stretch out in the shadder of a hayrick an', buryin' my
+face in the coolin' grass, think how 't would seem to have _her_ hand
+strokin' my forehead an' smoothin' all care away by her lovin' ways.
+
+"Jest as soon as she was strong enough, I took her home; an' without
+much ceremony, she sittin' in the arm-chair an' I standin' by her side,
+we was made man an' wife.... Oh, we was happy! an' thet choice of our
+happiness, for we both knew it war n't for long. I 've sometimes
+thought we took out a mortgage on our future bliss we was so happy....
+Six months from the day I took her home, the church bell tolled
+nineteen--an' might have tolled a thousand for all I heard."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+There was a long silence; no one cared to break it. As for me, I felt
+as if stricken dumb by what I was hearing. I knew, intuitively, what I
+was about to hear. Mrs. Macleod put her hand on Cale's hard brown fist
+as it lay on his knee. I am sure the sympathetic pressure prolonged
+the silence. Doctor Rugvie and Jamie were staring into the fire. I
+could not take my eyes from Cale's face; I was as if fascinated. He,
+on the contrary, never looked once my way.
+
+His voice grew husky towards the last; it was not till he had cleared
+his throat several times that he could speak.
+
+"I ain't said much 'bout Happy,--that's short for Keren-happuch, the
+name she always went by,--but she was the fust thing I took any
+interest in after thet. My wife charged me over an' over again to look
+out fer her, an' I 'd begun ter think 't was time.
+
+"There ain't no telling jest what Happy was. She war n't what you 'd
+call real harn'some, not at fust; but she had a way with her thet was
+winnin', an' a laugh thet always put me in mind of our old North Crick
+in August when it goes gurglin' an' winnerin' over its stony bed. She
+had a smile, too, to match the laugh. There ain't no tellin' what she
+was like. She was jest Happy, an' there warn't a likely chap this side
+of the border and t'other, thet knew her, who had n't tried ter get
+some hold on her. But 't war n't no use; she jest laughed 'em off,
+fust one, then t' other--but still they kept tryin' till she was
+twenty-one.
+
+"On her birthday she come over to me jest 'bout dusk as I was milkin'
+in the shed,--I can see her now, standin' by old Speckles' head an'
+hangin' on tight ter both her horns as if fer support--an' turnin'
+sudden ter me with a kind o' laugh, thet sounded a good deal more like
+a choked-down sob, she says:
+
+"'Brother Si.'
+
+"My name is Silas C., but when I left what used ter be home ter me, I
+war n't willin' ter have strangers call me by the name thet belonged
+ter those I loved, so I 've been Cale to all the rest fer a good many
+years now.
+
+"'Brother Si,'says she, 'you loved my sister; won't you tell me what
+ter do?'
+
+"'What's up?' says I, fer I could n't collect myself she come on me so
+sudden, an' I knew by her looks she meant business. Then she blurted
+it all out:
+
+"'George Jackson has asked me to marry him--an' father wants me to. I
+don't know whether I ought ter.' She wound up with a sigh.
+
+"'Why not?' says I, fer I war n't master enough of my feelin's to say
+any more.
+
+"'Well, I don't know exactly--only, I 'm afraid I don't love him as I
+'d ought ter.'"
+
+Cale moved uneasily. He leaned his elbows on his knees, resting his
+chin in the palms of his hands. He continued in a lower voice:
+
+"May the Lord forgive me, but I thought I was doin' fer the best to
+argue her inter thinkin' she loved him, an' if she did n't, then she
+would after marriage. An' I'd ought 'er known better! I ain't never
+fergiven myself fer meddlin'.
+
+"George Jackson was nigh ter me, although he was born in Canady an' I
+in New England. His farm was a border one, just over the line. There
+was about three hundred acres of extra good farmin' land and some heavy
+timber. My five acres was on the border, too, an' many a time we 've
+clasped hands over the old stone wall on our boundary, an' I 've said,
+laughin': 'Blood 's thicker 'n water, boy!'
+
+"I used ter work fer him a lot. He was his own master for he was an
+orphan; an' I had mother, an' thet kinder drew us closer, fer mother
+mothered him. There war n't a likelier young feller anywheres round.
+He was ten years younger 'n me, an' I 'd half brought him up in the
+farmin' line--proud of him, too, if I do say it.
+
+"There war n't a gal in our village or out of it fer a good many miles
+round thet had n't tried fer him but Happy--an' she was the only one he
+'d ever had eyes fer. Thet's the way it mostly goes in life. He was
+two years younger 'n she was--an' smart! He 'd been through the
+Academy, an' would have made something of himself besides a farmer if
+he had n't got bewitched, like most men sometimes in their lives, by a
+gal.
+
+"I 'd seen which way the wind was blowin' fer quite a while, but kept
+still, fer George never wanted ter be interfered with, an' Happy was as
+shy as a wood thrush. The long an' short of it is, they was engaged,
+an' Job seemed ter think his luck had come at last. But it war n't so
+with Happy. She never seemed the same after thet. She kept sayin' she
+wanted ter see a little more of the world before she settled down.
+An', sure enough, in September she got a chance; fer Keziah, who 'd
+lost her husband an' been awful sick with chills an' fever, come back
+ter the old place, an', as there war n't enough fer one more, Happy
+teased Job ter let her go down with a neighbor's gal to Boston an' work
+in a store there. 'Only fer a little while,' she said.
+
+"George set his face against her goin' like flint, tellin' her he had
+enough fer all. But I, knowin' what she said ter me thet night in the
+milkin' shed, advised him ter let her go an' have her way, tellin' him
+she 'd be all the happier afterwards, an' be contented ter settle down.
+
+"Wal, she went, an' all Job's peace of mind went with her. You see he
+was gettin' on in years, nigh on ter seventy-one, an' down with the
+rheumatiz all thet winter an' spring. The next July he come down with
+a kind of typhus, an' they sent fer Happy ter come home.
+
+"The minute I see her, I knew she war n't the same Happy as went away.
+She wore ear-jewels an' a locket, an' had plenty of city airs and ways;
+but the old laugh an' smile war n't all there. She was harn'some,
+though, at last! Harn'some as a picture, an' nobody blamed George fer
+puttin' up with what he did fer the sake of gettin' her. She led him a
+chase thet summer. She give him every chance ter break with her; but
+he would n't, an' she dass n't, fer Job had set his heart on the match,
+an' was thet weak an' childish thet he kept harpin' on their marriage
+from mornin' till night, an' thet kept up George's courage more 'n
+anything else. So things went on fer most two months.
+
+"One afternoon, late in September--I shall never ferget the day fer 't
+was Sunday, an' it seems as if the Sabbath was the devil's own day
+after all--George an' me took the team ter go up ter the north pasture
+to ketch his colts. Word had come down thet they 'd broke loose an'
+needed ter be tended to thet very night; so, without sayin' nothin' ter
+nobody, fer 't was only our own business if we _did_ go on Sunday, we
+set out.
+
+"On the way up George told me he an' Happy was ter be married the next
+week, an' I, fer one, was mighty glad on 't, fer I longed ter see her
+settled down an' like herself again.
+
+"The north pasture lays up over the hill good two mile from the farm,
+an' when we 'd gone 'bout half way, George reined up, an' says:
+
+"'Let's hitch the team here an' go over ter the pasture crosslots. It
+ain't more 'n half as fur, an' I 'm afraid it 'll get too dark ter
+hitch 'em if we drive round the road.'
+
+"'All right,' says I; an' we set off, George takin' the five-rail
+fences at one bound an' walkin' as if on air.
+
+"He was jest lettin' down the bars an' callin' the colts by name, when
+we heard a team comin' from the north. Both of us stopped ter listen
+an' see what 't was, fer there war n't but one road over the hill on
+the north side, an' thet was so steep it war n't travelled many times a
+year. We could look right down the slope of the pasture onter the road
+'bout a hundred foot below, an', in a minute, a team hove in sight--the
+horse followin' pretty much his own lead an' feelin' his way down as
+best he could.
+
+"There was a man an' a woman in the buggy pretty well occupied with one
+'nother, fer his arm was round her, an' her head was leanin' on his
+shoulder. Somehow I did n't like the look of it, an' I was jest
+turnin' ter George ter say so, when I heard sech an oath from his lips
+as gives me the creeps every time I think on 't.
+
+"There war n't no time ter say a word, fer I see what he see jest as
+plain as the sun in the sky:--the woman liftin' her face a little an'
+the man kissin' her over 'n over again.... 'T was Happy.
+
+"'Do you see thet?' says George, turnin' ter me with a glare like a
+madman.
+
+"'Yes,' says I, fer I could n't get out another word.
+
+"'You lie!' says he, 'an' if you say thet again it 'll be the last word
+as leaves your body alive!'
+
+"An' with thet he sprung at me like a tiger, an' the Lord only knows 't
+was my great pity fer him thet held my hand. But he did n't touch
+me--oh, no! His hand dropped as if it had been shot, an', leanin' all
+white an' quiverin' up against the fence, he dropped his head onter his
+folded arms an' burst inter great sobs thet shook the rails. It was
+like one of them spring freshets thet tears up the face of nature, an'
+I knew he 'd be the better fer it, fer he was only a boy in his years,
+if he was a man in his love.
+
+"'You ain't goin' ter let 'em go?' was the first words I could muster
+courage to say, as I see him turnin' back ter the pasture bars again.
+
+"'Yes, I 'm goin' ter let them go--ter the devil,' he muttered, between
+his teeth; then, turnin' ter me, as cool an' calm as if there war n't a
+woman nor a sarpent in the world, he says:
+
+"'You know, Si, there 's the colts ter be ketched, an' it's gettin'
+late.'
+
+"An', by the Lord Harry, they was ketched! I never see sech racin' an'
+tearin' an' rarin'! He was all over the pasture ter once, so it
+seemed, headin' 'em off, hangin' on ter their manes, throwin' himself
+astride of fust one then 'nother. I thought the old pasture would be
+ploughed ready fer spring sowin', the way their heels tore up the sod.
+I dass n't help him fer I knew the madness thet had been on him, an'
+the heat he was in, was workin' off thet way. So I kept out of his
+way, an' within three quarters of an hour he 'd got those four colts
+well in hand an' started fer home.
+
+"Mother told me the rest.
+
+"'Job had two sinkin' spells thet Sunday afternoon,' she said, 'an'
+there war n't a drop of sperits in the house. I 'd used up the last of
+the elderberry wine,' she said, 'an' long 'bout three o'clock, I told
+Happy she 'd better run down to Seth White's an' get some brandy. She
+come back in a hurry an' said he had n't a drop of anything in the
+house, an' she 'd run down to the Crick House,--'t war n't more 'n a
+mile--an' get some.
+
+"'Thet's the last I see of her till half past eight,' said mother, 'an'
+when she did come she was all of a shake. She said she 'd hurried so,
+an' had ter wait at the tavern till they 'd sent down ter the next
+village. I thought 't was kinder queer,' mother used ter say, 'fer 't
+was the fust time I 'd ever known the Crick House to run dry of a
+Sunday.
+
+"'I did n't say nothin', but took the bottle an' started upstairs,
+leavin' her settin' there on the settle. Job was ramblin' some, an'
+Keziah had all she could do to keep him pacified.'
+
+"George and me,"--Cale interrupted his story to explain to us,--"had
+moved Job over inter the north chamber over the kitchen, fer 't was
+handier ter tend him there; an' all the cookin' was done in the
+woodshed. But you could hear every sound in the kitchen plain as could
+be.
+
+"'Job was jest fallin' asleep,' mother said, 'when I heard George come
+in through the woodshed an' shut the door with a bang thet pretty nigh
+raised the roof, an' started Job off again; an' I jest riz up out of my
+chair ter give them young folks a piece of my mind when, all of a
+suddin', I heard Happy cry out sharp, as if somebody was hurtin' her:
+
+"'"Oh, don't--don't!"
+
+"'Then I knew there was trouble brewin'. I held up my finger ter
+Keziah ter keep still, an' slippin' down the back stairs, thet led
+inter the kitchen, laid my eye to the crack in the door thet was part
+open.
+
+"'I could see Happy crouchin' on the settle with both hands over her
+face, an' George, standin' over her, had laid a pretty heavy hand on
+her shoulder.
+
+"'"Who was thet devil?" says he, in a hoarse voice like a crow's-caw.
+There was only a groan fer answer.
+
+"'"Tell me the truth," says he with a great shudderin' breath thet
+seemed ter go down clean ter his finger-tips, fer she shook like a leaf
+under the power of his hands. "Are you fit ter be my wife?"
+
+"'"Fit ter be your wife!" she shrieked, and with a bound thet shook his
+hand free of her an' left her standin' face ter face with him. Then,
+liftin' both her round white arms, she opened her little palms upwards
+jest as if', mother said, 'she was tryin' ter reach the horns of the
+altar, an' it sounded as if she was prayin': "As there 's my mother's
+God in heaven above me, I am clean an' fit ter be your wife, George
+Jackson, an' the wife of any honest man livin', an' if you 'll take me,
+knowin' what you do--an' you 've seen all there was of harm--I 'll
+marry you ter-morrow."
+
+"'Her arms dropped by her side as if she had n't a mite of strength
+left in her body, an' she looked at him with a look thet will ha'nt me
+ter my dyin' day.'
+
+"Mother said: 'If I 'd had a daughter, I 'd ruther laid her in her
+grave than seen her marry any man with thet look on her face.'
+
+"'"So help me God, Happy, I 'll save you from yourself an' marry you
+ter-morrow," says George, slow an' solemn. An' at those words, Job riz
+right up in bed an' hollered "Amen, amen!" till the rafters rung.'
+
+"Mother 's told me the story over 'n over again, an' always in them
+same words," said Cale thoughtfully. "She used ter say she guessed
+Happy made a clean breast of it to George after hearin' that 'Amen'.
+
+"Sure enough they was married the next day--late in the afternoon--when
+Job had a lucid spell an' cried fer joy. 'I can leave you now, Happy,'
+was all he said as he give 'em his blessin'. When night come on he
+wandered again. He 'd had watchers more 'n three weeks, an' Keziah was
+all tuckered out, an' mother too. I said I 'd watch thet night, but
+Happy stuck to it she was goin' ter.
+
+"'But, Happy--' says mother, with a meanin' look an' smile.
+
+"'I know, Aunt Marthy.' She answered, sorter hesitatin'; then, settin'
+the bowl of porridge she had in her hand down on the table, she
+beckoned mother out inter the shed an', shuttin' the door tight, flung
+her arms round mother's neck an' begged her ter speak ter George, an'
+ask him ter let her watch jest this one night with her father.
+
+"'He can't deny me thet, Aunt Marthy, an' if you had a daughter placed
+as I am, would n't you do as much fer her?'
+
+"Mother said she 'd never ferget the scairt look on the girl's face,
+nor the feel of her two hands, like chunks of ice, round her neck.
+
+"'My heart ached fer her,' mother said, 'an' I told her I 'd speak ter
+George, an' I knew 't would be all right.'
+
+"An' so 't was. He was only too glad to do anything fer her ter make
+her feel easier in her mind; he said he 'd stretch out on the sofy in
+the parlor, so as to be on hand if they wanted him.
+
+"Mother set up till twelve, an' then Happy brought her up a steamin'
+bowl of catnip tea.
+
+"'Take it, Aunt Marthy,' she said, coaxin', 'it 'll do you good.'
+
+"'Bless your thoughtful little soul,' says mother, an' gulped it down
+as innercent as a lamb."
+
+At this point Cale rose, with one stride reached the fireplace and gave
+the backlog a mighty kick that sent the sparks in showers up the
+chimney; then, seating himself again, he went on in a hard unyielding
+voice:
+
+"I ain't made up my mind whether I 've fergiven her or not. I s'pose I
+have, seein' what the gal must have suffered after thet; but it was my
+innercent lovin' mother--an' how she could have done it beats all
+creation! But she was desp'rit.
+
+"George got up twice in the night, but all was quiet. He even walked
+round the house an' stood under the winder, hopin', as he told me
+afterwards, to see her shadder on the curtain. The second time he went
+out, he saw her pull aside the square of cotton an' look out. It was
+nigh mornin' then and the lamp still burnin'. 'Bout half after five he
+crept out in his stockin' feet, milked, an' turned the cows out; then
+he come back, laid down, an' just after daybreak shet his eyes fer the
+first time.
+
+"When he woke it was 'bout eight o'clock, an' still nary a sound in the
+house, fer Keziah had n't nothin' on her mind, 'cause mother took it
+all off. Again he slipped out of doors an' see a dull red spot on the
+curtain; it looked as if the light was burnin'. He thought she 'd
+fallen asleep. On thet, he creeps up the back stairs an' looks inter
+the chamber. There was mother stretched out on the cot unconscious,
+her face as white an' drawn as the square of cotton beside it. Job was
+breathin' heavy in the bed; the lamp was smellin' with the vilest smell
+and--Happy was gone."
+
+"Gone!" Jamie echoed.
+
+"Yes, gone fer good--an' ter this day I can't quite make up my mind
+whether I 've fergiven her or not.
+
+"Mother come to in something less than half an hour and before the
+doctor got there. We braced her up with a pint of strong coffee, an',
+natcherly, she could n't remember nothing after she 'd took the catnip
+tea--_and_ the laudanum.
+
+"George rode right an' left, to get track of her, or rather them, fer
+we all knew there was a man in the case after what we see. He
+telegraphed ter them big cities, an' hired detectives fer the dirty
+work; but they could n't get no clew. The folks at the Crick House
+said there 'd been a man there sketching but they had n't seen him
+sence Sunday night, when he left on foot. The gal, they said, had n't
+been near the house, an' Seth White told mother, it was he give her the
+brandy himself; so you can make what you can of it.
+
+"'I 'm her husband, an' she belongs ter me,' was all George would say,
+when we tried to make him give her up an' git a bill of divorce.
+
+"Wal," said Cale sententiously, looking hard at the Doctor, "there 's
+two ways of lookin' at thet, but it took him some time ter see it; an'
+it war n't till he 'd travelled fer four months, east, north, south,
+an' west as fur as the Rockies, thet he come home an' settled down to
+farmin' again; but it would n't work. He war n't the same man; lost
+his interest, an' was lettin' things go ter the dogs. He never took
+ter drink, thet I know of. But there war n't no use talking ter him.
+He was his own master an' would n't be interfered with.
+
+"It might have been nine months after he 'd come home, mebbe 't was a
+year, I don't remember, when he come to me one day with a telegram in
+his hand--it had come up on the stage--an' handed it to me with the
+face of a man ready ter face death or of a dead man jest come ter life,
+I could n't say which.
+
+"'Read it,' says he, shakin' like a man in drink; 'I can't.' An' I
+read:
+
+"'I am dyin' and alone among strangers; will you come to me fer the
+sake of my child.' There was an address thet made George groan, fer he
+'d been all over thet great Babel of New York, an' knew jest the kind
+of place she was in.
+
+"Wal, he went; an' three days afterwards he come home with the dead
+body of the woman, as was his wife an' yet was n't--jest accordin' as
+you look at it--an' a live child thet was hers an' not his 'n,
+whichever way you look at it.
+
+"Sech things ain't nothin' new to you, I s'pose?" Cale turned to the
+Doctor.
+
+"What became of the man?" said the Doctor, without answering his
+question. During this recital his eyes never left Cale's face.
+
+"Dunno."
+
+"You don't know! What do you mean by that, Cale?" said Jamie.
+
+"I mean," he answered slowly, "thet George Jackson never did nothin' by
+halves. He come ter me one day--the day after the funeral--an' said he
+was goin' away. An' he did; sold out an' went away."
+
+"Did the child live?" Doctor Rugvie's voice broke the silence somewhat
+sharply. I caught the flight of his thought; I am sure Jamie did also.
+
+"Yes, lived ter be a blessing ter all she come nigh. She war n't more
+'n three days old when he brought her home to Keziah. Happy was dead
+when he found her; more 'n thet he never told us. He left something
+for them with Lawyer Green--he told me he should do it. They lived on
+thet in part; it helped ter support 'em, fer they was in a tight place.
+Thet was how Job's luck came at last, poor soul--little enough it was.
+He kept on fer years, I heard, but was always weak-minded after he was
+told what had happened. They said he always used ter call the baby
+'Happy', an' could n't bear her out of his sight. Then, when she was
+'bout fourteen, he turned against her, an' kept thinkin' it was Happy
+herself; kept harpin' on her marriage to George, an' flingin' of what
+she 'd done inter her face, till the child could n't stand it no more.
+She never knew the whole truth, they said, till she was fifteen; then
+somebody was willin' ter tell her"--Cale smiled grimly--"as _they_ see
+it, an' it 'bout finished what Job begun. I heard she never tasted a
+morsel of food for two days. The last I heard about her was, she was
+keepin' the district school. It's been most ten years now sence I
+heard anything; you don't often meet a man from our way up in Manitoba
+or the river basin of British Columbia, an' I never was no hand at
+writin'. Sometime I mean ter look her up. I ain't been able ter do
+fer her as I 'd ought ter, fer I had bad luck fer too many years--them
+pesky western wildcat banks cleaned me out twice."
+
+"By what name was the child christened?" asked the Doctor.
+
+"Never was christened thet I know of."
+
+"Oh, Cale, if only they had been happier!" It was Jamie who spoke with
+almost a groan.
+
+"Wal, thet's the mystery of it," was his quiet answer. Gathering his
+loose-jointed frame together, he rose. "Guess I 'll go an' look after
+the hosses; it's goin' ter be a skinner of a night." At the door he
+turned.
+
+"I know I ain't told you nothin' livenin', but it's life, an' I could
+n't tell it no other way. It ain't jest the thing ter air fam'ly
+troubles, but it's all past; an' what I 've told, I 've told ter my
+friends, an' I 'll thank _you_ ter let what I 've said be 'twixt us
+four."
+
+We sat in silence for a while after he had left the room. I was
+wondering how I could make excuse to get away from them all, get away
+by myself and have it out with myself, when Jamie broke the silence:
+
+"Doctor Rugvie, I 've been putting two and two together. You know what
+you told us the last time you were here about that New York episode?
+Do you suppose Cale's story is the key to that?"
+
+"Possibly it might be, if those episodes were not of common
+occurrence--there are so many all the time."
+
+"I know; but this fitted in almost every detail. I would n't ask him
+how long ago all this happened."
+
+"Nor I," was the Doctor's reply, and his answer gave a glimpse of his
+thought. "I will when it comes right."
+
+"Dear old Cale," I murmured. I felt it incumbent on me to say
+something, lest my unresponsiveness be noticed.
+
+The Doctor rose and took a cigar from the box on the mantel, saying
+almost to himself:
+
+ "'There may be heaven, there must be hell,
+ Meantime there is our earth here--well!'
+
+"Good night, Mrs. Macleod, good night, Boy--Marcia, good night."
+
+He spoke in his usual voice, but with noticeable abruptness.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+So Cale knew. This was my first thought when I found myself alone in
+my room. Cale, then, was the husband of my mother's sister, Jemima
+Morey, who died before I was born, whose name I had heard but two or
+three times. My Aunt Keziah's mind grew dull in the strain of
+circumstance; she was never given a full supply of brains, and her
+memory weakened as she aged. Had she lived,--I shuddered at the
+thought,--she would have been imbecile like my grandfather and,
+doubtless, have lived to his age, ninety. In that case there would
+have been no life for me here.
+
+"But I _am_ here. I am going to remain here till I am sent away.
+Nothing that Cale has said shall influence me in this. All that is
+past--a part of another generation. I have put it all out of my life,
+once and for all. I live now and here, in Lamoral. I am not my
+mother; I am Marcia Farrell. I have not her life to answer for, and
+her life--oh, what she must have suffered!--shall no longer influence
+mine.
+
+"I am free! I declare myself free from the bondage of past memories,
+free, and I will to remain so."'
+
+This was my declaration of independence--independence of heredity and
+its accredited influence; of memories that control the mentality which
+governs life; freedom from the actuality of past environment. I drew a
+long free breath. My individual womanhood, this "I" of me, Marcia
+Farrell, not a composite of ancestral inheritance, asserted itself.
+
+What if my nose resembles my great-grandmother's? I asked, unfurling my
+revolutionary flag over the moat--untechnically "ditch"--of the
+stronghold, considered by some impregnable, of present day scientific
+discovery.
+
+What if I happen to have a temper like my maternal great-aunt's? What
+if I have a fighting instinct like my paternal ancestors, who may have
+come over with William the Conqueror as swordsmen or cooks--I don't
+care which?
+
+What if I handle my crochet needle in a manner very like the brandished
+spear of Goths, Vandals, and Huns, from all of whom it is perfectly
+possible that I may count my descent?
+
+What if I show distinctive animal characteristics? Jamie declares I
+run like a doe and look like a greyhound!
+
+What do I care if, millions of years ago when things on this earth were
+stickier and hotter than the worst dog-day in New York, this thing that
+has, in the end, become Marcia Farrell, this half-perfected mechanism
+of body and mind, had gills like a fish? What do I care if it had?
+
+This "I" of me is distinct from every other "I" on this inhabited
+globe. This "I" of me has its special work to do, not another's, not
+my ancestors'. Humble enough it is. It has to feed and clothe my body
+by labor, the brain regulating the handicraft. It has eyes to see all
+the beauty, all the ugliness of Life; ears to hear all its harmonies,
+all its discords; a mind to comprehend how some detail of chaos may
+find rebirth in order. This "I" of me, my soul, receives through the
+instruments of the senses, impressions of infinite chaos ordered into
+laws, not necessarily final, laws beneficial to man and his
+universe.--Am I to deny the existence of what is called the strange
+unknown ether, simply because, for ages, the instrument of the wireless
+was not on hand to give expression to its transmitting power?
+
+I repeated to myself, that I had my own life to live, not my
+mother's--oh God, forbid! Not my grandfather's--oh, in mercy not! Not
+my myriad of ancestors' lives; were this so, the mechanism of the brain
+would give under the strain. But just my own, mine, Marcia Farrell's,
+here, from day to day in Lamoral; a life lived in thankfulness of
+spirit for a shelter that is a home; in thankfulness for the modicum of
+intellect--with its accompanying physical fitness--that enables me to
+earn my living; in thankfulness for friends; in thankfulness--yes, I
+dare say it, even in the shadow of Cale's story of my mother's short
+life--that I love, that I can love.
+
+This is the full text of my declaration of independence, made at twelve
+of the clock,--I heard it striking in the kitchen below,--on the night
+of the twentieth of February, nineteen hundred and ten.
+
+From that hour, I lost all desire to know my parentage, to question
+Doctor Rugvie, to see the papers; all desire to establish the fact that
+I was a legitimate child. And I lost it because a greater interest,
+the dominating interest of love, was claiming all my thoughts, ruling
+my desires, regulating my wishes. My hour had struck and, knowing it,
+I regulated my clock by Mr. Ewart's timepiece, which is another way of
+saying I lived, henceforth, not only in his home, but in him and his
+interests.
+
+All that Cale told us I had known in part, but never had I known the
+circumstances in detail, freed from the accumulation of gossip. Now,
+with Delia Beaseley's relation of my birth and its attendant
+circumstances, the account, except on two points, seemed complete. On
+one, I intended to ask explanation from Cale, when an opportunity
+offered; in the second matter, the identity of my father, I took no
+interest. But to Cale I would speak. Dear old Cale! Had he known me
+all these months? Why had n't he spoken to me and told me?
+
+As I thought it over, I saw that I had given him no opportunity to
+question me, or to speak to me, concerning his surmise. He should have
+it soon--and again look me squarely in the eyes. Dear old Cale!
+
+It was noticeable the next day, that the Doctor was fairly well
+occupied with his own thoughts. During the hour in which I took my
+first lesson with skis, I caught him, more than once, looking at me as
+if searching for enlightenment on some subject, or object, projected,
+obscure and undefined, from his consciousness. My own high spirits
+were seemingly inexplicable to him. How could he know that my elation
+was due to the fact, that the express from Montreal would arrive in
+eight hours!
+
+"Cale," he said abruptly, while helping me out of some particularly
+awkward floundering, "when does the mail leave the house for the south
+bound trains?"
+
+"We cal'late ter get it off 'bout noon; little Pete takes it over."
+
+The Doctor looked at his watch. "Sorry, Marcia, to cut short this fun,
+especially after my urgent invitation, but I must get some letters off
+by that mail. We 'll try it again to-morrow."
+
+"Don't mind me, but I don't want to go in; it's great sport, the best
+yet. Cale, you can stay a little longer, can't you?"
+
+"To be sure; I ain't nothing special on hand fer the rest of the
+forenoon."
+
+"Then I 'll cut and run," said the Doctor, without ceremony and
+evidently pressed for time. He "cut" accordingly, his skis carrying
+him down the incline with what seemed to me dubious velocity.
+
+I turned to Cale and gave him my mittened hand. He guided me well and
+carefully. I landed, rather to my own surprise, right side up. I was
+well pleased with this progress; in all conditions of my partial
+equilibrium, I found the sport exciting.
+
+"You don't look like the same gal I drove up from the steamboat landing
+thet night four months ago." He looked down at me admiringly from his
+great height. "Your cheeks are clear pink and white, and your eyes
+shine; who 'd ever think they was the faded out brown ones, with great
+black hollers under 'em, thet I see lookin' 'round to find out what
+kind of a God's country you was in?"
+
+"I like your compliments. Tell me, Cale,"--I smiled straight up into
+his rugged face, in order to get a look at the small keen gray eyes
+beneath the bushy eyebrows--"how did you come to think it was I? Tell
+me."
+
+The tanned cheeks above the whiskers looked suddenly rather yellow. I
+could n't see his mouth for the frosted beard, but I saw his eyes fill.
+The hand that was still holding mine to help me up the incline,
+tightened its clasp. He hesitated a moment before he could answer:
+
+"I did n't know, Marcia, not for plumb sure; an' yet I _felt_ sure, for
+you was the livin' image of Happy Morey."
+
+"Am I so very like her--in all ways?"
+
+"Like her in looks, all but the eyes; they 're different. But you
+ain't much like her in your ways--she was what you might call
+winnin'er; you have ways of your own."
+
+"Did you open the windows of your life so wide for us last night, Cale,
+just to entice me to fly in and find refuge with you?"
+
+"Marcia," his voice trembled slightly, "I stood it jest as long as I
+could. I knew _you_ did n't know me from Adam; but I felt as if I
+could n't live another day in the house with you, 'thout makin' myself
+known ter you; an' I took thet way ter do it an', meanwhile, satisfy
+somebody's curiosity 'bout me, fer Jamie can't be beat by any woman for
+_thet_. I did n't go off half-cock though, last night, you may bet
+your life on thet."
+
+"I know you did n't, Cale--and can't we keep this between ourselves?"
+
+"Jest as you say, Marcia. What you say ter me won't go no further.
+There ain't no one nigher to me than you in all this world--
+
+"Nor than--" I began. I was about to say, "than you to me"; but I cut
+short the words that would have perjured the new joy in my heart.
+
+Cale apparently took no notice of the unfinished sentence.
+
+"Sometime I want ter know 'bout your life these last ten years--I can't
+sorter rest easy till I know."
+
+"There is so little to tell. Aunt Keziah died eight years ago; then I
+went down to New York to earn my living, and worked there till I came
+here--on a venture."
+
+"It's the best you ever made," he said emphatically. "Get sick of it
+there?"
+
+"Yes, I should have died if I 'd stayed in that city any longer; it was
+too much for me."
+
+I felt his hand grasp mine still more closely.
+
+"So 'twas, so 'twas," he said to himself; then to me:
+
+"Guess we won't lose track of one 'nother again, Marcia."
+
+"Not if I can help it, Cale; it is n't my fault that we see each other
+for the first time in twenty-six years."
+
+"So 't ain't, so 't ain't, poor little soul." I heard a catch in his
+voice, but I did not spare him.
+
+"How old was I when you left home?"
+
+"'Bout three months, if I remember right."
+
+"Did you ever see me--then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You did n't have any interest in me?"
+
+"Not much, I 'll own up." Then he added weakly, for he wanted to spare
+me the truth by gently lying out of it, "I 've heard men don't take to
+new-born babies as women do; they 're kinder soft ter handle."
+
+"And you saw me for the first time in my life at the steamboat landing?"
+
+"Yes--an' my knees fairly give way beneath me, for I saw Happy standin'
+before me an' speakin' in the voice I remember so well."
+
+"A long while, twenty-six years, Cale?"
+
+"Don't, Marcia, don't rub it in so!" He was half resentful; and I,
+having brought him to this point, was satisfied to relent.
+
+"Cale," I said, withdrawing my hand and facing him, as well as I could
+with my new foot appendages to steer, "I 'll forgive you for not paying
+any attention to me for twenty-six years, on one condition--"
+
+"What is thet?" His eagerness was almost pathetic.
+
+"That you 'll take me for just what I am, who I am, Marcia Farrell--not
+Happy Morey; if you don't I shall be unhappy. And you 're to love me
+for myself, do you hear? Just for myself, and not because I 'm the
+living image of my mother. Now don't you forget. I give you warning,
+I shall be insanely jealous if you love me for anybody but myself--and
+I take it for granted you _do_ love me, don't you, Cale?"
+
+"You know I do, Marcia."
+
+I had him at my mercy and I was merciful.
+
+"Well, then, if I did n't have all this paraphernalia on my feet, I
+would venture to throw my arms around your neck and give you a good
+hug--Uncle Cale. As it is I might flop suddenly and fall upon your
+breast."
+
+"Guess I could stand it if you did,"--he smiled happily, the creases
+around his eyes deepening to wrinkles,--"but 'twixt you and me, this
+ain't exactly the place nor the weather for any palaverin'--"
+
+"Palavering! Well, you are ungallant, Cale; I don't dare to call you
+'Uncle' now, for fear I might make a slip before the entire family, and
+that would complicate matters, would n't it?"
+
+"Guess 't would," he replied earnestly; "complicate 'em in a way 't
+would take more 'n a lawyer's wits ter uncomplicate."
+
+"Then let's go home and see what the Doctor is doing."
+
+"He 's great!"
+
+"Wait till I tell you sometime a secret about him--and me: you 'll
+think he is greater."
+
+"You don't mean thet, Marcia!"
+
+"Mean what?" I asked a little shortly, for I felt annoyed at his tone
+of protest and resentment.
+
+"Mean? Wal, thet the Doctor 's sweet on you--"
+
+"Silas C. Marstin, I am angry with you, yes, angry! Do you want to
+spoil all my fun,--yes, and my happiness,--by just mentioning such an
+impossible thing?"
+
+"God knows I don't." He spoke, as it seemed, almost on the verge of
+tears.
+
+"Then never, never--do you hear?--think or mention such a thing again.
+Promise me."
+
+"I won't, so help me--"
+
+"That 'll do; that's right. Now be sensible and get these skis off, so
+I can walk to the house like a woman instead of a penguin."
+
+"You ain't goin' to lay it up against me?" he pleaded, as we neared the
+house.
+
+"No, of course not; only, remember, you 're under oath. I mean all
+this." I nodded at him gravely.
+
+"An' I mean it too; you won't have nothing to complain of so fur as I
+'m concerned."
+
+"Dear old Cale!" I whispered to him as I entered the house, where I
+found Jamie in a state of suppressed excitement for I had given him no
+opportunity to advance his theories about what he had heard the night
+before from Cale.
+
+"I say, Marcia, come on into the office and let's talk; the Doctor is
+in the living-room, writing for all he is worth."
+
+"I can't; I 'm busy." At which he went off in a huff.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+"Let me take your mail out to little Pete," I said to the Doctor, who
+was superscribing his last letter, when I came in from the morning's
+sport.
+
+"Thanks, very much."
+
+He spoke abstractedly; ran over the addresses on several envelopes and
+handed them to me. I could not help seeing that the one on top was
+addressed to Delia Beaseley. I fancy he intended I should see it. I
+felt sure he had written to her for some of the forgotten details of
+that night in December more than twenty-six years ago.
+
+"He's on the track of that child--me! Cale's story has given him the
+clew," I said to myself, on noticing his absorption in his own thoughts
+during dinner and his preoccupation in the afternoon. In the evening
+he drove over with Cale to meet Mr. Ewart.
+
+I rather enjoyed the course events were taking; it would interest me to
+watch developments of the Doctor's detective work. In a way, it had
+all the fascination of a drama of which I felt myself no longer to be
+an actor, but a spectator.
+
+Jamie cornered me, after the Doctor and Cale drove off to the junction.
+
+"No, you don't!" he said, laughing, as he extended his long arms across
+the doorway of the living-room to bar my exit. "You will act like a
+Christian and love your neighbor as yourself this time. Sit down and
+talk--or I sha'n't be able to finish my last chapter."
+
+Of course I sat down, knowing perfectly well what I was about to
+hear--at least, I thought I did.
+
+"Marcia--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that what Cale told
+us, and what Doctor Rugvie told us, are two acts in a long
+drama--tragedy, if you like."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You _are_ cool, I must say!" He spoke with irritation. "Do you mean
+to tell me that life, presented in such a manner as those two
+men--opposite as the poles in standing--presented it, does n't interest
+you?"
+
+"I have n't the imagination of genius, Jamie."
+
+"Now you know perfectly well there is no imagination about it. It's
+life, just as Cale said; and it's my belief the Doctor will, in the
+end, get some track of that girl. If he does, it will be all up with
+the farm. Did you think of that?"
+
+"No!" I spoke the truth. I was amazed. It never occurred to me to
+connect the farm project with anything Cale had said.
+
+"I 'll wager he 'll compare notes with Cale on the way over to the
+station, and I 'm going to refer to the farm plan, if I have the chance
+after they get back, to see what he 'll say."
+
+"He won't think you 're interfering, will he?"
+
+"He can't." He spoke decidedly. "The farm project affects _me_, don't
+you see?"
+
+"Not exactly; how?"
+
+"Why, if--of course it's only an 'if'--the Doctor should find this
+girl, he would n't for a moment think of taking that money, which in
+justice if not in the law belongs to her, to further any of his plans.
+He is n't that kind of a man."
+
+"Of course not; but I don't see how--"
+
+"That's where you are obtuse. Look here, Marcia, how long do you
+suppose I can stand it to vegetate here in Canada? It's healthy, I
+agree to that, and doing me no end of good; but I can't see myself
+living here--existing, yes; but living, no! I'm better, stronger; and
+even if I were n't, I would n't play the coward either in life or
+death. As it is, I want to live my life full in my own way, among my
+own. I want to be in the thick of the fray, even if by being there I
+should go under a little sooner. I want to mingle with the multitude
+of men--see into their lives, give them something of mine in reality
+and through the imagination, and get their point of view into my life.
+I can't stay on indefinitely here in Canada; and if--if--"
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If the girl should be found, the farm project would amount to nothing.
+The Doctor sees, just as you and I see, that Ewart is not enthusiastic
+about it, and he is n't going to settle on Ewart's land with an
+unwelcome philanthropic scheme. And then--"
+
+"What?" I was becoming impatient.
+
+"Why, then, if it should fall through,--and I 'm selfishly hoping it
+may,--I'm not in the least bound, don't you know, to stay on here as
+Ewart's guest. I can go home."
+
+"Home!" I echoed. The thought of losing Jamie had never occurred to
+me. And if he went, then his mother, also, would go. If they both
+went, I should have necessarily to leave Lamoral, for I was merely an
+entail of their presence. Leave Lamoral! I sickened at the thought.
+
+"Oh, no, no, Jamie!" I cried out, rebelling against the prospect of a
+new upheaval in my life. "I can't spare you--I can't live here without
+you--"
+
+With every thought centered in Mr. Ewart at that moment, and
+comprehending as I did the logical result of Mrs. Macleod's leaving the
+manor and all that it would mean to me, I did not realize what
+impression my impulsive words might make on her son. In the silence
+that followed my protest, I had time to realize what I had said.
+
+"I did n't for a moment suppose you felt like this, Marcia."
+
+In a flash I understood the twist in his interpretation of my words and
+feeling.
+
+"You don't understand--" I began vehemently, then found myself
+hesitating like a schoolgirl who does not know her lesson. I was
+ashamed of myself, for Jamie was on the wrong track and must be put
+right at all costs.
+
+"I think I do." He spoke gently, almost pityingly as it seemed to me
+then. I boiled inwardly.
+
+"No, you don't; but there 's no time to explain now--I hear the bells--"
+
+"You have good ears; I don't."
+
+"They 're coming! Where 's Mrs. Macleod?"
+
+"Well, they 're not returning from an ocean voyage, even if they are
+coming; there is no need to run up the Union Jack-- Hold on a minute!"
+He barred the door again with his long arms.
+
+"Let me out--they 're at the door--"
+
+"What if they are?"
+
+I slipped quickly under his arm into the passageway. The dogs were
+frantic with joy. I wanted to show mine as plainly, perhaps then Jamie
+might understand! I flung open the door, and, as it happened my voice
+was the only one to welcome them.
+
+"You 're back so soon!"
+
+"You may well say that," said the Doctor, running up the steps and
+seeming to bring the whole Arctic region of cold in with him; "I drove
+over and made good time, I thought; but Ewart took the reins on the way
+back, and we came home at a clip--nine miles in fifty-two minutes!
+That's a record. Now, Ewart," he turned to speak to his friend who had
+stopped to give some order to Cale, "see how well I have heeded your
+injunction to 'look out' for Miss Farrell."
+
+"And the horses did n't bolt," I said, as I put my hand into his
+outstretched one.
+
+"Have you gotten over the effects of the aurora?"
+
+The hearty gladness in his voice was reward enough for the restraint I
+put on myself. I wanted to give him both hands and tell him in so many
+words that, with his coming, I was "at home" again.
+
+"No, and never shall," I responded joyfully.
+
+"Nor I either.-- Where 's Jamie? Oh, Mrs. Macleod," he said, spying
+her on the upper landing, "I 've taken you unawares for the first
+time.--Down, comrades, down!--Jamie Macleod, is this the way you
+welcome a wanderer to his own hearth?"
+
+Jamie's hand grasped his and pumped it well.
+
+"It's queer, Gordon, but you seem to look at your three days of absence
+from the same point of view that Marcia does."
+
+"How 's that?" he asked quickly, turning to me.
+
+"Just Jamie's nonsense; it's only that I was on the lookout for you,
+and heard the bells when he failed to."
+
+I knew I was growing reckless, but I did not care--why should I?--if he
+knew I was glad to see him at home again. I did not care if they all
+knew it--I must put Jamie right somehow. And what was there to hide?
+Not my gladness, not my joy, the new elements in my new life--this
+something I had never before experienced. Somehow, all my resolutions
+to keep this joy "to myself" went to the winds.
+
+Mr. Ewart made no reply, but I knew I added to his evident pleasure in
+his return, by my ready and frankly expressed acknowledgement that I
+was "on the lookout" for him.
+
+That evening was one never to be forgotten. It was a time when the
+friendship of the four men, Mr. Ewart, Cale, Doctor Rugvie, and Jamie
+Macleod, towards me, found expression both in jest and earnest; a time
+when Mrs. Macleod's kindly, if always a little remote interest in me
+was doubly grateful, for sure of it and its protection I could let the
+new life, that shortly before had awakened in me, flood my whole being
+and expand heart, soul and mind with its vital flux. I felt that I
+made my own place in this household; that I pleased them all; that they
+liked my speech, whether merry or grave; that they liked my ways
+because mine, whether I was lighting cigars and pipes for them, or
+frying griddlecakes at ten o'clock at night on the top of the soapstone
+stove, in redemption of my promise made months past. The truth is I
+felt at home, wholly, completely; and they, recognizing it, were glad
+for me.
+
+With Cale, that evening, I was tender, teasing, arrogant by turns; I
+had him at my mercy--and his lips were sealed! With Jamie I was
+absolutely nonsensical, as I dared to be in view of his twisted
+interpretation of my apparently sentimental, "I can't live without you
+here etc." I bothered and puzzled him, much to the others' amusement.
+Into the Doctor's spirit of banter I entered with the enjoyment of a
+not very "old" girl. I caught him looking at me with the same
+perplexed expression that he wore when I first smiled at him three
+months before--and I kept on smiling, as I had cause, hoping the
+message, oft repeated, would carry in time to his consciousness the
+recognition that I was, indeed, the daughter of her whom he had
+befriended more than a quarter of a century ago. The emphatic
+statement made by Cale and Delia Beaseley that I was her "living
+image", encouraged me in this line of procedure. To the Master of
+Lamoral I gave willing service, frying for him delectable griddlecakes,
+turning them till a golden brown, flapping them over skilfully on his
+warm plate, and deluging them with incomparable maple syrup from his
+own sugar "bush". He received this service in the spirit in which I
+gave it, and the cakes with the appreciation of a man and connoisseur.
+Mrs. Macleod seconded my efforts in this special line of cooking and
+enjoyed the fun as much as any one of us.
+
+"There 's no use, I 'm 'full up'," said Jamie with a sigh of
+exhaustion; he dropped into the sofa corner.
+
+"I kept tally for you, Boy," said the Doctor.
+
+"How many?"
+
+"Eighteen! Apply to me if you 're in trouble at one-thirty to-night."
+He looked at his watch.
+
+"You scored seventeen fully ten minutes ago, mon vieux," said Mr. Ewart
+laughing.
+
+"Slander, Marcia! Don't believe it. Three of mine would make only one
+of yours, Gordon Ewart;--I 've camped enough with you to know your
+'capacity', as the freight cars have it. Marcia Farrell, your last
+'batch' has been 'petering out', as we say at home. You dropped only
+one small spoonful for each of the last twenty cakes; the ones you made
+for Ewart had a complement of two big spoonfuls--they were corkers, no
+mistake. Hold up your head, Boy!" he admonished the collapsed object
+on the sofa. "Never say die--here are just four more for us four,
+amen."
+
+A dismal groan was his only answer. Mr. Ewart, taking turner and bowl
+from me, declared a truce. The Doctor set the plates on the table.
+When all was clear about the hearth, on which Cale laid a pine log for
+a treat, Mr. Ewart announced that he had a surprise in his pocket.
+
+"Jamie, your birthday falls on the twelfth of August, does n't it?"
+
+"Yes; how did you remember that, Gordon?"
+
+"You had a birthday when I was in Crieff with you seventeen years
+ago--and we celebrated. Have you forgotten?"
+
+"Forgotten!" Jamie came bolt upright, the cakes were as naught, the
+remembrance of them faded. "Do you think I could ever forget that?
+You took, or rather trotted me for a long walk over the moors--oh, the
+pink and the purple heather of them, the black blackness of their bogs,
+the green greenery of their bracken higher than my head!--to the
+'Keltie'; and you held me over the pool to see the whirl and dash of
+the plunging torrent. I remember the spray made me catch my breath.
+Then you took me down to the bank of the 'burnie', and found a place to
+camp--my first camp with you--under a big elm; and there you discovered
+a flat stone, and two crooked branches for crotches. You took from
+your mysterious game-basket a gypsy kettle and, filling it at the
+'burnie' with the water that tastes like no other in the world, you
+hung it from the crotch over the flat stone that was our hearth. You
+made heaven on that spot for a seven-year-old boy, because you let him
+touch off the fagots. You boiled the water, made tea--such tea!--and
+brought out of that same basket bannocks and fresh gooseberry jam--
+Oh, don't, don't mention that birthday! You make me homesick for it;
+even Marcia's griddlecakes can't help me!"
+
+"We 'll celebrate again this year in the wilds of the Upper Saguenay."
+Mr. Ewart took from his pocket a paper and, unfolding it, read the
+terms of a lease of a fish and game preserve in the northern wilderness.
+
+"And the Andrés, father and son, shall be our guides, our cooks, our
+factotums. The son is half Montagnais; his mother was of that tribe."
+
+"Oh, Ewart!" Jamie's eyes glistened, but his volubility was checked;
+he felt his friend's thought of him too deeply.
+
+"I secured it while I was away; I have wanted it for the last five
+years. The Doctor has promised us six weeks, and the camp will be more
+attractive"--he looked at Mrs. Macleod--"and keep us longer, if you and
+Miss Farrell will be my guests, and make a home for us in the
+wilderness. Will you?"
+
+For once in her life Mrs. Macleod did not balk at this direct question
+involving a decision. I record it to her credit.
+
+"And you?" He turned to me without apparent eagerness, but I caught
+the flash of pleasure in his eyes when I answered promptly, with
+enthusiasm:
+
+"It will be something to dream of till it is a reality. I 'll begin
+making my camp outfit to-morrow; and André père shall teach me to fish
+and paddle a canoe; his son shall teach me woodcraft, and some
+Montagnais squaw shall show me how to weave baskets. In those same
+baskets I will gather the mountain berries for such of the family as
+may crave them, and--and that wilderness shall be made to blossom like
+the rose and prove to us, at least, a land flowing with milk and honey."
+
+Mr. Ewart's question about a "home in the wilderness" was the motor
+power for my flight.
+
+"Amen and amen," cried the Doctor, approving of my soaring. "We 'll
+return to the Arcadia of the woodsman's simple life."
+
+"Humph!" said Cale. "You'd better add all them contraptions of veils,
+an' nettin's, and smudge kettles, an' ointments, an' forty kinds of
+made-up bait--so made-up thet I 've seen a trout, a three pounder, wink
+at me when he see some of it and wag away up stream as sassy as you
+please--an' a gross of joss sticks. By George, I 've seen mosquitoes
+as big as mice--"
+
+"Cale," I made protest; "you spoil all."
+
+"Better wait till you are there, Marcia, before you rhapsodize any
+more; you did it well, though, I 'll admit," said Jamie, with his most
+patronizing air.
+
+"So did you rhapsodize over Scotland," I retorted; "and I 'll
+rhapsodize if I never go; and you 're not to quench my enthusiasm with
+any of your Scotch mist that I am told is nothing less than a downpour."
+
+"By the way, when is your birthday, Marcia?" said the Doctor,
+carefully, oh, so carefully, knocking the ash from his cigar into the
+fireplace. The act was so very cautious that it betrayed to me his
+restrained expectancy of my answer! "I have an idea it's the last of
+June."
+
+How light I was of heart in answering him, in giving him the clew he
+was seeking as I would have made him a gift, fully, freely--for what
+was it to me now, whether he knew or not?
+
+"Next December, when the north wind blows over the Canada snows, you
+may remember me, if you will."
+
+"What date?"
+
+I waited intentionally for him to ask that question. I felt that Cale
+was holding his breath; but I did n't care, and replied without
+hesitation:
+
+"The third--twenty-seven years. What an age!"
+
+They laughed at me, one and all, the Doctor perhaps a little more
+heartily than the others. After that he sat, with one exception,
+silent; but Jamie spoke half impatiently:
+
+"Why did n't you give us a chance to celebrate last December?"
+
+"Nobody asked me about it."
+
+The Doctor spoke for the only time then. "I 'll make a mem of it," he
+said gayly, taking out his notebook and writing in it. And I saw
+through his every move--the dear man!
+
+"You might have given us the pleasure of remembering it," said Mrs.
+Macleod reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, I celebrated it in my own way--and for the first time in my life,"
+I replied, treasuring in my heart that hour in the office with Mr.
+Ewart when he took my gift of service "gratis".
+
+"Might a common mortal, who has both eyes and ears and generally can
+see through a barn door if it is wide open, ask in what manner you
+celebrated that you escaped notice of every member of this household?"
+Jamie spoke ironically.
+
+"Jamie, I outwitted even you that time. Of course I 'll tell you: I
+made a gift to some one, which was a good deal more satisfactory than
+to receive one myself."
+
+"The deuce you did! Perhaps you 'll tell me what it was and who was
+the man? I was n't aware of any extra purchases in the village."
+
+"Not now." I spoke decidedly. "Let's talk about the camp. I can't
+wait for the spring. When can we go?" I asked Mr. Ewart.
+
+"Not before the first of July, but we can remain until into September."
+
+The words were commonplace enough; but the tone in which they were
+spoken belonged to another day, another hour, to that moment when he
+accepted my gift of service "gratis". He, at least, knew how I
+celebrated that third of December!
+
+Content, satisfied, I began to jest with Jamie. We made and enlarged
+upon the most ideal plans it ever befell mortals to make. The others
+listened to our chaffing and found amusement in it, for we tried to
+outdo each other in camp-hyperbole. The Doctor, Mr. Ewart and Cale,
+whose presence Mr. Ewart insisted upon having the entire evening,
+smoked in silence. I knew where the Doctor's thoughts were. I would
+have given a half-hour of that evening's enjoyment--at least I think I
+would--to have read Mr. Ewart's.
+
+Late, very late, Cale rose, put a chunk into the soapstone, and said
+good night. I followed him into the kitchen. I wanted to speak with
+him, for I saw something was out of gear.
+
+"What's the matter, Cale?" I whispered, as he fumbled about for the
+candle somewhere on the kitchen dresser.
+
+"Marcia," he whispered in turn, "I 've pretty nigh lied myself inter
+hell for you ter-night. On the way over ter the junction the Doctor
+put his probe inter what's 'twixt you an' me mighty deep; but I was a
+match fer him! An' then I come home jest ter hear you give yourself
+all away! What in thun--"
+
+"Sh, Cale! Somebody 's coming--"
+
+"Wal, a gal's 'bout the limit when--" I heard him say in a tone of
+utter disgust, and, laughing to myself, I ran up stairs.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+After the Doctor's departure on the Saturday of that week, I wrote to
+Delia Beaseley, telling her how far I had ventured upon the disclosure
+of the fact that I was the daughter of her whom she had helped to save,
+and that she was now free to tell him whatever he might ask in regard
+to me, as far as she could answer; but that on no consideration was she
+to speak of the papers in his possession; and if he spoke to her of
+them, she was to say that he must settle that with me; that on no
+account was she to learn anything of their contents. I wrote her this
+as a precautionary measure only, for I was convinced the Doctor would
+not mention those papers. They belonged to me, to me alone. It was a
+matter of business.
+
+She wrote in answer that she would do as I requested.
+
+The spring was both long and late in coming. Day after day, week after
+week the wind held steadily from the east or northeast. When, at last,
+it turned right about face, and the sun, climbing high in the north,
+warmed the breast of mother-earth, already swelling with its hidden
+abundance, the waters were loosened and the great river and all its
+tributaries were in ice-throes, travailling for deliverance.
+
+Then it was that the plank sidewalks throughout the length and breadth
+of Richelieu-en-Bas were securely chained to each householder's fence
+or tree, to prevent them from sailing away on the rising flood. Then
+it was that rowboats were in evidence in many a front yard. The creek
+was impassable; the high-road bridge was threatened. Cale and Mr.
+Ewart seemed to live in rubber boots, both by day and by night. Pierre
+called frantically on all the protecting saints to withhold rain at the
+time of the "débâcle": the breaking up of the river. His son came in
+twice a day, on an average, with soaked stockings and knickerbockers
+wet through and through; was duly castigated--lightly, I say to his
+father's credit--and as regularly comforted by Angélique with flagons
+of spiced hot milk or very sweet ginger tea. It finally dawned upon us
+that the youngster deliberately waded through slush to obtain the
+creature comforts. After that, they were withheld.
+
+Cale looked grim and Mr. Ewart anxious for one twenty-four hours. All
+night they were out on horseback with lanterns and ropes. Then the
+heavy rainclouds dispersed without the dreaded deluge; the sun shone
+clear and warm; the small ice jams gave way, and the great floes went
+charging down on the black waters towards the sea.
+
+During this time of east wind, rain and snow, Jamie often chafed
+inwardly, for the weather kept him housed; but he busied himself with
+his work and soon became wholly absorbed, lost to what went on around
+him.
+
+And what was going on around him? Just this: two lives, a man's and a
+woman's, long bound by the frost of circumstance, like the ice-bound
+river in full view from the manor, were in the process of being warmed
+through and through, thawed out; the ice obstructing each channel was
+beginning to move, that the courses of their lives, under the power of
+love's rays, might, at last, flow unhindered each into the other. So
+it seemed to me, at least, during those weeks of waiting for the spring.
+
+Did I know he loved me? Yes, I knew it; was sure of it; but no word
+was spoken, for no word was needed then. We understood each other. We
+were man and woman, not boy and girl. We recognized what each of us
+was becoming to the other in the daily intimate household ways of
+life--an enduring test; in the community of our human interests, in the
+common wealth of our friends, of our books. His best friends were
+mine; mine were his--all except Delia Beaseley; sometime I intended he
+should know her.
+
+I thought at first that would come about through the farm project; but
+Mrs. Macleod, Jamie and I had to acknowledge, soon after the Doctor
+returned, that the development of this plan was at a standstill.
+Naturally this pleased both mother and son. For them it meant the
+prospect of a return in the near future to their home in Scotland;
+finally to England, and London. Jamie confided to me he should cast
+anchor there for a time, his second book having been accepted by a good
+publisher in that city.
+
+He found opportunity in my presence to ask Doctor Rugvie, just before
+he left us, about his further plans for the farm scheme, and was told
+rather brusquely that certain complications had arisen, which must be
+cleared up before he could proceed to develop them. Not once did he
+drive over to the farm on his last visit. As for Mr. Ewart, he never
+mentioned the subject. Jamie was wise enough to refrain from asking
+questions of him.
+
+The Doctor's announcement kept Jamie guessing for weeks, his curiosity
+being unsatisfied; but as for me--I laughed in my sleeve, for I knew
+how that "third of December" birthday on my innocent part, had
+disarranged the good Doctor's philanthropic scheme, for the present at
+least. I was curious to know how he would proceed to "clear away"
+those complications.
+
+The fear of leaving Lamoral for good was diminishing; I knew that what
+held me there, held Mr. Ewart also. I rested content in this knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+It was the second week in May when the seigniory farmers began to
+arrive and closet themselves with Mr. Ewart in the office. The "going"
+was atrocious, and the appearance at the side door of the clay-clogged
+cariole, buggy, _calèche_ and farm-cart, bore witness to this fact.
+
+Jamie and I were on the watch for each arrival. We knew nearly all of
+these habitant-farmers. They hitched their "team", and spent hours
+with Mr. Ewart. Sometimes, when we were in the living-room, we could
+hear voices from the office in lively and earnest discussion. We
+remarked the air of pride and satisfaction with which each one
+unhitched his horse, climbed into his special conveyance, slapped the
+reins on his animal's back and was off with a merry "Bonnes nouvelles!"
+to his habitant-wife who, while waiting for her husband, had been in
+the kitchen exchanging courtesies with Angélique, and feasting on
+freshly fried doughnuts and hot coffee. The notary from
+Richelieu-en-Bas, as well as the county surveyor, were also closeted
+with Mr. Ewart; they arrived after breakfast and left before supper.
+At dinner they were our guests, but no business topics were mentioned.
+
+By Saturday, the routine of visitation was concluded. The notary
+departed with his green baize bag apparently bursting with documents.
+It was Angélique who informed us after his departure that the seignior
+had been receiving the seignioral rents with his own hand.
+
+The next morning at the breakfast table, Mr. Ewart asked me if I would
+help him to audit some accounts, the farmers having just paid their
+half-yearly rents.
+
+"At what hour?" I asked.
+
+"I shall need your help for the entire forenoon and probably for an
+hour or two after dinner. Shall we say at nine?"
+
+"Can't I help?" said Jamie, rather half-heartedly I must confess.
+
+Mr. Ewart took in the situation by the tone, and smiled as he answered:
+
+"No; you 're too busy with your work; the prose of figures would n't
+appeal to you just now."
+
+"Would n't they though! Try me on a check from my publisher."
+
+"It's the point of view, after all, that changes proportions, is n't
+it? Are you going to work in here?"
+
+"Yes; I need about four by eight feet of surface to keep my ideas from
+jostling one another, and this dining-room table is about the right fit
+when I 'm comparing pages of manuscript with first galley proofs."
+
+"Good luck, then; we 'll not disturb you till dinner."
+
+An hour later when I went into the office, I found Mr. Ewart at his
+desk. Beside him was a large tin box, twice as large as a bread-box.
+On top lay two pairs of his thick driving-gloves. I must have looked
+my surprise, for he laughed as he rose to place two chairs, one on each
+side of the only table in the room--a fine old square one of ancient
+curly birch, generally bare, but now covered with a square of oil cloth.
+
+"What next? I can't wait for developments to explain all this
+paraphernalia," I said; my curiosity was thoroughly roused.
+
+"These." He held out a pair of the driving-gloves. "You are to put
+them on, please, and not to take them off till I give you permission."
+
+Mystified, I obeyed. He set down the tin box on the table between us;
+opened wide both windows to let in the tonic air, that began to hint of
+real spring, and, drawing on the other pair of gloves, took his seat
+opposite me at the table. I could not help laughing.
+
+"How does this performance strike you?" he asked, amused at my
+amusement.
+
+"Like the prelude to some absolutely ridiculous rite, unknown to me."
+
+"That is just what it is." He spoke so emphatically, so earnestly,
+that I was still further mystified. "You have hit the bull's-eye. It
+is a ridiculous rite, and, thank God, it's for the last time that I am
+chief mummer in it. Here in this box, Miss Farrell," he went on
+unlocking it and displaying a conglomerate mass of silver and soiled
+paper money, "are rents, seigniorial rents, paid by men who farm it on
+the seigniory, whose fathers and fathers' fathers have worked this
+ground before them, men who should own this land, to a man who should
+not own it in the existing conditions--conditions that have no place in
+the body politic, here or anywhere else. It's a left-over from
+medievalism--and I am about to do away with this order of things, to
+prove myself a man."
+
+"You believe, then, in the ownership of the land by the many?" I asked
+eagerly. I was glad to get his point of view. The discussions between
+him, Doctor Rugvie and Jamie, were always of great interest to me.
+Although I knew something of his plans from the other two, he had never
+mentioned them to me. I saw he was speaking with great feeling.
+
+"Believe in it! It's the first article in my political and
+sociological creed. I 've come back here to Canada, where I was born,
+to incorporate it in action.-- And you 're wondering where you come
+in, in this experiment, I 'll wager," he said gayly.
+
+I answered him in the same vein: "I confess, I fail to see the
+connection between your driving-gloves on my hands, your strong box
+between us--and the first article of your creed."
+
+"Of course you don't!" He laughed aloud at my mental plight and his
+own manner of announcing his special tenet. "I 'll begin at the
+beginning and present the matter by the handle. I want you to grasp it
+right in the first place."
+
+"Thank you," I said meekly; "not being a feminine John Stuart Mill, I
+need all the enlightenment I can have on the presence of this worldly
+dross that lies between us. Facts contradict theories."
+
+With a sudden, almost passionate movement, he shoved the box to one
+side on the table; it was no longer between us. I knew there was
+significance in his impulsive action, but I failed to understand what
+it indicated.
+
+"It's taking rather a mean advantage of a woman, I own, to ask her on
+the spur of the moment to share a man's political and sociological
+views--but I want you to share mine, and enlightenment is your due."
+
+"And in the meantime am I to keep on the gloves?"
+
+He laughed again. "Yes; keep them on and help me out of this scrape--I
+have never felt so humiliated in my life as I have taking this money.
+Now I 'll be rational. You see, smallpox roams at times through
+Canada. This money has been stored in stockings, instead of banks,
+after having been hoarded, handled, greased, soiled by a generation or
+more. You 'll find dates of issue on these notes that are a good deal
+older than you, and silver minted in the early sixties. Now I want
+your help in counting over--auditing, we 'll call it--this mass of
+corruption. And I don't intend you shall run any risk in handling even
+a small part of it--hence the gloves and the fresh air. After we 're
+through with it, we will pack the filthy lucre in the box and express
+it to a Montreal bank. It is n't mine--at least I do not consider it
+so."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I am going to apply these half-yearly rents in reducing the
+interest on the money I am loaning these farmers, in order to enable
+them to buy the best implements and cultivate their land more
+intelligently. This I may say to you, but to no one else."
+
+"You are going to sell them the land?"
+
+"The greater part of it. The forest I keep, because I love that work
+and hope in time to make a sufficient income from it, in case of actual
+need. In fact, I 've been working all the week with the notary to get
+the deeds in order."
+
+"So that was their 'bonnes nouvelles'?"
+
+"You heard them?"
+
+"Yes. They looked so happy--"
+
+"Oh, I am glad; glad too, that you could see something of their
+pleasure in this special work of mine. Do you know,"--he leaned
+towards me over the table,--"that I have asked you to help me with this
+as a matter of pure sentiment?"
+
+His eyes sought mine, but I am sure they found only an enquiring turn
+of mind in them, for I could not imagine where the sentiment was in
+evidence.
+
+"I see I 'll have to explain," he said smiling. "I want you, an
+American with all the free inheritance of the American, to share with
+me in this last rite of mediævalism, in order that in the future we may
+look back to it--and mark our own progress."
+
+Oh, that word "our"! Used so freely, it rejoiced me. He intended this
+affair to mark some epoch in his life and mine. I waited for him to
+say something further. But, instead, he turned to the business in hand
+and we set to work. To be sure the "auditing" on my part was a mere
+farce; for not only did Mr. Ewart do most of the counting, and making
+into bundles of a hundred, but he insisted on my not bending close over
+the currency to watch him. As I told him, "After asking me to help
+you, you keep me at arm's distance."
+
+Whereupon he smiled in an amused way, and said engagingly, but firmly:
+
+"There is no question of my keeping you at a distance. Don't mind my
+crotchets, Miss Farrell, I have a fancy to have you here with me at the
+obsequies of all this sixteenth-in-the-twentieth century nonsense. At
+forty-six, I still have my dreams. You 'll be good enough to indulge
+me, won't you?"
+
+"If that's all, I think I can indulge you. But is there nothing I can
+do to be of some real help?"
+
+"Nothing but to lend me your companionship during this trying ordeal.
+You might fill out some labels--you 'll find them in that handy-box on
+the desk--with the words 'hundred' and 'fifty', and I 'll gum them on
+to these slips for the money rolls."
+
+For a few minutes I busied myself with the labels. After that, I
+watched his swift counting of bills and silver, and his ordering them
+into neat packages and rolls. Before long, however, I took matters
+into my own gloved hand and, without so much as "by your leave", began
+the recount, labelling as I went on. Within an hour the work was
+finished and a smaller tin box packed.
+
+"How much did you make it?" he asked, before locking the box.
+
+"Three thousand four hundred and twenty-two, just."
+
+"The rate of interest I charge them is two per cent, and this amount
+will reduce that greatly."
+
+"Do you mean that you are letting them have the land, supplying money
+to help them cultivate it, and charging only two per cent interest?"
+
+"Why should I charge more? They are the ones who are doing the land
+good. You see, the use of this rent-accumulation to reduce their
+interest rate for the first year or two, is a part of my general
+scheme. They are to apply their half-yearly rents as purchase money
+for their land; this is in the deeds. Within a comparatively short
+period, this assures to each of them a freehold. The valuation I have
+put on their land is regulated by the amount of work they have put out
+on it, and the time they have lived on it.
+
+"Take old Mère Guillardeau, for instance. She has an 'arpent' now of
+her very own. She, and her father, and her father's father have lived
+on these seigniory lands for nearly two hundred years. I value that
+land by discounting the value of the service rendered to it in four
+generations. Her little 'cabane' is her own, having been built by her
+father. The land is worth to her all the accumulated value of those
+generations of toil; to me, who have never done anything for it,
+neither I nor my fathers, it is worth exactly ten dollars--now, don't
+laugh!--her yearly rent."
+
+"And that buys it!" I exclaimed, wondering what kind of finance this
+might be, frenzied or sane.
+
+"It is hers--and I have the pleasure of knowing it is hers while I am
+living. She and her old daughter of seventy drove out here the other
+day in Farmer Boucher's cart, and when she went home she carried the
+deed with her to have it registered. Old André's sister is a hundred
+years old in January--a hundred years, the product of one piece of
+land, for, practically they have lived from it with a yearly pig, a
+cow, a few hens and a garden. Ninety years of toil she has spent upon
+it. Would you, in the circumstances, have dared to make the time of
+purchase one year, six months even, and she nearly a centenarian?"
+
+"No." I was beginning to understand.
+
+"And take old Jo Latour. You know him well, for I hear from him how
+many times you have been there on snow-shoes to take him something
+'comforting and warming', as he says. Jo has rheumatism, the kind that
+catches him when he is sitting in his chair or stooping, and prevents
+his getting up; and at last, when he manages to stand upright, it won't
+let him bend or sit down again until after painful effort. What can he
+do? Boil maple syrup once a year, or chop a cord or two of wood at a
+dollar a cord? He is seventy-two and has no family as you know. What
+is he going to do when the pinch becomes too hard? He has a small
+woodlot, a little garden, a patch of tobacco--is happy all day long
+with his dog and pipe, despite that rheumatic crippling. I have valued
+his lot at twenty dollars, and a year's rent will pay for it--with the
+help of this," he added, touching the box.
+
+"I am learning how to take hold of the matter by the handle. Enlighten
+me some more, please."
+
+"I could go on for hours into more detail, but I am going to mention
+only two other families, to show how my plan works. There are
+Dominique Montferrand and Maxime Longeman, men of thirty or
+thereabouts, fine strong men with their broods of six and eight. They
+marry young; work hard and faithfully; shun the cabarets; save their
+surplus earnings. They were born on the land; they love it and give it
+of their best toil; it responds to good treatment. Their dairy is one
+of the best; their stock superior. They have seventy-five acres each.
+I asked them to value it themselves. They showed they appreciated the
+worth of the land by the price they set: four thousand dollars--four
+thousand 'pièces'. They would not cheapen it--not even for the sake of
+getting it more quickly. A man appreciates that spirit. I have set
+the period for half-yearly payments at ten years--and I will help out
+with improved farm implements at the rate of interest I mentioned.
+
+"In less than ten years, if the crops are good, it is theirs. If the
+crops are poor, they can still pay for it in the period set. They are
+young. They have something to work for during the best years of their
+lives."
+
+"But how do you feel about parting with all this land that was your
+ancestors? Are n't you, too, bound to it by ties of value given?"
+
+"Me? My ancestors!" he exclaimed. "Where did you get that idea? Who
+told you that this was ancestral land of mine?"
+
+"Mrs. Macleod, or Jamie, intimated it was yours by inheritance."
+
+"Hm--I must undeceive them. But _you_ are not to harbor such a thought
+for a moment."
+
+"I won't if you say so--but I would like to know how things stand." I
+grew bold to ask, at the thought of his expressed confidence in me.
+
+"Why, it's all so simple--"
+
+"More simple, I hope, than all that matter of seigniorial rights and
+transferences I read upon, in the Library before I came--and was no
+wiser than before."
+
+"And you thought-- Oh, this is rich!" he said, thoroughly amused.
+
+I nodded. "Yes; I thought you were a seignior. I dreamed dreams,
+before coming here of course, of retainers and ancestral halls, and
+then--I was met by Cale at the boat landing!"
+
+Mr. Ewart fairly shouted as he sensed my disappointment on the romantic
+side upon discovering Cale.
+
+"And the first thing you did, poor girl, was to lay a rag carpet strip
+in the passageway for my seigniorial boots--spurred, of course, in your
+imagination--to make wet snow tracks on! Oh, go on, go on; tell me
+some more. I would n't miss this for anything."
+
+Before I could speak there was a decided rap on the door.
+
+"That's Jamie," I said; "he has come for the fun."
+
+"Come in," cried Mr. Ewart. Jamie intruded his head; his rueful face
+caused an outburst on my part.
+
+"I say, Ewart, is it playing fair to a man to have all this unwonted
+hilarity in business hours, and keep me out?"
+
+"No more it is n't, mon vieux. Come in and hear about Miss Farrell's
+seigniorial romancing."
+
+"Go on, Marcia," said Jamie, sitting down by me.
+
+"You 've misled me, Jamie. Did n't you, or Mrs. Macleod, tell me when
+I first came that this Seigniory of Lamoral was Mr. Ewart's by
+inheritance?"
+
+"Well, it was in a way, was n't it, Gordon? It was a Ewart's?"
+
+"Not in a way, even. I never thought enough about your view of the
+matter to speak of it. Let's have a cigar, if Miss Farrell does n't
+object, and I 'll tell what there is to tell--there 's so little!"
+
+Jamie looked at me when Mr. Ewart rose to get the cigars--and looked
+unutterable things. I read his thought: "Now is our time to find out
+the truth of things heard and rumored."
+
+"I was born in Canada, Miss Farrell," he said, between puffs, "as Jamie
+knows, and educated in England. My mother's great-uncle, on her
+mother's side, was a Ewart of Stoke Charity, a little place in the
+south of England. While I was there, I was much with this great-uncle;
+I bear his name. He owned this estate of Lamoral in Canada, that is,
+two-thirds of the original seigniory; the other third belongs to the
+present seignior and seignioress in Richelieu-en-Bas. He purchased it
+from a Culbertson who inherited it from his grandfather, an officer of
+prominence in the French and Indian wars. At that time, many of the
+old French seigniories fell into the conqueror's hands, and, by the
+power of a might that makes right, were allotted to various English
+officers for distinguished services. The original Culbertson never
+lived here. His grandson, my great-uncle's friend, never cared enough
+for it to manage it himself; he left all to an agent and found it paid
+him but little--so little that he was willing enough to sell two-thirds
+of it, the neglected two-thirds, to my great-uncle.
+
+"On my great-uncle's death, his grandson, my contemporary, inherited
+it. I bought it of him ten years ago; but I have used it only as a
+camping-place when I have been over from England or the Island
+Continent. I paid for it with a part of what I earned on my sheep
+ranch in Australia--so linking two parts of the Empire in my small
+way--and I have never regretted it. That's all there is to tell of the
+'inheritance' romance, Miss Farrell."
+
+"Gordon--" Jamie stopped short; blew the smoke vigorously from his
+lips, and began again. "Would you mind telling me how you came to want
+to settle here?"
+
+"Why? Because I am a Canadian, not an Englishman."
+
+"Why do you always take pains to make that distinction?"
+
+"That's easy to explain. Because a Canadian is never an Englishman; he
+is Canadian heart and soul. You can't make him over into an
+Englishman, no matter if you plant him in Oxford and train him in
+Australia. I 've been enough in England to know that we are looked
+upon for what we are--colonials, Canadians, just the other side of the
+English pale although within the bounds of the British Empire. You
+feel it in the air, social, political and economic. No drawing-room in
+England accepts me as an Englishman--and I enter no drawing-room with
+any wish to be other than a Canadian of the purest brand. We 're not
+even English in our political rights over there. We are English only
+in the law, as is the pariah of India. We want to be just Canadians,
+inheritors of a land unequalled in its possibilities for human growth,
+for human progress, for the carrying out of just, wise laws, for a
+far-reaching economical largesse undreamed of in other lands--not
+excepting yours," he said, turning to me.
+
+"And would you mind telling me," I asked, emboldened by Jamie's
+personal question, "how it has come about that you look upon your
+special land ownership with such a broad human outlook?"
+
+"And this really interests you?" He asked me in some surprise.
+
+"It really interests me--why should n't it when I have my own
+livelihood to earn? The economic question, so-called, seems to me to
+resolve itself into the question: How are we, I and my brothers and
+sisters, who work in one way and another, going to feed and clothe
+ourselves--and yet not live by bread alone? But, I don't suppose you
+know that side of it, only theoretically?"
+
+"Yes, and no. I got all my inspiration about this land question in
+England."
+
+"In England!" Jamie repeated, showing his surprise. "That would seem
+the last place for the advancement of such theories about land as I
+have heard you explain more than once."
+
+"In this way. The object lesson came from England--but was upside down
+on my national retina. I had to re-adjust it in Canada. It's just
+here; the condition of England is this--I have seen it with both bodily
+and spiritual eyes:--That snug little, tight little island is what you
+might call in athletic parlance 'muscle bound'. I 'll explain. For
+more than a century she has colonized. What is left now? Her land
+owned by the few; her population, that which is left, rapidly
+pauperizing. England, with a land for the sustenance of millions, is
+powerless to help, to succor her own. She has too much unused land, as
+the muscle-bound athlete has too much muscle. It handicaps her in all
+progress. Her classes are now two: the very poor, and the poor who
+have no land; the rich who have practically all the land. In this
+condition of things her economical and political system is drained of
+it best.
+
+"Scotch, English, Irish--the clearest brains, the best muscle, the
+highest hearts, are coming over here to Canada. This land is the great
+free land for the many. In settling here, I wanted to add my quota of
+effort in the right direction. And I cannot see but that this little
+piece of earth, three thousand acres in all, on which, for two hundred
+years, men, women and children have succeeded one another, multiplying
+as generation after generation, have gone on caring for the land,
+living from it,--but never owning a foot of it,--is the best kind of an
+experiment station for working out my principles. I am about to apply
+the result of my English object lesson here in Lamoral. I have been
+telling Miss Farrell about the disposition I intend to make of it,
+gradually, of course. Perhaps you would like to hear sometime."
+
+"Will you tell me about it in detail?" Jamie asked eagerly.
+
+"I am only too pleased to find a listener, an interested one. Miss
+Farrell has proven a good one--I've kept you already two hours." He
+rose.
+
+"Is it possible!" I was genuinely surprised. "The time had seemed so
+short. I must go now and help Angélique with her new cake recipe--a
+cake we eat only in the States, and a good object lesson on the
+economic side." I rose and laid the gloves on the table. I had kept
+them on just a little longer than was necessary--because they were his!
+Foolish? Oh, yes, I knew it to be; but it was such a pleasure to
+indulge myself in foolishness that concerned nobody's pleasure but my
+own.
+
+"Sometime I want to ask you a few questions, Miss Farrell," said Mr.
+Ewart, as I turned to the door.
+
+"What about?" I was a little on the defensive.
+
+"I want to know how you came to have any such economic ideas in your
+thinking-box?"
+
+I turned again from the door to face him. "Have you ever lived in New
+York?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Have you ever been there?" There was a moment's hesitancy before he
+replied, thoughtfully:
+
+"Yes; I have been through it several times."
+
+"Then you must know something of the economic conditions of those four
+millions?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do I answer you, when I tell you I was one four-millionth for seven
+years? That I struggled for my daily bread with the other four
+millions; that after seven years I found myself going under in the
+struggle, poor, alone, ill, with just twenty-two dollars to show for
+the seven years of work? Can you wonder that I am interested in your
+work after _my_ object lesson?"
+
+For a moment there was silence in the office. I broke it.
+
+"My two friends," I said lightly, "I have upstairs in my purse a little
+sum of fourteen dollars that I received from Mrs. Macleod when I was in
+New York; that was my passage money to Lamoral. I was too proud to owe
+anything to any one unknown to me, so took fourteen dollars of my
+twenty-two--all I possessed after the seven years' struggle--and paid
+my own passage. I 've wondered again and again to whom I should return
+this money. I have never had the courage to ask. Will you tell me
+now?"
+
+"I knew nothing of the money, Miss Farrell, or of you." Mr. Ewart
+spoke at last in a steady, but strained voice. Jamie's eyes were
+reddened. He held out his hand and I put mine into it.
+
+"That was n't friendly of you, Marcia--you should have told us."
+
+"Whose money is it, Jamie?"
+
+"It's the Doctor's."
+
+"His own?"
+
+"His very own; he told me. Why?"
+
+"Because I am so thankful to know that it is not from that accumulated
+sum; you know what he said. I would not like to touch it, coming from
+such an unknown source, besides--"
+
+"Pardon me," said Mr. Ewart rising abruptly. Going to the side door he
+called to Cale who was passing round the house. "I have to speak with
+Cale."
+
+He left the room, and Jamie and I stared at each other, an
+interrogation point in the eyes of each.
+
+The tin box still stood on the table.
+
+"What's in that?" Jamie demanded.
+
+"Filthy lucre," I said, turning for the second time to leave the room.
+
+"Well, if Ewart's queer sometimes, as witness his abrupt departure, you
+'re queerer with your ideas of money."
+
+I laughed back at him as I went out of the office:
+
+"I can pay the Doctor now, Jamie. I 'm rich, you know."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+We saw little, if anything, of Mr. Ewart for the next week. His time
+was wholly occupied with the land business. He took his breakfast
+early, at five or thereabout, and rarely came home for dinner or
+supper. His return at night was also uncertain. Sometimes a telephone
+message informed us he was starting for Montreal, or Quebec. I think I
+saw him but once in the week that followed that morning in the office.
+Then it was late in the evening, on his return from Montreal. He
+seemed both tired and preoccupied. We were not at table with him
+during those seven days. I wondered, and Jamie guessed in vain,
+whether anything might be worrying him. It seemed natural that
+something should be the trouble during such a wholesale transference of
+land.
+
+Mrs. Macleod and I were busy all day in getting ready the camp outfit
+for the four of us. Cale was not to go, as his work was at home. It
+surprised me that he had so little to say about Mr. Ewart to whom he
+was devoted. Whenever, in the intimacy of our half-relation bond, I
+felt at liberty to question him about his employer, he always put me
+off in a manner far from satisfying and wholly irritating.
+
+I asked him once if he knew whether Mr. Ewart was a bachelor or a
+widower.
+
+He stared at me for a moment.
+
+"He ain't said one word ter me sence I come here as ter whether he is
+one or t'other," he answered, sharply for him.
+
+"That's all right, Cale; I bear you no grudge. But, in justice, you
+'ll have to admit that when you live month after month in the same
+house with a man and his friends, you can't help wanting to know all
+there is to know about him and them."
+
+"Wal, if you look at it thet way, I ain't nothing ter say. How 'bout
+yourself?" With that he deliberately turned his back on me, and left
+me wondering if by any incautious word, by my manner, by any small act,
+I might have betrayed the source of my new joy in life.
+
+By the first of June the Seigniory of Lamoral was a wonderfully active
+place. The farmers were making greater and more intelligent efforts in
+cultivating their lands than ever before. Mr. Ewart had established
+the beginning of a small school of agriculture and forestry.
+
+He used one of the vacant outbuildings for the classes. It was open to
+all the farmers and their families; and twice a week there were
+lectures by experts, hired by Mr. Ewart, with practical demonstration
+on soil-testing, selection of seed, hybridizing, and irrigation
+methods. They were well attended. The women turned out in full force
+when it was known that there would be three lectures on bee-culture,
+and the industry threatened to become a rage with the farmers' wives; I
+found from personal observation that the flower gardens were increased
+in number and enlarged as to acreage. Mr. Ewart said afterward, when
+the blossoming time was come, that the land reminded him of the
+wonderful flower gardens around Erfurt in Germany where honey is a
+staple of the country. It was proposed to hold a seigniory exhibition
+of fruits, vegetables and cereals, the last of September.
+
+The Canadian spring seems to lead directly in to summer's wide open
+door. In June, Jamie and I were often on horseback--I learning to ride
+a good Kentucky saddle horse that Mr. Ewart had added to the stables.
+We were much in the woods, picking our way along the rough beginnings
+of roads that Cale, with the help of a gang of Canuck workmen, was
+making at right angles through the heavy timber. He had been at work
+in this portion throughout the winter in order to bring the logs out on
+sledges over the encrusted snow.
+
+One afternoon in the middle of June, Mr. Ewart, whose continual
+flittings ceased with the first of the month, asked me to ride with him
+to the seigniory boundaries on the north--something I had expressed a
+wish to see before we left for camp, that I might note the progress on
+our return in September. He said it was a personally conducted tour of
+inspection of Cale's roads and trails.
+
+My old panama skirt had to serve me for riding-habit. A habitant's
+straw hat covered my head. Mr. Ewart rode hatless. I was anticipating
+this hour or two with him in the June green of the forest. I had not
+been alone in his presence since those hours in the office--and now
+there was added the intimacy of the woodsy solitude.
+
+"I am beginning to be impatient to show you the trails through that
+real wilderness on the Upper Saguenay; but those, of course, we take
+without horses," he said, as he held his hand for my foot and lifted me
+easily to the saddle.
+
+"I 've been marking off the days in the calendar for the last three
+weeks. It will be another new life for me in those wilds."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Have you decided which way to go?"
+
+"I think it will be the better way to go by train to Lake St. John--to
+Roberval. We can cross the lake there and reach our camp about as
+easily as by way of Chicoutimi. We shall have a lot of camp
+paraphernalia for so long a camping-out, and, besides, that route will
+show you and Jamie something of a wonderful country. Of course, we
+shall come back by the Saguenay; I 'm saving the best for the last."
+
+We forded our creek about a mile above the manor and entered the heavy
+timber.
+
+"And to think it is I, Marcia Farrell, who is going to enjoy all this!"
+I was joyful in the anticipation of spending eight weeks, at least, in
+the presence of this man; eight untrammelled weeks in this special
+wilderness to which he asked me in order that it might seem something
+of a home to him!
+
+"And why should n't it be you?"
+
+"I don't know of any reason why it should n't, except that it might so
+easily have been some one else. But I must n't think of that."
+
+"That is sensible; although I confess I don't like to think that you
+might so easily have been some one else. Hark! Hear that cuckoo--"
+
+We drew rein for a few minutes, there beneath the great trees. The
+western light was strong, for the sun was still two hours high. Then
+we rode on slowly over the wide rough clearings which Cale had run at
+right angles, north and south, east and west through the woods.
+
+"These are all to be grassed down next fall; in another year, if the
+grass catches well, they will make fine going for horses or for
+carriages, as well as good fire-lanes for which I have had them cut.
+In the second season I can turn some of the prize Swiss cattle in here
+to graze for extra feeding. They know so well how to do all this in
+Europe, and we can learn so much from those older countries! I am
+sure, too, if you knew France, you would say that these river counties
+in French Canada are so like the north of France--like Normandy! When
+I drive over the country hereabout, I can fancy myself there. I find
+the same expanse and quiet flow of the river, the highroads bordered by
+tall poplars, the villages sheltered from the north by a wood
+break--forest wood. Even the backwater of the river, like our creek,
+recalls those ancestral lands of my French brothers' forefathers:--the
+clear dark of the still surface, the lindens, their leaves as big as a
+palm-leaf fan, coming down to the water's edge, and a wood-scow poling
+along beneath them. I love every feature of this country!" he
+exclaimed with enthusiasm, "and I want you to." He turned in his
+saddle to look directly at me.
+
+"I do love it, what I know of it--and I wish I might sometime see those
+other countries you have spoken of, especially those flower gardens of
+Erfurt." I smiled at my thought.
+
+His words conjured in my imagination enticing pictures of travel--such
+as I had planned when in New York, when my ten years' savings should
+permit me to indulge myself in a little roaming. My dream that was! I
+was tempted to tell him of it then and there.
+
+"You know, Mr. Ewart, I spoke very freely to you and Jamie that morning
+in the office."
+
+"Yes; I am thankful you felt you could--at last. I have been waiting
+for some opportune hour when I could ask you a few personal questions,
+if you permit."
+
+"Well, that was one of my day dreams--at twenty-six," I said, wondering
+what his was, still unexpressed, at "forty-six". "The truth is, I
+wanted to break with every association in New York and with my past
+life--
+
+"Why, Miss Farrell? You are so young to say that; at your age you
+should have no past."
+
+I hesitated to answer. Thoughts followed one another with rapidity:
+"Shall I tell him? Lay before him what threatened to embitter my whole
+life? Shall I make known to him the weight of the burden that rested
+for so many years on my young shoulders--even before I went down into
+that great city to earn my livelihood? Shall I tell him that? How can
+he understand, not having had such experience? What, after all, is
+that to him, now?
+
+"Young?" I repeated, looking away from him westwards into the illumined
+perspective of forest greens. "When you were young, very young in
+years, was there never a time when you felt old, as if youth had never
+passed your way?"
+
+I heard a sudden, sharp-drawn breath. I turned to him on the instant,
+and in the quivering nostril, the frowning brows, the hard lines about
+the well-controlled lips, I read the confirmation of my intuition,
+expressed to Jamie so many months ago, that he had suffered. My
+question had probed, unintentionally, to the quick.
+
+With a woman's sympathetic insight, I saw that this man had never
+recovered from his past, never broken with it as, so recently, I had
+broken with mine. I felt that until he should make the effort, should
+gain that point of view, he could never feel free to love me as I loved
+him. The barrier of that past was between us. What it was I hardly
+cared to know. I was intent only upon helping him to free himself from
+the serfdom of memories.
+
+"Don't answer me--I don't want any," I said hastily, leaning over to
+lay my hand on the pommel of his saddle. It was the only demonstration
+I dared to make to express my understanding, my sympathy.
+
+In an instant his right hand closed hard upon mine; held it, hard
+pressed, on the pommel.
+
+"I think I want to answer you," he said, speaking slowly, deliberately,
+without the slightest trace of excitement in his passionless voice.
+
+He was looking into the woods--not at me--as he spoke, and I knew that
+at that moment his soul was wandering afar from mine; it was with some
+one in the past. Suddenly, a hot, unreasonable wave of jealousy
+overwhelmed me; I yielded to the impulse to pull my hand from under his.
+
+"It is not my hand he is clasping, and pressing with the strength of a
+press-block on the pommel; it's that other woman's!" I said to myself,
+making a second determined effort to release my hand.
+
+He whirled about in his saddle, looking me directly in the eyes. He
+read my thought of him.
+
+"Let your hand lie there, quietly, under mine," he said sternly; "it's
+_your_ hand, remember, not another's."
+
+The tense muscles of my hand relaxed. It lay passive under the
+pressure of his. I waited, quiescent. I realized that the Past had
+been roused from its lair. I must wait until it should seek covert
+again of its own accord, before speaking one word.
+
+"I want to answer you--and answer as you alone should be answered: Yes,
+I have felt old--centuries old--"
+
+He caught the bridle rein under the thumb of his right hand as it lay
+over mine. The left he thrust into his pocket; drew out a match-safe,
+a wax-taper. I, meanwhile, was wondering what it all meant; dreading
+developments, yet longing to know.
+
+He reached for an overhanging branch of birch and broke off a small
+twig of tender young green. To do so, he removed his hand from mine
+which I kept on the pommel. I saw that the Past was still prowling,
+and it behooved me not to irritate, not to enrage by any show of
+distrust; nor did I feel any.
+
+He struck the taper. "This is against forest rules," he said, "but for
+this once I shall break them."
+
+He held the fresh green of the tiny birch twig in the flame. The young
+life dried within leaf and leaf-bud. The living green hung limp,
+blackened.
+
+"Such was my life when I was young," he said, calmly enough; but,
+suddenly, a dull red flush showed beneath the clear brown of his
+cheeks. It mounted to temples, forehead, even to the roots of his hair
+where a fine sweat broke out.
+
+And, seeing that, I dared--I could bear the sight no longer:--I took my
+hand from the pommel and laid it over the poor blackened twig, crushing
+it in my palm; hiding it from his sight, from mine.
+
+I believe he understood the entire significance of my action; for he
+turned his hand instantly, palm upwards, and caught mine in it. The
+limp bit of foliage lay between the two palms. He looked at me
+steadily; not a flickering of the eye, not a twitch of the eyelid.
+
+"I lost the woman I loved--how I lost her I need not say. That's all.
+But I have answered you."
+
+"Yes--but--"
+
+"What? Speak out--you must," he said hastily, with the first outward
+sign of nervous irritation.
+
+"Is--is she dead?"
+
+I felt my whole future was at stake when I put that question.
+
+"Yes!"--a pause,--"are you answered fully now?"
+
+"Fully.--Let me have the twig."
+
+He released my hand. I looked at the bit of birch closely,
+scrutinizingly. I found what I was hoping to find: a tiny sign of
+life, a wee nub of green; something ready, unseared, for another year.
+
+"I think I 'll take it home," I said, as if interested only in botany;
+"I find there is life left in it--a tiny bud that may be a shoot in
+time. I 'll see what I can do with it; the experiment is worth trying."
+
+He smiled for answer. He understood. The beast of the Past was again
+in its lair. I regained my usual good spirits and proposed that we see
+Mrs. Boucher's flower gardens before we turned homewards.
+
+"I like to hear you use that word--it is a new one for me."
+
+"For me, too; and if you don't object I would like you to know why it
+means so much to me. You see I am anticipating the personal questions."
+
+"I want to know--all that I may."
+
+"It is your right, now that I am in your home. Shall I find you in the
+office this evening?"
+
+"Yes; but rather late. Shall we say ten? I shall not be at home for
+porridge."
+
+"Any time will do."
+
+We rode out into the open, where the horses cantered quickly along the
+highroad to Farmeress Boucher's. There I dismounted to visit her
+gardens and bee-hives and share her enthusiasm over the new industry.
+
+We gave our horses the rein on the homeward way and rode in silence,
+except for one remark from Mr. Ewart.
+
+"We have not been over the roads, and Cale will be disappointed. We
+will go another time."
+
+"That will do just as well; I only want to be able to mark the progress
+in September when we return from camp."
+
+It was supper time when we reached the manor, but Mr. Ewart did not
+stay for any. He was off again--"on business" he said.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+"What shall I tell him? How shall I tell him? Shall what I tell him
+be all, or garbled? Is there any need to mention my mother? Shall I
+confess to non-knowledge of my father's name? What is it, after all,
+to him, who and what they were? It is I, Marcia Farrell, in whom his
+interest centres."
+
+I thought hard and thought long when I found myself alone after nine in
+my room. I came at last to the conclusion that there was no need to
+bring in my mother's name into anything I might have to say to him--not
+yet. I regretted that he was not present that evening when Cale told
+the terrible story of her short life. It would have been all
+sufficient for me to say to him after that, "I am her daughter." Only
+once, on the occasion of making myself known, had I mentioned her to
+Cale; not once referred to her, or her desperate course since that
+narration. And Cale, moreover, had sealed our lips--the four of us. I
+had no wish to speak of what was so long past. But, sometime, I
+intended to ask Cale if George Jackson ever obtained a divorce from my
+mother, and when. In a way, what people are apt to consider a
+birthright depended on his answer.
+
+Again and again during that hour of concentrated thought, there surged
+up into consciousness, like a repeating wave of undertone, the
+realization that all that belonged to a quarter of a century ago, all,
+all past; done with; their accounts settled. They were forgotten,
+mostly, by everyone; forgiven, perhaps, by the few, including Cale.
+Why should what my mother did, or did not do, figure as a factor in my
+present and future life? I determined to take my stand with Mr. Ewart
+on this, and this alone.
+
+I was sitting by the open window in the soft June dark and, while
+thinking, deliberating, weighing facts, choosing them, defining my
+position to myself, I was aware that I was listening to catch the first
+distant thud of a horse's hoofs approaching the manor from--somewhere.
+The night was clear but dark. There was no wind. I rose from my chair
+and leaned out, stemming both hands on the window ledge. Far away,
+somewhere on the highroad above the bridge, I heard the long drawn note
+of an automobile horn, and for the first time since my coming to
+Lamoral! I listened intently; the machine was coming nearer. At last,
+I could hear voices in the still night. There was another note of
+warning, sweet, mellow, far-reaching. I leaned still farther out in
+order to see if I could catch a glimpse of the light, for I knew it was
+coming towards the manor. It was a curious thing--but just that sound
+of an automobile, that action of mine in the dark warmth of a summer
+night, reacted in consciousness. The motor power invoked the
+perceptive--and I saw myself as I was nine months before, leaning out
+from my "old Chelsea" attic window into the sickening sultry heat of
+mid-September, and shaking my puny fist at the great city around me!
+
+For a moment I relived that hour and the six following. Then, in a
+flash of comprehension, I saw my way to tell the master of Lamoral
+something of any very self--of myself alone: I would put into his hand
+the journal in which I wrote for the last time on that memorable night,
+when the course of my life was altered, its channel deepened and
+widened by my acceptance of the place "at service" in Lamoral--the
+Seigniory of Lamoral.
+
+The automobile was coming up the driveway. Underbrush and undergrowth
+having been removed by Cale, I caught through the opening the bright
+gleam of its acetylene lamps. It stopped at the door; I could not
+distinguish the voices, for the throb of its engine continued. A
+moment--it was off again. I heard the front door open and close. He
+was at home and alone.
+
+I lighted my lamp; opened my trunk and took from the bottom the
+journal, the two blank books. I waited a few minutes till I heard the
+clock in the kitchen strike ten; then, softly opening my door, I went
+down the corridor, down stairs into the living-room, now wholly dark,
+and moved cautiously, in order not to stumble against the furniture, to
+the office door which was dosed. I rapped softly. It was flung wide
+open. The Master of Lamoral was standing on the threshold of the
+brilliantly lighted room, with both hands extended to welcome me.
+
+"I was waiting for you."
+
+But I did not give him mine. Instead, I laid the two blank books in
+his outstretched palms.
+
+"What's this?" he said, surprised and, it seemed, not wholly pleased.
+
+"Something of me I want you to give your whole attention to when it is
+convenient; it is my way of answering those personal unput questions.
+Good night."
+
+He looked at me strangely for a moment, then at the books in his two
+hands, as if doubtful about accepting them without further explanation
+on my part.
+
+"Good night," I said again, smiling at his perplexity.
+
+"I suppose it must be good night to one part of you, the corporal, at
+least; but not to this other," he said, with an answering smile. "Who
+knows but that I may say good morning to this?"--indicating the
+journal--"I shall not sleep until I have read it. So good night to
+this part of you standing before me--and thanks for giving this other
+part of yourself into my hands."
+
+For the fraction of a minute I hesitated to go. It was so pleasant
+standing there on the threshold of the room I had furnished for
+him--the room that found favor with every one who entered it; so
+pleasant to know that he and I were alone there together with the
+intimate recollection of the afternoon in the forest between us. I had
+to exercise all my fortitude of common sense to rescue me from
+overdoing things, from lingering or entering.
+
+I beat a hurried retreat through the living-room. I knew that he was
+still standing on the threshold, for the flood of light from the office
+was undimmed. The door must have been open when I reached the upper
+landing on the stairs; then, in the perfect quiet of the darkened
+house, I heard him shut it--so shutting himself in with that other part
+of me.
+
+I wondered what he would think of that intangible presence? Long after
+I was in bed I could not sleep. Was he reading it through by course,
+or dipping into it here and there as I did on that night nine months
+ago? Would he, could he, placed as he was, understand something of my
+struggle?
+
+I lost myself in conjecture. I opened my door a little way, for a
+"cross draft", I said to myself, so lying gently; in reality it was to
+enable me to hear when Mr. Ewart should come up to his room. I
+listened for some sound. I heard nothing but the indefinite murmur of
+summer-night woodsy whisperings. The kitchen clock struck the time for
+four successive hours--and then there was a faint heralding of dawn.
+At three the woods showed dark against the sky. My straining ears
+caught the sound of a door closing somewhere about the house. I heard
+the soft pattering of the dogs running to and fro without it--then
+silence, broken only by a cock crowing lustily out beyond the barns.
+
+He had gone out, and he had not come upstairs.
+
+Of the latter I made sure when I rose, sleepy and heavy-eyed, at seven
+that June morning, and looked into the wide open door of his room in
+passing. He had not used it.
+
+For weeks, yes, for months, he never mentioned that night or the
+journal. He never spoke of keeping or returning it. So far as I
+actually knew he might not have read it; but I was aware of a change in
+his manner to me. His kindness and thoughtfulness for his household
+were universal; they included me. From that day, however, when he made
+his appearance at breakfast, immaculate and seemingly as fresh as if
+from a good sleep, I became the object of his special thought, his
+special solicitude.
+
+I was sure Cale noticed this at once. It dawned upon Jamie slowly but
+surely, and a more bewildered youth I have never seen. I knew he was
+trying to rhyme ever present facts with my sentiment about leaving
+Lamoral as expressed to him so recently. Mrs. Macleod, if she
+perceived the change in Mr. Ewart's manner towards me, gave no sign
+that she did--and I was grateful to her. She and I were much together,
+for we were busy getting ready for the camp outing. We were to start
+within ten days. The Doctor wrote me that he envied me the extra four
+weeks; he promised his friend to be with him the first of August.
+
+When all was in readiness, Mr. Ewart, with the load of camp belongings,
+left three days in advance of us. We were to meet him at Roberval.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+In the wilds of the Upper Saguenay! By the lake that, in this
+narration at least, shall have no name. It is long, narrow, winding at
+its southern extremity; at its northern, it is expanded pool-like among
+forest-covered heights the reflection of which darkens and apparently
+deepens it where its waters touch the marginal wilderness! In camp by
+the margin of the lake, beneath some ancient pines, rare in that
+region, and surrounded by the spicy fragrance of balsam, spruce and
+cedar, that came to us warm from the depths of the seemingly
+illimitable forest behind us!
+
+What a day, that one of our arrival! We journeyed by steamer across
+Lake St. John. We came by canoe on the river, by portage; and again by
+canoe on river or lake, as it happened. We camped for one night in the
+open. On the second day there were several portages; many of our camp
+belongings were borne on the backs of sturdy Montagnais, friends of old
+André, and led by André the Second, a strapping youth of sixty. There
+followed a journey of nine miles up the lake, our lake; and, then, at
+last, in the glow of sunset, we had sight of old André coming to
+welcome us in his canoe that floated, a "brown leaf", on the golden
+waters! I heard the soft grating of the seven keels on the clear
+shining yellow sands of a tiny cove--and Mr. Ewart was first ashore,
+helping each of us out, welcoming each to this special bit of his
+beloved Canadian earth.
+
+"Our home for ten weeks, Miss Farrell," he exclaimed, giving me both
+hands. "Steady with your foot--you must learn to know the caprices of
+your own canoe--"
+
+"My own?"
+
+"Yes, this is yours for the season; we don't poach much on one
+another's canoe preserves here in Canada. This is our fleet."
+
+"The whole seven?"
+
+"Yes; André the First and André the Second have three between them, big
+ones; you, Jamie and I have one each, and there is one for Mrs. Macleod
+if she will do me the honor of allowing me to teach her to paddle."
+
+"This is great, mother!" said Jamie who had not ceased to wring old
+André's hand since the two found firm footing. "But first I must teach
+her to swim, Ewart."
+
+Poor Mrs. Macleod! I doubt if her idea of camping out was wholly
+rose-colored at that moment, for she was tired with the excitement, and
+constant travel in canoe and on foot of the last two days.
+
+"The camp will be the safest place for me at present," she said, trying
+to appear cheerful, but glancing ruefully at the three rough board
+huts, gray and weather beaten.
+
+"You 've done nobly, Mrs. Macleod, I appreciate your effort; and if you
+'ll take immediate possession of the right hand camp--it's yours and
+Miss Farrell's--I hope you will find a little comfort even in this
+wilderness. I 'll just settle with these Montagnais comrades, for
+after supper they will be on their way back to Roberval." Jamie
+interrupted him to say:
+
+"Mother, here 's André, André, mon vieux camarade. This is my mother,
+André; I told you about her last year."
+
+Old André's hand, apparently as steady as her own, was extended to meet
+Mrs. Macleod's. I saw how expressive was that handclasp. The only
+words she spoke were in her rather halting French:
+
+"My son's comrade--he is mine, I hope, André."
+
+What a smile illumined that parchment face! It was good to see in the
+wilderness; it was humanly comprehensive of the entire situation.
+
+"This is Miss Farrell," said Jamie; "she lives with us, André, in
+Lamoral."
+
+Never shall I forget the look, the voice, the words with which he made
+me welcome.
+
+"I have waited many years for you to come. I am content, _moi_."
+
+He heaved a long sigh of satisfaction. I think only Mrs. Macleod heard
+the words, for Jamie had run up to the camp. André took our special
+suit cases and carried them to the hut.
+
+We took possession and found everything needed for our comfort. Tired
+as we were, we could not rest until we had unpacked and settled
+ourselves with something like regularity for the night. And, oh, that
+first supper in the open! The sun was setting behind the forest; the
+lake waters, touched with faint color on the farther shore, were
+without a ripple; the ancient pines above us quiet. And, oh, that
+first deep sleep on my bed of balsam spruce! Oh, that first awakening
+in the early morning, the glory of sunrise, the sparkle and dance of
+the lake waters in my eyes!
+
+Oh, that joy of living! I experienced it then in its fulness for the
+first time; and my sleep was more refreshing, my awakening more joyful,
+because of the near presence of the man I loved with all my heart.
+
+It was a new heaven for me--because it was a new earth!
+
+While dressing that first morning, André's welcoming words came back to
+me: "I have waited many years for you to come." And the look on his
+face. What did he mean? I recalled that Jamie quoted him, almost in
+those very words, when he told us of that episode of "forest love"
+which bore fruit in the wilderness of the Upper Saguenay.
+
+Why should he welcome me with just those words? How many years had he
+"waited"? Had there been no woman in camp since then? It was hardly
+possible. I determined to ask Mr. Ewart, as soon as I should have the
+opportunity, if there had been women here before us, and to question
+André, also, as to what he meant by his words, but not until I should
+know him better. He would tell me.
+
+And André told me, but it was after long weeks of intimate acquaintance
+with the forest and with each other; after the fact that I was becoming
+all in all to the master of Lamoral, was patent to each of my friends
+in camp. I saw no attempt on Mr. Ewart's part to hide this fact. I
+believe I should have despised him if he had. Yet never once during
+those first five weeks did he mention my journal. Rarely was I alone
+with him; twice only on the trails through the forest; once in the
+canoe to the lower end of the lake and on the return; that was all.
+Never a word of love crossed his lips--but his thought of me, his
+manner, his care of me, his provision for my enjoyment of each day, his
+delight in my delight in his "camp", his pleasure in the fact that I
+was not only regaining what I had lost by the fearful illness of the
+year before--Doctor Rugvie told him of that--but storing up within my
+not over powerful body, balm, sunshine, ozone, and health abundant for
+the future.
+
+And what did I not learn from him! And from André with whom I spent
+hours out of every day! What forest lore; what ways of cunning from
+the shy forest dwellers; what tricks of line and bait for the
+capricious trout, the pugnacious _ouananiche_, the lazy pickerel! What
+haunts of beaver I was shown! How I watched them by the hour, lying
+prone in my Khaki suit of drilling,--short skirt, high laced-boots,--my
+feminine "bottes sauvages" as André called them,--and bloomers,--from
+some cedar covert.
+
+Those five weeks were one long dream-reality of forest life, and this
+was despite flies and mosquitoes which we treated in a scientific
+manner.
+
+One of the Montagnais brought us the mail once a week from Roberval.
+The first of August he brought up a telegram that announced the Doctor
+would be with us the next day. Mr. Ewart decided to meet him at the
+last portage. André the Second went with him. They would be back just
+after dark that same day, he said. André the First was left to reign
+supreme in camp during his absence.
+
+"I am only as old as my heart, mademoiselle; you know that is young,
+and you make it younger while you are here," he said that afternoon,
+when he and I were trimming the camp with forest greens for the
+Doctor's coming, and Jamie was laying a beacon pile near the shore,
+just north of the camp where there was no underbrush or trees. André
+told us its light could be seen far down the lake.
+
+After supper I lay down in my hammock-couch, swung beneath the pines at
+the back of the camp. As I rocked there in the twilight, counting off
+the minutes of waiting by my heartbeats, I heard Jamie and André
+talking as they smoked together, and rested after the exertions of the
+day.
+
+"How came you to think of it, André?"
+
+"How came le bon Dieu to give me eyes--and sight like a hawk?"
+
+"But why are you so sure?"
+
+"Why? Because what I see, I see. What I hear, I hear. It is the same
+voice I hear in the forest; the same laugh like the little forest
+brook; the same face that used to look at itself in the pool and smile
+at what it saw there; the same eyes--non, they are different. I found
+those others in the wood violets; these match the young chestnuts just
+breaking from the burrs after the first frost."
+
+"But, André, it was so many years ago."
+
+"To me it is as yesterday, when I see her paddling the canoe and
+swaying like a reed in the gentle wind."
+
+"And you never knew her name?"
+
+"No. She was his 'little bird', his 'wood-dove' to him; and to her he
+was 'mon maître', always that--'my master' you say in English which I
+have forgotten, so long I am in the woods. They were so happy--it was
+always so with them."
+
+There was a few minutes of silence, then Jamie spoke.
+
+"Has Mr. Ewart ever spoken to you about what you told us that night in
+camp, André--about that 'forest love'?"
+
+"No, the seignior has never spoken, but,"--he puffed vigorously at his
+pipe,--"he has no need to speak of it; he thinks it now."
+
+"Why, now?" There was eager curiosity in Jamie's voice, and I knew
+well in what direction his thoughts were headed. I smiled to myself,
+and listened as eagerly as he for André's answer.
+
+"I have eyes that see; it is again the 'forest love' with him--"
+
+"Again?" Jamie interrupted him; his voice was suddenly a sharp
+staccato. "What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean what I say. The forest knows its own. She has come again; and
+my old eyes, that still see like the hawk, are glad at the sight of
+her--and of him. Have I not prayed all these years that Our Lady of
+the Snows might bless her--and _her child_?" There was no mistaking
+the emphasis on the last words.
+
+"André,"--Jamie's voice dropped to an excited whisper, but I caught
+it,--"you mean that?"
+
+"I mean _that_," he said.
+
+I heard him rise; I heard his steps soft on the cedar-strewn path.
+Jamie must have followed him, for in a moment I heard him calling from
+the shore:
+
+"Mother, Marcia, come on! André says it's time to light the beacon."
+
+I joined Mrs. Macleod, and in the dusk we made our way over to the pile
+of wood.
+
+"You are to light it, mademoiselle," said André, handing me the flaming
+pine knot. I obeyed mechanically, for André's words were filling all
+the night with confusing sounds that seemed to echo conflictingly from
+shore to shore.
+
+"Just here, by the birch bark, mademoiselle."
+
+The beacon caught; there was no wind. The bark snapped, curled and
+shrivelled; the branches crackled; the little flames leaped, the fire
+crept higher and higher till it lighted our faces and the waters in the
+foreground. We waited and watched till we heard a faint "hurrah", and
+soon, in the distance, a calcium light burned red and long. We went
+down again to the cove. Jamie was with his mother; I walked behind
+with André.
+
+"André," I whispered to him, "when you first saw me you said, 'I have
+waited many years for you to come'. Why did you say that?"
+
+"Why? Because I desired to speak the truth."
+
+"Am I like some one you have seen before? Tell me."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Who was she?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"Will you tell me sometime what you do know of her?"
+
+"Yes, I will tell you."
+
+"Soon?"
+
+"When you will?"
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"As you please. I will take you to the tree, my tree--and to hers; you
+shall see for yourself."
+
+"Thank you, André."
+
+"I must watch the fire," he said, and retraced his steps. Dear old
+André! It was such a pleasure to be able to talk with him in his own
+tongue.
+
+We heard the dip of the paddles, a call--our camp call. In a few
+minutes the Doctor was with us.
+
+I made excuse the next afternoon to go fishing with André. I kept
+saying to myself:
+
+"This thing is impossible; there can be no connection between me and
+any woman who may have been here in camp, and Mr. Ewart says several
+have been here to his knowledge. What if I do look like some other
+woman who, years ago, lived and loved here in this wilderness? What
+have I to do with her? I 'll settle this matter once for all and to my
+satisfaction; André will tell me. He is romantic; and that girl made a
+deep impression on him, especially in those circumstances. Now the
+thought of her has become a fixed idea."
+
+The Doctor sulked a little because he was not of my party.
+
+"I don't approve of your _solitude à deux_ parties; they 're against
+camp rules."
+
+"Just for this once. André is going to show me something I have wanted
+to see ever since I came."
+
+He was still growling after I was in the canoe.
+
+"Only this once!" I cried, waving my hand to him before we dipped the
+paddles.
+
+"She used to wave her hand like that," said André, paddling slowly
+until I got well regulated to his--what I called--rhythm.
+
+I stared at him. Was this an obsession with him? It began to look
+like it.
+
+We landed on the north shore of the lake. I followed him along a
+trail, that led through a depression between two heights, upwards to a
+heavily wooded small plateau overlooking the lake. I followed his lead
+for another quarter of a mile through these woods. I could see no
+trail. Then we came into a path, a good one. I remarked on it.
+
+"Yes: I have made it these many years. I come here every year."
+
+We heard the rush of a near-by torrent. The air swept cool over
+through the woods and struck full on our faces. In a few minutes we
+were facing it--a singing mass of water pouring down the smooth face of
+a rock like the apron of a dam; the face was inclined at an angle of
+fifty degrees. The torrent plunged into a basin set deep among rocks.
+Above this pool, above the surrounding trees, towered one great pine.
+André led me to it.
+
+"I have been coming here so many years--count," he said, pointing to
+the notches from the butt upwards to a height beyond my reach.
+
+This was the tree about which Jamie had sung, notched year after year
+by André, since he was ten, that he might know his age. And what an
+age! I counted: "Eighty notches."
+
+"Oh, André, all those years?"
+
+"But yes--and so many more." He held up his ten fingers.
+
+"And Mère Guillardeau will be a hundred her next birthday?"
+
+He nodded. "Yes; my sister is no longer in her first youth."
+
+He began to count backwards and downwards. I counted after him:
+"Twenty-seven." By the last notch there was a deep gash.
+
+"What is this?"
+
+"Twenty-seven years ago she was here, she whom you are like. I have
+waited twenty-seven years."
+
+"Tell me about it; I am ready to hear."
+
+"Come here." He beckoned to me from a group of trees, tamaracks, on
+the other side of the path. He went behind one. I followed him.
+
+"Read," he said. And I read with difficulty, although the lettering
+was cut deep, one word "Heureuse", and a date "1883. 9. 10."
+
+"'Heureuse'," I repeated. "Happy--happy; oh, I know how happy!"
+
+He looked at me significantly for a moment, and I knew that his "fixed
+idea" had possession of him. He regarded me, Marcia Farrell, as the
+child of that "forest love" of nearly twenty-seven years ago.
+
+"You say true; they were happy." Without preliminaries he told me the
+story he had related to Mr. Ewart and Jamie last year.
+
+"Has Mr. Ewart or Jamie ever seen this tree, André?"
+
+"No. I have told them both of my tree and the notches--but never of
+this other. You are the first to see it since her blue eyes watched
+him cut those letters. I have shown it to neither my young comrade nor
+to the seignior."
+
+"And you say I am so like her?"
+
+"As like as if you were her own child?"
+
+He put up his hand suddenly to "feel the wind". There was a sudden
+strange movement among the tree tops.
+
+"Come, come quickly, mademoiselle; we must get back. The wind is
+shifting to the southwest. It is blowing hot. I know the sign. The
+seignior will not want you to be out even with old André with this wind
+on the lake."
+
+I looked at the pool; it was black. The singing waters of the torrent
+showed unearthly white against the intensified green. The sky became
+suddenly overcast with swiftly moving clouds. In a moment the wind was
+all about us; the sound of its going through the forest filled the air
+with a confused roar. The great trees were already swaying, as we ran
+down the trail to the lake--and found Mr. Ewart just drawing his canoe
+and ours high up and away from the already uneasy water. He was
+breathing quickly.
+
+"There 's a storm coming, André--we saw it from the other side of the
+lake; coming hard, too, from the southwest. The lake will not be safe
+till it is over. We will stay here in the open even if we get wet. It
+is not safe in the woods; the trees are already breaking. I hear the
+crash of the branches."
+
+"And the seignior did not trust mademoiselle with me?" Evidently he
+was disgruntled. "True, I am no longer in my first youth" (I saw Mr.
+Ewart suppress a smile), "but years give caution, seignior--and I have
+many more than you."
+
+Mr. Ewart laughed pleasantly. The sound of it dissipated André's
+anger--the quick resentment of old age.
+
+"True, mon vieux camarade, you have the years; but I stand between you
+and mademoiselle when it comes to a matter of years. I must care for
+you both."
+
+"I am content that it should be so, _moi_." He squatted by the canoes
+which he lashed to a small boulder.
+
+No rain fell, but the wind was terrific in its force. We were obliged
+to lie flat on the sand. The air was filled with confused torrents of
+sound, so deafening that we could not make ourselves heard one to the
+other. It was over in ten minutes. The sky cleared, the sun shone;
+the lake waters subsided; the sounds died away, and very suddenly. In
+the minute's calm that followed it seemed as if, in all that land,
+there were no stirring of a leaf, a twig, or fin of fish, or wing of
+fowl. There was again a sudden change of wind, and we knew the very
+moment when the upper air currents, cool and crisp with a touch of
+Arctic frost, swept down upon the earth and brought refreshment. In
+another quarter of an hour there was no trace of the storm on the lake;
+but behind us, on each side of the trail, we saw great trees uprooted.
+
+"I can leave you and André now, and with a clear conscience, to your
+fishing," he said, as he ran down his canoe.
+
+I felt positively grateful to him for not insisting on taking me back
+with him; it would have hurt old André's pride as well as feelings.
+
+"We 'll bring home fish enough for supper," I said with fine amateur
+assurance.
+
+"I warn you 'We are seven' plus the two Montagnais; they stay to-night."
+
+"If I don't make good, André will." And André smiled in what I thought
+a particularly significant way.
+
+We watched the swift course of his canoe over the lake. Just as he was
+about to round a small promontory, that would hide him from our sight,
+he stood up, and swung the dripping paddle high above his head. I
+waved my hand in answering greeting.
+
+André turned to me with a smile. "The seignior has a look of that
+other--but he is not the same."
+
+What an obsession it was with this man of ninety! I watched him
+preparing lines and bait. The canoe had passed from sight.
+
+"André," I said, speaking on the impulse of the moment, "I want to go
+back to camp."
+
+"As you please, mademoiselle. I can fish on that side as well as
+this." Upon that he put up his pipe,--I verily believe it was still
+alive and his pockets must have been lined with asbestos,--and we
+embarked on our little voyage.
+
+I used my paddle mechanically, for I was thinking: "Is it for one
+moment probable I have any connection with that girl? Is that past, I
+am trying so hard to eliminate from my life, to present itself here as
+a quantity with which I must reckon--here in my life in this
+wilderness? Is there no avoiding it? André is so sure. Jamie knows
+he is sure; Mr. Ewart knows this too. They can say nothing to me about
+it--it is a matter of such delicacy; and they do not know who I am;
+even my journal does not tell that, and I knew this when I gave it into
+his hands.
+
+"But the Doctor--he knows. He knows from Cale and Delia Beaseley. He
+knows who I am; in all probability knows this very day, from those
+papers in his possession, my father's name; but he knows nothing of
+this new complication that André has brought about by his insistence
+that I am like some woman who camped here many years ago--
+
+"Twenty-seven years! That must have been just before I was born--and
+the date--and that word 'heureuse' with a queer capital H--oh--"
+
+Perhaps it was a groan that escaped my lips, for, like a searchlight,
+the logic of events illumined each factor in that tragedy in which my
+mother--
+
+My paddle fouled--the canoe careened--
+
+"Sit still, for the love of God, sit still!" André fairly shrieked at
+me.
+
+"It's all right, André," I said quietly, to calm him.
+
+"They say the lake has no bottom just here, mademoiselle--and if I had
+lost you for him--" he muttered, and continued to mutter, easing
+himself of his fright by swearing softly. He soon regained his
+composure; but was still frowning when I glanced behind me.
+
+What had this searchlight shown me?
+
+Just this:--that "heureuse" is French for happy--and the capital made
+it a proper name, "Happy". This word told me its own story. According
+to what Cale had said--and I had all detailed information from him--no
+trace of my mother was found although detectives had been put to work.
+She had simply dropped out of sight, not to come to the surface until
+that night in December when she tried to end her young life from the
+North River pier. Was she not for a part of that year and three months
+here in these wilds?
+
+Oh, what a far, far cry it must have been from this Canadian wilderness
+not made by man, to that other hundreds of miles away--that great
+metropolis, man made!
+
+We paddled for the rest of the way in silence.
+
+
+That evening we sat late around the camp fire, and before we separated
+for the night Mr. Ewart said, turning to me:
+
+"I want a promise from you, Miss Farrell."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Caution, caution!" said the Doctor.
+
+"That you will make no more _solitude à deux_ excursions, as John calls
+them, with old André. He is old, despite his seeming strength, and his
+age is beginning to tell on him. I see that he has failed much since
+last year."
+
+"You 're right there, Gordon; she should not risk it with him," said
+Jamie, emphatically. "I 've noticed the change from last year when I
+have been out with him on the trails. Why, he fell asleep only the
+other day with his line in his hand and his bait in the water!"
+
+"Did you see that?" said Mr. Ewart. "It happened, too, the other day
+with me. I was amazed, but not so much as I was last week when we were
+in the woods making the north trail. He sat down to smoke and,
+actually, his pipe dropped from his hand. I trod out the fire or there
+would have been a blaze. Apparently he was asleep. I watched him for
+an hour, when he seemed to come to himself. It was not a sleep; it was
+a lethargy. You say it is often so, John--the beginning of the end.
+We must not let him know anything of this--dear old André!"
+
+"He is already immortalized in that Odyssey of yours, Jamie. People
+won't forget him, for he lives again in that." The Doctor spoke with
+deep feeling.
+
+"And your promise, Miss Farrell?"
+
+"Since you insist, yes. But it is hard to give it; we have had so much
+pleasure together André and I; we have been great chums--dear old
+André!" Unconsciously I echoed Mr. Ewart's words.
+
+I am sure that was the thought of all of us; our good nights were not
+the merry ones of the last two months. We were saddened at the thought
+that he might not be with us again.
+
+For a moment or two Mr. Ewart and I stood alone by the embers of the
+camp fire; he was covering them with ashes.
+
+"Thank you for your promise. I don't care about experiencing another
+hour like that when I was crossing the lake this afternoon, with a
+young cyclone on its way. I have lost so much of life--I cannot lose
+you."
+
+His speech was abrupt; his voice low, but tense with emotion.
+
+"There will be no need of losing me. I will keep my promise." I spoke
+lightly, but I knew he knew the significance of my words, as I knew
+that of his, for with those words I gave myself to him. I felt
+intuitively that he would not speak of love to me, until he had broken
+completely with that past to which in thought he was still, in part, a
+slave. I was willing to wait patiently for his entire emancipation.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+"Marcia," said the Doctor one morning, after he had been enjoying,
+apparently, every minute of his vacation-life in the open, "will you
+come with me over the north trail as far as Ewart and André have made
+it? I want to show you something I found there the other day."
+
+Before I could answer, Jamie spoke:
+
+"How about your _solitude à deux_ principle, Doctor?"
+
+"It is wise to forget sometimes, Boy. Will you come this morning,
+Marcia?"
+
+I promptly said I would. I saw that he was slightly ruffled at Jamie's
+innocent jest; indeed, ever since his arrival, the Doctor had not been
+wholly like his genial self. Mrs. Macleod noticed it and spoke of it
+to me.
+
+"We don't realize, when we see him enjoying everything with the zest of
+a boy, how much he has on his mind. He told me the other day he must
+cut his vacation short; he is called to the Pacific coast for some of
+his special work."
+
+I said nothing at the time, because I could not agree with her. I
+noticed that, at times, there was a slight constraint in his manner
+towards me--me who was willing for him to know all there was to know,
+except the fact that I loved his friend. I was convinced that he
+wanted to air his special knowledge of me with me alone; that after he
+had freed his mind to me, there would be no constraint.
+
+Twice I caught him looking at Mr. Ewart, as if he were diagnosing his
+case, and I laughed inwardly. From time to time I surprised the same
+expression on his face when he was silent, smoking and, at the same
+time, watching me weave my baskets under the tutelage of a Montagnaise,
+the squaw of our postman. Mr. Ewart heard me express the wish to learn
+this handicraft, and within a week my teacher was provided. She
+remained in camp five days. Perhaps this opened the Doctor's eyes.
+Perhaps Jamie had spoken with him about what was evident to all. The
+Doctor grew more and more silent, more thoughtful, less inclined to
+jest with me. Added to this was the thought that we must break camp
+sooner than Mr. Ewart had intended. The "homing sense" was making
+itself felt, for September was with us. We saw some land birds going
+over early, and the first frost was a heavy one.
+
+The Doctor and I followed the north trail for half a mile; then the
+Doctor bade me rest, for it was rough going.
+
+"Marcia," he said abruptly, sitting down in front of me, his back
+against a tree, his hands clasping his knees, "let's have it out."
+
+I saw he felt ill at ease and could but wonder, for, after all, it was
+only I with whom he had to deal.
+
+"I am ready. I 've only been waiting for you all these weeks."
+
+"Do you know that I have been to Delia Beaseley for certain
+information?"
+
+"Yes; she wrote me. I wrote her to tell you all she knew of me."
+
+He seemed to breathe more freely after my speaking so frankly, as if I
+really would welcome anything he might have to say.
+
+"Ah--this clears the atmosphere; we can talk. Of course, you know with
+Cale's story dovetailing so perfectly into what I told you on my first
+making acquaintance with you, I simply had to put two and two together;
+besides, your smile was a constant reminder of some one whom I had
+known or met--but whom I could not recall try as hard as I might. The
+result of it all was that I went to Delia Beaseley and put a few
+questions. Now,"--he hesitated a moment; he seemed to brace himself
+mentally in order to continue,--"do you know positively whether your
+father is living or dead? Have you ever known?"
+
+"No; but dead to me even if living--that is why I said I was an orphan."
+
+"I understand; but you don't know either the one or the other for a
+fact?"
+
+"No; I have no idea."
+
+"You never knew his name?"
+
+"No; and none of the family knew it--you know what Cale said. He gave
+me the details for the first time."
+
+"You do not know, then, that I have in my possession some papers that
+might give the name?"
+
+"Yes; I know that. But I told Delia Beaseley not to mention that fact
+to you, or the papers in any way."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"_Why?_"
+
+I think all the bitterness of my past must have been concentrated in
+the tone in which I uttered that syllable. He did not press for the
+reason, and I did not offer to give it.
+
+"Did it ever occur to you that your father might be living?"
+
+"I have no father, living or dead," I replied passionately. "I own to
+no such possession. Does a man, simply because he chooses to pursue
+his pleasure, unmindful of results, acquire the right to fatherhood
+when he assumes no responsibility for his act?"
+
+"Marcia, poor child, has life been so hard for you? Has nothing
+compensated for just living?"
+
+He knew he was searching my very soul. I knew it; and the thought of
+my joy in life, in just living, because of my love that was filling
+every minute of the day and part of the night with a happiness so
+intense that, sometimes, I feared it could not endure from its sheer
+intensity, brought the tears to my eyes, softened my heart, turned for
+the moment the bitter to sweet.
+
+I answered, but with lips that trembled in spite of my efforts at
+control: "Yes, there is compensation, full, free, abundant. For all
+that life has taken out of me, it has replaced ten thousand fold.
+Perhaps I never had what we call 'life' till now."
+
+"Oh, child, I have seen this happiness in your face--would to God I
+might add to it!" His face worked strangely with emotion. "Marcia,
+dear, I am the friend, but also the surgeon. I have to use the knife--"
+
+"But not on me--not on me!" I cried out in protest. "Don't tell me you
+know who my father is or was--don't, if you are my friend; don't speak
+his name to me."
+
+"Why not, Marcia?"
+
+"I must not hear it; I will not hear it--will not, do you understand?
+I am trying to forget that past, live in my present joy--don't, please
+don't tell me." I covered my eyes with my hands.
+
+He drew down my hands from before my face.
+
+"Listen, my dear girl. There are rights--your rights I have every
+reason to believe, and legal, as it seems to me. This whole matter
+involves a point of honor with me. Let me explain--don't shrink so
+from hearing me; I won't mention any names. Let me ask you a
+question:--Did Delia Beaseley tell you there was a marriage certificate
+among those papers?"
+
+"Yes, but, thank God, she could not remember the name! It has been so
+many years--and all before I was born."
+
+"But I know it. It stands in black and white, and through that unlying
+witness you have rights--that money, you know--"
+
+"The 'conscience money'?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It is tainted, tainted, and my mother's blood is on it--I will not
+touch it. I will not have it. I have taken wages in Lamoral because
+Jamie assured me the money was your own--not one penny of it from that
+fund."
+
+"Yes, it is my own, and I never made a better investment with so few
+dollars. But, Marcia--"
+
+He hesitated; his face looked tense; his voice sounded as if strained
+to breaking. The knife was hurting him almost as much as it hurt me.
+I looked at him.
+
+"Don't look at me so; I can't do my duty if you do."
+
+"I don't want you to do your duty so far as I am concerned. I want you
+to show your friendship for me, by not telling me anything that you may
+know."
+
+"But, Marcia, it is time--"
+
+"But not now--oh, not now! You don't know what I have borne--I can
+bear no more--" I spoke brokenly.
+
+"My dear girl, what can you tell me that I do not know, I who was with
+your mother in her last hour--"
+
+I broke down then, sobbing, trying to explain but only half coherently:
+
+"She was here--twenty-seven years ago--with André--he showed me the
+tree--"
+
+"Marcia, calm yourself. Tell me, if you can, just what you mean."
+
+I struggled to regain my self-control, and when I could speak without
+sobbing, I explained in a few words my reason for thinking my mother
+was here long years before me with the man who was my father.
+
+The Doctor listened intently.
+
+"This makes the past clearer to me, Marcia, but at the same time it
+complicates the present, the future--"
+
+"Oh, don't let's talk about past or future!" I cried, nervously
+irritated by this constant reappearance of new combinations of my past
+in my present, and possible future. "Let me enjoy what is given me to
+enjoy now--it is so much!"
+
+"I must see my way, Marcia. A duty remains a duty, even if the doing
+of it be postponed. I am your friend. I cannot let you wreck your
+life---"
+
+"Wreck my life? What do you mean?" I demanded sharply. "How can I
+wreck it when for the first time I am in a safe harbor?"
+
+He could not, or would not, answer me directly.
+
+"Marcia, many a time when I have an operation to perform, the issue of
+which seems to me to be a clear one of death, I grow faint-hearted and
+say to myself: 'I will let the trouble take its natural course--it is
+death in the end, and, at least, not under my knife.' Then I get a
+grip on myself; look my duty squarely in the face--and do the best that
+lies in my trained hand, in my keen sight, in my knowledge of this
+frail body in which we dwell for a time. And sometimes it happens,
+that, instead of the issue death, of which I felt certain, there is
+life as the desired outcome--and I rejoice. I asked an old soldier
+once, a veteran of the Civil War, a three years man,--he is still
+living and now a minister of God's word,--how he felt in battle? Could
+he describe his feelings to me?
+
+"'Yes,' he said, 'I can. I don't know how it is with other men, but I
+used to have but one fear, that of being a coward. I prayed not to
+be.' That is the way I feel now towards you in relation to this
+matter. But for the present we will drop the subject; we will not
+discuss it further."
+
+He changed the subject at once, and I was grateful to him. He began to
+speak of Jamie.
+
+"He is getting very restless. He told me you knew something of his
+plans. What do you think of them?"
+
+"You mean his returning to England and settling for the winter in
+London? He told me that before we left Lamoral. I suppose he ought to
+go. At any rate, he is much stronger, better, is n't he?"
+
+"He is n't the same man. The truth is he was plucked away from the
+white scourge as a brand from the burning. I really believe he will
+not go back in the matter of health, although I wish he might remain
+another year here to clinch the matter for his own sake, and mine--"
+
+"And mine. I shall miss him so!"
+
+The Doctor looked at me rather curiously, but did not comment on what I
+said. I was wondering if he were at work reasoning to my conclusion
+about Mrs. Macleod's leaving Lamoral.
+
+"Well, my dear girl, it's a break-up all round. That's the worst of
+this camping-out business. Jamie is going so soon--
+
+"Soon? Do you mean he is going to leave Lamoral soon?"
+
+"Yes. He had letters last night from his publishers. The book
+requires his presence in London by September twenty-third. He will
+have to sail by the sixteenth. Mrs. Macleod is joyful at the prospect.
+Jamie told me to tell you. I think he hated to himself. He is very
+fond of you, Marcia."
+
+I smiled at my thoughts.
+
+"No fonder of me than I am of him. He has changed so much in these
+last nine months."
+
+"You, too, see that?"
+
+"Oh, yes, and his mother sees it. He has matured in every way."
+
+The Doctor smiled. "You talk as if you were his grandmother. I 'm
+proud of him, I confess. Had my boy lived--" His voice broke.
+
+"Dear Doctor Rugvie, it is all a wilderness, as Jamie said, is n't it?
+And we 're fortunate to find a trail, like this, that leads to
+camp--and friends," I said, pointing to the newly made path through the
+forest.
+
+"Yes, my dear,--and that reminds me I have n't shown you what I brought
+you here to see. Come."
+
+He penetrated farther into the woods and off the trail to the left.
+There we found a blasted tree in which was a great hollow.
+
+"It is filled with honey, Marcia, wild honey. I wonder that no track
+of bear is to be seen about here."
+
+"Who would ever think of finding such a store of sweet in this poor old
+lightning-blasted tree!" I exclaimed, looking more closely at it.
+"What a feast Bruin will have some day."
+
+"You see there is honey even in the wilderness, Marcia. I wanted to
+convince you that there is such--may you, also, find it so." He turned
+towards the camp, I following his lead.
+
+"By the way," he said, as he walked on rapidly, "do you know anything
+that could have given old André any physical or nervous shock recently?"
+
+"No--I don't recall anything, at least anything that he might feel
+physically. It's just possible a fright I gave him unintentionally
+that day of the storm may have affected him for a time. Why, does he
+show any effect of shock?"
+
+"Yes, decidedly. What was it?"
+
+I told him of my carelessness with the paddle while crossing the lake;
+of the careening of the canoe; of André's terrified shriek and his
+muttered fear of the depth of the lake.
+
+"That must have been it. I felt sure there was some nervous shock."
+
+"Oh, how could I do it! Dear old André--and I of all others!"
+
+"It's his age, Marcia; it was liable to come at any time; this is why
+Ewart felt so anxious about you that day and required the promise. Old
+as he is, he is tough as a pine knot, wiry as witch grass, with great
+powers of endurance, good eyesight, good teeth; he has seemed less than
+seventy till this year. Now he is breaking up. It would not surprise
+me if this were his débâcle."
+
+"I can't bear to think of it. Why must all these changes come at once!
+What am I to do in the midst of this general débâcle?"
+
+"Marcia," he stopped short, turned to face me, "remember that now and
+hereafter when you need a friend you will find one in me. Don't
+hesitate to come to me, to call on me whenever there may be need, or
+when there is no need. I had once, many years ago, not only a son but
+a darling daughter. She would have been about your age--a year
+younger."
+
+I could not thank him, grateful as I was, for I was inwardly rebellious
+that he should feel called upon to offer me the protection of his
+friendship, when he must see that his friend was the only one to give
+me the needed shelter---and that in Lamoral, because he loved me. For
+a moment his words seemed almost an insult to Mr. Ewart.
+
+Suddenly he laughed out--his hearty kindly laugh. It put new heart
+into me.
+
+"What is it?" I asked quickly, ready to respond to a little cheer.
+
+"Ewart is having his surprise too, but domestically. He had word in
+the mail from Cale last night, and according to his account everything
+is going to the dogs at Lamoral. Angélique has elected to fall in love
+with Widower Pierre and he with her. They are to postpone the marriage
+until the seignior returns, but beg he will consider the state of their
+affections and be considerate."
+
+I laughed with him. There was humor in this situation at Lamoral, for
+I had warned Cale before I left how this affair would terminate, and he
+had sniffed at my clairvoyance.
+
+"The truth is, Cale is homesick for the whole household."
+
+"Poor Cale! He is having a hard time. I ought to be at home to help
+him, to comfort him. Our new relationship means that I have found
+another friend."
+
+"And a faithful one."
+
+"You think we shall break camp very soon?"
+
+"Yes. I have to be off to-morrow--"
+
+"To-morrow! Why, you were to stay into the second week of September."
+
+"I have to leave sooner than I planned. The Montagnais brought up a
+telegram with the mail, and my answer goes back with me to-morrow. I
+'ve kept the Montagnais for guide, although I should not fear to risk
+it alone, now that I have been over the route so many times."
+
+"Then, if Mrs. Macleod and Jamie are to sail soon, I must go, too, I
+suppose."
+
+"Yes, Cale needs you; the whole household needs you. I proposed to
+Ewart that we all go together, then there will be no heart-breaking
+goodbys, except to André."
+
+I bit my lip to keep back any inquiry about Mr. Ewart's going with us,
+and was thankful I held my peace for the Doctor continued, tramping
+steadily on ahead of me:
+
+"But now Ewart will remain to the end--"
+
+"But has it come to this?" I cried. I was depressed at the turn of
+events.
+
+The Doctor stopped, turned and faced me, saying gravely:
+
+"It has, Marcia; I read the signs. We shall know when we get back. I
+was with him all last night; there is no help. But Ewart and I did not
+want you and Jamie and Mrs. Macleod to know it--not till morning. You
+thought he was out fishing when we left; so did Jamie. Ewart asked me
+to tell you on our way back."
+
+"André--"
+
+I could not speak another word. The old Canadian had so endeared
+himself to me during the many weeks in the wilds. Added to this was
+the thought of his probable connection with my mother's short-lived
+joy. It was all too sudden.
+
+"It _is_ the débâcle, no mistake about that," I said stolidly, and set
+my teeth together that they should not chatter and betray my weakness
+of spirit.
+
+"Can't I stay and help to nurse him?"
+
+"No, Marcia, that won't do. André lies in a lethargy; his condition
+may not change for days, for weeks, although I doubt this. His son and
+Ewart will do all that is necessary. Ewart will never leave the two
+here alone. You would be an extra care for them. It is now
+exceptionally cold for the season in this latitude; the fall rains may
+set in any time. Don't propose such a thing to Ewart, I beg of you.
+But Ewart remains--that is the kind of friend Ewart is."
+
+The request was too earnest for me not to accede to it with as good a
+grace as possible.
+
+On our return we found that it was as the Doctor had predicted: the old
+guide was unconscious.
+
+Mr. Ewart decided the matter of breaking camp. We were to leave the
+next morning with the Montagnais and André the Second for guides.
+André's son was to accompany us only to the fourth portage. The
+Doctor, with the other Montagnais, was sufficient for the rest of the
+way. The camp belongings were to follow later with Mr. Ewart, whenever
+that should be.
+
+I remember that day as one of dreary confusion--packing, sorting,
+shivering a little in the chill air. The sun shone pale; it failed to
+warm the earth or our bodies. All the forest stirred at times
+uneasily. André's son declared it foretold long cold rains followed by
+sharp frost. And amid all the confusion of the day we could hear the
+undertone of our thought: "Old André is dying". Mr. Ewart would not
+permit us to see him.
+
+"It is better to carry with you only the memory of him as he has looked
+to us during all these weeks--young in his heart, joyful in our
+companionship."
+
+I saw the relief in Mr. Ewart's face when we were ready. He spoke
+cheerily to me who failed to respond with anything resembling
+cheerfulness.
+
+"It's a bad business in camp during the fall rains, and they are
+setting in early this year. I shall know you are safely housed--and
+there is so much to look forward to. Home will be a pleasant place for
+us, won't it?"
+
+"I thought this, also, was home to you--"
+
+"Only so long as you are here; my home henceforth is where you are."
+
+And, hearing those words, despite the chill air, despite the lack of
+warm sunshine, despite the fact that old André lay dying in his tent
+just beyond the camp, despite the fact that Jamie and Mrs. Macleod were
+to leave me alone in Lamoral, that the Doctor was going away for an
+indefinite time, my happiness was at the flood.
+
+For a moment only, we stood there on the shore of the little cove,
+together and alone--and glad to be! We stood there, man and woman
+facing each other, as primeval man and woman may have stood thousands
+of years ago on this oldest piece of the known earth, there in the
+heart of the Canadian wilderness. Something primeval entered into the
+expression of our love for each other; our souls were naked, the one to
+the other; our eyes promised all, the one to the other; our lips were
+ready for their seal of sacrament when the time should come that we
+might give it each to the other without witness.
+
+And no word was spoken, for no word was needed.
+
+The Doctor joined us rather inopportunely and, accounting for the
+situation, made no end of a pother with his traps and his canoe.
+
+Once more Jamie and I asked if we might not take one look at old André,
+but the Doctor put his foot down.
+
+"Better not. Remember him as you last saw him; it will be a memory to
+dwell with--this would not be."
+
+Jamie put on a brave face, but I knew he was ready for a good cry.
+
+"I am not reconciled to say goodby to you here, Gordon," he said.
+
+The two clasped hands.
+
+"Oh, I shall be running over to see you and Mrs. Macleod before long.
+Be sure, Mrs. Macleod, to have my room ready for me next summer in
+Crieff--and don't forget the green canopy over my bed. I have n't
+forgotten it."
+
+She smiled. "I shall never forget your kindness, never; but I can't
+help the longing for home."
+
+"There, there, no more you can't," said the Doctor brusquely. "No more
+leave-takings; they don't set well on my breakfast. We shall all be
+together again soon, please God. The ocean is but a pond and the
+crossing a five days' picnic now-a-days. You may follow us in a few
+days, Ewart. Meanwhile, I 'll see that your household is safely landed
+at Lamoral--if only the rain will hold off, we shall have cause for
+thankfulness," he added fervently. We all knew the Doctor was talking
+against time and parting. "Raincoats all in readiness?" And then, not
+waiting for an answer:
+
+"I shall run up to Lamoral after I get back from San Francisco, Gordon;
+I 'm not sure I shan't return by the Canadian Pacific."
+
+"Good luck, John, and goodby till then," said Mr. Ewart. "Bon voyage,
+Mrs. Macleod. Miss Farrell, I give you carte blanche for all wedding
+preparations. Tell Pierre to order from his tailor, and charge to me.
+I shall give them away.--Macleod, you full-fledged genius,"--he caught
+Jamie's hands in his,--"let me hear from you--a wireless will just suit
+my impatience. Oh, Miss Farrell, may I trouble you to see Mère
+Guillardeau and tell her of André? I will telegraph you before I
+return. Goodby--goodby."
+
+There was a hand-clasp all around again. The Montagnais and André's
+son took their places; pushed off. Our return voyage was begun.
+
+With the dip of the paddles I heard, as an undertone, old André's
+little song he used to sing to us in camp, the little French song that
+Jamie incorporated in his "André's Odyssey":
+
+ "I am going over there, over there,
+ To search for the City of God.
+ If I find over there, over there,
+ What I seek--oh afar, oh afar!--
+ I will sing, when I'm home from afar,
+ Of the wonders and glory of God."
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+Never, never so long as memory lasts, can I forget the separate stages
+of that return journey. On the first day we had dull overcast skies
+that threatened rain; the chill wind roughened the lakes and river, and
+made dismal crossings of the portages at one of which we bade goodby to
+André's son. We arrived the next afternoon at Roberval in a veritable
+deluge, the rain having set in while we were crossing Lake St. John.
+We left by train that evening for Chicoutimi. I remember our late
+arrival there, the rain still falling in torrents, and, at last, our
+fleeing the next morning for shelter to the great Saguenay steamer.
+
+On that third day we made the voyage down the Saguenay. It seemed to
+me as if I were embarking on some Stygian flood, for we looked into a
+rain-swept impenetrable perspective. The dark waters were beaten into
+quiescence, except for the current, by the weight of falling raindrops.
+That was all we saw at first. Despite the Doctor's assumed
+cheerfulness and his brave attempts to cheer us, we felt depressed. At
+last came the cessation of rain; the heavy clouds rolled upwards; the
+perspective cleared and showed the mighty river narrowed to a gorge
+with the dark outposts of Capes East and West looming vast, desolate,
+repellent before us.
+
+And always there continued that darkness around, above, beneath us,
+till, farther down, we swept into the deeper shadow of Capes Trinity
+and Eternity. In passing them, the pall of some impending calamity
+fell upon my spirit. I could not emerge from it, try as I might.
+
+Was anything about to happen to the man I loved, to him who was waiting
+there in the wilderness to entertain Death as his next guest? Should
+we four friends, who were making this journey, ever be together in the
+future?
+
+The Doctor kept a watchful eye on me. When the steamer drew to the
+landing at Tadoussac, I saw him and Jamie remove their hats and stand
+so, bareheaded, till the boat moved away. Mrs. Macleod and I, watching
+them, said to each other that they were thinking of André and his
+voyage of seventeen years ago, when he set out from Tadoussac to see
+the "New Jerusalem" by that far western lake.
+
+We were glad to take the Montreal express at Quebec which we saw under
+lowering skies and in a bitter northeast wind. Jamie had telegraphed
+to Cale from Roberval; he and little Pete were at the junction to meet
+us. His joy at our return was unmistakable, but his welcome was unique.
+
+"Wal, Mis' Macleod, I guess 't is 'bout time fer you an' Marcia ter be
+gettin' back ter the manor. Angélique an' Pete have got tied up
+already--gone off honey-moonin' to Sorel. I could n't hinder it no
+longer. Marie 's took a notion to visit her 'feller', as they say
+here, in Three Rivers, an' me an' Pete is holdin' the fort."
+
+How we laughed; we could not help it at Cale's plight. That laugh did
+us a world of good. Cale, after shaking hands with each of us, stowed
+us away in the big coach.
+
+"I 'll come over again fer the traps, Doctor."
+
+"All right, Cale. I can be of some use, even if I don't stay but one
+night at Lamoral. By the way, just leave these things of mine in the
+baggage-room; it will save taking them over. I have my handbag."
+
+"We ain't got so much grub as we might have, but I guess we can make
+out to get along, Marcia," said Cale, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, I 'll manage, Cale; don't worry. We 'll stop in the village for
+provisions, and it won't take me long to straighten things out."
+
+"Of course you did n't think we were coming down on you like the
+Assyrians of old," said Jamie, taking his seat beside Cale.
+
+"Why, no. I cal'lated you 'd be here likely enough in ten days. I
+guess Angélique and Pete would n't have got spliced quite so soon if
+they 'd thought you 'd come this week. They cal'lated ter be home by
+the time you got here."
+
+We were glad to find something at which we could laugh without
+pretence. Cale's description of the wedding in the church, at which he
+was best man; of his inability to understand a word of the service; of
+Pete's embracing him instead of Angélique when it was all over, and of
+little Pete dissolving in tears on his return to empty Lamoral and
+wetting Cale's starched shirt front before he could be comforted, was
+something to be remembered.
+
+"I must write this up for Ewart," said Jamie, that evening when we sat
+once again around a normal hearth.
+
+"He will enjoy it; no one better," said the Doctor who was busy looking
+up New York sailings. "Look here, Boy, you say you want a week, at
+least, in New York?"
+
+"Yes. I have never seen the place, and I don't want to go home without
+knowing something about it."
+
+"Well, in that case, I will make a proposition to you. Suppose you
+sail from New York instead of Montreal? You can have a week there,
+sail on the sixteenth and be in London on time, provided you leave here
+to-morrow night."
+
+"To-morrow night?" I echoed dismally.
+
+"Yes, it will have to be to-morrow night--or leave out New York.
+Better decide to go, Mrs. Macleod, for then I can entertain you for two
+days before I leave for San Francisco and, in any case, put my house at
+your disposal."
+
+Both Mrs. Macleod and Jamie hesitated; I felt they were considering me,
+not wishing to leave me alone in Lamoral.
+
+"Don't think of me," I said. "The sooner this parting from you and
+Jamie is over the better it will be for me." I fear I spoke too
+decidedly.
+
+"Marcia, my dear, I don't see how I can leave you here alone."
+
+"I 'm used to being alone." I answered shortly to hide my emotion.
+
+"Yes, better cut it short," Jamie said with a twitch of his upper lip.
+"We 'll accept your invitation, Doctor Rugvie--you 're always doing
+something for us; we 've come to expect it; I hope we shan't end by
+taking it for granted."
+
+"Nothing would please me better than that, Boy. You are a bit
+over-tired, to-night; better go to bed now, and do all there is to be
+done in the morning. I must go then."
+
+"What, can't you wait to go with us?" Jamie demanded.
+
+"No; I must be in New York to-morrow evening. I will meet you at the
+station the next day."
+
+"I believe I am a bit fagged--and I know mother is. That portage
+business is a strain on the best legs. But you were game, Marcia, no
+mistake."
+
+"Help me to be 'game' now--and go to bed. I 'll follow just as soon as
+I set the bread to rise."
+
+"It's too bad that I must leave you to this, Marcia," said Mrs. Macleod
+regretfully, as she kissed me good night--for the second time at
+Lamoral.
+
+"Oh, I can do all there is to be done."
+
+I returned her kiss. I was beginning to love this gentle, reticent
+Scotchwoman.
+
+"I don't want any good night from you, Marcia," said Jamie gruffly.
+"Oh, I hate the whole business!" He flung out of the room, and I rose
+to follow him and Mrs. Macleod.
+
+"Stay with me a little while, Marcia; you are not so tired as they are.
+Who knows whether I shall see you for a whole month or more?" The
+Doctor spoke earnestly.
+
+"You expect to be gone so long?"
+
+"Perhaps longer--it depends on what I find awaiting me. You permit
+another?" He reached for a cigar.
+
+"Let me light it for you."
+
+I performed the little service for him, which he loved to accept from
+me, and then sat down in Jamie's corner of the sofa.
+
+The Doctor puffed vigorously for a while. Then he spoke, suddenly
+looking at me:
+
+"After all, it is Ewart that makes Lamoral, is n't it, Marcia?"
+
+"Yes," I replied promptly. I was so glad to speak his name here in his
+own home. I was hoping his friend would feel inclined to talk of him.
+
+"I have never had an opportunity to realize this before; it is the
+first time I have been here without him."
+
+"I remember Jamie said, the night before you came last November, that I
+should n't know the house after Mr. Ewart took possession."
+
+The Doctor turned to me, smiling almost wistfully,
+ or so it seemed to me.
+
+"His presence makes the difference between the house and the home. Is
+n't that what Jamie meant?"
+
+"Yes, I am sure it is. Mr. Ewart himself calls the old manor 'home'
+now." I smiled at my thoughts. Had he not said, "My home is
+henceforth where you are"?
+
+"And I, for my part, am thankful to hear him use that word. Marcia,
+Ewart has been, in a way, a homeless man."
+
+"I thought so from the little he has said."
+
+"He was orphaned early in life. Has he ever spoken to you of his
+wife?" The question was put casually, but I knew intentionally.
+
+"Only once."
+
+"And once only to me, his friend--several years ago. He has suffered.
+I have known no detail, but whatever it was, it went deep."
+
+I was willing to follow his lead a little further and, although I
+realized the ice was thin, I ventured.
+
+"I wonder if you have ever heard any gossip--"
+
+"Gossip? What gossip?" The Doctor's words were abrupt, his tone
+resentful.
+
+"Something Jamie heard here in the village, and because he did not
+believe it, he told me, when I first came, that if I ever heard it I
+should not believe it either--"
+
+"About Ewart?" He ceased to puff at his cigar.
+
+"Yes; about his having been married and divorced, and that he has a
+child living, a boy whom he is educating in England."
+
+"That's all fool-talk about the boy." The Doctor spoke testily. "I
+don't mind telling you that he was married, as of course you know, and
+lost his wife. I don't mind telling you that he was divorced from her;
+I suppose that is a matter of public record somewhere. I don't know
+who she was--or what she was; he is loyal to that memory. But there is
+no boy in the case."
+
+He tossed his cigar into the fire and began tapping the floor rapidly
+with the tip of his boot.
+
+"I inferred, of course, from a remark he made to me then, that there
+was a child mixed up in the affair--"
+
+"All this must be the foundation for the rumors, then?" I said.
+
+"Yes; but if Ewart has a child, and I am convinced he has--"
+
+"You are?" I asked in amazement, thereby proving to the Doctor that I
+had never given credence to this part of the report.
+
+He nodded emphatically, looking away from me into the fire. "If he has
+a child, I know it to be a girl--no boy."
+
+"I had n't thought of that."
+
+"I see you have n't," he said dryly; then, clearing his throat, he
+turned squarely to me, speaking deliberately, as if hoping every word
+would carry conviction.
+
+"Marcia, if Ewart has a child, as I am convinced he has, it is a
+daughter,--" with a quick turn of his head he faced me, speaking
+distinctly but rapidly,--"and that daughter is you."
+
+It was said, the unheard-of. He had used his knife when I was off my
+guard. I was powerless to shrink from it, to protest against its use.
+All I could do was to bear.
+
+I heard one of the dogs whine somewhere about the house. I know I
+counted the vagrant sparks flying up the chimney. I heard the kitchen
+clock striking. I counted--ten. I remembered that I had forgotten to
+wind it, and must do so when I made the bread. I moistened my lips;
+they were suddenly parched. Then I spoke.
+
+"Why have you told me this?" I failed, curiously, to hear my own
+voice, and repeated the question.
+
+"Marcia, it had to be said--it was my duty."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why?" He turned to me with something like anger flashing in his eyes.
+"Because I don't choose to have you make a wreck of your life, as I
+told you only the other day--"
+
+"But if I choose--" I did not know what I was saying. I was merely
+articulating, but could not tell him so.
+
+"If you choose! Good God--don't you see your situation? Marcia, dear
+girl, come to yourself--you are not yourself."
+
+Without another word he rose quickly, and went out. I heard him go
+into the kitchen. He came back with a third of a glass of water.
+
+"Take this, Marcia."
+
+I obeyed. The bitter taste is even now, at times, on my tongue. Soon
+I was able to hear my own voice.
+
+"Thank you." I felt his finger on my wrist.
+
+"You are better now?"
+
+"Yes." I passed my hand across my eyes to clear my sight. I heard a
+heavy long-drawn sigh from the man standing in front of me.
+
+"Does he know?" was my first rational question.
+
+"Ewart _know_? Marcia, Marcia--think what you are saying! Ewart is a
+gentleman--the soul of honor--"
+
+"No, of course, he does n't. I did n't think.-- Why have n't you told
+him instead of me?"
+
+"Why? I tell you because you are a woman; because it is your right to
+withdraw from a situation that is untenable; you must be the first to
+know."
+
+"I see; I am beginning to understand."
+
+"Marcia, this is a confession. I blame myself for much of this. I am
+guilty of procrastinating in a matter of duty. Listen, my dear girl;
+you remember that night in February when you met me at the junction?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I remember--I wish I could forget." I felt suddenly so tired.
+
+"I heard all this in Ewart's voice when he bade me look out for you. I
+saw all this in your face when you greeted him on his return. I did
+not know then of your connection with Cale, with that sad affair of
+twenty-seven years ago; but, from the moment I knew your birthday, from
+that night when Cale's story fitted its key to mine, from the moment I
+learned the truth from Delia Beaseley about you, from the moment I
+examined those papers in my possession, I should have spoken; should
+have written you at least; should have warned--but I waited to make
+more sure."
+
+"_Are_ you sure?"
+
+I put that question as a drowning man catches at a floating reed.
+
+"No, I dare not say I am sure until Ewart himself confirms black and
+white--sees that certificate; but I must warn you just the same. It is
+my duty."
+
+I drew a longer breath. He was not wholly sure then. There was a
+reprieve, meanwhile--
+
+What "meanwhile"? I could not think; but I was aware that the Doctor
+was speaking again, thinking for me. I listened apathetically.
+
+"Marcia, I have to leave to-morrow morning. I must leave you with
+Cale. Thank God, you have him near you! It has been impressed upon me
+that you must be told all this before Ewart gets back. You are a
+woman--and your womanhood will dictate, will show you the way out.
+Come to me, come to my home--I shall not be there; come now, with Mrs.
+Macleod and Jamie. I will wire Ewart that you are with us for a little
+while. Get time to breathe, to think things out, to conquer, before he
+comes--"
+
+"No." I spoke with decision. I made a physical effort to speak so.
+"I shall remain where I am--for a while. I have Cale. When I go, he
+goes with me; but, oh, don't, don't say any more--I cannot bear it!"
+
+My words were half prayer, half groan. I felt suddenly weak, sick
+throughout my whole body.
+
+"I wish I might bear this for you, dear girl. I had to say it. I
+could not let you go on--"
+
+"I know, I know, you did your duty--but don't say anything more."
+
+I held out my hand. "I shall be up in the morning and get your
+breakfast; it's so early for you to start. The others won't be up."
+
+"I wish you would," he said eagerly. "I must satisfy myself that you
+are up and about before I go, otherwise--" He hesitated.
+
+"Don't worry. I shall be about just the same--only now--"
+
+"I know; you want to be alone--you can bear no more. Good night." He
+left the room abruptly.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+Mechanically I covered the dying fire with ashes; lighted my candle;
+snuffed out those in the sconces, and went out into the kitchen. I
+wound the clock and set my bread to rise. I heard one of the dogs
+whining in the dining-room; he had been unintentionally shut in. I let
+him out. He showed his gratitude in his dog's way and followed me,
+unbidden, upstairs to my room.
+
+I entered, and shut the door softly not to rouse Jamie and Mrs.
+Macleod. I heard the dog settle on the threshold. Somehow, the sound
+helped me to bear. It was something belonging to _him_ that was near
+me in my trouble.
+
+I sat down on the side of my bed--sat there, I think, all night. A
+round of thought kept turning like a mill-wheel in my head:--"The man I
+love is my father--Mr. Ewart, my father, is the man I love."
+
+It was maddening.
+
+The mill-wheel turned and turned with terrible rapidity. I held my
+head in both hands. Towards morning, when the light began to break, I
+looked about me. At sight of the familiar interior, the wheel in my
+head turned more slowly--stepped for a moment. In the silence I could
+think; think another thought: "The Doctor is not _sure_--"
+
+I rose, steadying myself by holding on to the footboard.
+
+"Not sure--not sure." The mill-wheel was at work again. "Not
+sure--not sure."
+
+"Of course _not_." I spoke aloud. The sound of my own voice gave me
+poise. The wheel turned slowly. In another moment my whole being was
+in revolt. I spoke again:
+
+"_It is not true_. Not until he tells me, will I believe. The Doctor
+is mistaken; black and white can lie--even after twenty-seven years.
+The man I love--and I cannot help loving him--is not the man who is
+responsible for me in this world."
+
+All my woman's nature cried out against this blasphemy of circumstances
+against my love--my love for Gordon Ewart, that was so true, so pure;
+pure in its depths of passion, true in its patience sanctified through
+endurance.
+
+"I will go to Cale. He will know. He will tell me. He will see it
+cannot be true. This love Mr. Ewart feels for me is not, never has
+been, a father's love. No two human beings could be so drawn the one
+to the other, as we have been, with _that_ tie between them. It is
+preposterous on the face of it. It is a monstrosity, born of
+conflicting circumstances."
+
+The energy of life was returning. I undressed. I bathed face and head
+and arms. I dressed again in fresh garments. I opened the door; the
+dog rose, wagging his tail. I slipped noiselessly down the back stairs
+and found that Cale had been before me. The fire was made; the water
+in the kettle boiling.
+
+I made the coffee; worked over my bread; fried the bacon; broke the
+eggs for the omelette; whisked up some "gems" and put them into the
+oven. The mill-wheel no longer turned. When Cale came in, I sent him
+upstairs with a pitcher of hot water for the Doctor.
+
+"Seems like home ter see you round again, Marcia," he said, as he took
+the pitcher.
+
+"It seems good to be at home again." I tried to speak cheerfully.
+
+Doctor Rugvie gave me one long searching look, when he took his place
+at the breakfast table. Then he paid his attention to the omelette
+which he ate with evident relish. We talked of this and that. I went
+out into the hall with him.
+
+"Goodby, Marcia." He put out his hand. "Wire me just a word from time
+to time--I have left the California address on the library table."
+
+"Goodby--I shall not forget."
+
+That was all. But I drew a long breath of relief when I could no
+longer see the carriage. I feel sure he, too, drew another.
+
+All the forenoon I was busy packing, helping Mrs. Macleod and Jamie. I
+gave myself not a moment's rest; I dared not. Only once, just after
+dinner, and three hours before they were to leave for Montreal, I went
+up to my room to be alone for a minute or two; to gain strength to go
+through the rest of the time, before parting with my friends.
+
+I had been there not five minutes when Mrs. Macleod rapped.
+
+"Come in," I said a little wearily.
+
+She entered and came directly to where I sat by the window. She put
+her arms around me,--motherly-wise as I fancied,--and spoke to me:
+
+"Marcia, my dear, I cannot leave you without telling you I have seen it
+all. I speak as an older woman to a younger. Dear child, I wish you
+joy; you deserve all that is in store for you--and there is so much for
+you, so much here in the old manor. I am so happy for you and with
+you, my dear."
+
+I lifted my face to hers and she kissed me.
+
+"I don't like to leave you here; it goes against me--there is no woman
+near you; and you cannot remain in the circumstances, you know, my
+dear, after Mr. Ewart returns. I only wish you would come with us.
+But that would never do; Mr. Ewart would be my enemy for life, and I
+could not blame him."
+
+"Cale will be here," I said. "I have been wanting to tell you
+something."
+
+I told her of my relation to him; what it meant to me. I told, and to
+her amazement, of my connection with her of whom both the Doctor and
+Cale had spoken--and I told it all with a flood of tears, my head on
+her shoulder, her arms around me.
+
+And she thought I was crying for that Past!
+
+Those tears saved my brain.
+
+When she left me, I had given her my promise that if ever I should need
+a home, I would make hers mine.
+
+"But you will hardly need it, my dear. Mr. Ewart will make this the
+one spot on earth for you--and it is right that your future should
+compensate for your past."
+
+Jamie whistled all day; it got at last on my nerves. When I begged him
+to stop, he looked at me reproachfully and said never a word, which was
+unlike Jamie Macleod who has a Scotch tongue--a long and caustic one on
+occasion.
+
+He steadily refused to say goodby to me, or more than, "I shall see you
+in Scotland next summer--you and Ewart; give my love to him."
+
+He put his hand from the coach window, and said in a low voice:
+
+"I made such an ass of myself, Marcia, you know how. Forgive me, won't
+you?"
+
+I forced a smile for answer. There is such a thing as the comedy of
+irony.
+
+When they drove away, I turned to the empty house--empty except for the
+dogs--with a sigh of relief. It was good to be alone.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+The ordering of the house kept me busy the next forenoon, but after
+dinner I told Cale I was going over to Mère Guillardeau's to tell her
+about her brother.
+
+"I may go as far as the village, Cale. Don't expect me till just
+before supper."
+
+"All right."
+
+I told but half of the truth. I determined to carry out a part of what
+I planned on that voyage down the Saguenay. If there were anything to
+learn from Mère Guillardeau, that would throw light on that "forest
+episode" connected with my mother, I wanted to know what it was.
+
+I found the old woman alone, at her loom.
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle, you are come to tell me of André, my brother? You
+are more than welcome. And how goes it with André and my nephew? Did
+he send me a pair of moccasins for my old feet, such as he sent by the
+seignior last year?"
+
+She left her work and, still holding my hand, drew me to the little
+porch, where we sat down on a bench beneath a mass of wild cucumber
+vines.
+
+I kept her hand in mine--that old hand, which for nearly one hundred
+years had wrought and toiled, dug, planted, watered, hoed, milked the
+cow, cut the wood, woven cloth and carpets, harvested her tobacco!
+That prehensile thing which, in its youth, clasped the hand of her
+"mate" at the altar, cooked for him, sewed for him, piecing together
+the skins from the wilds, when he was at home from the trappers'
+haunts; and, meanwhile, it had found time to rock the cradle for her
+seven children and sew the shrouds for six of them!
+
+To me it was a marvellous thing--that hand!
+
+I looked at it, while I was trying to find words to tell her of André.
+It was thin to emaciation, misshapen from hard work--a frail mechanism,
+but still powerful because of the life-blood coursing within it. The
+dark blue veins were veritable bas-reliefs.
+
+"Dear Mère Guillardeau, we have had such a lovely summer with
+André--dear old André, so young in heart."
+
+"It was ever like that. Is he well, my brother?"
+
+"I hope it may be well with him soon."
+
+The old woman looked at me earnestly with her small deep-set eyes,
+faded with having looked so long on the sunshine and shadows of life.
+
+"He is dead, my brother?"
+
+"No, not yet. Mr. Ewart wanted me to tell you just as it is." I gave
+her the details.
+
+She sat quietly, her hand still in mine. Into her faded eyes there
+crept a shadow of some memory.
+
+"I have not seen him for many years, mademoiselle."
+
+"Was that when he made his voyage to Chicago?"
+
+"Yes. On his return he spent the winter with me. We had comfort
+together. We could talk of old times; we knew Canada when we were
+young--that was long ago." She sat quiet, thoughtful. Then she spoke
+again.
+
+"You will tell me when the seignior sends word?"
+
+"Oh, yes; at once."
+
+"I will pray for him. I will have masses said for his soul."
+
+"Your grandfather was born in the seigniory of Lamoral, so André said."
+
+"Yes; and my father, and I, and my brothers and sisters. My
+grandfather's seignior was French. Afterwards, the English seigniors
+had no love for the place. It is our seignior, the Canadian, who cares
+for it. He carries it on his heart--and us, too, mademoiselle. You
+know this land is mine now?"
+
+"Yes; I am so glad for you. It should have been yours long ago."
+
+"Yes, it is mine now for a little while; afterwards it will be my
+daughter's."
+
+"Do you know the old manor well? Have you ever lived there?"
+
+"Yes, I have lived at the manor house."
+
+"When was that, mother?"
+
+"Let me think.--It was ten years, counting by seedtime and harvest,
+before André spent that winter with me. It was a hard one; he helped
+me as a brother should. It was then he was shriven. I was in one of
+the pews in our church, waiting my turn. There were hundreds come for
+the shriving. The priest stood in the aisle, the great middle aisle,
+and all the time there were two kneeling besides him, one confessing,
+the other waiting his turn."
+
+"Did they have no confessional?"
+
+"We confessed in the aisle, mademoiselle, before all the world,--we all
+knew we were sinners,--and the crowd was so great. André, too, I saw
+by the side of the priest, whispering in his ear."
+
+"André! What could his simple life show for sin?"
+
+"He is human like the rest of us, mademoiselle."
+
+She took her pipe from her pocket. It reminded me of André. I filled
+and lighted it for her, and placed it between her still strong teeth.
+
+"André's was the sin of silence, as was mine. I, too, confessed it."
+
+I wondered if she would tell me further. I waited in suspense for her
+next words.
+
+"You ask me have I ever lived at the manor? I lived there one
+winter--a cruel winter even for us Canadians. It is so long ago, I may
+speak of it now. My brother will never speak of it more. It eases me
+to speak of it. It was Martinmas when an Englishman came to this very
+door. It was after dark. He said he had permission from the English
+seignior, who was in England, to stay in the manor as long as he would.
+The agent of the estate was with him--a hard man. He said it was all
+right, and showed me a paper which I could not read. My daughter read
+for me. It was signed by the English seignior; he, too, was a Ewart.
+The English gentleman asked me if I would come and keep the house for
+him and his wife; he was here for her health. Would I stay till spring?
+
+"He offered me twenty _pièces_ the month, mademoiselle--twenty
+_pièces_! That meant ease of mind for me and my daughter. I was not
+to leave the manor to go home, he said. I must stay there on account
+of his wife.
+
+"I took time to think; but the twenty _pièces_, mademoiselle! My
+daughter said, 'Go; it will keep us for three years.'
+
+"I went because I was paid twenty _pièces_ the month--but,
+mademoiselle, I would have stayed and worked for her for nothing, for
+love of her alone. Mademoiselle, look in your mirror when you are at
+home. You will see her again--so much you are like her; but not in
+your ways. You remember the first time you came to my daughter to buy
+the carpets? I said to myself then, 'I have lived to see her again.'"
+
+"How long ago was this, Mère Guillardeau?"
+
+"I have said ten years, counting by seedtime and harvest, before André
+made that voyage into the west. I loved her--and my brother loved her.
+She made sunshine in the manor. It was not as it is now; there was
+little to do with. She made light of everything; made the best of
+everything. She had a cow, for the warm milk; and hens, for the
+new-laid eggs--all nourishing and good, mademoiselle. I milked the cow
+and tended to everything. I was strong. I did all the work. The
+agent bought provisions in the village and brought them to us. They
+came, also, from Montreal. The house was full of sunshine, the
+sunshine of love, mademoiselle.
+
+"They were not married--but how they loved each other! I carried their
+sin on my soul. I never confessed till André, too, confessed. We
+confessed the same sin--the sin of silence.
+
+"In the spring I sent them to André, into the wilderness of the
+northern rivers. My brother loved her too, my poor brother.
+
+"It is long past, mademoiselle, but I can not forget."
+
+"And the present seignior never knew of this?"
+
+"The present seignior? Oh, no; he did not own Lamoral then.
+Sometimes, it is true, I think I see in him a look of that other; but
+it is not he. I never knew their names.
+
+"After they left, that agent took that cow from me, mademoiselle, a
+fine cow she was. He is dead these many years, but he was a hard man;
+I have not forgotten or forgiven, mademoiselle." She crossed herself.
+"The cow was mine; he took her, mademoiselle; a fine cow with a bag as
+pink as thorn blossoms, and seven quarts to the milking--I cannot
+forget."
+
+I rose to go, for the old woman threatened to become garrulous.
+Moreover, I had heard enough. The Doctor was mistaken. I had learned
+what I came to find out. I felt fortified to speak with Cale.
+
+"Goodby, Mère Guillardeau."
+
+"Goodby, mademoiselle. You will come again and tell me of my brother?"
+
+"Yes; so soon as I have any word."
+
+She stood in the porch to watch me down the road. I went on to the
+village. As I neared the steamboat landing, I noticed a large river
+sloop, tacking in the light breeze to the bank. I stopped to watch it.
+Soon it was abreast of me. I walked rapidly on to keep up with it. It
+came to anchor nearly opposite the cabaret. Its white hull was filled
+with apples. There must have been a ton or two--early harvest apples,
+red, yellow, and green; Astrachan, Porters and early Pippins.
+
+Surely this was the apple-boat which Jamie delighted in and described
+with such enthusiasm! I walked to the bank. A low trestle, laid in a
+width of two boards, gave passage to the boat. What a picture it made!
+The low green bank, the white sloop, the blue lively waters of the St.
+Lawrence, and, beyond, the islands stacked with the second cutting of
+hay!
+
+I went on board; bought a few apples; promised to come for a bushel or
+two the next day, and asked a few questions of the owner and his wife,
+French both of them.
+
+"How long do you stay?"
+
+"Only a week. This cargo is perishable. We sell here, then we go back
+for the harvest of winter apples. We come again in October."
+
+She showed me with pride her cabin and the bunk under the companionway,
+wherein lay her eighteen-months-old baby. "We could not leave him,"
+she said, wiping a bead of perspiration from his forehead. "The others
+are at home; they take care of themselves."
+
+The little cabin was absolutely neat.
+
+I bade her goodby, made a few purchases in the village, and walked back
+to Lamoral with a lighter heart than I had carried since I left camp.
+The old place looked so beautiful in the mellow September sunlight.
+
+I felt less burdened, less restless, less desperate, less doubtful of
+the future, after that walk. But I determined to wait a few days
+before speaking to Cale. I wanted to go over the whole matter, collate
+facts, sort evidence, before speaking.
+
+We had five pleasant days together, Cale and I. We grew confidential,
+as became relations. We talked of the Macleods; Cale wagered the
+Doctor would marry Mrs. Macleod in the end. At which I sniffed, and
+pretended to think he would lose his wager, but deep down in my
+heart--well, I had my doubts.
+
+I told him of André, of the Doctor's enjoyment of camp life. He did
+not ask me about Mr. Ewart directly, and I volunteered no information,
+except that we might expect a telegram from him any day.
+
+On the sixth day word came:
+
+"André has crossed the last portage; return Wednesday."
+
+He would be here in five days! My first thought was of him, not of
+André.
+
+O André, dear old guide and voyageur! You were only a withered leaf
+falling from the great Ygdrasil Tree of Empire--falling there in the
+wilds of the Upper Saguenay. But it is by such as you--and succeeding
+generations of millions of such--that the great Tree of Empire has
+thriven, thrives, and still keeps in abundant foliage!
+
+I knew the time had come when I must tell Cale all.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+"Cale, I want to talk with you."
+
+"All right, Marcia. I see you 've had something on your mind, thet 's
+been worryin' you, since you 've come home; better get it off. Nothin'
+like lettin' off a little steam when there 's too many pounds pressure
+on."
+
+"Cale, you _are_ a comfort."
+
+"Am I? Wal, it's 'bout time I was something ter you."
+
+"Cale, have you any idea where my mother fled to when she left her
+home?"
+
+"No; an' nobody else."
+
+"You said George Jackson could get no trace of her?"
+
+"Tried four months, detectives an' all; 't was n't no use. She was
+gone."
+
+"But did you have any idea in your own mind, I mean, as to where she
+might have gone?"
+
+"Wal, I can't say exactly. I _did_ think 'bout thet time, thet mebbe
+they 'd crossed the line inter Canady; but it ain't likely they 'd go
+north with the winter before 'em. Fact is, George was in such a state,
+I did n't think nor care much 'bout Happy, if _he_ could only keep his
+head level through it all. An' he did; he had grit, an' no mistake.
+'T was an awful blow, Marcia."
+
+"It's my belief she came into Canada."
+
+"'Tis, is it? What makes you think thet?" he asked in genuine surprise.
+
+"Circumstantial evidence that is convincing. I believe she has been in
+this very house--for months too."
+
+He looked at me suspiciously. (We were in the dining room; one on each
+side of the table.) I saw his forehead knit; then he spoke in a low
+voice, but rather anxiously:
+
+"Here in this house? Ain't you got your circumstantial evidence a
+little mixed, Marcia?"
+
+"No; listen."
+
+I told him all, linking event to event, incident with incident till the
+chain was complete. I fitted his story into the Doctor's which he
+heard for the first time from me; I added Delia Beaseley's story, then
+André's, and, last, Mère Guillardeau's. I made no mention however of
+the marriage certificate and the Doctor's last talk with me.
+
+"Now, what do you think of it, Cale?"
+
+"I see which way you 're heading, Marcia, but--" he brought his fist
+down hard on his knee,--"you 're on the wrong track."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I know it." He spoke with loud emphasis.
+
+"You have no idea, now, who my father was, or is? Not now, after I
+have brought in all the evidence available; except--"
+
+"Except what?" He asked quickly.
+
+"Never mind that now. Tell me, have you any idea who he was, or is?"
+
+"No, and nobody else thet I know of. She had high ideas, Happy had. I
+never believed she took up with any low cuss, not much! She was n't
+the kind to fall des'pritly in love with anybody like thet. Besides,
+had n't she had a man that was a man, even if he was only a boy in his
+years, to love the very ground she trod on? Happy was one of the
+uncommon kind of gals; she would n't take up with anyone thet come
+along. Now thet I know all this from you, I guess her love for thet
+man, whoever he was, or is, went 'bout as deep with her, as George's
+love for her went with him. Oh, Lord! It makes me sick to think of
+Happy Morey tryin' to throw herself inter the North River."
+
+"Then,"--I spoke slowly, hesitatingly; I gathered all my strength to
+ask the crucial question--"you don't think that Mr. Ewart is my father?"
+
+He stared at me as if I had taken leave of my senses. He swallowed
+hard twice. He leaned forward on the dining-room table, both fists
+pressed rigidly upon it.
+
+"Do _you_ think thet? Have you been thinkin' thet all this time,
+Marcia Farrell?"
+
+"No. I not only do not think it, I do not believe it. I was told so."
+
+"Who told you?" he demanded. He continued to stare at me; his attitude
+remained unchanged.
+
+"Doctor Rugvie."
+
+"What the devil does he know about it?"
+
+"He has the certificate--my mother's marriage certificate."
+
+"To which one?"
+
+"To my father."
+
+"An' he says Ewart is your father?"
+
+"He believes he is from the evidence--"
+
+"Evidence be damned. Has he shown you the name?"
+
+"No, I could n't--I would n't let him tell me."
+
+"I glory in your spunk, Marcia."
+
+"Then you do not believe it, Cale?"
+
+"Believe!" He spoke in utter scorn, and I laughed out almost
+hysterically; the tension was relieved too quickly.
+
+"Look here, Marcia Farrell, or whatever your name happens to be, he is
+no more your father than I am." He lifted both fists and brought them
+down on the table with the solidity of a stone-breaker's hammer. "It's
+God's truth, I am tellin' you."
+
+I laughed again in the face of this statement that so suddenly
+buttressed, as with adamant, my broken life, my wrecked hopes.
+
+"Can you prove it, Cale?" I, too, leaned across the table, my hands
+gripping the edge.
+
+"Prove it? Wal, I guess I ain't takin' any chances at jest _this_
+cross roads. I ain't makin' any statements that I can't take my oath
+on."
+
+"Prove it, then, Cale--in mercy to me, prove it."
+
+He looked at me with inexpressible pity. His eyes filled.
+
+"You poor child! As if you had n't had enough, 'thout bein' murdered
+this way. What in thunder was the Doctor thinkin' of?"
+
+"He wanted to save me--"
+
+"Save you, eh? Wal, the next time he wants to save you he 'd better
+borrow the life-preserver from me. You can tell him thet."
+
+"Prove it, Cale."
+
+He drew a long breath and, reaching over, laid his right hand over mine.
+
+"Marcia, I ain't no right to speak--to break a promise; but, by God, I
+'ll do it this time to save you--whatever comes! Gordon Ewart ain't no
+more your father 'n I am, for he was your mother's husband."
+
+"My mother's husband?" I echoed, but weakly. I failed for a few
+seconds to comprehend.
+
+"Yes, your mother's husband. Gordon Ewart is George Jackson--George
+Gordon Ewart Jackson, thet is what he was christened, an' I 've known
+it sence the furst minute I set eyes on him in full lamplight, here in
+this very house on the fifteenth day of last November. Do you want any
+more proof?"
+
+There is a limit to human suffering; a time when a surcharge of misery
+leaves mind and heart and soul numb. It was so with me upon hearing
+Cale's statement.
+
+"Did he know you?" I asked almost apathetically.
+
+"Yes, but it took him twenty-four hours. I 've changed more 'n he has."
+
+"Why did n't he use his own name?"
+
+"It is his own. He sloughed off thet part of it thet hindered him from
+cuttin' loose from all thet old life, he said, an' made the new one
+legal."
+
+"Did he know me?"
+
+"I don't know for sure. He ain't the kind to rake over a heap of dead
+ashes for the sake of findin' one little spark. But, Marcia, I believe
+he knew you from the minute he first see you there in the passageway."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Because you are the livin' image of your mother, as I told you once
+before. But you act different. An' he loved her so, he could n't help
+but seein' her in you--"
+
+"Oh, my God!"
+
+I think it was a groan rather than an exclamation. My head dropped on
+Cale's hand, as it lay over mine. The flashlight of intuition showed
+me the truth: this man, my mother's husband, the man who was dearer to
+me than life itself, was again loving her, whom he had loved only to
+lose, in me--her daughter! He was loving me because of her, not
+because of myself.
+
+Oh, I saw it in every detail! I saw every ugly feature in every act of
+the whole tragedy; and I saw myself the dupe of that Past from which I
+had tried so hard to escape.
+
+I raised my head. My decision was made. I looked at Cale defiantly.
+I think every fibre of me, moral, physical, mental, spiritual, revolted
+then and there against being made longer a mere shuttlecock for the
+battledores of Fate.
+
+"Cale, when does the next afternoon train leave the junction--the one
+that connects with the Southern Quebec for New England?"
+
+"Don't, Marcia, in the name of all that's holy, don't do nothing rash.
+I meant it for the best--"
+
+"I know you did; but that won't prevent my going."
+
+"But, hear to reason, Marcia; wait till Ewart comes---hear what he has
+to say--I 'm placed where I can't speak. Wait a few days."
+
+His hand felt clammy cold under mine. I pulled mine away. I hurt him,
+but I did not care.
+
+"There is nothing to be said. I am going. When does that train leave?"
+
+"Seven-five. What will Ewart say? You are doing him a bitterer wrong
+than your mother before you."
+
+I laughed in his face. His voice grew husky as he spoke again:
+
+"Stay for my sake then, Marcia; just five days--I 'm as nigh ter you as
+any in this world."
+
+"Not so very, Cale."
+
+Out of the numbness of my body, out of my bitterness of heart, out of
+the depths of my misery, I spoke: "Cale, listen. For twenty-six years
+I was in this world, and four men--the one people call my father, you,
+my uncle-in-law who loved your wife, my mother's sister, Doctor Rugvie
+who brought me into this world and made but two attempts to find me,
+Mr. Ewart who as George Jackson brought me home in his arms, a baby
+three days old, and left me for good and all, worse than orphaned--all
+four of you, how much have you cared for me in reality? Answer me
+that."
+
+There was silence in the room. I heard Cale draw a heavy breath.
+
+"You don't answer," I went on unmercifully, "and I am going away. I,
+too, am going to 'cut loose'. I want you to go down to Mère
+Guillardeau's and tell her André is dead, and the seignior will be here
+in five days."
+
+"What--now?" He moistened his lips.
+
+"Yes, now."
+
+"But you had n't ought ter be alone."
+
+"I am not alone; the dogs are here and little Pete."
+
+He rose and crossed the room. At the door he turned; his voice
+trembled excessively, and I saw he was in fear.
+
+"Promise me you won't do nothing rash, Marcia."
+
+I laughed aloud. "I promise--now go."
+
+When I heard him drive away from the house, I went upstairs and began
+to pack my trunk. The sooner I could get out of Lamoral, the better
+for all concerned, Mr. Ewart included. Did he think for one moment
+that I would consent to being loved for my mother's sake? Did he think
+to make good, through me, the loss of the woman he loved? How had he
+dared, knowing, yes, _knowing_ all, to love me for that other who never
+loved him! Why did he try to force his love upon her and, by changing
+the very channels of nature, bring all this devastation of misery upon
+my life? Why, why?
+
+I packed rapidly. There was not so much to take with me. Then I went
+through the rooms one after another: the living-room--the office. I
+looked at the Méryon etchings--the Pont Neuf and Ste. Etienne--on its
+walls. Upstairs, too, I went; into Jamie's room, into Mrs. Macleod's,
+then to Mr. Ewart's. I stopped short on the threshold.
+
+"Why am I going in here?" I asked myself. "What am I doing here?" I
+stepped in; looked about at my own handiwork--then at the bed. I
+crossed quickly to it and laid my cheek down upon his pillow. It was
+only for a moment. I heard wheels on the driveway. Cale was returning.
+
+"I am ready, Cale. You can take us over with the trunk in the light
+wagon; little Pete can go with us."
+
+The look he gave me was pitiful, but it made no appeal to me.
+
+"You will have to wait good forty minutes if you go now."
+
+"I don't mind it. _You_ need not wait. I would rather not say goodby."
+
+"Where are you goin', Marcia?"
+
+"Don't ask me that, Cale; I don't want to lie to you. I shall send my
+trunk to Spencerville. This is all I will say."
+
+"What must I tell George?"
+
+For a moment I failed to comprehend that he meant Mr. Ewart.
+
+"Tell him what you please."
+
+I set some supper on the kitchen table for him and little Pete, against
+their return.
+
+Cale reharnessed and brought the wagon to the side door.
+
+We drove those nine miles in silence, except for little Pete who asked
+several pertinent questions as to the reason of my going. In passing
+through Richelieu-en-Bas, I looked for the apple-boat. It was still
+there. Little Pete begged Cale to stop to see it on their way home.
+
+"Not to-night, sonny, it 'll be dark," he said sternly; "we 'll try it
+another day." I thought the small boy was ready to cry at his friend's
+abrupt refusal.
+
+Cale left me at the junction, after he had seen me buy a ticket for
+Spencerville, and the trunk was checked to that place.
+
+He put out his hand. "Marcia, I can't defend myself; all you say is
+true--but I think you will come to see different, sometime. We 're all
+human an' liable to make mistakes, big ones, an' I can't see as you 're
+an exception."
+
+The simple dignity of this speech impressed me even in those
+circumstances. I put my hand in his.
+
+"'Sometime', Cale? It has always been 'sometime' with me. It is going
+to be 'never again' now; no more mistakes on my part."
+
+"You _will_ write me a word--sometime, won't you, Marcia?"
+
+"I won't promise, Cale. I want to be alone. After all, I am only
+going away from here as I came--to find work and a livelihood. Goodby."
+
+I think he understood. He did not bid me goodby, but went away down
+the platform, walking slowly, stooping a little, his head drooping, as
+if all courage had failed him. And my heart was hardened.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+I watched him and little Pete drive away down the highroad; watched
+them out of sight. Then I sat down on the bench outside the
+waiting-room to think, "What next?"
+
+I had no intention of going to Spencerville. My trunk would be safe
+there with the address of a neighbor of my aunt. What I most wanted
+was to be alone and time to think, time to regain strength for the
+struggle before me.
+
+I don't know that for ten minutes I thought at all. I suppose I must
+have, for I remembered that at this hour Jamie and Mrs. Macleod were to
+sail; that the Doctor was on his way to San Francisco. That Cale could
+do nothing by telegraphing them. And what would he telegraph?
+
+The ticket-agent and baggage-master locked the office door and came
+over to me.
+
+"I 'm going up the road a piece; the train is twenty minutes late. You
+won't mind sitting here alone?"
+
+"Oh, no. It is a lovely evening."
+
+"No frost to-night." He went off on the highroad in the opposite
+direction from Richelieu-en-Bas.
+
+The evening promised to be fine; the sun set clear in the sky.
+Somewhere in the distance, I heard a night hawk's harsh cry.
+
+The dusk fell; still I sat there, not thinking much of anything. I had
+my hand-bag with me and my warm coat. I opened my bag and took out an
+apple; I had eaten nothing since breakfast and felt faint. The apple
+was an Astrachan. I found myself calculating what it cost--this one
+apple. I must begin to count the cost again of every morsel, although
+I had all my wages with me. But ten weeks of sickness--and where would
+they be!
+
+I put my teeth into the apple-- A thought: the apple-boat--it was to
+leave soon--the week was up!
+
+I rose from the bench, not stopping to take a second bite; took my
+hand-bag; threw my coat over my shoulder, and started down the road to
+Richelieu-en-Bas.
+
+It was rapidly growing dark. One mile, two miles, three miles--the
+night was there to cover me. I was thankful. Five miles, six miles--I
+was entering the long street of the village. The lindens and elms made
+the road black. I strained my eyes to see the lights. That from the
+cabaret was the first--then a green one above the water, several feet
+it looked to be. It must be the apple-boat!
+
+It was just the time in the evening when the men flock to the cabaret.
+As I drew near it, I heard the sound of the graphophone. I listened,
+not stopping in my walk.
+
+ "_O Canada, pays de mon amour!_"
+
+
+I stopped then; and it seemed as if my heart stopped at the same time.
+
+Oh, it had been "_Canada, land of my love_" in the deepest sense--and
+now!
+
+I went on to the boat; crossed the trestle. At the sound of my
+footstep on the deck, the woman put her head up the companionway.
+
+"Who 's there?"
+
+"Some one who wishes to speak with you alone; I was here the other day."
+
+"I know your voice, but I don't know your name. You can talk; my
+husband is, at present, yonder in the cabaret; he will be in by
+half-past ten. We sail to-night if the wind holds good."
+
+"To-night?"
+
+"Yes; and what is that to you?" she asked suspiciously.
+
+"May I come into the cabin?"
+
+"But, yes. Come."
+
+I sat down on the stool she placed for me. I was tired with the long
+walk.
+
+"I have been called away from here, where I have been at service--"
+
+"You--at service?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"Yes; and I am going away to find another place. Will you take me with
+you in the boat? May I go with you to your home, wherever it is?"
+
+She looked at me suspiciously. "I don't know--my husband--"
+
+"I will pay you well, whatever you ask--"
+
+"It is n't that,"--she hesitated,--"but I don't know who you are."
+
+"I am myself," I said wearily; "I am tired of my place, and they don't
+want me to leave. I want to go--I am too tired to stay--"
+
+"Too hard, was it?"
+
+"Everything was too hard. I come from Spencerville, just over the
+line; you know it?"
+
+"Oh, yes. My cousin settled there when the new tannery was built last
+year."
+
+"All my family lived there. I am now alone in the world. I have sent
+my trunk on--but I want a complete rest before I go out to service
+again. I thought I could get it with you. I don't want to let the
+family know I have gone. The family are all away at present."
+
+"Where have you been at work?"
+
+"At the old manor of Lamoral, three miles away."
+
+"I have heard of it; they bought ten barrels of apples last year." She
+seemed to be thinking over some matter foreign to me, at that moment.
+
+"Won't you take me? I am so tired."
+
+"You say you can work?"
+
+"Try me."
+
+"We are going back for the second harvest. We live near Iberville. We
+have orchards there, and help is always scarce at this time. Will you
+help?"
+
+"Oh, yes; anything. I can do the housework for you, if necessary."
+
+"You don't look tough enough for that."
+
+"Try me."
+
+"I 'll speak to my husband when he comes in."
+
+"All I ask of you is, that you will not let him tell anyone here that I
+am on the boat."
+
+"He has a tight mouth--a good head; he will do as I say."
+
+"That settles it," I thought.
+
+"If you will stay here with my baby, I 'll just step over to the
+cabaret and call him out. We can talk better in the road."
+
+"Yes."
+
+She climbed the steps, and I heard her heavy tread on the deck--her
+steps on the trestle-boards. After that, nothing for a quarter of an
+hour, except the soft lap of the river running past the boat.
+
+They came back together, the man with a lantern which he hung at the
+stern.
+
+"He says, my Jean, that you can come with us, if you will hire out for
+a month."
+
+"Tell him I will hire out to you for that time. And how much shall I
+pay you for the passage?"
+
+"Jean says that's all right,--you can't leave us unless you can
+swim,--and we 're more than glad to get the help."
+
+"I can sleep on the deck; I have a warm coat."
+
+"Oh, no; my husband often sleeps on deck when we are at anchor; but
+to-night he will not sleep at all. We go to Sorel; we must be there by
+three in the morning. You can sleep in his bunk."
+
+She parted some curtains and showed me a two-and-a-half feet wide bunk
+beneath the sloping deck. I thanked her.
+
+"If the wind should come up heavy, I shall do the steering," she said.
+"I will be down after we get under way. I help Jean."
+
+She went up the tiny companionway, and I heard her talking in a low
+voice to "Jean". Soon there was a noise of trailing ropes, of a sail
+being hoisted; a sound of pushing and hauling--a soft swaying motion to
+the boat, then the ripple of the water under her bow.
+
+I lay down in the bunk; the sound of the ever-flowing river soothed me.
+I was worn out.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THREE
+
+FINDING THE TRAIL
+
+
+
+I
+
+A dream would seem more real to me than the experience of that night.
+
+I listened, half sleeping, half waking, to hear only the ripple of
+water under the bow. Towards morning the wind freshened. I heard
+great commotion overhead. Evidently Jean and Madame Jean were taking
+in sail. I knew we must be near Sorel. I went up on deck to ask if I
+could be of any help.
+
+"Not now," said Madame Jean who was busy with the gaskets; "but when we
+come in to Sorel there will be some merchants on the wharf to get the
+rest of our apples. If you will mind the baby then, I shall not have
+him on my hands if he wakes up."
+
+"To be sure I will. May I stay here on deck for a little air?"
+
+"But, yes; you cannot sleep in this noise."
+
+The morning stars paled. The light crept out of the east along the
+pathway of the great river. The sun rose, turning its waters to gold.
+
+We were late in getting into Sorel. While there I remained in the
+cabin with the baby who was still asleep. By seven o'clock we were off
+again--the merchants had been willing to lend a hand in unloading. We
+had a fair brisk wind for our sail up the Richelieu, or Sorel River.
+
+Madame Jean made us coffee, gave us doughnuts, cheese, and thickly
+buttered bread. The fresh milk for the baby was taken on at Sorel, and
+the little fellow, who could creep but not walk, gave me plenty to do.
+Madame Jean laughed at my attempts to confine him in one place; he
+seemed to be all over the deck at once. She called out merrily from
+the tiller:
+
+"Eh, mademoiselle, you have never had one, I can see! You have much to
+learn. Here, take the tiller for a moment, I will show you."
+
+She took a small-sized rope that had a hook at one end and a snap-catch
+at the other. She caught up the baby and, turning him over flat on her
+lap, showed me a stout steel ring sewed into the band of his blue denim
+creeper. Into this she fastened the snap and, hooking the other end
+into the belt of my skirt, set him down on the deck.
+
+"Voilà!" she said triumphantly. I found the arrangement worked
+perfectly and relieved me from all anxiety. He was tethered; but he
+could roam at large, so he thought.
+
+All day we voyaged up the Richelieu between the rich Canadian
+farm-lands, the mountains, faintly blue on the horizon, rising more and
+more boldly in the south, as we approached the Champlain country. Just
+before sunset we glided up to an old wharf at Iberville.
+
+There followed a series of shouts and whistles from the head of it.
+There was a frantic waving of aprons. A rough farm wagon, drawn by an
+old pepper-and-salt horse and loaded with children, bore down upon us,
+rattling over the loose planks like a gun carriage. The old horse was
+spurred on by flaps and jerks of the reins which were handled by a
+fine-looking bareheaded girl on the board that served for a seat.
+
+There were answering shouts from Jean and Madame Jean; answering
+wavings of towels and shirts which had been drying on the rail--all
+equally frantic. Then the whole cartful tumbled out on the wharf,
+almost before the horse came to a halt, and, literally, stormed the
+sloop.
+
+Jean and his wife were lost to my sight in the children's embrace;
+fourteen arms were trying to smother both at the same time. I was
+holding the baby when the horde descended on him, and only the fact
+that I was a stranger prevented me from sharing the fate of their
+mother.
+
+"They are good children, eh?" said Madame Jean proudly, with a blissful
+smile. She smoothed her tumbled hair and twisted her apron again to
+the front of her plump person.
+
+I was properly introduced by my own name which I gave to madame and her
+husband. The whole family fairly pounced upon the few belongings in
+the boat and carried them to the great wagon. Madame Jean, holding the
+baby, sat in the middle enthroned on the pile of bunk cushions; the
+children crowded in around her. I was asked, as a compliment, to sit
+beside Monsieur Jean on the board seat which he covered with an old
+moth-eaten buffalo robe. He took the reins, and amid great rejoicings
+we jolted up the wharf into the main street of Iberville, the whole
+family exchanging greetings with every passer by, it seemed to me, just
+as fervently as if they had but recently returned from an ocean voyage.
+Our wagon--a chariot of triumph--rattled on through the town and out
+into the open country. They chatted all together and all at once. I
+failed to understand what it was about, for several of the children
+were very young and their French still far from perfect. Their voices
+were pitched on A sharp, and the effect was astonishing as well as
+ear-splitting.
+
+They paid no attention to me. I was grateful. I felt myself again a
+stranger in the midst of this alien family life.
+
+Two miles out from the town, we came to the roof-tree of the
+Duchênes,--this was their name,--and within half an hour we sat, eleven
+of us, around the kitchen table at supper. From beneath it, an old
+hound protruded his long nose, and caught with a snap the tidbits that
+were thrown to him. A huge Maltese cat settled herself across my feet.
+A canary shrilled over all the noise. In the midst of the merry
+meal--blackberries and milk, hot fried raised bread with maple
+syrup--the whole family was apparently thrown into convulsions by the
+appearance in the room of a pet goat and, behind him, the old
+pepper-and-salt horse that Monsieur Duchêne had turned out in the yard
+to graze!
+
+There was a general uprising; charge and counter charge, shrieks,
+laughter. The baby and I were the only ones left at the table. Then,
+humiliating exodus of the beasts and triumphant entry of the family.
+The supper proceeded.
+
+And afterwards--never shall I forget that little scene!--after the
+dishes were washed, the goat fed, the horse bedded and the baby asleep,
+the seven children placed themselves in a row, the oldest girl of
+fifteen at the head, and waited for a signal from their father: a long
+drawn chord on a mouth harmonicum. Together parents and children sang
+the _Angelus_, sang till the room was filled with melody and, it seemed
+to me, the soft September night without the open door.
+
+This was my introduction to the family Duchêne. I slept in an
+unfinished chamber. A sheet was tacked to the rafters over the bed.
+The window beside it looked into a mass of trees.
+
+Oh, those orchard slopes of Iberville! I made intimate acquaintance
+with them for the next four weeks. I worked hard. I was up at five to
+help Madame Jean with the breakfast and the housework, what there was
+of it; then we were all off to the orchards to pick the wholesome,
+beautiful fruit--Northern Spies, Greenings, Baldwins and Russets. To
+use Jamie's expression, their "fragrance is in my nostrils" as I write
+of them.
+
+At noon we had lunch--bread and butter, with jerked beef, cheese,
+apples, washed down with the sweetest of sweet cider from the mill.
+There was no stint of the simple fare. Then at work again--all the
+children joining, except the baby who roamed at will among the orchard
+grass with two small pigs that scampered wildly to and fro.
+
+It was work, work--picking, sorting, packing, till the shadows were
+long on the grass and the apple-cart was piled high with windfalls.
+The barrels were filled with picked fruit of the choicest. And after
+supper, regularly every evening, we sang the _Angelus_.
+
+This life was beneficial to me. I made no plans. I was glad to work
+hard in order to drown thought, to keep my body, as it were, numb. I
+really dared not think of _what was_, for then I could not sleep; could
+not be ready for the next day's work. To forget myself; this was my
+sole desire. Madame Duchêne watched my work with ever increasing
+admiration. Monsieur Duchêne wanted to engage me for another season.
+
+"But you must not leave us this winter, mademoiselle. We need you," he
+said one day, after nearly four weeks had passed. He was preparing to
+set out on his return voyage down the Sorel to Richelieu-en-Bas.
+
+"Others may need me, Monsieur Duchêne. I have been so content in your
+home; it has done me good."
+
+"Mademoiselle has some sorrow? Can we help, my wife and I?"
+
+"You have helped me by trusting me, by letting me make one of your
+family all these weeks."
+
+"But you will keep the house till we return?"
+
+"I should like to do this for you, but I cannot stay so late here in
+the country. I must find employment for the winter."
+
+"We cannot afford to pay you, mademoiselle, but you shall have your
+keep, if you will, for your help and your company, while you stay."
+Madame Duchêne spoke earnestly.
+
+"I cannot, dear Madame Duchêne; it is time for me to go."
+
+"May I ask where, Mademoiselle Farrell?" she asked, with such gentle
+pity audible in her voice, such kindly thoughts visible in her bright
+blue eyes, that, for a moment, I wavered. This was, at least, a
+shelter, a "retreat" for both my soul and my body.
+
+"I do not know as yet."
+
+"What can we do for you?" she urged.
+
+"But one thing: say nothing to any one in Richelieu-en-Bas that you
+have seen me, that I have been with you--that you know me, even."
+
+"As you will."
+
+I remained with the children who declared they should be desolate if I
+went on the same day that father and mother left them. Together the
+children and I watched the apple-boat, loaded to the gunwale, sail away
+from Iberville wharf.
+
+Two days after that, the children drove me to the station. I took the
+day express to New York.
+
+I decided to go to Delia Beaseley.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Not in its aspect of Juggernaut did the great city receive me that hot
+September night at half-past eight, but as a veritable refuge where I
+could lose myself among its millions.
+
+I welcomed the roar of its thoroughfares, the noises of its traffic;
+they deafened my soul. Jamie's voice saying: "We shall see you in
+Crieff next summer--you and Ewart," grew faint and far away. Cale's
+voice pleading, Cale's voice warning me: "You are doing him a bitterer
+wrong than your mother before you," became less distinct.
+
+The flashing electric signs were welcome and the white glaring lights
+of Broadway. They dazzled me; they helped to blind my inner sight to
+that vision of Mr. Ewart, standing on the shore of the little cove, far
+away in that northern wilderness, and looking into my eyes with a look
+that promised life in full.
+
+I rode down the Bowery oblivious of myself; I was lost in wonder at the
+multitudes. I knew those multitudes were composed of individuals; that
+those individuals were distinct the one from the other. Each had his
+experience, as I was having mine. Life was interpreting itself to each
+in different terms: to some through drink; to others through
+prostitution; to a few--thank God, only a few!--through threatened
+starvation; to a host through the blessing of daily work; to hundreds
+of unemployed through the misery of suspense. And love, hate,
+faithfulness, treachery--all were there, hidden in the hearts of those
+multitudes.
+
+Some lines of William Watson's kept saying themselves over and over to
+me in thought, as I watched those throngs; as I listened to the glare
+of street bands, the grinding of hurdy-gurdies, and heard the flow of
+street life, which is _the_ life, of the foreign East Side;
+
+ "Momentous to himself, as I to me,
+ Hath each man been that ever woman bore;
+ Once, in a lightning-flash of sympathy,
+ I _felt_ this truth, an instant, and no more."
+
+
+"Momentous to himself." Oh yes--not a soul among those thousands who
+was not "momentous to himself", no matter how low soever fallen!
+"Momentous to himself"--I watched the throngs, and _understood_.
+
+I made my way into V--- Court, unafraid and unmolested. Delia Beaseley
+opened the door. At sight of her all the pent-up emotion of weeks
+threatened to find vent.
+
+"Delia, it is I, Marcia Farrell--"
+
+"Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried, as she drew me into the hall under
+the dim light. "It is good to see you again! But what is it?" she
+asked anxiously, lifting my hat from my face. "Are you sick?"
+
+I could not answer her. She led me into the back room I remembered so
+well. There, as once before, she pushed me gently into the
+rocking-chair. She removed my hat and brought a fan.
+
+"What is it, my dear? Can't you tell me?"
+
+Oh, how many times, during her life of helpfulness, she must have asked
+that question of homeless girls and despairing women!
+
+"Delia," I began; then I hesitated. Should I tell her, or carry in
+silence my trouble about with me? Before I could speak again, she had
+her arms--those motherly arms I had felt before--around me; my head was
+on her shoulder; my arms about her neck. I sobbed out my story, and
+she comforted me as only a woman, who has suffered, can comfort.
+
+"Let me stay a little while with you, Delia, till I get work again."
+
+"Stay with me! Bless your heart, I couldn't let you go if you wanted
+to. Here 's my Jane--she 's out now--ready to drop with the work and
+the heat; we 've had a long spell of it, and I not knowing where to
+turn for help just now, for I want her to go away on a vacation; she
+needs it. Just you stay right here with me, and I 'll pack Jane off
+to-morrow."
+
+"Have you--is any body with you?" I asked.
+
+"Yes." She nodded significantly. "There 's two of 'em on my hands
+now. One's got through, and the other is expecting soon. Both of 'em
+can't see the use of living, and Jane 's about worn out."
+
+"You will let me help? I can do something, if it's only the housework."
+
+"I can tend to that." She spoke decidedly. "What I want is to have
+you round 'em, comforting 'em, cheerin' 'em--"
+
+"_I_ comforting, _I_ cheering, Delia?"
+
+She nodded emphatically. "Yes, my dear, just that. Your work is cut
+out for you right here, for a few weeks anyway. You come upstairs with
+me now and set with one of 'em, and give her a bowl of gruel--I was
+just going to come up with one from the kitchen when you rung,--while I
+get Jane's things together; she 'll be in by ten. She 's over to one
+of the Settlement Houses helping out to-night."
+
+Somehow, on hearing this account of Jane's activity--tired Jane who
+could help and rescue at home, and then go out to the Settlement House
+to give of her best till ten at night--my own life dwindled into
+insignificance. The true spirit of the great city entered into me. I
+felt the power of it for good. I felt its altruism; I realized its
+deepest significance; and I saw wherein lay my own salvation from
+selfish brooding, from forbidden craving, from morbid thinking.
+
+"Let me have Jane's work," I said.
+
+We talked no more that night of matters that were personal. I gave my
+whole time and strength to help "bring her through", as Delia defined
+the state of things in regard to a girl, five years younger than I,
+"who had missed her footing".
+
+It was an anxious week. There was delirium, despair, suicidal intent;
+but we "brought her through".
+
+While watching by that girl's bedside, I relived that experience of my
+mother, the result of which was that I, Marcia Farrell, was there to
+help. In those night watches I had time for many thoughts. Cale's
+voice grew insistent, for the roar of the city was subdued at one and
+two in the morning:
+
+"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."
+
+Over and over again I heard those words. The undertone of metropolitan
+life, when at its lowest vitality, went on and on.--Two o'clock, three.
+The girl on the bed grew quiet; delirium ceased. Four--I heard the
+rattle of the milk-carts and the truck gardeners' wagons coming up from
+the ferries.
+
+"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Over
+and over again I heard it.
+
+Cale's voice was louder now, more and more insistent. All that day I
+heard it above the push-cart vendors' cries and the hurdy-gurdy's dance
+music, above the roar of the Second Avenue Elevated and the polyglot
+street clamor.
+
+Yes, I had to acknowledge it: my mother had wronged him. I visualized
+that act in her life. I saw her promising to marry him, although she
+was unwilling. I saw her giving herself in marriage to him in the
+presence of the minister and her sick father. I saw her young husband
+creeping out in the night to watch for her shadow on the curtain. I
+saw him lying down to sleep a little after his vigil--but I could not
+see my mother when she left the house. Not until she made sunshine in
+the old manor, where I was conceived, not until she made sunshine in
+the forest for old André, could I see her again in her youth and
+beauty, in the enjoyment of her stolen bliss.
+
+But I could see him whom she deserted. I saw him in the pasture among
+the colts. I saw him raving at being made her dupe; I saw him even
+raising his hand against Cale. I saw him in his fruitless search,
+east, west, north, south. I saw him leaving the very house in which I
+was watching. I saw him broken, changed, "cutting loose" from his old
+life, determined to relive in other conditions, in other lands. I saw
+him returning from that far Australian country to that house where my
+mother's steps had resounded on the old flagging in the passageway at
+Lamoral,--unknowing of her former presence there, unknowing that her
+daughter was there awaiting him,--to that place which I, also
+unknowing, had made home for him. I saw him living again in his love
+for me who was her daughter!--and he knew this! Knew I was her
+daughter.
+
+How had he dared? And he her husband--my mother's husband! The
+thought was staggering.
+
+I looked at the girl on the bed. She was asleep, but her respiration
+was rapid; she was breathing for two. "What if--"
+
+I dared scarcely formulate my thought. Was he her husband? Did merely
+the spoken word make Gordon Ewart and my mother, man and wife? What
+was it Cale said: she had pleaded so with his mother not to be with her
+husband that first night of her marriage. And there was no second.
+
+I began to see differently, as Cale predicted. Horror, shame,
+humiliation, despair, jealousy of my own mother--all this that
+obstructed vision, deflected, distorted it, was being cleared away.
+
+Had Mr. Ewart come to look at this matter in the same light, that he
+had never been my mother's husband? That words, alone, could never
+make him that?
+
+"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."
+Perhaps Cale was right.
+
+"Why was he silent?" I asked myself, and found the answer: he could not
+have gained my love, had I known. And he wanted my love--wanted me,
+and me alone of all the world for his mate. But how could he, knowing?
+
+I lost myself in conjecture, but I began to see clearly, differently.
+My own act, my desertion of him, after what he had mutely promised, was
+becoming a base thing in my eyes.
+
+I asked Delia Beaseley once, if she had heard any word from Mr. Ewart.
+
+"No, not a word," she said decidedly, "and remembering how he looked
+when he braced up and walked into this very basement twenty-seven years
+ago, I don't expect to hear from him. I ain't judgin' you, my dear,
+but you 've done an awful thing."
+
+"And what of his act?"
+
+"Well, there are two ways of looking at that," was all she would say.
+She used Cale's very words, when he told his story.
+
+I asked once again, if she had heard from the Doctor?
+
+"No. He was going out to California. He come to see me before he
+went, and he said he 'd about given up the farm plans; that he could
+n't see his way clear to carry them out for the present. And I don't
+mind telling you, that he said he would put half the interest money on
+that 'conscience fund', as he calls it, that he thinks your father
+provides to ease his soul, to helping me here in my work."
+
+I remembered what I had advised on that memorable evening in
+Lamoral--and I wondered at the ways of life.
+
+
+We "brought the girl through" with help of nurse and doctor. She and
+her child were saved, saved for good as I have every reason to believe,
+for I have kept in touch with her ever since. I am her friend, why
+quite such a friend, I do not feel called upon to explain.
+
+I answered the door bell one day when the baby upstairs was ten days
+old--and found myself face to face with Cale.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+When I saw him, I acknowledged to myself my weakness. Deep down in my
+heart I had been longing, with a desire which was prayer, that I might
+have some word from Lamoral.
+
+"Cale--Cale, dear, come in." I caught his hand, which was not
+outstretched to mine, to draw him in. "If we were n't the observed of
+all in this court I would kiss you on the spot." He continued to stare
+at me; he did not speak.
+
+"Cale, forgive me for my hardness of heart--say you forgive me, for I
+can't forgive myself; I was--"
+
+He interrupted me, speaking quietly:
+
+"I know what you was; you can't tell me nothin' 'bout _thet_, Marcia.
+I ain't laid up nothin' you said to me, nor nothin' you said against
+nobody; but I ain't fergiven yer fer leavin' me without knowin' of your
+whereabouts--
+
+"Cale, I had to be alone--"
+
+"I don't care whether you had to be alone or not," he said testily;
+"you might have let me know where you was goin'. You was n't fit to go
+alone, nor be alone. My hair 's turned gray thinkin' what might
+happen. Where was you?" he demanded sternly.
+
+"I was in Iberville."
+
+I led him unresisting into the back room; it was my turn to place some
+one in the rocking-chair.
+
+"Iberville! How in thunder did you get to Iberville when you did n't
+go on the train?"
+
+"How did you know I did n't go on the train?"
+
+"The baggage-master told me. How did you go?"
+
+"In the apple-boat."
+
+"Wal, I 'm stumped. How long did you stay there?"
+
+"Nearly four weeks. Why?"
+
+"Why? Because I 'd been doing detective work on my own account. (How
+my heart sank at those words; Mr. Ewart had not attempted to find me
+then!). I 've been doin' it for the last six weeks. This is the third
+time I 've been in New York."
+
+"But not here?"
+
+"Yes, here--in this very house. I give Mis' Beaseley the credit; she
+knows how to hold her tongue. I see she ain't told you."
+
+"No. But you have n't been here since I 've been in the house?"
+
+"No, I just got here to-day."
+
+"How did you happen to come this third time, Cale?"
+
+"I come because the Doctor told me to try it again here--"
+
+"The Doctor? Is he at home?"
+
+"Guess he is by this time; I left him at Lamoral yesterday--"
+
+"At Lamoral?" On hearing that word, a trembling I could not control
+seized upon me. If only Cale would speak of Mr. Ewart!
+
+"Yes, Lamoral. I 've been lyin' right and left to Angélique an'
+Pierre, an' Marie, an' Mère Guillardeau an' all the folks 'round that's
+been inquirin'; but I didn't lie to the Doctor--not much!"
+
+"How--how did the Doctor happen to be in Lamoral?"
+
+"Guess you fergot he said he 'd like enough come back by the C.P."
+
+I was silent. I saw that Cale did not intend to speak Mr. Ewart's name
+first. He was leaving it to me.
+
+"Look here, Marcia, I 'm goin' to talk to you for once in my life like
+a Dutch uncle. I don't mean to live through another six weeks like
+those I 've been through, if I should live to be a hundred."
+
+"I am sorry, Cale, to have been the cause of any anxiety, any suffering
+on your part--but I, too, suffered--and far more than you can ever
+know." I spoke bitterly.
+
+"I ain't denyin' you suffered--but there 's others to consider; others
+have suffered, too, I guess, in a way _you_ don't know nothin' about,
+bein' a woman."
+
+"What do you mean, Cale?" I asked, trying to make him speak Mr. Ewart's
+name.
+
+"Mean? Marcia Farrell, you know what I mean. Ain't you got a woman's
+heart beatin' somewhere in your bosom?"
+
+"Oh, Cale, don't!"
+
+"I 've got to, Marcia; you 've got to see things different, or you 'll
+rue the day you ever blinded yourself to facts."
+
+"Is Mr. Ewart ill?"
+
+"Ill?" There was a curious twitch to his mouth as he repeated that
+word. "Wal, it depends on what you call 'ill'. That's a pretty mild
+word for some sorts of diseases--"
+
+"Oh, Cale, tell me quick--don't keep me waiting any longer--"
+
+"Any longer for what?"
+
+"You know, Cale, I want to hear of him--know about him--"
+
+"Oh, you do, do you? Wal, it 's pretty late in the day for you to show
+some feelin'. Look here, Marcia, I ain't goin' to meddle. I meddled
+once thirty years ago when I tried to persuade your mother she loved
+George Jackson, an' I 've lived to curse the day I did it. I ain't
+goin' to fall inter the same trap _this_ time, you bet yer life on
+thet; but I 'm goin' to speak my mind 'fore I leave you here. Will you
+answer me one plain question, an' answer it straight?"
+
+"I 'll try to."
+
+"_Do_ you think different from what you did? Have you come to see
+things any different from what you put 'em to me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Wal, thet's to the point; now we can talk. The Doctor and Ewart was
+talkin' this over 'fore I come away; I heard every word. I was right
+there, and they asked me to be. Gordon Ewart told the Doctor that when
+he fust see him aboard ship, that was nineteen years ago, he made his
+acquaintance because he knew he was the man who had brought you inter
+this world. He never let him go. He kept in touch with him. He come
+to be his closest friend. An' he never told that he, Gordon Ewart, is
+the one that puts that money regularly into the Doctor's hands, without
+his knowin' who it comes from, for the sake of helpin' others--"
+
+"But he did not think of me." I could not help it; I spoke bitterly.
+
+"No. He did n't want to think of you. He wanted to ferget there was
+anybody or anything in this world to remind him of what he 'd suffered
+from Happy Morey; an' he tried his best. An' he told the Doctor that
+when he 'd thought he 'd conquered, when he come to see things
+different too, he come back to settle in the old manor an' carry out
+his ideas. An' the very fust night, he found you there. He said he
+knew then, he couldn't get away from his past; it was livin' right
+there along with him.
+
+"Marcia, I ain't meddlin', and mebbe I 'm to blame; but when I told you
+what I did, I done for the best as I thought. The Doctor done for the
+best as he thought. He believed you were Ewart's daughter, and he see
+what we all could n't help seein'--"
+
+"What, Cale?" I longed to hear from Cale's lips that he had seen Mr.
+Ewart's love for me.
+
+"You _know_, Marcia Farrell, I ain't goin' ter tell you. The Doctor
+said he thought fust along, it was because Ewart knew he was your
+father; but he said his eyes was opened mighty sudden--an' it 'bout
+made him sick, for he thinks a sight of you, Marcia. I see from the
+fust how things was driftin' with George, and as him an' me had
+recognized one 'nother from the fust, an' as he did n't say he knew
+you, I kept still. I was n't goin' to meddle, an' I ain't goin' to
+meddle now--only I 'm goin' straight off to tell him where you are."
+
+"But he has n't tried to find me--"
+
+"No, nor he never will. Your mother 'bout killed him when he was a
+boy, an' he is n't goin' to run after you who has 'bout killed him
+again as a man. You don't know nothin' what you 've done. I 've been
+through hell with him these last six weeks, an' I went through it with
+him once before twenty-eight years ago, an' that hell compared with
+this was like a campfire to a forest-roarer.-- Now you know."
+
+"Cale--Cale, what have I done?"
+
+"You 've done what will take the rest of your life to undo. I ain't
+goin' to meddle, I tell you, but I 'm tellin' you just as things stand.
+My part's done--for I 've found you; an' I 'm goin' to tell him so."
+
+He stood up; as it were, shook himself together, and without any
+ceremony started for the door.
+
+"Cale, don't go yet--I want to tell you; you don't see my position--"
+
+"Position be hanged. I guess folks that find their lives hangin' by a
+thread don't stop to argify much 'bout 'position'; they get somewhere
+where they can _live_--thet 's all they want."
+
+He was at the front door by this time. I grasped his arm and held it
+tight.
+
+"You will come again, Cale, you must."
+
+"I 'm goin' home to Lamoral as quick as the Montreal express can get me
+there. I can't breathe here in this hole!"
+
+He loosened his shirt collar and took off his coat. It was an
+unseasonable day in November--an Indian summer day with the mercury at
+eighty-four. The life of the East Side was flooding the streets. He
+turned to me as he stood on the low step. "I hope it won't be goodby
+for another six weeks, Marcia."
+
+"Cale, oh, Cale--"
+
+He was off down the court with a long stride peculiar to himself. I
+saw him step over a bunch of babies playing in the mud at the corner of
+the court. He turned that corner into the street. I went in and shut
+the door.
+
+Delia Beaseley was out for the entire forenoon, but Jane, who had
+returned from her two weeks vacation, was upstairs. I had plenty of
+time to think, to feel. I must have sat there in the back room for an
+hour or more, then the front door bell rang again.
+
+I answered it--and found Mr. Ewart.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Are you alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I wish to see you for a few minutes."
+
+"Come into the back room."
+
+I led the way. I heard him shut the front door.
+
+There was no word of welcome on the part of either, no hand extended.
+All I could see, as he stood there momentarily on the step, was the set
+face, the dark hollows beneath his eyes, the utter fatigue in his
+attitude. He stood with his hand on the door jamb, bracing himself by
+it. So he must have stood long years before when he came to seek my
+mother. That was my thought.
+
+He did not sit down; but I--I had to; I had not strength left to stand.
+
+"I 'm going to ask you a few questions."
+
+"Yes." My tongue was dry; my lips parched. It was with difficulty I
+could articulate.
+
+"What did you think I promised you, even if without words, that last
+time I saw you in camp?"
+
+"All."
+
+"What did you promise me when you looked into my eyes, there on the
+shore of the cove?"
+
+"All." I had no other word at my command.
+
+"And what did 'all' mean to you?"
+
+I could not answer.
+
+"Did it mean that you were to be my wife, that I was to be your
+husband?"
+
+"I thought so."
+
+"And you came to think otherwise--"
+
+"How could it be, oh, how could it be?" I cried out wildly, the dumb
+misery finding expression at last. "How could it be when you are my
+mother's husband--"
+
+"Stop! Not here and now. I will not hear that--not here, where I
+found her dead in this basement; not now, when I have come to find her
+child. Listen to me. Answer me, as if before the judgment seat of
+your truest womanhood and our common humanity. Is she a wife who never
+loves the man who loves her, and is married to her in the law? Answer
+me."
+
+"No."
+
+"Is he a husband who never receives the pledge of love from the woman
+he loves, and to whom he is married in the law? Answer me again."
+
+"No."
+
+"Can words merely, the 'I promise', the 'I take', make marriage in its
+truest sense? Tell me."
+
+"No."
+
+"Was the woman who never loved me, my wife in any true sense for all
+the spoken words?"
+
+"No," I answered again, but my voice faltered.
+
+"Was the man who loved her, her husband simply by reason of those few
+spoken words?"
+
+"No--but--"
+
+"Yes, I know what you would say; the words, at least, were spoken that
+made us before the world man and wife in the law--but how about the
+'before God'?"
+
+I could not answer. The man who was cross-questioning me was trying to
+get at the truth as I saw it.
+
+"The law can be put aside, and I put it aside; I was divorced from her.
+But what difference, except to you, does that make? Marcia Farrell, I
+was never your mother's husband. Had I been, had I taken her once in
+my arms as wife, can you think for one moment that I would have stayed
+in the manor, continued in your presence--watching, waiting, longing
+for some sign of love for me on your part? You cannot think it--it is
+not possible."
+
+His voice shook with passion, with indignation. He bent to me.
+
+"Tell me, in mercy tell me, what stands between us two? Speak out now
+from the depths of your very soul. Lay aside fear; there is nothing to
+fear, believe me. I am fighting now not only for my life, but for
+yours which is dearer to me than my own. Speak."
+
+I took courage. I looked up at him as he bent over me.
+
+"I thought you loved my mother in me--I was afraid it was not I you
+loved, not Marcia Farrell, but Happy Morey."
+
+"You thought _that_!--And I never knew." He spoke rapidly, with a
+catch in his voice which sounded like a half laugh or a sob.
+
+He straightened himself suddenly, then, as suddenly, he bent over me
+again, took my face between his hands and looked into my eyes, as if by
+looking he could engrave his words on my brain.
+
+"I swear to you by my manhood, that I have loved and love you for
+yourself, for what you are. I swear to you by my past life, a life
+that has never known the love of a woman, that the past no longer
+exists for me; that it no longer existed for me from the moment I saw
+you coming down stairs that first night at Lamoral. I waited this time
+to make sure that a woman loved me as I wanted to be loved, as I must
+be loved--and I waited too long. You are not like your mother, except
+in looks. You are you--the woman I want to make my wife, the woman I
+look to, to make life with me. Marcia! Let the past bury its
+dead--what do we care for it? We are living, you and
+I--living--loving--"
+
+He drew me up to him--and life in its fulness began for me....
+
+
+"And now put on your hat, give me your coat, and come with me," he said
+a half an hour afterwards.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To the City Hall to get our marriage licence."
+
+"To-day?"
+
+"Yes, now, before luncheon. Tell Jane you will not return--"
+
+"But my bag--shall I take that? And Delia, what will--"
+
+"Delia must look out for herself; you can explain by letter. Tell Jane
+to have your bag sent this afternoon to this address." He gave me a
+card on which he scribbled, "Check room of the Grand Central Station".
+"We can be married at the magistrate's office--"
+
+I must have shown some disappointment at this decision, for he asked
+quickly:
+
+"What is it, Marcia? Tell me. Remember, I can bear nothing more."
+
+I took a lighter tone with him. I saw that the nervous strain under
+which he was suffering must be relieved.
+
+"I am disappointed, yes, downright disappointed. Even if you don't
+want to make certain promises, I confess I do. I want to say 'I
+promise'; I want to hear myself saying 'I take you' and 'till death do
+us part'. I want to say those very words; I would like the whole world
+to hear. Why, think of it, I am going to be your wife! Do you grasp
+that fact?" I said, smiling at him.
+
+I won an answering smile.
+
+"Have your own way; I may as well succumb to the inevitable now as at
+any time, for you will always have it with me."
+
+"Oh, I would n't be so mean as to want it all the time, besides it
+would be so monotonous; but I do want it this once--the great and only
+'once' for me."
+
+"Where do you want to be married? Have you any preference?"
+
+"A decided one. I want to be married in the chapel of St. Luke's, and
+I want Doctor Rugvie to give me away. As you both came down last night
+from Lamoral, I don't believe he is away from the city, now is he?"
+
+"He is up at St. Luke's. He said he should be there till five. I was
+to telephone him there."
+
+"Then at five it shall be," I declared, with an emphasis that made him
+smile again.
+
+"At five you shall be married; but, remember, I am the party of the
+second part." He spoke half whimsically; I was so glad to hear that
+tone in his voice. I welcomed the joy that began to express itself
+normally in merry give and take.
+
+"No, first, Mr. Ewart--always first--"
+
+"I don't see it so."
+
+"Not at present, but you will when I am Mrs. Ewart. I want to ask you
+a question."
+
+"Yes, anything."
+
+"Have you ever seen those papers that Doctor Rugvie has in his
+possession?"
+
+"No, and I never want to. They are yours."
+
+"But I don't want to see them either. You do not know their contents?"
+
+"No; only that there is a marriage certificate among them and a paper
+or two for you." I noticed he avoided mentioning my mother's name.
+
+"Gordon--" I called him so for the first time, and was rewarded with a
+kiss, after which intermezzo, I finished what I had to say:
+
+"--You say let the past bury its dead; so long as those papers exist,
+it will, in a way, live. I would like to know that they do not exist."
+
+"You are sure you do not care to know your parentage?"
+
+"No. Why should I? What is that to me? It is enough that I am to be
+your wife--and what my mother said, or did not say, could not influence
+me now. She never could have anticipated _this_. Besides, there might
+be some mention by her of my parentage."
+
+"You express my own thought, my own desire, Marcia. Shall we ask John
+to destroy them?"
+
+"Yes, and the sooner the better."
+
+He drew a long breath of relief.
+
+"Then that chapter is closed--and I have you to myself, without
+knowledge of any other tie. I thank God that I have come into my own
+through you alone. Come, we must be going."
+
+"I 'll just run up stairs and tell Jane that I shall not come back
+here, and, Gordon--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I want something else with all my heart."
+
+"What, more? I am growing impatient."
+
+"I want Delia Beaseley and Cale for witnesses--"
+
+"It is wonderful how a man can make plans and a woman undo them when
+she has her way! I was intending to be married by a magistrate, and
+then carry you off unbeknown to Cale and Company, and telephone to them
+later. Now, of course, they shall be with us."
+
+I left word with Jane to tell her mother to be at St. Luke's chapel
+promptly that afternoon at five; it was a matter of great importance
+and that Mr. Ewart would be there. At which Jane looked her amazement,
+but had the good sense to say nothing.
+
+We left the house together. Together we rode up the Bowery. We
+procured our licence, and together we rode on the electrics up to the
+Bronx and, afterwards, had our luncheon at the cafe in the park on the
+heights. As the short November afternoon drew to a close, we rode down
+to St. Luke's. It was already five when we entered the chapel.
+
+Delia, Cale and the Doctor were there, waiting for us; but they spoke
+no word of greeting, nor did we. They followed us in silence to the
+altar where, with our three friends close about us, we were made man
+and wife.
+
+At the end of the short service, the two men grasped my husband by the
+hand. But still no word was spoken. It remained for Cale to break the
+silence; he turned to me.
+
+"Guess you 've found the trail all right this time, Marcia." His voice
+trembled; he tried to smile; and I--I just threw my arms around his
+neck and gave him what he termed the surprise of his life: a hearty
+kiss. The Doctor, of course, claimed the same favor, and Delia
+Beaseley dissolved suddenly into tears--poor Delia, I am sure I read
+her thought at that moment!--only to laugh with the next breath, as did
+all the rest of us, for Cale spoke out his feelings with no uncertain
+sound.
+
+"I guess I 'll say goodby till I can see you again in the old manor,
+Mis' Ewart, an' I hope you 'll be ter home soon as convenient. I ain't
+had a square meal fer the last six weeks. Angélique has filled the
+sugar bowl twice with salt by mistake, an' put a lot of celery salt
+inter her doughnuts three times runnin'--an' all on account of her
+bein' so taken up with Pete. An' he ain't much better even if he was a
+widower; he fed the hosses nine quarts of corn meal apiece for three
+days runnin' ter celebrate, an' the only thing thet saved 'em was, thet
+he had sense enough left not ter wet it."
+
+My husband assured him that we should be at home soon--perhaps in a day
+or two.
+
+The Doctor insisted that Cale and Delia should come home with him to
+dinner, in order that Cale might have one "square meal" before he left
+on the night train. They accepted promptly. It was an opportunity to
+talk matters over.
+
+We bade them goodby at the entrance to the hospital; then my husband
+and I went down and into the great city, the heart of which had been
+shown to us because we had seen, at last, into our own.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+I have been his wife for nearly two years. I am sitting by the window
+in the living-room at Lamoral, while writing these last words. My
+baby, my little daughter, now four months old, lies in her bassinet
+beside me.
+
+I believe Gordon's dearest wish was for a son, but I had set my heart
+on a daughter, and I really think he would have welcomed twins, or even
+triplets, of the feminine gender, if I had expressed a preference for
+them! A little daughter it is, however, and her father kneels beside
+her to worship and adore. Sometimes I detect the traces of tears when
+his face emerges from her still uncertain embrace.
+
+Our little daughter, born to such a heritage of love! I look at her
+often when she is asleep and wonder what her life will be. So far as
+her father and I can make it, it shall be a joy; and yet--and yet! To
+this little soul, as to every other new-born, life will interpret
+itself in its own terms, despite father-love, and mother-love and the
+love of friends--of whom she has already a host!
+
+Cale has constituted himself prime minister of the nursery ever since
+her advent, and advises me on all occasions. She is sovereign in the
+house. Angélique and Marie fell out on the subject of which should
+launder the simple baby dresses, and, in consequence, we had an
+uncomfortable household for a week. Pete and his son, no longer
+"little" Pete, are her slaves. And as for the dogs, they guard the
+room when she takes her frequent naps, three lying outside the
+threshold, and one within, by the crib, to make known to us when she
+wakes. Of course, each dog has his day--otherwise there would be no
+living in the house with them.
+
+Only this morning, Mère Guillardeau, now over a hundred, drove over to
+see her and brought with her a tiny pair of dainty moccasins that her
+nephew, André, sent down from the Upper Saguenay. Even the bassinet,
+in which she is at this moment lying, was woven by our Montagnais
+postman's squaw-wife and sent to me in anticipation of her coming. We
+must try not to spoil her.
+
+Our first summer was spent in Crieff with Jamie and Mrs. Macleod.
+
+Jamie showed me the great Gloire de Dijon roses growing on the stone
+walls of his home, and the ivy covering the gate that gives passage
+from the lower side of the garden to the meadows and the
+bright-glancing Earn. Before you step out through it, it frames the
+misty blue Grampians beyond the river. Jamie used to describe all this
+to me that winter in Lamoral; but the reality is more beautiful than
+any description.
+
+The Doctor was with us for three weeks in August. We celebrated
+Jamie's birthday by repeating Gordon's celebration of it so long ago.
+We went over the moors and through the bracken to the "Keltic". We
+made our fire beneath the same tree, under which Gordon camped to the
+little boy's delight, nineteen years before, and we swung our gypsy
+kettle and made refreshing tea. We had a perfect day together.
+
+It was on that occasion Jamie confided in me. He told me his decision
+to return to England was not wholly influenced by his publishers, but
+because of his interest in Bess Stanley who, he had heard, was seen a
+good deal in the company of a distant cousin of my husband's--another
+Gordon Ewart, named from his father from whom my Gordon bought the
+manor and seigniory of Lamoral.
+
+He discerned that the only wise thing for him was to be on the spot,
+"to head the other off" as he put it.
+
+"If I can be only one half day with Bess now and then, I can make her
+forget every other man," he declared solemnly.
+
+I laughed inwardly, but I knew he spoke the truth. Jamie Macleod is
+fascination itself when he exerts himself.
+
+"I am going to win, you know, in the end," he said. "Another Ewart
+shan't cut me out again--" He spoke mischievously, audaciously.
+
+"Oh, you big fraud! It's well I understand you."
+
+"And I, you, Marcia--I 'll cable."
+
+"Do, that's a dear. I shall be so anxious."
+
+
+Yesterday I received the cablegram; Jamie has won.
+
+I can't help wondering about those other "Gordon Ewarts", distant
+cousins of my husband. Can it be?--
+
+No, no! I will not even speculate. That past is forever laid, thank
+God.
+
+I write "forever"--but perhaps that is not possible, for I have lived
+through a strange experience that makes me doubt at times. When my
+nestling was on her way to us, when a perfect love enfolded me, a love
+that protected, guarded, surrounded me with everything that life can
+yield, then it was that, at times, I felt again a stranger in this
+world; nor love of husband, nor love of friends, nor my love for them,
+for my home, nor my very passion of anticipated motherhood, could
+banish that feeling.
+
+I never told my husband. He will read it here for the first time. I
+accounted for it by reason of my condition in which every nerve centre
+was alive for two. It may be my mother felt this before me--I do not
+know. But when my baby came, when I could touch the little bundle
+beside me, when I gave her the first nourishment from the fountain of
+her life, the feeling left me. I have not experienced it since.
+
+During this last winter I have occupied my enforced leisure in writing
+out these life-lines of mine. I have written them for my daughter. It
+may be that she, too, sheltered as she now is, may sometime find
+herself lost in the wilderness we call Life, may read these life-lines
+and, hearing her mother's cry, may find by means of it the trail--as
+her mother found it before her.
+
+My husband, entering quietly without my hearing him, leaned over my
+shoulder, as I was writing those last words, and took my pen from my
+fingers.
+
+"Not yet, Marcia; you have n't gained your strength."
+
+I seized a pencil, and while I try to finish now, scribbling, he is
+holding the end of it, ready to lift it from the paper.
+
+"Please, Gordon--just a few more words--only a few about the new farm
+project, and Delia, and the Doctor and Mrs. Macleod,"--I hear him laugh
+under his breath when I couple those two names; we are still hoping in
+that direction,--"and those dear Duchênes--and you, of course--"
+
+The pencil is being lifted--I struggle to write--
+
+"Oh, Gordon, you tyrant!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS BY
+
+MARY E. WALLER
+
+
+ THE WOOD-CARVER OF 'LYMPUS
+ A DAUGHTER OF THE RICH
+ THE LITTLE CITIZEN
+ SANNA OF THE ISLAND TOWN
+ A YEAR OUT OF LIFE
+ FLAMSTED QUARRIES
+ A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS
+ MY RAGPICKER
+ THROUGH THE GATES OF THE NETHERLANDS
+ OUR BENNY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Cry in the Wilderness, by Mary E. Waller
+
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+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Cry in the Wilderness
+
+Author: Mary E. Waller
+
+Illustrator: Arthur I. Keller
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2011 [EBook #34396]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="&quot;What a wilderness was this Seigniory of Lamoral! and yet--I liked it.&quot; Frontispiece. <I>See Page 92</I>." BORDER="">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center">
+&quot;What a wilderness was this Seigniory of Lamoral! <BR>
+and yet&mdash;I liked it.&quot; Frontispiece. <I><A HREF="#P92">See Page 92</A></I>.
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t1">
+A CRY IN
+<BR>
+THE WILDERNESS
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+BY
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+MARY E. WALLER
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t4">
+Author of "The Wood-carver of 'Lympus," "Flamsted<BR>
+Quarries," "A Year Out of Life," etc.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t4">
+WITH FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR BY
+<BR>
+ARTHUR I. KELLER
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+TORONTO
+<BR>
+MCCLELLAND &amp; GOODCHILD
+<BR>
+LIMITED
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t4">
+<I>Copyright, 1912,</I>
+<BR>
+BY MARY E. WALLER.
+<BR><BR>
+<I>All rights reserved</I>
+<BR><BR><BR>
+Published, October, 1912
+<BR><BR><BR>
+THE COLONIAL PRESS
+<BR>
+C. H. SIMONDS &amp; CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+CONTENTS
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+BOOK ONE
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 15%">
+<A HREF="#chap0101">THE JUGGERNAUT</A>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+BOOK TWO
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 15%">
+<A HREF="#chap0201">THE SEIGNIORY OF LAMORAL</A>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+BOOK THREE
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 15%">
+<A HREF="#chap0301">FINDING THE TRAIL</A>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0101"></A>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BOOK ONE
+</H4>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE JUGGERNAUT
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+A Cry in the Wilderness
+</H2>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"You Juggernaut!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That's exactly what I said, and said aloud too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was leaning from the window in my attic room in the old district of
+New York known as "Chelsea"; both hands were stemmed on the ledge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You Juggernaut of a city!" I said again, and found considerable
+satisfaction in repeating that word. I leaned out still farther into
+the sickening September heat and defiantly shook my fist, as it were
+into the face of the monster commercial metropolis of the New World.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt the blood rush into my cheeks&mdash;thin and white enough, so my
+glass told me. Then I straightened myself, drew back and into the
+room. The quick sharp clang of the ambulance gong, the clatter of
+running hoofs sounded below me in the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And they keep going under&mdash;so," I said beneath my breath; and added,
+but between my teeth:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But <I>I</I> won't&mdash;I <I>won't</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Turning from the window, I took my seat at the table on which was a
+pile of newspapers I kept for reference, and searched through them
+until I found an advertisement I remembered to have seen a week before.
+I had marked it with a blue pencil. I cut it out. Then I put on my
+hat and went down into the city that lay swooning in the intense,
+sultry heat of mid-September.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sun, dimmed and blood red in vapor, was setting behind the Jersey
+shore. The heated air quivered above the housetops. Wherever there
+was a stretch of asphalt pavement, innumerable hoof-dents witnessed to
+the power of the sun's rays. The shrivelled foliage in the parks was
+gray with dust.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew well enough that on the upper avenues for blocks and blocks the
+houses were tightly boarded as if hermetically sealed to light and air;
+but I was going southward, and below and seaward every door and window
+yawned wide. To the rivers, to the Battery, to the Bridge, the piers,
+and the parks, the sluggish, vitiated life of the city's tenement
+districts was crawling listless. The tide was out; and I knew that
+beneath the piers&mdash;who should know better than I who for six years had
+taken half of my recreation on them?&mdash;the fetid air lay heavy on the
+scum gathered about the slime-covered piles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The advertisement was a Canadian "want", and in reading it an
+overpowering longing came upon me to see something of the spaciousness
+of that other country, to breathe its air that blows over the northern
+snow-fields. I had acted on an impulse in deciding to answer it, but
+that impulse was only the precipitation of long-unuttered and unfilled
+desires. I was realizing this as I made my way eastward into one of
+the former Trinity tenement districts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I found the flag-paved court upon which the shadows were already
+falling. It was not an easily discoverable spot, and I was a little in
+doubt as to entering and inquiring further; I didn't like its look. I
+took out the advertisement; yes, this was the place: "No. 8 V&mdash;&mdash;
+Court."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't back down now," I said to myself by way of encouragement and,
+entering, rang the bell of an old-fashioned house with low stoop and
+faded green blinds close shut in sharp contrast to the gaping ones
+adjoining. The openly neglected aspect of its neighbors was wanting,
+as was, in fact, any indication of its character. Ordinarily I would
+have shunned such a locality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door was opened by a woman apparently fifty. Her strong
+deeply-lined face I trusted at once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you want?" The voice was business-like, neither repellent nor
+inviting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've come in answer to this," I said, holding out the clipping. The
+woman took it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You come in a minute, till I get my glasses."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She led the way through a long, unlighted hall into a back room where
+the windows were open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You set right down there," she said, pushing me gently into a
+rocking-chair and pressing a palm-leaf fan into my hand, "for you look
+'bout ready to drop."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She spoke the truth; I was. The sickening breathlessness of the air,
+nine hours of indoor work, and little eaten all day for lack of
+appetite, suddenly took what strength I had when I started out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the woman stood by the window reading the slip in the fading light,
+my eyes never left her face. It seemed to me&mdash;and strangely, too, for
+I have always felt my independence of others' personal help&mdash;that my
+life itself was about to depend on her answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, this is the place to apply; but now the first thing I want to
+know is how you come to think you 'd fit this place? You don't look
+strong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, I am;" I spoke hurriedly, as if a heavy pressure that was
+gradually making itself felt on my chest were forcing out the words;
+"but I haven't been out of the hospital very long&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What hospital?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"St. Luke's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was the matter with you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Typhoid pneumonia with pleurisy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How long was you there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten weeks, to the first of July; I've been at work since&mdash;but I want
+to get away from here where I can breathe; if I don't I shall die."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a queer flutter in my voice. I could hear it. The woman
+noticed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ain't you well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, I am, and want work&mdash;but away from here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There must have been some passionate energy left in my voice at least,
+for the woman lifted her thick eyebrows over the rim of her spectacles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"H'm&mdash;let's talk things over." She drew up a chair in front of me. "I
+won't light up yet, it's so hot. I guess we 'll get a tempest 'fore
+long."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She sat down, placing her hands on her knees and leaning forward to
+look more closely at my face. I seemed to see her through a fog, and
+passed my hand across my eyes to wipe it away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's no use beating 'round the bush when it comes to business,"
+she said bluntly but kindly; "I 've got to ask you some pretty plain
+questions; the parties in this case are awful particular."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes." I answered with effort. The fog was still before my eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see what it says." She began to read the advertisement slowly:
+"'Wanted: A young girl of good parentage, strong, and country raised,
+for companion and assistant to an elderly Scotchwoman on a farm in
+Canada, Province of Quebec. Must have had a common school education.
+Apply at No. 8 V&mdash;&mdash; Court, New York City.' You say you 've been in
+St. Luke's?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you know the one they call Doctor Rugvie there? He 's the great
+surgeon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I don't know him; but I 've heard so much of him. He was pointed
+out to me once when I was getting better."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, by good rights you ought to be applying for this place to him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To him?" I asked in surprise. I could n't make this fact rhyme in
+connection with this woman and Canada.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, to him; I'm only a go-between he trusts. He 's in Europe now and
+is n't coming home till late this year, so he left this with me," she
+indicated the advertisement, "and told me not to put it in till a week
+ago. I ain't had many applications. Folks in this city don't take to
+going off to a farm in Canada, and those I 've had would n't have
+suited. But, anyway, Doctor Rugvie is reference for this place that's
+advertised, and I guess he 's good enough for anybody. I thought I 'd
+tell you this to relieve your mind. 'T ain't every girl would come
+down here to this hole looking for a place.&mdash; Where was you born?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here in New York, but I have lived most of my life in the country,
+northern New England, just this side of the Canada line. I 've been
+here seven years, five in the Public Library; that's my reference."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How old are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twenty-six next December&mdash;the third."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I would n't have thought it. Mother living?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; she died when I was born."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any father?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I don't know whether my father is living or not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I began to wish I had n't come here to be questioned like this; yet I
+knew the woman was asking only what was necessary in the circumstances.
+I feared my answers would seal my fate as an applicant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was your father's name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know." Again I caught the sound of that strange flutter in my
+voice. "I never knew my father."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Humph! Then your mother wasn't married, I take it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The statement would have sounded heartless to me except that the
+woman's voice was wholly businesslike, just as if she had asked that
+question a hundred times already of other girls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes&mdash;yes, she was."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Before you was born?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was her husband's name then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jackson."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Christian name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"George."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jackson&mdash;Jackson&mdash;George Jackson." The woman repeated the name,
+dwelling upon it as if some memory were stirred in the repetition.
+"And you say you don't know who your father was?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;". I could n't help it&mdash;that word broke in a half hysterical sob.
+I kept saying to myself: "Oh, why did I come&mdash;why did I come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, look here, my dear," and it seemed as if a flood of tenderness
+drowned all those business tones in her voice, "you stop right where
+you are. There ain't no use my putting you into torment this way,
+place or no place&mdash;Doctor Rugvie wouldn't like it; 't ain't human. If
+you can tell me all you know, and want to, just you take your own
+time,"&mdash;she laid a hand on my shoulder,&mdash;"and if you don't, just set
+here a while till the tempest that's coming up is over, and I 'll see
+you safe home afterwards. You ain't fit to be out alone if you are
+twenty-six. You don't look a day over twenty. There 's nothing to
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She leaned nearer, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting in her
+palms. I tried to see her face, but the fog before my eyes was growing
+thicker, the room closer; her voice sounded far away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See here&mdash;will it make it any easier if I tell you I 've got a girl
+consider'ble older than you as has never known her father's name
+either? And that there ain't no girl in New York as has a lovinger
+mother, nor a woman as has a lovinger daughter for all that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could not answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A flash of red lightning filled the darkening room. It was followed by
+a crash of thunder, a rush of wind and a downpour as from a
+cloud-burst. I saw the woman rise and shut both windows; then for me
+there was a blank for two or three minutes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She told me afterwards that when she turned from the window, where she
+stood watching the rain falling in sheets, she saw me lying prone
+beside her chair. I know that I heard her talking, but I could not
+speak to tell her I could.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My gracious!" she ejaculated as she bent over me, "if this don't beat
+all! Jane," she called, but it sounded far away, "come here quick.
+Here, help me lift this girl on to the cot. Bring me that camphor
+bottle from the shelf; I 'll loosen her clothes.&mdash;Rub her hands.&mdash;She
+fell without my hearing her, there was such an awful crash.&mdash;Light the
+lamp too...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There now, she's beginning to come to; guess 't was nothing but the
+heat after all, or mebbe she 's faint to her stomach; you never can
+tell when this kind 's had any food. Just run down and make a cup of
+cocoa, but light the lamp first&mdash;I want to see what she 's like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I heard all this as through a thick blanket wrapped about my head, but
+I could n't open my eyes or speak. The woman's voice came at first
+from a great distance; gradually it grew louder, clearer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now we 'll see," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She must have let the lamplight fall full on my face, for through my
+closed and weighted lids I saw red and yellow. I felt her bend over
+me; her breath was on my cheek. Still I could not speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She 's the living image," I heard her say quite distinctly; "I guess I
+'ve had one turn I shan't get over in a hurry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I found myself wondering what she meant and trying to lift my eyelids.
+She took my hand; I knew she must be looking at the nails.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She 's coming round all right&mdash;the blood 's turning in her nails."
+She took both my hands to rub them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I opened my eyes then, and heard her say: "Eyes different."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then she lifted my head on her arm and fed me the cocoa spoonful by
+spoonful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you, I 'm better now," I said; my voice sounded natural to
+myself, and I made an effort to sit up. "I 'm so sorry I 've made you
+all this trouble&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't talk about trouble, child; you lay back against those pillows
+and rest you. I 'll be back in a little while." She left the room.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0102"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+When she returned, shortly after, I had regained my strength. She
+found me with my hat on and sitting in the rocking-chair. The woman
+drew up her own, and began in a matter-of-fact voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now we 'll proceed to business. I 've been thinking like chain
+lightning ever since that clap of thunder, and I can tell you the storm
+'s cleared up more 'n the air. I ain't the kind to dodge round much
+when there 's business on hand. Straight to the point is the best
+every time; so I may as well tell you that this place,"&mdash;she held out
+the advertisement,&mdash;"is made for you and you for the place, even if you
+ain't quite so strong as you might be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt the tension in my face lessen. I was about to speak, but the
+woman put out her hand, saying:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, don't say a word&mdash;not yet; let me do the talking; you can have
+your say afterwards, and I 'll be only too glad to hear it. But it's
+laid on me like the Lord's hand itself to tell you what I 'm going to.
+It 'll take long in the telling, but if you go out to this place, you
+ought to know something why there is such a place to go to, and to
+explain that, I 've got to begin to tell you what I 'm going to. You
+'re different from the others, and it's your due to know. I should
+judge life had n't been all roses for you so far, and if you should
+have a few later on, there 'll be plenty of thorns&mdash;there always is.
+So just you stand what I 'm going to tell you. This was n't in the
+bargain when I told Doctor Rugvie I 'd see all the applicants and try
+to get the right one,&mdash;but I can make it all right with him. It's a
+longer story than I wish 't was, but I 've got to begin at the
+beginning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And begin with myself, too, for I was country raised. Father and
+mother both died when I was young, and I brought myself up, you might
+say. I come down here when I was nineteen years old, and it wasn't
+more 'n a year 'fore I found myself numbered with the outcasts on this
+earth&mdash;all my own fault too. I 've always shouldered the blame, for a
+woman as has common sense knows better, say what you 've a mind to; but
+the knowledge of that only makes green apples sourer, I can tell you.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mind the night in December, thirty years ago, when I found myself in
+the street, too proud to beg, too good to steal. There was n't nothing
+left&mdash;nothing but the river; there 's always enough of that and to
+spare. So I took a bee line for one of the piers, and crouched down by
+a mooring-post. I 'd made up my mind to end it all; it did n't cost me
+much neither. I only remember growing dizzy looking down at the foam
+whirling and heaving under me, and kinder letting go a rope I 'd
+somehow got hold of...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The next thing I knew I was hearing a woman say:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You leave her to me; she'll be as quiet as a lamb now.' She put her
+arms around me. 'You poor child,' she said, 'you come along with me.'
+And I went.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, that woman mothered me. She took in washing and ironing in two
+rooms on Tenth Avenue. She never left me night or day for a week
+running till my baby come. And all she 'd say to me, when I got sort
+of wild and out of my head, was:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You ain't going to be the grave of your child, be you?' And that
+always brought me to myself. I was so afraid of murdering the child
+that was coming. That's what she kept saying:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You ain't going to be so mean as not to give that innercent baby a
+chance to live! Just you wait till it comes and you 'll see what life
+'s for. 'T ain't so bad as you think, and some folks make out; and
+that child has a right to this world. You give it the right, and then
+die if you think it's best.' So she kept at me till my baby come, and
+then&mdash;why, I got just fierce to live for its sweet little sake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Bout six months after that I got religion&mdash;never mind how I got it; I
+got it, that's the point, and I 've held on to it ever since. And when
+I 'd got it, the first thing I did was to take my baby in my arms and
+go down to that pier, clear out to the mooring-post, and kneel right
+down there in the dark and vow a vow to the living God that I 'd give
+my life to saving of them of His poor children who 'd missed their
+footing, and trying to help 'em on to their feet again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I 've kept it; brought my girl right up to it too. She 's been my
+mainstay through it all these last ten years. I took in washing and
+ironing in the basement of this very house,&mdash;my saving angel helped me
+to work,&mdash;and when it was done, late at night between eleven and
+twelve, I 'd go down to the rivers, sometimes one, sometimes t' other,
+and watch and wait, ready to do what come in my way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At first the police got on to my track thinking something was wrong;
+but it took 'bout two words to set 'em right, as it did every other man
+that come near me; and soon I went and come and no questions asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One night I 'd been down to one of the North River piers. It was in
+December, and a howling northeaster had set in just before sundown. It
+was sleeting and snowing and blowing a little harder than even I could
+stand. I had just crossed the street from the pier and was thanking
+God, as I covered my head closer with my shawl, that, so far as I knew,
+no one of His children was tired of living, when something&mdash;I did n't
+see what for I was bending over against the wind&mdash;went by me with a
+rush, and I thought I heard a groan. I turned as quick as a flash, and
+see something dark running, swaying, stumbling across the street,
+headed for the pier. That was enough for me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I caught up my skirt and give chase. How the woman, for it was one,
+could get over the ground so fast was a mystery, except that she was
+running with the wind. She was on to the pier in no time. I cried
+'Stop!' and 'Watch!' I don't think she heard me. Once she nearly
+fell, and I thought I had her I was so close to her; but she was up and
+off again before I could lay hand on her. Then I shouted; and the Lord
+must have lent me Gabriel's trump, for the woman turned once, and when
+she see me she threw out her hands and fairly flew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Sound steamer had n't gone out, the night was so thick and bad,
+and the cabin lights alongside shone out bright enough for me to mark
+her as she dodged this way and that trying to get to the end of the
+pier.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She knew I was after her, and I was n't going to give up. But when I
+see the make-fast, and all around it the yeasting white on water as
+black as ink, and she standing there with her arms up ready to jump, my
+knees knocked together. Somehow I managed to get hold of her
+dress&mdash;but she did n't move; and all of a sudden, before I could get my
+arms around her, she dropped in a heap, groaning: 'My child&mdash;my child&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've always thought 't was then her heart broke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A deck-hand on the steamer heard me screech, and together we got her
+on the floor of the lower deck. We did what we could for her, and when
+she 'd come to, they got me a hack and I took her home, laid her on my
+bed, and sent the hackman for Doctor Rugvie. He 's been my right-hand
+man all these years. He stayed with her till daylight. He told me she
+'d never come through alive; the heart action was all wrong.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After he 'd gone, she spoke for the first time and asked for some
+paper and a pencil. I propped her up on the pillows, and all that day
+between her pains she was writing, writing and tearing up. Towards
+night she grew worse. I asked her name then, and if she had any
+friends. She looked at me with a look that made my heart sink; but she
+give me no answer. About six, she handed me a slip of paper&mdash;'A
+telegram,' she said, and asked me if I would send it right off. I
+could n't leave her, but when the Doctor come about eight, I slipped
+out and sent it. The name on it was the one you say was your mother's
+husband's and the message said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I am dying and alone among strangers. Will you come to me for the
+sake of my child,' and she give me the address.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come here, my dear," said the woman suddenly to me. I was staring at
+her, not knowing whether I drew breath or not; "come here to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I rose mechanically. The woman drew me down upon her knee and put her
+two strong arms about me. I knew I was in the presence of revelation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At midnight her child, a girl, was born&mdash;the third of December just
+twenty-six years ago. Doctor Rugvie fought for her life, but he could
+n't save her. At one she died&mdash;of a broken heart and no mistake, so
+the Doctor said. She refused to give him her name and he left her in
+peace&mdash;that's his way. But before she died she give him an envelope
+which she filled with some things she 'd been writing in the afternoon,
+and said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Keep them&mdash;for my daughter. I trust you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, my dear, my dear, the sorrow in this God's earth! I ain't got
+used to it yet and never shall. That dying face was like an angel's.
+Doctor Rugvie said he 'd never seen the like before. She spoke only
+once to him in all her agony, then she said: 'The little life that is
+coming is worth all this&mdash;all&mdash;all.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The next morning there come a telegram from somewhere in New
+England&mdash;I forget where&mdash;'Will be with you at two.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And sure enough, a little after two, a young feller come to the door.
+He did n't look more 'n twenty, but it seemed from his face as if those
+twenty years had done something to him 't would generally take a man's
+lifetime to do, and said he 'd come to claim her who was his wife.
+That's just what he said, no more, no less: 'I've come to claim her who
+was my wife. Where is she?' And he give me the telegram.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was 'bout the hardest thing I 've ever had to do, but I had to tell
+him just as things was. I thought for a minute he was going to fall he
+shook so; but he laid hold of the door-jamb and, straightening himself,
+looked me square in the eye just as composed as Doctor Rugvie himself,
+and says:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'In that case I have come to claim the body of her who was my wife.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Those are his very words. I took him into the back room and left 'em
+alone together. I did n't dare to say a word for his face scairt me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When he come out he said he would relieve me of all further
+responsibility, which I took pains to inform him included a day-old
+baby, thinking that would fetch some explanation from him. But he did
+n't seem to lay any weight on <I>that</I> part of it. He made all the
+arrangements himself, and I took a back seat. I see I was n't any more
+necessary to him than if I had n't been there. He went out for an hour
+and come back with a nurse; and at six that afternoon he drove away in
+a hack with her and the baby, an express cart with the body following
+on behind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I told him the last thing 'fore he went that his wife had given an
+envelope with some papers to Doctor Rugvie, and that they were for his
+child. He turned and give me a look that was beyond me. I never could
+fathom that look! It said more 'n any living human being's look that I
+ever see&mdash;if only I could have read it! But he never spoke a word, not
+even a word of thanks&mdash;not that I was expecting or wanted any after
+seeing his face as he stood hanging on to the door-jamb. I knew then
+he did n't really see me nor anything else except the body of his wife
+somewhere in that basement. He did everything as if he 'd been a
+machine instead of a human being; and when I see him drive off I did
+n't know much more 'n I did when I took the woman in, except that she
+was married."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was silent. I drew a long breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that all you know?" I felt I could not be left so, suspended as it
+were over the abyss of the unknown in my life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She sighed. "My dear, this great city is full of just such mysteries
+that no human being can fathom. I, for one, don't try to. I can only
+lend a helping hand, and ask no questions; 't ain't best. Well, I 've
+been talking a blue streak for a half an hour, but I 've had to. When
+you laid there on the cot, you was the living image of that other, only
+thinner, smaller like. You told me you was born in this city
+twenty-six years ago come the third of next December; that you did n't
+know who your father was, but that your mother was married. Her
+husband's name was the same as the one on the telegram. I 've put two
+and two together, and perhaps I 've made five out of it. Anyway it's
+your right to know. I 'm sure Doctor Rugvie will back me up in this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment I made no answer. Then I spoke:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you sure there is no more? You can't recall anything that Doctor
+Rugvie said about that paper in the envelope?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, yes, I can; a little more. After all, it's what will help you
+most&mdash;and yet I ain't sure&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me, do&mdash;do." My hands clasped each other nervously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, it's just this: Doctor Rugvie was called away out of the city on
+a case as soon as he 'd got through here, and meantime the young feller
+had come and gone. When the Doctor come back I told him what had been
+going on while he was away, and I give him the envelope. He told me he
+found her marriage certificate in it&mdash;but not to the man whose name was
+on the telegram. I never could make head nor tail of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Married&mdash;my mother married&mdash;" I repeated. I drew away from the
+woman's restraining arms and slipping to my knees beside her, buried my
+face in her lap and began to sob. I could not help it. I was broken
+for the time both physically and mentally by the force of my unpent
+emotion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman laid her hand protectingly, tenderly on my quivering
+shoulders, and waited. She must have seen spring freshets before, many
+a one during the past thirty years, and have known both their benefit
+and injury to the human soul. Gradually I regained my control.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you don't know what this means to me!" I exclaimed, lifting my
+face swollen with weeping to the kindly one that looked down into mine.
+"You don't know what this means to me&mdash;it has lifted so much, so
+much&mdash;has let in so much light just at a time when I needed it so&mdash;when
+everything looked so black. Sometime I will tell you; but now I want
+to know when, where, how I can get hold of that marriage certificate.
+It belongs to me&mdash;to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I rose with an energy that surprised the woman and, stooping, took her
+face between my hands and kissed her. I smiled down into that face.
+She sat speechless. I smiled again. She passed her hand over her eyes
+as if trying to clear her mind of confusing ideas. I spoke again to
+her:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The tempest is over; why should n't we look for a bright to-morrow?"
+I could hear the vibrant note of a new hope in my voice. The woman
+heard it too. She continued to stare at me. I drew up my chair to
+hers and, laying my hand on her knee, said persuasively:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, let's talk; and let me ask some questions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To be sure; to be sure," the woman replied. I know she was wondering
+what would be the next move on the part of her applicant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you want to know my name?" I said. "That's rather an important
+matter when you take a new position; and you said the place was mine,
+didn't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman smiled indulgently. "To be sure it's yours; and what is your
+name?" she asked, frankly curious at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia Farrell, but I took my great-grandmother's maiden name. There
+are none of the family left; I 'm the last."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was you christened?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never was christened. And what is your name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Delia Beaseley."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And your daughter's?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jane."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And when does Doctor Rugvie return?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The last of November. You want that certificate?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must have it; it is mine by right." I spoke with decision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you 'll get it just as soon as the Doctor can find it; like
+enough it's locked up in some Safe Deposit with his papers; you mustn't
+forget it's been nearly twenty-six years since he's had it.&mdash;I can't
+for the life of me think of that name."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind that now; tell me about the place. Where is it? Who are
+the people? Or is there only one&mdash;it said 'an elderly Scotchwoman'.
+Do you know her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, my dear, I don't know any one of them, and Doctor Rugvie does n't
+mean I should; that's where he trusts me. I can tell you where the
+place is: Lamoral, Province of Quebec; more 'n that I don't know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," I spoke half in protest, "does n't Doctor Rugvie think that any
+one taking the position ought to know beforehand where she is going and
+whom she 's going to live with?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He might tell you if he was here himself, and then again he mightn't.
+You see it's this way: he trusts me to use my common sense in accepting
+an applicant, and he expects the applicant to trust his name for
+reference to go to the end of the world if he sends her there, without
+asking questions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, the old tyrant!" I laughed a little. "What does he pay?" was my
+next question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor Rugvie! You think <I>he</I> pays? Good gracious, child, you <I>are</I>
+on the wrong track."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then put me on the right one, please." I laid my hand on the hard
+roughened one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I s'pose I might as well; I don't believe the Doctor would mind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course he would n't." I spoke with a fine, assumed assurance.
+Delia Beaseley smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know I told you that young feller who come here went away without
+saying so much as 'Thank you'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I merely nodded in reply. That question suddenly quenched all the new
+hope of a new life in me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Along the first of the New Year, that was twenty-five years ago, I got
+a draft by mail from a national bank in this city; the draft was on
+that bank; it was for five hundred dollars. And ever since, in
+December, I have had a check for one hundred in the same way. I always
+get Doctor Rugvie to cash them for me, and he says no questions are
+answered; after the first year he did n't ask any. The Doctor 's in
+the same boat. He 's got a draft on that same bank for five hundred
+dollars every year for the last twenty-five years. He says it's
+conscience money; and he feels just as I do, that it comes either from
+the man who claimed to be the woman's husband, or from that other she
+was married to according to the certificate.&mdash;I can't think of that
+name!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He don't care much, I guess, seeing the use he 's going to put the
+money to. He 's hired a farm for a term of years, up in the Province
+of Quebec, somewhere near the St. Lawrence, with some good buildings on
+it; and when he knows of somebody that needs just such a home to pick
+up in he is going to send 'em up there. And the conscience money is
+going to help out. This is the place where you 're to help the
+Scotchwoman, as I understand it. Now that's all I can tell you, except
+the wages is twenty-five dollars a month besides room and keep. I
+s'pose you 'll go for that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go! I can't wait to get away; I 'd like to go to-morrow, but I must
+stay two or three weeks longer in the library. But, I don't
+understand&mdash;how am I to accept the place without notification? And you
+don't know even the name of the Scotch-woman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll tend to that. My girl writes all the letters for me, and the
+letters to this place go in the care of the 'Seigniory of Lamoral',
+whatever that may mean. They get there all right. You come round here
+within a week, and I 'm pretty sure that the directions will be here
+with the passage money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt my face flush from my chin to the roots of my hair; and I knew,
+moreover, that Delia Beaseley was reading that sign with keen
+accustomed eyes; she knew there was sore need for just that help.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0103"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Do you who are reading these life-lines know what it is to be alone in
+a world none too mindful of anyone, even if he be somebody? Never to
+experience after the day's work the rest and joy of home-coming to
+one's own?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Do you know what it is to acknowledge no tie of blood that binds one
+life to another and makes for a common interest in joy or sorrow? To
+ask yourself: Do I belong here? To wonder, perhaps, why, in fact, you
+are here? To feel your isolation in a crowded thoroughfare, your
+remoteness in the midst of an alien family life? To feel, in truth, a
+stranger on this earth?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If you have known this, if you have experienced this, or, even if, at
+times, you have been only dimly conscious of this for another, then you
+will understand these my life-lines, and it may be they will interpret
+something of yourself to yourself.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Delia Beaseley walked with me as far as the Bowery. There I insisted
+on her leaving me. I assured her I was used to the streets of New York
+in the evening. However, she waited with me for the car.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I said good night to the woman, who twenty-six years ago saved
+another woman, "one who had missed her footing",&mdash;those words seem to
+ring constantly in my ears,&mdash;in order that I, Marcia Farrell, that
+stranger's child, might become the living fact I am, I began to realize
+that during the last hour I had been acting a part, and acting it well;
+that, without sacrificing the truth at any stage of the evening's
+developments, I had been able to obtain all this information, which
+pointed to a crisis in my life, yet had given but little return in
+kind. I felt justified in withholding it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, as soon as I had left her and entered the car, there was a
+reaction from the intensity of my emotion. I felt a strange elation of
+spirit, a rising courage to face the new conditions in that other
+country, and a consequent physical recuperation. The lassitude that
+had burdened me since my long illness seemed to have left me. My mind
+was alert. I felt I had been able to take advantage of a promising
+circumstance and, in so doing, the mental inertia from which I had been
+suffering for three months was overcome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without being able to find any special reason for it, my life began to
+assume importance in my thoughts. I suppose this is the normal
+condition of youth; only, I never felt that I had had much youth. With
+the thought of this new future, unknown, untried as it was, opening
+before me, I experienced an unaccountable security, an unwonted
+serenity of existence. All these thoughts and feelings crowded upon me
+as I rode up through the noisy Bowery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All my life hitherto had been undefined to me on the side of expansion;
+only its limitations impressed me as being ever present, sharply
+outlined, hedging me in with memories that gave no scope for
+anticipation. Sometimes it seemed to me as if I had always been old;
+the seven years in New York, my daily encounter with metropolitan life
+and its problem of "keep" had intensified this feeling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I came down to the city to look for work I was nearly twenty. I
+had left what to me was a makeshift for a home&mdash;and I regretted
+nothing. I had done my whole duty there in caring for my grandfather,
+imbecile for years, and my aunt, the last of my family, until they
+died. Then I was free.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After paying all the debts, I found I had just thirty dollars of my
+own. With these I started for the city. On my arrival this amount was
+diminished by nine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At twenty I was facing life for the first time alone, unfriended, in
+new conditions; poor, too, but that I had always been. I knew that
+money must be had somehow, must be forthcoming in a few days at most.
+But at that time my spirit was indomitable, my courage high. I was my
+own mistress; and my only feeling, as I sat in the Grand Central
+Station on that morning of my arrival, reading through the various
+columns of "wants" in the early newspapers, was that I had escaped, at
+last, from all associations that were hateful to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was thinking of all this as the car passed with frequent haltings
+along the noisy Bowery, and of that first experience of this city: its
+need-driven herds of human beings, the thoroughfares crowded with
+traffic, its nightmare crossings, the clank and deafening roar of the
+overhead railroad, when, suddenly, mingled with the steam rising from
+the pavements, that were cooling rapidly after the recent shower, I
+smelt the acrid heaviness of fresh printer's ink. That smell
+visualized for me the column of leaded "Wants," the dismal
+waiting-room, the uncompromising daylight that spared no wrinkle, no
+paint, no moth-spot on the indifferent faces about me. That was nearly
+seven years ago&mdash;and now&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I found I was at Union Square, and got out; walked a block to Broadway
+and waited on the corner for an uptown car. During that minute of
+waiting, a woman spoke to me:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I take a car here can I get up to West Sixty-first street?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes." My answer was short and sharp. I had heard the kind of
+question put in that oily voice too many times to pay any further heed
+to it. I stepped out into the street to take the car.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you 're going up that way I might as well go 'long too. I like
+comp'ny," said the woman, keeping abreast of me and nudging me with an
+elbow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The car was nearly full, and the crowd waiting for it made a running
+assault upon the few vacancies. Just before it stopped I saw some one
+leave the seat behind the motor-man; I made a rush to secure the place.
+As I sat down the woman mounted the step.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't get rid of me so easy, duckie," she said with a leer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned squarely to her, looking beneath the wide brim of the tawdry
+bedraggled hat to find her eyes; her gin-laden breath was hot on my
+cheek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You go your way and I 'll go mine," I said in a low hard voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a curse the woman swung off the step just as the two signal bells
+rang.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I took off my hat. The night was cooling rapidly after the tempest.
+The motion of the car created a movement of air against my face. It
+was grateful to me. I drew a long breath of relief; these evening
+rides in the open cars were one of my few recreations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the car sped along the broad thoroughfare, now so long familiar to
+me, so wonderful and alluring to my country eyes in those early years,
+so drearily artificial and depressing in the later ones, I found myself
+dwelling again on that first experience in this city; I recalled the
+first time I was accosted by a woman pander. It was when I was reading
+the wants that morning of my arrival. I looked up to find her taking a
+seat beside me&mdash;a woman who tried by every dives' art of which she was
+possessed to entice me to go with her on leaving the station. Oh, she
+was awful, that woman! I never knew there were such till then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The searchlight of memory struck full upon my thought at that time: And
+they said my mother was like this!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That thought, horrible as it was to me, was my safeguard then and has
+been ever since. Such as they said my mother was, I would never be.
+Nor am I aware that any moral factor was the lever in this decision.
+Rather it was my pride that had been scourged for many years by a
+girl's half knowledge of her mother's career, my sensitiveness that was
+ever ready at the least outside touch to make me close in upon myself,
+the horror of thinking it might be possible that my name could be used
+as I had heard my mother's, that had panoplied my nature and warped it
+until that nature had narrowed to its armor. I was proud, sensitive,
+cold, or thought I was&mdash;and I was glad of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It had come to a point, at last, now when I was nearly twenty-six, that
+in what I termed my strength, lay my weakness. But of this I was, as
+yet, unaware.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I shut my eyes as the car sped onwards that I might not see the swift
+succession of glaring lights&mdash;the many flashing, changing,
+nerve-tormenting electric signs and advertisements, the brilliant
+globes, stars, and whirligigs of all kinds. How they tired me now!
+And the summer theatre throngs streaming in under the entrance arches
+picked out in glowing red and white, the saloons flashing a well-known
+signal to customers&mdash;I knew it all and was glad to close my eyes to it
+all. Now and then I caught a strain of music from the orchestra of
+some roof-garden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At Seventy-second Street I changed for Amsterdam Avenue. I wanted to
+get away to the heights. The air was becoming fresher and I needed
+more of it. Another twenty minutes and the car stopped near the brow
+of the hill. I left it and walked a cross block till I came to
+Morningside Heights, the small, irregular, but beautiful promenade
+behind St. Luke's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I leaned on the massive stone coping that crowns the wall of the
+escarpment; below me the hill sloped sharply to the flats of the
+Harlem. I looked off over the city.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+East, and north-east in the direction of the Sound, great cloud masses,
+the wrack of the tempest, were piled high towards the zenith; but
+beneath them there was a clear zone near the city's level. A moon
+nearly two thirds to the full, was heralding its appearance above them
+by lighted rifts, bright-rimmed haloes, and the marvellous play of
+direct shaft light that struck downwards behind the clouds into the
+clear space above the city and shot white radiance upon its roofs. The
+sky, also, while yet the moon was invisible, was radiant, but with
+starlight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Against this background, I watched the glow-worm lights of the elevated
+trains winding along the high invisible trestle-work. Beneath me lay
+Morningside Park, the foliage and its shadows blackened in masses
+beneath the glaring white of the arc-lights; and beyond, in seemingly
+interminable perspective, the long converging lines of parallel street
+lights led my gaze across the city to some large, unknown, uncertain
+flarings somewhere near the East River shore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And from all this wide-stretching housing-place of a vast population,
+there rose into my ears a continuous, dull, peculiar sound, as of the
+magnified stertorous breathing of a hived and stifled humanity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had come here many times in the last four years, at all seasons, at
+all times. I drew strength and inspiration from this view in all its
+aspects, until my almost fatal illness in the late spring. After that
+there came upon me a powerful longing for change. I wanted to get away
+from this city, its sights and sounds; to escape from the conditions
+that were sapping my life. And the way was, at last, opened. How I
+exulted in this thought!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were others on the promenade, and I was withdrawn from thought of
+myself by hearing voices, a man's and a woman's, below me on the
+winding walk that leads down the slope past the poplars to the level of
+the Harlem streets. The woman's was pleading, strident from
+excitement; it broke at last in a dry hard sob. The man's was hateful;
+the tones and accents like a vicious snarl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned away sickened, indignant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's always so in this city!" I said to myself while I walked rapidly
+towards the hospital. "If I get a chance for a breath of fresh air, or
+if I take a walk in the park, or have an outlook that, for a moment, is
+free from all suggestions of crime and horror&mdash;then beware! For then I
+have to shut my ears not to hear the fatal sounds of human brutishness;
+or I hear a shot in the park, and a life goes out in some
+thick-foliaged path; or I have to turn away my eyes from a sight in the
+gutter that offends three of my senses&mdash;and so my day is ruined. It's
+merciless, merciless&mdash;and I loathe it!" I cried within myself as I
+passed the hospital.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I lifted my eyes to the massive purity of noble St. Luke's, the windows
+rising tier upon tier above me. A light showed here and there. At the
+sight my mood softened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I know it is merciful too&mdash;it is merciful," I murmured; then I
+stopped short and turned back to the entrance. I entered the main
+vestibule, mounted the marble steps that lead to the chapel, opened the
+noiseless heavily-padded doors, and sat down near the entrance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The air was close and hot after the outer freshness; the lights few.
+The stained-glass window behind the altar was a meaningless confused
+mass of leaded opacity. I knew that the daylight was needed to ensoul
+it, to give to the dead unmeaning material its spiritual symbolism.
+And because I knew this, I realized, as I sat there, what a long
+distance in a certain direction I had travelled since that morning in
+the Grand Central Station, seven years ago.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the air was very close. I felt depressed, disappointed, that the
+time and the place yielded me nothing. I was faint, too; I had taken
+nothing but the cocoa since noon. Without realizing it, another
+reaction from that strange elation of spirit was setting in. I knew I
+ought to be in the attic room in Chelsea rather than where I was. It
+was already nine, and an hour's ride before me on the surface car.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went out to Amsterdam Avenue. No car was in sight. I walked on down
+the hill, knowing that one would soon overtake me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A man and woman were just behind me talking&mdash;at least, the woman was.
+I recognized her voice as one of those I had heard on the winding path
+by the poplars. A moment after, they passed me in a noticeably
+peculiar fashion: the man sauntering by on my right, the woman hurrying
+past on my left. At the same moment I heard the car coming down the
+hill. I turned at once, but only to see the man, who had passed me,
+running swiftly along the pavement and up the hill to meet it; the
+woman was running after him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I saw that the car was over full. The platform and steps were black
+with human beings clinging to the guard rails like swarming bees
+alight. I saw the man struggle madly to catch the guards and gain a
+footing on the lower step, the woman still running beside him and
+holding him by the coat. Then I was aware of a sudden sweeping
+movement of the man's free arm, the roar of the car as it sped down the
+incline, and of the woman lying, hatless from the force of the man's
+blow, on the pavement beside the track. He had freed himself so!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before I could reach her the woman was up and off again, running
+hatless after the quickly receding car. Only one cry, no scream,
+escaped her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I shivered. There was nothing to be done with such as these, no rescue
+possible. A sudden thought half paralyzed me; I stood motionless: Had
+my own mother ever been cast off like this? Had such treatment been
+the cause of her seeking the river? Had I, Marcia Farrell, been
+fathered by such a brute?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the second time in my life, I felt my hardness of heart towards the
+mother I had never known soften with pity; a sob rose in my throat. I
+shook my shoulders as if freeing them from some nightmare clutch, and
+hurried to the next corner to meet the car that was following the other
+closely.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0104"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+I unlocked my attic room in the fourth storey of the old Chelsea house
+and lighted the lamp. In contrast to what both ear and eye had been
+witness during the evening: Delia Beaseley's account of my mother's
+rescue and death, and that scene of life's brutality on Columbia
+Heights, the sight of the small plain interior gave me, for the first
+time in all the seven years, a home-sense, a feeling of welcome and
+refuge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked at the cretonne-covered cot, the packing boxes curtained with
+the same, the white painted hanging box-shelves, the one chair&mdash;a flour
+barrel, cut to the required form, well padded and upholstered; all
+these were the work of my hands in free hours. And I was about to
+exchange the known for the unknown! This thought added to my
+depression.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I put out the lamp and sat down by the one window. The night air was
+refreshingly cool. The many lights on the river gleamed clear; the
+roar in the streets was subdued. Gradually, my antagonism to the
+physical features of the metropolis, to its heedless crowds, its
+overpowering mechanism, its thoroughfares teeming with human beings who
+passed me daily, knowing little of their own existence and nothing of
+mine, its racial divergencies, grew less intense; in fact, the whole
+life of this city, in its aspect of mere Juggernaut, was being
+unconsciously modified for me as I realized I was about to go forth
+into a strange country.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was recalling those ten weeks of mortal weakness and suffering at St.
+Luke's, the kindness of nurses and physicians. No matter if I had paid
+my way; theirs was a ready helpfulness, a steady administration of the
+tonic of human kindness that never could be bought and paid for in the
+Republic's money. I thought of Delia Beaseley and her noble work among
+those "who had missed their footing". I relived in imagination that
+rescue of my own mother, with all of the horror and all of the merciful
+pity it entailed. I found myself wondering if Doctor Rugvie would be
+able to lay his hand on those papers immediately after his arrival. I
+dwelt upon the many kindly advances from my co-workers in the Library;
+few of these women I had met, for I felt strangely old, apart from
+them, and the struggle to live and at the same time accomplish my
+purpose had been so hard. My landlady, too, came in for a share of my
+softening mood; exacting, but scrupulously honest, she had lodged under
+this same roof a generation of theological students, yet her best dress
+remained a rusty alpaca. I thought of the various types of students
+for the ministry&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I smiled at that thought, a smile that proved the latent youth in me
+was sufficiently appreciative, at least of that phase of life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I left the window and, after closing the lower half of the inside
+shutters, partly undressed and relighted the lamp. Then I took two
+paper-covered blank books from my trunk. I sat down in my one easy
+chair of home manufacture and, resting my feet on the cot, began to
+read.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These two books were my journal, my confidante, my most intimate
+companion for seven years. I had written in them intermittently only,
+and, as I turned a page here and there, my eye dwelt longest, not on
+the few high lights, as it were, in my uneventful life of work and
+struggle, but on the many shadows they deepened and emphasized.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Nov. 4, 1902. My first day in New York. I took a hack from the
+station to this house in the old "Chelsea district" they call it. My
+first hack-ride; it was pretty grand for me, but I was afraid to try
+the street cars after a horrid woman had tried her best to get me to go
+with her after I left the station&mdash;oh, it was awful! I never knew
+there could be such women before&mdash;not that kind. I shall look for work
+to-morrow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nov. 5. I have to pay a dollar and a half for this room in the attic.
+There isn't any heat, and there is no gas in it. I have to furnish it
+myself. My landlady is a queer little old woman, Mrs. Turtelot, who
+has kept lodgers here for thirty years. She has her house filled with
+the students from the Theological Seminary near by. It's lucky I have
+this place to come to. I wondered to-day how girls ever get on in this
+city, without having someone to go to they know is all right. She
+seems like a Frenchwoman, perhaps a French Canadian. I think she must
+be, for her mother used to work at Seth White's tavern up home; it was
+through his neighbors I got her address. She says the students have to
+furnish their own bed clothes and towels. I 'm glad I brought mine
+with me. It's awfully cold here to-night, but Mrs. Turtelot has given
+me a lamp, till I can get one, and that warms up some. Anyway, I feel
+safe here from that other kind. I 'll soon earn enough to fix up a
+little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nov. 6. I 've been tramping about all day answering advertisements.
+Mrs. Turtelot told me not to go into any strange place, like up stairs,
+and not to go over a door sill. I have n't found that so easy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I 've been afraid all day of getting lost, but she told me to-night to
+ask every time for West Twenty-third Street and follow it to the river;
+then I could always find my way here.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I slept in her room on the sofa the first night; she says I can sleep
+with her for a few nights till I can get a cot. A student is leaving
+here in a few days and he will sell his second hand. But I don't want
+to sleep with her, and I asked her as a favor to let me have two
+pillows. She didn't have any extra ones, but let me have hers; so I
+have a good bed on the floor. Could n't find work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nov. 8. Mrs. T. told me to-day that it is a bad time of year to find
+work. It is late in the season and help is being turned off, and,
+besides, it is going to be a hard winter, so everybody says. What do
+the turned-off ones do, then, for a living?&mdash; No job yet! But I won't
+go out to service in a private family unless I have to. I 've had
+enough of that in the past.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nov. 9. Since I came here I have answered fifty-two advertisements. I
+get the same answer every time: "You have n't been trained and you have
+n't had any experience." How am I to get training and experience if I
+don't have the chance? That's what I want to know.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nov. 10. I 've bought the cot and the mattress. I paid four dollars
+for them. There is a small stove hole in the chimney on one side of my
+room; when I get to earning, I 'm going to have a little stove here and
+do my own cooking. Thank fortune, I can cook as well as chop wood if I
+have to! So far I 've heated my things on Mrs. T.'s stove. She lives,
+that is, cooks, eats, sleeps, and washes in her back basement; the
+front one she rents to a barber. He makes his living from the students
+round here and the professors at the Seminary. She says the students
+cook most of their meals in their rooms on their gas stoves. I wish I
+had one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nov. 13. A bad lot of a date! No work yet, and I 've tramped all day
+in the slush and snow. I dried my things down in Mrs. T.'s room. I
+did n't dare to spend any more in car fares, for I must have a stove.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I know to a cent just what I 've spent since I came, but I 'm going to
+put it down so I can see the figures; it will make me more cautious
+about spending. The car fare is more than I meant it should be, but,
+to save it, I walked the first three days from Eighty-sixth Street and
+Fourth Avenue&mdash;a bakery that advertised for a woman to sell the early
+morning bread in the shop; three hours of work only, at twenty cents an
+hour&mdash;down as far as the Washington Market where they wanted a girl to
+sell flowers in a sidewalk booth, for two weeks before Christmas. I
+found then that the soles of my boots were beginning to wear and that
+it saves something to ride.
+</P>
+
+<PRE STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+Car fare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ .75
+Bread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
+Cheese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
+1 tin pail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
+6 eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
+1 can baked beans . . . . . . . . . . . .17
+2 pints soup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
+Oil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
+Tin lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
+Cot and mattress . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.00
+Room rent, two weeks in advance . . . . 3.00
+Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $9.51
+</PRE>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+And I have ten dollars and ninety-three cents left. I can hold the
+fort another two weeks on this.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nov. 15. No work yet. I 'm going to keep a stiff upper lip and find
+work, or starve in doing it. This city <I>sha'n't</I> beat <I>me</I>, not if I
+can use my two arms and hands and legs, two eyes, one tongue and a
+brain! No!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nov. 17. I scrubbed down the three flights of stairs for Mrs. T.
+to-day. She has the rheumatism in her wrists, and I was glad to do it
+for her to help pay for her loan of the pillows and for letting me heat
+my things on her stove. I must buy my own to-morrow. I feel ashamed
+to ask favors of her any longer, for I have put off the buying of it
+till I could get work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Friday. Now I have just four dollars left; for I bought it to-day and
+set it up myself. A little second hand one with one hole on top&mdash;and
+no coals to put in it! I don't dare use the last four dollars, for the
+rent is due soon and I have to pay in advance. I suppose it's all
+right to secure herself, but it's hard on me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nov. 30. I believe I 'm hungry, and I don't remember to have been
+hungry before in all my life, without having enough ready to fill my
+stomach. But I don't dare to spend another cent till I get work. It
+must come, <I>it must</I>&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I 've lived three days on a half a pound of walnuts, half a pound of
+cheese and a loaf of bread&mdash;and walked my feet sore looking for a
+place. I know I could have had two places, but I dared not engage to
+the women. That woman in the Grand Central Station haunts me; these
+two women had a look of her! One wanted me in private manicure rooms
+to learn the trade; she said I had the right kind of fingers after the
+rough had worn off. The other wanted me to show rooms to rent in a
+queer looking house. Mrs. T. told me to keep away from it and all like
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dec. 1. I 'm not only hungry, I 'm cold too. I bought two pails of
+coals, and paid high for them so Mrs. T. says. They say there is going
+to be a coal famine from the great strike. It makes me mad that it
+should all pile up on me in this way! Why can't I have work? Why,
+when I am willing, can't I find a place?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An awful feeling comes over me sometimes, when I am turned down at a
+place I 've applied for: I want to throttle the first well-dressed man
+or woman I meet and say, "Give me work or I 'll make it the worse for
+you!" Then I turn all dizzy and sick after that feeling, and hate
+myself for the thought; it's so unjust.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dec. 10. I asked Mrs. T. if I might n't pay by the week and at the end
+of each week. I think she knew what the trouble was. She hesitated
+for a minute, and that was enough for me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I <I>can</I> pay you," I said, "only it's a little more convenient."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I 'd like you to," she said in her queer dry voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I hated her at that moment. I went up stairs to my bare room and took
+off the knit woollen petticoat I made for myself at home, just before
+coming down; I took that and a set of gold beads, that were my
+grandmother's, and went out with them to a pawnbroker's just around the
+corner on the avenue. I got eight dollars for the two of them, and
+made the time in which to redeem them one month. Then I went back to
+the house and paid her. She looked surprised, but her skinny hand
+closed upon the money as if she, too, had no more for the morrow. I
+don't know that she has. The students come and go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dec. 14. I stood on Twentieth Street near Broadway to-day, watching
+the teamsters unload the heavy drays at the back of a department store.
+I found myself envying them&mdash;they had work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dec. 15. I am not up to date with my clothes, and I have no money to
+make myself so. I find it is for this reason I am "turned down" at so
+many places where I apply. I read it in men's eyes, in the women's
+hard stare.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dec. 17. A man offered to clothe me for a position in a shop, if I
+would&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I know I looked at him; I think I saw him, or perhaps the beast that
+was in him. Then I saw queer lights before me, red and yellow&mdash;if I
+had been a man I would have taken him by the throat. When, at last, I
+could see again, the man was gone. Good riddance! There is such a
+thing as day nightmare.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dec. 19. I am beginning to understand how it is done; how the fifteen
+dollar waists, the diamond rings, the theatre, and the suppers after,
+can be had without work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dec. 20. The strike is on. I should have to do without coals, strike
+or no strike, for I have nothing to buy them with. Mrs. Turtelot
+offered to let me heat my food on her stove&mdash;my food! I 've lived on
+one loaf of bread and a can of baked beans for seven days&mdash;and to-day I
+'ve been down to the Washington Market just to smell the evergreens
+that, for all I have no home, give me a homesick longing for the
+country. But I will not go back; I 'll starve here first.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Afterwards I walked up to Twenty-third Street, and lost myself there in
+the holiday crowds. What throngs!&mdash;jostled, pushed, beset by vendors,
+loaded with bundles, yet so good natured! No one looked hungry. I
+stood on the kerb to watch the men selling toys and birds; to listen to
+the strange cries, the shrilling of the wooden canaries and the trill
+of the real ones; to peep into the rabbit hutch, and the basket of
+kittens; to stroke an armful of sleeping puppies; to smell the
+fragrance of roses and violets and carnations; to smile a little at the
+slow-moving turtles, the leaping frogs, the Jack-in-the-box, the
+mechanical toys of all kinds that performed on the sidewalk, each the
+centre of a small crowd. Then, at twilight, the flare from the
+chestnut vendor's stand, the little electric lights of the Punch and
+Judy sidewalk show, the electric torches that the children were
+carrying, the brilliant whirligigs for advertisements, gave to the
+whole scene a strange unreal appearance. Men, women, children,
+Christmas trees, dogs, birds, electric cars, rabbits, kittens, a goat,
+cabs, automobiles, express carts, surged into the flare and glare,
+first of one light then of another, till what was shadow and what was
+substance I failed to make out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dec. 21. At last, oh, at last, there is work for me,&mdash;for me, too,
+among all these millions! But it makes me sick to know there must be
+some who are trying and never find.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have taken a place in a small writing-paper factory. It's down near
+Barclay Street, in the loft of a crazy old building, three wooden
+flights from the street. The loft is lighted at both ends by windows
+and in the top by skylights. It is heated by a large cylinder stove in
+the centre, and a small glue box-pot at one end. The air is close, but
+I don't care much, for it is so warm. I get four dollars a week.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I can manage to live, at least, on this. I can think about nothing
+else to-night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jan. 15, 1903. The coal strike is on. It is cold in the loft, for we
+have to be saving of fuel. It takes all I can save to buy three
+pailfuls of coal a week for my little stove. I kindle my fire at
+night, heat water, cook my cereal, or bean soup, and am comfortable
+till morning; the room is decently warm to dress in. I am off to work
+at seven. Fuel and rent and some necessary underclothes leave little
+for food. I cannot redeem my petticoat, and gold beads which my
+grandmother had from her mother, Marcia Farrell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+July 6. Hot, hotter, hottest in the old fire-trap of a loft. The sun
+beats down through the skylights till we get sick. Two of the girls
+fainted this afternoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Aug. 4. I discovered the Public Library to-day! It means so much to
+me that I simply can't write a word about it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nov. 4. Just a year ago to-day since I came here. I am able to draw a
+free breath for the first time, to look about me and plan a little for
+my future. I 've made up my mind to study for the examinations for a
+place in the Public Library. My district school was no bad training,
+after all, for this work. It taught me one lesson: to put my mind on
+what was given me to do&mdash;and I have not forgotten it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The extra time for study at night will take more fuel and oil, but I
+can make that up by living a few more days every week on bean soup. I
+'ve made living on four dollars a week an art this last year. An art?
+Yes, rather than a science; and, like an art, it accomplishes
+surprisingly satisfactory results&mdash;results that science, with all its
+proven facts, from which it deduces laws of hygiene, fails to produce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I honestly believe that I 'm better fed than half the theological
+students. They scrimp and save&mdash;for a theatre ticket! They're a queer
+lot! I 've asked half a dozen to tell me what they 're aiming at, and
+not one of the six could give me a sensible answer. If they had said
+right out&mdash;"It's an easy way to get a small living," I would have
+respect for them. We all have to earn our living in one way or another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+March, 1904. Desk assistant in a branch of the Library&mdash;at last!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+October, 1906. When I came down here I made a vow to put everything
+behind me; forget what I had left in New England, the memories of those
+hard-worked years, and start afresh; cut loose from all the old
+associations. I have succeeded fairly well. This new life of books is
+a wonderful one. I like my work as desk assistant in the Library, and
+I get nine dollars a week. This is wealth for me; I am saving. I have
+so much besides: the river and the ferries for a change; one trip up
+the Hudson&mdash;a thing to live on for years until I get another. Sometime
+I mean to travel&mdash;sometime! Meanwhile, I go on saving in every
+possible way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jan. 8, 1907. What luck for me! I don't have to buy a book. The
+whole Library is mine for the asking. How I have read these last three
+years! As if I could never read enough; read while I 've been standing
+and eating; read before getting up and long after I have been in bed.
+It has been a hunger and thirst for this kind of food&mdash;and there has
+been enough of <I>this</I>! Enough!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Feb. 1908. I am studying French now daily, and beginning Latin by
+myself, for I want to take the higher examinations for the cataloguing
+department. That will mean more pay and the prospect of a vacation
+sometime.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+March 16, 1908. How I gloat like a miser over my savings-bank book!
+Just one hundred and seventy-five dollars to my credit. I have visions
+of&mdash;oh, so much in ten years!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+May, 1908. I was at the Metropolitan this morning. I feel rich when I
+realize that all this treasure-house is open to me&mdash;is mine for the
+entering. I am taking the whole museum, room by room. A year's work
+on Sundays.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+August, 1908. I have not seen fit to change my method of expenditure
+since I entered the Library; I have continued to spend as I spent when
+I had four dollars a week, with the exception that I allow,
+necessarily, a little more for clothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For housing:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<PRE STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+Room, $1.50 a week.
+Fuel and oil in winter, $ 0.75
+Oil in summer, .26
+</PRE>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Now for my art:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have allowed for my food exactly one dollar a week and allow the same
+now. I go down to the Washington Market early in the morning. I revel
+in the sight of the fresh vegetables, of the flowers and fruits. The
+market-people know me now, and many a gift-flower I have brought back
+with me to my room, and several times a pot of herbs or spring bulbs;
+now and then a few sprays of parsley or thyme. These I look upon as my
+commission! Without leaving the market, I buy a loaf of bread for ten
+cents; a knuckle of veal, or a beef bone, a pound and a half of
+sausages, or a pound of salt pork, for fifteen cents; I vary my
+purchases from time to time that I may have variety. Ten cents for
+vegetables&mdash;I vary these, also, as much as possible; these, with a
+pound of rice, nine cents, a half a pound of butter, eighteen cents,
+and a quart of beans for another ten cents, give me satisfying
+combinations. When eggs are cheap I vary this diet with them, lettuce
+and bacon. I buy things that are cheapest in their season. In summer,
+I drop out all meat and substitute milk. I allow myself one pound of
+sugar a week; no tea, no coffee; the city water is the only thing of
+which I can have enough free. With what is left of my hundred
+cents,&mdash;for in my art it is the cents with which I reckon, not
+dollars,&mdash;I buy fruit in its season, a bit of cheese, sometimes even a
+Philadelphia squab! At times, they are cheaper than meat in the
+Market. In the season I can get one for ten cents.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have an extra treat when I buy that last, for the old man at the
+poultry stall, who draws the chickens and various fowl, is a model from
+the old Italian masters. An Italian himself, he speaks little English,
+wears a skull cap and, to my delight, looks like one of Fra Angelico's
+saints. I learn all this from the Metropolitan Museum, and apply it in
+the Washington Market!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At times I haunt the fish stalls, select good sea food for a change,
+and am rewarded by the play of color on the zinc counters&mdash;the mottled
+green of live lobsters, the scarlet of boiled ones, the silver and rose
+of pompano, the pomegranate of salmon. I have stood by the half hour
+to watch the slow-moving turtles, the scuttling crabs in the tanks. I
+have good friends throughout the Market&mdash;men and women. They confide
+in me at times, like the cod-and-hake man, dealer in dried fish, who
+told me he had "a girl once down on Cape Cod". He seemed relieved by
+this confession. He was serving me at the time, and his two hundred or
+more pounds, his red face and his cordiality were delightful. My
+butter-egg-and-cheese man also confides to me that he is a commuter;
+has purchased a home on the instalment plan; has three children, and
+his wife runs a private laundry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What remains of the four dollars after the weekly bills are paid, I lay
+aside for clothes. I make my own shirt waists. It took me eleven
+months to earn a good skirt of brown Panama cloth; but it has lasted me
+four years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I think I live well, <I>considering</I>; but, in living thus, there is no
+denying I cross the bridge of mere sustenance every day, and am obliged
+to burn my bridge behind me! I don't like it&mdash;but am thankful for
+work. I 'm not beneath adding to my reserve fund five cents at a time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dec. 18, 1908. They 're nice boys, the theological students&mdash;but
+queer, some of them. I 've watched different sets of them come and go
+during these six years. Two or three have attempted to make a little
+love to me; a few have adopted me&mdash;so they said&mdash;for their sister. I
+'m forgotten with their graduation and their flitting! One or two are
+really friends; they 're younger than I, of course, and I can patronize
+and quiz them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Johnny is my favorite. There is little theological nonsense about him,
+and there is an inquisitive disposition to see New York and make the
+most of his time here. He 's from the north part of the state; likes
+books, likes people, likes a good time, whenever he can get it, on his
+limited income to which he adds by helping the basement barber two days
+in the week, canvassing for books in the summer, and on Saturdays
+waiting on the patrons of a book stall in a corridor of one of the big
+hotels.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Taken altogether, Johnny is a man who has not as yet found his calling,
+although he is anchored for the present, through affection for his
+father, to "Chelsea" and a career that, at times, irks him. We 've had
+many a good talk about this matter. I tell him he 's not dragging
+anchor, but weighing it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I like to see New York through Johnny's eyes&mdash;Adirondack eyes, keen,
+honest, and blue; they take in all the metropolitan sights, from the
+Hippodrome, to the Bowery vaudevilles and the Cathedral of St. John.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It's fun to "do" the city with him, with no expense except car fares.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jan. 1909. Johnny and I stood outside the Metropolitan Opera House
+this evening, to see the hodge-podge of carriages and automobiles
+arrive with their contents: the women who toil not, neither do they
+spin anything except financial webs for men's undoing. It was a queer
+sight! Hundreds of women passed me. As I looked at them, I saw the
+same long, pointed, manicured nails, the same jewelled fingers, the
+incurving fronts, the distorted busts, the lined and rouged faces&mdash;like
+those I loathed so when I first came to this city. I asked myself,
+"What's the difference between the two kinds? Is it money alone that
+makes it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But are there two kinds?" I was asking myself again, when Johnny, who
+has an eye for good clothes on man and woman, called my attention to a
+woman's opera cloak. It was worth a man's ransom. From a deep yoke of
+Russian sable depended the long cape of pale green satin covered with
+graduated flounces, from eight to fourteen inches deep, of Venetian
+point. And taking in all this, I saw&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, I don't know that I dare to set down in words, even for my own
+enlightenment, what I saw in that Vision. But, suddenly, all the rich
+robings, opera cloaks, clinging gowns of silk, velvet and chiffon, the
+diamond tiaras, the jewelled necklaces, the French lingerie even&mdash;all
+dropped from every one in that procession; and there, on a New York
+sidewalk, in the harsh glare of electric lights, amidst the hiss and
+cranking of their automobiles, the clank of silver-mounted harness and
+the champing of bits, the shouts and calls and myriad city noises, I
+saw them for what they really are:&mdash;women, like unto all other women;
+women made originally for the mates of men, for mothers, for
+burden-bearers, with prehensile hands to grasp, then lead and uplift,
+and so aid in the work of the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And what more I saw in the Vision I may scarcely write down; for,
+therein, I was shown for these same women both unfathomable depths and
+scarce attainable heights, both degradation and transfiguration, the
+human bestial and the humanly divine&mdash;the Vampire, the Angel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And I was shown in that Vision the Calvaries of maternity common to
+all, whether the conception be immaculate, so-called if within the law,
+or maculate, so-called if without the law. I saw, also, the
+Gethsemanes of motherhood common to all. I saw, moreover, the three
+Dolorous Ways which their feet&mdash;and the feet of all women, because
+women&mdash;are treading, have ever trod, must ever tread, that the seed
+which shall propagate the Race may be trodden deep for germination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Moreover, I saw in that Vision the women treading the seed in the Ways.
+One of the Ways was stony, and those therein walked with bleeding feet
+for their labor was in vain; the land was sterile. And the second was
+deeply rutted with sand, and those therein labored heavily with sweat
+and toil; the fruition was but for a day. And the third Way was heavy
+with deeply-furrowed fertile soil, and those that trod it toiled long
+and late that the seed might not fail of abundant harvest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Furthermore, I saw that every woman was treading one of these three
+Ways; and silk, and chiffon, or velvet gown, opera cloaks of sable and
+satin, diamond tiaras and jewelled necklaces could avail them naught.
+Trammelled by these or by rags&mdash;it matters not which&mdash;they must tread
+the Ways.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I pressed my hand over my eyes to clear them of this Vision; for, at
+last, I understood. I knew that I, too, being a woman, must tread one
+of the three Dolorous Ways even as my mother had trodden one before me.
+But which?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could bear it no longer. "Come away, Johnny," I said abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+April, 1909. I am beginning to be so tired of the confusion of the
+streets. The work at the Library has become irksome. I am tired of
+reading, too, and feel as if my last prop had been taken from under me,
+when I have no longer the desire to read.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I handle the books, place them, record dates, handle books again, place
+them, record dates, handle books again&mdash;the very smell of the booky
+atmosphere is sickening to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I suppose I need rest. But how can I rest when I have my daily living
+to earn? I won't touch those hundred and seventy-five dollars if I
+never have a vacation. I should lose all my courage if I had to spend
+a dollar of that money, except for the final end&mdash;nine years hence.
+Even the thought of stopping work makes me feel weary.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" ALIGN="center">
+<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 4em">*****</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+July 1. So the money is gone! I have been trying to face this fact
+the last hour. The long sickness of ten weeks has taken it all, for I
+was too proud to go to the hospital without paying my way. I let no
+one know how matters stood with me. I have come out of St. Luke's
+feeling so weak, so indifferent to life, to everything I thought made
+my own small life worth living.&mdash;And it is so hot here! So breathless!
+A great longing has come upon me to get away somewhere. Since I have
+been so sick things look different to me. The energy of life seems to
+have gone out of me, and I want to creep away into some place far, far
+away from this city, where I can live a more normal life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But how can I make the break? Where can I go? How begin all over
+again in this awful struggle to get work, and succeed in anything? My
+courage has failed me.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I closed the books. I was wondering if I should destroy them and in
+this fashion burn all my bridges behind me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," I spoke aloud; "I 'll save them, but I will never keep another
+journal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I opened to a blank page, took pen and ink and wrote on it:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+September 18th, 1909. I have decided to accept a place at service (at
+last!) on a farm in Canada, Province of Quebec, Seigniory of Lamoral
+(?). Wages twenty-five dollars a month, besides room and board.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And underneath:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+12 midnight. My last word in this book. Within the past six hours I
+have experienced something of what I call "heaven and hell". I have
+travelled a long road since I came to this city on November 4, 1902.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0105"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+V
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+A few evenings afterwards Delia Beaseley came up to see me. She
+brought the passage money and a note of instruction. It was directly
+to the point: I was to take a sleeping car on the Montreal express;
+then the day local boat down the St. Lawrence to Richelieu-en-Bas. At
+the landing I was to enquire for Mrs. Macleod, and someone would be
+there to meet me. A time-table was enclosed. The note was signed
+"Janet Macleod ".
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This must be the 'elderly Scotchwoman,' Delia," I said after reading
+the note twice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm thinking it's her&mdash;but then you never can tell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did she send the passage money?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By post office order. It would n't have hurt her to send a bit of a
+welcome word, to my thinking." She spoke rather grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm not going for the welcome, you know; it's work and a change I
+want&mdash;and right thankful I am to get the chance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well you may be, my dear, in these times," she said, softening at once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall write you, Delia, all about everything; you know you want to
+hear all about things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would I own to being a woman if I did n't?" She laughed her hearty
+laugh; then, with a little hesitancy: "And, my dear, I 'd think kindly
+of you for writing me, and I 'd like to know that all is going well
+with you, but you know there's Doctor Rugvie to reckon with, and he
+won't hold to much correspondence, I 'm thinking, between me
+and&mdash;what's the name of that place? I can't pronounce it&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Richelieu-en-Bas."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rich&mdash;I can't get the twist of it round my English tongue; say it
+again, and may be I 'll catch it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I repeated it twice for her, but her results were not equal to her
+efforts. We both laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind, Delia; and don't tell me Doctor Rugvie is going to say to
+whom I shall write or to whom I shan't&mdash;especially if it's my friend,
+Delia Beaseley."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I can't say, my dear; but I 'll speak to him about it when he
+gets home&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, no nonsense from a sensible woman, Delia Beaseley; I should think
+I was going into a land of mysteries to hear you talk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed again. "I don't say as it's a mystery, but I can't help
+thinking he wants to keep the matter quiet like, you see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I don't see&mdash;and I don't intend to," I said obstinately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Delia changed the subject. "It's well you 've got your passage money.
+It's quite dear travelling that way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never was in a Pullman in my life, Delia, but you may believe I shall
+enjoy it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She beamed on me. "That's right, my dear, take all the pleasure you
+can, and, of course, if Doctor Rugvie did n't mind&mdash;well, I must own up
+to it that I 'd like to hear from you, and what you make of it up
+there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you shall, Delia; no secrets between you and me; there can't be; we
+'ve known each other too long&mdash;ever since I was born into the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked a little mystified at my statement, but accepted it
+evidently with appreciation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jane or me 'll be down to the station to see you off," she said as she
+bade me good night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During the next two weeks and at odd times, I did a good bit of
+reference work on my own account in looking up the histories of the
+Canadian "Seigniories"; but at the end of that time I was ready to set
+out for that other country only a little wiser for my research.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A week later, Delia Beaseley was at the Grand Central to see me start
+on my journey northwards.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I feel as if I were setting out on a real series of adventures,
+Delia!" I exclaimed when I met her. I took both her hands in mine.
+"If only I were a man I should take stick and knapsack and find my way
+on foot. I 'd camp on the shore of the Tappan Zee, wander through the
+Catskills, and stop over night at the old Dutch farmhouses, follow the
+shores of Lake Champlain and cross the border high of heart, even if
+footweary!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Delia smiled indulgently upon me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Such fancies will help you out a good bit, my dear; it's well you have
+a word or two of French to get along with. I used to hear it when I
+was a girl in Cape Breton."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I caught the shadow of a memory settle in her eyes. We were at the
+gate. The train was made up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must say goodby here, my dear; they won't let me in to the train."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I took both her hands again. "Goodby, Delia Beaseley," I began; then
+something choked me. I so wanted to thank her for all her goodness to
+me. "I wish I knew what to say&mdash;how to thank&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, there, my dear, I 'm the one to be thankful. I 've been
+reaping a harvest just from one little seed I sowed near twenty-six
+years ago&mdash;and I never thought to see so much as a blade of grass!
+That's all. I 'm wonderful grateful it's been given me to see such a
+harvest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Delia, if I only amounted to something, so that you could be proud
+of your little harvest&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, don't, my dear, don't; don't say nothing more, but just go
+straight forward with God's blessing, which is the same as mine this
+time, and&mdash;don't forget me if ever you need a friend."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My eyes filled with unaccustomed tears. A curious thought: New York,
+the Juggernaut, the fetich of millions, just when I was ridding myself
+of the horror of its awful presence, was about to bind me to it through
+this new-old friend!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I caught her rough toil-worn hand in both mine and pressed my lips to
+it; then I dropped it, and walked rapidly down the platform to the
+train. Not once did I look behind me.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+For a little while after entering the luxurious sleeping car, I felt
+awkward, uncomfortable; I had never been in one before. But when I was
+settled in my ample, high-backed section, and the train began to move
+slowly out of the station and through the tunnel, I felt more at ease.
+After that, with every mile that the train, moving more and more
+swiftly, put between me and the city's sights and sounds, I felt a
+rising of spirits, an ease of mind and body I had never before
+experienced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Within an hour all depression had vanished; hopes and anticipations for
+the new environment filled the foreground of my thoughts. Without
+adequate reason, I believed that the change I was making was for my
+good; that with new faces about me, with new and closer interests
+which, alone as I was in the world, I must substitute for a home, I was
+about to escape from all former associations and the memories they
+fostered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Only one thought troubled me, that was the connection by Delia Beaseley
+of Doctor Rugvie's name with that of George Jackson&mdash;my mother's
+husband. I had hoped never to hear that name again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an hour I peered at the dark Hudson, the shadowed hills; the night
+fell, blotting out the landscape wholly and shutting me into the warm
+brilliantly lighted car with a sense of cosy security.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked at the few people I could see over the high sections. Three
+women were opposite to me, two of them young. I found myself
+calculating the cost of their dresses and accessories, their furs and
+hats. I reckoned the amount to be something like my wages on the farm
+for six years. How easily and unconsciously they wore their good
+clothes! One of the two younger held my attention. She was fair,
+slender, long-throated, and carried herself with noticeable erectness.
+I caught bits of their conversation carried on in low pleasing voices:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be such a surprise to them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... the C. P. steamer&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, fancy! They must have known&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... you know I am glad to be at home this winter..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is it? ..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Somewhere in Richelieu-en-Bas&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was all ears. Richelieu-en-Bas was my destination. Their voices
+were so low I could catch but little more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just fancy! But you would never know from him&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When is Mr. Ewart coming over?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bess!" The fair one held up a warning finger; "your voice carries
+so." She rose and reached for her furs from the hook. "Let's go into
+the forward car and see the Ellwicks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The others rose too; shook themselves out a little; patted hair rolls,
+changed a hairpin, took down their furs and left the car&mdash;tall graceful
+women, all of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Since my illness I had squeezed out from my earnings enough for the
+passage money, fourteen dollars, and eight besides. I did n't want to
+begin by being indebted to any one in the Seigniory of Lamoral for that
+amount; and I did n't want it deducted from my first wages. I pleased
+myself with the fancy that, soon after my arrival, I should give the
+money into some one's hands with an appropriate word or two, to the
+effect that I had chosen to pay my own travelling expenses. That
+sounded better than passage money which was reminiscent of the steerage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They should understand that if I were at service, I had a little
+moneyed independence of my own&mdash;the pitiful eight dollars with which to
+go out into the new country. Immigrants have come in with less than
+this&mdash;nor been deported. Well, I ran no risk of being deported from
+Canada.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I asked the porter to make my berth early. About nine I lay down,
+tired and worn out with the excitement of the past three weeks. I drew
+the curtains close to shut out the night, and lay there passively
+content, listening to the steadily accented <I>clankity-clank-clank</I> of
+the Montreal night express.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I liked the sound; it soothed me. This swift on-rush into the night
+towards Canada, the even motion, began to rest the long over-strained
+nerves. During these hours, at least, I was care free. I slept.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the first time for months that sleep was long, unbroken, dreamless.
+I awoke refreshed, strengthened. Drawing the window curtains aside, I
+looked out upon a world newly bathed in the early morning lights.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the sight, my enthusiasm, which I thought quenched forever in the
+overwhelming flood of adverse circumstance, was rekindled; my
+imagination stimulated. Dawn was breaking clear and golden behind the
+mountains across Lake Champlain. Green those mountains are in the
+October sunlight, green and yellow and frost-wrought crimson; but now
+they loomed dark against the horizon's deepening gold. A few small
+dawn clouds of pure rose and one, gigantic, high-piled, of smoke gray,
+hung motionless above the mist-veiled waters of the lake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I watched the coming of this day with charmed eyes. The sun rose
+clear, undimmed over the shadowed mountains. The lake mists felt its
+beams; dispersed suddenly in silver flocculence; and the path across
+the blue waters was free for the morning glory that was advancing apace.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0201"></A>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BOOK TWO
+</H4>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE SEIGNIORY OF LAMORAL
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Richelieu&mdash;Richelieu-en-Bas."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The captain of the local freight and passenger boat, that had taken six
+hours to make its trip down the St. Lawrence from Montreal, pointed
+encouragingly to the low north bank of the river. I looked eagerly in
+that direction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Richelieu-en-Haut is back there," with a sweep of his hand northwards,
+"six miles back on the railroad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little steamer was running, at that moment, within twenty feet of
+the low bank which, I saw at once, had been converted into a meandering
+village street, built up only on one side. A double row of trees
+shaded both houses and highway. We were within confidential speaking
+distance of the few people I saw in the street, and apparently on
+intimate terms with the front rooms of the tiny houses. We sailed past
+the market-place square, past the long low inn with double verandas,
+past the post office, and drew to the landing-place which the steamer
+saluted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This salute was the signal for the appearance of what appeared to me
+the entire population of the place. There were people under the
+lindens, people at the doors and open windows, people in boats rowing
+towards us; one man was poling a scow in which were a cow and two
+horses. There were men with handcarts, boys with baskets, old women
+and young girls, all talking, gesticulating freely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The handcarts were drawn up to the landing-place; the steamer was made
+fast to an apology for a mooring-post; the gangway heaved up. Several
+sheep on the lower deck were run down it by a forced method of
+locomotion, their keepers hoisting their hind legs, and steering them
+wheelbarrow fashion into the street where some children attempted to
+ride them. All about me I heard the chatter of Canadian French, not a
+word of which I understood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A ponderous antiquated private coach, into which were harnessed two
+fine shaggy-fetlocked horses,&mdash;I learned afterwards these were
+Percherons, with sires from Normandy,&mdash;stood in the street directly
+opposite the boat; a small boy was holding their heads. I wondered if
+that were my "Seigniory coach"!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My trunk was literally shovelled out down the gangway, and I followed.
+I stood on the landing-place and looked about me. I was, in truth, in
+that other country for, oh, the air! It was like nothing I had ever
+known! So strong, so free, so soft, as if it were blowing straight
+from the great Northland, over unending virgin plains, through primeval
+unending forests, that the dwellers on this great water highway might
+enjoy something of its primal purity and strength.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was filling my lungs full of it and thinking of my instructions to
+ask for Mrs. Janet Macleod, when a tall man, loosely jointed but
+powerfully built, made his way to me through the crowd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I take it you 're the gal Mis' Macleod 's lookin' fer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was simply the statement of a foregone conclusion, but the drawling
+nasal intonation, the accent and manner of speech, told me that it was
+native to my northern New England, where I have lived two-thirds of my
+life; it was the speech of my own people. I laughed; I could not have
+helped it. It was such a come-down from my high ideas of "Seigniory
+retainers" of foreign birth, with which romance I had been entertaining
+myself ever since I had fed my fancy on what the New York Public
+Library yielded me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I 'm the one, Marcia Farrell. Is this our coach?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man gave me a keen glance from under his bushy eyebrows; indeed, he
+looked sharply at me a second time. If he thought I was quizzing him
+he was much mistaken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, that's our'n,"&mdash;I noticed he placed an emphasis on the
+possessive,&mdash;"and we 'd better be gettin' along 'fore dark; the
+steamer's late. You and the coach ain't just what you 'd call a
+perfect fit&mdash;nor I could n't say as you was a misfit," he added, as he
+opened the door for me to get in. "Guess Mis' Macleod was expectin'
+somebody with a little more heft to 'em; you don't look over tough?"
+The statement was put in the form of a question. "But your trunk 'll
+fill up some."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He hoisted it endwise with one hand on to the front seat; took his
+place beside it; gathered up the reins, and said to the boy:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let 'em go, Pete. You get up behind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the horses did not go. They snorted, threw up their heads,
+flourished their long tails, one of them showed his heels, and both
+cavorted to the wild delight of the assembled crowd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Some emphatic words from the coachman, and judicious application of the
+whiplash, soon showed the young thoroughbreds what was wanted of them,
+and they trotted slowly, heavily, but steadily, down the road beside
+the river, Pete, who was behind on a curious tail extension, shouting
+to the small boys as he passed them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After the horses had settled down to real work, my driver turned to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you come through last night clear from New York?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and I 'm glad to get here; this air is wonderful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thet 's what they all say when they strike Canady fer the fust time.
+I take it it's your fust time?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I 'm a stranger here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Speakin' 'bout air&mdash;I can't see much difference 'twixt good air most
+anywheres. Take it, now, up in New England, up north where I was
+raised, you can't get better nowheres. Thet comes drorrin' through the
+mountains and acrosst the Lake, an' it can't be beat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I made no reply for I feared he would ask me if I knew "New England up
+north".
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned to look at me, evidently surprised at my short silence. He
+saw that I was being jolted about on the broad back seat, owing to the
+uneven road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sho! If I did n't have the trunk, I 'd put you here on the front seat
+'longside of me to kinder steady you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How far is it to the Seigniory of Lamoral, Mr.&mdash;?" I ventured to ask,
+hoping for a flood of information about the Seigniory and its occupants.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Call me Cale," he said shortly; "thet 's short fer Caleb, an' what all
+the Canucks know me by. Mis' Macleod, she ain't but jest come to it;
+she balked consider'ble at fust, but it rolls off'n her tongue now
+without any Scotch burr, I can tell you! You was askin' 'bout the
+Seigniory of Lamoral&mdash;I dunno jest what to say. The way we 're
+proceedin' now it's 'bout an hour from here, but with some hosses it
+might take a half, an' by boat you can make it as long as you 're a
+mind ter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a large place?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thet depends on whether you 're talkin' 'bout the old manor or the
+Seigniory; one I can show you in ten minutes, t' other in about three
+days." He turned and looked at me again with his small keen gray eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where was <I>you</I> raised?" He spoke carelessly enough; but I knew my
+own. He was simulating indifference, and I put him off the track at
+once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was born in New York City."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Great place&mdash;New York."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He chirrupped to the colts, and we drove for the next fifteen minutes
+without further conversation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The boat, owing to heavy freight, was an hour late in leaving Montreal,
+and two hours longer than its usual time, in discharging it at a dozen
+hamlets and villages along the St. Lawrence. In consequence, it was
+sunset when we left the landing-place, and the twilight was deepening
+to-night, as we turned away from the river road and drove a short
+distance inland. Once Caleb drew rein to light a lantern, and summon
+Pete from the back of the coach to sit beside him and hold it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It grew rapidly dark. Leaning from the open upper half of the coach
+door, I could just see between the trees along the roadside, a sheet of
+water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hola!" Cale shouted suddenly with the full power of his lungs.
+"Hola&mdash;hola!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was echoed by Pete's shrill prolonged "Ho&mdash;la-a-a-a-a!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho-la! Ho!" came the answer from somewhere across the water. Cale
+turned and looked over his shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thet 's the ferry. We ferry over a piece here; it's the back water of
+a crick thet makes in from the river 'long here, fer 'bout two mile."
+He turned into a narrow lane, dark under the trees, and drove to the
+water's edge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the flare of the lantern I could see a broad raft, rigged with a
+windlass, slowly moving towards us over the darkening waters. Another
+lantern of steady gleam lighted the face of the ferryman. It took but
+a few minutes to reach the bank; the horses went on to the boards with
+many a snort and much stamping of impatient hoofs. Pete took his place
+at their heads.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Marche!</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We moved slowly away towards the other bank. There was no moon; the
+night air was crisp with coming frost; an owl hooted somewhere in the
+woods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were soon on the road again, as ever beneath trees. It seemed to me
+as if we were turning to the river again. I asked Cale about it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 've hit it 'bout right, in the dark too. We foller back a quarter
+of a mile, an' then we 're there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That quarter of a mile seemed long to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here we are," said Cale, at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked out. I could see the long low outlines of a house showing
+dimly white through the trees, for there were trees everywhere. A
+flaring light, as from a wood fire, illumined one window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We drew up at a broad flight of low steps. A door into a lighted
+passageway was opened. I saw there were at least four people in it;
+one, a woman in a white cap, came out on the upper step.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you brought Miss Farrell, Cale?" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Mis' Macleod, fetched her right along; but the boat was good
+three hours late.&mdash;Pete, open the door; I 'll hold the hosses."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went up the steps, not knowing what to say, for the mere inflection
+of her voice, the gentle address, the prefix "Miss" to my name, told me
+intuitively that I was with gentle people, and my service with them was
+to be other than I fancied.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0202"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"I hope you will soon feel at home in the old manor." With these words
+I was made welcome. Mrs. Macleod led the way into the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jamie," she said to a young man, or youth, I could not tell which,
+"this is Miss Farrell. My son," she added, turning to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Call me Marcia," I said to her. She smiled as if pleased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will be feeling very tired after your long journey&mdash;and I 'm
+thinking jolly hungry after coming up in the old boat; that was
+mother's doings."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Jamie&mdash;!" she spoke in smiling protest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+O Jamie, Jamie Macleod! Your thin bright eager face was in itself a
+welcome to the old manor of Lamoral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm not tired, but I confess to having a good appetite; this Canada
+air would make an angel long for manna," I said laughing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wouldn't it though&mdash;oh, it's great!" he responded joyfully.
+"Angélique, here, will help you out in that direction&mdash;she's our cook;
+Angélique, come here." He gave his command in French.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The short thickset French Canadian of the black-eyed-Susan type, came
+forward, with outstretched hand, from the back of the passageway; there
+was good friendship in her hearty grip.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Marie will take charge of you till supper time," said Mrs.
+Macleod, smiling; "Jamie is apt to run the house at times because he
+can speak with the servants in their own tongue."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, mother!" It was Jamie's turn to protest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod spoke to the little maid, who was beaming on me, in
+halting French.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you speak French?" she asked me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I can read it, that 's all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well, with that you can soon understand and speak it; my Scotch
+tongue is too old to be learning new tricks; fortunately I understand
+it a little. Marie will take you to your room."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marie looked on me with an encouraging smile, and led the way up stairs
+through a wide passageway, down three steps into another long corridor,
+and opened a door at the end. She lighted two candles and, after some
+pantomime concerning water, left me, closing the door behind her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And this was my room. I looked around; it took immediate possession of
+me in spirit&mdash;a new experience for me and a wholly pleasing one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were two windows in one end; the walls were sloping. I concluded
+it must be in the gable end of some addition to the main building. The
+walls were whitewashed; the floor was neatly laid with a woven rag
+carpet of peculiar design and delicate coloring; the cottage bedroom
+set was painted dark green. There was a plain deal writing table with
+writing pad and inkstand, and a dressing table on which stood two white
+china candlesticks. Counterpane, chair cushions, and window hangings
+were of beautiful old chintz still gay with faded paroquets and vines,
+trees, trellises, roses and numerous humming-birds, on a background of
+faded crocus yellow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a knock at the door. On my using one of the few words in
+French at my command, "Entrez," Marie burst in with delighted
+exclamations and a flood of unintelligible French. But I gathered she
+was explaining to me Pierre who followed her, cap in one hand, and in
+the other, the handle of my trunk which he was dragging behind him.
+This was evidently Pierre, father, in distinction from Pierre, son.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Big Pete and little Pete," I translated for their benefit; whereupon
+Marie clapped her hands and Peter the Great came forward man fashion to
+shake hands before he placed my trunk. As the two spoke together I
+heard the name "Cale".
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a household!" I said to myself after they had gone, and while I
+was doing over my hair. "I wonder if there are any other members? And
+what is my place in it going to be?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It kept me guessing until I had made myself ready for supper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Soon there was another knock. Marie's voice was heard; her tongue
+loosed in voluble expression of her evident desire to conduct me down
+stairs to the dining-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here are more of us!" was Jamie Macleod's exclamation, as I entered
+the long low room. Four fine dogs&mdash;he told me afterwards they were
+Gordon setters&mdash;rose slowly from the rug before the fireplace. "But
+they 're Scotch and need no introduction. Come here, comrades!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The four leaped towards me; snuffed at me with evident curiosity;
+licked my hands and were about to spring on me, but a word from their
+master sent them back to the rug.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He showed me my place at the long narrow table; drew out the chair for
+his mother and, when she was seated, spoke to the dogs who, with
+perfect decorum, sedately settled themselves on their haunches in twos,
+one on each side of Mrs. Macleod at the head of the table, one on each
+side of her son at her right. They looked for all the world like the
+Barye bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum! After all, I could not get
+rid of all the associations, nor did this one bring with it anything
+but pleasure, that the great city had yielded me this much of
+instruction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was looking at the dogs and about to speak, when I noticed that Mrs.
+Macleod had bent her head and folded her hands. I caught Jamie looking
+at me out of the corner of his eye. For the first time in my life I
+heard "grace" said at a table. I felt myself grow red; I was
+embarrassed. Jamie saw my confusion and began to chat in his own
+bright way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I asked mother if she had written definitely what we 'd asked you up
+here for into the wilds of Canada."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Jamie! You will be giving Miss&mdash;Marcia," she corrected herself,
+"to understand I asked her here under false pretence. To tell the
+truth, I did n't quite see how to explain myself at such a distance."
+She spoke with perfect sincerity. "Moreover, Doctor Rugvie told me
+that Mrs. Beaseley was absolutely trustworthy, and I relied on her&mdash;but
+you don't know Doctor Rugvie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of him, yes; I saw him once in the hospital."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you 've been in the hospital too?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Jamie who put that question, and something of the eager light in
+his face faded as he asked it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, last spring; I was there ten weeks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you know," he said quite simply, and looked at me with inquiring
+eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why or how I was enabled to read the significance of that simple
+statement, I cannot say; I know only in part. But I do know that my
+eyes must have answered his, for I saw in them a reflection of my own
+thought: We both, then, have known what it is, to draw near to the
+threshold of that door that opens only outward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't indeed look strong; I noticed that the first thing," said
+Mrs. Macleod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but I am," I assured her; "you will see when you have work for me.
+I can cook, and sew&mdash;and chop wood, and even saw a little, if
+necessary."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod looked at me in absolute amazement, and Jamie burst into a
+hearty laugh. It was good to hear, and, without in the slightest
+knowing why, I laughed too&mdash;at what I did not know, nor much care. It
+was good to laugh like that!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And to think, mother, that you told me to come down heavy on the
+'strong and country raised'! Oh, this is rich! I wrote that
+advertisement, Miss Far&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please call me Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I?" He was again eager and boyish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not?" I said. He went on with his unfinished sentence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;And I pride myself that I rose to the occasion of mother's command
+to make it 'brief but explicit'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor girl, you 've had little chance to hear anything explicit from me
+as yet." Mrs. Macleod smiled, rather sadly I thought. "But you shall
+know before you go to bed. I could n't be so thoughtless as to keep
+you in suspense over night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I can wait," I said; "but what I want to know, Mr. Macleod&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please call me Jamie," he said, imitating my voice and intonation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I?" I replied, mimicking his own. Then we both fell to laughing
+like two children, and it seemed to me that I felt what it is to be
+young, for the first time in my life. The four dogs wagged their
+tails, threshing the floor with them like flails and keeping time to
+our hilarity; Mrs. Macleod smiled, almost happily, and Marie came in to
+see what it was all about.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you want to know?" he said at last, mopping the tears from his
+eyes with his napkin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why you advertised your mother as 'an elderly Scotchwoman'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because that sounded safe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again we laughed, it seemed at almost nothing. The dogs whined as if
+wanting to join in what fun there was; the fire snapped merrily on the
+hearth, and the large coal-oil lamp, at the farther end of the long
+table, sent forth a cheerful light from under its white porcelain
+shade, and showed me the old room in all its simple beauty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Overhead, the great beams and the ceiling were a rich mahogany color
+with age. The sides were panelled to the ceiling with the same wood.
+Between the two doors opening into the passageway, was a huge but
+beautifully proportioned marble chimney-piece that reached to the beams
+of the ceiling. The marble was of the highest polish, white, pale
+yellow, and brown in tone. Above the mantel, it formed the frame of a
+large canvas that showed a time-darkened landscape with mounted
+hunters. The whole piece was exquisitely carved with the wild grape
+vine&mdash;its leaves and fruit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On each side were old iron sconces. Above the two doors were the
+antlers of stags. The room was lighted by four windows; these were
+hung with some faded chintz, identical in pattern and color with that
+in my bedroom; they were drawn. I wondered, as I looked at this beauty
+of simplicity, what the other rooms in the house would show. I noticed
+there was no sideboard, no dresser; only the table, and heavy chairs
+with wooden seats, furnished the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The food was wholesome and abundant. I found myself wondering that I
+could eat each mouthful without counting the cost.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll stay here with the dogs and smoke," Jamie said, as we left the
+table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We crossed the passageway, which I noticed was laid with flagging and
+unheated, to the room opposite the dining-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here again, there were the wood ceilings and panelled walls, the latter
+painted white. The great chimney-piece was like its fellow in the
+dining-room; only the carvings were different: intricate scrollwork and
+fine groovings. There was a canvas, also, in the marble frame, but it
+was in a good state of preservation; it showed a walled city on a
+height and a river far below. I wondered if it could be Quebec.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The room was larger than the other, but much cosier in every way.
+There were a few modern easy chairs, an ample old sofa&mdash;swans carved on
+the back and arms&mdash;a large library table of black oak with bevelled
+edges, also beautifully carved; and around the walls of the room, in
+every available space, were plain low bookshelves of pine stained to
+match the table. On the floor were the same woven rugs of rag carpet,
+unique of design and beautiful in coloring&mdash;dark brown, pale yellow,
+and white, with large squares marked off in narrow lines of rose. The
+furniture, except for the sofa which was upholstered in faded yellow
+wool damask, was covered with flowery chintz like that in the
+dining-room, and at the windows were the same faded yellow hangings. A
+large black bear skin rug lay before the hearth. There were no
+ornaments or pictures anywhere. On the mantel were two pots of
+flourishing English ivy. A stand of geraniums stood before one of the
+four windows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were sconces on each side of the chimney-piece, but of gilt
+bronze. Each was seven-branched, and it was evident that Marie had
+just lighted all fourteen candles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod drew her chair to the hearth, and I took one near her.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0203"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"It is a good time to speak of some matters between ourselves; Jamie
+will not be coming in for an hour at least." She turned and looked at
+me steadily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know how much or how little you know of this place, and
+perhaps it will be best to begin at the beginning. Mrs. Beaseley wrote
+me you were born in the city of New York."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; twenty-six years ago next December."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So Mrs. Beaseley wrote, or rather her daughter did for her. She said
+you were an orphan."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes." I answered so. How could I answer otherwise knowing what I
+did? But I felt the blood mount to my temples when I stated this half
+truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You say you do not know Doctor Rugvie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; only of him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish you did." (How could she know that my wish to see him and know
+him must be far stronger than hers!)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He will be coming out here later on in the winter&mdash;are you cold?" she
+asked quickly, for I had shivered to cover an involuntary start.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, not at all; but I think it must be growing colder outside."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is. Cale said we might have heavy frost or snow before morning.
+You will find the changes in temperature very sudden and trying here in
+spring and autumn. About Doctor Rugvie; he is a good man, and a great
+one in his profession. We made his acquaintance many years ago in
+Scotland, in my own home, Crieff. He had lodgings with us for ten
+weeks, and since then he has made us proud to be counted among his
+friends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She rose, stirred the fire and took a maple stick from a large
+wood-basket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me," I said, taking it from her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You really don't look strong enough."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but I am; you 'll see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the way, don't let my son do anything like this. He is often
+careless and over confident, and he must not strain himself&mdash;he is
+under strict orders." She was silent for a moment then went on:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My son is not strong, as you must see." She looked at me appealingly,
+as if hoping I might dispute her statement; but I could say nothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A year ago," she spoke slowly, as if with difficulty, "he was in the
+Edinboro' Hospital for five months; he inherits his father's
+constitution, and the hemorrhages were very severe. Doctor Rugvie came
+over to see him, and advised his coming out here to Canada to live as
+far as possible in the pine forests. He has been away all summer. He
+is to go away again next year with one of the old guides.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want you to remain with me as companion and assistant here in the
+house; the service is large and, as you will soon find," she added with
+a smile, "extremely personal. They are interested in us and our
+doings, and we are expected to reciprocate that interest. It will be a
+comfort to Jamie to know you are with me, and that I am not alone in
+this French environment." She interrupted herself to say:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did Mrs. Beaseley tell you anything about this place? You can speak
+with perfect freedom to me. We have no mysteries here." She smiled as
+if she read my thoughts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She told me she knew nothing of the place, except that Doctor Rugvie
+had hired a farm in Canada with some good buildings on it, and that he
+intended to use it for those who might need to be built up in health."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She has stated it exactly. My son and I are the first
+beneficiaries&mdash;only, this is not the farm."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not the farm!" I exclaimed. She looked amused at my surprise. "What
+is it then? Do tell me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is very little to tell. A friend of Doctor Rugvie's, an
+Englishman who was with him for a week in Scotland while he was with
+us, is owner of the Seigniory of Lamoral; it is his, I think, by
+inheritance, although I am not positive; and this is the old manor
+house. The estate is very large, but has been neglected; I have
+understood it is to be cultivated; some of it is to be reforested and
+the present forest conserved. He will be his own manager and will make
+his home here a great part of the year. Mean while, he has installed
+us here in his absence, through Doctor Rugvie, of course, and given
+over the charge of house and servants to Jamie and me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what is the owner's title?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has none that I know of. The real 'Seignior' and 'Seignioress'
+live in Richelieu-en-Bas in the new manor house&mdash;I say 'new', but that
+must be seventy-five years old. This is only a part of the original
+seigniory."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't understand these seigniories, and I tried to read up about
+them before I came here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is very perplexing&mdash;these seigniorial rights and rents and
+transferences. I don't make any pretence of understanding them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are the farm buildings occupied now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; Doctor Rugvie wants to attend to those himself. It is his
+recreation to make plans for this farm, and he will be here himself to
+see that they are begun and carried out right. He tells me he has
+always loved Canada."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what am I to do for you? I want to begin to feel of a little
+use," I said half impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are doing for me now, my dear." (How easily Delia Beaseley's name
+for me came from the "elderly Scotchwoman's" lips!) "Your presence
+cheers Jamie; the young need the young, and belong to the young&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," I protested, "I am not young; I am twenty-six."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Jamie is twenty-three. But when you laughed together to-night,
+you both might have been sixteen. It did me good to hear you; this old
+house needs just that&mdash;and I can't laugh easily now," she added. I
+heard a note of hopelessness in her voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How lovely she was as she sat by the fire in the soft radiance of
+candle light! "Elderly"!&mdash;She could not be a day over fifty-seven or
+eight. The fine white cap rested on heavy, smoothly parted hair; the
+figure was round to plumpness; the dress, not modernized, became her;
+her voice was still young if a little weary, and her brown eyes bright,
+the lids unwrinkled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know Delia Beaseley well? Doctor Rugvie says she is a fine
+woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is noble," I said emphatically; "I feel that I know her well,
+although I have seen her only a few times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is she a widow?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door opened before I could gather my wits to answer. I felt
+intuitively that I could not say to this Scotchwoman, that Delia
+Beaseley was neither widow nor wife. I welcomed the sudden inrush of
+all four dogs and Jamie behind them, with the smell of a fresh pipe
+about him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I positively must have my second short pipe here with you. I kept
+away in deference to the new member of the family." He flourished his
+pipe towards me. "I always smoke here, don't I, mother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In that case, I will stay in my room after supper unless you continue
+to smoke your first, second, and third&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only two; Doctor Rugvie won't allow me a third&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor Rugvie is a tyrant, and I 've said the same thing before," I
+declared firmly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, look here, Marcia," he said solemnly, "we will call a halt right
+now and here." He settled his long length in the deep easy chair on
+the other side of the hearth, refilled and relighted his pipe. "Doctor
+Rugvie is my friend, my very special friend; whoever enters this house,
+enters it on the footing of friendship with all those who are my
+friends&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hear, hear! Another tyrant," I said, turning to his mother who was
+enjoying our chaff.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;Whose name is legion," he went on, ignoring my interruption. "I'll
+begin to enumerate them for your benefit. There are the four dogs,
+Gordon setters of the best breed&mdash;and Gordon's setters in fact." He
+made some pun at which his mother smiled, but it was lost on me. "They
+'re not mine, they 're my friend's, and that amounts to the same thing
+when he 's away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And who is this friend of dogs and of man?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He? Guy Mannering, hear her! Why there's only one 'he' for this
+place and that's&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor Rugvie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor Rugvie!" he repeated, looking at me in unfeigned amazement;
+then to his mother:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have n't you told her yet, mother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I doubt if I mentioned his name&mdash;I had so many other things to say and
+think of." She spoke half apologetically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The man who owns this house, Miss Farrell,"&mdash;he was speaking so
+earnestly and emphatically that he forgot our agreement,&mdash;"the man who
+owns these dogs, the lord of this manor, such as it is, and everything
+belonging to it, lord of a forest it will do your eyes and lungs and
+soul good to journey through, the man who is master in the best sense
+of Pete and little Pete, of Angélique and Marie, of old Mère
+Guillardeau, of a dozen farmers here on the old Seigniory of Lamoral,
+my friend, Doctor Rugvie's friend and friend of all Richelieu-en-Bas,
+is Mr. Ewart, Gordon Ewart&mdash;and you missed my pun! the first I've made
+to-day!&mdash;and I hope he will be yours!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I 'll compromise. If he will just tolerate me here for your
+sakes, I 'll be his friend whether he is mine or not&mdash;for I want to
+stay."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I meant what I said; and I think both mother and son realized, that
+under the jesting words there was a deep current of feeling. Mrs.
+Macleod leaned over and laid her hand on mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You shall stay, Marcia; it will not depend on Mr. Ewart, your
+remaining with us. When the farm is ready, Doctor Rugvie will place us
+there, and then I shall need your help all the time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again, as at the station with Delia Beaseley's blessing ringing in my
+ears, I felt the unaccustomed tears springing in my eyes. Jamie leaned
+forward and knocked the ashes from his pipe; he continued to stare into
+the fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And who are the others?" I asked unsteadily; my lips trembled in spite
+of myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The others? Oh&mdash;," he seemed to come back to us from afar, "there is
+André&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And who is André?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just André&mdash;none such in the wide world; my guide's old father, old
+Mère Guillardeau's brother, old French voyageur and coureur de bois; it
+will take another evening to tell you of André.&mdash; Mother," he spoke
+abruptly, "it's time for porridge and Cale."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I will speak to Marie." She rose and left the room by a door at
+the farther end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Remark those fourteen candles, will you?" said Jamie, between puffs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have noticed them; I call that a downright extravagance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I pay for it," he said sententiously; then, with a slight flash of
+resentment; "you need n't think I sponge on Ewart to the extent of
+fourteen candles a night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I laughed a little under my breath. I knew a little friction would do
+him no harm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And when those fourteen candles burn to within two inches of the
+socket, as at present, it is my invariable custom, being a Scotsman, to
+call for the porridge&mdash;and for Cale, because he is of our tongue, and
+needs to discourse with his own, at least once, before going to bed. I
+say a Scotsman without his nine o'clock porridge is a cad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any more remarks are in order," I said to tease him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You really must know Cale&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought I made his acquaintance this afternoon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed again his hearty laugh. "I forgot; he drove you out. We
+did n't send Pete because we thought you might not understand his
+lingo. But you must n't fancy you know Cale because you 've seen him
+once&mdash;oh, no! You 'll have to see him daily and sometimes hourly; in
+fact, you will see so much of him that, sometimes, you will wish it a
+little less; for you are to understand that Cale is omnipresent, very
+nearly omnipotent here with us, and indispensable to <I>me</I>. You will
+accept him on my recommendation and afterwards make a friend of him for
+your own sake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale?&mdash;He 's just Cale too. His name is Caleb Marstin; 'hails', as he
+says, from northern New England. I have noticed he does n't care to
+name the locality, and I respect his reticence; it's none of my
+business. He says he has n't lived there for more than a quarter of a
+century and has no relations. He can tell you more about forests,
+lumber and forestry, in one hour than a whole Agricultural College. He
+has been for years lumbering in northern Minnesota and across the
+Canadian border. He 's here to help reforest and conserve the old
+forest to the estate; he 's&mdash;in a word, he 's my right hand man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is Mr. Ewart lord of Cale too?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At my question, Jamie's long body doubled up with mirth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have n't seen each other yet and don't know each other. Gordon Ewart
+is n't apt to acknowledge any one as his master, especially in the
+matter of forestry, and Cale never does; result, fun for us when they
+do know each other."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did you happen to get him here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, a girl I know, who visits in Richelieu-en-Bas, said her father,
+who is a big lumber merchant on the States' border, knew of good men
+for the place. Ewart had told me that this was my first business, to
+get a man for the place; so I wrote to him, and he replied that Cale
+was coming east in the spring and he had given him my name. That's
+how."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod came in, followed by Marie with steaming porridge, bowls
+and spoons on a tray; Cale was behind her. Jamie looked up with a
+smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale, this is Miss Farrell, the new member of our Canadian settlement.
+I take it you have spoken with her before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no outstretched hand for me; nor did I extend mine to him.
+We were of one people, Cale and I: northern New Englanders, and rarely
+demonstrative to strangers. We are apt to wait for an advance in
+friendship and then retreat before it when it is made, for the simple
+reason that we fear to show how much we want it! But I smiled up at
+him as he took his stand by the mantel, leaning an elbow on it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Cale and I have made each other's acquaintance." I noticed that
+when I looked up at him and smiled, he gave an involuntary start. I
+wondered if Jamie saw it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, we had some conversation, such as 'twas, on the way. 'T ain't
+every young gal would ride out inter what you might call the
+unbeknownst of a seigniory in Canady with an old feller like me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A slow smile wrinkled his gaunt whiskered cheeks, and creased a little
+more deeply the crowsfeet around the small keen grey eyes that, I
+noticed, fixed themselves on me and were hardly withdrawn during the
+five minutes he stood by the mantel gulping his porridge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After finishing it, he bade us an abrupt good night and left.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's struck Cale, mother?" Jamie asked as soon as he had left the
+room; "this is the first time I 've ever known his loquacity to be at a
+low ebb. It could n't be Marcia, could it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think Marcia's presence had anything to do with it; he is n't
+apt to be minding the presence of any one. I think he has something on
+his mind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then he 'd better get it off; I don't like it," said Jamie brusquely;
+"here they come&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In came Angélique and Marie, Pierre the Great, and Pierre the Small, to
+bid us good night; it was their custom; and after the many
+"bonne-nuits" and "dormez-biens", they trooped out. We took our
+lighted candlesticks from the library table where Marie had placed
+them; Jamie snuffed out the fourteen low-burning lights in the sconces,
+drew ashes over the embers, put a large screen before the fire, and we
+went to our rooms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mine greeted me with an extra degree of warmth. Marie had made more
+fire; the air was frosty. I drew apart the curtains and looked out.
+There was only the blackness of night beyond the panes. I drew them to
+again; unlocked my trunk to take out merely what was necessary for the
+night, undressed and went to bed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I must have lain there hours with wide open eyes; there was no sleep in
+me. Hour after hour I listened for a sound from somewhere; there was
+absolute silence within the manor and without. I had opened my window
+for air, and, as I lay there wide awake, gradually, without reason, in
+that intense silence, the various nightly street sounds of the great
+city, five hundred miles to the southward, began to sound in my ears;
+at first far away, then nearer and nearer until I heard distinctly the
+roar of the elevated, the multiplied "honk-honk" of the automobiles,
+the rolling of cabs, the grating clamor of the surface cars, the clang
+of the ambulance, the terrific clatter of the horses' hoofs as they
+sped three abreast to the fire, the hoarse whistle of tug and ferry;
+and, above all, the voices of those crying in that wilderness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again I felt that awful burden, that blackness of oppression, which was
+with me for weeks in the hospital&mdash;the result of the intensified life
+of the huge metropolis and the giant machinery that sustains it&mdash;and,
+feeling it, I knew myself to be a stranger even in the white walled
+room in the old manor house of Lamoral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It must have been long, long after midnight when I fell asleep.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0204"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+There was a soft white light on walls and ceiling when I awoke. I
+recognized it at once: the reflection from snow. I drew aside both
+curtains and looked out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, how beautiful!" I exclaimed, drawing long deep breaths of the fine
+dry air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the so-called "feather-snow" that had fallen during the night.
+It powdered the massive drooping hemlock boughs, the spraying
+underbrush, the stiff-branched spruce and cedars that crowded the tall
+pines, overstretching the steep gable above my windows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just below me, about twenty feet from the house, was the creek, a
+backwater of the St. Lawrence, lying clear, unruffled, dark, and
+mirroring the snow-frosted cedars, hemlocks, and spraying underbrush.
+Across its narrow width the woods came down to the water, glowing
+crimson, flaunting orange, shimmering yellow beneath the light snow
+fall. Straight through these woods, and directly opposite my windows,
+a broad lane had been cut, a long wide clearing that led my eyes
+northward, over some open country, to the soft blue line of the
+mountains. I took them to be the Laurentides.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From a distance, in the direction of the village, came the sudden
+muffled clash of bells; then peal followed peal. The sun was fully an
+hour high. As I listened, I heard the soft <I>drip</I>, <I>drip</I>, that
+sounded the vanishing of the "feather-snow".
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I stood long at the window, for I knew this glory was transient and
+before another snowfall every crimson and yellow leaf would have fallen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While dressing, I took myself to task for the mood of the night before.
+Such thoughts could not serve me in my service to others. I was a
+beneficiary&mdash;Mrs. Macleod's word&mdash;as well as Jamie and his mother, and
+I determined to make the most of my benefits which, in the morning
+sunshine, seemed many and great. Had I not health, a sheltering room,
+abundant food and good wages?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could not help wondering whose was the money with which I was to be
+paid. Had it anything to do with Doctor Rugvie's "conscience fund"?
+Did Mrs. Macleod and Jamie bear the expense? Or was it Mr. Ewart's?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ewart&mdash;Ewart," I said to myself; "why it's the very same I heard in
+the train."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then and there I made my decision: I would write to Delia Beaseley
+that, as Mrs. Macleod said Doctor Rugvie would be here sometime later
+on in the winter, I would wait until I should have seen him before
+asking him for my papers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall ask her never to mention my name to him in connection with
+what happened twenty-six years ago; I prefer to tell it myself," was my
+thought; "it is an affair of my own life, and it belongs to me, and to
+no other, to act as pioneer into this part of my experience&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marie's rap and entrance with hot water, her voluble surprise at
+finding me up and dressed, and our efforts to understand each other,
+diverted my thoughts. I made out that the family breakfasted an hour
+later, and that it was Marie's duty to make a fire for me every
+morning. I felt almost like apologizing to her for allowing her to do
+it for me, who am able-bodied and not accustomed to be waited on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I took rain-coat and rubbers, and followed her down stairs. She
+unbolted the great front door and let me out into the early morning
+sunshine. I stood on the upper step to look around me, to take in
+every detail of my surroundings, only guessed at the night before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Maples and birch mingled with evergreens, crowding close to the house,
+filled the foreground on each side. In front, an unkempt driveway
+curved across a large neglected lawn, set with lindens and pines, and
+lost itself in woods at the left. Between the tree trunks on the lawn,
+at a distance of perhaps five hundred feet, I saw the broad gleaming
+waters of the St. Lawrence broken by two long islands. Behind the
+farther one I saw the smoke of some large steamer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked up at the house. It was a storey and a half, long, low,
+white. The three large windows on each side of the entrance were
+provided with ponderous wooden shutters banded with iron. There were
+four dormers in the gently sloping roof and two large central chimneys,
+besides two or three smaller ones in various parts of the roof. Such
+was the old manor of Lamoral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A path partly overgrown with bushes led around the house; following it,
+I found that the main building was the least part of the whole
+structure. Two additions, varying in length and height, provided as
+many sharp gables, and gave it the inconsequent charm of the unexpected.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Beyond, in a tangle of cedars and hemlocks, were some low square
+out-buildings with black hip-roofs. Still following the path, that
+turned to the left away from the outbuildings, I found myself in the
+woods that from all sides encroached upon the house. It was a joy to
+be in them at that early hour. The air was filled with sunshine and
+crisp with the breath of vanishing snow. The sky was deep blue as seen
+between the interlocking branches, wet and darkened, of the crowding
+trees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before me I saw what looked to be another out-building, also white, and
+evidently the goal for this path through the woods. It proved to be a
+small chapel, half in ruins; the door was time-stained and barred with
+iron; the window glass was gone; only the delicate wooden traceries of
+the frame were intact. I mounted a pile of building stone beneath one
+of the windows, and by dint of standing on tiptoe I could look over the
+window ledge to the farther end of the chapel. To my amazement I saw
+that it had been, in part, a mortuary chapel. Several slabs were lying
+about as if they had been pried off, and the deep stone-lined graves
+were empty. The place fairly gave me the creeps; it was so unexpected
+to find this reminder in the hour of the day's resurrection.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="P92"></A>
+
+<P>
+What a wilderness was this Seigniory of Lamoral! And yet&mdash;I liked it.
+I liked its wildness, the untrammelled growth of its trees, underbrush
+and vines; the dignified simplicity of its old manor that matched the
+simple sincerity of its present inmates. I felt somehow akin to all of
+it, and I could say with truth, that I should be glad to remain a part
+of it. But I recalled what Mrs. Macleod said about our removal to the
+farm, and that remembrance forbade my indulging in any thoughts of
+permanency.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stranger I am in it, and stranger I must remain to it, and at no
+distant time 'move on,' I suppose." This was my thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A noise of soft runnings-to-and-fro in the underbrush startled me. I
+jumped down from the pile of stones and started for the house, but not
+before the dogs found me and announced the fact with continued and
+energetic yelpings. Jamie greeted me from the doorway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good morning! You 've stolen a march on me; I wanted to show you the
+chapel in the woods. You will find this old place as good as a two
+volume novel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a wilderness it is!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what Cale is here for. He is only waiting for Ewart to come to
+bring order out of this chaos. I hope you noticed that cut through the
+woods across the creek?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it's lovely; those are the Laurentians I see, are n't they?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're right. The cut is Cale's doing. He said the first thing
+necessary was to let in light and air, and provide drainage. But he
+won't do much more till Ewart comes&mdash;he does n't want to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When is Mr. Ewart coming?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We expect him sometime the last of November. He was in England when
+we last heard from him&mdash;here's Marie; breakfast is ready." He opened
+the door to the dining-room and Mrs. Macleod greeted me from the head
+of the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I loved the dining-room; the side windows looked into a thicket of
+spruce and hemlock, and from the front ones I could see under the
+great-branched lindens to the St. Lawrence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After breakfast Mrs. Macleod showed me what she called the "offices",
+also the large winter kitchen at the end of the central passageway, and
+the method by which both are heated: a range of curious make is set
+into the wall in such a way that the iron back forms a portion of the
+wall of the passageway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We came out here early in the spring and found this arrangement
+perfect for heating the passageway. Angélique has moved in this
+morning from the summer kitchen; she says the first snowfall is her
+warning. I have yet to experience a Canadian winter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She showed me all over the house. It was simple in arrangement and
+lacked many things to make it comfortable. Above, in the main house,
+there were four large bedrooms with dormer windows and wide shallow
+fireplaces. The walls were whitewashed and sloping as in my room. The
+furniture was sparse but old and substantial. There were no bed
+furnishings or hangings of any kind. All the rooms were laid with rag
+carpets of beautiful coloring and unique design.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jamie and I have rooms in the long corridor where yours is," said Mrs.
+Macleod; "it's much cosier there; we actually have curtains to our
+beds, which seems a bit like home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was looking out of one of the dormer windows as she spoke, and saw
+little Pete on the white Percheron, galloping clumsily up the driveway.
+He saw me and waved a yellow envelope. I knew that little yellow flag
+to be a telegram. A sudden heart-throb warned me that it might bring
+some word that would shorten my stay in this old manor, and banish all
+three to Doctor Rugvie's farm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A few minutes afterwards, we heard Jamie's voice calling from the lower
+passageway:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother, where are you?&mdash;Oh, you 're there, Marcia!" he said, as I
+leaned over the stair rail. "Here 's a telegram from Ewart, and news
+by letter&mdash;no end of it. Come on down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come away," said Mrs. Macleod quickly. I saw her cheeks flush with
+excitement. On entering the living-room we found Jamie in high
+feather. He flourished the telegram joyously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I say, mother, it's great! Ewart telegraphs he will be here by
+the fifteenth of November and that Doctor Rugvie will come with him.
+And here 's a letter from him, written two weeks ago, and he says that
+by now all the cases of books should be in Montreal, plus two French
+coach horses at the Royal Stables. He says Cale is to go up for them.
+He tells me to open the cases, and gives you free hand to furbish up in
+any way you see fit, to make things comfortable for the winter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear boy, what an avalanche of responsibility! I don't know that I
+feel competent to carry out his wishes." She looked so hopelessly
+helpless that her son laughed outright.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And when and where do I come in?" I asked merrily; "am I to continue
+to be the cipher I 've been since my arrival?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You forgot Marcia, now did n't you, mother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I did, dear. Do you really think you can attempt all this?"
+she asked rather anxiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do it! Of course I can&mdash;every bit, if only you will let me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hurrah for the States!" Jamie cried triumphantly; "Marcia, you're a
+trump," he added emphatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod turned to me, saying half in apology:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I really have no initiative, my dear; and when so many demands are
+made upon me unexpectedly, I simply can do nothing&mdash;just turn on a
+pivot, Jamie says; and the very fact that I am a beneficiary here would
+be an obstacle in carrying out these plans. It is so different in my
+own home in Crieff."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I heard the note of homesickness in her voice, and it dawned upon me
+that there are others in the world who may feel themselves strangers in
+it. My heart went out to her for her loneliness in this far away land
+of French Canada.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, so am I a beneficiary; so is Cale and the whole household; and
+if only you will let me, I 'll make Mr. Ewart himself feel he is a
+beneficiary in his own house," I retorted gayly. "And as for Doctor
+Rugvie, we 'll see whether his farm will have such attractions for him
+after he has been our guest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod laid her hand on my shoulder and smiled, saying with a
+sigh of relief:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you will only take the generalship, Marcia, you will find in me a
+good aide-de-camp."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie said nothing, but he gave me a look that was with me all that day
+and many following. It spurred me to do my best.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0205"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+V
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+How I enjoyed the next three weeks! Jamie said the household activity
+had been "switched off" until the arrival of the letter and telegram
+from Mr. Ewart; these, he declared, made the connection and started a
+current. Its energy made itself pleasurably felt in every member of
+the household. Cale was twice in Montreal, on a personally conducted
+tour, for the coach horses. Big Pete was putting on double windows all
+over the house, stuffing the cracks with moss, piling cords of winter
+wood, hauling grain and, during the long evenings, enjoying himself by
+cutting up the Canadian grown tobacco, mixing it with a little
+molasses, and storing it for his winter solace. Angélique was making
+the kitchen to shine, and Marie was helping Mrs. Macleod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the first week Jamie and I lived, in part, on the road between
+Lamoral and Richelieu-en-Bas. With little Pete for driver, an old
+cart-horse and a long low-bodied wagon carried us, sometimes twice a
+day, to the village. We spent hours in the one "goods" shop of the
+place. It was a long, low, dark room stocked to the ceiling on both
+walls and on shelves down the middle, with all varieties of cotton,
+woolen and silk goods, some of modern manufacture but more of past
+decades. In the dim background, a broad flight of stairs, bisecting on
+a landing, led to the gallery where were piled higgledy-piggledy every
+Canadian want in the way of furnishings, from old-fashioned bellows and
+all wool blankets, to Englishware toilet sets that must have found
+storage there for a generation, and no customer till Jamie and I
+appeared to claim them. There, too, I unearthed a bolt of English
+chintz.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a tiny front room of a tiny house on the marketplace, I found an old
+dealer in skins. He and his wife made some up for me into small
+foot-rugs for the bedrooms. Acting on Angélique's suggestion, I
+visited old Mère Guillardeau's daughter. I found her in her cabin at
+her rag carpet loom, and bought two rolls which she was just about to
+leave with the "goods" merchant to sell on commission. I wanted them
+to make the long passageways more comfortable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I revelled in each day's work which was as good as play to me. I
+gloried in being able to spend the money for what was needed to make
+the house comfortable, without the burden of having to earn it; just as
+I rejoiced in the abundant wholesome food that now nourished me,
+without impoverishing my pocket. There were times when I found myself
+almost grateful for the discipline and denial of those years in the
+city; for, against that background, my present life seemed one of
+care-free luxury. I began to feel young; and it was a pleasure to know
+I was needed and helpful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The shortening November days, the strengthening cold, that closed the
+creek and was beginning to bind the river, the gray unlifting skies, I
+welcomed as a foil to the cosy evenings in the dining-room where Mrs.
+Macleod and I sewed and stitched, and planned for the various rooms,
+Jamie smoked and jeered or encouraged, and the four dogs watched every
+movement on our part, with an ear cocked for little Pete who was
+cracking butternuts in the kitchen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The life in the manor was so peaceful, so sheltered, so normal. Every
+member of the household was busy with work during the day, and the
+night brought with it well-earned rest, and a sense of comfort and
+security in the flame-lighted rooms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Often after going up to my bedroom, which Marie kept acceptably warm
+for me, I used to sit before the open grate stove for an hour before
+going to bed, just to enjoy the white-walled peace around me, the night
+silence without, the restful quiet of the old manor within. At such
+times I found myself dreading the "foreign invasion", as I termed in
+jest the coming of the owner of Lamoral and Doctor Rugvie. To the
+first I gave little thought; the second was rarely absent from my
+consciousness. "How will it all end?" I asked myself time and time
+again while counting off the days before his arrival. What should I
+find out? What would the knowledge lead to?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who am I? Who&mdash;who?" I said to myself over and over again during
+those three weeks of preparation. And at night, creeping into my
+bed&mdash;than which there could be none better, for it was in three layers:
+spring, feather bed and hair mattress&mdash;and drawing up the blankets and
+comforter preparatory for the sharp frost of the early morning, I cried
+out in revolt:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't care a rap who I may prove to be! If only this peaceful sense
+of security will last, I want to remain Marcia Farrell to the end."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I knew it could not last. I hinted as much to Jamie Macleod only
+three days before the fifteenth of November. We were making our last
+trip to the village for some extra supplies for Angélique. We were
+alone, and I was driving.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jamie," I said suddenly, after the old and trustworthy cart-horse,
+newly and sharply shod for the ice, had taken us safely over the frozen
+creek, "I wish this might last, don't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at me a little doubtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean the kind of life we 're living now? Yes,"&mdash;he
+hesitated,&mdash;"for some reasons I do; but there are others, and for those
+it is better that the change should come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What others?" I was at times boldly inquisitive of Jamie; I took
+liberties with his youth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You would n't understand them if I told you. Wait till the others
+come and you 'll see, in part, why."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know," I continued, my words following my thought, "that you
+'ve never told me a thing about Doctor Rugvie and Mr. Ewart?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not told you anything? Why, I thought I 'd said enough that first
+evening for you to know as much of them as you can without seeing them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you have n't; you 've been like a clam so far as telling me
+anything about their looks, or age, or&mdash;or anything&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, own up, now; you mean you want to know if they 're married or
+single?" He was beginning to tease.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I do. This old manor has had a good many surprises for me
+already in these three weeks, you, for one&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He threw back his head, laughing heartily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;And the 'elderly Scotchwoman', and Cale for a third; and if you
+would give me a hint as to the matrimonial standing of the two from
+over-seas, I should feel fortified against any future petticoat
+invasion of their wives, or children, or sweethearts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie laughed uproariously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Guy Mannering, hear her! I thought you said you saw Doctor Rugvie
+in the hospital."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I did; but it was only a glimpse, and a long way off, as he was
+passing through another ward."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned to me quickly. "It's Doctor Rugvie you want to know about
+then? Why about him, rather than Ewart?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because,&mdash;('Be cautious,' I warned myself),&mdash;I happen to have known of
+him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, fire away, and I 'll answer to the best of my knowledge. I
+believe a woman lives, moves and has her being in details," he said a
+little scornfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you just found that out?" I retorted. "Well, you have n't cut
+all your wisdom teeth yet. And now, as you seem to think it's Doctor
+Rugvie I 'm most interested in, we 'll begin with your Mr. Ewart." I
+changed my tactics, for I feared I had shown too much eagerness for
+information about Doctor Rugvie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My Mr. Ewart!" He smiled to himself in a way that exasperated me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, your Mr. Ewart. How old is he? For all you 've told me he might
+be a grandfather."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ewart&mdash;a grandfather!" Again he laughed, provokingly as I thought. I
+kept silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Honestly, Marcia, I don't know Ewart's age, and"&mdash;he was suddenly
+serious&mdash;"for all I know, he may be a grandfather."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For all you know! What do you mean by that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean I never seriously gave Gordon Ewart's age a thought. When I am
+with him he seems, somehow, as young as I&mdash;younger in one way, for he
+has such splendid health. But I suppose he really is old enough to be
+my father&mdash;forty-five or six, possibly; I don't know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is he married?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie brought his hand down upon his knee with such a whack that the
+old cart-horse gave a queer hop-skip-and-jump. We both laughed at his
+antic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There you have me, Marcia. I 'm floored in your first round of
+questions. I don't know exactly&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly! It seems to me that, marriage being an exact science, if a
+man is married why he is&mdash;and no ifs and buts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's so." Jamie spoke seriously and nodded wisely. "I never heard
+it put in just those words, 'exact science', but come to think of it,
+you 're right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, is he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is he what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Married. Are we to expect later on a Mrs. Ewart at Lamoral?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Great Scott, no!" said Jamie emphatically. "Look here, Marcia, I hate
+to tell tales that possibly, and probably, have no foundation&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who wants you to tell tales?" I said indignantly. "I won't hear you
+now whatever you say. You think a woman has no honor in such things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well, you 'll have to hear it sometime, I suppose, in the
+village&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I won't&mdash;and I won't hear you either," I said, and closed my ears with
+my fingers; but in vain, for he fairly shouted at me:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, I don't know whether he 's married or not&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I say I don't care&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you heard that anyway," he shouted again diabolically; "here 's
+another: they say&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Keep still; the whole village can hear you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 're not within a mile of the village; take your fingers out of your
+ears if you don't want me to shout."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not till you stop shouting." He lowered his voice then, and I
+unstopped my ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, Marcia, I believe it's all a rotten lot of damned gossip&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Jamie Macleod! I never heard you use so strong an expression."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't care; it's my way of letting off steam. Mother is n't round."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We both laughed and grew good-humored again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never thought a Scotsman, who takes porridge regularly at nine
+o'clock every evening, could swear&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, did n't you! Where are <I>your</I> wisdom teeth? Live and learn,
+Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quits, Jamie." He chuckled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Honestly, Marcia, I could n't answer you in any other way. Ewart has
+never opened his lips to me about his intimate personal life; he has no
+need to&mdash;for, of course, there is a great difference in our ages even
+if he is such a companion. And then, you know, I only saw him that one
+week in Crieff when he was with us, and I was a little chap&mdash;it was
+just after father left us&mdash;and he was no end good to me. And the
+second time was this year in June when he stayed a week here and then
+took me up to André. He was with us a month in camp; that is where I
+came to know him so well. He 's an Oxford man, and that's what I was
+aiming at when&mdash;when my health funked. He seems to understand how hard
+it is to me to give it all up. I don't object to telling you it was
+Doctor Rugvie who was going to put me through."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Jamie!" It was all I could say, for I had known during our few
+weeks of an intimacy, which circumstances warranted, that some great
+disappointment had been his&mdash;wholly apart from his being handicapped by
+his inheritance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About Ewart," he went on; "you know a village is a village, and a dish
+of gossip is meat and drink for all alike. It's only a rumor anyway,
+but it crops out at odd times and in the queerest places that he was
+married and divorced, and that he has a son living whom he is educating
+in Europe. I don't believe one bally word of it, and I don't want you
+to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I won't to please you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, if you want to know about Doctor Rugvie, I can tell you. He
+lives, you might say, in the open. Ewart strikes me as the kind that
+takes to covert more. Doctor Rugvie is older too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He must be fifty if he 's a day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 's fifty-four&mdash;and he is a widower, a straight out and out one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you do! Who told you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Delia Beaseley."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is she a widow?" Jamie asked slyly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, no nonsense, Jamie Macleod." I spoke severely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense! I was only putting two and two together logically; you said
+the Doctor trusted her&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And well he may. No, she is n't a widow," I said shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That settles it; you need n't be so touchy about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has he any children?" I asked, ignoring the admonition.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; that's his other great sorrow. He lost both his son and daughter.
+Do you know, I can't help thinking he 's doing all this for them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean the farm arrangement?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and us&mdash;he 's been such a friend to mother and me. Oh, he 's
+great!" He was lost suddenly in one of his silences. I had already
+learned never to permit myself the liberty of breaking them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We drove into the village, and, while Jamie was with the grocer,
+"stoking ", as he put it for the coming week, I was wondering what to
+make of Delia Beaseley's theory about the "conscience money" and its
+connection with the farm. Was it to aid in carrying out the Doctor's
+plans for helpfulness? From what Jamie Macleod had told me, I came to
+the conclusion that neither he nor his mother knew anything of <I>that</I>
+financial source. How strange it seemed to know of this tangled skein
+of circumstance, the right thread of which I could not grasp!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While thinking of this, I became aware of the noise of a cheap
+graphophone carrying a melody with its raucous voice; the sounds came
+from a cabaret just below the steamboat landing-place. I listened
+closely to catch the words; the melody, even in this cheap
+reproduction, was a beautiful one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>O Canada, pays de mon amour</I>&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I caught those words distinctly, and was amusing myself with this
+expression of patriotism when Jamie came out of the shop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's up?" he asked, noticing my listening attitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hark!" He listened intently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that!" he said with a smile of recognition as he stepped into the
+wagon; "you should hear Ewart sing it. I 've heard him in camp and
+seen old André fairly weep at hearing it. I see you are discovering
+Richelieu-en-Bas; but you should make acquaintance with the apple-boat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a month too late now for it; it moors just below the cabaret by
+the lowest level of the bank. It's a fine old sloop, and the hull is
+filled with the reddest, roundest, biggest apples that you 've ever
+seen. I come down here once a day regularly while she is here, just to
+get the fragrance into my nostrils, to walk the narrow plank to her
+deck, and touch&mdash;and taste to my satisfaction. We put in ten barrels
+at the manor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could see that picture in my mind's eye: the old apple-boat, the
+heaped up apples, the hull glowing with their color, the green river
+bank, the blue waters of the St. Lawrence, the islands for a
+background&mdash;and the October air spicy with the fragrance of Pomona's
+blessed gift!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We put the old cart-horse through his best paces in order to be at home
+before sunset. We had all the books to arrange in the next two days
+for we had left them until the last. Pete was opening the boxes when
+we came away.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0206"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+VI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+After supper we went over the house to see the various furnishings by
+firelight. Pete had built roaring fires in each bedroom to take off
+the chill, and was to keep them going till the rooms should be occupied
+on the night of the fifteenth; this was necessary against the
+increasing cold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I confess I had worked to some purpose, and Mrs. Macleod and every
+member of the household seconded me with might and main. Now, in a
+body, the eight of us trooped from room to room, to enjoy the sight of
+the labor of our hands. Angélique was stolidly content. Marie was
+volubly enthusiastic. Cale, his hands in his pockets, took in all with
+keen appreciative eyes, and expressed his satisfaction in a few words:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'T ain't every man can get a welcome home like this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're right, Cale," said Jamie, "and there are n't so many men it's
+worth doing all this for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We stood together, admiring,&mdash;and I was happy. I had spent but
+eighty-seven dollars, "<I>pièces</I>", and the rooms did look so inviting!
+The windows and beds were hung with the English chintz, which was old
+fashioned, a mixture of red and white with a touch of gray. I had sent
+to Montreal for fine lamb's wool coverlets for every bed. The village
+furnished plain deal tables for writing. Jamie stained them dark oak,
+and I put on desk pads and writing utensils. Two easy chairs cushioned
+with the chintz were in each room. The old English-ware toilet sets of
+white and gold looked really stately on the old-fashioned stands. Mrs.
+Macleod sewed, with Marie's help, until she had provided every window
+with an inner set of white dimity curtains, every washstand, every
+bureau and table with a cover. She made sheets by the dozen which
+Angélique and Marie laundered. Pete had polished the fine old brass
+andirons, that furnished each fireplace, till they shone. My bedroom
+foot-rugs were pronounced a success, and graced the rag carpets beside
+each bed; they were of coarse gray and white fur. Marie had found in
+the garret some long-unused white china candlesticks of curious design,
+like those in my room; a pair stood on each bureau.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were standing about in the Doctor's room, admiring. The firelight
+played on the white walls, deepened the red in the hangings to crimson,
+shone in the ball-topped andirons, and lighted the pleased satisfied
+faces about me. A sudden thought struck a chill to my heart:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a contrast between this room and that poor basement in V&mdash;&mdash;
+Court where, twenty-six years ago, the man who is going to enjoy this
+comfort fought for my mother's life, and succeeded in giving me mine!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I left the room abruptly. Jamie called after me:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where are you going, Marcia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Down stairs to begin with the books."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold on till I come; you can't handle them alone. Cale, put the
+screens before the fires. Come on down, mother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The passageway was stacked high with books along the walls. Cale had
+brought them in, and these were not the half. I was looking at them
+when the others came down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You took them out, Cale, how many do you think there are?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cal'lated 'bout three hundred in a box. We 've opened five, and
+there 's two we ain't opened."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie started to gather up an armful, but Cale took them from him. His
+tenderness and care of him were wonderful to see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No yer don't! If there 's to be any fetchin' and carryin', I 'm the
+one ter do it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I 'm the one to place and classify. I want to prove that I did
+n't work five years in the New York Library for nothing." I stayed
+with Cale while he was gathering up the books.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cal'late you was paid a good price fer handlin' other folks'
+brains." Cale spoke tentatively, and I humored him; I like to give
+news of myself piece-meal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, I did, Cale; I had nine dollars a week."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hm&mdash;pretty small wages fer a treadmill like thet!" He spoke almost
+scornfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that was better than I had in the beginning. What would you say
+to four dollars a week, Cale?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With room and keep?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a bit of it; board and room and clothes had to come out of that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hm&mdash;". He looked at me keenly, but made no reply. "You tend ter
+putting 'em on the shelves, an' I 'll take 'em all in. 'T ain't fit
+work fer women, all such liftin'; books has heft, if what's in 'em is
+pretty light weight sometimes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What would you say about the owner of all these books, Cale? Let's
+guess what he 's like," I said, laughing, as I lingered to hear what he
+would say. But he was non-committal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I could n't guess fer I ain't seen the insides. I 'm glad he 's
+coming, though; I want ter get down to some real work 'fore long. Wal,
+we 'll see what he 's like in two days now. Pete an' I have got to
+drive over ter Richelieu-en-Haut&mdash;durn me, if I can see why they don't
+call it Upper Richelieu!&mdash;an' meet the Quebec express."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They won't get here till long after dark, then."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.&mdash;Here, jest put a couple more on each arm, will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I accommodated him, and we went into the living-room. Jamie looked
+rather glum. Sometimes, I know, he feels as if he had no place in all
+this preparation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Jamie, let me plan&mdash;" I began, but he interrupted me:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maîtresse femme," he muttered; then he smiled on me, but I paid no
+heed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You sit at the library table; Cale will bring in the books and pile
+them round it; you will sort them according to subject, and I will put
+them on the shelves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go ahead, I 'm ready."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To help us, we pressed Angélique and Marie into service. In a little
+while we had five hundred books piled about the table. These were as
+many as Mrs. Macleod and I could handle for the evening, so we
+dismissed the others.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was pleasant work, filling the empty shelves; moreover, I was in my
+element. It was good to see books about again; I owed so much to them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is what the room needed," I said, placing the last of the
+historical works on a lower shelf.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; what a difference it makes, doesn't it? Oh, I say, mother, here
+'s one of your late favorites!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Memoirs of Doctor Barnardo."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must read them again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who was Doctor Barnardo?" I asked; I was curious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you don't know of him and his London work, then you have a treat
+before you in this book." Mrs. Macleod spoke with unusual enthusiasm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And he was Ewart's friend too. I might have known I should find this
+among his books. It always seems to me as if it were 'books and the
+man'. Show me what books are a man's familiars, and I 'll tell you his
+characteristics."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, really, can you do that?" I asked, surprised at this dictum from
+such youthful lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, in a general way I can. Look at this for instance." He held out
+a volume. "The man who has this book for an inner possession, and also
+on his shelves, is a thinker, broad-minded, scholarly, human to an
+intense degree&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?" I said, impatient to see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Something you don't know, I 'll wager; it is n't a woman's book."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Jamie Macleod, read your characteristics of men, if you can, by
+the books they read and love, but, please, please, keep within your
+masculine 'sphere of influence', and don't presume to say what is or
+what is n't a woman's book. I know a good deal more about those than
+you do&mdash;what is the book anyway?" I confess his overbearing ways about
+women provoke me at times. But he paid no heed to my little temper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's dear old Murray's 'Rise of the Greek Epic'&mdash;it comes next to the
+Bible. It's an English book; you would n't be apt to read it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, would n't I?" I exclaimed, and determined another forty-eight
+hours should not pass without my having made myself familiar with the
+rise of the Greek epic, and the fall of it, for that matter. I
+swallowed my indignation, for the truth was I had not heard of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And here 's another&mdash;American, this time, and right up to date. I 'll
+wager you never heard of this either. Would n't I know just by the
+title it would be Ewart's!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How would you know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, because any man of his calibre would have it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And I was no wiser than before. I was beginning to realize that there
+was a whole world of experience of which I knew nothing; that, in my
+struggle to exist in the conditions of the city so far away, I had
+grown self-centered and, in consequence, narrow, not open to the world
+of others. Jamie Macleod, with his twenty-three years, was opening my
+inward eye. I can't say that what I saw of myself was pleasing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is the book?" I asked, after a moment's silence in which Mrs.
+Macleod was busy with the "Memoirs", and Jamie was looking over titles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'The Anthracite Coal Industry'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, give it to me; I 'll classify it with 'Economics and Sociology'.
+There will be more of this kind, I 'm sure. Let's go on with the work
+or we shan't be through before midnight. Look up the 'Lives' and
+'Letters', and 'Autobiographies' next. I want to put them on the upper
+shelf&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know;" he nodded approvingly; "so they will be at your elbow when,
+of a winter's evening, you want to reach out your hand, without much
+trouble, and find a companion. Well, give me a little time to look
+them over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I watched him for a few minutes, as he took up book after book,
+examined the title, sometimes turned the leaves rapidly, and again
+opened to some particular page and lost himself for a moment. Jamie
+was showing me another side than that to which I had grown accustomed
+in our daily intercourse. I sat down while I was waiting, for I was
+tired. Mrs. Macleod was reading.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you ready now?" I asked, after waiting a quarter of an hour, and
+still no sound from behind the pile of books across the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"M-hm, in a minute."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His mother looked up, and we both saw that he was absorbed in
+something. Mrs. Macleod smiled indulgently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's always his way with a book&mdash;lost to everything around him. He
+would n't hear a word we said if we were to talk here for an hour."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll make him hear." I spoke positively, and again Mrs. Macleod
+smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jamie&mdash;I would like a few books, the 'Lives' and 'Letters'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For answer he burst into a roar that roused the dogs under the table.
+He slapped his hand on his knee, threw his leg over the arm of the easy
+chair, and settled into an attitude that indicated, there would be no
+more work gotten out of him for the rest of the evening. Suddenly he
+shouted again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here 's a man for you!" he said joyfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who?" I demanded, but might have spared myself the question. There
+was another interval of silence, followed by an uproarious outburst:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I do love Stevenson's 'damns'! They 're great! Hear this&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He read a portion of a letter which included a choicely selected
+expletive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jamie!" It was a decided protest on his mother's part; but I laughed
+aloud, for I, too, knew what he meant. I, too, loved the varied and
+picturesque "damns" of those letters that had been so much to me in the
+past few years. As I looked at Jamie, another Scotsman, with the thin
+bright eager face, I knew at once that, without realizing it, I had
+connected his appearance with that of Robert Louis Stevenson, his
+countryman. And how like the two spirits were!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder," I said to myself, "I wonder if this same Jamie Macleod also
+has the inner impulse to write!" And, having said that in thought, I
+looked at Jamie Macleod through different glasses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We let him mercifully alone; but I went on with my work, reading
+titles, classifying, placing, finding genuine pleasure in speculating
+on the "calibre" of the owner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At nine, Marie entered with the porridge; Cale followed her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here endeth the first chapter," I said to Cale. "We 'll try to get
+all the books on the shelves to-morrow; then we can have one day of
+rest before they come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You kinder speak as if two extra men in the fam'ly would make some
+difference," said Cale, smiling down at me from his place by the mantel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will make a difference I shall not like, Cale. There 'll be no
+more cosy evening-ends with porridge, after the lord of the manor
+comes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that you say?" Jamie was roused at last. I thought I could do
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing in particular; only Cale and I were saying how different it
+would be when Mr. Ewart comes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You bet it will!" said Jamie emphatically. "You won't know this
+house,"&mdash;he took up his porridge,&mdash;"and Ewart won't know it either
+since you 've had your hand on it, Marcia." This I perceived to be a
+sop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thet's so," said Cale, with emphasis. "I never see what a difference
+all thet calico an' fixin's has made; an' my room looks as warm with
+them red blankets and foot-rugs! It beats me how a woman can take an
+old house like this, an' make it look as if it had been lived in
+always. I thank <I>you</I>," he said, looking hard at me, "fer all the
+comfort you 've worked inter my room."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have n't thanked me the way I want to be thanked, Cale," I said,
+smiling up at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I done the best I could," he replied with such a crestfallen air that
+we laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The only way you can thank me is to call me 'Marcia'. I 've wanted to
+ask you to, ever since our first drive together up from the steamboat
+landing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sho!&mdash;Have you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at me intently for a minute; then he spoke slowly and we all
+knew with deep feeling: "You 're name 's all right; but you've made
+such a lot of happiness in this house since you come, I 'd like ter
+have my own name fer you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that?" I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'd like ter call you 'Happy', if you don't mind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I know I turned white, but I controlled myself. Was it possible he
+knew! It could not be. I dared not assume that he knew and refuse
+him. I made an effort to answer in my usual voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I don't, Cale&mdash;only, I hardly deserve it; all I 've done is
+just in 'the day's work', you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not all," he said, putting down his emptied bowl and turning to the
+door; "no wages thet I ever heard of will buy good-will an' the
+happiness you 've put inter all this work."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Cale, I don't deserve this&mdash;" But he was gone without the usual
+good night to any of us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do too," said Jamie shortly, and, reaching for his pipe, went off
+into the dining-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod laid her hand on my shoulder. "They mean it, Marcia; good
+night, my dear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the first time she leaned over and kissed me. I ran up to my room
+without any good night on my part. I needed to be alone after what
+Cale had said. Did he know? <I>Could</I> he know? Or was it merely chance
+that he chose that name? Over and over again I asked myself these
+questions&mdash;and could find no answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Late at night I made ready for bed. I drew the curtains and looked
+out. The window ledge was piled two inches high with snow; against the
+panes I saw the soft white swirl and heard the hushed, intermittent
+brushing of the drifting storm.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0207"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+VII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The snow fell lightly but steadily all night and the next day. Just
+after sunset the leaden skies cleared, and the starred firmamental blue
+of a Canadian winter night replaced them. Before six, Cale and Peter
+were off on their nine mile drive to Richelieu-en-Haut to meet the
+Quebec express. They drove in a low comfortable double "pung", lined
+with fur rugs and piled with robes; a skeleton truck trailed behind for
+luggage. The yoke of bells jangled cheerfully in the dry crisping air,
+for the Percherons were lively&mdash;the French coach horses were not ready
+for the northern snows&mdash;and freely tossed their heads as they played a
+little before plunging into the light drifts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After supper I went to my room, making the excuse that I had a bit of
+work to finish. All my thoughts centered on Doctor Rugvie whose coming
+was so momentous to me. While I sewed, I made a dozen plans for
+approaching him on the subject of the papers, and rejected each in turn
+as not serving my purpose. Finally, my work being finished, I sat
+quiet, with a tensity of quietness that showed itself in my listening
+attitude and tightly clasped hands. It was nearly time for the sound
+of the returning bells. At last,&mdash;it was nearly nine,&mdash;I heard them
+close to the house and, hearing them, I knew intuitively that my life,
+hitherto so detached from others, was about to be linked through
+strange circumstance&mdash;the Doctor's coming&mdash;to some unknown personality
+in the past. I knew this; how I knew, I cannot say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I heard Jamie calling to me from the lower passageway. I opened my
+door but did not cross the threshold. I stood listening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly the dogs went mad with joy. I heard Jamie's voice in joyous
+greeting. I heard men's voices, Cale's loudest in giving some order to
+Peter; then Mrs. Macleod's. The confusion grew apace when Angélique
+and Marie joined their French welcome to the English one. Listening
+so, I felt shut out from it all; felt myself a stranger again in the
+environment to which I had so soon wonted myself. Then I heard Jamie's
+voice calling:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, Marcia Farrell, where are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was at the foot of the stairs looking up at me as I came down, and
+scarcely waited for me to reach the last step before saying:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ewart, this is Miss Farrell; Marcia&mdash;my friend, the 'lord of the
+manor'." He spoke with such teasing emphasis that I could have boxed
+his ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I think the "lord of the manor" intended to shake hands with me; at
+least, his hand was promptly extended; but before I could take it, it
+dropped at his side, for Jamie was claiming me for the second
+introduction:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Allow me to present to you the result of the advertisement, Doctor!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" The pleasant voice held a note of surprised interrogation. My
+hand was taken in a firm professional clasp, and I looked up into the
+face of the great surgeon who had troubled himself with me so far as to
+give me the chance to exist. For the life of me, I could not find the
+right word of welcome in these circumstances, and the only result of
+the instantaneous mental effort to find it was, that those words of
+Delia Beaseley's, which I heard as I was regaining consciousness in
+V&mdash;&mdash; Court: "She's the living image", flashed into my consciousness
+with the illuminating suddenness of a re-appearing electric signboard.
+And, seeing them, rather than hearing them, I looked up into the fine
+homely face and smiled my welcome. It was the only one I had at my
+command just then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something indefinable, intangible, perhaps best expressed as the
+visible diffused wave-current of consciousness' wireless telegraphy,
+showed in his face. Puzzled, concentrated thought was evident from the
+sudden contraction of the forehead. Nor did the look "clear up"; it
+remained as he greeted me&mdash;and I knew he had not the key to interpret
+the message, sent thus to him across an interval of twenty-six years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Mrs. Macleod, it's surely a success," he said, releasing my hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Success? Oh, no end!" Jamie interrupted him in his joyous
+excitement. "You 'll see!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, Boy, give your mother a chance," said the Doctor, laughing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have practical witness that Marcia is all that Jamie claims she
+is." Mrs. Macleod spoke enthusiastically for her, and to cover my
+embarrassment I suggested that the Doctor should go at once to his room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, she 's canny! She wants you to see the improvements," Jamie
+cried, as he rushed upstairs two steps at a time after Mr. Ewart who,
+attended by the dogs, was investigating the region of the bedrooms. I
+think he doubted their comfort. The Doctor followed, and soon I heard
+his voice praising everything, with Jamie's lending a running
+accompaniment of jesting comment. It occurred to me then, that I had
+not heard the "lord of the manor" utter a word. Cale and Peter came in
+with the trunks, chests, gun-cases, with bags of ice-hockey sticks,
+kits, snow-shoes and skis&mdash;indeed, all the sporting paraphernalia for a
+Canadian winter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Within ten minutes, my clean passageway, laid with the brand-new rag
+carpet, was piled high with these masculine belongings, and the snow
+from eight masculine boots was melting and wetting the pretty strip
+into dismal sogginess! I began to understand why the passageways in
+the manor were laid with flagging, and I determined I would have the
+lower carpet taken up in the morning, that Jamie might not laugh at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Cale set down the last chest, he must have taken note of my despair,
+for he spoke encouragingly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Makes a lot of difference in a house havin' so many men folks round."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should think so, Cale, look at that carpet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sho! It don't look more 'n fit for mop-rags, an' they in the house
+scurce ten minutes. Guess 't 'll have ter come up ter-morrer, an' I
+'ll see that 't is up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And it will stay up; but it did look so neat and cosy&mdash;and now see
+that!" I included in a glance the entire mass of luggage and sporting
+outfit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good deal of truck for one man, but I guess he can handle it all;
+seems a likely enough sort of feller. I had to introduce myself, you
+might say, for he an' Pete was talkin' so fast in French that I could
+n't get in a word edgewise at furst. You 'd have thought the old manor
+barns was afire, and they was trying to get the hosses out. I managed
+to have my say, though, 'fore we struck the river road."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have n't had a good look at him&mdash;Jamie did n't give me the chance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, I can't say as I have neither. He 's pretty quiet, but I noticed
+he hit the nail on the head every time he did speak. The one they call
+Doctor Rugvie is some different; he was like a schoolboy let loose when
+he got into the pung. Guess Mr. Ewart won't wait long 'fore he 'll
+have a sleigh, as is a sleigh, to match the French coach hosses, from
+what I heard. The Doctor had his little joke about a pung for a manor
+house. I 've got to go over again ter-morrer to get the rest of the
+truck."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Cale, more!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He nodded, and, with a significant upward motion of his thumb, made his
+exit at the kitchen end. I slipped into the dining-room to see that
+all was in readiness for the extra supper. I actually did not know
+what to do with myself, what was my place, or where I belonged in the
+household, now that the owner of Lamoral and his friend were here. I
+looked about: the flames from the pine cones were leaping in the
+fireplace, the curtains were drawn close, the room was filled with a
+resinous forest fragrance, for I had placed large branches of white
+pine in some antiquated milk jugs of glazed red clay, which I found in
+one of the unused dairy rooms, and set them on each end of the mantel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I heard Jamie and the Doctor on the stairs, I left by way of the
+kitchen and, passing through that and the bare offices between it and
+the living-room, slipped into the latter to inspect it. Here also the
+fire was blazing, the wax candles in the sconces were lighted. The
+yellow sofa was drawn in front of the fireplace, but good eight feet
+from it. At either end were the easy chairs, and at the right of the
+chimney, nearest the door into the kitchen offices, was a low ample tea
+table covered with a white linen cloth, set with plain white china, a
+nickel-plated tea-kettle and lamp. Behind the sofa, along the length
+of its straight long back, stood the library table furnished with
+writing pad and inkstand, a wooden bookrack filled with Jamie's
+favorites and mine, and a bowl of red geranium blossoms. I was
+satisfied with my work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Around the room, even between the windows, the more than two thousand
+books in their cases formed a rich dado of finely blended colors&mdash;the
+deep royal blue and dark reds in morocco, the yellow-white imitation of
+parchment,&mdash;parchment itself in several instances,&mdash;the light faun and
+reddish brown of half calf; even shagreen was there, and the limp
+bronze-gilt leather of Chinese bindings. Jamie told me that many of
+the editions were rare.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to me in my ignorance, that there could be no more beautiful
+room than this simple, book-lined, wood-panelled parlor in the old
+manor of Lamoral. I felt an ownership in it, for I had helped in part
+to create the intimate atmosphere that I knew must be like
+home,&mdash;something I had dreamed of, but never expected to make real.
+The owner, whose voice I heard for the first time talking to the dogs
+as he came down stairs, presented himself to me at that moment as an
+outsider, an intruder. I waited until I heard him close the
+dining-room door; then I went up stairs again to my own room.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0208"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+VIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+I did not light the candles. The firelight showed through the mica in
+the stove grate. I sat down by the window and looked out. A full moon
+shone high and clear above the dark irregular outline of the massed
+treetops in the woods across the creek, now covered with ice and
+blanketed with white. The great hemlock branches, crowding close to
+the house, were drooping, snow-laden. The moonlight, reflected in
+them, flashed diamond dust from the upper branches; beneath the lower
+ones it cast violet shadows on the snow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What next?" I was thinking, and might have spared myself the trouble
+of that thought, for just then Mrs. Macleod knocked at the door and
+came in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the dark? Marcia, my dear, we need you down stairs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I 'll come, Mrs. Macleod, if you wish me to, but I don't
+quite see how, as your companion and assistant, I am needed now down
+stairs. I shall feel as if I were not earning my salt, just playing
+lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, can any one tell me why the spirit of revolt at the change in my
+position in this house, through the coming of the owner and his friend,
+should have materialized in just this ungracious speech? I was ashamed
+of myself the moment I had given it utterance. Such a mean sentiment!
+Not worthy of a woman of twenty-six. I was thankful she could not see
+my face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She hesitated before replying. When she spoke I heard a note of
+displeasure in her voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I need you now, perhaps, more than before. With these guests in the
+house, there is more responsibility than during the last three weeks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If only they <I>were</I> guests!" The perverse spirit was still at work
+within me. "But we are the guests now, and I don't quite see what my
+work is to be; my position seems to be an anomalous one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It may seem so to you," she replied quietly. I knew by the tone of
+her voice she was exercising great self control, and that had the
+candles been lighted I should have seen her cheeks flush a deep pink;
+"but evidently it is perfectly clear to Doctor Rugvie. The position is
+his creation. I think you can trust him.&mdash; Are you coming?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rebuke was well deserved, and, in accepting it, my respect for her
+was doubled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just let me get my work," I said, fumbling in my basket for some petty
+crochet. She said nothing, and in silence we went down stairs
+together, she little realizing that, in referring to Doctor Rugvie as
+the one to whom I was indebted for being here, she twisted some fibre
+in my mental make-up and caused it to vibrate painfully. Had I but
+known it, I had been keyed to this moment ever since hearing Delia
+Beaseley's account of my mother's death&mdash;keyed too long and at too high
+a pitch. Something had to give way; hence my mood of apparent revolt,
+because I could not live in unchanged circumstances in this manor of
+Lamoral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As we entered the living-room the three pipes were in full blast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Permitted?" said the Doctor, waving his towards us as he rose. Mr.
+Ewart, also, rose and came towards us. In the manner of his action I
+saw that, already, he had taken his rightful place as host. He held
+out his hand in greeting, and I took it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sit here, Miss Farrell, by me," he motioned to the corner of the sofa
+next his easy chair, "and tell me how you have managed to accomplish a
+home&mdash;in three weeks. Mrs. Macleod and Jamie have been giving you all
+the credit for this transformation. How did you do it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put me at ease at once, for what he said sounded both cordial and
+sincere. The tone of voice challenged me instantly to be as sincere
+with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps it's because I never have had the chance to make what you call
+a 'home' before, and besides," I looked up from my sofa corner and
+dared to say the truth, "it was such a pleasure to spend some money
+that I did n't have to earn by hard work; this was play for me. But,
+truly, Mrs. Macleod and Jamie are not fair to themselves; they not only
+helped, but inspired me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, woman, woman!" said the Doctor, laughing; "shopping is the
+characteristic symptom of the sex!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Talk about inspiration," said Jamie; "Marcia put mother and me through
+our best paces. I can tell you we conjugated: I must hustle, Thou must
+hustle, He must hustle, We must hustle, You must hustle, They must
+hustle, for three weeks," he said emphatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You seem to have thriven on it," said the Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your work was in the New York Library, Miss Farrell?" It was Mr.
+Ewart who spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, in a branch; I was there for five years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who told you that, Gordon?" Jamie demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who?&mdash;Who but Cale?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod laughed outright at that, and Jamie and I joined her; we
+could not help it. The mere inflection of Mr. Ewart's voice, told us
+he had succumbed on the way over to our omniscient One. I saw that,
+quiet as he was, he had a keen sense of humor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he continued, "Cale made my acquaintance on the platform, and
+half way on the road he took occasion to give me some information
+concerning my household."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I know that too," I said, "for Cale confided to me immediately on
+his arrival that, to use his own expression, he could n't get in a
+'word edgewise', on account of the rapidity with which you and Peter
+were carrying on a conversation in French. I think he is jealous of
+every tongue but his own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We had better compare notes, Miss Farrell. I concluded that Cale was
+a firm friend of yours from his remarks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did he say? Do tell me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will&mdash;if you 'll agree to tell me his comments on my talk with
+Pierre. I believe Pierre's words fell over themselves, he had so much
+to tell me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hear&mdash;hear!" This from Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I agree; tell me, please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think it was just before we entered the river road&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know it was, for he told me so," I said, enjoying the fun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, he did! Well, perhaps you will be so good as to tell me, if he
+told you what he told me you told him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You would n't ask that if you knew Cale," said Jamie, shaking his head
+dubiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, he did n't," I said. "Cale is a genuine Yankee. What did he say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You hear that, Ewart? What did I tell you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you've been telling, too, have you, Jamie Macleod? He gave me to
+understand that it was he who brought you from the steamboat to the
+house; that you were born in New York; that you had been in the Public
+Library of that city; that in consequence what you did n't know about
+books was, in his estimation, not worth knowing; that you were just as
+handy with hammer and tacks as you were with books, and that you had
+been 'fixin' up' the old manor till it shone. I gathered further, that
+he expected me to be properly appreciative of the benefits conferred
+upon me in this matter. As, up to that time, I had heard nothing of
+your arrival in Richelieu-en-Bas, and as my friend here, Doctor Rugvie,
+was likewise in the dark in regard to your personality, you may imagine
+our curiosity; in fact, he wanted to rouse it, and took the best way to
+do it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He can do that," said Mrs. Macleod, smiling at this description of
+Cale's powers; "but he rarely satisfies us in regard to himself. Of
+course, Jamie and I respect his reticence, but I should like to know if
+he has been married. He is such a character! I should like to know
+more of his life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must take a good look at him to-morrow," said the Doctor, filling
+his pipe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should n't know him if I met him on the road," said Mr. Ewart; "for
+his cap was drawn over his forehead, and his beard and side whiskers
+were a mask. Won't he come in with us for a few minutes, Jamie?&mdash; By
+the way, you say that he is always with you at porridge, a custom I
+hope you will not depart from, now I am here, Mrs. Macleod."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall want some too," said the Doctor, whimsically; "it will be like
+those never-to-be-forgotten days in Crieff fifteen years ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod said nothing; but she turned to him with such an indulgent
+smile, that I knew she would give the great man anything in reason or
+unreason for what he had been, and was, to her son and to herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie jumped up impulsively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me what he said, Marcia, about Gordon's talk with Pierre, and
+then I 'll go and have him in&mdash;without the porridge, though, for it's
+too late to-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He said that if the old manor barns had been 'afire', and Mr. Ewart
+and Pierre had been trying to get the horses out, they could n't have
+talked faster."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's one on you, Ewart," said Jamie, gleefully. Mr. Ewart laughed.
+"I hope to make a friend of Cale; I like him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie left the room, and the talk drifted to other things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you seen Mère Guillardeau lately?" Mr. Ewart asked of Mrs.
+Macleod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not since the last of October; but Marcia has seen her recently."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at me inquiringly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I bought the rag carpet strips of her daughter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is the old woman well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, she is wonderful for her age."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ninety-nine next year," said Mr. Ewart. "What a century she has
+lived!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"André père must be ninety, then," said Doctor Rugvie. "How well I
+remember him! He is Mère Guillardeau's brother, as perhaps you know,"
+he said turning to me. "Jamie must have told you of André."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, of André father and André son; you know them both?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the first time I had spoken directly with the Doctor, although
+he was the one in the room upon whom all my thoughts centered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For many years; I saw him first in Tadoussac, just after the Columbian
+Exposition in Chicago. Afterwards, for six consecutive summers I was
+in camp with him and his son on the Upper Saguenay. There 's none like
+him. By the way, Miss Farrell, has Jamie ever told you how the old
+guide André went to the World's Fair at Chicago?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 'll get him to tell you&mdash;and us; I can never hear it too many
+times. It's unique, and it takes Jamie to tell it well. André told me
+years ago, and last summer he told Jamie and Mr. Ewart. Jamie wrote me
+about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall never forget that night," said Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laid his pipe on the mantel and stood back to the fireplace, his
+hands clasped behind him. He was not so tall as Jamie or Doctor
+Rugvie; not so thin as the former, nor stout like the latter. He had
+kept his body in good training for, as he stood there, despite the few
+gray hairs on the temples, he looked like a man of thirty, rather than
+one who might be father to Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie came in at this moment, looking thoroughly cross as well as
+crestfallen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He won't come," he announced bluntly, taking his seat and leaning
+forward to the fire, his long arms resting on his knees, his hands
+clasped and hanging between them. He glared at the andirons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the matter, Jamie?" I asked; I knew something had gone wrong.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He says he does n't belong here, and all that rot. Confound it all!
+When you come up against Cale's crotchets you might as well go hang
+yourself for all you can move him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked at Mr. Ewart. I saw the gray eyes flash suddenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must change all that, Jamie. Just give him leeway till I 've
+looked about a bit and struck root into my&mdash;home." I noticed the
+slight hesitation before the word "home". "By the way, it's early yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Early!" Jamie was rousing himself from his private sulk. "You might
+like to know that generally we have porridge at nine and are in bed by
+half-past."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 'll change all that too, Mrs. Macleod&mdash;with the Doctor's
+permission, of course," he said, sitting down beside her. "We 're not
+going to lose the pleasure of these long winter evenings. After
+porridge, we 'll have grand bouts of chess, Jamie, and a little
+music&mdash;I see that Miss Farrell has not included a piano in her
+furnishings&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not for eighty-seven dollars," I said, hoping he would appreciate the
+financial fact; but he only looked a little mystified, and went on:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;And hours with the books, and some snowshoeing on fine moonlight
+nights; you 'll see that the winter is none too long in Canada&mdash;<I>O pays
+de mon amour</I>!" he said smiling. Clasping his hands behind his head,
+he looked steadily at the leaping flames.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tone in which he said all this would have heartened a confirmed
+pessimist; upon Jamie Macleod it acted like new wine. His face grew
+radiant, and the look he gave his friend held something of worship in
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Doctor Rugvie groaned audibly as he laid aside his pipe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it, <I>mon vieux</I>?" said Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You make me envious," he said, rising and putting on another log; "but
+if I can be with you only one week, I 'm going to make the most of it.
+No turning in before eleven-thirty while I 'm here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll make it one with you any time you say, John." Underneath the
+banter we heard the undercurrent of deep affection. "You 'll be up
+here two or three times during the winter, and next summer you 've
+promised to camp with Jamie and the Andrés, father and son, and me, for
+two months on the Upper Saguenay. Speaking of André, père, Jamie, have
+you redeemed the promise you gave me last summer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie twisted his long length in his chair before answering. "Yes, in
+a way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What does 'in a way' mean? What promise?" asked the Doctor eagerly.
+Mr. Ewart answered for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was about André&mdash;old André's story of his voyage to the Columbian
+Exposition in 'ninety-three. Have you written it up?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In a way I have, yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Jamie Macleod," I exclaimed, half impatiently, "for lack of
+originality, commend me to you to-night!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was afraid I should not hear the story. I exulted in the thought
+that my intuition concerning a second R. L. Stevenson in Jamie Macleod,
+was to prove correct. Jamie looked over at me and smiled provokingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come on, Boy, out with it!" said the Doctor encouragingly. "I 'm
+willing to be bored with your literary style for the sake of hearing
+dear old André's story rehashed by a young aspirant for honors."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you seen anything of this?" Mr. Ewart turned to Mrs. Macleod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've neither seen nor heard anything of this kind," she replied with
+an amazed look at her son. Jamie smiled again, this time quizzically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's this you 've been keeping from your mother, Boy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Jamie, do read it to us!" I begged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie laughed aloud then, much to the two men's delight, as I could
+see, and said&mdash;tease that he is:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've been waiting for Marcia to ask me; she is n't apt to ask favors
+of any one; but I say,&mdash;" he looked half shamefacedly at his
+friends,&mdash;"it's rough on me to read anything of mine before such
+critics as you and Gordon, Doctor Rugvie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you good," growled the Doctor; "get you used to publicity. If we
+have a genius in the family, it's best he should sprout his pin
+feathers in our presence before he becomes a full-fledged Pegasus. We
+could n't hold you down then, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 've had a lot of faith in me, Doctor&mdash;you and Ewart; after all,
+Oxford mightn't have done what that has for me. I 'll read it&mdash;but I
+shall feel like a fool, I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It won't hurt you to feel that way once in a while at twenty-three;
+it's educative," said the Doctor dryly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the general laughter that followed, Jamie left the room. He was
+gone but a minute. When he came in, I saw he was nervous. He cleared
+his throat once or twice, after taking his seat at the left of the
+fireplace, and glanced anxiously at the candles; but they were fresh at
+nine, and good for two hours longer. Doctor Rugvie looked at his watch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Half-past ten; I 'll keep time, Jamie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you call it, Jamie?" Mr. Ewart asked, to ease the evident
+embarrassment in which the young Scotsman found himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'André's Odyssey'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good! I like that," said the Doctor; "that's just what it was.
+Nothing like a good title to work up to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, I embellished a little here and there, but I stuck to the
+facts and in many places to André's words; and I tried to make the
+whole in André's spirit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Intentions all right, Boy&mdash;let us judge of the result," said the
+Doctor. He settled comfortably in his chair, leaned his head on the
+back and gazed steadily at the wooden ceiling; but I think he managed
+to keep an eye on Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And, oh, that bright eager face, the firelight enhancing its
+brightness! The hand that trembled despite his effort at control, the
+slight flush on the high cheek bones from which the summer's tan had
+not yet house-worn! The expressive unsteady voice that gradually
+steadied itself as, in the interest of reading, self-consciousness was
+forgotten!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I bent low over my crochet; I did not want to look again at him, for I
+was glad, so glad for him, for his mother, for his two friends, who had
+had such faith in him, for myself that I could count him as a friend.
+This was, indeed, the beginning of fulfilment.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0209"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+For five and twenty years no man had seen in Tadoussac old André's face
+nor heard his voice upon the river's lower course. Both long and late
+within their icy caves the winters dwelt. The spring-tides, messaging
+the wild emancipated water's glee, rushed down to meet the short-lived
+summer joy, and autumn after autumn fled with torch of flaming leaf,
+reversed, death-heralding, far up the Saguenay's dark winding
+gorge&mdash;yet André came no more in all that time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now, behold them both, in Tadoussac! old André and his dog, Pierre,
+le brave, or was it Pierre's son?&mdash;lean-ribbed, thin-haunched and
+tragic-eyed, with fell of wolf, Pierre! How well they all remembered
+him, le brave! The frosts were in his bones, oh, long ere this; so
+Pierre's offspring, then?&mdash;as large as life! And André, too, old guide
+and voyageur!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of notches six times ten had André cut within the shaft of one great
+pine that sings above that wonderful caprice of pool, and quiet river
+reach, and torrent wild, men long have called the Upper Saguenay. That
+very day when his boy's heart beat wild to suffocation, as upon the
+bank he landed his first salmon&mdash;nom de Dieu, no sunset glow e'er
+equalled in his eyes that palpitant and silver-scalèd mass of vibrant
+rose!&mdash;the sap from that first notch had oozed; and now they said in
+Tadoussac that André never knew his age!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, fools! What matter of a few years more or less? He counted all
+his years by his heart's youth, as here he was in Tadoussac to prove.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And whither away?"&mdash;"To see Mère Guillardeau?"&mdash;"To visit once again
+in Richelieu-en-Bas?"&mdash;"Or else Trois Rivières where long ago the
+maskinonge leaped for him?" "To see the Seigniory of Lamoral where
+lived his grandpère's seignior, lived and died?"&mdash;"A pilgrimage?
+Sainte Anne de Beaupré, then?"&mdash;"Or Indian Lorette just by Quebec?"
+The questions multiplied. "Come, tell us all." And André told them
+all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Tis true," he said, "that there upon the Upper Saguenay strange tales
+are rife. From o'er the distant sea the English came to camp within
+the wilds, and I was guide. I listened to their tales whene'er the
+camp-fire crackled and the snow, the feather-snow that melted from the
+pines, fell hissing on the glowing arch of logs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How André loved that sound! How dear to him was that one time in all
+the year's full round, when freeze the nights, the sap grows chill and
+numb; when warms the rising sun at early dawn and that sweet ichor
+runs! It kept him young; within him stirred his youthful forest hopes
+and joys with that first mounting life. And loud he laughed, nor gave
+the secret of his youth, his woodsman's lasting joys.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He told them how with mien impassive he had listened well, reflected
+long on what the English said, till May clouds, mirrored in the
+darkling pools, foreshadowed substance for those haunting dreams of
+glories human eyes had never seen; for far away upon the Lake there
+stood a city marvellous, the English said,&mdash;and they to André never yet
+had lied,&mdash;and who beheld it saw with naked eye the glories of the New
+Jerusalem.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And André, marking how the little runs were earlier loosened from their
+icy chains, how soft beneath the black and sodden leaves the water
+trickled free with here and there a bubble rising, proving spring had
+come&mdash;old André, listening so, the echo caught of that far song of
+storm-tossed Michigan as its wild waters, mingling with the rest,
+pursued their steady seaward course and swept with undertones enticing
+past the gorge of Saguenay and sang in André's ear:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Viens, viens, tu trouveras<BR>
+Là bas, là bas,<BR>
+Le royaume cher et merveilleux<BR>
+Du bon Dieu."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+What wonder that his simple woodsman's heart was moved to quick
+response! That ere one moon had waxed and waned his dugout was
+prepared for its long journey inland, west by south, along the waterway
+of two great Lands! He showed it now in Tadoussac with pride: this
+fruit of two Canadian winters' toil. Its ample hull was shiny black
+with age. Its prow sharp-nosed and long to cleave, pike-like, the
+rapids' wave, capricious, treacherous. Its stern was truncated like
+tail of duck, the waters never closed but on it pressed, and sped it on
+the river's lower course.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For twenty years he watched the sturdy growth of one great tree that
+towered above its mates; and when the noble bole, both straight and
+strong, was grown to such proportions that he deemed it fit to brave
+the rapids, such its curve, he laid the monarch low, and hewed, and
+shaped, and burned, and thickly overlaid with pitch, and launched it on
+the Lower Saguenay&mdash;a fine, well-balanced craft, his floating camp; and
+this was thirty years or more agone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His destination now made known, upon the river bank a crowd eyed him
+agape. With pride he showed to wondering Tadoussac how he had made
+provision for his voyage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Along one side was lashed a sapling pine with seamless sail,
+three-cornered and close furled; 'twas fashioned from the stout flap of
+a tent. Along the other stretched two pockets strong of moose skin,
+hair side out to shed the rain. The topmost one he filled with ample
+store of salmon smoked on his own spit of ash, and good supply of that
+brown wrinkled leaf whose qualmy fragrance, issuing from the bowl of
+his loved pipe, had ever proved in camp and wild the solace of his
+lonely life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Within the other pocket he had placed his comrade-breadwinner, his
+trusted gun. Its shining barrel glistened cunningly from out the soft
+black depths, and knowingly, for many a wingèd voyager of the air would
+it bring low to beat the lucent wave to crimson froth before the voyage
+were done. Both oars and paddles of well-seasoned ash he laid within
+the dugout's ample hulk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he was ready to set out, and seek that shining wonder-city by the
+Lake&mdash;a "New Jerusalem", the English said, and they to André never yet
+had lied. His old-time friends were gathered at the pier to bid him on
+his quest "God Speed". They cast the painter loose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Adieu&mdash;adieu," a hand clasp here and there, and then again: "Adieu!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Pierre, with forepaws stemmed against the prow, bayed musical farewell.
+Old André turned and murmuring, "Adieu," broke forth exultantly in
+joyous song:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Je chercherai<BR>
+Là bas, là bas<BR>
+La ville de Dieu, la merveilleuse;<BR>
+Si je la trouve, quand je serai<BR>
+De mon retour,<BR>
+Elle chante toujours, mon âme joyeuse,&mdash;<BR>
+Les gloires de Dieu, les gloires de Dieu."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+So aged André, guide and voyageur, his parchment face alight with
+inward joy, fared forth to seek that City in the West.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+For you who love the sunlight on the wave, who hail with joy the
+sunrise ever new; for you to whom the starlight brings a thought of
+that high peace that guides the wanderer; for you who watch the coming
+of the day with eyes that see the miracle of life; for you who share in
+all the fair delights of sunlight, moonlight, starlight, twilight,
+dawn, and feel their charm in every mood and tense of nature's
+perfecting&mdash;for you alone I sing this voyage over inland seas.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+By sunlight, moonlight, starlight, André fared along the river called
+"the Queen's Highway"; and soon there frowned upon him, dark, superb,
+the crested towering headland of Tourmente that signals to the Plains
+of Abraham. And ever westwards, west by south, he fared until he saw
+the shipping of Quebec like some huge cobweb outlined intricate in
+black against the golden gleaming west.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sunset gun resounded in mid-air as André anchor dropped below the
+town. The man-of-war's huge bulk belched answering flame, and ere the
+cannon's echoing roar had ceased, a sharp report was heard, a pigmy
+sound that woke its pigmy echo from the Rock. So André fired salute
+and quickly ran aloft his tiny Union Jack. 'Twas seen along the quays;
+the sailors cheered and cheered, until Pierre bayed musical response.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then André, when the moon had fully risen, stretched out along the
+stern and smoked his pipe, Pierre at his feet, and watched the Rock
+that, like a jewel many facetted, now held, now flashed at every point
+the lights along the Terrace in the Upper Town. He heard a merry song,
+a peal of bells, a strain of distant music, plash of oars&mdash;then
+silence. One by one the lights went out; the moon was riding high and
+full above the scarp and ramparts of the Citadel; beneath, the river
+rolled its silvered flood.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Then onwards, ever onwards toward the West fared steadily this old
+French voyageur, and as he passed the dreaded Raven Cape he trolled a
+catch, "<I>Un noir corbeau</I>", to ward all ill and evil from his sturdy
+craft. So sped unharmed, swift-paddling toward the broad and sunlit
+shallows of Saint Peter's lake, and ever westwards to the Royal Isle
+where Montreal's green height looks down upon its shadowy reflex in
+Saint Lawrence's wave.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On, on he sped and ever to the West, land-locked at times in
+prairie-bound canals; then pulling vigorously, the rapids past, along
+the River's narrowing polished curve, with oar stroke, swift and
+sweeping, keeping time to hit of merry raftsmen on the Sault.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fresh-hearted André! All the wholesome joys to which his simple life
+was consecrate were his as on he voyaged; his eventide brought joy and
+calm and light-of-evening peace. But once he would have tarried&mdash;as
+alights a wearied sea-mew on some lonely isle&mdash;when, paddling slow and
+noiselessly he steered his craft among the leafy waterways of that
+Arcadian Venice of our North: the Thousand Isles. His woodsman's heart
+beat high when, gliding silently past sunny glades and darkling glens,
+he heard the wavelets lap the crinkling sands and saw the water glint
+against the slopes fringed deep with June's lush green.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At times he paused, the paddle braced, and leaned thereon his weight;
+the while, his lungs inflate, he drew deep breaths of fragrance
+balsamic that flowed in counter currents, sensate, warm, from out the
+depths of cedar thickets gray, and red, and white. And then away, away
+he sped past gardens gay with summer blooms, past emerald lawns set
+round by sapphire waves. And here and there an islet laughed at him&mdash;a
+tiny patch of verdure overhung by one white birch that glistered in the
+sun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And every night a strange enchantment wrought upon his spirit when,
+beneath the stars, on some long reach that narrowed suddenly, embraced
+by banks converging, forest clad, the dugout drifted 'twixt two
+firmaments. Then André dreamed of pool and river reach and ancient
+pine o'er-hanging torrents wild, far distant on the Upper Saguenay; and
+summer dwellers on those Fortunate Isles were ware at midnight of a
+singing voice and fragment of a song, like some last chord drawn
+lingeringly across responsive strings:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Je cherche, je cherche, là bas, là bas,<BR>
+La ville de Dieu, la merveilleuse;<BR>
+Si je la trouve, quand je serai<BR>
+De mon retour je chante toujours<BR>
+Les gloires de Dieu, les gloires de Dieu."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Ontario, Ontario, all hail thou lovely Lake that in thy breast doth
+hide the many secrets of Niagara! Upon thy waves, soft thrilling
+joyously with rush of thunderous waters from afar, see, like a gull,
+the white three-cornered sail dip lightly to the fair breeze from the
+North!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Là bas, là bas," sang André o'er and o'er, and e'en Pierre bayed long
+into the West, awoke shrill echoes from the border farms at early dawn,
+and told his nightly tale to waning summer moons till cliff and shore
+gave back the sound in echoes manifold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And what of nights within some sheltered cove when storm and darkness
+claimed both sea and sky? And what of days when furious cross-winds
+rose, and smote the lake that hissed and writhed and roared beneath the
+scourge that welted its white breast? Then André crossed himself and
+told his beads; Pierre crouched low adown within the hull; the dugout
+rocked safe moored within the cove or, drawn up on a strip of pebbly
+beach, with softly-grating keel in rhythmic beats told off the lapsing
+surges till the West translucent 'neath the lifting cloud mass gleamed,
+and in the sedges near the shore he heard the reed birds whistle
+plaintively and low.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Three moons had waxed and waned since, far away upon the Upper
+Saguenay, the pools foreshadowed substance of those haunting dreams of
+glories human eye had never seen&mdash;thrice thirty days ere André neared
+his goal. At last, emerging from the narrow strait of savage Mackinac,
+he set his sail and voyaged ever southwards day by day with many a tack
+cajoling every breeze. The white fish leaped within the dugout's wake;
+the gulls' harsh cry was heard above the mast; at times a passing
+steamer's paddles throbbed an hour and broke the dead monotony of sea
+and sky on lonely Michigan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On silent sea, neath silent skies he voyaged, till lo! one silent morn
+ere rise of sun, the light mists, veiling yet disclosing, crept
+slow-curling o'er the surface of the Lake to meet the brightening east,
+and there dissolved in sudden glory, leaving André rapt, with dripping
+oars suspended and with eyes intent upon a vision marvellous!&mdash;The
+softened radiance of breaking day shone clear, subdued, on dome and
+tower and arch, on rich facade and many-columned gate of that ethereal
+Wonder-City white, the fundaments of which in amethyst and chrysopras
+were seen deep down beneath the surface of the Lake that, motionless,
+reflected heaven on earth and earth in heaven!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And André, gazing so, bared his gray head, the slow tears coursing down
+his furrowed cheeks, and, folding on his breast his calloused hands,
+prayed low and fingered o'er his wellworn beads.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Old André moored his dugout to the pier, and leaving tragic-eyed Pierre
+within as sentinel, slow-blinking towards the east, he turned his steps
+to that high-columned gate, the prototype of heaven on this our earth,
+and passed beneath the portal as the sun rose o'er the Lake in gorgeous
+crimson state.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0210"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+X
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+I can still hear in memory the sudden hiss from a bursting air-pocket
+in the forelog; it broke the silence which followed Jamie's reading.
+At the sound, it seemed as if we drew a freer breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Was it Jamie Macleod who was sitting there with flushed cheeks, bright
+eyes, dilated pupils, and eager inquiring look which asked of his
+friends their approval or criticism? Or was it some changeling spirit
+of genius that for the time being had taken up its abode in the frail
+tenement of his body?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His mother leaned to him and laid her hand on his shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear boy," was all she said, for they were rarely demonstrative
+with each other; but, oh, the pride and affection in her voice! I saw
+Jamie's mouth twitch before he smiled into her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 've made us live it, Boy," said the Doctor quietly and with deep
+feeling; "but I never thought you could do it&mdash;not so, for all the
+faith I 've had in you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie drew a long breath of relief; he spoke eagerly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was the trial trip, Doctor, and I did hope it would stand the test
+with you and Ewart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart rose and crossed the hearth to him. He held out his strong
+shapely hand. Jamie's thin one closed upon it with a tense nervous
+pressure, as I could see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I congratulate you, Macleod." The tone of his voice, the address as
+man to man, expressed his pride, his love, his admiration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie smiled with as much satisfaction as if for the first time there
+had been conferred upon him manhood suffrage, the freedom of the city
+of London, and a batch of Oxford honors. Then, satisfied, he turned to
+me. I spoke lightly to ease the emotional tension that was evident in
+all the rest of us:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 've imposed upon me, Jamie Macleod. You 're classed henceforth
+with frauds and fakirs! How could I know when you were scrapping with
+me the last three weeks over such prosaic things as rag carpets, toilet
+sets and skins, that you were harboring all this poetry!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you think it's poetry? You 've found me out!" Jamie said,
+showing his delight. "Honestly, Marcia, you like it? I want you to,
+though I say it as should n't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I do," I answered earnestly; "I can understand the song the
+better for it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What song?" the Doctor asked, before Jamie could speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'<I>O Canada, pays de mon amour</I>'," I quoted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know that?" Mr. Ewart spoke quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only as I have heard it through the graphophone, in the cabaret below
+the steamboat landing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, Marcia, that's rough on the song!&mdash;Gordon," he exclaimed, "do
+you sing it for us, do; then she 'll know how it ought to sound."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the only possible epilogue for the 'Odyssey'&mdash;what a capital
+title, Boy! Sing it, Ewart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait till I have a piano."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't need it. You used to sing it in camp."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I had André's violin."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have it! Pierre will fiddle for you." Jamie jumped to his feet.
+"Hark!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We listened. Sure enough, from some room behind the kitchen offices,
+probably in the summer kitchen, we could hear the faint but merry
+sounds of a violin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They 're celebrating your home-coming, Ewart! I knew they were up to
+snuff when Angélique gave me an order for a half a dozen bottles of the
+'vin du pays', you remember, Marcia? They 're at it now. I might have
+known it, for they have n't come in to say good night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's have them all in then," said Mr. Ewart. "They 'll stay up as
+long as we do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you sing for them?" Mrs. Macleod put the question directly to
+her host.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For you and them, if you wish it," was the cordial reply. "Jamie, you
+'re master of ceremonies and have had something up your sleeve all this
+evening; I know by your looks. Bring them in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie laughed mischievously. "Oh, I 'll bring them in," he said. I
+knew then that, unknown to his mother and me, he had planned a surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get Cale in, if you can," Mr. Ewart called after him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Cale 's abed before this; <I>he</I> does n't acknowledge you as his
+lord of the manor, not yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was remarkable, Gordon," said the Doctor, as soon as the door
+closed on Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, he has given me a surprise. Of course you realized that whole
+description was in metre?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was sure of it after the first page or two, but I could scarcely
+trust my ears. What the boy has done is to make of it a true Canadian
+idyl. I wish Drummond might have heard it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe Jamie knows 'The Habitant' book of poems by heart. Have you
+ever read it, Miss Farrell?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, in New York; and Jamie has promised to give me a copy for a
+Christmas remembrance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll add one to it," said the Doctor, "'The Voyageur,' then you will
+probe a little deeper into Ewart's love and mine for Canada."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, thank you; these two will be the beginning of my private library."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll give you an autograph copy of 'Johnnie Courteau,' if you like; I
+knew Drummond," said Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To say I was pleased, would not express the pleasure those two men gave
+me in just thinking of me in this way. I thanked them both, a little
+stiffly, I fear, for I am not used to gifts; but my face must have
+shown them how genuine was my feeling for the favors. They both saw my
+slight confusion and interpreted it, for Mr. Ewart said, smiling:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you don't mind I will add to the unborn library Drummond's other
+volume; I 'm going to try to live up to Cale's expectation of me
+concerning your connection with books. They will help you to remember
+this evening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As if I needed anything to remember it!" I exclaimed, at ease again.
+"It's like&mdash;-it's like&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like what, Marcia?" Mrs. Macleod put this question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell us, do," the Doctor added; "don't keep me in suspense; my
+temperament can't bear it." He looked at me a little puzzled and
+wholly curious. I was glad to answer both Mrs. Macleod and him
+truthfully:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like a new lease of life for me." My smile answered the Doctor's, and
+I was interested to see that the same wireless message I was
+transmitting again across the abyss of time, failed again of
+interpretation. I turned to Mrs. Macleod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I may be needed in the kitchen." I rose to leave the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you in the secret too?" Mr. Ewart asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but I 've been recalling certain commissions Angélique gave
+me&mdash;extra citron, pink coloring for cakes, and powdered sugar for
+which, as yet, we have had no use in the house. But I want to be in
+the secret, for Jamie&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sentence remained unfinished, for Jamie flung open the door with a
+flourish, and stout Angélique, flushed with responsibility and the "vin
+du pays", entered carrying a huge round platter, whereon was a cake of
+noble proportions ornamented with white frosting in all sorts of
+curlycues and central "<I>Félicitations</I>" in pink. Behind her came Marie
+with a tin tray, laid with an immaculate napkin&mdash;one of our new
+ones&mdash;filled with pressed wine-glasses and decanters of antiquated
+shape. Following her was little Pete, carrying on each arm an enormous
+wreath of ground pine and bittersweet. Big Pete brought up the rear,
+his face glowing, his black eyes sparkling, his earrings twinkling. He
+was tuning his violin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All rose to greet them; but ignoring us, with intense seriousness, they
+ranged themselves in a row near the door. They still held their
+offerings. Pierre, drawing his bow across the strings, nodded his
+head. Thereupon they began to sing, and sang with all their hearts and
+vocal powers to the accompaniment of the violin:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>O Canada, pays de mon amour!</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the first words, Mr. Ewart's voice, full, strong, vibrant with
+patriotism, joined them; his fine baritone seemed to carry the melody
+for all the others. The room rang to the sound of the united voices.
+I saw Cale at the door, listening with bent head. Jamie stood beside
+him, triumphant and happy at the success of his surprise party.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How Angélique sang! Her stout person fairly quivered with the
+resonance of her alto. Marie's shrill treble rose and fell with
+regular staccato emphasis. Pierre, father, roared his bass in harmony
+with Pierre, son's falsetto, and beat time heavily with his right foot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the finish, the Doctor started the applause in which Jamie and Cale
+joined. With a sigh of absolute satisfaction, Angélique presented her
+cake to Mr. Ewart who, taking it from her with thanks, placed it on the
+library table and paid her the compliment of asking her to cut it.
+Marie passed around the tray and decanted the "vin du pays". Little
+Peter, following instructions given him in the kitchen, hung a wreath
+from each corner of the mantel. Compliments and congratulations on the
+cake, the wine, the wreaths, the song, the master's home-coming, the
+refurbished manor house, were exchanged freely, and we all talked
+together in French and English. My broken French was understood
+because they were kind enough to guess at my meaning&mdash;the most of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the healths were drunk, to Mr. Ewart, to the Doctor, to Jamie,
+Mrs. Macleod and me; and we drank theirs. Finally, Mr. Ewart went to
+Cale, whom Jamie had persuaded to step over the threshold, and gave his
+health, touching glasses with him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To my fellow laborer in the forest." He repeated it in French for the
+benefit of the French contingent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale, touching glasses, swallowed his wine at one gulp and abruptly
+left the room. He half stumbled over little Pierre who was sitting in
+the corner by the door, supremely happy in the remains of his huge
+piece of cake, which at his special request was cut that he might have
+the pink letters "Félici", and in the two lumps of white sugar which
+Mr. Ewart dropped into a glass of wine highly diluted with water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, it was good to see them! It was good to hear their merry chat; to
+be glad in their rejoicing over the return and final settlement of Mr.
+Ewart among them, their "lord of the manor", as they persisted in
+calling him to his evident disgust and amusement. But their joy was
+genuine, a pleasant thing to bear witness to in these our times.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And if Father Pierre in his exuberance of congratulation repeated
+himself many times; if Angélique asked Mr. Ewart more than once if the
+cake was exactly to his taste; if Marie grew doubly voluble with her
+"Dormez-biens", and little Pierre was discovered helping himself
+uninvited to another piece of cake&mdash;an act that roused Angélique to
+seeming frenzy&mdash;Mr. Ewart closed an eye to it all, for, as they
+trooped, still voluble, out of the room, he knew as well as we that
+their measure of happiness was full, pressed down and running over.
+Oh, their bonhomie! It was a revelation to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The embers were still bright in the fireplace but the candles were
+burning low in the sconces; it was high time at half-past eleven for
+the whole household to say good night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A home-coming to remember, Gordon," I heard Doctor Rugvie say, as I
+left the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't yet realize it; but I 've dreamed&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I caught no more, for the door closed upon them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two men must have talked together into the morning hours, for I
+heard them come upstairs long after I was in bed. Not until the house
+was wholly quiet could I get to sleep.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0211"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+I was up betimes the next morning, but Cale had been before me and
+taken up the offending rag carpet from the passageway. When I went
+into the kitchen, Angélique told me that the seignior&mdash;she persisted in
+calling him that&mdash;and the Doctor had had their coffee and early
+doughnuts and were off in the pung, the seignior driving; that they
+said they would be at home for dinner. I found Cale and Pierre, acting
+under orders in the early morning, taking the trunks up to the
+bedrooms, placing the guns in the racks, removing the various sporting
+implements to a room behind the kitchen, and the chests to a storeroom.
+At breakfast we three were alone together as usual. The four dogs were
+absent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod and I spent the entire forenoon bringing order again into
+the various rooms. In the meantime, Jamie was dreaming and reading in
+the living-room. I had been there just a month and a day, and could
+not help wondering who would pay me! I needed the money for some
+heavier clothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two friends appeared promptly for dinner and brought with them
+appetites sharpened by the increasing cold. They had been in
+Richelieu-en-Bas and arranged for a telephone for the manor, called on
+some English friends visiting at the new manor house in the village,
+and stopped at some of the seigniory farmhouses on the way home. I
+found Mère Guillardeau had been remembered at this early date.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you busy this afternoon, Miss Farrell?" said the Doctor, as we
+rose from our first meal together and went into the living-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not unless Mrs. Macleod needs me?" I looked at her inquiringly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, there is nothing more, Marcia; you did a good day's work in a few
+hours this morning," she replied in answer to my look.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can I be helpful to you in any way?" I said, turning again to the
+Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;I think you can." He smiled quizzically, looking down upon me
+from his substantial height. "You may not know&mdash;of course you don't,
+how could you know, never having heard much of an old fellow like me&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, have n't I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you? Then the Boy here has been giving me away. Has he ever
+told you I am something of a whip?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, not that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, I am going to prove it to you. I propose to show the two
+French coach horses how to draw a pung,&mdash;Ewart does n't yet own a
+sleigh, you know in Canada,&mdash;and I wish you would lend me your company
+for an hour or so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If the Doctor expected an enthusiastic response he must have been
+disappointed. Not that I did n't want the ride in the pung, but it
+occurred to me that here was my opportunity, offered without my seeking
+it, to ask of him all that I had been planning to ask during many
+weeks. As this door of opportunity was so suddenly opened to me, I
+felt the chill of the unknown creeping towards me over its threshold.
+I answered almost with hesitation:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly, I will go, unless Mrs. Macleod&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Macleod says she does n't need you." He spoke quickly, his keen
+eyes holding mine for a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, that's a jolly cool way you have at times, Marcia!" Jamie
+exploded in his usual fashion when he is ruffled. "But you 'll get
+used to it, Doctor&mdash;I have."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A martyr, eh, Boy?" The Doctor looked amused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, rather&mdash;at times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't mind Jamie's martyrdoms, Doctor Rugvie; tell me when you want me
+to be ready."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In half an hour. I don't want to start too late; be sure to take
+enough wraps."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I left them to go upstairs, wondering on the way what wraps I should
+take&mdash;I, who possessed only sufficient clothing to help out a New York
+winter, but no furs, no fur coat, no warm moccasins, no mittens, only
+an unlined gray tweed ulster that with a grey sweater had done duty for
+four years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want my pay more than I want a pung ride," I growled, as I was
+trying to make the one thick veil I owned do double duty for head and
+ears protector. I folded a square of newspaper and laid it over my
+chest under my sweater; I put on two pairs of stockings. Thus
+fortified against the Canadian cold, I went downstairs promptly on time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart came out into the passageway; the Doctor was talking with
+Mrs. Macleod in the living-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Miss Farrell," he exclaimed, "I see you don't realize our
+climate; you can't go without more wraps&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He hesitated, grew visibly embarrassed. I knew by his manner he had
+unwittingly probed my poverty to the quick, and I crimsoned with shame;
+yes, I was ashamed that my lack should thus be made known to
+him&mdash;ashamed as when Delia Beaseley's keen eyes read my need of money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't need to bundle up&mdash;I have been accustomed to go without
+such heavy clothing," I said, with ready lie to cover my confusion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor came out and took his fur-lined coat from a wooden peg under
+the staircase. Mr. Ewart turned abruptly and reached for something on
+an adjoining peg; it was a fur coat of Canadian fox, soft and fine and
+warm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are to wear this, otherwise the Doctor won't let you go," he said
+quickly, decidedly, shaking it down and holding it ready for me to slip
+in my arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a second, a second only, I hesitated, searching for some excuse to
+give up the drive and so avoid acceptance of this favor; then I slipped
+into it, much to Jamie's delight who, appearing at the living-room
+door, cried out:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My, Marcia, but you 're smart in Ewart's togs! We 'll have some of
+our own if this is the kind of weather they treat us to in Canada. I
+'ve been hugging the fire all the morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saved the situation for me and I was grateful to him; but Mr. Ewart
+looked at him, almost anxiously, saying:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should have been getting the heater put up this forenoon, instead of
+rushing off the first thing this morning. A poor host thus far, Jamie,
+but I 'll make good hereafter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor looked me over carefully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're safeguarded with that; the sleeves are so long and ample they
+are as good as a modern muff&mdash;go back, Boy,"&mdash;he spoke brusquely, as he
+opened the outer door,&mdash;"this is no place for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale vacated the pung, and the Doctor and I filled it. He took the
+reins; the beautiful creatures rose as one in the exuberance of life;
+shook their heads, and the bells with them, as they poised a moment on
+their hind feet; then they planted their hoofs in the crisping snow,
+and we were off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your ears must have burned more than a little this forenoon, Miss
+Farrell," he said, after driving in silence for ten minutes during
+which time he proved conclusively to the French horses that he was a
+"whip" of the first order, and to be respected henceforth as such. It
+was a pleasure to see his management of the high-lifed animals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mine? I was n't conscious of anything unusual about them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We were speaking of you and your evident executive ability, and we
+took the time on our drive to try to settle a little business matter
+that concerns you. ("Ah, wages," I thought with satisfaction.) We
+tried to agree but we failed; and although we did not come to blows
+over the question, it was not settled to my satisfaction, at least.
+You don't mind my speaking very frankly?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, indeed; I wish you would." I looked up at him over the turned-up
+fur collar of Mr. Ewart's fox skins&mdash;"pelts" is our name for them in
+New England&mdash;and smiled merrily. I was right glad to get down, at
+last, to some business basis and know where I stood. Again I saw the
+perplexed look in his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because, naturally, you know, I look for pay day to help out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naturally," he repeated gravely; then laughed out, a hearty,
+good-comrade laugh. "Just how long have you been here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A month yesterday."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And wages overdue!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nodded emphatically. I felt as if I could tell this man beside me,
+with his wide experience of humankind, about the pitiful sum of
+twenty-two dollars I had saved from my wreck of life in New York; about
+my scrimpings; even of the two pair of stockings, and the square of
+newspaper reposing at that very minute on my chest and crackling
+audibly when I drew a deeper breath. There was no feeling of
+soul-shame on account of my poverty with him, any more than I should
+have felt physical shame at the nakedness of my body if subject to one
+of his famous surgical operations. Had not this man helped to bring me
+into the world? Should I have been here but for him? Had he not known
+me as an entity before I knew anything of the fact of life? This idea
+of him disarmed my pride.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"H'm," he said at last, thoughtfully, "I must live up to my reputation
+of owing no man or woman over night. You shall have it so soon as we
+get back to the house&mdash;and well earned too," he added; "I had no idea
+an advertisement could bring about such a satisfactory result."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean me or the refurbished house?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean you. And now that we 're alone, do you mind telling me
+something of how it came about? I 'll own to asking you to come with
+me that we might have a preliminary chat together."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you did! Well, commend me to one of my compatriots to ferret out
+my intentions. I heard Cale say you were born in New York."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, twenty-six years ago, but I have lived most of my life in the
+country, in northern New England."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wh&mdash;?" he caught himself up in his question, and I ignored it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That climate is really just as severe as the Canadian, so I feel quite
+at home in this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I ask if your parents are living?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, they 're not living; my mother died when I was born. I told Delia
+Beaseley so when I applied for this place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+("Now is my time; courage!" I exhorted myself in thought.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm glad you know Delia Beaseley, she 's a fine woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A noble one," I said, heartily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, noble&mdash;and good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And good," I repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I 'll tell you a little how good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do?" He looked surprised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, she told me something of her life." He turned squarely to me
+then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How came she to?" He asked bluntly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, courage, Marcia Farrell, out with it," I said to myself, but
+aloud:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She said I resembled some one whom she knew years ago&mdash;some one who,
+she said, had 'missed her footing'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She said that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nodded. "Then she spoke of her own life and what came of it&mdash;how she
+had tried to save others; and one thing led on to another until I felt
+I had always known her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned again to look at me, and it was given me to read his very
+thought:&mdash;Have you ever come near missing your footing? Did Delia
+Beaseley save you from any pitfall?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I answered his unspoken thought:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you may take my word for it I am wholly respectable&mdash;always have
+been. I could n't have answered your advertisement if I had n't been."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The deuce you are! Well, young lady, I 'll ask you not to answer a
+man's thoughts again before he has given them expression; it's
+uncanny." He was growling a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I laughed aloud, for it delighted me to puzzle him a bit, especially
+with the revelation of my identity in prospect. I was enjoying the
+pung ride too. We were on the river road. The black tree trunks,
+standing out against the white snow-covered expanse of the St.
+Lawrence, seemed to speed past us. The sharp bits of ice-snow flew
+from the fleet horses' hoofs, and now and then one stung my cheek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale informed me that you worked in the New York Library; may I ask
+how you happened to answer the advertisement?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wanted to get away from the city&mdash;far away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tired of it&mdash;like the rest of us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;and I was ill." He gave me a look that was suddenly wholly
+professional.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Long?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten weeks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Typhoid pneumonia with pleuri&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you were going to come out with me for a spin in that ulster!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He roared so at me that the horses, taking fright at the sound of his
+voice, plunged suddenly and gave him plenty to do to calm them into a
+trot again. I enjoyed the equine gymnastics so promptly provided for
+his diversion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was at St. Luke's." I volunteered this information when he was free
+to receive it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"St. Luke's, eh? That's where you heard of this old curmudgeon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, there; and from Delia Beaseley, and Jamie, and Mrs. Macleod."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the way, you and Jamie seem to be great friends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I love him," I said emphatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"H'm, lucky dog; better not tell him so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not?" I asked, at once on the defensive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor compressed his lips in a fashion that said as plainly as if
+he had spoken, "Unsophisticated at twenty-six; I don't believe her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I love Cale, too, and he is my own kind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale 's all right; I 'm going to know him better before the week is
+out. And how about Mrs. Macleod?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Macleod is Jamie's mother, and I like her and respect her&mdash;but
+she 's not easy to love."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's true&mdash;she is not easy to love. About the salary," he said
+changing the subject; "I intended to pay it myself until you were
+installed on the farm; it is a favor to me to be allowed to help out
+Mrs. Macleod. I knew from private sources that she needed someone to
+cheer her here in this Canadian country; it's a great change from her
+home in Crieff, and then she carries Jamie on her heart all the time.
+I insisted this morning on taking charge of the whole business, you
+included," he smiled ruefully, "but Ewart would n't hear to it. He
+argues that so long as you are in his house, and your work is&mdash;well, we
+'ll call it home-making, he, being the beneficiary has the sole right
+to pay for his benefits."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's just what I told Mrs. Macleod and Jamie I would try to make of
+you and him&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The dickens you did! A beneficiary of me, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and I shall try to," I said earnestly. The Doctor grew serious
+at once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will not be a hard task, Miss Farrell; I begin to dream of what the
+farm will be like with you to help make it a home for me and, in time,
+many others, as I hope."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor Rugvie, would you mind calling me by my first name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I should mind very much, because it's exactly what I have wanted
+to do, but did not feel at liberty to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In my position it is better that all in the house should call me
+Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your position?" He looked around at me with a queer twist of his
+upper lip. "What is your position?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"According to the advertisement it was for service on a farm in Canada."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now you find yourself in an anomalous one? Is that the trouble?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, just it. I don't know what is to be required of me&mdash;I really
+don't see how I am to earn my salt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't bother yourself about that." He frowned slightly. "I confess
+this insistence on Ewart's part to pay you, complicates matters a
+little. <I>I</I> wanted to be boss this time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I hoped you would be mine, anyway," I said mutinously. "I am far
+from satisfied to have my business dealings with Mr. Ewart, a stranger
+and an alien."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be only for a time; I am going to tell you, all of you, about
+my farm plans this evening. I have n't spoken yet to Ewart very freely
+about them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The horses were turned homewards, and I felt that little time was left
+me to ask any intimate questions of the Doctor concerning myself. I
+could not find the right word&mdash;and I knew I was not trying with any
+degree of earnestness. "I 'll put it off till the last of the week," I
+said to myself; then I began to speak of that self, for I knew the
+Doctor was waiting for this and, wisely, was biding my time. I was
+grateful to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I told him of my hard-worked young years and my longing to get away to
+independence. I entered into no family details; it was not necessary.
+I told him something of my struggle in New York and of my place in the
+Branch Library; of my long illness and how it had left me: tired out,
+listless, practically homeless and in need of immediate money. I told
+him how I sought Delia Beaseley on the strength of the advertisement;
+how she helped me; how I felt I had found release from the city and its
+burden of livelihood, and how happy I was with my new duties in the old
+manor house; how the fact that it was an old manor fed the vein of
+romance in me which neither hard work nor illness had been able to work
+out; how I enjoyed Jamie and Mrs. Macleod, Angélique, and Pierre and
+all the household&mdash;and how I had dreaded his coming, yet longed for it,
+because it would unsettle my future which was not to be in the manor
+house of Lamoral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I told him all this, freely; but to speak of my mother, of my birth, of
+the papers, and of what I wanted them for, was beyond me. The secret
+of the Past, projected on the possible Future, loomed gigantic,
+threatening. I would let well enough alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You poor child," he said, when I finished. That was all; but I knew
+that henceforth I should have a friend in Doctor Rugvie. He drove the
+rest of the way in silence.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0212"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+When I joined them an hour after supper, they were talking about the
+heater that had been put up in the living-room while we were away. The
+warmth from it was delightful, but the blazing fire in the fireplace
+gave the true cheer to the room, added charm for the eye. The Doctor
+looked up as I came in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you ever seen a stove like this&mdash;Marcia?" There was a twinkle
+both in his voice and his eye, as he called me for the first time by my
+Christian name. He was tease enough to try it in the presence of the
+rest of the household.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, my grandfather had two in his farmhouse. There is nothing
+like them for an even heat; it never burns the face. The top is a
+lovely place to fry griddlecakes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You seem to know this species root and branch, Miss Farrell," said Mr.
+Ewart. "After that remark may I challenge you to make a few for us
+some night for supper?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You won't have to challenge, for I like them myself; and if you 'll
+trust me we 'll have a griddlecake party here in this room some
+evening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My first innings, Marcia!" cried Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll have to let that go unchallenged, Macleod, seeing I 'm host; but
+you took unfair advantage of me. I 'll get even with you sometime."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where did you get your idea, Gordon?" The Doctor turned to his friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was born with it, you might say. I don't remember the time when we
+did n't have two or three in my father's house, and I 've never found
+anything equal to them for heating. They 're all out of date now;
+there is no manufactory for them. I had trouble in finding these, but
+I unearthed three last spring when I was in northern Vermont. I knew
+we should need them, and they keep all night, you know. I 'm going to
+have one put up in the bathroom&mdash;these oil stoves are an abomination."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Amen," said the Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So say we all of us.&mdash; Hark, hear that wind!" said Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stove was of soapstone, square, with hinged top that, opening
+upward, gave room for the insertion of a "chunk"&mdash;a huge, unsplittable,
+knotty piece of maple, birch, or beech. Cale came in with one while we
+were listening to the roar of the gale; it was a section of a maple
+butt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, thet 'll last all night an' inter the forenoon," he said,
+lowering it carefully into the glowing brands in the box. "I 'll shet
+up the drafts, an' you 'll have a small furnace with no dust nor dirt
+to bother with; an' the ashes is good fertilizer&mdash;can't be beat for
+clover."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's take a household vote on the subject of modern improvements for
+the manor," said Mr. Ewart, helping himself to a cigar and then passing
+the box to Cale who had turned to leave the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale took one with an "I thank <I>you</I>" this being a habit of speech to
+emphasize the last word, and was about to go out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stay a while with us, Cale," said Mr. Ewart, speaking as a matter of
+course; "I want the opinion of every member of my household&mdash;my
+Anglo-Saxon one, I mean."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two men stood facing each other, and between them I saw a look pass
+that bespoke mutual confidence. I thought they must have made rapid
+progress in one short day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, I don't mind if I do. It's flatterin' to a man, say what you 've
+a mind ter, ter have his advice asked on any subject&mdash;let alone what
+interests him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's a fine back-handed compliment for you, Ewart," said Jamie,
+whose delight in Cale's acquiescence was very evident.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I took it so," said Mr. Ewart quietly, drawing up a chair beside his
+and motioning to Cale who, after a slight hesitation, sat down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How cosy it was around the fire! Since our return from the pung ride,
+the wind had risen, keen and hard in the northwest and, crossing the
+Laurentians, was swooping down upon the river lands, swaying the great
+spruces in the woods all about us till it seemed as if ocean surf were
+breaking continuously just without the walls of the manor and, now and
+then, spending its force upon them until the great beams quivered under
+the impact. Every blast seemed to intensify our comfort within.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The telephone will be a great convenience," Mrs. Macleod remarked from
+the corner of the sofa, looking up from her knitting; "it will save so
+many trips to the village in weather like this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it a long distance one, Gordon?" said Jamie who was lolling on the
+other end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; I thought we might as well connect with almost anywhere. Our
+household is rather cosmopolitan. Does this suit you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suits me to a dot. I can talk with my 'best girl', as they call her
+in the States, when she is on the wing&mdash;as she is now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, ho, Boy! Has it come to this so soon?" The Doctor sighed
+audibly, causing us to laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jamie's 'best girl' changes with the season and sometimes the
+temperature, Doctor," said Mrs. Macleod, smiling at some remembrance.
+"Do you recall a little girl who with her mother had lodgings at
+Duncairn House, just opposite ours in Crieff?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor nodded. "Yes, and how Jamie Macleod enticed her away one
+summer afternoon to the meadows and banks of the Earn just below the
+garden gate, and the hue and cry that was raised when the two failed to
+make their appearance at supper time? Somebody&mdash;I won't say who&mdash;went
+to bed without porridge that night. What was her name, Boy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I saw, we all saw, just the least hesitation on Jamie's part to answer
+with his usual assurance. We saw, also, the touch of red on his high
+cheek bones deepen a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bess&mdash;Bess Stanley."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is a Miss Stanley who visited at the new manor last summer&mdash;any
+relation, do you know?" asked Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Same," Jamie answered concisely, meanwhile puffing vigorously at his
+pipe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The plot thickens, Mrs. Macleod," said the Doctor dubiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is she tall and slender and fair, Jamie?" I put what I considered an
+opportune question; I knew it would both surprise and irritate him as
+well as rouse his curiosity of which he has an abundance. I really
+spoke at a venture because the name recalled to me the two girls in the
+sleeping-car and their destination: Richelieu-en-Bas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned to me with irony in his look. "She is all you say. May I
+make so bold as to enquire of you whether you speak from knowledge, or
+if you simply made a good guess?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From knowledge&mdash;first hand, of course," I said with assurance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sat up then, eyeing me defiantly, much to the others' amusement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps you can give me further information about the young lady&mdash;all
+will be gratefully received."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, nothing&mdash;except that I believe it was she through whom you
+obtained Cale, was n't it?" I heard Cale chuckle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, Marcia," he began severely enough, then burst into one of
+his hearty laughs that dissolves his irritation at once; "you 'll be
+telling me what she wrote me in my last letter if you 're such a mind
+reader. I say," he said, settling himself into a chair beside me, "let
+up on a man once in a while in the presence of such a cloud of
+witnesses, won't you? Take me when I 'm alone. The truth is, Ewart,
+Marcia gives herself airs because she is three years my senior. She
+takes the meanest kind of advantage; and I can't hit back because she
+'s a woman. But about that telephone, Ewart; are they going to run it
+on the trees."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the only way at this season."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Could n't it remain so the year round?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?" said Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because the poles will just spoil everything; as it is, it is&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is what, Marcia? Out with it," said Jamie encouragingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perfect as it is," I said boldly, willing they should know what I
+thought of this wilderness of neglect that surrounded us in the heart
+of French Canada.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess we can keep it perfect, as you say, Marcia, 'thout havin' to rub
+the burrs off'n our coats every time we go round the house," said Cale.
+"We 're going to do some pretty tall cuttin' inter some of this
+underbrush and dead timber next week if the snow ain't too deep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Cale, it will spoil it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, thet 's as you look at it; but 't ain't good policy to keep a
+fire-trap quite so near to a livin'-place; makes insurance rates
+higher."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How would you feel then about having a modern hot water heater put
+into the old manor, Miss Farrell?" Mr. Ewart put the question to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put it to a vote," I replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All in favor, aye," he continued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was silence in the room except for one of the dogs that, asleep
+under the table, stirred uneasily and whined as if rousing from a dream
+of an unattainable bone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a vote against. How about piping in gas?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" we protested as one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Settled," he said smiling. We saw that our decision pleased him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Confess, now, Gordon, you did n't want any such innovations yourself,"
+said the Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did n't, for I like my&mdash;home, as it is," he said simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I like to hear you use that word 'home', Gordon," said the Doctor,
+looking intently into the fire; "as long as I 've known you, I think I
+'ve never heard you use it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No." The man on the opposite side of the hearth spoke decidedly, but
+in a tone that did not invite further confidence. "I 've never
+intended to use it until I could feel the sense of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Another who has felt what it is to be a stranger in this world," I
+thought to myself. And the fact that there were others, made me, for
+the moment, feel less a stranger. I was glad to hear him speak so
+frankly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor looked up, nodding understandingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now I want some advice from all this household," he said earnestly,
+and I thought to change the subject; "it's about the farm I 've hired
+and the experiment with it. Give it fully, each of you, and, like
+every other man, I suppose I shall take what agrees with my own way of
+looking at it. My plans were so indefinite when I wrote to you to hire
+it, Gordon, that I went into no detail; and I 'm not at all sure that
+they are so clear to me now. Here 's where I want help."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's not like you, John; what's up?" said his friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to start the thing right, and I 'm going to tell you just how I
+'m placed; a deuce of a fix it is too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale put on a log and left the room, saying good-night as he passed
+out. I gathered up my sewing&mdash;I was hemming some napkins&mdash;and made a
+motion to follow him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor rose. "Marcia,"&mdash;he put out a hand as if to detain me; he
+spoke peremptorily,&mdash;"come back. There are no secrets among us, and I
+want you to advise with."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There seemed nothing to do but to obey, and I was perfectly willing to,
+because I wanted to hear all and everything about the farm project that
+threatened to break up my pleasant life in the manor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I took up my work again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put down your work, Marcia; fold your hands and listen to me. I want
+your whole attention."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I obeyed promptly. Jamie gleefully rubbed his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It takes you, Doctor, to make Marcia mind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm a man of years, Boy," the Doctor retorted, thereby reducing Jamie
+to silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We sat expectant; but evidently the Doctor was in no hurry to open up
+his subject. After a few minutes of deep thought, he spoke slowly,
+almost as if to himself:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm wondering where to begin, what to take hold of first. The
+ordering of life is beyond all science&mdash;we 've found that out, we
+so-called 'men of science'. The truth is, I believe I have a
+'conscience fund' in the bank and on my mind. I know I am speaking
+blindly, and perhaps reasoning blindly, and it's because I want you to
+see things for me more clearly than I do, and through a different
+medium, that I am going to tell you, as concisely as I can&mdash;and without
+mentioning names&mdash;of an experience I had more than a quarter of a
+century ago. I 've had several of the kind since, they are common in
+our profession&mdash;but the result of this special experience is unique."
+He paused, continuing to look steadfastly into the fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the silence we heard the sweep of the wind through the woods, now
+and then the scraping swish of a pine branch brushing the roof beneath
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I recall that it was in December. I was twenty-nine, and had just got
+a foothold on the first round of the professional ladder. Near
+midnight I was called to go down into one of the slum districts&mdash;I
+don't intend to mention names&mdash;of New York. There in a basement, I
+found a woman who had just been rescued from suicide."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused, still keeping his gaze fixed intently on the fire. And I?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the first words a faint sickness came upon me. Was I to hear this
+again?&mdash;here, remote from the environment from which I had so recently
+fled? Could it be possible that I was to hear again that account of my
+mother's death? I struggled for control. They must not know, they
+should not see that struggle. Intent on keeping every feature passive,
+hoping that in the firelight whatever my face might have shown would
+pass unnoticed, I waited for the Doctor's next word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems unprofessional, perhaps, to enter into any detail, but we are
+far away from that environment now&mdash;and in time, too, for it was over a
+quarter of a century ago. She was very young, nineteen perhaps, and
+about to become a mother. I remained with her till morning. I knew
+she would never come through her trial alive. I went again in the
+evening and stayed with her till her child was born and&mdash;to the end
+which came an hour afterwards. During all those twenty-four hours she
+spoke but twice. She gave me no name, although I asked her; no name of
+friends even&mdash;God knows if she had any, or why was she there?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, here is my dilemma: in the morning, I signed the death
+certificate and then went out of the city on a case that kept me
+forty-eight hours. On my return, the woman, who had rescued this poor
+girl,&mdash;a woman who took in washing and ironing in that basement&mdash;told
+me a man had appeared at the house to claim the body he said was his
+wife's. She gave me the man's name, but the name of this man was not
+the name of the husband according to a marriage certificate which I
+found in an envelope the young woman entrusted to me for her child. At
+any rate, he had claimed the body and taken it away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, ordinarily the living waves of existence close very soon over
+such an episode&mdash;all too common; and, so far as I am concerned, in such
+and other similar cases I forget; it is well that I can. But I 've
+never been permitted to forget this!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He made this announcement emphatically, looking up suddenly from the
+fire, and glancing at each of us in turn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And, moreover, I don't believe I am ever going to be permitted to
+forget. Some one intends I shall remember!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With me it was merely a charity case&mdash;one, it is true, that called
+forth my deepest sympathy. The circumstances were peculiar. The woman
+was young, rarely attractive in face, refined, well dressed. Her
+absolute silence concerning herself during all that weary time; her
+heroic endurance and, I may say, angelic acceptance of her
+martyrdom&mdash;and all this in such an environment! How could it help
+making a deep impression? Still, I am convinced I should have
+forgotten it, had it not been for a constant reminder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the first week of the next February, I received a notification from
+a national bank in the city that five hundred dollars had been
+deposited to my credit. The woman who lived in that basement received
+during the first week of the New Year a draft on that bank&mdash;and mailed
+by the bank&mdash;for the same amount. She consulted me about accepting it.
+When I attempted to investigate at the bank, I found that no
+information would be given and no questions answered&mdash;only the
+statement made that the money was mine to do with what I might choose.
+Next December, and a year to a day from the death of that young woman,
+I received a similar notification, and the woman a draft for one
+hundred. Since that time, now over twenty-five years ago, no December
+has ever passed that the regular notification has not been mailed to me
+and to the woman. I wrote to the man who had claimed the body, and
+whose name and address the woman, who lived in the basement,
+remembered. The letter was never answered. I waited a year, and wrote
+the second time. The letter came back to me from the dead letter
+office. I invested the increasing amount after two years and let it
+accumulate at compound interest. As you will see, these donations have
+amounted now to a tidy sum. I believe it to be 'conscience
+money'&mdash;either from the man who claimed the body as that of his wife,
+or from the woman's husband according to the marriage certificate. Or
+are both men one and the same?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hired the farm of you, Gordon, merely telling you it was one of my
+many philanthropic plans that, thus far, I have been unable to carry
+out. As yet I have not used that money for any benefactions. Would
+you hold it longer, or would you apply it to my farm project which is
+to provide a home for the homeless, and for those whose home does not
+provide sufficient change for them? I have thought sometimes I would
+limit the philanthropy to those who need up-building in health.&mdash; What
+do you say, Gordon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked across the hearth to his friend who was leaning back in his
+chair, his arm resting on the arm, his hand shading his eyes from the
+firelight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should like to think it over, John; it is a peculiar case. Have you
+ever thought of the child? Do you know anything about it? Was it a
+boy or a girl?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A girl. No, I never thought of the child&mdash;poor little bit of life's
+flotsam. We don't get much time to think of all those we help to float
+in on the tide. Now this is what I am getting, by looking at the
+matter through others' eyes&mdash;you mean she should be looked up, and the
+money go to her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was my first thought, but, as I said, I must think it over. The
+two men, at least, the two names of possibly the same man, complicate
+matters."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what puzzles me," said Jamie. The Doctor turned to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you look at it, Boy, you, with your twenty-three years? The
+world where such things happen is n't much like that world of André's
+Odyssey, is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie answered brightly, but his voice was slightly unsteady:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it's the same old world; it's a wilderness, you know, for all of
+us, only there are so many paths through it, across it, and up and down
+it&mdash;paths and trails and roads that cross and recross; so many that end
+in swamp and bog; so many that lead nowhither; so many that are lost on
+the mountain. And so few guideposts&mdash;I wish there were more for us
+all! You may bet your life that man&mdash;whether the girl's husband or
+lover&mdash;has had to tread thorns until his feet bled before he could
+clear his way through. Those five hundred dollars, in yearly deposits,
+he intends shall be guideposts, and he trusts you to put them up in the
+wilderness where they will do the most good.&mdash;I 'd hate to be that man!
+Would you mind telling me, Doctor, how she attempted to make way with
+herself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tried to drown herself from one of the North River piers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And her child too," said Jamie musingly; "there came near being two
+graves in <I>his</I> wilderness." He thought a moment in silence. "Make
+the home on the farm with the money, Doctor Rugvie; use the interest in
+helping others who have lost their way in the wilderness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good advice, Boy, I 'll remember to act on it." The Doctor spoke
+gratefully, heartily. His glance rested affectionately upon the long
+figure on the sofa. Was he wondering, as I was, how Jamie at
+twenty-three could reach certain depths which his particular plummet
+could never have sounded? I intended to ask him what he thought of
+Jamie's outlook on life, sometime when we should be alone together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Macleod," he said, "do you think with your son?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She hesitated. It is her peculiarity that a direct question, the
+answer to which involves a decision, flusters her painfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall have to think it over, like Mr. Ewart," she replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you, Marcia," he turned to me. Out of my knowledge I answered
+unhesitatingly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not of the child I 'm thinking; she could n't accept the money
+knowing for what it is paid. Nor am I thinking about those women who
+need 'guide-posts', Jamie. I 'm thinking of that other woman who lived
+in the basement and took in washing and ironing, the one who rescued
+that other from her misery and cared for her with your help, Doctor
+Rugvie&mdash;should n't she be remembered? She, who is living? If I had
+that money at my disposal, I would found the farm home and put that
+woman at the head of it. You may be sure she would know how to put up
+the guideposts&mdash;and in the right places too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I spoke eagerly, almost impulsively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor looked at me comprehendingly&mdash;he knew that I knew that it
+was of Delia Beaseley he had been speaking&mdash;and smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Another idea, Marcia, also worth remembering and acting upon with
+Jamie's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned suddenly to Mr. Ewart, not knowing why I felt impelled to;
+perhaps his silence, his noticeable unresponsiveness to his friend's
+proposition, impressed as well as surprised me; at any rate I looked up
+very quickly and caught the look he gave me. It half terrified me.
+What had I said to offend him? The steel gray eyes were almost black,
+and the look&mdash;had it possessed physical force, I felt it would have
+crushed me. It was severe, indignant, uncompromising. I was
+mystified. The look was more flashed at me than directed at me for the
+space of half a second&mdash;then he spoke to Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are right, Jamie, about the wilderness; we 'll talk this matter
+over sometime together before John goes,"&mdash;I perceived clearly that
+Mrs. Macleod and I were shut out of future conferences,&mdash;"and I know we
+can make some plan satisfactory to him and to us all. Count on me,
+John, to help you in carrying out the best plan whatever it may be. In
+any case, it will mean that we are to have more of your company, and
+that's what I want." He spoke lightly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Doctor Rugvie smiled, then his features grew earnest again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gordon, I want to put a question to you, and after you to Jamie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; go ahead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have given you the mere outlines of a bare and ugly episode of New
+York city. That man, or those two men, or that dual entity, has never
+ceased to perplex me. How does it look to you, knowing merely the
+outlines?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As if the woman had been dealing with two different men," he replied
+almost indifferently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor looked at him earnestly, and I saw he was puzzled by his
+friend's attitude. "That may be&mdash;one never can tell in such cases," he
+answered quietly; but I could feel his disappointment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's queer, Ewart," said Jamie, gravely; "to me it looks as if two
+men had done a girl an irreparable wrong." Perhaps we all felt that
+the conversation had been carried a little too far in this direction.
+The Doctor turned it into other channels, but it lagged. I felt
+uncomfortable, and wished I had insisted upon going up to my room when
+the subject of the farm was broached. After all, we had come to no
+decision, and I doubted if the Doctor was much the wiser for all our
+opinions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marie's entrance with the porridge relieved the tension somewhat, and I
+was glad to say good night as soon as I had finished mine.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0213"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Doctor Rugvie had opened an easy way of approach for me to ask him what
+I would, but that question put by Mr. Ewart in regard to the child,
+whether it was a boy or a girl, seemed to block the way, for a time at
+least, impassably. If I were to make inquiry now of the Doctor
+concerning my identity and ask the name of my father, naturally he
+would infer, after Mr. Ewart's remark, that the question of the
+property was my impelling motive. My reason told me the time was ripe
+to settle this personal question, but something&mdash;was it intuition? I
+believe in that, if only we would follow its lead and leave reason to
+lag in chains far behind it&mdash;seemed to paralyze my power of will in
+making any move to ascertain my paternal parentage. And yet I had
+dared to respond to that demand in Jamie's advertisement "of good
+parentage"!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I am myself," I thought, half defiantly, "and after all, it's
+not what those who are dead and gone stood for that counts. It's what
+I stand for; and what I am rests with my will to make. They 'll have
+to accept me for what I am."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was in the kitchen, concocting an old-fashioned Indian pudding and
+showing Angélique about the oven, as these thoughts passed through my
+mind. At that moment Jamie opened the door and looked in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, Marcia&mdash;awfully busy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, not now; what do you want?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You&mdash;I 'm lonesome. Come on into the living-room&mdash;I 've built up a
+roaring fire there&mdash;and let's talk; nobody 's around."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where 's Doctor Rugvie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gone off with Cale to the farm. He 'll get pneumonia if he does n't
+look out; the place is like an ice-house at this season."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I slipped the pudding into the oven. "Now look out for it and keep
+enough milk in it till it wheys, Angélique." I turned to Jamie.
+"Where's Mr. Ewart?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Ewart's off nosing about in Quebec for some old furniture for his
+den. Pierre drove him to the train just after breakfast. He told
+mother he would be back in time for supper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's queer," I said, following him through the bare offices, one of
+which was to be the den, into the living-room where stale cigar smoke
+still lingered. "Whew! Let's have in some fresh air."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I opened the hinged panes in the double windows; opened the front door
+and let in the keen crisp air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, now," I closed them; "we can 'talk' as you say in comfort. I
+did n't air out early this morning, for when I came in I found Mr.
+Ewart writing. He looked for all the world as if he were making his
+last will and testament. I beat a double-quick retreat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll bet you did. I 'd make tracks if Ewart looked like that." He
+drew up two chairs before the fire. "Here, sit here by me; let's be
+comfy when we can. I say, Marcia&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused, leaning to the fire in his favorite position: arms along his
+knees, and clasped hands hanging between them. He turned and looked at
+me ruefully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We all got beyond our depth, did n't we, last night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Doctor 's a dear, is n't he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 's the dearest kind of a dear, and I could n't bear to see him
+snubbed by your lord of the manor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie nodded. "That was rather rough. I don't understand that side of
+Ewart&mdash;never have seen it but once before, and I would n't mind, you
+know, Marcia," he lowered his voice, "if I never saw it again. It made
+no end of an atmosphere, did n't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thick and&mdash;muggy," I replied, searching for the word that should
+express the mental and spiritual atmospheric condition, the result of
+Mr. Ewart's attitude in last evening's talk. "And it has n't wholly
+cleared up yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He nodded. "I believe that's why he took himself out of the way this
+morning. Look here&mdash;I 've a great overpowering longing to confide in
+you, Marcia." He laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Confide then; I 'm a regular safe deposit and trust company. Tell me,
+do; I'm dying to talk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you are!" He turned to me with his own bright face illumined.
+"Is n't it good that we 're young, Marcia? I feel that forcibly when I
+am with so many older men."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm just beginning to feel young, Jamie; to see my way through that
+wilderness you spoke of."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew his sympathy, his understanding, not of my life but of the
+condition of mind to which that life had brought me. It is this quick
+understanding of another's "sphere", I may call it, that makes the
+young Scotsman so wonderfully attractive to all who meet him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know what the Doctor said about the world of which he told us last
+night and of André's world?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, one night in camp&mdash;last summer, you know, it was just before
+Ewart left me there&mdash;old André told us what happened years ago up there
+in the wilds of the Saguenay. He said one day two Indian guides,
+Montagnais, came to his camp. The oldest, Root-of-the-Pine, a friend
+of André's, brought him word from old Mère Guillardeau, André's
+sister&mdash;you know her&mdash;who is living here in Lamoral. She told him to
+receive two of the English, a man and a woman, as guests for a month.
+The Indian told André they were waiting across the portage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"André said he went over to meet them, and they stayed with him not
+only one month, but four. He told us the girl had a voice as sweet as
+the nightingale's; that her eyes were like wood violets, her laugh like
+the forest brook. He said they loved each other madly, so madly that
+even his old blood was stirred at times. He was alone with them there
+in that wilderness for all those months, caring for them, fishing,
+hunting, picking the mountain berries, till the first snow flew. Then
+they took their flight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mère Guillardeau had sent in her message: 'Ask no questions. You can
+confess and be shriven when you come to Richelieu-en-Bas.' He obeyed
+to the letter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He knew, he said, that they were not married, but he caught enough of
+their English to know they were looking forward to being married when
+it should be made possible for them. Whence they came, he never knew;
+whither they went, he never asked. They came, as birds come that mate
+in the spring; they went, as the late birds go after the mating season
+is over, with the first snow-fall; but, Marcia&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Jamie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You won't mind my speaking out after what was said last evening?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mind nothing from you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"André told us that before they left he knew a nestling was on its way;
+the slender form, like a willow shoot, as he expressed it, was rounder,
+and the face of the girl was the face of a tender doe. You should have
+heard him tell it&mdash;there in the setting of forest, lake and mountain!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'All this happened long, long ago,' he said, 'but still I hear her
+voice in the forest; still I see her eyes in the first wood violets;
+see her smile that made sunshine in the darkest woods. Still I hear
+her light steps about the camp and follow her still in thought across
+the last portage when we carried her in our arms; still see her waving
+her hand to me from the canoe that floated like a brown leaf on the
+blue lake waters. Wherever she may be, may the Holy Virgin, Our Lady
+of the Snows, guard her&mdash;and her child! I have waited all these years
+for her to come again.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia&mdash;André called their love 'forest love'. Sometimes I think he
+spoke truly; untaught, he knew the difference."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I listened, caught by the pathos of the tale, the charm of old André's
+words; but in love I was untaught. I wondered how Jamie could know the
+"difference".
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But now to my point. Of course I listened all eyes and ears to André.
+When he finished, the camp fire was low. The full moon had risen above
+the waters of the lake and lighted the tree-fringed shore. I turned to
+Ewart, and caught the same look on his face that I saw last night when
+the Doctor was telling his story: the look of a man who is seeing
+ghosts&mdash;more than one. For three days I scarce got a decent word when
+he was with me, which was seldom; he was off by himself in the forest.
+So you see <I>this</I>, last night's occurrence, does not wholly surprise
+me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We sat for a while without talking. Jamie took his pipe, filled and
+lighted it with a glowing coal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jamie," I said at last. He nodded encouragingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know you told me about that queer rumor that crops out at such odd
+times and places&mdash;about Mr. Ewart's having been married and divorced,
+and the boy he is educating, 'Boy or girl?' you know he said&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Might n't it be&mdash;I know you did n't believe it, but would n't it be
+possible that there is some truth in that, distorted, perhaps, but
+enough to make him suffer when there is any reference to love that has
+brought with it misery and suffering?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It may be you 're right; I had n't thought of it in that light. Of
+course, I never heard of the rumor till I came back from camp in
+September; then it seemed to be in the air. I wonder if the Doctor has
+ever heard anything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Probably his coming home so soon and making his home here started the
+gossip. Jamie&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You said he never spoke much to you about his personal affairs&mdash;that
+you don't know so very much of his intimate personal life. Does n't
+that prove that he has had some trouble, some painful experience?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Woman's logic, but I suppose he has. Most men have been through the
+wilderness, or been lost in it, by the time they are forty. I should
+think if&mdash;mind you, I say 'if'&mdash;he was ever married, ever divorced,
+ever had a child somewhere, he might find his special trail difficult
+at times; but he has n't lost it! Ewart does not lose a trail so
+easily! Look at his experience&mdash;Oxford, London, Australian
+sheep-ranchman, forester here in Lamoral! And he 's so tender with
+everything and everybody. That's what makes him so beloved here in
+this French settlement."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Except towards the Doctor last night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's so; but he is tender just the same. I 've seen that trait in
+him so many times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should think he might be&mdash;and like adamant at others," I said, and
+began to put the room to rights.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0214"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XIV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"We shall miss the Doctor no end," said Jamie ruefully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We caught the last wave of his hand; the pung's broad fur-behung back
+could no longer be seen; the jingle of the bells grew fainter; soon
+there was silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He promised to come again in February. And, now, what next?" I
+turned to Mrs. Macleod who was standing with Jamie at the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There does n't seem to be any 'next'?" she answered with such evident
+dejection that Jamie and I laughed at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take heart, mither," her son admonished her, using for the first time
+in my presence the softer Scotch for mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's been such a pleasant week for us&mdash;and I find Mr. Ewart so
+different; not that I mean to criticize our host," she added hastily
+and apologetically. She seemed to take pleasure in refusing to be
+comforted for the loss of the Doctor's cheering presence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course he 's different; there can't be two Doctor Rugvies in this
+needy world; but you wait till you know Ewart better, mother. Talk
+about 'what next'! You 'll find as soon as Ewart sets things humming
+here there 'll be plenty of the 'next'; Cale can give you a point or
+two on that already. By the way, he seems to have sworn allegiance to
+Ewart; he does n't have time for me now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what are we women to do here?" I exclaimed half impatiently. My
+busy working life in the city, with the consequent pressure that made
+itself felt every hour of the day, and burdened me at night with the
+dreadful "what next if strength and health should fail?", had unfitted
+me in part for the continued quiet of domesticity. I found myself
+beginning to chafe under it, now that the house was settled. I wanted
+more work to fill my time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better ask Ewart," said Jamie to tease me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will." I spoke decidedly and gave Jamie a surprise. "I 'll speak
+to him the very first time I get the chance. He has n't given me one
+yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're right there, Marcia. I noticed you and the Doctor were great
+chums from the first, but Ewart has n't said much to you&mdash;he is so
+different, though, as mother says. It takes time to know Ewart, and
+sometimes&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What 'sometimes'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sometimes when I think I know him, I find I don't. That interests me.
+You 'll have the same experience when you get well acquainted with him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is no monotony about that at any rate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should say not." He spoke emphatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod turned to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm sure I feel just as you do, Marcia, about the 'what next'. I
+don't know of anything except to keep house and provide for the meals&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's no sinecure in this climate, mother. Such appetites! Even
+Marcia is developing a bank holiday one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And gaining both color and flesh," said Mrs. Macleod, looking me over
+approvingly. I dropped her a curtsey which surprised her Scotch
+staidness and amused Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you <I>sure</I> you are twenty-six?" He smiled quizzically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As sure as you are of your three and twenty years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie turned from the window, took a book and dipped into it. I
+thought he was lost to us for the next two hours. Mrs. Macleod left
+the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sometimes I feel a hundred." Jamie spoke thoughtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I a hundred and ten." I responded quickly to his mood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're bound to go me ten better. But no&mdash;have you, though?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nodded emphatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, in New York."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why in New York?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't know it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; but I mean to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish you joy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me why in New York."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You would n't understand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would n't I? Try me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked up at him as he stood there thoughtful, his forefinger between
+the leaves of the book. <I>He</I> had no living to earn. <I>He</I> had not to
+bear the burden and heat of an earned existence. How could he
+understand? So I questioned in my narrowness of outlook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I felt the burden," I answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What burden?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The burden of&mdash;oh, I can't tell exactly; the burden of just that
+terrible weight of life as it is lived there. Before I was ill it
+weighed on me so I felt old, sometimes centuries old&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie leaned forward eagerly, his face alive with feeling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, that's just the way I felt when I was in the hospital. I was
+bowed down in spirit with it&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You?" I asked in amazement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I; why not? I can't help myself; I am a child of my time. Only,
+I felt the burden of life as humanity lives it, not touched by locality
+as you felt it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you have n't really lived that life yet, Jamie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I have, Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder now if <I>you</I> will understand? I get it&mdash;I get all that
+through the imagination."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But imagination is n't reality."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More real than reality itself sometimes. Look here, I 'm not a
+philanthropic cad and I don't mean to say too much, but I can say this:
+when a thinking man before he is twenty-five has run up hard against
+the only solid fact in this world&mdash;death, he somehow gets a grip on
+life and its meaning that others don't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I waited for more. This was the Jamie of whom the depth of simplicity
+in "André's Odyssey" had given me a glimpse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He straightened himself suddenly. "I want to say right here and now
+that if I have felt, and feel&mdash;as I can't help feeling, being the child
+of my time and subject to its tendencies&mdash;the burden of this life of
+ours as lived by all humankind, thank God, I can even when bowed in
+spirit, feel at times the 'rhythm of the universe' that adjusts,
+coordinates all&mdash;" He broke off abruptly, laughing at himself. "I 'm
+getting beyond my depth, Marcia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I shook my head. He smiled. "Well, then, I 'll get down to bed rock
+and say something more: you won't mind my mooning about and going off
+by myself and acting, sometimes, as if I had patented an aeroplane and
+could sustain myself for a few hours above the heads of all humanity&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I laughed outright. "What do you mean, Jamie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean that as I can't dig a trench, or cut wood, or run a motor bus,
+or be a member of a life-saving crew like other men, I 'm going to try
+to help a man up, and earn my living if I can, by writing out what I
+get in part through experience and mostly through imagination. There!
+Now I 've told you all there is to tell, except that I 've had
+something actually accepted by a London publisher; and if you 'll put
+up with my crotchets I 'll give you a presentation copy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Jamie!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was so glad for him that for the moment I found nothing more to say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, Jamie,'" he mimicked; then with a burst of laughter he threw
+himself full length on the sofa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you laughing at?" I demanded sternly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At what Ewart and the Doctor would say if they could hear us talking
+like this so soon as their backs were turned on the manor. I believe
+the Doctor's last word to you was 'griddlecakes', and Ewart's to me:
+'We 'll have dinner at twelve&mdash;I 'm going into the woods with Cale'.
+Well, I 'm in for good two hours of reading," he said, settling himself
+comfortably in the sofa corner. I had come to learn that this was my
+dismissal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before Mr. Ewart's return, I took counsel with myself&mdash;or rather with
+my common-sense self. If I were to continue to work in this household,
+I must know definitely what I was to do. The fact that I was receiving
+wages meant, if it meant anything, that I received them in exchange for
+service rendered. The Doctor left the matter in an unsatisfactory,
+nebulous state, saying, that if Ewart insisted on paying my salary it
+was his affair to provide the work; and thereafter he was provokingly
+silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had been too many years in a work-harness to shirk any responsibility
+along business lines now, and when, after supper, I heard Jamie say
+just before we left the dining-room: "I'm no end busy this evening,
+Gordon, I 'll work in here if you don't mind; I 'll be in for
+porridge," I knew my opportunity was already made for me. I told Mrs.
+Macleod that, as she could not tell me what was expected of me, I
+should not let another day go by without ascertaining this from Mr.
+Ewart. Perhaps she intentionally made the opening for my opportunity
+easier, for when I went into the living-room an hour later, I found Mr.
+Ewart alone with the dogs. He was at the library table, drawing
+something with scale and square.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pardon me for not rising," he said without looking up; "I don't want
+to spoil this acute angle; I 'm mapping out the old forest. I 'm glad
+you 're at liberty for I need some help."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At liberty!" I echoed; and, perceiving the humor of the situation, I
+could not help smiling. "That's just what I have come to you to
+complain of&mdash;I have too much liberty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You want work?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a bald statement of an axiomatic truth, and it was made while he
+was still intent upon finishing the angle. I stood near the table
+watching him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes." I thought the circumstances warranted conciseness, and my being
+laconic, if necessary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then we can come to an understanding without further preliminaries."
+He spoke almost indifferently; he was still intent on his work. "Be
+seated," he said pleasantly, looking up at me for the first time and
+directly into my face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I did as I was bidden, and waited. I am told I have a talent for
+waiting on another's unexpressed intentions without fidgetting, as so
+many women do, with any trifle at hand. I occupied myself with looking
+at the man whom Jamie loved, who "interested" him. I, too, found the
+personality and face interesting. By no means of uncommon type,
+nevertheless the whole face was noticeable for the remarkable moulding
+of every feature. There were lines in it and, without aging, every one
+told. They added character, gave varied expression, intensified
+traits. Life's chisel of experience had graven both deep and fine; not
+a coarse line marred the extraordinary firmness that expressed itself
+in lips and jaw; not a touch of unfineness revealed itself about the
+nose. Delicate creases beneath the eyes, and many of them, mellowed
+the almost hard look of the direct glance. Thought had moulded; will
+had graven; suffering had both hardened and softened&mdash;"tempered" is the
+right word&mdash;as is its tendency when manhood endures it rightly. But
+joy had touched the contours all too lightly; the face in repose showed
+absolutely no trace of it. When he smiled, however, as he did, looking
+up suddenly to find me studying him, I realized that here was great
+capacity for enjoying, although joyousness had never found itself at
+home about eyes and lips. He laid aside the drawing and turned his
+chair to face me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor Rugvie&mdash;and Cale," he added pointedly, "tell me you were for
+several years in a branch of the New York Library. Did you ever do any
+work in cataloguing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; I was studying for the examinations that last spring before I was
+taken ill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I am sure you will understand just how to do the work I have laid
+out for you. I have a few cases still in storage in Montreal&mdash;mostly
+on forestry. Before sending for them, I wanted to see where I could
+put them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cut and dried already! I need n't have given myself extra worry about
+my future work," I thought; but aloud I said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll do my best; if the books are German I can't catalogue them. I
+have n't got so far."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll take care of those; there are very few of them. Most of them
+are in French; in fact, it is a mild fad of mine to collect French
+works, ancient and modern, on forestry. I 'll send for the books after
+the office has been furnished and put to rights. I am expecting the
+furniture from Quebec to-morrow. And now that I have laid out your
+work for you for the present, I 'll ask a favor&mdash;a personal one," he
+added, smiling as he rose, thrust his hands deep into his pockets and
+jingled some keys somewhere in the depths.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?" I, too, rose, ready to do the favor on the instant if
+possible, for his wholly businesslike manner, the directness with which
+he relied upon my training to help him pleased me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'd like to leave the settling of my den in your hands&mdash;wholly," he
+said emphatically. "You have been so successful with the other rooms
+that I 'd like to see your hand in my special one. How did you know
+just what to do, and not overdo,&mdash;so many women are guilty of
+that,&mdash;tell me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He spoke eagerly, almost boyishly. It was pleasant to be able to tell
+him the plain truth; no frills were needed with this man, if I read him
+rightly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because it was my first chance to work out some of my home ideals&mdash;my
+first opportunity to make a home, as I had imagined it; then, too,&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I hesitated, wondering if I should tell not only the plain truth, but
+the unvarnished one. I decided to speak out frankly; it could do no
+harm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I enjoyed it all so much because I could spend some
+money&mdash;judiciously, you know,"&mdash;I spoke earnestly. He nodded
+understandingly, but I saw that he suppressed a smile,&mdash;"without having
+to earn it by hard work; I 've had to scrimp so long&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His face grew grave again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How much did you spend? I think I have a slight remembrance of some
+infinitesimal sum you mentioned the first evening&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Infinitesimal! No, indeed; it was almost a hundred&mdash;eighty-seven
+dollars and sixty-three cents, to be exact."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Miss Farrell!" It was his turn to protest. He went over to the
+hearth and took his stand on it, his back to the fire, his hands
+clasped behind him. "Do you mean to tell me that you provided all this
+comfort and made this homey atmosphere with eighty-seven dollars and
+sixty-three cents?&mdash;I'm particular about those sixty-three cents."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did, and had more good fun and enjoyment in spending them to that
+end, than I ever remember to have had before in my life. You don't
+think it too much?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked up at him and smiled; and smiled again right merrily at the
+perplexed look in his eyes, a look that suddenly changed to one of such
+deep, emotional suffering that my eyes fell before it. I felt
+intuitively I ought not to see it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too much!" he repeated, and as I looked up again quickly I found the
+face and expression serene and unmoved. "Well, as you must have
+learned already, things are relative when it comes to value, and what
+you have done for this house belongs in the category of things that
+mere money can neither purchase nor pay for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't quite see that; I thought it was I who was having all the
+pleasure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His next question startled me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are an orphan, I understand, Miss Farrell?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes." Again I felt the blood mount to my cheeks as I restated this
+half truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you must know what it is to be alone in the world?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;all alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps to have no home of your own?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To feel yourself a stranger even in familiar places?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes&mdash;many times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Surely, then, you will understand what it means for a lonely man to
+come back to this old manor, which I have occupied for years only at
+intervals, and more as a camping than an abiding place, and find it for
+the first time a home in fact?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I can understand it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very well, then," he said emphatically and holding out his hand into
+which I laid mine, wondering as I did so "what next" was to be expected
+from this man, "I am your debtor for this and must remain so; and in
+the circumstances," he continued with an emphasis at once so frank and
+merry, that it left no doubt of his sincerity as well as of his
+appreciation of the situation, "I think there need be no more talk of
+work, or wages, or reciprocal service between you and me as long as you
+remain with us. It's a pact, is n't it?" he said, releasing my hand
+from the firm cordial pressure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I want my wages," I protested with mock anxiety. "I really can't
+get on without money&mdash;and I was to have twenty-five dollars a month and
+'board and room' according to agreement."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed at that. I was glad to hear him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I have no responsibility for the agreement or what the
+advertisement has brought forth; it was one of the great surprises of
+my life to find you here. By the way, I hear you prefer to receive
+your pay from the Doctor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he tell you that?" I demanded, not over courteously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Professionally," he replied with assumed gravity. "I insisted on
+taking that pecuniary burden on myself, as I seemed to be the first
+beneficiary; but I 've changed my mind, and, hereafter, you may apply
+to the Doctor for your salary. I 'll take your service gratis and tell
+him so. Does this suit you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So completely, wholly and absolutely that&mdash;well, you 'll see! When
+can I take possession of the office? It needs a good cleaning down the
+first thing." I was eager to begin to prove my gratitude for the
+manner in which he had extricated me from the anomalous position in his
+household.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From this moment; only&mdash;no manual labor like 'cleaning down'; there
+are enough in the house for that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, nonsense!" I replied, laughing at such a restriction. "I 'm used
+to it&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I intend you to be unused to it in my house&mdash;you understand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was decided command in these words; they irritated me as well as
+the look he gave me. But I remembered in time that, after all, the old
+manor of Lamoral was his house, not mine, and it would be best for me
+to obey orders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very well; I 'll ask Marie and little Pete to help me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marie appeared with the porridge, a little earlier than usual on
+Jamie's account, and Mr. Ewart asked her to bring a lighted candle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come into the office for a moment," he said, leading the way with the
+light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stopped at the threshold to let me pass. The room was warm; the
+soapstone heater was doing effective work. The snow gleamed white
+beneath the curtainless windows, and the crowding hemlocks showed black
+pointed masses against the moonlight. There was some frost on the
+panes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It looks bare enough now," he said, raising the candle at the full
+stretch of his arm that I might see the oak panels of the ceiling; "I
+leave it to you to make it cheery. Here 's something that will help
+out in this room and in the living-room."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took a large pasteboard box from the floor, and we went back into
+the other room. Jamie and Mrs. Macleod were there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, what have you there, Gordon?" said the former, frankly showing
+the curiosity that is a part of his make-up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Something that should delight your inner man's eye," he replied.
+Going to the table, he opened the box and took from it some of the
+exquisite first and second proofs of those wonderful etchings by Meryon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We looked and looked again. Old Paris, the Paris of the second
+republic, lay spread before us: bridges, quays, chimney-pots, roofs,
+river and the cathedral of Notre Dame were there in black and white,
+and the Seine breathing dankness upon all! I possessed myself of one,
+the Pont Neuf, and betook myself to the sofa to enjoy it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know these, Miss Farrell?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only as I have seen woodcuts of them in New York."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are my favorites; I want nothing else on my walls. Will you
+select some for this room and some for the den? I will passepartout
+them; they should have no frames."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're just giving me the best treat you could possibly provide," I
+said, still in possession of the proof, "and how glad I am that I 've
+had it&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, Marcia?" This from Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean the chance to extract a little honey from the strong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod and Jamie looked thoroughly mystified, not knowing New
+York; but Mr. Ewart smiled at my enthusiasm and scripture application.
+He understood that some things during the years of my "scrimping" had
+borne fruit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe you 're more than half French, Ewart," said Jamie, looking
+up from the proof he was examining; "I mean in feeling and sympathy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I am all Canadian."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean English, don't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I mean Canadian."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was said with a fervor and a decision which had such a snap to it,
+that Jamie looked at him in surprise. Without replying, he continued
+his examination of the proof, whistling softly to himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart turned to Mrs. Macleod and said, smiling:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want all members of my household to know just where I stand; in the
+future we may have a good many English guests in the house.&mdash;Please,
+give me an extra amount of porridge, Mrs. Macleod."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0215"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+With the coming of the furniture and the furnishing of the office, my
+hands were full for the next week. During the time, Mr. Ewart was in
+Ottawa on business, and I worked like a Trojan to have everything in
+readiness on his return. I was determined he should be the first to
+see the transformation of his special room, and forbade Jamie to open
+the door so much as a crack that might afford him a peep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It does n't seem much like the manor with Ewart away and you invisible
+except at meals," he growled from the arm-chair he had placed just
+outside the sill of the office door. He begged me to leave the door
+open just a little way, enough to enable him to have speech with me&mdash;a
+privilege I granted, but reluctantly, for I was putting the books on
+the shelves and giving the task my whole attention. The last day of
+the week was with us, and Mr. Ewart was expected in a few hours. I
+stopped long enough, however, to peep at him through the inch-wide
+opening. He was drawing away at a cold pipe and looked wholly
+disconsolate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A new version of Omar Khayyàm," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'A pipe, you know ... and Thou<BR>
+Beside me, chatting in the wilderness.'"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose you 'll let me in when Ewart comes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've nothing to say about that; it is n't my den."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was under the impression it was wholly yours, judging from your
+possession of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, no sarcasm, Jamie Macleod; work is work, and there 's been a lot
+to do in here&mdash;not but what I 've taken solid comfort in putting this
+room into shape."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, we have seen that; even Cale remarked to me the other night
+that he 'guessed' Mr. Ewart knew a good thing when he saw it, as he had
+a general furnisher and library assistant all in one, who was working
+for his interest about as hard as she could."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good for Cale, he is a discerning person. But he seems to be
+following suit pretty closely along his lines."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hear you 're to catalogue the books that are in the den."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is my order."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you want me to help you? Old French is n't so easy sometimes,"
+he asked, coaxing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no; I 've help enough in Mr. Ewart. He knows it a good deal
+better than you do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Sass'," was Jamie's sole reply, a word he had borrowed from Cale's
+vocabulary; he used it to characterize my attitude towards his
+acquirements.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I worked on in silence till the books were housed; then I drew a long
+breath of satisfaction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that sigh for?" was the demand from the other side of the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For a noble deed accomplished, my friend."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Humph!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now move away your chair, I 'm coming out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no movement of the chair, and, to punish him, I locked the
+door on the inside and went out through the kitchen up to my room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I recall that afternoon: the heavy first-of-December skies; the
+gray-black look on the hemlocks; the faded trunks of the lindens; the
+dullness of the unreflecting snow; the intermittent soughing of the
+wind in the pines. All without looked drear, jaded, almost lifeless;
+the cold was penetrating. I determined that all within should be
+bright with home cheer on the master's return. Did he not say I had
+made a home of the old manor?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I recall dressing myself with unusual care and wishing I had some
+light-colored gown to help brighten the interior for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For him! I was looking in the mirror and coiling my hair when I
+realized my thought; to my amazement my own face seemed to me almost
+the face of a stranger. I saw that its thin oval had rounded, the
+cheeks gained a faint color; animation was in every feature, life
+anticipant in the eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what the change has done so soon; pure air, home life, good
+food and an abundance of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I failed to read the first sign.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was nothing for it but to put on the well-worn skirt of brown
+panama serge, a clean shirt waist and a white four-in-hand. I promised
+myself not only a warm coat out of the first month's wages, but a
+light-colored inexpensive dress that would harmonize with the general
+feeling of youthfulness of which my inner woman was now aware. I sat
+down at the window to wait for the sound of the pung bells. Soon there
+was a soft tap at my door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come in." Jamie made his appearance with a bunch of partridge berries
+in his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With Cale's compliments; he found them under the snow in the woods,
+and hopes you will do him the honor to wear them in your hair. He left
+them with me just before he went to meet Ewart; I had them under the
+arm-chair to present to you formally when you should come out of the
+den; instead of which, you ignominiously&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please, don't, Jamie&mdash;no coals of fire; give me the lovely things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, remember, you are to wear them in your hair, so Cale says."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's perfectly absurd&mdash;but I must do it to please him. Who would
+credit him with such an attention?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I stay while you put them in?" he asked meekly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you may, you sisterless youth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I parted the bunch, and pinned a spray on each side, in the coils and
+plaits of my over heavy hair. Jamie said nothing till this finishing
+touch had been put to my toilet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, it's ripping, Marcia. Cale will be your abject slave from
+henceforth. By the way, I 've never heard him call you 'Happy', as he
+proposed to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor I."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder what's the reason? Perhaps he thought he had been too fresh,
+and he does n't dare&mdash;There 's Ewart!" He was off on a run.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I thought I would wait for the various greetings to be over before
+going down. I felt sure I should not see his hand withdrawn this time,
+as on the occasion of his first home-coming. When I heard his voice
+below in the hall, I was aware of a warm thrill of delight, a joyous
+expectancy of good, a feeling as if the home-coming were my own; for
+never in my life had I been welcomed as he was, with a shout from
+Jamie, an outburst from the dogs, and joyful ejaculations from
+Angélique and Marie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went down, my cheeks glowing, my heart warm with the home-sense,
+and&mdash;I wondered at myself&mdash;my hand outstretched to his. When his
+closed upon it with the same cordial pressure of the week before, I
+knew for the first time in my life the joy of being "at home".
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And I failed to read the second sign.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0216"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XVI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It was a busy winter and a joyous one for me; a short and happy one for
+Jamie, so he said. He was correcting proof for the first venture and
+collecting data for the second; trying his hand at a chapter here and
+there; alternately despairing, rejoicing, appealing to Mr. Ewart or me
+for criticism&mdash;something we were unable to give him, as from disjointed
+portions of his work we did not know the trend of his ideas; protesting
+one day that he could write nothing worth reading, then on the next
+proclaiming to the household, including Cale, his temporary triumph of
+mind over material. We enjoyed his moods, all of them, whether of
+despair or enthusiasm, guying him in the one and encouraging him in the
+other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cataloguing took me well into the first week in January. Mr. Ewart
+was often in the den with me of an afternoon, and I was glad to take
+advantage of his knowledge of the language in translation, and the use
+of obsolete words. His own time seemed over full for those first few
+months. On Tuesday and Saturday mornings, he was always in the office
+to see the farmers on the estate and talk with them about his plans for
+future development. On other week-days, when weather permitted, he and
+Cale were much in the woods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I found that Mr. Ewart did not intend it should be all work and no play
+for me. Twice in December he drove me in the pung&mdash;no sleigh had as
+yet been purchased, although a piano filled a corner of the
+living-room; once, early in the morning, before the sun had a chance to
+warm and partly melt the ice-crystals that encased every branch, every
+twig and twiglet. On that morning, we drove without speech for miles
+behind the swiftly trotting French coach horses; the beauty about us
+was indescribable, and silence was the best appreciation. We sped
+through the woods'-road, a prismatic arcade of interlaced crystals;
+along the river bank beside the vast frozen expanse of the St.
+Lawrence, gleaming and glittering with blinding reflected radiance. It
+was so brilliant, that against it the trees by the roadside, laden as
+they were with ice, stood out black and gaunt. Then into
+Richelieu-en-Bas, where every roof, every fence, every post and rivet,
+looked to be pure rock crystal. Window-frames, eaves, doors, the old
+pump in the marketplace were behung with icicles. The world about us
+that morning was another world than the work-a-day one to which I was
+accustomed. I had seen this special condition of ice in northern New
+England, but never in such beauty and grandeur.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We drove home before the ice began to soften. Afterwards, I sat for an
+hour at my open window, listening to the musical tinkle and metallic
+clink of the falling ice from the trees in the woods across the creek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the reason given that Jamie and I needed exercise in the open
+every day,&mdash;our occupations being of the sedentary kind, as he
+said,&mdash;Mr. Ewart bade us fare forth with him to learn the art of
+snowshoeing. He was past master in it and a good teacher. By the
+middle of January we were well on our feet and independent of any help
+from him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, the joy of the fleet tracks over the unbroken white! Oh, the
+coursing of the blood, the deep, deep breaths of what Mr. Ewart called
+the "iced wine" air! Oh, the blessed hunger that was satisfied with
+wholesome food after the invigorating exercise! Oh, the refreshing
+sleep, with the temperature at zero and the still air touching my
+cheeks under the fur robe across my bed! And with it all the sense of
+security, the sense of peace, of rest!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In this atmosphere, the remembrance of the weary years in the great
+city grew dim. I rejoiced at it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was beginning, also, to make myself easily understood with the
+French. Their language I loved; their literature I cultivated. It was
+a delight to be able to visit the tiny homes in the village, whither I
+was sent on one errand or another by Mr. Ewart, so getting extra rides
+in the pung and longer hours in the bracing air. It was an education
+to make the acquaintance of various families, learn the names of every
+member of the households, their interests and occupations. They were
+such tiny homes, made so high of stoop to avoid the rising spring flood
+that the great river is apt to send far and wide and deep into the
+village streets, covering the noble park and flooding first floors,
+respecting neither twin-towered church nor manor house; so low in the
+walls, few-windowed, and those double and packed with moss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And such expansive souls as I found in the tiny homes: the hostess of
+the inn, Mrs. Macleod's dressmaker who lived beneath the shadow of the
+great twin-towered church; the furrier and his wife on the
+market-square; from them I bought my warm coat; ancient Mère
+Guillardeau and her old daughter, weaver of rag carpets, and some of
+her friends who followed the same calling and showed me, during the
+short winter days, how to weave them on their rough looms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of the three or four English families, with the exception of the
+postmistress, I knew nothing, or knew of them only through Mr. Ewart
+and Jamie. The "Seignior" and "Seignioress", so-called although
+English, were in Montreal for the winter. The old General and his wife
+were housed through infirmities. Now and then I saw a bevy of
+red-cheeked English girls, driving over from their home-school in Upper
+Richelieu for a jolly lark on their half-holiday. Of other English I
+heard nothing; there were none in Richelieu-en-Bas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the season advanced and I was firm on my winter feet, I made many a
+snow-shoe call on the farmers' families who lived on the old seigniory
+lands. It was good to hear them tell their hopes and anticipations;
+for Mr. Ewart's plan to do away with the old seigniorial rents and
+leases, and make of each farmer, at present paying rent, a freeholder,
+was welcomed, with almost passionate enthusiasm, in this community,
+where, generally, change is looked at askance. It was not long before
+I discovered that, on entering these homes, I found myself anticipating
+some word of praise, some expression of loyalty and devotion to the man
+who was to give them a new outlook on life. I listened with willing
+ears and led them, many times of my own accord, to speak of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the long winter evenings I read thoroughly into the history of
+French Canada. It took me far afield, into English as well; into
+biography and the work of pioneers. It showed me the flaming
+enthusiasm of the fanatic, the faith of the apostle, the courage of
+high adventure, the chivalry of noble lives, the loyalty and devotion
+of the humble. It showed me, also, the cruelty of man to man, the
+divergence of race, the warring of nations, the battlefields, the
+conquests, the heavy hand of the conqueror, the red man's friendship,
+the red man's enmity, fire, sword, torture. But in and through and
+above all, it opened to me the high heart of the Canadian, the
+undaunted faith in established principles, and the patriotism that is a
+veritable passion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Canada, my Canada!" an old French Canadian once exclaimed to me as
+we sat by the box-stove in his little "cabin". "There is no land like
+it; no land where they live at peace as we do here; no land where they
+are so content by their own fireside." And he spoke the truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I began to understand, through my intercourse with our neighbors on the
+estate and the village people, those words of Drummond&mdash;Drummond who
+has shown us the hearts of Canada's children:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Our fathers came to win us<BR>
+This land beyond recall&mdash;<BR>
+And the same blood flows within us<BR>
+Of Briton, Celt and Gaul&mdash;<BR>
+Keep alive each glowing ember<BR>
+Of our sireland, but remember<BR>
+Our country is Canadian<BR>
+Whatever may befall.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Then line up and try us,<BR>
+Whoever would deny us<BR>
+The freedom of our birthright,<BR>
+And they 'll find us like a wall&mdash;<BR>
+For we are Canadian, Canadian forever,<BR>
+Canadian forever&mdash;Canadian over all!"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+One night in February, just before the Doctor's mid-winter visit, a
+friend of the dead poet passed a night beneath the roof of the old
+manor house as Mr. Ewart's guest. After the yellow chintz curtains
+were close drawn, so shutting out the wintry night, and while the
+backlog was glowing, he read to us from those poems that at the
+author's will exact tears or smiles from their hearers. After the
+reading of "The Rossignol", Jamie took his seat at the piano and played
+softly that exquisite old French Canadian air "<I>Sur la montagne</I>".
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart rose and, taking his stand beside him, sang the words of the
+poem which have been set to this music.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Jus' as de sun is tryin'<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Climb on de summer sky<BR>
+Two leetle birds come flyin'<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Over de mountain high&mdash;<BR>
+Over de mountain, over de mountain,<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hear dem call,<BR>
+Hear dem call&mdash;poor leetle rossignol!"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+They recalled to me that twin song of Björnson's which, despite its
+joyous note of anticipation, holds the same pathos of unsatisfied
+longing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The last note had scarcely been struck when Jamie broke into the jolly
+accompaniment to
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"For he was a grand Seigneur, my dear,<BR>
+He was a grand Seigneur."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+And, listening so to poems and music and the talk of these men of fine
+mind and high aspirations, to their hopes for Canada as a whole, to
+their expression of pride in her marvellous growth and their faith in
+her future, I said to myself:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I the girl, or rather woman now, who a few years ago made her way
+up from the narrow thoroughfares about Barclay Street to her attic room
+in 'old Chelsea'&mdash;up through the traffic-congested streets of New York,
+in the dark of the late winter afternoon, the melting snow falling in
+black drops and streams from the elevated above her; the avenues
+running brown snow-water; the rails gleaming; the steaming horses
+plashing through slush; the fog making haloes about the dimmed
+arc-lights; the hurrying, pressing tide of humanity surging this way
+and that and nearly taking her off her feet at the crossings; the whole
+city reeking with a warm-chill mist, and the shrieking, grinding,
+grating, whistling, roaring polyglot din of the metropolis half
+deafening her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thinking of this as I stared into the fire, listening to the good talk
+on many subjects, something&mdash;was it the frost of homelessness?&mdash;melted
+in my heart. The feelings and emotions that had been benumbed through
+the icy chill of circumstance, thawed within me. The tears, usually
+unready, filled my eyes. I bent my head that the others might not see,
+but they fell faster and faster. And with every one that plashed on my
+hands, as they lay folded in my lap, I felt the unbinding from my life
+of one hard year after another, until the woman who rose to bring in
+the porridge, in order to cover her emotion, was one who rose free of
+all thwarting circumstance. I had come into my own&mdash;a woman's own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I failed to read the third sign.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0217"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XVII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Doctor Rugvie's visit! It was fruitful of much, little as I
+anticipated that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I wrote regularly every month to Delia Beaseley telling her all that I
+knew would be of interest to her about my life at Lamoral, and assuring
+her that my lines had fallen in pleasant places. She wrote, at first,
+to tell me that my wish, in regard to keeping my identity from Doctor
+Rugvie for the present, would be respected; but in a later letter she
+urged me to make it known to him; to ascertain all the facts possible
+about my parentage. I replied that I preferred to wait.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And why did I prefer to wait? I asked myself this question and found
+no answer. When the answer came, it was unmistakable in its leadings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A letter from Doctor Rugvie; he is coming Monday!" I cried joyfully,
+flourishing the sheet in Jamie's face when he appeared at the door to
+ask for his mail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was sitting on the floor by the shelves in the living-room, for I was
+busy cataloguing the books in the general and mixed collection, and
+searching for allied subjects. This work Mr. Ewart assigned to me
+after I had finished the "forestry" cataloguing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where 's mine?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have n't any, nor Mr. Ewart&mdash;from the Doctor, I mean."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You seem to be particularly elated over the fact."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jamie, my friend, feel&mdash;" I held up the envelope to him; he took it
+and fingered it investigatingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's this in it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is an object which in international currency exchange we call a
+draft&mdash;the equivalent of my wages, Jamie; in other words, payment for
+industrial efficiency; do you hear?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My, but you are a mercenary woman! One of the kind we read of in the
+States," he retorted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait till you get your first check for royalties from London, then use
+that word and tone to me again if you dare."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart opened the door of the office.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's this I hear about the Doctor and mercenary tendencies&mdash;the two
+don't go together as I happen to know." He spoke from the threshold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie showed him the envelope, holding it high above my head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This, Ewart, is the compensation for sundry days of so-called labor on
+the part of Miss Farrell&mdash;drives, snow-shoeing, tobogganing with Cale
+not discounted, of course. Shall I read it, Marcia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For all I care."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart looked on smiling at our chaff.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's on the First National Bank of New York, Ewart, for the amount of
+fifty-two dollars and eighty-seven cents&mdash;how 's that about the cents,
+Marcia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because the Doctor insists on paying me every two months and seems to
+call thirty days a month&mdash;why every two, I don't know, do you?" I said
+laughing, and looking up, questioning, into Mr. Ewart's face. What I
+saw there, what I am sure Jamie saw, was not encouraging for more
+jesting on Jamie's part or mine. He turned away abruptly and sat down
+at his desk before he spoke:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Doctor wired me this afternoon that he would be here to-night
+instead of Monday, as he can get in an extra day. I can't say how
+sorry I am it has happened so, for I made arrangements to be in Quebec
+to-night and in Ottawa to-morrow night. I return Monday. Well, I must
+leave him in your hands&mdash;he won't lack entertainment. I wish, Jamie,
+it were possible for you to risk it and meet him with me this evening;
+but I suppose this night air is too keen&mdash;it's ten below now. I shall
+take the train he comes on and may not have time for a word of welcome."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose it would be risking too much." Jamie spoke with something
+that sounded like a sigh. "I don't want the Doctor to roar at me the
+first thing because I am indiscreet&mdash;not after what he and his advice
+and kindness have done for me already."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart laid a hand on his shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're another man, Macleod, since coming here. We won't make any
+back tracks into that wilderness, will we?" He spoke so gently, so
+affectionately, that Jamie turned suddenly to him, exclaiming
+impulsively:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gordon, if you were a woman I 'd kiss you for saying that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew what courage it gave him to hear this from his friend; and I
+wondered what kind of a man this might be who, one moment, could look
+stern and unyielding at our half childish chaffing, and in the next be
+all affectionate solicitude for this younger man who, at times, was all
+boy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, Miss Farrell," he turned to me, "won't you come? Cale will
+drive me over in the double pung."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no hesitation in my giving an affirmative answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 'll have supper within an hour, please, Mrs. Macleod," he said, as
+she entered the room. He looked at the pile of books on the floor
+beside me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's too late for you to work any more." He stooped and, gathering up
+an armful, began to place them. "Will you be so kind as to speak to
+Marie and tell her to have four soapstones thoroughly heated, and ask
+Cale to warm the robes? It will be twenty below before you get back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just what I 've wanted to do all winter," I exclaimed; "a drive on
+such a clear, full-moon night to Richelieu-en-Haut will be something to
+remember."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope to make it so; for it's a typical Canadian midwinter night&mdash;a
+thing of splendor if seen with seeing eyes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you won't expect me to talk much, will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No,"&mdash;he smiled genially, and Jamie audaciously winked at me behind
+his back,&mdash;"it's apt to make my teeth ache, and although yours are as
+sound as mine, I don't believe they can stand prolonged exposure to
+severe cold any better. But how about Cale? There is no ice embargo
+on his flow of speech."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie burst into a laugh. "You 're right, Gordon, he 'll do all the
+talking for both, and for the Doctor too. By the way, mother," he
+said, turning to Mrs. Macleod and at the same time holding out a hand
+to help me up from the floor&mdash;an attention I ignored to save his
+strength&mdash;"something Cale said the other day, but casually, led me to
+think he may be a benedict instead of a bachelor; you have n't found
+out yet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but sometime it will come right for me to ask him. He has
+consideration for women in just those little things that would lead me
+to believe that he has been married&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I say, mother, that's rough on Ewart and me. Give us a point or
+two on the 'little things', will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stop teasing, Jamie; I still think, as I thought from the first, that
+he has been&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps more than once, mother! Perhaps he 's a widower, or even a
+grass widower&mdash;I 've heard of such in the States&mdash;or he might be a
+divorcé, or a Mormon, or a swami gone astray&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Havers!" she exclaimed, with a show of resentment which caused her son
+to rejoice, for it was only when thoroughly out of patience with him
+that she used the Scotch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're too absurd," I said with a warning look.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother is for stiff back-boned unrelentingness in such things," he
+remarked soberly, after she and Mr. Ewart left the room; "and I 've put
+my foot into it too," he added dolefully. "Why, the deuce, did n't you
+stop me in time?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did I know how far your nonsense would lead you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I don't care&mdash;much; I can't step round on eggs just because of
+what I 've heard&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If only you had n't said anything about 'grass widower'!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't rub it in so," he said pettishly, and by that same token I knew
+he was repentant because, without intention, he might have spoken in a
+way to hurt momentarily his friend.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Beats all how dumb critters scent a change," said Cale, just after
+supper. He was loaded with the robes he had been warming. Pierre was
+waiting in the pung, having brought the horses around a little early.
+Little Pete with a soapstone was following Cale. "They begun to be
+uneasy 'bout two hours ago; I take it they heard Mr. Ewart say he was
+leavin' on the night express, and begun to get nerved up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So they did, Cale; they were in the office, all four of them, and
+heard every word. Look at them!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale stopped on his way to the front door and looked up the stairway.
+Mr. Ewart was coming down, a dog on each side of him, and two behind
+fairly nosing his heels. They made no demonstration; were not
+apparently expectant; but, as Cale remarked 'they froze mighty close to
+him', sneaking down step by step beside and behind him, ears drooping,
+tails well curled between their legs&mdash;four despairing setters!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We watched them. Mr. Ewart paid no heed to them. They heeled along in
+the passageway almost on their bellies when he took his fur coat from
+the hook. He had another on his arm which he held open for me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I really am warmly enough dressed," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't doubt it&mdash;for now; but you 'll be grateful enough to me three
+hours later for insisting on your wearing it&mdash;in with you!" He moved a
+dog or two from under his feet, gently but forcibly with the tip of his
+boot; whereupon they literally crawled on the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you don't mind, Cale,"&mdash;he spoke purposely in a low monotone, but
+with a look of amusement,&mdash;"if you don't mind having the dogs in with
+you under the robes on the front seat, I 'm willing to have them go,
+but I don't want them to run with the pung."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I noticed no movement on the part of the dogs except an intense
+quivering of the whole body. One who does not understand doghood might
+have fancied they were shivering at the prospect of the eighteen-mile
+drive in the cold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ain't no objection," said Cale; "the fact is there ain't no better
+foot-warmer 'n a dog on a cold night, an' I was goin' ter ask if I
+could n't have the loan of one of 'em fer ter-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, they can all go&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The last word was drowned in a chaos of frantically joyous barks. They
+leaped on him, caressed him, stood up with their forepaws stemmed on
+the breast of his fur coat, licked his boots, his hands, and attempted
+his face&mdash;but of that he would have none.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be still now&mdash;and come on, comrades!" he said. The four made a mad
+but silent rush for the door. Cale gave them right of way; Pierre
+swore great French oaths wholly disproportionate to the occasion, for
+the outrush of the dogs caused the French coach horses to plunge only
+twice. At last we were in&mdash;the dogs in front with Cale, and Mr. Ewart
+and I on the back seat, so muffled in furs, fur robes, fur caps, coats
+and mittens, that we humans were scarce to be distinguished from our
+canine neighbors.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We no longer used the frozen creek for a crossing, but drove a mile up
+the road to the highroad bridge. The night was very cold. The moon
+had not yet risen. The stars shone with Arctic splendor. Cale drove
+us rapidly over the dry, hard-packed snow&mdash;to my amazement in silence.
+Through the woods, down the river road we sped, and on through
+Richelieu-en-Bas. The light in the cabaret by the steamboat landing
+shone dimly; the panes were thick with frost. Here and there a bright
+lamp gleamed from some window, but, as a whole, the village was dark.
+We drove on to the open country towards Richelieu-en-Haut six miles
+away, sometimes through a short stretch of deep woods where the horses
+shied at the misshapen stumps, snow-covered. Then out into the open
+again, the flat expanse of white seemingly unbroken. Here and there,
+far across the snow-fields, I caught a glimpse of a light from some
+farmhouse. Once we heard the baying of a hound, at which all four
+setters came suddenly to life from beneath the robes and barked
+vindictive response.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To the north the sky was dark and less star-strewn than above.
+Suddenly I was aware of a wondrous change: the stars paled; the north
+glowed with tremulous light, translucent yellow that deepened to
+gold&mdash;an arc of gold spanning twenty degrees on the horizon. The glory
+quivered; ran to and fro; fluctuated from east to west, unstable as
+liquid, ethereal as gas; paled gradually; then, in the twinkling of an
+eye, dissolved, and in its dissolution sent streamer after streamer,
+rose, saffron, pale crocus and white, rapidly zenithward, rising,
+sinking, undulating, till the heavens were filled with marvellous
+light. Cale reined in the horses for a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess this can't be beat by the biggest show on earth," he remarked
+appreciatively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look to the right&mdash;the east, Miss Farrell," said Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I leaned forward to look past him. Over the white expanse, lightened
+in the rays of the northern aurora, the moon, nearly full, showed the
+half of its red-gold disk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The glory faded from the heavens; the moon, rising rapidly, sent its
+beams over the fields; the horses saw their shadows long on the off
+side. Cale chirruped to them, and we sped onwards to the station.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was happy! If Cale had called me by that name at this time I would
+have welcomed it. It applied to me. It was good to be alive; good to
+be out in such a world of natural glory; good to have, in the night and
+the silence, such companionship that understood my own silence of
+enjoyment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was happy at the prospect of the Doctor's coming. The thought of the
+future removal to the farm no longer filled me with misgivings. "I
+shall still be near the manor, it will not be banishment in any sense."
+So I comforted myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned to get a look over the ridge of fur at the man beside me. He
+had spoken but once, to ask if I were comfortable. I wondered if he
+were enjoying all this as much as I? He must have read my thought for
+he turned his face to me, saying:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am enjoying all this on my own behalf, and doubly because your
+enjoyment of it is so evident."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How evident? You can't see that, and I have n't said a word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps for that very reason."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He leaned over and drew the robe farther about my exposed shoulder. I
+felt the strength of his arm as he pulled at the heavy pelt, the
+gentleness of his touch as he tucked it behind my back. So little of
+this thoughtfulness and care had been mine! Almost nothing of it in my
+life! No wonder that other women who are cared for, carried on loving
+hands, protected by the bulwark of a man's love, cannot understand what
+the simple adjustment of that robe around a chilled shoulder meant to
+me, Marcia Farrell!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was always doing something in general for my comfort and pleasure,
+but never anything special. Even this drive I owed to Jamie's physical
+inability to accept his friend's invitation. But this fact did not
+quench my joy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you comfortable&mdash;feet warm?" he asked for the second time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As warm as toast."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What was it that I felt as I continued to sit silent by this man's
+side?&mdash;an alien, I had called him to the Doctor; fool that I was! I
+felt a peculiar sense of perfect physical rest I had never before
+experienced, a consciousness of happy companionship that needed no word
+to make itself understood. This sense of companionship, this rest of
+soul and body during the two hours I passed at this man's side&mdash;I
+enjoyed them to the full. The feelings and emotions of the woman who,
+only a few evenings before, had thrown off the yoke of burdening
+circumstance, who had broken, to her own physical benefit, with past
+associations and memories, found scope, in the protecting night and the
+silence, for perilous nights of imagination. Thoughts undreamed of
+hitherto, desires I had never supposed permissible in my narrow walk of
+life, proved their power over me at this hour. Hopes unbounded, if
+wholly unfounded,&mdash;for what had this man ever said to me since his
+home-coming that he had not said a dozen times to every member of his
+household?&mdash;imagined joys of another, a dual life&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," I said to myself, giving rein to pleasing fantasy, "a dual life
+in one&mdash;our lives, his and mine, one and inseparable; why not, Marcia
+Farrell? Why should n't I grasp with both hands outstretched at all
+life may have to give me? Why not hold it fast even if it have thorns?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Imagination was carrying me out of myself. I called a halt to all this
+frenzy, as it at once appeared to me by the cold light of the moon, and
+brought myself down to earth and common sense with a jolt. I moved
+uneasily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you cold?" Mr. Ewart asked, evidently noticing the movement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; but too much aurora, I 'm afraid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you feel that too? I thought I would n't mention it, but
+something affected me powerfully for the moment, and there has been an
+aftermath of sensation since. If this display is wholly electrical, it
+may easily be that some human machines are tuned like the wireless to
+catch certain vibrations at certain times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I sat down hard, metaphorically, on eight feet of frozen earth upon
+hearing this explanation. "You little fool," I said to myself, but
+aloud:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whatever it was, it was effectual; I have never experienced anything
+like it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; have you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The answer seemed long in coming.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, many years ago; and it was here in this northern country too.
+Sometime I would like to tell you about it.&mdash;Cale," he spoke quickly,
+abruptly, "I hear the train. Keep the horses in the open roadway
+behind the station, then if they bolt at the headlight you can have
+free rein and a clear road. They 've never seen that light. We 'll
+get out here," he said, throwing off the robes as Cale drew rein at the
+edge of the platform, "and you can welcome the Doctor for me if I miss
+him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He whisked me out of the pung, giving me both hands as aid, and
+replaced the robes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Keep the horses head on, and don't let the dogs run," were his last
+words to Cale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Quebec express whistled at the curve an eighth of a mile distant
+from the junction; the sound fell strangely flat in the intense cold.
+Cale braced himself to handling the horses. I followed Mr. Ewart to
+the front of the platform.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The engine was thundering past us, and the train drawing to a stop of
+fifteen seconds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take off your mitten," he said abruptly; I pulled it off with a jerk.
+He held out his ungloved hand, and I laid mine within it. The two
+palms, warm, throbbing with coursing life, met&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goodby till Monday&mdash;and thank you for coming. There he is!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had just time to see the Doctor appear on the platform at the other
+end of the car. Mr. Ewart called to him as he swung himself on to the
+already moving train:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"John, look out for Miss Farrell&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dazed Doctor failed to grasp the situation. Mr. Ewart waved his
+hand as he passed him; "Till Monday&mdash;Miss Farrell will explain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Farrell, eh?" The Doctor turned to me who was at his side by
+means of an awkward skip and a jump, cumbered as I was with the long
+coat. "Br-r-rre! Is this the weather you give me as a greeting?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why don't you say rather: 'Is this the weather you brave to meet me
+in?' Would n't that sound more to the point? Come on to the pung; the
+soapstones are fine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;that sounds more like Canadian hospitality. Come on yourself,
+Marcia Farrell; where's the pung?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Behind the station, that is, if the horses have n't bolted with Cale
+and the four dogs. Here he is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Four canine noses were visible above the robes; eight delicate nostrils
+were flaring after the departing train. At the sound of the Doctor's
+voice a concerted howl arose from among the robes on the front seat&mdash;a
+howl expressive of disappointment, of betrayal by their master: "He is
+gone, we are left behind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shut up," said Cale shortly, with a significant movement of his foot
+beneath the robes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Cale!" I made protest, for at that moment I sympathized. I should
+have felt the same had I been a dog; as it was&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked after the swiftly receding train, a bright beaded trailing
+line of black in the white night. The Doctor was opening the robes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In with you, and then we can talk; there 's no wind to prevent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As soon as he was seated beside me and the horses' heads turned
+homewards, he began to chat in his cheery way, he asking, I answering
+the many questions; he telling of Delia Beaseley and his delight to be
+in Canada again, I inquiring, until we found ourselves passing through
+Richelieu-en-Bas. And during all the time I was listening to his merry
+chat and chaffing, to his kindly expressed interest in all that
+pertained to my small doings at the manor, I was hearing the on-coming
+thunder of the engine and those last words: "Take off your
+mitten&mdash;Good-by till Monday&mdash;thank you for coming."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+During that hour and a half of our homeward drive, I gave no heed to
+the perfect Canadian night, its silver radiance, its snow gleam and
+sparkle enhancing the violet shadows. I was seeing only that
+long-stretching waste of white beyond the junction, that bright beaded
+trailing line of black, narrowing and foreshortened as it receded
+swiftly into the night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And where was the sense of physical rest? Why had this unrest I was
+experiencing taken its place? I was sitting beside as good a man, as
+fine a man, one more than that other's equal in achievement, as the
+world counts achievement. I was groping for a solution when the Doctor
+exclaimed: "There's the manor!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The white walls and snow-covered roof stood out boldly against the
+black massed background of spruce, hemlock and pine. The yellow chintz
+curtains were drawn apart, showing us both the gleam of lamplight and
+the leaping firelight. At the windows in the living-room were Jamie
+and his mother; at those of the dining-room both Angélique and Marie
+were visible for a moment. The Pierres, father and son, were at the
+steps to lend a helping hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are at home again, Marcia," the Doctor spoke significantly. I
+responded, simulating joyousness:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and does n't it give us a warm cheery welcome?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But even as I replied, I was conscious that the old manor of Lamoral
+without its master would never be home for me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went up the steps answering gayly to Jamie's "Is he here?" But by
+the emptiness of heart, by the emptiness of the passageway, by the
+empty sound of the various greetings, joyous and hearty as they in
+truth were, I knew I needed no fourth sign to interpret myself to
+myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My woman's hour had struck&mdash;and with no uncertain sound.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0218"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XVIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"And what next?" I asked myself after my head was on the pillow and
+while staring hour after hour at the opposite wall. Surely I had read
+enough of love! I had imagined what it might be like, even if I had
+never experienced it, even if I had thought little enough about it in
+connection with myself. I did not know it on what might be called the
+positive side, but I seemed to have some knowledge of it negatively. I
+knew it could be cruel, cruel as death; my own mother was a dead
+witness to that. I knew it could be brutal when passion alone means
+love; I was eye witness to this on Columbia Heights not so very long
+ago. I knew, or thought I knew, that it could be killed, or rather
+worn to a thread by the slow grinding of adverse circumstance. I
+recalled my own lack of affection after the years of sacrifice for the
+imbecile grandfather, my shiftless aunt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now, in the face of such knowledge, to have this revelation! This
+sudden absorption in another of my humankind; all my thought at once,
+without warning, transferred to that other wherever he might be; all
+interest in life centering with the force of gravity in that other's
+life; "at home" only in that other's presence; at rest only by his
+side&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, look here, Marcia Farrell, don't you be Jane Eyrey," I said to
+myself in a low but stern voice. I sat up in bed and drew the extra
+comforter about my shoulders. "No nonsense at your age! You accept
+the fact that you love this man,&mdash;and you will have to whether you want
+to or not,&mdash;a man who has never spoken a word of love to you, who has
+treated you with the consideration, it is no more, no less than that,
+which he shows to every member of his household. Now, make the most of
+this fact, but without showing it. Don't make the youthful mistake,
+since you are no longer a girl, of fancying he is reciprocating what
+you feel, feeling your every feeling, thinking your every thought.
+And, above all, don't betray your self at this crisis of your life, to
+him or any member of his household&mdash;not to Delia Beaseley, not to
+Doctor Rugvie. Rest in his presence when you can. Rejoice to be near
+him&mdash;but inwardly, only, remember that!&mdash;when you shall find
+opportunity, but don't make one; discipline yourself in this, there
+will be need enough for it. 'Stick to your sure trot'; give full
+compensation in work for your wages&mdash;and enjoy what this new life may
+offer you from day to day. This new joy is your own; keep it to
+yourself. Now lie down for good and all, and go to sleep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thereupon I snugged down among the welcome warmth of the bed-clothes,
+saying to myself:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't care 'what next'. I am so happy&mdash;happy&mdash;happy&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But, even as I spoke that word softly&mdash;oh, so softly!&mdash;laying the palm
+of my right hand, that still felt the strong throbbing of his, under my
+cheek, I remembered that Cale had never once called me by the name he
+had proposed, "Happy"; that Jamie noticed the omission and remarked on
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And what did Cale know? What could he know? There used to be a family
+of Marstins in our town before I was born. My aunt told me once that
+her sister married into the family; that, too, was before I was born.
+I never knew any one of the name, and I never cared to look at the old
+family headstones. The churchyard, because it held my mother, was
+hateful to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And I? I was too cowardly to ask Cale why he omitted to call me by his
+chosen name; for by that name my mother was known among her own, so I
+was told&mdash;that mother whom I never knew, whose memory I never loved, of
+whom I was ashamed because people said she had belied her womanhood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But ever since Delia Beaseley opened my eyes to a portion of the truth
+concerning her, I had felt great pity for her. Now, at the thought of
+her, dying for love, for this very thing that had come to me like
+lightning out of the blue, dying without friends in that dull basement
+in V&mdash;&mdash; Court, my heartstrings contracted, literally, for I
+experienced a feeling of suffocation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother, oh, mother," I cried out under my breath, "was it for this,
+that I know to be love, you gave your all, even life itself? Oh, I
+have understood so little&mdash;so little; I have been so hard, mother. I
+did n't know&mdash;forgive me, mother&mdash;forgive, I never knew&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It eased me to speak out these words, although I knew that in giving
+utterance to them my ears were the only ones the sound of my pleading
+could reach. Those ears, on which the word mother would have fallen so
+blessedly, would never hear, could never hear. Not so very far away,
+in northern New England, the snows lay white and deep, as white and
+deep as in Canada, on her neglected grave.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something Delia Beaseley quoted from my mother in her hour of trial
+flashed again into consciousness: "The little life that is coming is
+worth all this." And my mother must have said it knowing all the joy,
+the bliss, the suffering, both of body and of soul, that this love must
+in due time bring to her daughter, because she was a woman-child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What a Dolorous Way my mother must have trodden, must have been willing
+to tread for <I>this</I>!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There are minutes, rare in the longest lives, when life becomes so
+intensified that vision clears almost preternaturally, sees through
+telescopic lenses, so to speak. At such moments, the soul becomes so
+highly sensitized that it may photograph for future reference the birth
+or passing of Love's star.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0219"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XIX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"It's my innings now, while Ewart is away," said the Doctor; "Marcia,
+will you go skiing to-morrow with me and Cale?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did n't I promise you I would wait till you came?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know you did; but possession, you know, is nine tenths of the law,
+and Ewart has been having it all his own way here with you since I
+left. He did, however, give me a parting word to look out for you. I
+don't see that you need much looking after; a young lady perfectly able
+to look out for herself, eh, Mrs. Macleod?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps the circumstances warranted some sort of chaperonage, Doctor,"
+said Mrs. Macleod, entering into his fun and frolic as into no one's
+else. "As Marcia sets it forth, she was alone, except for you, on the
+platform of the junction nine miles from home, with Cale braced in the
+pung on the highroad, ready for the horses to bolt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said the Doctor, musing, "the circumstances were slightly out of
+the ordinary.&mdash;A full bowl, if you please, Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were sitting around the hearth in the livingroom on the following
+Sunday evening. Porridge had just been brought in and I was dispensing
+it. Mr. Ewart's insistence upon Cale's joining us at this hour every
+evening, and remaining with us when no guest was present&mdash;the Doctor we
+counted one of us&mdash;had for result that, many an evening, we listened
+delighted and interested to his stories of adventure in the new
+Northwest. He was, in truth, a man of the woods, a man also of their
+moods, and like them showing track and trail, leafy underbrush,
+primeval forest trees, and the darling flowers of the forest as well;
+but, also, like them, withholding from our eyes the secret springs of
+his life. We often wondered if ever he would disclose any one of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Yankee brother to old André," was Jamie's definition of him. He
+seldom spoke of matters personal to himself, so seldom that Jamie's
+great joke, perpetrated in his mother's presence and mine, was to the
+effect that "Ewart and Cale and Marcia are all enlisted in the
+reserves, mother; and only you, the Doctor, and I are able to fight in
+the open." The full significance of which good-natured raillery I
+understood, and answered him accordingly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All in good time, Jamie. There is so little to tell, it's worth while
+to keep you guessing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was serving Cale with his portion of porridge when he spoke,
+answering the question put by the Doctor to <I>me</I>. Cale had been
+gradually appropriating me since my coming, and I had no cause to
+resent his right of proprietorship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess 'twill take two ter hold her up the fust few times; but Marcia's
+nimble on her feet; she 'll outstrip us soon. She 's a mighty good one
+on snowshoes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ewart taught you, did n't he?" said the Doctor, turning to me and
+holding out his bowl the second time. "Just a spoonful more, if you
+please. I take it this oatmeal came direct from Scotland, did n't it,
+Mrs. Macleod?" She nodded a pleased affirmative.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and a fine teacher he is too," I responded heartily. I was
+determined the Doctor should not find me backward or awkward when his
+friend's name was mentioned. With the thought that to-morrow that
+friend would be with me&mdash;us&mdash;again, I found my spirits rising. It was
+hard to repress them. Perhaps the Doctor's keen eye noticed something
+in my manner, for he spoke with emphasis:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, something has made you over; there 's no exercise like it in
+this northern climate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I guess 't ain't all snow-shoeing," said Cale sententiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're right, Cale," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Account for it then, Cale; I 'd like to hear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 'll give Doctor Rugvie the recipe for all the future farm-folks,
+won't we?" I nodded understandingly at Cale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So we will&mdash;so we will," he replied thoughtfully. "Out with it, Cale.
+What is it has changed Marcia so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, if you want to know I can give it ter you&mdash;a reg'lar tonic to be
+taken daily in big doses. It's old-fashioned, mebbe, but genu<I>ine</I>,"
+he said with so comical an emphasis and inflection that we laughed.
+"It can't be beat, you 'll see. Take equal parts of dry clean air, so
+bracin' thet sometimes a man feels as if he was walkin' on it, good
+food and plenty of it, good comp'ny. Shake 'em well together to get
+out the lumps, and mix well in&mdash;a good home. I take it thet's about
+it, Doctor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale, you old Hippocrates," said the Doctor, delighted at Cale's gift
+of speech, for he had heard him discourse only on "hosses" when he was
+with us the first time, "you 'd be worth three thousand dollars a year
+to me as consulting hygienist. Do you want the job?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No." He spoke decidedly. "This job 's good enough fer me. I hope 't
+will be for life now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ewart's colors again, eh, Jamie?" He turned to Jamie with a lift of
+his eyebrows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Winning all along the course, Doctor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you know all that, Cale?" The Doctor dropped his chaffing and
+looked over earnestly at Cale beside the chimney-piece.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Know what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The fact that those special ingredients must be mixed in a good home
+to prove so effectual as in Marcia's case?" He turned to examine me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do I know it?" He spoke slowly, almost with hesitation, and
+beneath his bushy eyebrows I thought I saw a suspicious glitter in his
+small keen gray eyes, but it may have been imagination. "I have n't
+always been a lonely man, you know&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's just what I don't know, Cale." The Doctor spoke with the
+encouragement of good fellowship, not as one willing or wanting to ask
+his confidence, but as one hoping in friendship to receive it. I am
+sure we all felt with the Doctor at this moment, for Cale's reticence
+had been a matter of concern to Jamie and Mrs. Macleod. But Jamie had
+respected his silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale set his emptied bowl on the tray and sat down again, making
+himself comfortable by crossing his legs. He heaved a sigh of
+satisfaction. Mrs. Macleod, Jamie and I read that sign; Cale was ready
+to expand a little more in the cheerful atmosphere of friends and
+fireside. We three knew that what he had to retail would be well worth
+hearing. Jamie settled himself in the sofa corner as usual. The
+Doctor insisted on carrying the tray to the kitchen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, this is good," he said, seating himself by me and spreading his
+hands to the blaze. "We shan't be interrupted, and the rest of the
+evening is ours. It's a bitter night, too, which, by contrast, makes
+this comfort delectable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We waited, expectant, for Cale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 've been wonderin' now fer 'bout six months, Mis' Macleod, you an'
+Jamie, whether I was a married man or not, now, hain't you?" He smiled
+as he spoke, the creases about his eyes deepening slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod, with an embarrassment we all enjoyed seeing, moved to a
+seat beside him; saying gently, if deprecatingly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I could n't help it, Cale."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How could you, bein' a woman?" he replied as gently. "An' you too,
+Marcia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course; don't I belong to the weaker sex? But here is Jamie,
+although a man&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I say, Marcia, that's not playing fair," Jamie growled at me as if
+indifferent; but I knew his curiosity was at the flood, and Cale knew
+it too. I feared he might tease without satisfying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I 'm married, Mis' Macleod, an' it seems as if I 'd always been
+married."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie's recent remark about Cale's being a widower, grass-widower,
+divorcé, Mormon, etc., came back to me, and I could hardly keep from
+laughing aloud at Mrs. Macleod's look of dismay and amazement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say I'm married, fer you see that once married is always married
+with <I>me</I>," he repeated emphatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor nodded approvingly. "No uncertain note about that, Cale."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No sir&mdash;<I>ee</I>," Cale nodded understandingly at him in turn, much to
+Jamie's delight. "A marriage when it <I>is</I> a marriage&mdash;'fore God an'
+men, an' 'fore the altar of two lovin' hearts, is fer good&mdash;fer this
+world anyway, an' fer the next if there is one. 'T ain't often you can
+come acrosst 'em now-a-days. I guess some men, put it to 'em on a
+sudden, could n't say under oath whether they was married or single,
+seein' this divorce business mixes things up worse 'n a progressive
+euchre party. I 'm only speakin' fer myself, mind you, an' I don't set
+up fer judgin' others."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good for you, Cale! Those are my sentiments," said the Doctor
+laughing heartily at Cale's idea of the "progressive euchre party".
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's what keeps me young," Cale continued earnestly; "fer jest the
+thought of the one woman I loved, an' love now with all the love thet
+'s in me, warms me jest as this blaze would thaw freezin' sap; it keeps
+me, as you might say, kinder thawed out with folks, an' a durned cussed
+tough world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused a moment and, leaning forward, clasped his hands around his
+crossed knees. I had seen him do this only when he was bracing himself
+to say something of deep significance. He faced me squarely, with the
+same keen look that I detected on the first night of my arrival.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've been wonderin', Marcia, if you did n't hail from somewheres near
+my place, Spencerville, in northern New England, jest over the
+line&mdash;though come ter think of it, you said you was born in New York,
+did n't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Brought to bay by this question, put to me suddenly without warning, I
+brought all my self control to bear on my voice and answered:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I was born there, but my home for two thirds of my life was in
+the vicinity of Spencerville."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought so," said Cale almost indifferently. "You had a way with
+you like the folks round there&mdash;not that I know any of your
+generation," he added hastily. "I left there over a quarter of a
+century ago. Only, now and then, your ways take me back into another
+generation where my wife belonged," he said, as if explaining why he
+had taken the liberty to approach me with the direct question. I
+forced myself to put on a bold front and ask:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who was your wife, Cale? I may know of the family."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have my doubts about <I>thet</I>," he said with considerable emphasis.
+"Girls of your age ain't apt to know of folks thet lived, an' loved,
+an'&mdash;I was goin' to say 'lost', but she ain't never thet to me, 'fore
+they was born. My wife's name, Marcia, was Morey, Jemimy Morey&mdash;one of
+three&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Triplets? Yes <I>marm</I>," he said, in reply to Mrs. Macleod's look of
+surprise. "Job Morey, her father, was a poor man, poor, as we used ter
+say, as Job's turkey. He 'd had a hard time, no mistake. He 'd had
+five boys ter raise on a farm thet was half rocks. Then come the war
+an' the two oldest had ter go. The third an' fourth was drafted an'
+Job hired the money to pay bounty; but the cuss turned bounty jumper
+an' they had ter go. Thet was the year when there was a bleedin' heart
+an' a rag of crape in most every house in the village. Two on 'em come
+home ter die, an' the t' other two was never heard from; it most killed
+Aunt Sally. They 'd had poor luck with four boys, an', by George,
+after the youngest of them five was fifteen if Aunt Sally did n't have
+triplets&mdash;gals all on em!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother said half the women in the village was there ter help. She
+said she was out in the woodshed cuttin' up some kindlin'&mdash;Job never
+was known ter be forehanded in anythin'&mdash;an' Job come out the kitchen
+end without seein' her. She heard him give a groan an' say, all to
+himself he s'posed, as plain as could be: 'O Lord, three more mouths
+ter fill, an' so little ter fill 'em with!' Then, turnin' an' seeing
+mother, he smiled as well as he could in the circumstances, an' tried
+ter put a good face on it by sayin':
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, Aunt Marthy, I ain't got all the material goods thet Old
+Testament Job had, but I 've got one of his latter day blessings, three
+daughters, an' I guess, if Sally don't mind, I 'll name 'em after 'em.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thet 'show they come by their names: Keziah, Jemimy, and
+Keren-happuch, which was the most outlandish name fer about the
+prettiest baby, mother said, thet ever she 'd set eyes on. They
+shortened it to 'Happy' mighty quick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aunt Sally who 'd never been strong sence the girls was born, broke
+right down under her trouble, when she lost her last boy, and never
+rallied. She died when the girls was n't more 'n ten year old, an'
+after thet, those six little hands worked early an' late to keep the
+house for their father. An' they kept it well too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Many 's the time after chores was done, I 'd sly over to Job's to
+fetch wood an' carry water for the sake of gettin' a smile from my pet,
+thet was Jemimy&mdash;a fair-skinned, blue-eyed little thing thet looked as
+if a breath of wind would blow her over. I watched her grow up like
+one of them pink-and-white wind-flowers thet come so early in spring,
+an' I used ter pull whole basketfuls for her, jest ter see her flush up
+so pleased like, an' get a kiss for my pains.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was ten years older than her&mdash;old enough ter know what would happen
+when Jemimy was ten years older too. She growed right inter my life,
+an' I growed right inter hers, so 't was nat'ral enough when she was
+seventeen for us ter say we belonged to one another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Job never could get ahead, and the farm was mortgaged clear up to the
+handle. I had n't much neither, for I had mother ter support and
+worked out by the month, an' Jemimy said 't was no time ter think of
+gettin' married; we 'd better wait till we could get a little ahead.
+She said she 'd heard of a place in the mills down Mass'chusetts way,
+an' although I stood out against it, she had set her heart on goin' an'
+earnin' a little extra, an' I let her have her way. Keziah married
+jest 'bout thet time a poor shote of a feller, an' went out West with
+him on ter some gov'ment lands. Happy was ter keep the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jemimy promised faithfully ter write, an' so she did, though 't was
+hard work after mill hours, she said, for she was so tired; but she
+loved me too well to have me fret an' worry, so she wrote pretty
+reg'lar every two weeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She 'd been away 'bout seven months an' Job was lookin' like a man
+with some backbone in him, for half of Jemimy's pay kept comin' reg'lar
+an' Happy made everything she come nigh like sunshine, when one evenin'
+Job come over an' asked me how long it had been sence I heard from
+Jemimy. 'Goin' on four weeks,' says I. 'She told me not to expect
+much this month she 's so busy.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'We ain't heard for six weeks,' says Job, 'an' t'other night I had a
+dream; 't war n't much of a dream neither&mdash;only I can't get rid of it,
+work it off nor sleep it off, neither. S'posin' you write.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may be pretty sure I did, an', not gettin' an answer, I drove down
+ter the nearest station an' sent a telegram, an' thet not gettin' an
+answer neither, I jest put myself aboard the next train for Lowell.
+Fust time I 'd been on the cars too, but they could n't go fast enough
+for me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I went straight ter the mill she 'd been workin' in, an' asked fer the
+boss. Then I put the question thet had been hangin' round me like a
+nightmare for twenty-four hours back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Can you tell me where ter find Jemimy Morey?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was a cur'ous sort er smile went curlin' round the man's lips as
+he opened a great ledger, an' read an entry thet made me set down on a
+chair handy, feelin' weak as water:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Entered February 2.&mdash;Left July 19.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thet was all, but 't was enough.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Where 's she gone ter?' says I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'We don't keep run of the hands after they 've left unless they go ter
+another mill, an' she ain't,' says he, clappin' to the ledger with a
+bang thet said plain as could be, 'Time 's up.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I guess you 'll have ter let me see the women, fer it's a life an'
+death matter ter me', says I, fer his drivin' ways madded me, an' I was
+pretty green an' did n't know as much as I might have.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The strength seemed ter come floodin' right in ter me when I 'd said
+thet, and I guess there must have been a kinder 'knock-yer-down' look
+in my eyes, fer the feller sort o' winced&mdash;there war n't but us two in
+the office&mdash;an' said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It's against the rules an' 't won't do no good, but if you 'll feel
+any better you can this time.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see I thought if I could see the women, I 'd ask 'em, an' p'raps
+they 'd know 'bout her. But, Lord! when I see thet great room
+stretchin' away ter nothin', an' them hundreds of girls and women
+a-workin', tendin' them looms as if their life depended on them wooden
+bolts shovin' back'ards an' for'ards like lightnin', I jest set down on
+the first bench I come ter sicker 'n death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A great wave of black an' a wave of green went through the room. My
+pulses kept time to the <I>rick-rack</I> of the flyin' shuttles, an' my head
+swum with the dizzyin' of the wheels an' the pumpin' of the shafts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Good God,' I thought, 'is this the place she 's been breathin' out
+her sweet life in!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I tried ter think, but could n't, the floor jarred so with the rumble
+of the great machines; an' the air grew as thick with dust as a barn
+floor in threshin' time; an' right through it all, a scorchin' August
+sun burned in great quiverin' furrers; an' from outside where it
+slanted on the river rushin' through the mill-sluices, it sent a
+blindin' reflection whirlin' an' eddyin' along the glarin' white
+ceilin's till I felt like a drownin' man bein' sucked under...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I got out somehow, fer I found myself on the street. I went ter every
+mill in the place&mdash;an' might have spared myself the trouble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I took the houses by rote, askin' at each one for Jemimy Morey.
+Up one street, down another, I went, the little red brick boxes lookin'
+as like as one honeycomb ter another; most of 'em was empty&mdash;all at the
+mills except the old women and babies; the fust could n't give me no
+kind of an answer, an' the second I stumbled over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was gettin' towards six, an' I war n't no nearer findin' what I 'd
+come fer than when I started, when I heard a factory bell ringin' an'
+asked what it meant. They told me a quarter ter six an' shuttin' off
+steam. I started on a dead run fer the little footbridge thet led from
+the canal alongside, to the mill gates. There I took my stand jest as
+the six o'clock whistle blew and the great mill gates was hoisted, an'
+the women an' children come flockin' out an' over the bridge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I asked every squad of 'em&mdash;they could n't get by me without answerin'
+me fer 't was only a foot-bridge&mdash;if they knew a mill hand by name
+Jemimy Morey?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For five minutes I got pretty much the same answer, then a little slip
+of a gal no higher'n my elbow says: 'What d' you want of her? You
+can't see her for she 's up at Granny's sick of the fever, an' nobody
+dass n't go near her.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's no use my tellin' you how I found her nor what we said&mdash;only
+'t war n't exactly what I 'd planned all through hayin' time when,
+noonin's, I 'd stretch out in the shadder of a hayrick an', buryin' my
+face in the coolin' grass, think how 't would seem to have <I>her</I> hand
+strokin' my forehead an' smoothin' all care away by her lovin' ways.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jest as soon as she was strong enough, I took her home; an' without
+much ceremony, she sittin' in the arm-chair an' I standin' by her side,
+we was made man an' wife.... Oh, we was happy! an' thet choice of our
+happiness, for we both knew it war n't for long. I 've sometimes
+thought we took out a mortgage on our future bliss we was so happy....
+Six months from the day I took her home, the church bell tolled
+nineteen&mdash;an' might have tolled a thousand for all I heard."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0220"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+There was a long silence; no one cared to break it. As for me, I felt
+as if stricken dumb by what I was hearing. I knew, intuitively, what I
+was about to hear. Mrs. Macleod put her hand on Cale's hard brown fist
+as it lay on his knee. I am sure the sympathetic pressure prolonged
+the silence. Doctor Rugvie and Jamie were staring into the fire. I
+could not take my eyes from Cale's face; I was as if fascinated. He,
+on the contrary, never looked once my way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice grew husky towards the last; it was not till he had cleared
+his throat several times that he could speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ain't said much 'bout Happy,&mdash;that's short for Keren-happuch, the
+name she always went by,&mdash;but she was the fust thing I took any
+interest in after thet. My wife charged me over an' over again to look
+out fer her, an' I 'd begun ter think 't was time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There ain't no telling jest what Happy was. She war n't what you 'd
+call real harn'some, not at fust; but she had a way with her thet was
+winnin', an' a laugh thet always put me in mind of our old North Crick
+in August when it goes gurglin' an' winnerin' over its stony bed. She
+had a smile, too, to match the laugh. There ain't no tellin' what she
+was like. She was jest Happy, an' there warn't a likely chap this side
+of the border and t'other, thet knew her, who had n't tried ter get
+some hold on her. But 't war n't no use; she jest laughed 'em off,
+fust one, then t' other&mdash;but still they kept tryin' till she was
+twenty-one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On her birthday she come over to me jest 'bout dusk as I was milkin'
+in the shed,&mdash;I can see her now, standin' by old Speckles' head an'
+hangin' on tight ter both her horns as if fer support&mdash;an' turnin'
+sudden ter me with a kind o' laugh, thet sounded a good deal more like
+a choked-down sob, she says:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Brother Si.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My name is Silas C., but when I left what used ter be home ter me, I
+war n't willin' ter have strangers call me by the name thet belonged
+ter those I loved, so I 've been Cale to all the rest fer a good many
+years now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Brother Si,'says she, 'you loved my sister; won't you tell me what
+ter do?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What's up?' says I, fer I could n't collect myself she come on me so
+sudden, an' I knew by her looks she meant business. Then she blurted
+it all out:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'George Jackson has asked me to marry him&mdash;an' father wants me to. I
+don't know whether I ought ter.' She wound up with a sigh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Why not?' says I, fer I war n't master enough of my feelin's to say
+any more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, I don't know exactly&mdash;only, I 'm afraid I don't love him as I
+'d ought ter.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale moved uneasily. He leaned his elbows on his knees, resting his
+chin in the palms of his hands. He continued in a lower voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May the Lord forgive me, but I thought I was doin' fer the best to
+argue her inter thinkin' she loved him, an' if she did n't, then she
+would after marriage. An' I'd ought 'er known better! I ain't never
+fergiven myself fer meddlin'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"George Jackson was nigh ter me, although he was born in Canady an' I
+in New England. His farm was a border one, just over the line. There
+was about three hundred acres of extra good farmin' land and some heavy
+timber. My five acres was on the border, too, an' many a time we 've
+clasped hands over the old stone wall on our boundary, an' I 've said,
+laughin': 'Blood 's thicker 'n water, boy!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I used ter work fer him a lot. He was his own master for he was an
+orphan; an' I had mother, an' thet kinder drew us closer, fer mother
+mothered him. There war n't a likelier young feller anywheres round.
+He was ten years younger 'n me, an' I 'd half brought him up in the
+farmin' line&mdash;proud of him, too, if I do say it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There war n't a gal in our village or out of it fer a good many miles
+round thet had n't tried fer him but Happy&mdash;an' she was the only one he
+'d ever had eyes fer. Thet's the way it mostly goes in life. He was
+two years younger 'n she was&mdash;an' smart! He 'd been through the
+Academy, an' would have made something of himself besides a farmer if
+he had n't got bewitched, like most men sometimes in their lives, by a
+gal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'd seen which way the wind was blowin' fer quite a while, but kept
+still, fer George never wanted ter be interfered with, an' Happy was as
+shy as a wood thrush. The long an' short of it is, they was engaged,
+an' Job seemed ter think his luck had come at last. But it war n't so
+with Happy. She never seemed the same after thet. She kept sayin' she
+wanted ter see a little more of the world before she settled down.
+An', sure enough, in September she got a chance; fer Keziah, who 'd
+lost her husband an' been awful sick with chills an' fever, come back
+ter the old place, an', as there war n't enough fer one more, Happy
+teased Job ter let her go down with a neighbor's gal to Boston an' work
+in a store there. 'Only fer a little while,' she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"George set his face against her goin' like flint, tellin' her he had
+enough fer all. But I, knowin' what she said ter me thet night in the
+milkin' shed, advised him ter let her go an' have her way, tellin' him
+she 'd be all the happier afterwards, an' be contented ter settle down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, she went, an' all Job's peace of mind went with her. You see he
+was gettin' on in years, nigh on ter seventy-one, an' down with the
+rheumatiz all thet winter an' spring. The next July he come down with
+a kind of typhus, an' they sent fer Happy ter come home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The minute I see her, I knew she war n't the same Happy as went away.
+She wore ear-jewels an' a locket, an' had plenty of city airs and ways;
+but the old laugh an' smile war n't all there. She was harn'some,
+though, at last! Harn'some as a picture, an' nobody blamed George fer
+puttin' up with what he did fer the sake of gettin' her. She led him a
+chase thet summer. She give him every chance ter break with her; but
+he would n't, an' she dass n't, fer Job had set his heart on the match,
+an' was thet weak an' childish thet he kept harpin' on their marriage
+from mornin' till night, an' thet kept up George's courage more 'n
+anything else. So things went on fer most two months.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One afternoon, late in September&mdash;I shall never ferget the day fer 't
+was Sunday, an' it seems as if the Sabbath was the devil's own day
+after all&mdash;George an' me took the team ter go up ter the north pasture
+to ketch his colts. Word had come down thet they 'd broke loose an'
+needed ter be tended to thet very night; so, without sayin' nothin' ter
+nobody, fer 't was only our own business if we <I>did</I> go on Sunday, we
+set out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On the way up George told me he an' Happy was ter be married the next
+week, an' I, fer one, was mighty glad on 't, fer I longed ter see her
+settled down an' like herself again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The north pasture lays up over the hill good two mile from the farm,
+an' when we 'd gone 'bout half way, George reined up, an' says:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Let's hitch the team here an' go over ter the pasture crosslots. It
+ain't more 'n half as fur, an' I 'm afraid it 'll get too dark ter
+hitch 'em if we drive round the road.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'All right,' says I; an' we set off, George takin' the five-rail
+fences at one bound an' walkin' as if on air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was jest lettin' down the bars an' callin' the colts by name, when
+we heard a team comin' from the north. Both of us stopped ter listen
+an' see what 't was, fer there war n't but one road over the hill on
+the north side, an' thet was so steep it war n't travelled many times a
+year. We could look right down the slope of the pasture onter the road
+'bout a hundred foot below, an', in a minute, a team hove in sight&mdash;the
+horse followin' pretty much his own lead an' feelin' his way down as
+best he could.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was a man an' a woman in the buggy pretty well occupied with one
+'nother, fer his arm was round her, an' her head was leanin' on his
+shoulder. Somehow I did n't like the look of it, an' I was jest
+turnin' ter George ter say so, when I heard sech an oath from his lips
+as gives me the creeps every time I think on 't.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There war n't no time ter say a word, fer I see what he see jest as
+plain as the sun in the sky:&mdash;the woman liftin' her face a little an'
+the man kissin' her over 'n over again.... 'T was Happy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Do you see thet?' says George, turnin' ter me with a glare like a
+madman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yes,' says I, fer I could n't get out another word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You lie!' says he, 'an' if you say thet again it 'll be the last word
+as leaves your body alive!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' with thet he sprung at me like a tiger, an' the Lord only knows 't
+was my great pity fer him thet held my hand. But he did n't touch
+me&mdash;oh, no! His hand dropped as if it had been shot, an', leanin' all
+white an' quiverin' up against the fence, he dropped his head onter his
+folded arms an' burst inter great sobs thet shook the rails. It was
+like one of them spring freshets thet tears up the face of nature, an'
+I knew he 'd be the better fer it, fer he was only a boy in his years,
+if he was a man in his love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You ain't goin' ter let 'em go?' was the first words I could muster
+courage to say, as I see him turnin' back ter the pasture bars again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yes, I 'm goin' ter let them go&mdash;ter the devil,' he muttered, between
+his teeth; then, turnin' ter me, as cool an' calm as if there war n't a
+woman nor a sarpent in the world, he says:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You know, Si, there 's the colts ter be ketched, an' it's gettin'
+late.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An', by the Lord Harry, they was ketched! I never see sech racin' an'
+tearin' an' rarin'! He was all over the pasture ter once, so it
+seemed, headin' 'em off, hangin' on ter their manes, throwin' himself
+astride of fust one then 'nother. I thought the old pasture would be
+ploughed ready fer spring sowin', the way their heels tore up the sod.
+I dass n't help him fer I knew the madness thet had been on him, an'
+the heat he was in, was workin' off thet way. So I kept out of his
+way, an' within three quarters of an hour he 'd got those four colts
+well in hand an' started fer home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother told me the rest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Job had two sinkin' spells thet Sunday afternoon,' she said, 'an'
+there war n't a drop of sperits in the house. I 'd used up the last of
+the elderberry wine,' she said, 'an' long 'bout three o'clock, I told
+Happy she 'd better run down to Seth White's an' get some brandy. She
+come back in a hurry an' said he had n't a drop of anything in the
+house, an' she 'd run down to the Crick House,&mdash;'t war n't more 'n a
+mile&mdash;an' get some.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Thet's the last I see of her till half past eight,' said mother, 'an'
+when she did come she was all of a shake. She said she 'd hurried so,
+an' had ter wait at the tavern till they 'd sent down ter the next
+village. I thought 't was kinder queer,' mother used ter say, 'fer 't
+was the fust time I 'd ever known the Crick House to run dry of a
+Sunday.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I did n't say nothin', but took the bottle an' started upstairs,
+leavin' her settin' there on the settle. Job was ramblin' some, an'
+Keziah had all she could do to keep him pacified.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"George and me,"&mdash;Cale interrupted his story to explain to us,&mdash;"had
+moved Job over inter the north chamber over the kitchen, fer 't was
+handier ter tend him there; an' all the cookin' was done in the
+woodshed. But you could hear every sound in the kitchen plain as could
+be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Job was jest fallin' asleep,' mother said, 'when I heard George come
+in through the woodshed an' shut the door with a bang thet pretty nigh
+raised the roof, an' started Job off again; an' I jest riz up out of my
+chair ter give them young folks a piece of my mind when, all of a
+suddin', I heard Happy cry out sharp, as if somebody was hurtin' her:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'"Oh, don't&mdash;don't!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Then I knew there was trouble brewin'. I held up my finger ter
+Keziah ter keep still, an' slippin' down the back stairs, thet led
+inter the kitchen, laid my eye to the crack in the door thet was part
+open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I could see Happy crouchin' on the settle with both hands over her
+face, an' George, standin' over her, had laid a pretty heavy hand on
+her shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'"Who was thet devil?" says he, in a hoarse voice like a crow's-caw.
+There was only a groan fer answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'"Tell me the truth," says he with a great shudderin' breath thet
+seemed ter go down clean ter his finger-tips, fer she shook like a leaf
+under the power of his hands. "Are you fit ter be my wife?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'"Fit ter be your wife!" she shrieked, and with a bound thet shook his
+hand free of her an' left her standin' face ter face with him. Then,
+liftin' both her round white arms, she opened her little palms upwards
+jest as if', mother said, 'she was tryin' ter reach the horns of the
+altar, an' it sounded as if she was prayin': "As there 's my mother's
+God in heaven above me, I am clean an' fit ter be your wife, George
+Jackson, an' the wife of any honest man livin', an' if you 'll take me,
+knowin' what you do&mdash;an' you 've seen all there was of harm&mdash;I 'll
+marry you ter-morrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Her arms dropped by her side as if she had n't a mite of strength
+left in her body, an' she looked at him with a look thet will ha'nt me
+ter my dyin' day.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother said: 'If I 'd had a daughter, I 'd ruther laid her in her
+grave than seen her marry any man with thet look on her face.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'"So help me God, Happy, I 'll save you from yourself an' marry you
+ter-morrow," says George, slow an' solemn. An' at those words, Job riz
+right up in bed an' hollered "Amen, amen!" till the rafters rung.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother 's told me the story over 'n over again, an' always in them
+same words," said Cale thoughtfully. "She used ter say she guessed
+Happy made a clean breast of it to George after hearin' that 'Amen'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure enough they was married the next day&mdash;late in the afternoon&mdash;when
+Job had a lucid spell an' cried fer joy. 'I can leave you now, Happy,'
+was all he said as he give 'em his blessin'. When night come on he
+wandered again. He 'd had watchers more 'n three weeks, an' Keziah was
+all tuckered out, an' mother too. I said I 'd watch thet night, but
+Happy stuck to it she was goin' ter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'But, Happy&mdash;' says mother, with a meanin' look an' smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I know, Aunt Marthy.' She answered, sorter hesitatin'; then, settin'
+the bowl of porridge she had in her hand down on the table, she
+beckoned mother out inter the shed an', shuttin' the door tight, flung
+her arms round mother's neck an' begged her ter speak ter George, an'
+ask him ter let her watch jest this one night with her father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'He can't deny me thet, Aunt Marthy, an' if you had a daughter placed
+as I am, would n't you do as much fer her?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother said she 'd never ferget the scairt look on the girl's face,
+nor the feel of her two hands, like chunks of ice, round her neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'My heart ached fer her,' mother said, 'an' I told her I 'd speak ter
+George, an' I knew 't would be all right.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' so 't was. He was only too glad to do anything fer her ter make
+her feel easier in her mind; he said he 'd stretch out on the sofy in
+the parlor, so as to be on hand if they wanted him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother set up till twelve, an' then Happy brought her up a steamin'
+bowl of catnip tea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Take it, Aunt Marthy,' she said, coaxin', 'it 'll do you good.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Bless your thoughtful little soul,' says mother, an' gulped it down
+as innercent as a lamb."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this point Cale rose, with one stride reached the fireplace and gave
+the backlog a mighty kick that sent the sparks in showers up the
+chimney; then, seating himself again, he went on in a hard unyielding
+voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ain't made up my mind whether I 've fergiven her or not. I s'pose I
+have, seein' what the gal must have suffered after thet; but it was my
+innercent lovin' mother&mdash;an' how she could have done it beats all
+creation! But she was desp'rit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"George got up twice in the night, but all was quiet. He even walked
+round the house an' stood under the winder, hopin', as he told me
+afterwards, to see her shadder on the curtain. The second time he went
+out, he saw her pull aside the square of cotton an' look out. It was
+nigh mornin' then and the lamp still burnin'. 'Bout half after five he
+crept out in his stockin' feet, milked, an' turned the cows out; then
+he come back, laid down, an' just after daybreak shet his eyes fer the
+first time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When he woke it was 'bout eight o'clock, an' still nary a sound in the
+house, fer Keziah had n't nothin' on her mind, 'cause mother took it
+all off. Again he slipped out of doors an' see a dull red spot on the
+curtain; it looked as if the light was burnin'. He thought she 'd
+fallen asleep. On thet, he creeps up the back stairs an' looks inter
+the chamber. There was mother stretched out on the cot unconscious,
+her face as white an' drawn as the square of cotton beside it. Job was
+breathin' heavy in the bed; the lamp was smellin' with the vilest smell
+and&mdash;Happy was gone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gone!" Jamie echoed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, gone fer good&mdash;an' ter this day I can't quite make up my mind
+whether I 've fergiven her or not.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother come to in something less than half an hour and before the
+doctor got there. We braced her up with a pint of strong coffee, an',
+natcherly, she could n't remember nothing after she 'd took the catnip
+tea&mdash;<I>and</I> the laudanum.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"George rode right an' left, to get track of her, or rather them, fer
+we all knew there was a man in the case after what we see. He
+telegraphed ter them big cities, an' hired detectives fer the dirty
+work; but they could n't get no clew. The folks at the Crick House
+said there 'd been a man there sketching but they had n't seen him
+sence Sunday night, when he left on foot. The gal, they said, had n't
+been near the house, an' Seth White told mother, it was he give her the
+brandy himself; so you can make what you can of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm her husband, an' she belongs ter me,' was all George would say,
+when we tried to make him give her up an' git a bill of divorce.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal," said Cale sententiously, looking hard at the Doctor, "there 's
+two ways of lookin' at thet, but it took him some time ter see it; an'
+it war n't till he 'd travelled fer four months, east, north, south,
+an' west as fur as the Rockies, thet he come home an' settled down to
+farmin' again; but it would n't work. He war n't the same man; lost
+his interest, an' was lettin' things go ter the dogs. He never took
+ter drink, thet I know of. But there war n't no use talking ter him.
+He was his own master an' would n't be interfered with.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It might have been nine months after he 'd come home, mebbe 't was a
+year, I don't remember, when he come to me one day with a telegram in
+his hand&mdash;it had come up on the stage&mdash;an' handed it to me with the
+face of a man ready ter face death or of a dead man jest come ter life,
+I could n't say which.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Read it,' says he, shakin' like a man in drink; 'I can't.' An' I
+read:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I am dyin' and alone among strangers; will you come to me fer the
+sake of my child.' There was an address thet made George groan, fer he
+'d been all over thet great Babel of New York, an' knew jest the kind
+of place she was in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, he went; an' three days afterwards he come home with the dead
+body of the woman, as was his wife an' yet was n't&mdash;jest accordin' as
+you look at it&mdash;an' a live child thet was hers an' not his 'n,
+whichever way you look at it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sech things ain't nothin' new to you, I s'pose?" Cale turned to the
+Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What became of the man?" said the Doctor, without answering his
+question. During this recital his eyes never left Cale's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dunno."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't know! What do you mean by that, Cale?" said Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean," he answered slowly, "thet George Jackson never did nothin' by
+halves. He come ter me one day&mdash;the day after the funeral&mdash;an' said he
+was goin' away. An' he did; sold out an' went away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did the child live?" Doctor Rugvie's voice broke the silence somewhat
+sharply. I caught the flight of his thought; I am sure Jamie did also.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, lived ter be a blessing ter all she come nigh. She war n't more
+'n three days old when he brought her home to Keziah. Happy was dead
+when he found her; more 'n thet he never told us. He left something
+for them with Lawyer Green&mdash;he told me he should do it. They lived on
+thet in part; it helped ter support 'em, fer they was in a tight place.
+Thet was how Job's luck came at last, poor soul&mdash;little enough it was.
+He kept on fer years, I heard, but was always weak-minded after he was
+told what had happened. They said he always used ter call the baby
+'Happy', an' could n't bear her out of his sight. Then, when she was
+'bout fourteen, he turned against her, an' kept thinkin' it was Happy
+herself; kept harpin' on her marriage to George, an' flingin' of what
+she 'd done inter her face, till the child could n't stand it no more.
+She never knew the whole truth, they said, till she was fifteen; then
+somebody was willin' ter tell her"&mdash;Cale smiled grimly&mdash;"as <I>they</I> see
+it, an' it 'bout finished what Job begun. I heard she never tasted a
+morsel of food for two days. The last I heard about her was, she was
+keepin' the district school. It's been most ten years now sence I
+heard anything; you don't often meet a man from our way up in Manitoba
+or the river basin of British Columbia, an' I never was no hand at
+writin'. Sometime I mean ter look her up. I ain't been able ter do
+fer her as I 'd ought ter, fer I had bad luck fer too many years&mdash;them
+pesky western wildcat banks cleaned me out twice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By what name was the child christened?" asked the Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never was christened thet I know of."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Cale, if only they had been happier!" It was Jamie who spoke with
+almost a groan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, thet's the mystery of it," was his quiet answer. Gathering his
+loose-jointed frame together, he rose. "Guess I 'll go an' look after
+the hosses; it's goin' ter be a skinner of a night." At the door he
+turned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know I ain't told you nothin' livenin', but it's life, an' I could
+n't tell it no other way. It ain't jest the thing ter air fam'ly
+troubles, but it's all past; an' what I 've told, I 've told ter my
+friends, an' I 'll thank <I>you</I> ter let what I 've said be 'twixt us
+four."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We sat in silence for a while after he had left the room. I was
+wondering how I could make excuse to get away from them all, get away
+by myself and have it out with myself, when Jamie broke the silence:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor Rugvie, I 've been putting two and two together. You know what
+you told us the last time you were here about that New York episode?
+Do you suppose Cale's story is the key to that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Possibly it might be, if those episodes were not of common
+occurrence&mdash;there are so many all the time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know; but this fitted in almost every detail. I would n't ask him
+how long ago all this happened."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor I," was the Doctor's reply, and his answer gave a glimpse of his
+thought. "I will when it comes right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear old Cale," I murmured. I felt it incumbent on me to say
+something, lest my unresponsiveness be noticed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor rose and took a cigar from the box on the mantel, saying
+almost to himself:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'There may be heaven, there must be hell,<BR>
+Meantime there is our earth here&mdash;well!'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"Good night, Mrs. Macleod, good night, Boy&mdash;Marcia, good night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He spoke in his usual voice, but with noticeable abruptness.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0221"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+So Cale knew. This was my first thought when I found myself alone in
+my room. Cale, then, was the husband of my mother's sister, Jemima
+Morey, who died before I was born, whose name I had heard but two or
+three times. My Aunt Keziah's mind grew dull in the strain of
+circumstance; she was never given a full supply of brains, and her
+memory weakened as she aged. Had she lived,&mdash;I shuddered at the
+thought,&mdash;she would have been imbecile like my grandfather and,
+doubtless, have lived to his age, ninety. In that case there would
+have been no life for me here.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I <I>am</I> here. I am going to remain here till I am sent away.
+Nothing that Cale has said shall influence me in this. All that is
+past&mdash;a part of another generation. I have put it all out of my life,
+once and for all. I live now and here, in Lamoral. I am not my
+mother; I am Marcia Farrell. I have not her life to answer for, and
+her life&mdash;oh, what she must have suffered!&mdash;shall no longer influence
+mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am free! I declare myself free from the bondage of past memories,
+free, and I will to remain so."'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was my declaration of independence&mdash;independence of heredity and
+its accredited influence; of memories that control the mentality which
+governs life; freedom from the actuality of past environment. I drew a
+long free breath. My individual womanhood, this "I" of me, Marcia
+Farrell, not a composite of ancestral inheritance, asserted itself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What if my nose resembles my great-grandmother's? I asked, unfurling my
+revolutionary flag over the moat&mdash;untechnically "ditch"&mdash;of the
+stronghold, considered by some impregnable, of present day scientific
+discovery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What if I happen to have a temper like my maternal great-aunt's? What
+if I have a fighting instinct like my paternal ancestors, who may have
+come over with William the Conqueror as swordsmen or cooks&mdash;I don't
+care which?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What if I handle my crochet needle in a manner very like the brandished
+spear of Goths, Vandals, and Huns, from all of whom it is perfectly
+possible that I may count my descent?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What if I show distinctive animal characteristics? Jamie declares I
+run like a doe and look like a greyhound!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What do I care if, millions of years ago when things on this earth were
+stickier and hotter than the worst dog-day in New York, this thing that
+has, in the end, become Marcia Farrell, this half-perfected mechanism
+of body and mind, had gills like a fish? What do I care if it had?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This "I" of me is distinct from every other "I" on this inhabited
+globe. This "I" of me has its special work to do, not another's, not
+my ancestors'. Humble enough it is. It has to feed and clothe my body
+by labor, the brain regulating the handicraft. It has eyes to see all
+the beauty, all the ugliness of Life; ears to hear all its harmonies,
+all its discords; a mind to comprehend how some detail of chaos may
+find rebirth in order. This "I" of me, my soul, receives through the
+instruments of the senses, impressions of infinite chaos ordered into
+laws, not necessarily final, laws beneficial to man and his
+universe.&mdash;Am I to deny the existence of what is called the strange
+unknown ether, simply because, for ages, the instrument of the wireless
+was not on hand to give expression to its transmitting power?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I repeated to myself, that I had my own life to live, not my
+mother's&mdash;oh God, forbid! Not my grandfather's&mdash;oh, in mercy not! Not
+my myriad of ancestors' lives; were this so, the mechanism of the brain
+would give under the strain. But just my own, mine, Marcia Farrell's,
+here, from day to day in Lamoral; a life lived in thankfulness of
+spirit for a shelter that is a home; in thankfulness for the modicum of
+intellect&mdash;with its accompanying physical fitness&mdash;that enables me to
+earn my living; in thankfulness for friends; in thankfulness&mdash;yes, I
+dare say it, even in the shadow of Cale's story of my mother's short
+life&mdash;that I love, that I can love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This is the full text of my declaration of independence, made at twelve
+of the clock,&mdash;I heard it striking in the kitchen below,&mdash;on the night
+of the twentieth of February, nineteen hundred and ten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From that hour, I lost all desire to know my parentage, to question
+Doctor Rugvie, to see the papers; all desire to establish the fact that
+I was a legitimate child. And I lost it because a greater interest,
+the dominating interest of love, was claiming all my thoughts, ruling
+my desires, regulating my wishes. My hour had struck and, knowing it,
+I regulated my clock by Mr. Ewart's timepiece, which is another way of
+saying I lived, henceforth, not only in his home, but in him and his
+interests.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All that Cale told us I had known in part, but never had I known the
+circumstances in detail, freed from the accumulation of gossip. Now,
+with Delia Beaseley's relation of my birth and its attendant
+circumstances, the account, except on two points, seemed complete. On
+one, I intended to ask explanation from Cale, when an opportunity
+offered; in the second matter, the identity of my father, I took no
+interest. But to Cale I would speak. Dear old Cale! Had he known me
+all these months? Why had n't he spoken to me and told me?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As I thought it over, I saw that I had given him no opportunity to
+question me, or to speak to me, concerning his surmise. He should have
+it soon&mdash;and again look me squarely in the eyes. Dear old Cale!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was noticeable the next day, that the Doctor was fairly well
+occupied with his own thoughts. During the hour in which I took my
+first lesson with skis, I caught him, more than once, looking at me as
+if searching for enlightenment on some subject, or object, projected,
+obscure and undefined, from his consciousness. My own high spirits
+were seemingly inexplicable to him. How could he know that my elation
+was due to the fact, that the express from Montreal would arrive in
+eight hours!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale," he said abruptly, while helping me out of some particularly
+awkward floundering, "when does the mail leave the house for the south
+bound trains?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We cal'late ter get it off 'bout noon; little Pete takes it over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor looked at his watch. "Sorry, Marcia, to cut short this fun,
+especially after my urgent invitation, but I must get some letters off
+by that mail. We 'll try it again to-morrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't mind me, but I don't want to go in; it's great sport, the best
+yet. Cale, you can stay a little longer, can't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To be sure; I ain't nothing special on hand fer the rest of the
+forenoon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I 'll cut and run," said the Doctor, without ceremony and
+evidently pressed for time. He "cut" accordingly, his skis carrying
+him down the incline with what seemed to me dubious velocity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned to Cale and gave him my mittened hand. He guided me well and
+carefully. I landed, rather to my own surprise, right side up. I was
+well pleased with this progress; in all conditions of my partial
+equilibrium, I found the sport exciting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't look like the same gal I drove up from the steamboat landing
+thet night four months ago." He looked down at me admiringly from his
+great height. "Your cheeks are clear pink and white, and your eyes
+shine; who 'd ever think they was the faded out brown ones, with great
+black hollers under 'em, thet I see lookin' 'round to find out what
+kind of a God's country you was in?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I like your compliments. Tell me, Cale,"&mdash;I smiled straight up into
+his rugged face, in order to get a look at the small keen gray eyes
+beneath the bushy eyebrows&mdash;"how did you come to think it was I? Tell
+me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tanned cheeks above the whiskers looked suddenly rather yellow. I
+could n't see his mouth for the frosted beard, but I saw his eyes fill.
+The hand that was still holding mine to help me up the incline,
+tightened its clasp. He hesitated a moment before he could answer:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did n't know, Marcia, not for plumb sure; an' yet I <I>felt</I> sure, for
+you was the livin' image of Happy Morey."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I so very like her&mdash;in all ways?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like her in looks, all but the eyes; they 're different. But you
+ain't much like her in your ways&mdash;she was what you might call
+winnin'er; you have ways of your own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you open the windows of your life so wide for us last night, Cale,
+just to entice me to fly in and find refuge with you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia," his voice trembled slightly, "I stood it jest as long as I
+could. I knew <I>you</I> did n't know me from Adam; but I felt as if I
+could n't live another day in the house with you, 'thout makin' myself
+known ter you; an' I took thet way ter do it an', meanwhile, satisfy
+somebody's curiosity 'bout me, fer Jamie can't be beat by any woman for
+<I>thet</I>. I did n't go off half-cock though, last night, you may bet
+your life on thet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know you did n't, Cale&mdash;and can't we keep this between ourselves?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jest as you say, Marcia. What you say ter me won't go no further.
+There ain't no one nigher to me than you in all this world&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor than&mdash;" I began. I was about to say, "than you to me"; but I cut
+short the words that would have perjured the new joy in my heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale apparently took no notice of the unfinished sentence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sometime I want ter know 'bout your life these last ten years&mdash;I can't
+sorter rest easy till I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is so little to tell. Aunt Keziah died eight years ago; then I
+went down to New York to earn my living, and worked there till I came
+here&mdash;on a venture."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the best you ever made," he said emphatically. "Get sick of it
+there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I should have died if I 'd stayed in that city any longer; it was
+too much for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt his hand grasp mine still more closely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So 'twas, so 'twas," he said to himself; then to me:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess we won't lose track of one 'nother again, Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not if I can help it, Cale; it is n't my fault that we see each other
+for the first time in twenty-six years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So 't ain't, so 't ain't, poor little soul." I heard a catch in his
+voice, but I did not spare him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How old was I when you left home?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Bout three months, if I remember right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you ever see me&mdash;then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You did n't have any interest in me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not much, I 'll own up." Then he added weakly, for he wanted to spare
+me the truth by gently lying out of it, "I 've heard men don't take to
+new-born babies as women do; they 're kinder soft ter handle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you saw me for the first time in my life at the steamboat landing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;an' my knees fairly give way beneath me, for I saw Happy standin'
+before me an' speakin' in the voice I remember so well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A long while, twenty-six years, Cale?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't, Marcia, don't rub it in so!" He was half resentful; and I,
+having brought him to this point, was satisfied to relent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale," I said, withdrawing my hand and facing him, as well as I could
+with my new foot appendages to steer, "I 'll forgive you for not paying
+any attention to me for twenty-six years, on one condition&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is thet?" His eagerness was almost pathetic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That you 'll take me for just what I am, who I am, Marcia Farrell&mdash;not
+Happy Morey; if you don't I shall be unhappy. And you 're to love me
+for myself, do you hear? Just for myself, and not because I 'm the
+living image of my mother. Now don't you forget. I give you warning,
+I shall be insanely jealous if you love me for anybody but myself&mdash;and
+I take it for granted you <I>do</I> love me, don't you, Cale?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know I do, Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had him at my mercy and I was merciful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, if I did n't have all this paraphernalia on my feet, I
+would venture to throw my arms around your neck and give you a good
+hug&mdash;Uncle Cale. As it is I might flop suddenly and fall upon your
+breast."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess I could stand it if you did,"&mdash;he smiled happily, the creases
+around his eyes deepening to wrinkles,&mdash;"but 'twixt you and me, this
+ain't exactly the place nor the weather for any palaverin'&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Palavering! Well, you are ungallant, Cale; I don't dare to call you
+'Uncle' now, for fear I might make a slip before the entire family, and
+that would complicate matters, would n't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess 't would," he replied earnestly; "complicate 'em in a way 't
+would take more 'n a lawyer's wits ter uncomplicate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then let's go home and see what the Doctor is doing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 's great!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait till I tell you sometime a secret about him&mdash;and me: you 'll
+think he is greater."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't mean thet, Marcia!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mean what?" I asked a little shortly, for I felt annoyed at his tone
+of protest and resentment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mean? Wal, thet the Doctor 's sweet on you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Silas C. Marstin, I am angry with you, yes, angry! Do you want to
+spoil all my fun,&mdash;yes, and my happiness,&mdash;by just mentioning such an
+impossible thing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God knows I don't." He spoke, as it seemed, almost on the verge of
+tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then never, never&mdash;do you hear?&mdash;think or mention such a thing again.
+Promise me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I won't, so help me&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That 'll do; that's right. Now be sensible and get these skis off, so
+I can walk to the house like a woman instead of a penguin."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You ain't goin' to lay it up against me?" he pleaded, as we neared the
+house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, of course not; only, remember, you 're under oath. I mean all
+this." I nodded at him gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' I mean it too; you won't have nothing to complain of so fur as I
+'m concerned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear old Cale!" I whispered to him as I entered the house, where I
+found Jamie in a state of suppressed excitement for I had given him no
+opportunity to advance his theories about what he had heard the night
+before from Cale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, Marcia, come on into the office and let's talk; the Doctor is
+in the living-room, writing for all he is worth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't; I 'm busy." At which he went off in a huff.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0222"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Let me take your mail out to little Pete," I said to the Doctor, who
+was superscribing his last letter, when I came in from the morning's
+sport.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks, very much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He spoke abstractedly; ran over the addresses on several envelopes and
+handed them to me. I could not help seeing that the one on top was
+addressed to Delia Beaseley. I fancy he intended I should see it. I
+felt sure he had written to her for some of the forgotten details of
+that night in December more than twenty-six years ago.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's on the track of that child&mdash;me! Cale's story has given him the
+clew," I said to myself, on noticing his absorption in his own thoughts
+during dinner and his preoccupation in the afternoon. In the evening
+he drove over with Cale to meet Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I rather enjoyed the course events were taking; it would interest me to
+watch developments of the Doctor's detective work. In a way, it had
+all the fascination of a drama of which I felt myself no longer to be
+an actor, but a spectator.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie cornered me, after the Doctor and Cale drove off to the junction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you don't!" he said, laughing, as he extended his long arms across
+the doorway of the living-room to bar my exit. "You will act like a
+Christian and love your neighbor as yourself this time. Sit down and
+talk&mdash;or I sha'n't be able to finish my last chapter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course I sat down, knowing perfectly well what I was about to
+hear&mdash;at least, I thought I did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that what Cale told
+us, and what Doctor Rugvie told us, are two acts in a long
+drama&mdash;tragedy, if you like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You <I>are</I> cool, I must say!" He spoke with irritation. "Do you mean
+to tell me that life, presented in such a manner as those two
+men&mdash;opposite as the poles in standing&mdash;presented it, does n't interest
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have n't the imagination of genius, Jamie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now you know perfectly well there is no imagination about it. It's
+life, just as Cale said; and it's my belief the Doctor will, in the
+end, get some track of that girl. If he does, it will be all up with
+the farm. Did you think of that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" I spoke the truth. I was amazed. It never occurred to me to
+connect the farm project with anything Cale had said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll wager he 'll compare notes with Cale on the way over to the
+station, and I 'm going to refer to the farm plan, if I have the chance
+after they get back, to see what he 'll say."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He won't think you 're interfering, will he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He can't." He spoke decidedly. "The farm project affects <I>me</I>, don't
+you see?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not exactly; how?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, if&mdash;of course it's only an 'if'&mdash;the Doctor should find this
+girl, he would n't for a moment think of taking that money, which in
+justice if not in the law belongs to her, to further any of his plans.
+He is n't that kind of a man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course not; but I don't see how&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's where you are obtuse. Look here, Marcia, how long do you
+suppose I can stand it to vegetate here in Canada? It's healthy, I
+agree to that, and doing me no end of good; but I can't see myself
+living here&mdash;existing, yes; but living, no! I'm better, stronger; and
+even if I were n't, I would n't play the coward either in life or
+death. As it is, I want to live my life full in my own way, among my
+own. I want to be in the thick of the fray, even if by being there I
+should go under a little sooner. I want to mingle with the multitude
+of men&mdash;see into their lives, give them something of mine in reality
+and through the imagination, and get their point of view into my life.
+I can't stay on indefinitely here in Canada; and if&mdash;if&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If the girl should be found, the farm project would amount to nothing.
+The Doctor sees, just as you and I see, that Ewart is not enthusiastic
+about it, and he is n't going to settle on Ewart's land with an
+unwelcome philanthropic scheme. And then&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" I was becoming impatient.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, then, if it should fall through,&mdash;and I 'm selfishly hoping it
+may,&mdash;I'm not in the least bound, don't you know, to stay on here as
+Ewart's guest. I can go home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Home!" I echoed. The thought of losing Jamie had never occurred to
+me. And if he went, then his mother, also, would go. If they both
+went, I should have necessarily to leave Lamoral, for I was merely an
+entail of their presence. Leave Lamoral! I sickened at the thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, no, Jamie!" I cried out, rebelling against the prospect of a
+new upheaval in my life. "I can't spare you&mdash;I can't live here without
+you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With every thought centered in Mr. Ewart at that moment, and
+comprehending as I did the logical result of Mrs. Macleod's leaving the
+manor and all that it would mean to me, I did not realize what
+impression my impulsive words might make on her son. In the silence
+that followed my protest, I had time to realize what I had said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did n't for a moment suppose you felt like this, Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a flash I understood the twist in his interpretation of my words and
+feeling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't understand&mdash;" I began vehemently, then found myself
+hesitating like a schoolgirl who does not know her lesson. I was
+ashamed of myself, for Jamie was on the wrong track and must be put
+right at all costs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I do." He spoke gently, almost pityingly as it seemed to me
+then. I boiled inwardly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you don't; but there 's no time to explain now&mdash;I hear the bells&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have good ears; I don't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They 're coming! Where 's Mrs. Macleod?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, they 're not returning from an ocean voyage, even if they are
+coming; there is no need to run up the Union Jack&mdash; Hold on a minute!"
+He barred the door again with his long arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me out&mdash;they 're at the door&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What if they are?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I slipped quickly under his arm into the passageway. The dogs were
+frantic with joy. I wanted to show mine as plainly, perhaps then Jamie
+might understand! I flung open the door, and, as it happened my voice
+was the only one to welcome them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're back so soon!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may well say that," said the Doctor, running up the steps and
+seeming to bring the whole Arctic region of cold in with him; "I drove
+over and made good time, I thought; but Ewart took the reins on the way
+back, and we came home at a clip&mdash;nine miles in fifty-two minutes!
+That's a record. Now, Ewart," he turned to speak to his friend who had
+stopped to give some order to Cale, "see how well I have heeded your
+injunction to 'look out' for Miss Farrell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the horses did n't bolt," I said, as I put my hand into his
+outstretched one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you gotten over the effects of the aurora?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hearty gladness in his voice was reward enough for the restraint I
+put on myself. I wanted to give him both hands and tell him in so many
+words that, with his coming, I was "at home" again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, and never shall," I responded joyfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor I either.&mdash; Where 's Jamie? Oh, Mrs. Macleod," he said, spying
+her on the upper landing, "I 've taken you unawares for the first
+time.&mdash;Down, comrades, down!&mdash;Jamie Macleod, is this the way you
+welcome a wanderer to his own hearth?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie's hand grasped his and pumped it well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's queer, Gordon, but you seem to look at your three days of absence
+from the same point of view that Marcia does."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How 's that?" he asked quickly, turning to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just Jamie's nonsense; it's only that I was on the lookout for you,
+and heard the bells when he failed to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew I was growing reckless, but I did not care&mdash;why should I?&mdash;if he
+knew I was glad to see him at home again. I did not care if they all
+knew it&mdash;I must put Jamie right somehow. And what was there to hide?
+Not my gladness, not my joy, the new elements in my new life&mdash;this
+something I had never before experienced. Somehow, all my resolutions
+to keep this joy "to myself" went to the winds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart made no reply, but I knew I added to his evident pleasure in
+his return, by my ready and frankly expressed acknowledgement that I
+was "on the lookout" for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That evening was one never to be forgotten. It was a time when the
+friendship of the four men, Mr. Ewart, Cale, Doctor Rugvie, and Jamie
+Macleod, towards me, found expression both in jest and earnest; a time
+when Mrs. Macleod's kindly, if always a little remote interest in me
+was doubly grateful, for sure of it and its protection I could let the
+new life, that shortly before had awakened in me, flood my whole being
+and expand heart, soul and mind with its vital flux. I felt that I
+made my own place in this household; that I pleased them all; that they
+liked my speech, whether merry or grave; that they liked my ways
+because mine, whether I was lighting cigars and pipes for them, or
+frying griddlecakes at ten o'clock at night on the top of the soapstone
+stove, in redemption of my promise made months past. The truth is I
+felt at home, wholly, completely; and they, recognizing it, were glad
+for me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With Cale, that evening, I was tender, teasing, arrogant by turns; I
+had him at my mercy&mdash;and his lips were sealed! With Jamie I was
+absolutely nonsensical, as I dared to be in view of his twisted
+interpretation of my apparently sentimental, "I can't live without you
+here etc." I bothered and puzzled him, much to the others' amusement.
+Into the Doctor's spirit of banter I entered with the enjoyment of a
+not very "old" girl. I caught him looking at me with the same
+perplexed expression that he wore when I first smiled at him three
+months before&mdash;and I kept on smiling, as I had cause, hoping the
+message, oft repeated, would carry in time to his consciousness the
+recognition that I was, indeed, the daughter of her whom he had
+befriended more than a quarter of a century ago. The emphatic
+statement made by Cale and Delia Beaseley that I was her "living
+image", encouraged me in this line of procedure. To the Master of
+Lamoral I gave willing service, frying for him delectable griddlecakes,
+turning them till a golden brown, flapping them over skilfully on his
+warm plate, and deluging them with incomparable maple syrup from his
+own sugar "bush". He received this service in the spirit in which I
+gave it, and the cakes with the appreciation of a man and connoisseur.
+Mrs. Macleod seconded my efforts in this special line of cooking and
+enjoyed the fun as much as any one of us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's no use, I 'm 'full up'," said Jamie with a sigh of
+exhaustion; he dropped into the sofa corner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I kept tally for you, Boy," said the Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How many?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eighteen! Apply to me if you 're in trouble at one-thirty to-night."
+He looked at his watch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You scored seventeen fully ten minutes ago, mon vieux," said Mr. Ewart
+laughing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Slander, Marcia! Don't believe it. Three of mine would make only one
+of yours, Gordon Ewart;&mdash;I 've camped enough with you to know your
+'capacity', as the freight cars have it. Marcia Farrell, your last
+'batch' has been 'petering out', as we say at home. You dropped only
+one small spoonful for each of the last twenty cakes; the ones you made
+for Ewart had a complement of two big spoonfuls&mdash;they were corkers, no
+mistake. Hold up your head, Boy!" he admonished the collapsed object
+on the sofa. "Never say die&mdash;here are just four more for us four,
+amen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A dismal groan was his only answer. Mr. Ewart, taking turner and bowl
+from me, declared a truce. The Doctor set the plates on the table.
+When all was clear about the hearth, on which Cale laid a pine log for
+a treat, Mr. Ewart announced that he had a surprise in his pocket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jamie, your birthday falls on the twelfth of August, does n't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; how did you remember that, Gordon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You had a birthday when I was in Crieff with you seventeen years
+ago&mdash;and we celebrated. Have you forgotten?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forgotten!" Jamie came bolt upright, the cakes were as naught, the
+remembrance of them faded. "Do you think I could ever forget that?
+You took, or rather trotted me for a long walk over the moors&mdash;oh, the
+pink and the purple heather of them, the black blackness of their bogs,
+the green greenery of their bracken higher than my head!&mdash;to the
+'Keltie'; and you held me over the pool to see the whirl and dash of
+the plunging torrent. I remember the spray made me catch my breath.
+Then you took me down to the bank of the 'burnie', and found a place to
+camp&mdash;my first camp with you&mdash;under a big elm; and there you discovered
+a flat stone, and two crooked branches for crotches. You took from
+your mysterious game-basket a gypsy kettle and, filling it at the
+'burnie' with the water that tastes like no other in the world, you
+hung it from the crotch over the flat stone that was our hearth. You
+made heaven on that spot for a seven-year-old boy, because you let him
+touch off the fagots. You boiled the water, made tea&mdash;such tea!&mdash;and
+brought out of that same basket bannocks and fresh gooseberry jam&mdash;
+Oh, don't, don't mention that birthday! You make me homesick for it;
+even Marcia's griddlecakes can't help me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 'll celebrate again this year in the wilds of the Upper Saguenay."
+Mr. Ewart took from his pocket a paper and, unfolding it, read the
+terms of a lease of a fish and game preserve in the northern wilderness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the Andrés, father and son, shall be our guides, our cooks, our
+factotums. The son is half Montagnais; his mother was of that tribe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Ewart!" Jamie's eyes glistened, but his volubility was checked;
+he felt his friend's thought of him too deeply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I secured it while I was away; I have wanted it for the last five
+years. The Doctor has promised us six weeks, and the camp will be more
+attractive"&mdash;he looked at Mrs. Macleod&mdash;"and keep us longer, if you and
+Miss Farrell will be my guests, and make a home for us in the
+wilderness. Will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For once in her life Mrs. Macleod did not balk at this direct question
+involving a decision. I record it to her credit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you?" He turned to me without apparent eagerness, but I caught
+the flash of pleasure in his eyes when I answered promptly, with
+enthusiasm:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be something to dream of till it is a reality. I 'll begin
+making my camp outfit to-morrow; and André père shall teach me to fish
+and paddle a canoe; his son shall teach me woodcraft, and some
+Montagnais squaw shall show me how to weave baskets. In those same
+baskets I will gather the mountain berries for such of the family as
+may crave them, and&mdash;and that wilderness shall be made to blossom like
+the rose and prove to us, at least, a land flowing with milk and honey."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart's question about a "home in the wilderness" was the motor
+power for my flight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Amen and amen," cried the Doctor, approving of my soaring. "We 'll
+return to the Arcadia of the woodsman's simple life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Humph!" said Cale. "You'd better add all them contraptions of veils,
+an' nettin's, and smudge kettles, an' ointments, an' forty kinds of
+made-up bait&mdash;so made-up thet I 've seen a trout, a three pounder, wink
+at me when he see some of it and wag away up stream as sassy as you
+please&mdash;an' a gross of joss sticks. By George, I 've seen mosquitoes
+as big as mice&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale," I made protest; "you spoil all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better wait till you are there, Marcia, before you rhapsodize any
+more; you did it well, though, I 'll admit," said Jamie, with his most
+patronizing air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So did you rhapsodize over Scotland," I retorted; "and I 'll
+rhapsodize if I never go; and you 're not to quench my enthusiasm with
+any of your Scotch mist that I am told is nothing less than a downpour."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the way, when is your birthday, Marcia?" said the Doctor,
+carefully, oh, so carefully, knocking the ash from his cigar into the
+fireplace. The act was so very cautious that it betrayed to me his
+restrained expectancy of my answer! "I have an idea it's the last of
+June."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How light I was of heart in answering him, in giving him the clew he
+was seeking as I would have made him a gift, fully, freely&mdash;for what
+was it to me now, whether he knew or not?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Next December, when the north wind blows over the Canada snows, you
+may remember me, if you will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What date?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I waited intentionally for him to ask that question. I felt that Cale
+was holding his breath; but I did n't care, and replied without
+hesitation:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The third&mdash;twenty-seven years. What an age!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They laughed at me, one and all, the Doctor perhaps a little more
+heartily than the others. After that he sat, with one exception,
+silent; but Jamie spoke half impatiently:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why did n't you give us a chance to celebrate last December?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody asked me about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor spoke for the only time then. "I 'll make a mem of it," he
+said gayly, taking out his notebook and writing in it. And I saw
+through his every move&mdash;the dear man!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You might have given us the pleasure of remembering it," said Mrs.
+Macleod reproachfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I celebrated it in my own way&mdash;and for the first time in my life,"
+I replied, treasuring in my heart that hour in the office with Mr.
+Ewart when he took my gift of service "gratis".
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Might a common mortal, who has both eyes and ears and generally can
+see through a barn door if it is wide open, ask in what manner you
+celebrated that you escaped notice of every member of this household?"
+Jamie spoke ironically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jamie, I outwitted even you that time. Of course I 'll tell you: I
+made a gift to some one, which was a good deal more satisfactory than
+to receive one myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The deuce you did! Perhaps you 'll tell me what it was and who was
+the man? I was n't aware of any extra purchases in the village."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not now." I spoke decidedly. "Let's talk about the camp. I can't
+wait for the spring. When can we go?" I asked Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not before the first of July, but we can remain until into September."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words were commonplace enough; but the tone in which they were
+spoken belonged to another day, another hour, to that moment when he
+accepted my gift of service "gratis". He, at least, knew how I
+celebrated that third of December!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Content, satisfied, I began to jest with Jamie. We made and enlarged
+upon the most ideal plans it ever befell mortals to make. The others
+listened to our chaffing and found amusement in it, for we tried to
+outdo each other in camp-hyperbole. The Doctor, Mr. Ewart and Cale,
+whose presence Mr. Ewart insisted upon having the entire evening,
+smoked in silence. I knew where the Doctor's thoughts were. I would
+have given a half-hour of that evening's enjoyment&mdash;at least I think I
+would&mdash;to have read Mr. Ewart's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Late, very late, Cale rose, put a chunk into the soapstone, and said
+good night. I followed him into the kitchen. I wanted to speak with
+him, for I saw something was out of gear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the matter, Cale?" I whispered, as he fumbled about for the
+candle somewhere on the kitchen dresser.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia," he whispered in turn, "I 've pretty nigh lied myself inter
+hell for you ter-night. On the way over ter the junction the Doctor
+put his probe inter what's 'twixt you an' me mighty deep; but I was a
+match fer him! An' then I come home jest ter hear you give yourself
+all away! What in thun&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sh, Cale! Somebody 's coming&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, a gal's 'bout the limit when&mdash;" I heard him say in a tone of
+utter disgust, and, laughing to myself, I ran up stairs.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0223"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+After the Doctor's departure on the Saturday of that week, I wrote to
+Delia Beaseley, telling her how far I had ventured upon the disclosure
+of the fact that I was the daughter of her whom she had helped to save,
+and that she was now free to tell him whatever he might ask in regard
+to me, as far as she could answer; but that on no consideration was she
+to speak of the papers in his possession; and if he spoke to her of
+them, she was to say that he must settle that with me; that on no
+account was she to learn anything of their contents. I wrote her this
+as a precautionary measure only, for I was convinced the Doctor would
+not mention those papers. They belonged to me, to me alone. It was a
+matter of business.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She wrote in answer that she would do as I requested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The spring was both long and late in coming. Day after day, week after
+week the wind held steadily from the east or northeast. When, at last,
+it turned right about face, and the sun, climbing high in the north,
+warmed the breast of mother-earth, already swelling with its hidden
+abundance, the waters were loosened and the great river and all its
+tributaries were in ice-throes, travailling for deliverance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then it was that the plank sidewalks throughout the length and breadth
+of Richelieu-en-Bas were securely chained to each householder's fence
+or tree, to prevent them from sailing away on the rising flood. Then
+it was that rowboats were in evidence in many a front yard. The creek
+was impassable; the high-road bridge was threatened. Cale and Mr.
+Ewart seemed to live in rubber boots, both by day and by night. Pierre
+called frantically on all the protecting saints to withhold rain at the
+time of the "débâcle": the breaking up of the river. His son came in
+twice a day, on an average, with soaked stockings and knickerbockers
+wet through and through; was duly castigated&mdash;lightly, I say to his
+father's credit&mdash;and as regularly comforted by Angélique with flagons
+of spiced hot milk or very sweet ginger tea. It finally dawned upon us
+that the youngster deliberately waded through slush to obtain the
+creature comforts. After that, they were withheld.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale looked grim and Mr. Ewart anxious for one twenty-four hours. All
+night they were out on horseback with lanterns and ropes. Then the
+heavy rainclouds dispersed without the dreaded deluge; the sun shone
+clear and warm; the small ice jams gave way, and the great floes went
+charging down on the black waters towards the sea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During this time of east wind, rain and snow, Jamie often chafed
+inwardly, for the weather kept him housed; but he busied himself with
+his work and soon became wholly absorbed, lost to what went on around
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And what was going on around him? Just this: two lives, a man's and a
+woman's, long bound by the frost of circumstance, like the ice-bound
+river in full view from the manor, were in the process of being warmed
+through and through, thawed out; the ice obstructing each channel was
+beginning to move, that the courses of their lives, under the power of
+love's rays, might, at last, flow unhindered each into the other. So
+it seemed to me, at least, during those weeks of waiting for the spring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Did I know he loved me? Yes, I knew it; was sure of it; but no word
+was spoken, for no word was needed then. We understood each other. We
+were man and woman, not boy and girl. We recognized what each of us
+was becoming to the other in the daily intimate household ways of
+life&mdash;an enduring test; in the community of our human interests, in the
+common wealth of our friends, of our books. His best friends were
+mine; mine were his&mdash;all except Delia Beaseley; sometime I intended he
+should know her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I thought at first that would come about through the farm project; but
+Mrs. Macleod, Jamie and I had to acknowledge, soon after the Doctor
+returned, that the development of this plan was at a standstill.
+Naturally this pleased both mother and son. For them it meant the
+prospect of a return in the near future to their home in Scotland;
+finally to England, and London. Jamie confided to me he should cast
+anchor there for a time, his second book having been accepted by a good
+publisher in that city.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He found opportunity in my presence to ask Doctor Rugvie, just before
+he left us, about his further plans for the farm scheme, and was told
+rather brusquely that certain complications had arisen, which must be
+cleared up before he could proceed to develop them. Not once did he
+drive over to the farm on his last visit. As for Mr. Ewart, he never
+mentioned the subject. Jamie was wise enough to refrain from asking
+questions of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor's announcement kept Jamie guessing for weeks, his curiosity
+being unsatisfied; but as for me&mdash;I laughed in my sleeve, for I knew
+how that "third of December" birthday on my innocent part, had
+disarranged the good Doctor's philanthropic scheme, for the present at
+least. I was curious to know how he would proceed to "clear away"
+those complications.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fear of leaving Lamoral for good was diminishing; I knew that what
+held me there, held Mr. Ewart also. I rested content in this knowledge.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0224"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXIV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It was the second week in May when the seigniory farmers began to
+arrive and closet themselves with Mr. Ewart in the office. The "going"
+was atrocious, and the appearance at the side door of the clay-clogged
+cariole, buggy, <I>calèche</I> and farm-cart, bore witness to this fact.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie and I were on the watch for each arrival. We knew nearly all of
+these habitant-farmers. They hitched their "team", and spent hours
+with Mr. Ewart. Sometimes, when we were in the living-room, we could
+hear voices from the office in lively and earnest discussion. We
+remarked the air of pride and satisfaction with which each one
+unhitched his horse, climbed into his special conveyance, slapped the
+reins on his animal's back and was off with a merry "Bonnes nouvelles!"
+to his habitant-wife who, while waiting for her husband, had been in
+the kitchen exchanging courtesies with Angélique, and feasting on
+freshly fried doughnuts and hot coffee. The notary from
+Richelieu-en-Bas, as well as the county surveyor, were also closeted
+with Mr. Ewart; they arrived after breakfast and left before supper.
+At dinner they were our guests, but no business topics were mentioned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By Saturday, the routine of visitation was concluded. The notary
+departed with his green baize bag apparently bursting with documents.
+It was Angélique who informed us after his departure that the seignior
+had been receiving the seignioral rents with his own hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next morning at the breakfast table, Mr. Ewart asked me if I would
+help him to audit some accounts, the farmers having just paid their
+half-yearly rents.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At what hour?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall need your help for the entire forenoon and probably for an
+hour or two after dinner. Shall we say at nine?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't I help?" said Jamie, rather half-heartedly I must confess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart took in the situation by the tone, and smiled as he answered:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; you 're too busy with your work; the prose of figures would n't
+appeal to you just now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would n't they though! Try me on a check from my publisher."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the point of view, after all, that changes proportions, is n't
+it? Are you going to work in here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; I need about four by eight feet of surface to keep my ideas from
+jostling one another, and this dining-room table is about the right fit
+when I 'm comparing pages of manuscript with first galley proofs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good luck, then; we 'll not disturb you till dinner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An hour later when I went into the office, I found Mr. Ewart at his
+desk. Beside him was a large tin box, twice as large as a bread-box.
+On top lay two pairs of his thick driving-gloves. I must have looked
+my surprise, for he laughed as he rose to place two chairs, one on each
+side of the only table in the room&mdash;a fine old square one of ancient
+curly birch, generally bare, but now covered with a square of oil cloth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What next? I can't wait for developments to explain all this
+paraphernalia," I said; my curiosity was thoroughly roused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These." He held out a pair of the driving-gloves. "You are to put
+them on, please, and not to take them off till I give you permission."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mystified, I obeyed. He set down the tin box on the table between us;
+opened wide both windows to let in the tonic air, that began to hint of
+real spring, and, drawing on the other pair of gloves, took his seat
+opposite me at the table. I could not help laughing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How does this performance strike you?" he asked, amused at my
+amusement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like the prelude to some absolutely ridiculous rite, unknown to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is just what it is." He spoke so emphatically, so earnestly,
+that I was still further mystified. "You have hit the bull's-eye. It
+is a ridiculous rite, and, thank God, it's for the last time that I am
+chief mummer in it. Here in this box, Miss Farrell," he went on
+unlocking it and displaying a conglomerate mass of silver and soiled
+paper money, "are rents, seigniorial rents, paid by men who farm it on
+the seigniory, whose fathers and fathers' fathers have worked this
+ground before them, men who should own this land, to a man who should
+not own it in the existing conditions&mdash;conditions that have no place in
+the body politic, here or anywhere else. It's a left-over from
+medievalism&mdash;and I am about to do away with this order of things, to
+prove myself a man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You believe, then, in the ownership of the land by the many?" I asked
+eagerly. I was glad to get his point of view. The discussions between
+him, Doctor Rugvie and Jamie, were always of great interest to me.
+Although I knew something of his plans from the other two, he had never
+mentioned them to me. I saw he was speaking with great feeling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Believe in it! It's the first article in my political and
+sociological creed. I 've come back here to Canada, where I was born,
+to incorporate it in action.&mdash; And you 're wondering where you come
+in, in this experiment, I 'll wager," he said gayly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I answered him in the same vein: "I confess, I fail to see the
+connection between your driving-gloves on my hands, your strong box
+between us&mdash;and the first article of your creed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you don't!" He laughed aloud at my mental plight and his
+own manner of announcing his special tenet. "I 'll begin at the
+beginning and present the matter by the handle. I want you to grasp it
+right in the first place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you," I said meekly; "not being a feminine John Stuart Mill, I
+need all the enlightenment I can have on the presence of this worldly
+dross that lies between us. Facts contradict theories."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a sudden, almost passionate movement, he shoved the box to one
+side on the table; it was no longer between us. I knew there was
+significance in his impulsive action, but I failed to understand what
+it indicated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's taking rather a mean advantage of a woman, I own, to ask her on
+the spur of the moment to share a man's political and sociological
+views&mdash;but I want you to share mine, and enlightenment is your due."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And in the meantime am I to keep on the gloves?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed again. "Yes; keep them on and help me out of this scrape&mdash;I
+have never felt so humiliated in my life as I have taking this money.
+Now I 'll be rational. You see, smallpox roams at times through
+Canada. This money has been stored in stockings, instead of banks,
+after having been hoarded, handled, greased, soiled by a generation or
+more. You 'll find dates of issue on these notes that are a good deal
+older than you, and silver minted in the early sixties. Now I want
+your help in counting over&mdash;auditing, we 'll call it&mdash;this mass of
+corruption. And I don't intend you shall run any risk in handling even
+a small part of it&mdash;hence the gloves and the fresh air. After we 're
+through with it, we will pack the filthy lucre in the box and express
+it to a Montreal bank. It is n't mine&mdash;at least I do not consider it
+so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because I am going to apply these half-yearly rents in reducing the
+interest on the money I am loaning these farmers, in order to enable
+them to buy the best implements and cultivate their land more
+intelligently. This I may say to you, but to no one else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are going to sell them the land?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The greater part of it. The forest I keep, because I love that work
+and hope in time to make a sufficient income from it, in case of actual
+need. In fact, I 've been working all the week with the notary to get
+the deeds in order."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So that was their 'bonnes nouvelles'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You heard them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes. They looked so happy&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I am glad; glad too, that you could see something of their
+pleasure in this special work of mine. Do you know,"&mdash;he leaned
+towards me over the table,&mdash;"that I have asked you to help me with this
+as a matter of pure sentiment?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His eyes sought mine, but I am sure they found only an enquiring turn
+of mind in them, for I could not imagine where the sentiment was in
+evidence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see I 'll have to explain," he said smiling. "I want you, an
+American with all the free inheritance of the American, to share with
+me in this last rite of mediævalism, in order that in the future we may
+look back to it&mdash;and mark our own progress."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, that word "our"! Used so freely, it rejoiced me. He intended this
+affair to mark some epoch in his life and mine. I waited for him to
+say something further. But, instead, he turned to the business in hand
+and we set to work. To be sure the "auditing" on my part was a mere
+farce; for not only did Mr. Ewart do most of the counting, and making
+into bundles of a hundred, but he insisted on my not bending close over
+the currency to watch him. As I told him, "After asking me to help
+you, you keep me at arm's distance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whereupon he smiled in an amused way, and said engagingly, but firmly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is no question of my keeping you at a distance. Don't mind my
+crotchets, Miss Farrell, I have a fancy to have you here with me at the
+obsequies of all this sixteenth-in-the-twentieth century nonsense. At
+forty-six, I still have my dreams. You 'll be good enough to indulge
+me, won't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If that's all, I think I can indulge you. But is there nothing I can
+do to be of some real help?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing but to lend me your companionship during this trying ordeal.
+You might fill out some labels&mdash;you 'll find them in that handy-box on
+the desk&mdash;with the words 'hundred' and 'fifty', and I 'll gum them on
+to these slips for the money rolls."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a few minutes I busied myself with the labels. After that, I
+watched his swift counting of bills and silver, and his ordering them
+into neat packages and rolls. Before long, however, I took matters
+into my own gloved hand and, without so much as "by your leave", began
+the recount, labelling as I went on. Within an hour the work was
+finished and a smaller tin box packed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How much did you make it?" he asked, before locking the box.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three thousand four hundred and twenty-two, just."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The rate of interest I charge them is two per cent, and this amount
+will reduce that greatly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean that you are letting them have the land, supplying money
+to help them cultivate it, and charging only two per cent interest?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why should I charge more? They are the ones who are doing the land
+good. You see, the use of this rent-accumulation to reduce their
+interest rate for the first year or two, is a part of my general
+scheme. They are to apply their half-yearly rents as purchase money
+for their land; this is in the deeds. Within a comparatively short
+period, this assures to each of them a freehold. The valuation I have
+put on their land is regulated by the amount of work they have put out
+on it, and the time they have lived on it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take old Mère Guillardeau, for instance. She has an 'arpent' now of
+her very own. She, and her father, and her father's father have lived
+on these seigniory lands for nearly two hundred years. I value that
+land by discounting the value of the service rendered to it in four
+generations. Her little 'cabane' is her own, having been built by her
+father. The land is worth to her all the accumulated value of those
+generations of toil; to me, who have never done anything for it,
+neither I nor my fathers, it is worth exactly ten dollars&mdash;now, don't
+laugh!&mdash;her yearly rent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And that buys it!" I exclaimed, wondering what kind of finance this
+might be, frenzied or sane.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is hers&mdash;and I have the pleasure of knowing it is hers while I am
+living. She and her old daughter of seventy drove out here the other
+day in Farmer Boucher's cart, and when she went home she carried the
+deed with her to have it registered. Old André's sister is a hundred
+years old in January&mdash;a hundred years, the product of one piece of
+land, for, practically they have lived from it with a yearly pig, a
+cow, a few hens and a garden. Ninety years of toil she has spent upon
+it. Would you, in the circumstances, have dared to make the time of
+purchase one year, six months even, and she nearly a centenarian?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No." I was beginning to understand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And take old Jo Latour. You know him well, for I hear from him how
+many times you have been there on snow-shoes to take him something
+'comforting and warming', as he says. Jo has rheumatism, the kind that
+catches him when he is sitting in his chair or stooping, and prevents
+his getting up; and at last, when he manages to stand upright, it won't
+let him bend or sit down again until after painful effort. What can he
+do? Boil maple syrup once a year, or chop a cord or two of wood at a
+dollar a cord? He is seventy-two and has no family as you know. What
+is he going to do when the pinch becomes too hard? He has a small
+woodlot, a little garden, a patch of tobacco&mdash;is happy all day long
+with his dog and pipe, despite that rheumatic crippling. I have valued
+his lot at twenty dollars, and a year's rent will pay for it&mdash;with the
+help of this," he added, touching the box.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am learning how to take hold of the matter by the handle. Enlighten
+me some more, please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I could go on for hours into more detail, but I am going to mention
+only two other families, to show how my plan works. There are
+Dominique Montferrand and Maxime Longeman, men of thirty or
+thereabouts, fine strong men with their broods of six and eight. They
+marry young; work hard and faithfully; shun the cabarets; save their
+surplus earnings. They were born on the land; they love it and give it
+of their best toil; it responds to good treatment. Their dairy is one
+of the best; their stock superior. They have seventy-five acres each.
+I asked them to value it themselves. They showed they appreciated the
+worth of the land by the price they set: four thousand dollars&mdash;four
+thousand 'pièces'. They would not cheapen it&mdash;not even for the sake of
+getting it more quickly. A man appreciates that spirit. I have set
+the period for half-yearly payments at ten years&mdash;and I will help out
+with improved farm implements at the rate of interest I mentioned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In less than ten years, if the crops are good, it is theirs. If the
+crops are poor, they can still pay for it in the period set. They are
+young. They have something to work for during the best years of their
+lives."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But how do you feel about parting with all this land that was your
+ancestors? Are n't you, too, bound to it by ties of value given?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Me? My ancestors!" he exclaimed. "Where did you get that idea? Who
+told you that this was ancestral land of mine?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Macleod, or Jamie, intimated it was yours by inheritance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hm&mdash;I must undeceive them. But <I>you</I> are not to harbor such a thought
+for a moment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I won't if you say so&mdash;but I would like to know how things stand." I
+grew bold to ask, at the thought of his expressed confidence in me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, it's all so simple&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More simple, I hope, than all that matter of seigniorial rights and
+transferences I read upon, in the Library before I came&mdash;and was no
+wiser than before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you thought&mdash; Oh, this is rich!" he said, thoroughly amused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I nodded. "Yes; I thought you were a seignior. I dreamed dreams,
+before coming here of course, of retainers and ancestral halls, and
+then&mdash;I was met by Cale at the boat landing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart fairly shouted as he sensed my disappointment on the romantic
+side upon discovering Cale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the first thing you did, poor girl, was to lay a rag carpet strip
+in the passageway for my seigniorial boots&mdash;spurred, of course, in your
+imagination&mdash;to make wet snow tracks on! Oh, go on, go on; tell me
+some more. I would n't miss this for anything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before I could speak there was a decided rap on the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's Jamie," I said; "he has come for the fun."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come in," cried Mr. Ewart. Jamie intruded his head; his rueful face
+caused an outburst on my part.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, Ewart, is it playing fair to a man to have all this unwonted
+hilarity in business hours, and keep me out?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No more it is n't, mon vieux. Come in and hear about Miss Farrell's
+seigniorial romancing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on, Marcia," said Jamie, sitting down by me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 've misled me, Jamie. Did n't you, or Mrs. Macleod, tell me when
+I first came that this Seigniory of Lamoral was Mr. Ewart's by
+inheritance?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it was in a way, was n't it, Gordon? It was a Ewart's?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not in a way, even. I never thought enough about your view of the
+matter to speak of it. Let's have a cigar, if Miss Farrell does n't
+object, and I 'll tell what there is to tell&mdash;there 's so little!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie looked at me when Mr. Ewart rose to get the cigars&mdash;and looked
+unutterable things. I read his thought: "Now is our time to find out
+the truth of things heard and rumored."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was born in Canada, Miss Farrell," he said, between puffs, "as Jamie
+knows, and educated in England. My mother's great-uncle, on her
+mother's side, was a Ewart of Stoke Charity, a little place in the
+south of England. While I was there, I was much with this great-uncle;
+I bear his name. He owned this estate of Lamoral in Canada, that is,
+two-thirds of the original seigniory; the other third belongs to the
+present seignior and seignioress in Richelieu-en-Bas. He purchased it
+from a Culbertson who inherited it from his grandfather, an officer of
+prominence in the French and Indian wars. At that time, many of the
+old French seigniories fell into the conqueror's hands, and, by the
+power of a might that makes right, were allotted to various English
+officers for distinguished services. The original Culbertson never
+lived here. His grandson, my great-uncle's friend, never cared enough
+for it to manage it himself; he left all to an agent and found it paid
+him but little&mdash;so little that he was willing enough to sell two-thirds
+of it, the neglected two-thirds, to my great-uncle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On my great-uncle's death, his grandson, my contemporary, inherited
+it. I bought it of him ten years ago; but I have used it only as a
+camping-place when I have been over from England or the Island
+Continent. I paid for it with a part of what I earned on my sheep
+ranch in Australia&mdash;so linking two parts of the Empire in my small
+way&mdash;and I have never regretted it. That's all there is to tell of the
+'inheritance' romance, Miss Farrell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gordon&mdash;" Jamie stopped short; blew the smoke vigorously from his
+lips, and began again. "Would you mind telling me how you came to want
+to settle here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why? Because I am a Canadian, not an Englishman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why do you always take pains to make that distinction?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's easy to explain. Because a Canadian is never an Englishman; he
+is Canadian heart and soul. You can't make him over into an
+Englishman, no matter if you plant him in Oxford and train him in
+Australia. I 've been enough in England to know that we are looked
+upon for what we are&mdash;colonials, Canadians, just the other side of the
+English pale although within the bounds of the British Empire. You
+feel it in the air, social, political and economic. No drawing-room in
+England accepts me as an Englishman&mdash;and I enter no drawing-room with
+any wish to be other than a Canadian of the purest brand. We 're not
+even English in our political rights over there. We are English only
+in the law, as is the pariah of India. We want to be just Canadians,
+inheritors of a land unequalled in its possibilities for human growth,
+for human progress, for the carrying out of just, wise laws, for a
+far-reaching economical largesse undreamed of in other lands&mdash;not
+excepting yours," he said, turning to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And would you mind telling me," I asked, emboldened by Jamie's
+personal question, "how it has come about that you look upon your
+special land ownership with such a broad human outlook?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And this really interests you?" He asked me in some surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It really interests me&mdash;why should n't it when I have my own
+livelihood to earn? The economic question, so-called, seems to me to
+resolve itself into the question: How are we, I and my brothers and
+sisters, who work in one way and another, going to feed and clothe
+ourselves&mdash;and yet not live by bread alone? But, I don't suppose you
+know that side of it, only theoretically?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and no. I got all my inspiration about this land question in
+England."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In England!" Jamie repeated, showing his surprise. "That would seem
+the last place for the advancement of such theories about land as I
+have heard you explain more than once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In this way. The object lesson came from England&mdash;but was upside down
+on my national retina. I had to re-adjust it in Canada. It's just
+here; the condition of England is this&mdash;I have seen it with both bodily
+and spiritual eyes:&mdash;That snug little, tight little island is what you
+might call in athletic parlance 'muscle bound'. I 'll explain. For
+more than a century she has colonized. What is left now? Her land
+owned by the few; her population, that which is left, rapidly
+pauperizing. England, with a land for the sustenance of millions, is
+powerless to help, to succor her own. She has too much unused land, as
+the muscle-bound athlete has too much muscle. It handicaps her in all
+progress. Her classes are now two: the very poor, and the poor who
+have no land; the rich who have practically all the land. In this
+condition of things her economical and political system is drained of
+it best.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Scotch, English, Irish&mdash;the clearest brains, the best muscle, the
+highest hearts, are coming over here to Canada. This land is the great
+free land for the many. In settling here, I wanted to add my quota of
+effort in the right direction. And I cannot see but that this little
+piece of earth, three thousand acres in all, on which, for two hundred
+years, men, women and children have succeeded one another, multiplying
+as generation after generation, have gone on caring for the land,
+living from it,&mdash;but never owning a foot of it,&mdash;is the best kind of an
+experiment station for working out my principles. I am about to apply
+the result of my English object lesson here in Lamoral. I have been
+telling Miss Farrell about the disposition I intend to make of it,
+gradually, of course. Perhaps you would like to hear sometime."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you tell me about it in detail?" Jamie asked eagerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am only too pleased to find a listener, an interested one. Miss
+Farrell has proven a good one&mdash;I've kept you already two hours." He
+rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it possible!" I was genuinely surprised. "The time had seemed so
+short. I must go now and help Angélique with her new cake recipe&mdash;a
+cake we eat only in the States, and a good object lesson on the
+economic side." I rose and laid the gloves on the table. I had kept
+them on just a little longer than was necessary&mdash;because they were his!
+Foolish? Oh, yes, I knew it to be; but it was such a pleasure to
+indulge myself in foolishness that concerned nobody's pleasure but my
+own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sometime I want to ask you a few questions, Miss Farrell," said Mr.
+Ewart, as I turned to the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What about?" I was a little on the defensive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to know how you came to have any such economic ideas in your
+thinking-box?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I turned again from the door to face him. "Have you ever lived in New
+York?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you ever been there?" There was a moment's hesitancy before he
+replied, thoughtfully:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; I have been through it several times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you must know something of the economic conditions of those four
+millions?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do I answer you, when I tell you I was one four-millionth for seven
+years? That I struggled for my daily bread with the other four
+millions; that after seven years I found myself going under in the
+struggle, poor, alone, ill, with just twenty-two dollars to show for
+the seven years of work? Can you wonder that I am interested in your
+work after <I>my</I> object lesson?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment there was silence in the office. I broke it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My two friends," I said lightly, "I have upstairs in my purse a little
+sum of fourteen dollars that I received from Mrs. Macleod when I was in
+New York; that was my passage money to Lamoral. I was too proud to owe
+anything to any one unknown to me, so took fourteen dollars of my
+twenty-two&mdash;all I possessed after the seven years' struggle&mdash;and paid
+my own passage. I 've wondered again and again to whom I should return
+this money. I have never had the courage to ask. Will you tell me
+now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew nothing of the money, Miss Farrell, or of you." Mr. Ewart
+spoke at last in a steady, but strained voice. Jamie's eyes were
+reddened. He held out his hand and I put mine into it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was n't friendly of you, Marcia&mdash;you should have told us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whose money is it, Jamie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the Doctor's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His own?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His very own; he told me. Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because I am so thankful to know that it is not from that accumulated
+sum; you know what he said. I would not like to touch it, coming from
+such an unknown source, besides&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pardon me," said Mr. Ewart rising abruptly. Going to the side door he
+called to Cale who was passing round the house. "I have to speak with
+Cale."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He left the room, and Jamie and I stared at each other, an
+interrogation point in the eyes of each.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tin box still stood on the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's in that?" Jamie demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Filthy lucre," I said, turning for the second time to leave the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, if Ewart's queer sometimes, as witness his abrupt departure, you
+'re queerer with your ideas of money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I laughed back at him as I went out of the office:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can pay the Doctor now, Jamie. I 'm rich, you know."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0225"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+We saw little, if anything, of Mr. Ewart for the next week. His time
+was wholly occupied with the land business. He took his breakfast
+early, at five or thereabout, and rarely came home for dinner or
+supper. His return at night was also uncertain. Sometimes a telephone
+message informed us he was starting for Montreal, or Quebec. I think I
+saw him but once in the week that followed that morning in the office.
+Then it was late in the evening, on his return from Montreal. He
+seemed both tired and preoccupied. We were not at table with him
+during those seven days. I wondered, and Jamie guessed in vain,
+whether anything might be worrying him. It seemed natural that
+something should be the trouble during such a wholesale transference of
+land.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Macleod and I were busy all day in getting ready the camp outfit
+for the four of us. Cale was not to go, as his work was at home. It
+surprised me that he had so little to say about Mr. Ewart to whom he
+was devoted. Whenever, in the intimacy of our half-relation bond, I
+felt at liberty to question him about his employer, he always put me
+off in a manner far from satisfying and wholly irritating.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I asked him once if he knew whether Mr. Ewart was a bachelor or a
+widower.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stared at me for a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He ain't said one word ter me sence I come here as ter whether he is
+one or t'other," he answered, sharply for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right, Cale; I bear you no grudge. But, in justice, you
+'ll have to admit that when you live month after month in the same
+house with a man and his friends, you can't help wanting to know all
+there is to know about him and them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, if you look at it thet way, I ain't nothing ter say. How 'bout
+yourself?" With that he deliberately turned his back on me, and left
+me wondering if by any incautious word, by my manner, by any small act,
+I might have betrayed the source of my new joy in life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the first of June the Seigniory of Lamoral was a wonderfully active
+place. The farmers were making greater and more intelligent efforts in
+cultivating their lands than ever before. Mr. Ewart had established
+the beginning of a small school of agriculture and forestry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He used one of the vacant outbuildings for the classes. It was open to
+all the farmers and their families; and twice a week there were
+lectures by experts, hired by Mr. Ewart, with practical demonstration
+on soil-testing, selection of seed, hybridizing, and irrigation
+methods. They were well attended. The women turned out in full force
+when it was known that there would be three lectures on bee-culture,
+and the industry threatened to become a rage with the farmers' wives; I
+found from personal observation that the flower gardens were increased
+in number and enlarged as to acreage. Mr. Ewart said afterward, when
+the blossoming time was come, that the land reminded him of the
+wonderful flower gardens around Erfurt in Germany where honey is a
+staple of the country. It was proposed to hold a seigniory exhibition
+of fruits, vegetables and cereals, the last of September.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Canadian spring seems to lead directly in to summer's wide open
+door. In June, Jamie and I were often on horseback&mdash;I learning to ride
+a good Kentucky saddle horse that Mr. Ewart had added to the stables.
+We were much in the woods, picking our way along the rough beginnings
+of roads that Cale, with the help of a gang of Canuck workmen, was
+making at right angles through the heavy timber. He had been at work
+in this portion throughout the winter in order to bring the logs out on
+sledges over the encrusted snow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One afternoon in the middle of June, Mr. Ewart, whose continual
+flittings ceased with the first of the month, asked me to ride with him
+to the seigniory boundaries on the north&mdash;something I had expressed a
+wish to see before we left for camp, that I might note the progress on
+our return in September. He said it was a personally conducted tour of
+inspection of Cale's roads and trails.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My old panama skirt had to serve me for riding-habit. A habitant's
+straw hat covered my head. Mr. Ewart rode hatless. I was anticipating
+this hour or two with him in the June green of the forest. I had not
+been alone in his presence since those hours in the office&mdash;and now
+there was added the intimacy of the woodsy solitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am beginning to be impatient to show you the trails through that
+real wilderness on the Upper Saguenay; but those, of course, we take
+without horses," he said, as he held his hand for my foot and lifted me
+easily to the saddle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've been marking off the days in the calendar for the last three
+weeks. It will be another new life for me in those wilds."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you decided which way to go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think it will be the better way to go by train to Lake St. John&mdash;to
+Roberval. We can cross the lake there and reach our camp about as
+easily as by way of Chicoutimi. We shall have a lot of camp
+paraphernalia for so long a camping-out, and, besides, that route will
+show you and Jamie something of a wonderful country. Of course, we
+shall come back by the Saguenay; I 'm saving the best for the last."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We forded our creek about a mile above the manor and entered the heavy
+timber.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And to think it is I, Marcia Farrell, who is going to enjoy all this!"
+I was joyful in the anticipation of spending eight weeks, at least, in
+the presence of this man; eight untrammelled weeks in this special
+wilderness to which he asked me in order that it might seem something
+of a home to him!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And why should n't it be you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know of any reason why it should n't, except that it might so
+easily have been some one else. But I must n't think of that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is sensible; although I confess I don't like to think that you
+might so easily have been some one else. Hark! Hear that cuckoo&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We drew rein for a few minutes, there beneath the great trees. The
+western light was strong, for the sun was still two hours high. Then
+we rode on slowly over the wide rough clearings which Cale had run at
+right angles, north and south, east and west through the woods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These are all to be grassed down next fall; in another year, if the
+grass catches well, they will make fine going for horses or for
+carriages, as well as good fire-lanes for which I have had them cut.
+In the second season I can turn some of the prize Swiss cattle in here
+to graze for extra feeding. They know so well how to do all this in
+Europe, and we can learn so much from those older countries! I am
+sure, too, if you knew France, you would say that these river counties
+in French Canada are so like the north of France&mdash;like Normandy! When
+I drive over the country hereabout, I can fancy myself there. I find
+the same expanse and quiet flow of the river, the highroads bordered by
+tall poplars, the villages sheltered from the north by a wood
+break&mdash;forest wood. Even the backwater of the river, like our creek,
+recalls those ancestral lands of my French brothers' forefathers:&mdash;the
+clear dark of the still surface, the lindens, their leaves as big as a
+palm-leaf fan, coming down to the water's edge, and a wood-scow poling
+along beneath them. I love every feature of this country!" he
+exclaimed with enthusiasm, "and I want you to." He turned in his
+saddle to look directly at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do love it, what I know of it&mdash;and I wish I might sometime see those
+other countries you have spoken of, especially those flower gardens of
+Erfurt." I smiled at my thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His words conjured in my imagination enticing pictures of travel&mdash;such
+as I had planned when in New York, when my ten years' savings should
+permit me to indulge myself in a little roaming. My dream that was! I
+was tempted to tell him of it then and there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know, Mr. Ewart, I spoke very freely to you and Jamie that morning
+in the office."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; I am thankful you felt you could&mdash;at last. I have been waiting
+for some opportune hour when I could ask you a few personal questions,
+if you permit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, that was one of my day dreams&mdash;at twenty-six," I said, wondering
+what his was, still unexpressed, at "forty-six". "The truth is, I
+wanted to break with every association in New York and with my past
+life&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Miss Farrell? You are so young to say that; at your age you
+should have no past."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I hesitated to answer. Thoughts followed one another with rapidity:
+"Shall I tell him? Lay before him what threatened to embitter my whole
+life? Shall I make known to him the weight of the burden that rested
+for so many years on my young shoulders&mdash;even before I went down into
+that great city to earn my livelihood? Shall I tell him that? How can
+he understand, not having had such experience? What, after all, is
+that to him, now?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Young?" I repeated, looking away from him westwards into the illumined
+perspective of forest greens. "When you were young, very young in
+years, was there never a time when you felt old, as if youth had never
+passed your way?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I heard a sudden, sharp-drawn breath. I turned to him on the instant,
+and in the quivering nostril, the frowning brows, the hard lines about
+the well-controlled lips, I read the confirmation of my intuition,
+expressed to Jamie so many months ago, that he had suffered. My
+question had probed, unintentionally, to the quick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a woman's sympathetic insight, I saw that this man had never
+recovered from his past, never broken with it as, so recently, I had
+broken with mine. I felt that until he should make the effort, should
+gain that point of view, he could never feel free to love me as I loved
+him. The barrier of that past was between us. What it was I hardly
+cared to know. I was intent only upon helping him to free himself from
+the serfdom of memories.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't answer me&mdash;I don't want any," I said hastily, leaning over to
+lay my hand on the pommel of his saddle. It was the only demonstration
+I dared to make to express my understanding, my sympathy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In an instant his right hand closed hard upon mine; held it, hard
+pressed, on the pommel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I want to answer you," he said, speaking slowly, deliberately,
+without the slightest trace of excitement in his passionless voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was looking into the woods&mdash;not at me&mdash;as he spoke, and I knew that
+at that moment his soul was wandering afar from mine; it was with some
+one in the past. Suddenly, a hot, unreasonable wave of jealousy
+overwhelmed me; I yielded to the impulse to pull my hand from under his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not my hand he is clasping, and pressing with the strength of a
+press-block on the pommel; it's that other woman's!" I said to myself,
+making a second determined effort to release my hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He whirled about in his saddle, looking me directly in the eyes. He
+read my thought of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let your hand lie there, quietly, under mine," he said sternly; "it's
+<I>your</I> hand, remember, not another's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tense muscles of my hand relaxed. It lay passive under the
+pressure of his. I waited, quiescent. I realized that the Past had
+been roused from its lair. I must wait until it should seek covert
+again of its own accord, before speaking one word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to answer you&mdash;and answer as you alone should be answered: Yes,
+I have felt old&mdash;centuries old&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He caught the bridle rein under the thumb of his right hand as it lay
+over mine. The left he thrust into his pocket; drew out a match-safe,
+a wax-taper. I, meanwhile, was wondering what it all meant; dreading
+developments, yet longing to know.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He reached for an overhanging branch of birch and broke off a small
+twig of tender young green. To do so, he removed his hand from mine
+which I kept on the pommel. I saw that the Past was still prowling,
+and it behooved me not to irritate, not to enrage by any show of
+distrust; nor did I feel any.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He struck the taper. "This is against forest rules," he said, "but for
+this once I shall break them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He held the fresh green of the tiny birch twig in the flame. The young
+life dried within leaf and leaf-bud. The living green hung limp,
+blackened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Such was my life when I was young," he said, calmly enough; but,
+suddenly, a dull red flush showed beneath the clear brown of his
+cheeks. It mounted to temples, forehead, even to the roots of his hair
+where a fine sweat broke out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And, seeing that, I dared&mdash;I could bear the sight no longer:&mdash;I took my
+hand from the pommel and laid it over the poor blackened twig, crushing
+it in my palm; hiding it from his sight, from mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I believe he understood the entire significance of my action; for he
+turned his hand instantly, palm upwards, and caught mine in it. The
+limp bit of foliage lay between the two palms. He looked at me
+steadily; not a flickering of the eye, not a twitch of the eyelid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I lost the woman I loved&mdash;how I lost her I need not say. That's all.
+But I have answered you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;but&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What? Speak out&mdash;you must," he said hastily, with the first outward
+sign of nervous irritation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is&mdash;is she dead?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt my whole future was at stake when I put that question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes!"&mdash;a pause,&mdash;"are you answered fully now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fully.&mdash;Let me have the twig."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He released my hand. I looked at the bit of birch closely,
+scrutinizingly. I found what I was hoping to find: a tiny sign of
+life, a wee nub of green; something ready, unseared, for another year.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I 'll take it home," I said, as if interested only in botany;
+"I find there is life left in it&mdash;a tiny bud that may be a shoot in
+time. I 'll see what I can do with it; the experiment is worth trying."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He smiled for answer. He understood. The beast of the Past was again
+in its lair. I regained my usual good spirits and proposed that we see
+Mrs. Boucher's flower gardens before we turned homewards.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I like to hear you use that word&mdash;it is a new one for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For me, too; and if you don't object I would like you to know why it
+means so much to me. You see I am anticipating the personal questions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to know&mdash;all that I may."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is your right, now that I am in your home. Shall I find you in the
+office this evening?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; but rather late. Shall we say ten? I shall not be at home for
+porridge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any time will do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We rode out into the open, where the horses cantered quickly along the
+highroad to Farmeress Boucher's. There I dismounted to visit her
+gardens and bee-hives and share her enthusiasm over the new industry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We gave our horses the rein on the homeward way and rode in silence,
+except for one remark from Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have not been over the roads, and Cale will be disappointed. We
+will go another time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That will do just as well; I only want to be able to mark the progress
+in September when we return from camp."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was supper time when we reached the manor, but Mr. Ewart did not
+stay for any. He was off again&mdash;"on business" he said.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0226"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXVI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"What shall I tell him? How shall I tell him? Shall what I tell him
+be all, or garbled? Is there any need to mention my mother? Shall I
+confess to non-knowledge of my father's name? What is it, after all,
+to him, who and what they were? It is I, Marcia Farrell, in whom his
+interest centres."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I thought hard and thought long when I found myself alone after nine in
+my room. I came at last to the conclusion that there was no need to
+bring in my mother's name into anything I might have to say to him&mdash;not
+yet. I regretted that he was not present that evening when Cale told
+the terrible story of her short life. It would have been all
+sufficient for me to say to him after that, "I am her daughter." Only
+once, on the occasion of making myself known, had I mentioned her to
+Cale; not once referred to her, or her desperate course since that
+narration. And Cale, moreover, had sealed our lips&mdash;the four of us. I
+had no wish to speak of what was so long past. But, sometime, I
+intended to ask Cale if George Jackson ever obtained a divorce from my
+mother, and when. In a way, what people are apt to consider a
+birthright depended on his answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again and again during that hour of concentrated thought, there surged
+up into consciousness, like a repeating wave of undertone, the
+realization that all that belonged to a quarter of a century ago, all,
+all past; done with; their accounts settled. They were forgotten,
+mostly, by everyone; forgiven, perhaps, by the few, including Cale.
+Why should what my mother did, or did not do, figure as a factor in my
+present and future life? I determined to take my stand with Mr. Ewart
+on this, and this alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was sitting by the open window in the soft June dark and, while
+thinking, deliberating, weighing facts, choosing them, defining my
+position to myself, I was aware that I was listening to catch the first
+distant thud of a horse's hoofs approaching the manor from&mdash;somewhere.
+The night was clear but dark. There was no wind. I rose from my chair
+and leaned out, stemming both hands on the window ledge. Far away,
+somewhere on the highroad above the bridge, I heard the long drawn note
+of an automobile horn, and for the first time since my coming to
+Lamoral! I listened intently; the machine was coming nearer. At last,
+I could hear voices in the still night. There was another note of
+warning, sweet, mellow, far-reaching. I leaned still farther out in
+order to see if I could catch a glimpse of the light, for I knew it was
+coming towards the manor. It was a curious thing&mdash;but just that sound
+of an automobile, that action of mine in the dark warmth of a summer
+night, reacted in consciousness. The motor power invoked the
+perceptive&mdash;and I saw myself as I was nine months before, leaning out
+from my "old Chelsea" attic window into the sickening sultry heat of
+mid-September, and shaking my puny fist at the great city around me!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment I relived that hour and the six following. Then, in a
+flash of comprehension, I saw my way to tell the master of Lamoral
+something of any very self&mdash;of myself alone: I would put into his hand
+the journal in which I wrote for the last time on that memorable night,
+when the course of my life was altered, its channel deepened and
+widened by my acceptance of the place "at service" in Lamoral&mdash;the
+Seigniory of Lamoral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The automobile was coming up the driveway. Underbrush and undergrowth
+having been removed by Cale, I caught through the opening the bright
+gleam of its acetylene lamps. It stopped at the door; I could not
+distinguish the voices, for the throb of its engine continued. A
+moment&mdash;it was off again. I heard the front door open and close. He
+was at home and alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I lighted my lamp; opened my trunk and took from the bottom the
+journal, the two blank books. I waited a few minutes till I heard the
+clock in the kitchen strike ten; then, softly opening my door, I went
+down the corridor, down stairs into the living-room, now wholly dark,
+and moved cautiously, in order not to stumble against the furniture, to
+the office door which was dosed. I rapped softly. It was flung wide
+open. The Master of Lamoral was standing on the threshold of the
+brilliantly lighted room, with both hands extended to welcome me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was waiting for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I did not give him mine. Instead, I laid the two blank books in
+his outstretched palms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's this?" he said, surprised and, it seemed, not wholly pleased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Something of me I want you to give your whole attention to when it is
+convenient; it is my way of answering those personal unput questions.
+Good night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at me strangely for a moment, then at the books in his two
+hands, as if doubtful about accepting them without further explanation
+on my part.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good night," I said again, smiling at his perplexity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose it must be good night to one part of you, the corporal, at
+least; but not to this other," he said, with an answering smile. "Who
+knows but that I may say good morning to this?"&mdash;indicating the
+journal&mdash;"I shall not sleep until I have read it. So good night to
+this part of you standing before me&mdash;and thanks for giving this other
+part of yourself into my hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the fraction of a minute I hesitated to go. It was so pleasant
+standing there on the threshold of the room I had furnished for
+him&mdash;the room that found favor with every one who entered it; so
+pleasant to know that he and I were alone there together with the
+intimate recollection of the afternoon in the forest between us. I had
+to exercise all my fortitude of common sense to rescue me from
+overdoing things, from lingering or entering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I beat a hurried retreat through the living-room. I knew that he was
+still standing on the threshold, for the flood of light from the office
+was undimmed. The door must have been open when I reached the upper
+landing on the stairs; then, in the perfect quiet of the darkened
+house, I heard him shut it&mdash;so shutting himself in with that other part
+of me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I wondered what he would think of that intangible presence? Long after
+I was in bed I could not sleep. Was he reading it through by course,
+or dipping into it here and there as I did on that night nine months
+ago? Would he, could he, placed as he was, understand something of my
+struggle?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I lost myself in conjecture. I opened my door a little way, for a
+"cross draft", I said to myself, so lying gently; in reality it was to
+enable me to hear when Mr. Ewart should come up to his room. I
+listened for some sound. I heard nothing but the indefinite murmur of
+summer-night woodsy whisperings. The kitchen clock struck the time for
+four successive hours&mdash;and then there was a faint heralding of dawn.
+At three the woods showed dark against the sky. My straining ears
+caught the sound of a door closing somewhere about the house. I heard
+the soft pattering of the dogs running to and fro without it&mdash;then
+silence, broken only by a cock crowing lustily out beyond the barns.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had gone out, and he had not come upstairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of the latter I made sure when I rose, sleepy and heavy-eyed, at seven
+that June morning, and looked into the wide open door of his room in
+passing. He had not used it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For weeks, yes, for months, he never mentioned that night or the
+journal. He never spoke of keeping or returning it. So far as I
+actually knew he might not have read it; but I was aware of a change in
+his manner to me. His kindness and thoughtfulness for his household
+were universal; they included me. From that day, however, when he made
+his appearance at breakfast, immaculate and seemingly as fresh as if
+from a good sleep, I became the object of his special thought, his
+special solicitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was sure Cale noticed this at once. It dawned upon Jamie slowly but
+surely, and a more bewildered youth I have never seen. I knew he was
+trying to rhyme ever present facts with my sentiment about leaving
+Lamoral as expressed to him so recently. Mrs. Macleod, if she
+perceived the change in Mr. Ewart's manner towards me, gave no sign
+that she did&mdash;and I was grateful to her. She and I were much together,
+for we were busy getting ready for the camp outing. We were to start
+within ten days. The Doctor wrote me that he envied me the extra four
+weeks; he promised his friend to be with him the first of August.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When all was in readiness, Mr. Ewart, with the load of camp belongings,
+left three days in advance of us. We were to meet him at Roberval.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0227"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXVII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+In the wilds of the Upper Saguenay! By the lake that, in this
+narration at least, shall have no name. It is long, narrow, winding at
+its southern extremity; at its northern, it is expanded pool-like among
+forest-covered heights the reflection of which darkens and apparently
+deepens it where its waters touch the marginal wilderness! In camp by
+the margin of the lake, beneath some ancient pines, rare in that
+region, and surrounded by the spicy fragrance of balsam, spruce and
+cedar, that came to us warm from the depths of the seemingly
+illimitable forest behind us!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What a day, that one of our arrival! We journeyed by steamer across
+Lake St. John. We came by canoe on the river, by portage; and again by
+canoe on river or lake, as it happened. We camped for one night in the
+open. On the second day there were several portages; many of our camp
+belongings were borne on the backs of sturdy Montagnais, friends of old
+André, and led by André the Second, a strapping youth of sixty. There
+followed a journey of nine miles up the lake, our lake; and, then, at
+last, in the glow of sunset, we had sight of old André coming to
+welcome us in his canoe that floated, a "brown leaf", on the golden
+waters! I heard the soft grating of the seven keels on the clear
+shining yellow sands of a tiny cove&mdash;and Mr. Ewart was first ashore,
+helping each of us out, welcoming each to this special bit of his
+beloved Canadian earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Our home for ten weeks, Miss Farrell," he exclaimed, giving me both
+hands. "Steady with your foot&mdash;you must learn to know the caprices of
+your own canoe&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My own?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, this is yours for the season; we don't poach much on one
+another's canoe preserves here in Canada. This is our fleet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The whole seven?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; André the First and André the Second have three between them, big
+ones; you, Jamie and I have one each, and there is one for Mrs. Macleod
+if she will do me the honor of allowing me to teach her to paddle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is great, mother!" said Jamie who had not ceased to wring old
+André's hand since the two found firm footing. "But first I must teach
+her to swim, Ewart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Poor Mrs. Macleod! I doubt if her idea of camping out was wholly
+rose-colored at that moment, for she was tired with the excitement, and
+constant travel in canoe and on foot of the last two days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The camp will be the safest place for me at present," she said, trying
+to appear cheerful, but glancing ruefully at the three rough board
+huts, gray and weather beaten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 've done nobly, Mrs. Macleod, I appreciate your effort; and if you
+'ll take immediate possession of the right hand camp&mdash;it's yours and
+Miss Farrell's&mdash;I hope you will find a little comfort even in this
+wilderness. I 'll just settle with these Montagnais comrades, for
+after supper they will be on their way back to Roberval." Jamie
+interrupted him to say:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother, here 's André, André, mon vieux camarade. This is my mother,
+André; I told you about her last year."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old André's hand, apparently as steady as her own, was extended to meet
+Mrs. Macleod's. I saw how expressive was that handclasp. The only
+words she spoke were in her rather halting French:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My son's comrade&mdash;he is mine, I hope, André."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What a smile illumined that parchment face! It was good to see in the
+wilderness; it was humanly comprehensive of the entire situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is Miss Farrell," said Jamie; "she lives with us, André, in
+Lamoral."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Never shall I forget the look, the voice, the words with which he made
+me welcome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have waited many years for you to come. I am content, <I>moi</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He heaved a long sigh of satisfaction. I think only Mrs. Macleod heard
+the words, for Jamie had run up to the camp. André took our special
+suit cases and carried them to the hut.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We took possession and found everything needed for our comfort. Tired
+as we were, we could not rest until we had unpacked and settled
+ourselves with something like regularity for the night. And, oh, that
+first supper in the open! The sun was setting behind the forest; the
+lake waters, touched with faint color on the farther shore, were
+without a ripple; the ancient pines above us quiet. And, oh, that
+first deep sleep on my bed of balsam spruce! Oh, that first awakening
+in the early morning, the glory of sunrise, the sparkle and dance of
+the lake waters in my eyes!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, that joy of living! I experienced it then in its fulness for the
+first time; and my sleep was more refreshing, my awakening more joyful,
+because of the near presence of the man I loved with all my heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a new heaven for me&mdash;because it was a new earth!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While dressing that first morning, André's welcoming words came back to
+me: "I have waited many years for you to come." And the look on his
+face. What did he mean? I recalled that Jamie quoted him, almost in
+those very words, when he told us of that episode of "forest love"
+which bore fruit in the wilderness of the Upper Saguenay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why should he welcome me with just those words? How many years had he
+"waited"? Had there been no woman in camp since then? It was hardly
+possible. I determined to ask Mr. Ewart, as soon as I should have the
+opportunity, if there had been women here before us, and to question
+André, also, as to what he meant by his words, but not until I should
+know him better. He would tell me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And André told me, but it was after long weeks of intimate acquaintance
+with the forest and with each other; after the fact that I was becoming
+all in all to the master of Lamoral, was patent to each of my friends
+in camp. I saw no attempt on Mr. Ewart's part to hide this fact. I
+believe I should have despised him if he had. Yet never once during
+those first five weeks did he mention my journal. Rarely was I alone
+with him; twice only on the trails through the forest; once in the
+canoe to the lower end of the lake and on the return; that was all.
+Never a word of love crossed his lips&mdash;but his thought of me, his
+manner, his care of me, his provision for my enjoyment of each day, his
+delight in my delight in his "camp", his pleasure in the fact that I
+was not only regaining what I had lost by the fearful illness of the
+year before&mdash;Doctor Rugvie told him of that&mdash;but storing up within my
+not over powerful body, balm, sunshine, ozone, and health abundant for
+the future.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And what did I not learn from him! And from André with whom I spent
+hours out of every day! What forest lore; what ways of cunning from
+the shy forest dwellers; what tricks of line and bait for the
+capricious trout, the pugnacious <I>ouananiche</I>, the lazy pickerel! What
+haunts of beaver I was shown! How I watched them by the hour, lying
+prone in my Khaki suit of drilling,&mdash;short skirt, high laced-boots,&mdash;my
+feminine "bottes sauvages" as André called them,&mdash;and bloomers,&mdash;from
+some cedar covert.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Those five weeks were one long dream-reality of forest life, and this
+was despite flies and mosquitoes which we treated in a scientific
+manner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of the Montagnais brought us the mail once a week from Roberval.
+The first of August he brought up a telegram that announced the Doctor
+would be with us the next day. Mr. Ewart decided to meet him at the
+last portage. André the Second went with him. They would be back just
+after dark that same day, he said. André the First was left to reign
+supreme in camp during his absence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am only as old as my heart, mademoiselle; you know that is young,
+and you make it younger while you are here," he said that afternoon,
+when he and I were trimming the camp with forest greens for the
+Doctor's coming, and Jamie was laying a beacon pile near the shore,
+just north of the camp where there was no underbrush or trees. André
+told us its light could be seen far down the lake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After supper I lay down in my hammock-couch, swung beneath the pines at
+the back of the camp. As I rocked there in the twilight, counting off
+the minutes of waiting by my heartbeats, I heard Jamie and André
+talking as they smoked together, and rested after the exertions of the
+day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How came you to think of it, André?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How came le bon Dieu to give me eyes&mdash;and sight like a hawk?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But why are you so sure?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why? Because what I see, I see. What I hear, I hear. It is the same
+voice I hear in the forest; the same laugh like the little forest
+brook; the same face that used to look at itself in the pool and smile
+at what it saw there; the same eyes&mdash;non, they are different. I found
+those others in the wood violets; these match the young chestnuts just
+breaking from the burrs after the first frost."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, André, it was so many years ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To me it is as yesterday, when I see her paddling the canoe and
+swaying like a reed in the gentle wind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you never knew her name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No. She was his 'little bird', his 'wood-dove' to him; and to her he
+was 'mon maître', always that&mdash;'my master' you say in English which I
+have forgotten, so long I am in the woods. They were so happy&mdash;it was
+always so with them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a few minutes of silence, then Jamie spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has Mr. Ewart ever spoken to you about what you told us that night in
+camp, André&mdash;about that 'forest love'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, the seignior has never spoken, but,"&mdash;he puffed vigorously at his
+pipe,&mdash;"he has no need to speak of it; he thinks it now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, now?" There was eager curiosity in Jamie's voice, and I knew
+well in what direction his thoughts were headed. I smiled to myself,
+and listened as eagerly as he for André's answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have eyes that see; it is again the 'forest love' with him&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Again?" Jamie interrupted him; his voice was suddenly a sharp
+staccato. "What do you mean by that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean what I say. The forest knows its own. She has come again; and
+my old eyes, that still see like the hawk, are glad at the sight of
+her&mdash;and of him. Have I not prayed all these years that Our Lady of
+the Snows might bless her&mdash;and <I>her child</I>?" There was no mistaking
+the emphasis on the last words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"André,"&mdash;Jamie's voice dropped to an excited whisper, but I caught
+it,&mdash;"you mean that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean <I>that</I>," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I heard him rise; I heard his steps soft on the cedar-strewn path.
+Jamie must have followed him, for in a moment I heard him calling from
+the shore:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother, Marcia, come on! André says it's time to light the beacon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I joined Mrs. Macleod, and in the dusk we made our way over to the pile
+of wood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are to light it, mademoiselle," said André, handing me the flaming
+pine knot. I obeyed mechanically, for André's words were filling all
+the night with confusing sounds that seemed to echo conflictingly from
+shore to shore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just here, by the birch bark, mademoiselle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The beacon caught; there was no wind. The bark snapped, curled and
+shrivelled; the branches crackled; the little flames leaped, the fire
+crept higher and higher till it lighted our faces and the waters in the
+foreground. We waited and watched till we heard a faint "hurrah", and
+soon, in the distance, a calcium light burned red and long. We went
+down again to the cove. Jamie was with his mother; I walked behind
+with André.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"André," I whispered to him, "when you first saw me you said, 'I have
+waited many years for you to come'. Why did you say that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why? Because I desired to speak the truth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I like some one you have seen before? Tell me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who was she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you tell me sometime what you do know of her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I will tell you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Soon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When you will?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-morrow?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As you please. I will take you to the tree, my tree&mdash;and to hers; you
+shall see for yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you, André."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must watch the fire," he said, and retraced his steps. Dear old
+André! It was such a pleasure to be able to talk with him in his own
+tongue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We heard the dip of the paddles, a call&mdash;our camp call. In a few
+minutes the Doctor was with us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I made excuse the next afternoon to go fishing with André. I kept
+saying to myself:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This thing is impossible; there can be no connection between me and
+any woman who may have been here in camp, and Mr. Ewart says several
+have been here to his knowledge. What if I do look like some other
+woman who, years ago, lived and loved here in this wilderness? What
+have I to do with her? I 'll settle this matter once for all and to my
+satisfaction; André will tell me. He is romantic; and that girl made a
+deep impression on him, especially in those circumstances. Now the
+thought of her has become a fixed idea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor sulked a little because he was not of my party.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't approve of your <I>solitude à deux</I> parties; they 're against
+camp rules."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just for this once. André is going to show me something I have wanted
+to see ever since I came."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was still growling after I was in the canoe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only this once!" I cried, waving my hand to him before we dipped the
+paddles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She used to wave her hand like that," said André, paddling slowly
+until I got well regulated to his&mdash;what I called&mdash;rhythm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I stared at him. Was this an obsession with him? It began to look
+like it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We landed on the north shore of the lake. I followed him along a
+trail, that led through a depression between two heights, upwards to a
+heavily wooded small plateau overlooking the lake. I followed his lead
+for another quarter of a mile through these woods. I could see no
+trail. Then we came into a path, a good one. I remarked on it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes: I have made it these many years. I come here every year."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We heard the rush of a near-by torrent. The air swept cool over
+through the woods and struck full on our faces. In a few minutes we
+were facing it&mdash;a singing mass of water pouring down the smooth face of
+a rock like the apron of a dam; the face was inclined at an angle of
+fifty degrees. The torrent plunged into a basin set deep among rocks.
+Above this pool, above the surrounding trees, towered one great pine.
+André led me to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have been coming here so many years&mdash;count," he said, pointing to
+the notches from the butt upwards to a height beyond my reach.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was the tree about which Jamie had sung, notched year after year
+by André, since he was ten, that he might know his age. And what an
+age! I counted: "Eighty notches."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, André, all those years?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But yes&mdash;and so many more." He held up his ten fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Mère Guillardeau will be a hundred her next birthday?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He nodded. "Yes; my sister is no longer in her first youth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He began to count backwards and downwards. I counted after him:
+"Twenty-seven." By the last notch there was a deep gash.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twenty-seven years ago she was here, she whom you are like. I have
+waited twenty-seven years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me about it; I am ready to hear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come here." He beckoned to me from a group of trees, tamaracks, on
+the other side of the path. He went behind one. I followed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Read," he said. And I read with difficulty, although the lettering
+was cut deep, one word "Heureuse", and a date "1883. 9. 10."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Heureuse'," I repeated. "Happy&mdash;happy; oh, I know how happy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at me significantly for a moment, and I knew that his "fixed
+idea" had possession of him. He regarded me, Marcia Farrell, as the
+child of that "forest love" of nearly twenty-seven years ago.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You say true; they were happy." Without preliminaries he told me the
+story he had related to Mr. Ewart and Jamie last year.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has Mr. Ewart or Jamie ever seen this tree, André?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No. I have told them both of my tree and the notches&mdash;but never of
+this other. You are the first to see it since her blue eyes watched
+him cut those letters. I have shown it to neither my young comrade nor
+to the seignior."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you say I am so like her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As like as if you were her own child?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put up his hand suddenly to "feel the wind". There was a sudden
+strange movement among the tree tops.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, come quickly, mademoiselle; we must get back. The wind is
+shifting to the southwest. It is blowing hot. I know the sign. The
+seignior will not want you to be out even with old André with this wind
+on the lake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked at the pool; it was black. The singing waters of the torrent
+showed unearthly white against the intensified green. The sky became
+suddenly overcast with swiftly moving clouds. In a moment the wind was
+all about us; the sound of its going through the forest filled the air
+with a confused roar. The great trees were already swaying, as we ran
+down the trail to the lake&mdash;and found Mr. Ewart just drawing his canoe
+and ours high up and away from the already uneasy water. He was
+breathing quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's a storm coming, André&mdash;we saw it from the other side of the
+lake; coming hard, too, from the southwest. The lake will not be safe
+till it is over. We will stay here in the open even if we get wet. It
+is not safe in the woods; the trees are already breaking. I hear the
+crash of the branches."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the seignior did not trust mademoiselle with me?" Evidently he
+was disgruntled. "True, I am no longer in my first youth" (I saw Mr.
+Ewart suppress a smile), "but years give caution, seignior&mdash;and I have
+many more than you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart laughed pleasantly. The sound of it dissipated André's
+anger&mdash;the quick resentment of old age.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"True, mon vieux camarade, you have the years; but I stand between you
+and mademoiselle when it comes to a matter of years. I must care for
+you both."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am content that it should be so, <I>moi</I>." He squatted by the canoes
+which he lashed to a small boulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No rain fell, but the wind was terrific in its force. We were obliged
+to lie flat on the sand. The air was filled with confused torrents of
+sound, so deafening that we could not make ourselves heard one to the
+other. It was over in ten minutes. The sky cleared, the sun shone;
+the lake waters subsided; the sounds died away, and very suddenly. In
+the minute's calm that followed it seemed as if, in all that land,
+there were no stirring of a leaf, a twig, or fin of fish, or wing of
+fowl. There was again a sudden change of wind, and we knew the very
+moment when the upper air currents, cool and crisp with a touch of
+Arctic frost, swept down upon the earth and brought refreshment. In
+another quarter of an hour there was no trace of the storm on the lake;
+but behind us, on each side of the trail, we saw great trees uprooted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can leave you and André now, and with a clear conscience, to your
+fishing," he said, as he ran down his canoe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt positively grateful to him for not insisting on taking me back
+with him; it would have hurt old André's pride as well as feelings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 'll bring home fish enough for supper," I said with fine amateur
+assurance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I warn you 'We are seven' plus the two Montagnais; they stay to-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I don't make good, André will." And André smiled in what I thought
+a particularly significant way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We watched the swift course of his canoe over the lake. Just as he was
+about to round a small promontory, that would hide him from our sight,
+he stood up, and swung the dripping paddle high above his head. I
+waved my hand in answering greeting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+André turned to me with a smile. "The seignior has a look of that
+other&mdash;but he is not the same."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What an obsession it was with this man of ninety! I watched him
+preparing lines and bait. The canoe had passed from sight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"André," I said, speaking on the impulse of the moment, "I want to go
+back to camp."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As you please, mademoiselle. I can fish on that side as well as
+this." Upon that he put up his pipe,&mdash;I verily believe it was still
+alive and his pockets must have been lined with asbestos,&mdash;and we
+embarked on our little voyage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I used my paddle mechanically, for I was thinking: "Is it for one
+moment probable I have any connection with that girl? Is that past, I
+am trying so hard to eliminate from my life, to present itself here as
+a quantity with which I must reckon&mdash;here in my life in this
+wilderness? Is there no avoiding it? André is so sure. Jamie knows
+he is sure; Mr. Ewart knows this too. They can say nothing to me about
+it&mdash;it is a matter of such delicacy; and they do not know who I am;
+even my journal does not tell that, and I knew this when I gave it into
+his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the Doctor&mdash;he knows. He knows from Cale and Delia Beaseley. He
+knows who I am; in all probability knows this very day, from those
+papers in his possession, my father's name; but he knows nothing of
+this new complication that André has brought about by his insistence
+that I am like some woman who camped here many years ago&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twenty-seven years! That must have been just before I was born&mdash;and
+the date&mdash;and that word 'heureuse' with a queer capital H&mdash;oh&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps it was a groan that escaped my lips, for, like a searchlight,
+the logic of events illumined each factor in that tragedy in which my
+mother&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My paddle fouled&mdash;the canoe careened&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sit still, for the love of God, sit still!" André fairly shrieked at
+me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's all right, André," I said quietly, to calm him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They say the lake has no bottom just here, mademoiselle&mdash;and if I had
+lost you for him&mdash;" he muttered, and continued to mutter, easing
+himself of his fright by swearing softly. He soon regained his
+composure; but was still frowning when I glanced behind me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What had this searchlight shown me?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just this:&mdash;that "heureuse" is French for happy&mdash;and the capital made
+it a proper name, "Happy". This word told me its own story. According
+to what Cale had said&mdash;and I had all detailed information from him&mdash;no
+trace of my mother was found although detectives had been put to work.
+She had simply dropped out of sight, not to come to the surface until
+that night in December when she tried to end her young life from the
+North River pier. Was she not for a part of that year and three months
+here in these wilds?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, what a far, far cry it must have been from this Canadian wilderness
+not made by man, to that other hundreds of miles away&mdash;that great
+metropolis, man made!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We paddled for the rest of the way in silence.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+That evening we sat late around the camp fire, and before we separated
+for the night Mr. Ewart said, turning to me:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want a promise from you, Miss Farrell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Caution, caution!" said the Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That you will make no more <I>solitude à deux</I> excursions, as John calls
+them, with old André. He is old, despite his seeming strength, and his
+age is beginning to tell on him. I see that he has failed much since
+last year."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're right there, Gordon; she should not risk it with him," said
+Jamie, emphatically. "I 've noticed the change from last year when I
+have been out with him on the trails. Why, he fell asleep only the
+other day with his line in his hand and his bait in the water!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you see that?" said Mr. Ewart. "It happened, too, the other day
+with me. I was amazed, but not so much as I was last week when we were
+in the woods making the north trail. He sat down to smoke and,
+actually, his pipe dropped from his hand. I trod out the fire or there
+would have been a blaze. Apparently he was asleep. I watched him for
+an hour, when he seemed to come to himself. It was not a sleep; it was
+a lethargy. You say it is often so, John&mdash;the beginning of the end.
+We must not let him know anything of this&mdash;dear old André!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is already immortalized in that Odyssey of yours, Jamie. People
+won't forget him, for he lives again in that." The Doctor spoke with
+deep feeling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And your promise, Miss Farrell?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Since you insist, yes. But it is hard to give it; we have had so much
+pleasure together André and I; we have been great chums&mdash;dear old
+André!" Unconsciously I echoed Mr. Ewart's words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I am sure that was the thought of all of us; our good nights were not
+the merry ones of the last two months. We were saddened at the thought
+that he might not be with us again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment or two Mr. Ewart and I stood alone by the embers of the
+camp fire; he was covering them with ashes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you for your promise. I don't care about experiencing another
+hour like that when I was crossing the lake this afternoon, with a
+young cyclone on its way. I have lost so much of life&mdash;I cannot lose
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His speech was abrupt; his voice low, but tense with emotion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There will be no need of losing me. I will keep my promise." I spoke
+lightly, but I knew he knew the significance of my words, as I knew
+that of his, for with those words I gave myself to him. I felt
+intuitively that he would not speak of love to me, until he had broken
+completely with that past to which in thought he was still, in part, a
+slave. I was willing to wait patiently for his entire emancipation.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0228"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXVIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia," said the Doctor one morning, after he had been enjoying,
+apparently, every minute of his vacation-life in the open, "will you
+come with me over the north trail as far as Ewart and André have made
+it? I want to show you something I found there the other day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before I could answer, Jamie spoke:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How about your <I>solitude à deux</I> principle, Doctor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is wise to forget sometimes, Boy. Will you come this morning,
+Marcia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I promptly said I would. I saw that he was slightly ruffled at Jamie's
+innocent jest; indeed, ever since his arrival, the Doctor had not been
+wholly like his genial self. Mrs. Macleod noticed it and spoke of it
+to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We don't realize, when we see him enjoying everything with the zest of
+a boy, how much he has on his mind. He told me the other day he must
+cut his vacation short; he is called to the Pacific coast for some of
+his special work."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I said nothing at the time, because I could not agree with her. I
+noticed that, at times, there was a slight constraint in his manner
+towards me&mdash;me who was willing for him to know all there was to know,
+except the fact that I loved his friend. I was convinced that he
+wanted to air his special knowledge of me with me alone; that after he
+had freed his mind to me, there would be no constraint.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Twice I caught him looking at Mr. Ewart, as if he were diagnosing his
+case, and I laughed inwardly. From time to time I surprised the same
+expression on his face when he was silent, smoking and, at the same
+time, watching me weave my baskets under the tutelage of a Montagnaise,
+the squaw of our postman. Mr. Ewart heard me express the wish to learn
+this handicraft, and within a week my teacher was provided. She
+remained in camp five days. Perhaps this opened the Doctor's eyes.
+Perhaps Jamie had spoken with him about what was evident to all. The
+Doctor grew more and more silent, more thoughtful, less inclined to
+jest with me. Added to this was the thought that we must break camp
+sooner than Mr. Ewart had intended. The "homing sense" was making
+itself felt, for September was with us. We saw some land birds going
+over early, and the first frost was a heavy one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor and I followed the north trail for half a mile; then the
+Doctor bade me rest, for it was rough going.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia," he said abruptly, sitting down in front of me, his back
+against a tree, his hands clasping his knees, "let's have it out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I saw he felt ill at ease and could but wonder, for, after all, it was
+only I with whom he had to deal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am ready. I 've only been waiting for you all these weeks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know that I have been to Delia Beaseley for certain
+information?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; she wrote me. I wrote her to tell you all she knew of me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He seemed to breathe more freely after my speaking so frankly, as if I
+really would welcome anything he might have to say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;this clears the atmosphere; we can talk. Of course, you know with
+Cale's story dovetailing so perfectly into what I told you on my first
+making acquaintance with you, I simply had to put two and two together;
+besides, your smile was a constant reminder of some one whom I had
+known or met&mdash;but whom I could not recall try as hard as I might. The
+result of it all was that I went to Delia Beaseley and put a few
+questions. Now,"&mdash;he hesitated a moment; he seemed to brace himself
+mentally in order to continue,&mdash;"do you know positively whether your
+father is living or dead? Have you ever known?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; but dead to me even if living&mdash;that is why I said I was an orphan."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I understand; but you don't know either the one or the other for a
+fact?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; I have no idea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You never knew his name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; and none of the family knew it&mdash;you know what Cale said. He gave
+me the details for the first time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do not know, then, that I have in my possession some papers that
+might give the name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; I know that. But I told Delia Beaseley not to mention that fact
+to you, or the papers in any way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Why?</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I think all the bitterness of my past must have been concentrated in
+the tone in which I uttered that syllable. He did not press for the
+reason, and I did not offer to give it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did it ever occur to you that your father might be living?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have no father, living or dead," I replied passionately. "I own to
+no such possession. Does a man, simply because he chooses to pursue
+his pleasure, unmindful of results, acquire the right to fatherhood
+when he assumes no responsibility for his act?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, poor child, has life been so hard for you? Has nothing
+compensated for just living?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He knew he was searching my very soul. I knew it; and the thought of
+my joy in life, in just living, because of my love that was filling
+every minute of the day and part of the night with a happiness so
+intense that, sometimes, I feared it could not endure from its sheer
+intensity, brought the tears to my eyes, softened my heart, turned for
+the moment the bitter to sweet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I answered, but with lips that trembled in spite of my efforts at
+control: "Yes, there is compensation, full, free, abundant. For all
+that life has taken out of me, it has replaced ten thousand fold.
+Perhaps I never had what we call 'life' till now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, child, I have seen this happiness in your face&mdash;would to God I
+might add to it!" His face worked strangely with emotion. "Marcia,
+dear, I am the friend, but also the surgeon. I have to use the knife&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But not on me&mdash;not on me!" I cried out in protest. "Don't tell me you
+know who my father is or was&mdash;don't, if you are my friend; don't speak
+his name to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not, Marcia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must not hear it; I will not hear it&mdash;will not, do you understand?
+I am trying to forget that past, live in my present joy&mdash;don't, please
+don't tell me." I covered my eyes with my hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew down my hands from before my face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen, my dear girl. There are rights&mdash;your rights I have every
+reason to believe, and legal, as it seems to me. This whole matter
+involves a point of honor with me. Let me explain&mdash;don't shrink so
+from hearing me; I won't mention any names. Let me ask you a
+question:&mdash;Did Delia Beaseley tell you there was a marriage certificate
+among those papers?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, but, thank God, she could not remember the name! It has been so
+many years&mdash;and all before I was born."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I know it. It stands in black and white, and through that unlying
+witness you have rights&mdash;that money, you know&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The 'conscience money'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is tainted, tainted, and my mother's blood is on it&mdash;I will not
+touch it. I will not have it. I have taken wages in Lamoral because
+Jamie assured me the money was your own&mdash;not one penny of it from that
+fund."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it is my own, and I never made a better investment with so few
+dollars. But, Marcia&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He hesitated; his face looked tense; his voice sounded as if strained
+to breaking. The knife was hurting him almost as much as it hurt me.
+I looked at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't look at me so; I can't do my duty if you do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't want you to do your duty so far as I am concerned. I want you
+to show your friendship for me, by not telling me anything that you may
+know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Marcia, it is time&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But not now&mdash;oh, not now! You don't know what I have borne&mdash;I can
+bear no more&mdash;" I spoke brokenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear girl, what can you tell me that I do not know, I who was with
+your mother in her last hour&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I broke down then, sobbing, trying to explain but only half coherently:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was here&mdash;twenty-seven years ago&mdash;with André&mdash;he showed me the
+tree&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, calm yourself. Tell me, if you can, just what you mean."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I struggled to regain my self-control, and when I could speak without
+sobbing, I explained in a few words my reason for thinking my mother
+was here long years before me with the man who was my father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor listened intently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This makes the past clearer to me, Marcia, but at the same time it
+complicates the present, the future&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't let's talk about past or future!" I cried, nervously
+irritated by this constant reappearance of new combinations of my past
+in my present, and possible future. "Let me enjoy what is given me to
+enjoy now&mdash;it is so much!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must see my way, Marcia. A duty remains a duty, even if the doing
+of it be postponed. I am your friend. I cannot let you wreck your
+life&mdash;-"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wreck my life? What do you mean?" I demanded sharply. "How can I
+wreck it when for the first time I am in a safe harbor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He could not, or would not, answer me directly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, many a time when I have an operation to perform, the issue of
+which seems to me to be a clear one of death, I grow faint-hearted and
+say to myself: 'I will let the trouble take its natural course&mdash;it is
+death in the end, and, at least, not under my knife.' Then I get a
+grip on myself; look my duty squarely in the face&mdash;and do the best that
+lies in my trained hand, in my keen sight, in my knowledge of this
+frail body in which we dwell for a time. And sometimes it happens,
+that, instead of the issue death, of which I felt certain, there is
+life as the desired outcome&mdash;and I rejoice. I asked an old soldier
+once, a veteran of the Civil War, a three years man,&mdash;he is still
+living and now a minister of God's word,&mdash;how he felt in battle? Could
+he describe his feelings to me?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yes,' he said, 'I can. I don't know how it is with other men, but I
+used to have but one fear, that of being a coward. I prayed not to
+be.' That is the way I feel now towards you in relation to this
+matter. But for the present we will drop the subject; we will not
+discuss it further."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He changed the subject at once, and I was grateful to him. He began to
+speak of Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is getting very restless. He told me you knew something of his
+plans. What do you think of them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean his returning to England and settling for the winter in
+London? He told me that before we left Lamoral. I suppose he ought to
+go. At any rate, he is much stronger, better, is n't he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is n't the same man. The truth is he was plucked away from the
+white scourge as a brand from the burning. I really believe he will
+not go back in the matter of health, although I wish he might remain
+another year here to clinch the matter for his own sake, and mine&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And mine. I shall miss him so!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor looked at me rather curiously, but did not comment on what I
+said. I was wondering if he were at work reasoning to my conclusion
+about Mrs. Macleod's leaving Lamoral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, my dear girl, it's a break-up all round. That's the worst of
+this camping-out business. Jamie is going so soon&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Soon? Do you mean he is going to leave Lamoral soon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes. He had letters last night from his publishers. The book
+requires his presence in London by September twenty-third. He will
+have to sail by the sixteenth. Mrs. Macleod is joyful at the prospect.
+Jamie told me to tell you. I think he hated to himself. He is very
+fond of you, Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I smiled at my thoughts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No fonder of me than I am of him. He has changed so much in these
+last nine months."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You, too, see that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, and his mother sees it. He has matured in every way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor smiled. "You talk as if you were his grandmother. I 'm
+proud of him, I confess. Had my boy lived&mdash;" His voice broke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear Doctor Rugvie, it is all a wilderness, as Jamie said, is n't it?
+And we 're fortunate to find a trail, like this, that leads to
+camp&mdash;and friends," I said, pointing to the newly made path through the
+forest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, my dear,&mdash;and that reminds me I have n't shown you what I brought
+you here to see. Come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He penetrated farther into the woods and off the trail to the left.
+There we found a blasted tree in which was a great hollow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is filled with honey, Marcia, wild honey. I wonder that no track
+of bear is to be seen about here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who would ever think of finding such a store of sweet in this poor old
+lightning-blasted tree!" I exclaimed, looking more closely at it.
+"What a feast Bruin will have some day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see there is honey even in the wilderness, Marcia. I wanted to
+convince you that there is such&mdash;may you, also, find it so." He turned
+towards the camp, I following his lead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the way," he said, as he walked on rapidly, "do you know anything
+that could have given old André any physical or nervous shock recently?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;I don't recall anything, at least anything that he might feel
+physically. It's just possible a fright I gave him unintentionally
+that day of the storm may have affected him for a time. Why, does he
+show any effect of shock?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, decidedly. What was it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I told him of my carelessness with the paddle while crossing the lake;
+of the careening of the canoe; of André's terrified shriek and his
+muttered fear of the depth of the lake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That must have been it. I felt sure there was some nervous shock."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, how could I do it! Dear old André&mdash;and I of all others!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's his age, Marcia; it was liable to come at any time; this is why
+Ewart felt so anxious about you that day and required the promise. Old
+as he is, he is tough as a pine knot, wiry as witch grass, with great
+powers of endurance, good eyesight, good teeth; he has seemed less than
+seventy till this year. Now he is breaking up. It would not surprise
+me if this were his débâcle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't bear to think of it. Why must all these changes come at once!
+What am I to do in the midst of this general débâcle?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia," he stopped short, turned to face me, "remember that now and
+hereafter when you need a friend you will find one in me. Don't
+hesitate to come to me, to call on me whenever there may be need, or
+when there is no need. I had once, many years ago, not only a son but
+a darling daughter. She would have been about your age&mdash;a year
+younger."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could not thank him, grateful as I was, for I was inwardly rebellious
+that he should feel called upon to offer me the protection of his
+friendship, when he must see that his friend was the only one to give
+me the needed shelter&mdash;-and that in Lamoral, because he loved me. For
+a moment his words seemed almost an insult to Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly he laughed out&mdash;his hearty kindly laugh. It put new heart
+into me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?" I asked quickly, ready to respond to a little cheer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ewart is having his surprise too, but domestically. He had word in
+the mail from Cale last night, and according to his account everything
+is going to the dogs at Lamoral. Angélique has elected to fall in love
+with Widower Pierre and he with her. They are to postpone the marriage
+until the seignior returns, but beg he will consider the state of their
+affections and be considerate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I laughed with him. There was humor in this situation at Lamoral, for
+I had warned Cale before I left how this affair would terminate, and he
+had sniffed at my clairvoyance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The truth is, Cale is homesick for the whole household."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor Cale! He is having a hard time. I ought to be at home to help
+him, to comfort him. Our new relationship means that I have found
+another friend."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And a faithful one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think we shall break camp very soon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes. I have to be off to-morrow&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-morrow! Why, you were to stay into the second week of September."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have to leave sooner than I planned. The Montagnais brought up a
+telegram with the mail, and my answer goes back with me to-morrow. I
+'ve kept the Montagnais for guide, although I should not fear to risk
+it alone, now that I have been over the route so many times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, if Mrs. Macleod and Jamie are to sail soon, I must go, too, I
+suppose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Cale needs you; the whole household needs you. I proposed to
+Ewart that we all go together, then there will be no heart-breaking
+goodbys, except to André."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I bit my lip to keep back any inquiry about Mr. Ewart's going with us,
+and was thankful I held my peace for the Doctor continued, tramping
+steadily on ahead of me:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But now Ewart will remain to the end&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But has it come to this?" I cried. I was depressed at the turn of
+events.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor stopped, turned and faced me, saying gravely:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It has, Marcia; I read the signs. We shall know when we get back. I
+was with him all last night; there is no help. But Ewart and I did not
+want you and Jamie and Mrs. Macleod to know it&mdash;not till morning. You
+thought he was out fishing when we left; so did Jamie. Ewart asked me
+to tell you on our way back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"André&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could not speak another word. The old Canadian had so endeared
+himself to me during the many weeks in the wilds. Added to this was
+the thought of his probable connection with my mother's short-lived
+joy. It was all too sudden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It <I>is</I> the débâcle, no mistake about that," I said stolidly, and set
+my teeth together that they should not chatter and betray my weakness
+of spirit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't I stay and help to nurse him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, Marcia, that won't do. André lies in a lethargy; his condition
+may not change for days, for weeks, although I doubt this. His son and
+Ewart will do all that is necessary. Ewart will never leave the two
+here alone. You would be an extra care for them. It is now
+exceptionally cold for the season in this latitude; the fall rains may
+set in any time. Don't propose such a thing to Ewart, I beg of you.
+But Ewart remains&mdash;that is the kind of friend Ewart is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The request was too earnest for me not to accede to it with as good a
+grace as possible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On our return we found that it was as the Doctor had predicted: the old
+guide was unconscious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Ewart decided the matter of breaking camp. We were to leave the
+next morning with the Montagnais and André the Second for guides.
+André's son was to accompany us only to the fourth portage. The
+Doctor, with the other Montagnais, was sufficient for the rest of the
+way. The camp belongings were to follow later with Mr. Ewart, whenever
+that should be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I remember that day as one of dreary confusion&mdash;packing, sorting,
+shivering a little in the chill air. The sun shone pale; it failed to
+warm the earth or our bodies. All the forest stirred at times
+uneasily. André's son declared it foretold long cold rains followed by
+sharp frost. And amid all the confusion of the day we could hear the
+undertone of our thought: "Old André is dying". Mr. Ewart would not
+permit us to see him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is better to carry with you only the memory of him as he has looked
+to us during all these weeks&mdash;young in his heart, joyful in our
+companionship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I saw the relief in Mr. Ewart's face when we were ready. He spoke
+cheerily to me who failed to respond with anything resembling
+cheerfulness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a bad business in camp during the fall rains, and they are
+setting in early this year. I shall know you are safely housed&mdash;and
+there is so much to look forward to. Home will be a pleasant place for
+us, won't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought this, also, was home to you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only so long as you are here; my home henceforth is where you are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And, hearing those words, despite the chill air, despite the lack of
+warm sunshine, despite the fact that old André lay dying in his tent
+just beyond the camp, despite the fact that Jamie and Mrs. Macleod were
+to leave me alone in Lamoral, that the Doctor was going away for an
+indefinite time, my happiness was at the flood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment only, we stood there on the shore of the little cove,
+together and alone&mdash;and glad to be! We stood there, man and woman
+facing each other, as primeval man and woman may have stood thousands
+of years ago on this oldest piece of the known earth, there in the
+heart of the Canadian wilderness. Something primeval entered into the
+expression of our love for each other; our souls were naked, the one to
+the other; our eyes promised all, the one to the other; our lips were
+ready for their seal of sacrament when the time should come that we
+might give it each to the other without witness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And no word was spoken, for no word was needed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor joined us rather inopportunely and, accounting for the
+situation, made no end of a pother with his traps and his canoe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once more Jamie and I asked if we might not take one look at old André,
+but the Doctor put his foot down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better not. Remember him as you last saw him; it will be a memory to
+dwell with&mdash;this would not be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie put on a brave face, but I knew he was ready for a good cry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not reconciled to say goodby to you here, Gordon," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two clasped hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I shall be running over to see you and Mrs. Macleod before long.
+Be sure, Mrs. Macleod, to have my room ready for me next summer in
+Crieff&mdash;and don't forget the green canopy over my bed. I have n't
+forgotten it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled. "I shall never forget your kindness, never; but I can't
+help the longing for home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, there, no more you can't," said the Doctor brusquely. "No more
+leave-takings; they don't set well on my breakfast. We shall all be
+together again soon, please God. The ocean is but a pond and the
+crossing a five days' picnic now-a-days. You may follow us in a few
+days, Ewart. Meanwhile, I 'll see that your household is safely landed
+at Lamoral&mdash;if only the rain will hold off, we shall have cause for
+thankfulness," he added fervently. We all knew the Doctor was talking
+against time and parting. "Raincoats all in readiness?" And then, not
+waiting for an answer:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall run up to Lamoral after I get back from San Francisco, Gordon;
+I 'm not sure I shan't return by the Canadian Pacific."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good luck, John, and goodby till then," said Mr. Ewart. "Bon voyage,
+Mrs. Macleod. Miss Farrell, I give you carte blanche for all wedding
+preparations. Tell Pierre to order from his tailor, and charge to me.
+I shall give them away.&mdash;Macleod, you full-fledged genius,"&mdash;he caught
+Jamie's hands in his,&mdash;"let me hear from you&mdash;a wireless will just suit
+my impatience. Oh, Miss Farrell, may I trouble you to see Mère
+Guillardeau and tell her of André? I will telegraph you before I
+return. Goodby&mdash;goodby."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a hand-clasp all around again. The Montagnais and André's
+son took their places; pushed off. Our return voyage was begun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the dip of the paddles I heard, as an undertone, old André's
+little song he used to sing to us in camp, the little French song that
+Jamie incorporated in his "André's Odyssey":
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"I am going over there, over there,<BR>
+To search for the City of God.<BR>
+If I find over there, over there,<BR>
+What I seek&mdash;oh afar, oh afar!&mdash;<BR>
+I will sing, when I'm home from afar,<BR>
+Of the wonders and glory of God."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0229"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXIX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Never, never so long as memory lasts, can I forget the separate stages
+of that return journey. On the first day we had dull overcast skies
+that threatened rain; the chill wind roughened the lakes and river, and
+made dismal crossings of the portages at one of which we bade goodby to
+André's son. We arrived the next afternoon at Roberval in a veritable
+deluge, the rain having set in while we were crossing Lake St. John.
+We left by train that evening for Chicoutimi. I remember our late
+arrival there, the rain still falling in torrents, and, at last, our
+fleeing the next morning for shelter to the great Saguenay steamer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On that third day we made the voyage down the Saguenay. It seemed to
+me as if I were embarking on some Stygian flood, for we looked into a
+rain-swept impenetrable perspective. The dark waters were beaten into
+quiescence, except for the current, by the weight of falling raindrops.
+That was all we saw at first. Despite the Doctor's assumed
+cheerfulness and his brave attempts to cheer us, we felt depressed. At
+last came the cessation of rain; the heavy clouds rolled upwards; the
+perspective cleared and showed the mighty river narrowed to a gorge
+with the dark outposts of Capes East and West looming vast, desolate,
+repellent before us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And always there continued that darkness around, above, beneath us,
+till, farther down, we swept into the deeper shadow of Capes Trinity
+and Eternity. In passing them, the pall of some impending calamity
+fell upon my spirit. I could not emerge from it, try as I might.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Was anything about to happen to the man I loved, to him who was waiting
+there in the wilderness to entertain Death as his next guest? Should
+we four friends, who were making this journey, ever be together in the
+future?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor kept a watchful eye on me. When the steamer drew to the
+landing at Tadoussac, I saw him and Jamie remove their hats and stand
+so, bareheaded, till the boat moved away. Mrs. Macleod and I, watching
+them, said to each other that they were thinking of André and his
+voyage of seventeen years ago, when he set out from Tadoussac to see
+the "New Jerusalem" by that far western lake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were glad to take the Montreal express at Quebec which we saw under
+lowering skies and in a bitter northeast wind. Jamie had telegraphed
+to Cale from Roberval; he and little Pete were at the junction to meet
+us. His joy at our return was unmistakable, but his welcome was unique.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, Mis' Macleod, I guess 't is 'bout time fer you an' Marcia ter be
+gettin' back ter the manor. Angélique an' Pete have got tied up
+already&mdash;gone off honey-moonin' to Sorel. I could n't hinder it no
+longer. Marie 's took a notion to visit her 'feller', as they say
+here, in Three Rivers, an' me an' Pete is holdin' the fort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How we laughed; we could not help it at Cale's plight. That laugh did
+us a world of good. Cale, after shaking hands with each of us, stowed
+us away in the big coach.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll come over again fer the traps, Doctor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, Cale. I can be of some use, even if I don't stay but one
+night at Lamoral. By the way, just leave these things of mine in the
+baggage-room; it will save taking them over. I have my handbag."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We ain't got so much grub as we might have, but I guess we can make
+out to get along, Marcia," said Cale, anxiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I 'll manage, Cale; don't worry. We 'll stop in the village for
+provisions, and it won't take me long to straighten things out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you did n't think we were coming down on you like the
+Assyrians of old," said Jamie, taking his seat beside Cale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, no. I cal'lated you 'd be here likely enough in ten days. I
+guess Angélique and Pete would n't have got spliced quite so soon if
+they 'd thought you 'd come this week. They cal'lated ter be home by
+the time you got here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were glad to find something at which we could laugh without
+pretence. Cale's description of the wedding in the church, at which he
+was best man; of his inability to understand a word of the service; of
+Pete's embracing him instead of Angélique when it was all over, and of
+little Pete dissolving in tears on his return to empty Lamoral and
+wetting Cale's starched shirt front before he could be comforted, was
+something to be remembered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must write this up for Ewart," said Jamie, that evening when we sat
+once again around a normal hearth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He will enjoy it; no one better," said the Doctor who was busy looking
+up New York sailings. "Look here, Boy, you say you want a week, at
+least, in New York?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes. I have never seen the place, and I don't want to go home without
+knowing something about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, in that case, I will make a proposition to you. Suppose you
+sail from New York instead of Montreal? You can have a week there,
+sail on the sixteenth and be in London on time, provided you leave here
+to-morrow night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-morrow night?" I echoed dismally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it will have to be to-morrow night&mdash;or leave out New York.
+Better decide to go, Mrs. Macleod, for then I can entertain you for two
+days before I leave for San Francisco and, in any case, put my house at
+your disposal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both Mrs. Macleod and Jamie hesitated; I felt they were considering me,
+not wishing to leave me alone in Lamoral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't think of me," I said. "The sooner this parting from you and
+Jamie is over the better it will be for me." I fear I spoke too
+decidedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, my dear, I don't see how I can leave you here alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm used to being alone." I answered shortly to hide my emotion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, better cut it short," Jamie said with a twitch of his upper lip.
+"We 'll accept your invitation, Doctor Rugvie&mdash;you 're always doing
+something for us; we 've come to expect it; I hope we shan't end by
+taking it for granted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing would please me better than that, Boy. You are a bit
+over-tired, to-night; better go to bed now, and do all there is to be
+done in the morning. I must go then."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, can't you wait to go with us?" Jamie demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; I must be in New York to-morrow evening. I will meet you at the
+station the next day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe I am a bit fagged&mdash;and I know mother is. That portage
+business is a strain on the best legs. But you were game, Marcia, no
+mistake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Help me to be 'game' now&mdash;and go to bed. I 'll follow just as soon as
+I set the bread to rise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's too bad that I must leave you to this, Marcia," said Mrs. Macleod
+regretfully, as she kissed me good night&mdash;for the second time at
+Lamoral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I can do all there is to be done."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I returned her kiss. I was beginning to love this gentle, reticent
+Scotchwoman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't want any good night from you, Marcia," said Jamie gruffly.
+"Oh, I hate the whole business!" He flung out of the room, and I rose
+to follow him and Mrs. Macleod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stay with me a little while, Marcia; you are not so tired as they are.
+Who knows whether I shall see you for a whole month or more?" The
+Doctor spoke earnestly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You expect to be gone so long?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps longer&mdash;it depends on what I find awaiting me. You permit
+another?" He reached for a cigar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me light it for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I performed the little service for him, which he loved to accept from
+me, and then sat down in Jamie's corner of the sofa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor puffed vigorously for a while. Then he spoke, suddenly
+looking at me:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After all, it is Ewart that makes Lamoral, is n't it, Marcia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," I replied promptly. I was so glad to speak his name here in his
+own home. I was hoping his friend would feel inclined to talk of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have never had an opportunity to realize this before; it is the
+first time I have been here without him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember Jamie said, the night before you came last November, that I
+should n't know the house after Mr. Ewart took possession."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor turned to me, smiling almost wistfully,
+r so it seemed to me.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His presence makes the difference between the house and the home. Is
+n't that what Jamie meant?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I am sure it is. Mr. Ewart himself calls the old manor 'home'
+now." I smiled at my thoughts. Had he not said, "My home is
+henceforth where you are"?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I, for my part, am thankful to hear him use that word. Marcia,
+Ewart has been, in a way, a homeless man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought so from the little he has said."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was orphaned early in life. Has he ever spoken to you of his
+wife?" The question was put casually, but I knew intentionally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And once only to me, his friend&mdash;several years ago. He has suffered.
+I have known no detail, but whatever it was, it went deep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was willing to follow his lead a little further and, although I
+realized the ice was thin, I ventured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder if you have ever heard any gossip&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gossip? What gossip?" The Doctor's words were abrupt, his tone
+resentful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Something Jamie heard here in the village, and because he did not
+believe it, he told me, when I first came, that if I ever heard it I
+should not believe it either&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About Ewart?" He ceased to puff at his cigar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; about his having been married and divorced, and that he has a
+child living, a boy whom he is educating in England."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all fool-talk about the boy." The Doctor spoke testily. "I
+don't mind telling you that he was married, as of course you know, and
+lost his wife. I don't mind telling you that he was divorced from her;
+I suppose that is a matter of public record somewhere. I don't know
+who she was&mdash;or what she was; he is loyal to that memory. But there is
+no boy in the case."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He tossed his cigar into the fire and began tapping the floor rapidly
+with the tip of his boot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I inferred, of course, from a remark he made to me then, that there
+was a child mixed up in the affair&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All this must be the foundation for the rumors, then?" I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; but if Ewart has a child, and I am convinced he has&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are?" I asked in amazement, thereby proving to the Doctor that I
+had never given credence to this part of the report.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He nodded emphatically, looking away from me into the fire. "If he has
+a child, I know it to be a girl&mdash;no boy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had n't thought of that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see you have n't," he said dryly; then, clearing his throat, he
+turned squarely to me, speaking deliberately, as if hoping every word
+would carry conviction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, if Ewart has a child, as I am convinced he has, it is a
+daughter,&mdash;" with a quick turn of his head he faced me, speaking
+distinctly but rapidly,&mdash;"and that daughter is you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was said, the unheard-of. He had used his knife when I was off my
+guard. I was powerless to shrink from it, to protest against its use.
+All I could do was to bear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I heard one of the dogs whine somewhere about the house. I know I
+counted the vagrant sparks flying up the chimney. I heard the kitchen
+clock striking. I counted&mdash;ten. I remembered that I had forgotten to
+wind it, and must do so when I made the bread. I moistened my lips;
+they were suddenly parched. Then I spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why have you told me this?" I failed, curiously, to hear my own
+voice, and repeated the question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, it had to be said&mdash;it was my duty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?" He turned to me with something like anger flashing in his eyes.
+"Because I don't choose to have you make a wreck of your life, as I
+told you only the other day&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But if I choose&mdash;" I did not know what I was saying. I was merely
+articulating, but could not tell him so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you choose! Good God&mdash;don't you see your situation? Marcia, dear
+girl, come to yourself&mdash;you are not yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without another word he rose quickly, and went out. I heard him go
+into the kitchen. He came back with a third of a glass of water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take this, Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I obeyed. The bitter taste is even now, at times, on my tongue. Soon
+I was able to hear my own voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you." I felt his finger on my wrist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are better now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes." I passed my hand across my eyes to clear my sight. I heard a
+heavy long-drawn sigh from the man standing in front of me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does he know?" was my first rational question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ewart <I>know</I>? Marcia, Marcia&mdash;think what you are saying! Ewart is a
+gentleman&mdash;the soul of honor&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, of course, he does n't. I did n't think.&mdash; Why have n't you told
+him instead of me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why? I tell you because you are a woman; because it is your right to
+withdraw from a situation that is untenable; you must be the first to
+know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see; I am beginning to understand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, this is a confession. I blame myself for much of this. I am
+guilty of procrastinating in a matter of duty. Listen, my dear girl;
+you remember that night in February when you met me at the junction?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, I remember&mdash;I wish I could forget." I felt suddenly so tired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I heard all this in Ewart's voice when he bade me look out for you. I
+saw all this in your face when you greeted him on his return. I did
+not know then of your connection with Cale, with that sad affair of
+twenty-seven years ago; but, from the moment I knew your birthday, from
+that night when Cale's story fitted its key to mine, from the moment I
+learned the truth from Delia Beaseley about you, from the moment I
+examined those papers in my possession, I should have spoken; should
+have written you at least; should have warned&mdash;but I waited to make
+more sure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Are</I> you sure?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I put that question as a drowning man catches at a floating reed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I dare not say I am sure until Ewart himself confirms black and
+white&mdash;sees that certificate; but I must warn you just the same. It is
+my duty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I drew a longer breath. He was not wholly sure then. There was a
+reprieve, meanwhile&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What "meanwhile"? I could not think; but I was aware that the Doctor
+was speaking again, thinking for me. I listened apathetically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, I have to leave to-morrow morning. I must leave you with
+Cale. Thank God, you have him near you! It has been impressed upon me
+that you must be told all this before Ewart gets back. You are a
+woman&mdash;and your womanhood will dictate, will show you the way out.
+Come to me, come to my home&mdash;I shall not be there; come now, with Mrs.
+Macleod and Jamie. I will wire Ewart that you are with us for a little
+while. Get time to breathe, to think things out, to conquer, before he
+comes&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No." I spoke with decision. I made a physical effort to speak so.
+"I shall remain where I am&mdash;for a while. I have Cale. When I go, he
+goes with me; but, oh, don't, don't say any more&mdash;I cannot bear it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My words were half prayer, half groan. I felt suddenly weak, sick
+throughout my whole body.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish I might bear this for you, dear girl. I had to say it. I
+could not let you go on&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know, I know, you did your duty&mdash;but don't say anything more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I held out my hand. "I shall be up in the morning and get your
+breakfast; it's so early for you to start. The others won't be up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish you would," he said eagerly. "I must satisfy myself that you
+are up and about before I go, otherwise&mdash;" He hesitated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't worry. I shall be about just the same&mdash;only now&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know; you want to be alone&mdash;you can bear no more. Good night." He
+left the room abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0230"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Mechanically I covered the dying fire with ashes; lighted my candle;
+snuffed out those in the sconces, and went out into the kitchen. I
+wound the clock and set my bread to rise. I heard one of the dogs
+whining in the dining-room; he had been unintentionally shut in. I let
+him out. He showed his gratitude in his dog's way and followed me,
+unbidden, upstairs to my room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I entered, and shut the door softly not to rouse Jamie and Mrs.
+Macleod. I heard the dog settle on the threshold. Somehow, the sound
+helped me to bear. It was something belonging to <I>him</I> that was near
+me in my trouble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I sat down on the side of my bed&mdash;sat there, I think, all night. A
+round of thought kept turning like a mill-wheel in my head:&mdash;"The man I
+love is my father&mdash;Mr. Ewart, my father, is the man I love."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was maddening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The mill-wheel turned and turned with terrible rapidity. I held my
+head in both hands. Towards morning, when the light began to break, I
+looked about me. At sight of the familiar interior, the wheel in my
+head turned more slowly&mdash;stepped for a moment. In the silence I could
+think; think another thought: "The Doctor is not <I>sure</I>&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I rose, steadying myself by holding on to the footboard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not sure&mdash;not sure." The mill-wheel was at work again. "Not
+sure&mdash;not sure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course <I>not</I>." I spoke aloud. The sound of my own voice gave me
+poise. The wheel turned slowly. In another moment my whole being was
+in revolt. I spoke again:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>It is not true</I>. Not until he tells me, will I believe. The Doctor
+is mistaken; black and white can lie&mdash;even after twenty-seven years.
+The man I love&mdash;and I cannot help loving him&mdash;is not the man who is
+responsible for me in this world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All my woman's nature cried out against this blasphemy of circumstances
+against my love&mdash;my love for Gordon Ewart, that was so true, so pure;
+pure in its depths of passion, true in its patience sanctified through
+endurance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will go to Cale. He will know. He will tell me. He will see it
+cannot be true. This love Mr. Ewart feels for me is not, never has
+been, a father's love. No two human beings could be so drawn the one
+to the other, as we have been, with <I>that</I> tie between them. It is
+preposterous on the face of it. It is a monstrosity, born of
+conflicting circumstances."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The energy of life was returning. I undressed. I bathed face and head
+and arms. I dressed again in fresh garments. I opened the door; the
+dog rose, wagging his tail. I slipped noiselessly down the back stairs
+and found that Cale had been before me. The fire was made; the water
+in the kettle boiling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I made the coffee; worked over my bread; fried the bacon; broke the
+eggs for the omelette; whisked up some "gems" and put them into the
+oven. The mill-wheel no longer turned. When Cale came in, I sent him
+upstairs with a pitcher of hot water for the Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Seems like home ter see you round again, Marcia," he said, as he took
+the pitcher.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems good to be at home again." I tried to speak cheerfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Doctor Rugvie gave me one long searching look, when he took his place
+at the breakfast table. Then he paid his attention to the omelette
+which he ate with evident relish. We talked of this and that. I went
+out into the hall with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goodby, Marcia." He put out his hand. "Wire me just a word from time
+to time&mdash;I have left the California address on the library table."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goodby&mdash;I shall not forget."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was all. But I drew a long breath of relief when I could no
+longer see the carriage. I feel sure he, too, drew another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All the forenoon I was busy packing, helping Mrs. Macleod and Jamie. I
+gave myself not a moment's rest; I dared not. Only once, just after
+dinner, and three hours before they were to leave for Montreal, I went
+up to my room to be alone for a minute or two; to gain strength to go
+through the rest of the time, before parting with my friends.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had been there not five minutes when Mrs. Macleod rapped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come in," I said a little wearily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She entered and came directly to where I sat by the window. She put
+her arms around me,&mdash;motherly-wise as I fancied,&mdash;and spoke to me:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, my dear, I cannot leave you without telling you I have seen it
+all. I speak as an older woman to a younger. Dear child, I wish you
+joy; you deserve all that is in store for you&mdash;and there is so much for
+you, so much here in the old manor. I am so happy for you and with
+you, my dear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I lifted my face to hers and she kissed me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't like to leave you here; it goes against me&mdash;there is no woman
+near you; and you cannot remain in the circumstances, you know, my
+dear, after Mr. Ewart returns. I only wish you would come with us.
+But that would never do; Mr. Ewart would be my enemy for life, and I
+could not blame him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale will be here," I said. "I have been wanting to tell you
+something."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I told her of my relation to him; what it meant to me. I told, and to
+her amazement, of my connection with her of whom both the Doctor and
+Cale had spoken&mdash;and I told it all with a flood of tears, my head on
+her shoulder, her arms around me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she thought I was crying for that Past!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Those tears saved my brain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she left me, I had given her my promise that if ever I should need
+a home, I would make hers mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you will hardly need it, my dear. Mr. Ewart will make this the
+one spot on earth for you&mdash;and it is right that your future should
+compensate for your past."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie whistled all day; it got at last on my nerves. When I begged him
+to stop, he looked at me reproachfully and said never a word, which was
+unlike Jamie Macleod who has a Scotch tongue&mdash;a long and caustic one on
+occasion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He steadily refused to say goodby to me, or more than, "I shall see you
+in Scotland next summer&mdash;you and Ewart; give my love to him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put his hand from the coach window, and said in a low voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I made such an ass of myself, Marcia, you know how. Forgive me, won't
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I forced a smile for answer. There is such a thing as the comedy of
+irony.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When they drove away, I turned to the empty house&mdash;empty except for the
+dogs&mdash;with a sigh of relief. It was good to be alone.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0231"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXXI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The ordering of the house kept me busy the next forenoon, but after
+dinner I told Cale I was going over to Mère Guillardeau's to tell her
+about her brother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I may go as far as the village, Cale. Don't expect me till just
+before supper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I told but half of the truth. I determined to carry out a part of what
+I planned on that voyage down the Saguenay. If there were anything to
+learn from Mère Guillardeau, that would throw light on that "forest
+episode" connected with my mother, I wanted to know what it was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I found the old woman alone, at her loom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, mademoiselle, you are come to tell me of André, my brother? You
+are more than welcome. And how goes it with André and my nephew? Did
+he send me a pair of moccasins for my old feet, such as he sent by the
+seignior last year?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She left her work and, still holding my hand, drew me to the little
+porch, where we sat down on a bench beneath a mass of wild cucumber
+vines.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I kept her hand in mine&mdash;that old hand, which for nearly one hundred
+years had wrought and toiled, dug, planted, watered, hoed, milked the
+cow, cut the wood, woven cloth and carpets, harvested her tobacco!
+That prehensile thing which, in its youth, clasped the hand of her
+"mate" at the altar, cooked for him, sewed for him, piecing together
+the skins from the wilds, when he was at home from the trappers'
+haunts; and, meanwhile, it had found time to rock the cradle for her
+seven children and sew the shrouds for six of them!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To me it was a marvellous thing&mdash;that hand!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked at it, while I was trying to find words to tell her of André.
+It was thin to emaciation, misshapen from hard work&mdash;a frail mechanism,
+but still powerful because of the life-blood coursing within it. The
+dark blue veins were veritable bas-reliefs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear Mère Guillardeau, we have had such a lovely summer with
+André&mdash;dear old André, so young in heart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was ever like that. Is he well, my brother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope it may be well with him soon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old woman looked at me earnestly with her small deep-set eyes,
+faded with having looked so long on the sunshine and shadows of life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is dead, my brother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, not yet. Mr. Ewart wanted me to tell you just as it is." I gave
+her the details.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She sat quietly, her hand still in mine. Into her faded eyes there
+crept a shadow of some memory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have not seen him for many years, mademoiselle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was that when he made his voyage to Chicago?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes. On his return he spent the winter with me. We had comfort
+together. We could talk of old times; we knew Canada when we were
+young&mdash;that was long ago." She sat quiet, thoughtful. Then she spoke
+again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will tell me when the seignior sends word?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes; at once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will pray for him. I will have masses said for his soul."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your grandfather was born in the seigniory of Lamoral, so André said."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; and my father, and I, and my brothers and sisters. My
+grandfather's seignior was French. Afterwards, the English seigniors
+had no love for the place. It is our seignior, the Canadian, who cares
+for it. He carries it on his heart&mdash;and us, too, mademoiselle. You
+know this land is mine now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; I am so glad for you. It should have been yours long ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it is mine now for a little while; afterwards it will be my
+daughter's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know the old manor well? Have you ever lived there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I have lived at the manor house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When was that, mother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me think.&mdash;It was ten years, counting by seedtime and harvest,
+before André spent that winter with me. It was a hard one; he helped
+me as a brother should. It was then he was shriven. I was in one of
+the pews in our church, waiting my turn. There were hundreds come for
+the shriving. The priest stood in the aisle, the great middle aisle,
+and all the time there were two kneeling besides him, one confessing,
+the other waiting his turn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did they have no confessional?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We confessed in the aisle, mademoiselle, before all the world,&mdash;we all
+knew we were sinners,&mdash;and the crowd was so great. André, too, I saw
+by the side of the priest, whispering in his ear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"André! What could his simple life show for sin?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is human like the rest of us, mademoiselle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took her pipe from her pocket. It reminded me of André. I filled
+and lighted it for her, and placed it between her still strong teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"André's was the sin of silence, as was mine. I, too, confessed it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I wondered if she would tell me further. I waited in suspense for her
+next words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You ask me have I ever lived at the manor? I lived there one
+winter&mdash;a cruel winter even for us Canadians. It is so long ago, I may
+speak of it now. My brother will never speak of it more. It eases me
+to speak of it. It was Martinmas when an Englishman came to this very
+door. It was after dark. He said he had permission from the English
+seignior, who was in England, to stay in the manor as long as he would.
+The agent of the estate was with him&mdash;a hard man. He said it was all
+right, and showed me a paper which I could not read. My daughter read
+for me. It was signed by the English seignior; he, too, was a Ewart.
+The English gentleman asked me if I would come and keep the house for
+him and his wife; he was here for her health. Would I stay till spring?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He offered me twenty <I>pièces</I> the month, mademoiselle&mdash;twenty
+<I>pièces</I>! That meant ease of mind for me and my daughter. I was not
+to leave the manor to go home, he said. I must stay there on account
+of his wife.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I took time to think; but the twenty <I>pièces</I>, mademoiselle! My
+daughter said, 'Go; it will keep us for three years.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I went because I was paid twenty <I>pièces</I> the month&mdash;but,
+mademoiselle, I would have stayed and worked for her for nothing, for
+love of her alone. Mademoiselle, look in your mirror when you are at
+home. You will see her again&mdash;so much you are like her; but not in
+your ways. You remember the first time you came to my daughter to buy
+the carpets? I said to myself then, 'I have lived to see her again.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How long ago was this, Mère Guillardeau?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have said ten years, counting by seedtime and harvest, before André
+made that voyage into the west. I loved her&mdash;and my brother loved her.
+She made sunshine in the manor. It was not as it is now; there was
+little to do with. She made light of everything; made the best of
+everything. She had a cow, for the warm milk; and hens, for the
+new-laid eggs&mdash;all nourishing and good, mademoiselle. I milked the cow
+and tended to everything. I was strong. I did all the work. The
+agent bought provisions in the village and brought them to us. They
+came, also, from Montreal. The house was full of sunshine, the
+sunshine of love, mademoiselle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They were not married&mdash;but how they loved each other! I carried their
+sin on my soul. I never confessed till André, too, confessed. We
+confessed the same sin&mdash;the sin of silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the spring I sent them to André, into the wilderness of the
+northern rivers. My brother loved her too, my poor brother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is long past, mademoiselle, but I can not forget."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the present seignior never knew of this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The present seignior? Oh, no; he did not own Lamoral then.
+Sometimes, it is true, I think I see in him a look of that other; but
+it is not he. I never knew their names.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After they left, that agent took that cow from me, mademoiselle, a
+fine cow she was. He is dead these many years, but he was a hard man;
+I have not forgotten or forgiven, mademoiselle." She crossed herself.
+"The cow was mine; he took her, mademoiselle; a fine cow with a bag as
+pink as thorn blossoms, and seven quarts to the milking&mdash;I cannot
+forget."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I rose to go, for the old woman threatened to become garrulous.
+Moreover, I had heard enough. The Doctor was mistaken. I had learned
+what I came to find out. I felt fortified to speak with Cale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goodby, Mère Guillardeau."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goodby, mademoiselle. You will come again and tell me of my brother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; so soon as I have any word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stood in the porch to watch me down the road. I went on to the
+village. As I neared the steamboat landing, I noticed a large river
+sloop, tacking in the light breeze to the bank. I stopped to watch it.
+Soon it was abreast of me. I walked rapidly on to keep up with it. It
+came to anchor nearly opposite the cabaret. Its white hull was filled
+with apples. There must have been a ton or two&mdash;early harvest apples,
+red, yellow, and green; Astrachan, Porters and early Pippins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Surely this was the apple-boat which Jamie delighted in and described
+with such enthusiasm! I walked to the bank. A low trestle, laid in a
+width of two boards, gave passage to the boat. What a picture it made!
+The low green bank, the white sloop, the blue lively waters of the St.
+Lawrence, and, beyond, the islands stacked with the second cutting of
+hay!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went on board; bought a few apples; promised to come for a bushel or
+two the next day, and asked a few questions of the owner and his wife,
+French both of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How long do you stay?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only a week. This cargo is perishable. We sell here, then we go back
+for the harvest of winter apples. We come again in October."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She showed me with pride her cabin and the bunk under the companionway,
+wherein lay her eighteen-months-old baby. "We could not leave him,"
+she said, wiping a bead of perspiration from his forehead. "The others
+are at home; they take care of themselves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little cabin was absolutely neat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I bade her goodby, made a few purchases in the village, and walked back
+to Lamoral with a lighter heart than I had carried since I left camp.
+The old place looked so beautiful in the mellow September sunlight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I felt less burdened, less restless, less desperate, less doubtful of
+the future, after that walk. But I determined to wait a few days
+before speaking to Cale. I wanted to go over the whole matter, collate
+facts, sort evidence, before speaking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We had five pleasant days together, Cale and I. We grew confidential,
+as became relations. We talked of the Macleods; Cale wagered the
+Doctor would marry Mrs. Macleod in the end. At which I sniffed, and
+pretended to think he would lose his wager, but deep down in my
+heart&mdash;well, I had my doubts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I told him of André, of the Doctor's enjoyment of camp life. He did
+not ask me about Mr. Ewart directly, and I volunteered no information,
+except that we might expect a telegram from him any day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the sixth day word came:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"André has crossed the last portage; return Wednesday."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He would be here in five days! My first thought was of him, not of
+André.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+O André, dear old guide and voyageur! You were only a withered leaf
+falling from the great Ygdrasil Tree of Empire&mdash;falling there in the
+wilds of the Upper Saguenay. But it is by such as you&mdash;and succeeding
+generations of millions of such&mdash;that the great Tree of Empire has
+thriven, thrives, and still keeps in abundant foliage!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I knew the time had come when I must tell Cale all.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0232"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXXII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Cale, I want to talk with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, Marcia. I see you 've had something on your mind, thet 's
+been worryin' you, since you 've come home; better get it off. Nothin'
+like lettin' off a little steam when there 's too many pounds pressure
+on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale, you <I>are</I> a comfort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I? Wal, it's 'bout time I was something ter you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale, have you any idea where my mother fled to when she left her
+home?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; an' nobody else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You said George Jackson could get no trace of her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tried four months, detectives an' all; 't was n't no use. She was
+gone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But did you have any idea in your own mind, I mean, as to where she
+might have gone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, I can't say exactly. I <I>did</I> think 'bout thet time, thet mebbe
+they 'd crossed the line inter Canady; but it ain't likely they 'd go
+north with the winter before 'em. Fact is, George was in such a state,
+I did n't think nor care much 'bout Happy, if <I>he</I> could only keep his
+head level through it all. An' he did; he had grit, an' no mistake.
+'T was an awful blow, Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's my belief she came into Canada."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Tis, is it? What makes you think thet?" he asked in genuine surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Circumstantial evidence that is convincing. I believe she has been in
+this very house&mdash;for months too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at me suspiciously. (We were in the dining room; one on each
+side of the table.) I saw his forehead knit; then he spoke in a low
+voice, but rather anxiously:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here in this house? Ain't you got your circumstantial evidence a
+little mixed, Marcia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; listen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I told him all, linking event to event, incident with incident till the
+chain was complete. I fitted his story into the Doctor's which he
+heard for the first time from me; I added Delia Beaseley's story, then
+André's, and, last, Mère Guillardeau's. I made no mention however of
+the marriage certificate and the Doctor's last talk with me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, what do you think of it, Cale?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see which way you 're heading, Marcia, but&mdash;" he brought his fist
+down hard on his knee,&mdash;"you 're on the wrong track."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know it." He spoke with loud emphasis.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have no idea, now, who my father was, or is? Not now, after I
+have brought in all the evidence available; except&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Except what?" He asked quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind that now. Tell me, have you any idea who he was, or is?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, and nobody else thet I know of. She had high ideas, Happy had. I
+never believed she took up with any low cuss, not much! She was n't
+the kind to fall des'pritly in love with anybody like thet. Besides,
+had n't she had a man that was a man, even if he was only a boy in his
+years, to love the very ground she trod on? Happy was one of the
+uncommon kind of gals; she would n't take up with anyone thet come
+along. Now thet I know all this from you, I guess her love for thet
+man, whoever he was, or is, went 'bout as deep with her, as George's
+love for her went with him. Oh, Lord! It makes me sick to think of
+Happy Morey tryin' to throw herself inter the North River."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then,"&mdash;I spoke slowly, hesitatingly; I gathered all my strength to
+ask the crucial question&mdash;"you don't think that Mr. Ewart is my father?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stared at me as if I had taken leave of my senses. He swallowed
+hard twice. He leaned forward on the dining-room table, both fists
+pressed rigidly upon it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do <I>you</I> think thet? Have you been thinkin' thet all this time,
+Marcia Farrell?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No. I not only do not think it, I do not believe it. I was told so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who told you?" he demanded. He continued to stare at me; his attitude
+remained unchanged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doctor Rugvie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What the devil does he know about it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has the certificate&mdash;my mother's marriage certificate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To which one?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To my father."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An' he says Ewart is your father?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He believes he is from the evidence&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Evidence be damned. Has he shown you the name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I could n't&mdash;I would n't let him tell me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I glory in your spunk, Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you do not believe it, Cale?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Believe!" He spoke in utter scorn, and I laughed out almost
+hysterically; the tension was relieved too quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, Marcia Farrell, or whatever your name happens to be, he is
+no more your father than I am." He lifted both fists and brought them
+down on the table with the solidity of a stone-breaker's hammer. "It's
+God's truth, I am tellin' you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I laughed again in the face of this statement that so suddenly
+buttressed, as with adamant, my broken life, my wrecked hopes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can you prove it, Cale?" I, too, leaned across the table, my hands
+gripping the edge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prove it? Wal, I guess I ain't takin' any chances at jest <I>this</I>
+cross roads. I ain't makin' any statements that I can't take my oath
+on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prove it, then, Cale&mdash;in mercy to me, prove it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at me with inexpressible pity. His eyes filled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You poor child! As if you had n't had enough, 'thout bein' murdered
+this way. What in thunder was the Doctor thinkin' of?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He wanted to save me&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Save you, eh? Wal, the next time he wants to save you he 'd better
+borrow the life-preserver from me. You can tell him thet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prove it, Cale."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew a long breath and, reaching over, laid his right hand over mine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, I ain't no right to speak&mdash;to break a promise; but, by God, I
+'ll do it this time to save you&mdash;whatever comes! Gordon Ewart ain't no
+more your father 'n I am, for he was your mother's husband."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My mother's husband?" I echoed, but weakly. I failed for a few
+seconds to comprehend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, your mother's husband. Gordon Ewart is George Jackson&mdash;George
+Gordon Ewart Jackson, thet is what he was christened, an' I 've known
+it sence the furst minute I set eyes on him in full lamplight, here in
+this very house on the fifteenth day of last November. Do you want any
+more proof?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a limit to human suffering; a time when a surcharge of misery
+leaves mind and heart and soul numb. It was so with me upon hearing
+Cale's statement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he know you?" I asked almost apathetically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, but it took him twenty-four hours. I 've changed more 'n he has."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why did n't he use his own name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is his own. He sloughed off thet part of it thet hindered him from
+cuttin' loose from all thet old life, he said, an' made the new one
+legal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he know me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know for sure. He ain't the kind to rake over a heap of dead
+ashes for the sake of findin' one little spark. But, Marcia, I believe
+he knew you from the minute he first see you there in the passageway."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What makes you think so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because you are the livin' image of your mother, as I told you once
+before. But you act different. An' he loved her so, he could n't help
+but seein' her in you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, my God!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I think it was a groan rather than an exclamation. My head dropped on
+Cale's hand, as it lay over mine. The flashlight of intuition showed
+me the truth: this man, my mother's husband, the man who was dearer to
+me than life itself, was again loving her, whom he had loved only to
+lose, in me&mdash;her daughter! He was loving me because of her, not
+because of myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, I saw it in every detail! I saw every ugly feature in every act of
+the whole tragedy; and I saw myself the dupe of that Past from which I
+had tried so hard to escape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I raised my head. My decision was made. I looked at Cale defiantly.
+I think every fibre of me, moral, physical, mental, spiritual, revolted
+then and there against being made longer a mere shuttlecock for the
+battledores of Fate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale, when does the next afternoon train leave the junction&mdash;the one
+that connects with the Southern Quebec for New England?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't, Marcia, in the name of all that's holy, don't do nothing rash.
+I meant it for the best&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know you did; but that won't prevent my going."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, hear to reason, Marcia; wait till Ewart comes&mdash;-hear what he has
+to say&mdash;I 'm placed where I can't speak. Wait a few days."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His hand felt clammy cold under mine. I pulled mine away. I hurt him,
+but I did not care.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is nothing to be said. I am going. When does that train leave?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Seven-five. What will Ewart say? You are doing him a bitterer wrong
+than your mother before you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I laughed in his face. His voice grew husky as he spoke again:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stay for my sake then, Marcia; just five days&mdash;I 'm as nigh ter you as
+any in this world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so very, Cale."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out of the numbness of my body, out of my bitterness of heart, out of
+the depths of my misery, I spoke: "Cale, listen. For twenty-six years
+I was in this world, and four men&mdash;the one people call my father, you,
+my uncle-in-law who loved your wife, my mother's sister, Doctor Rugvie
+who brought me into this world and made but two attempts to find me,
+Mr. Ewart who as George Jackson brought me home in his arms, a baby
+three days old, and left me for good and all, worse than orphaned&mdash;all
+four of you, how much have you cared for me in reality? Answer me
+that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was silence in the room. I heard Cale draw a heavy breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't answer," I went on unmercifully, "and I am going away. I,
+too, am going to 'cut loose'. I want you to go down to Mère
+Guillardeau's and tell her André is dead, and the seignior will be here
+in five days."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What&mdash;now?" He moistened his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you had n't ought ter be alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not alone; the dogs are here and little Pete."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rose and crossed the room. At the door he turned; his voice
+trembled excessively, and I saw he was in fear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Promise me you won't do nothing rash, Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I laughed aloud. "I promise&mdash;now go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When I heard him drive away from the house, I went upstairs and began
+to pack my trunk. The sooner I could get out of Lamoral, the better
+for all concerned, Mr. Ewart included. Did he think for one moment
+that I would consent to being loved for my mother's sake? Did he think
+to make good, through me, the loss of the woman he loved? How had he
+dared, knowing, yes, <I>knowing</I> all, to love me for that other who never
+loved him! Why did he try to force his love upon her and, by changing
+the very channels of nature, bring all this devastation of misery upon
+my life? Why, why?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I packed rapidly. There was not so much to take with me. Then I went
+through the rooms one after another: the living-room&mdash;the office. I
+looked at the Méryon etchings&mdash;the Pont Neuf and Ste. Etienne&mdash;on its
+walls. Upstairs, too, I went; into Jamie's room, into Mrs. Macleod's,
+then to Mr. Ewart's. I stopped short on the threshold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why am I going in here?" I asked myself. "What am I doing here?" I
+stepped in; looked about at my own handiwork&mdash;then at the bed. I
+crossed quickly to it and laid my cheek down upon his pillow. It was
+only for a moment. I heard wheels on the driveway. Cale was returning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am ready, Cale. You can take us over with the trunk in the light
+wagon; little Pete can go with us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The look he gave me was pitiful, but it made no appeal to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will have to wait good forty minutes if you go now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't mind it. <I>You</I> need not wait. I would rather not say goodby."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where are you goin', Marcia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't ask me that, Cale; I don't want to lie to you. I shall send my
+trunk to Spencerville. This is all I will say."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What must I tell George?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment I failed to comprehend that he meant Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell him what you please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I set some supper on the kitchen table for him and little Pete, against
+their return.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale reharnessed and brought the wagon to the side door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We drove those nine miles in silence, except for little Pete who asked
+several pertinent questions as to the reason of my going. In passing
+through Richelieu-en-Bas, I looked for the apple-boat. It was still
+there. Little Pete begged Cale to stop to see it on their way home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not to-night, sonny, it 'll be dark," he said sternly; "we 'll try it
+another day." I thought the small boy was ready to cry at his friend's
+abrupt refusal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale left me at the junction, after he had seen me buy a ticket for
+Spencerville, and the trunk was checked to that place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put out his hand. "Marcia, I can't defend myself; all you say is
+true&mdash;but I think you will come to see different, sometime. We 're all
+human an' liable to make mistakes, big ones, an' I can't see as you 're
+an exception."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The simple dignity of this speech impressed me even in those
+circumstances. I put my hand in his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Sometime', Cale? It has always been 'sometime' with me. It is going
+to be 'never again' now; no more mistakes on my part."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You <I>will</I> write me a word&mdash;sometime, won't you, Marcia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I won't promise, Cale. I want to be alone. After all, I am only
+going away from here as I came&mdash;to find work and a livelihood. Goodby."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I think he understood. He did not bid me goodby, but went away down
+the platform, walking slowly, stooping a little, his head drooping, as
+if all courage had failed him. And my heart was hardened.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0233"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XXXIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+I watched him and little Pete drive away down the highroad; watched
+them out of sight. Then I sat down on the bench outside the
+waiting-room to think, "What next?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I had no intention of going to Spencerville. My trunk would be safe
+there with the address of a neighbor of my aunt. What I most wanted
+was to be alone and time to think, time to regain strength for the
+struggle before me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I don't know that for ten minutes I thought at all. I suppose I must
+have, for I remembered that at this hour Jamie and Mrs. Macleod were to
+sail; that the Doctor was on his way to San Francisco. That Cale could
+do nothing by telegraphing them. And what would he telegraph?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ticket-agent and baggage-master locked the office door and came
+over to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm going up the road a piece; the train is twenty minutes late. You
+won't mind sitting here alone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no. It is a lovely evening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No frost to-night." He went off on the highroad in the opposite
+direction from Richelieu-en-Bas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The evening promised to be fine; the sun set clear in the sky.
+Somewhere in the distance, I heard a night hawk's harsh cry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dusk fell; still I sat there, not thinking much of anything. I had
+my hand-bag with me and my warm coat. I opened my bag and took out an
+apple; I had eaten nothing since breakfast and felt faint. The apple
+was an Astrachan. I found myself calculating what it cost&mdash;this one
+apple. I must begin to count the cost again of every morsel, although
+I had all my wages with me. But ten weeks of sickness&mdash;and where would
+they be!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I put my teeth into the apple&mdash; A thought: the apple-boat&mdash;it was to
+leave soon&mdash;the week was up!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I rose from the bench, not stopping to take a second bite; took my
+hand-bag; threw my coat over my shoulder, and started down the road to
+Richelieu-en-Bas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was rapidly growing dark. One mile, two miles, three miles&mdash;the
+night was there to cover me. I was thankful. Five miles, six miles&mdash;I
+was entering the long street of the village. The lindens and elms made
+the road black. I strained my eyes to see the lights. That from the
+cabaret was the first&mdash;then a green one above the water, several feet
+it looked to be. It must be the apple-boat!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was just the time in the evening when the men flock to the cabaret.
+As I drew near it, I heard the sound of the graphophone. I listened,
+not stopping in my walk.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"<I>O Canada, pays de mon amour!</I>"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+I stopped then; and it seemed as if my heart stopped at the same time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, it had been "<I>Canada, land of my love</I>" in the deepest sense&mdash;and
+now!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went on to the boat; crossed the trestle. At the sound of my
+footstep on the deck, the woman put her head up the companionway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who 's there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some one who wishes to speak with you alone; I was here the other day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know your voice, but I don't know your name. You can talk; my
+husband is, at present, yonder in the cabaret; he will be in by
+half-past ten. We sail to-night if the wind holds good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; and what is that to you?" she asked suspiciously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I come into the cabin?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, yes. Come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I sat down on the stool she placed for me. I was tired with the long
+walk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have been called away from here, where I have been at service&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You&mdash;at service?" she asked in surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; and I am going away to find another place. Will you take me with
+you in the boat? May I go with you to your home, wherever it is?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at me suspiciously. "I don't know&mdash;my husband&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will pay you well, whatever you ask&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is n't that,"&mdash;she hesitated,&mdash;"but I don't know who you are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am myself," I said wearily; "I am tired of my place, and they don't
+want me to leave. I want to go&mdash;I am too tired to stay&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too hard, was it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everything was too hard. I come from Spencerville, just over the
+line; you know it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes. My cousin settled there when the new tannery was built last
+year."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All my family lived there. I am now alone in the world. I have sent
+my trunk on&mdash;but I want a complete rest before I go out to service
+again. I thought I could get it with you. I don't want to let the
+family know I have gone. The family are all away at present."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where have you been at work?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At the old manor of Lamoral, three miles away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have heard of it; they bought ten barrels of apples last year." She
+seemed to be thinking over some matter foreign to me, at that moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Won't you take me? I am so tired."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You say you can work?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Try me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are going back for the second harvest. We live near Iberville. We
+have orchards there, and help is always scarce at this time. Will you
+help?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes; anything. I can do the housework for you, if necessary."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't look tough enough for that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Try me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll speak to my husband when he comes in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All I ask of you is, that you will not let him tell anyone here that I
+am on the boat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has a tight mouth&mdash;a good head; he will do as I say."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That settles it," I thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you will stay here with my baby, I 'll just step over to the
+cabaret and call him out. We can talk better in the road."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She climbed the steps, and I heard her heavy tread on the deck&mdash;her
+steps on the trestle-boards. After that, nothing for a quarter of an
+hour, except the soft lap of the river running past the boat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They came back together, the man with a lantern which he hung at the
+stern.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He says, my Jean, that you can come with us, if you will hire out for
+a month."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell him I will hire out to you for that time. And how much shall I
+pay you for the passage?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jean says that's all right,&mdash;you can't leave us unless you can
+swim,&mdash;and we 're more than glad to get the help."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can sleep on the deck; I have a warm coat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no; my husband often sleeps on deck when we are at anchor; but
+to-night he will not sleep at all. We go to Sorel; we must be there by
+three in the morning. You can sleep in his bunk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She parted some curtains and showed me a two-and-a-half feet wide bunk
+beneath the sloping deck. I thanked her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If the wind should come up heavy, I shall do the steering," she said.
+"I will be down after we get under way. I help Jean."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She went up the tiny companionway, and I heard her talking in a low
+voice to "Jean". Soon there was a noise of trailing ropes, of a sail
+being hoisted; a sound of pushing and hauling&mdash;a soft swaying motion to
+the boat, then the ripple of the water under her bow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I lay down in the bunk; the sound of the ever-flowing river soothed me.
+I was worn out.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0301"></A>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BOOK THREE
+</H4>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+FINDING THE TRAIL
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+A dream would seem more real to me than the experience of that night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I listened, half sleeping, half waking, to hear only the ripple of
+water under the bow. Towards morning the wind freshened. I heard
+great commotion overhead. Evidently Jean and Madame Jean were taking
+in sail. I knew we must be near Sorel. I went up on deck to ask if I
+could be of any help.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not now," said Madame Jean who was busy with the gaskets; "but when we
+come in to Sorel there will be some merchants on the wharf to get the
+rest of our apples. If you will mind the baby then, I shall not have
+him on my hands if he wakes up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To be sure I will. May I stay here on deck for a little air?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, yes; you cannot sleep in this noise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The morning stars paled. The light crept out of the east along the
+pathway of the great river. The sun rose, turning its waters to gold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We were late in getting into Sorel. While there I remained in the
+cabin with the baby who was still asleep. By seven o'clock we were off
+again&mdash;the merchants had been willing to lend a hand in unloading. We
+had a fair brisk wind for our sail up the Richelieu, or Sorel River.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Madame Jean made us coffee, gave us doughnuts, cheese, and thickly
+buttered bread. The fresh milk for the baby was taken on at Sorel, and
+the little fellow, who could creep but not walk, gave me plenty to do.
+Madame Jean laughed at my attempts to confine him in one place; he
+seemed to be all over the deck at once. She called out merrily from
+the tiller:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eh, mademoiselle, you have never had one, I can see! You have much to
+learn. Here, take the tiller for a moment, I will show you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took a small-sized rope that had a hook at one end and a snap-catch
+at the other. She caught up the baby and, turning him over flat on her
+lap, showed me a stout steel ring sewed into the band of his blue denim
+creeper. Into this she fastened the snap and, hooking the other end
+into the belt of my skirt, set him down on the deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Voilà!" she said triumphantly. I found the arrangement worked
+perfectly and relieved me from all anxiety. He was tethered; but he
+could roam at large, so he thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All day we voyaged up the Richelieu between the rich Canadian
+farm-lands, the mountains, faintly blue on the horizon, rising more and
+more boldly in the south, as we approached the Champlain country. Just
+before sunset we glided up to an old wharf at Iberville.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There followed a series of shouts and whistles from the head of it.
+There was a frantic waving of aprons. A rough farm wagon, drawn by an
+old pepper-and-salt horse and loaded with children, bore down upon us,
+rattling over the loose planks like a gun carriage. The old horse was
+spurred on by flaps and jerks of the reins which were handled by a
+fine-looking bareheaded girl on the board that served for a seat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were answering shouts from Jean and Madame Jean; answering
+wavings of towels and shirts which had been drying on the rail&mdash;all
+equally frantic. Then the whole cartful tumbled out on the wharf,
+almost before the horse came to a halt, and, literally, stormed the
+sloop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jean and his wife were lost to my sight in the children's embrace;
+fourteen arms were trying to smother both at the same time. I was
+holding the baby when the horde descended on him, and only the fact
+that I was a stranger prevented me from sharing the fate of their
+mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are good children, eh?" said Madame Jean proudly, with a blissful
+smile. She smoothed her tumbled hair and twisted her apron again to
+the front of her plump person.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was properly introduced by my own name which I gave to madame and her
+husband. The whole family fairly pounced upon the few belongings in
+the boat and carried them to the great wagon. Madame Jean, holding the
+baby, sat in the middle enthroned on the pile of bunk cushions; the
+children crowded in around her. I was asked, as a compliment, to sit
+beside Monsieur Jean on the board seat which he covered with an old
+moth-eaten buffalo robe. He took the reins, and amid great rejoicings
+we jolted up the wharf into the main street of Iberville, the whole
+family exchanging greetings with every passer by, it seemed to me, just
+as fervently as if they had but recently returned from an ocean voyage.
+Our wagon&mdash;a chariot of triumph&mdash;rattled on through the town and out
+into the open country. They chatted all together and all at once. I
+failed to understand what it was about, for several of the children
+were very young and their French still far from perfect. Their voices
+were pitched on A sharp, and the effect was astonishing as well as
+ear-splitting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They paid no attention to me. I was grateful. I felt myself again a
+stranger in the midst of this alien family life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Two miles out from the town, we came to the roof-tree of the
+Duchênes,&mdash;this was their name,&mdash;and within half an hour we sat, eleven
+of us, around the kitchen table at supper. From beneath it, an old
+hound protruded his long nose, and caught with a snap the tidbits that
+were thrown to him. A huge Maltese cat settled herself across my feet.
+A canary shrilled over all the noise. In the midst of the merry
+meal&mdash;blackberries and milk, hot fried raised bread with maple
+syrup&mdash;the whole family was apparently thrown into convulsions by the
+appearance in the room of a pet goat and, behind him, the old
+pepper-and-salt horse that Monsieur Duchêne had turned out in the yard
+to graze!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a general uprising; charge and counter charge, shrieks,
+laughter. The baby and I were the only ones left at the table. Then,
+humiliating exodus of the beasts and triumphant entry of the family.
+The supper proceeded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And afterwards&mdash;never shall I forget that little scene!&mdash;after the
+dishes were washed, the goat fed, the horse bedded and the baby asleep,
+the seven children placed themselves in a row, the oldest girl of
+fifteen at the head, and waited for a signal from their father: a long
+drawn chord on a mouth harmonicum. Together parents and children sang
+the <I>Angelus</I>, sang till the room was filled with melody and, it seemed
+to me, the soft September night without the open door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was my introduction to the family Duchêne. I slept in an
+unfinished chamber. A sheet was tacked to the rafters over the bed.
+The window beside it looked into a mass of trees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, those orchard slopes of Iberville! I made intimate acquaintance
+with them for the next four weeks. I worked hard. I was up at five to
+help Madame Jean with the breakfast and the housework, what there was
+of it; then we were all off to the orchards to pick the wholesome,
+beautiful fruit&mdash;Northern Spies, Greenings, Baldwins and Russets. To
+use Jamie's expression, their "fragrance is in my nostrils" as I write
+of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At noon we had lunch&mdash;bread and butter, with jerked beef, cheese,
+apples, washed down with the sweetest of sweet cider from the mill.
+There was no stint of the simple fare. Then at work again&mdash;all the
+children joining, except the baby who roamed at will among the orchard
+grass with two small pigs that scampered wildly to and fro.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was work, work&mdash;picking, sorting, packing, till the shadows were
+long on the grass and the apple-cart was piled high with windfalls.
+The barrels were filled with picked fruit of the choicest. And after
+supper, regularly every evening, we sang the <I>Angelus</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This life was beneficial to me. I made no plans. I was glad to work
+hard in order to drown thought, to keep my body, as it were, numb. I
+really dared not think of <I>what was</I>, for then I could not sleep; could
+not be ready for the next day's work. To forget myself; this was my
+sole desire. Madame Duchêne watched my work with ever increasing
+admiration. Monsieur Duchêne wanted to engage me for another season.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you must not leave us this winter, mademoiselle. We need you," he
+said one day, after nearly four weeks had passed. He was preparing to
+set out on his return voyage down the Sorel to Richelieu-en-Bas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Others may need me, Monsieur Duchêne. I have been so content in your
+home; it has done me good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mademoiselle has some sorrow? Can we help, my wife and I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have helped me by trusting me, by letting me make one of your
+family all these weeks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you will keep the house till we return?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should like to do this for you, but I cannot stay so late here in
+the country. I must find employment for the winter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We cannot afford to pay you, mademoiselle, but you shall have your
+keep, if you will, for your help and your company, while you stay."
+Madame Duchêne spoke earnestly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot, dear Madame Duchêne; it is time for me to go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I ask where, Mademoiselle Farrell?" she asked, with such gentle
+pity audible in her voice, such kindly thoughts visible in her bright
+blue eyes, that, for a moment, I wavered. This was, at least, a
+shelter, a "retreat" for both my soul and my body.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not know as yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What can we do for you?" she urged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But one thing: say nothing to any one in Richelieu-en-Bas that you
+have seen me, that I have been with you&mdash;that you know me, even."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As you will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I remained with the children who declared they should be desolate if I
+went on the same day that father and mother left them. Together the
+children and I watched the apple-boat, loaded to the gunwale, sail away
+from Iberville wharf.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Two days after that, the children drove me to the station. I took the
+day express to New York.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I decided to go to Delia Beaseley.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0302"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Not in its aspect of Juggernaut did the great city receive me that hot
+September night at half-past eight, but as a veritable refuge where I
+could lose myself among its millions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I welcomed the roar of its thoroughfares, the noises of its traffic;
+they deafened my soul. Jamie's voice saying: "We shall see you in
+Crieff next summer&mdash;you and Ewart," grew faint and far away. Cale's
+voice pleading, Cale's voice warning me: "You are doing him a bitterer
+wrong than your mother before you," became less distinct.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The flashing electric signs were welcome and the white glaring lights
+of Broadway. They dazzled me; they helped to blind my inner sight to
+that vision of Mr. Ewart, standing on the shore of the little cove, far
+away in that northern wilderness, and looking into my eyes with a look
+that promised life in full.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I rode down the Bowery oblivious of myself; I was lost in wonder at the
+multitudes. I knew those multitudes were composed of individuals; that
+those individuals were distinct the one from the other. Each had his
+experience, as I was having mine. Life was interpreting itself to each
+in different terms: to some through drink; to others through
+prostitution; to a few&mdash;thank God, only a few!&mdash;through threatened
+starvation; to a host through the blessing of daily work; to hundreds
+of unemployed through the misery of suspense. And love, hate,
+faithfulness, treachery&mdash;all were there, hidden in the hearts of those
+multitudes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Some lines of William Watson's kept saying themselves over and over to
+me in thought, as I watched those throngs; as I listened to the glare
+of street bands, the grinding of hurdy-gurdies, and heard the flow of
+street life, which is <I>the</I> life, of the foreign East Side;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Momentous to himself, as I to me,<BR>
+Hath each man been that ever woman bore;<BR>
+Once, in a lightning-flash of sympathy,<BR>
+I <I>felt</I> this truth, an instant, and no more."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Momentous to himself." Oh yes&mdash;not a soul among those thousands who
+was not "momentous to himself", no matter how low soever fallen!
+"Momentous to himself"&mdash;I watched the throngs, and <I>understood</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I made my way into V&mdash;- Court, unafraid and unmolested. Delia Beaseley
+opened the door. At sight of her all the pent-up emotion of weeks
+threatened to find vent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Delia, it is I, Marcia Farrell&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried, as she drew me into the hall under
+the dim light. "It is good to see you again! But what is it?" she
+asked anxiously, lifting my hat from my face. "Are you sick?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could not answer her. She led me into the back room I remembered so
+well. There, as once before, she pushed me gently into the
+rocking-chair. She removed my hat and brought a fan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it, my dear? Can't you tell me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, how many times, during her life of helpfulness, she must have asked
+that question of homeless girls and despairing women!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Delia," I began; then I hesitated. Should I tell her, or carry in
+silence my trouble about with me? Before I could speak again, she had
+her arms&mdash;those motherly arms I had felt before&mdash;around me; my head was
+on her shoulder; my arms about her neck. I sobbed out my story, and
+she comforted me as only a woman, who has suffered, can comfort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me stay a little while with you, Delia, till I get work again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stay with me! Bless your heart, I couldn't let you go if you wanted
+to. Here 's my Jane&mdash;she 's out now&mdash;ready to drop with the work and
+the heat; we 've had a long spell of it, and I not knowing where to
+turn for help just now, for I want her to go away on a vacation; she
+needs it. Just you stay right here with me, and I 'll pack Jane off
+to-morrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you&mdash;is any body with you?" I asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes." She nodded significantly. "There 's two of 'em on my hands
+now. One's got through, and the other is expecting soon. Both of 'em
+can't see the use of living, and Jane 's about worn out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will let me help? I can do something, if it's only the housework."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can tend to that." She spoke decidedly. "What I want is to have
+you round 'em, comforting 'em, cheerin' 'em&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>I</I> comforting, <I>I</I> cheering, Delia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She nodded emphatically. "Yes, my dear, just that. Your work is cut
+out for you right here, for a few weeks anyway. You come upstairs with
+me now and set with one of 'em, and give her a bowl of gruel&mdash;I was
+just going to come up with one from the kitchen when you rung,&mdash;while I
+get Jane's things together; she 'll be in by ten. She 's over to one
+of the Settlement Houses helping out to-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Somehow, on hearing this account of Jane's activity&mdash;tired Jane who
+could help and rescue at home, and then go out to the Settlement House
+to give of her best till ten at night&mdash;my own life dwindled into
+insignificance. The true spirit of the great city entered into me. I
+felt the power of it for good. I felt its altruism; I realized its
+deepest significance; and I saw wherein lay my own salvation from
+selfish brooding, from forbidden craving, from morbid thinking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me have Jane's work," I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We talked no more that night of matters that were personal. I gave my
+whole time and strength to help "bring her through", as Delia defined
+the state of things in regard to a girl, five years younger than I,
+"who had missed her footing".
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was an anxious week. There was delirium, despair, suicidal intent;
+but we "brought her through".
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While watching by that girl's bedside, I relived that experience of my
+mother, the result of which was that I, Marcia Farrell, was there to
+help. In those night watches I had time for many thoughts. Cale's
+voice grew insistent, for the roar of the city was subdued at one and
+two in the morning:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Over and over again I heard those words. The undertone of metropolitan
+life, when at its lowest vitality, went on and on.&mdash;Two o'clock, three.
+The girl on the bed grew quiet; delirium ceased. Four&mdash;I heard the
+rattle of the milk-carts and the truck gardeners' wagons coming up from
+the ferries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Over
+and over again I heard it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale's voice was louder now, more and more insistent. All that day I
+heard it above the push-cart vendors' cries and the hurdy-gurdy's dance
+music, above the roar of the Second Avenue Elevated and the polyglot
+street clamor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, I had to acknowledge it: my mother had wronged him. I visualized
+that act in her life. I saw her promising to marry him, although she
+was unwilling. I saw her giving herself in marriage to him in the
+presence of the minister and her sick father. I saw her young husband
+creeping out in the night to watch for her shadow on the curtain. I
+saw him lying down to sleep a little after his vigil&mdash;but I could not
+see my mother when she left the house. Not until she made sunshine in
+the old manor, where I was conceived, not until she made sunshine in
+the forest for old André, could I see her again in her youth and
+beauty, in the enjoyment of her stolen bliss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But I could see him whom she deserted. I saw him in the pasture among
+the colts. I saw him raving at being made her dupe; I saw him even
+raising his hand against Cale. I saw him in his fruitless search,
+east, west, north, south. I saw him leaving the very house in which I
+was watching. I saw him broken, changed, "cutting loose" from his old
+life, determined to relive in other conditions, in other lands. I saw
+him returning from that far Australian country to that house where my
+mother's steps had resounded on the old flagging in the passageway at
+Lamoral,&mdash;unknowing of her former presence there, unknowing that her
+daughter was there awaiting him,&mdash;to that place which I, also
+unknowing, had made home for him. I saw him living again in his love
+for me who was her daughter!&mdash;and he knew this! Knew I was her
+daughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How had he dared? And he her husband&mdash;my mother's husband! The
+thought was staggering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I looked at the girl on the bed. She was asleep, but her respiration
+was rapid; she was breathing for two. "What if&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I dared scarcely formulate my thought. Was he her husband? Did merely
+the spoken word make Gordon Ewart and my mother, man and wife? What
+was it Cale said: she had pleaded so with his mother not to be with her
+husband that first night of her marriage. And there was no second.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I began to see differently, as Cale predicted. Horror, shame,
+humiliation, despair, jealousy of my own mother&mdash;all this that
+obstructed vision, deflected, distorted it, was being cleared away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Had Mr. Ewart come to look at this matter in the same light, that he
+had never been my mother's husband? That words, alone, could never
+make him that?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."
+Perhaps Cale was right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why was he silent?" I asked myself, and found the answer: he could not
+have gained my love, had I known. And he wanted my love&mdash;wanted me,
+and me alone of all the world for his mate. But how could he, knowing?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I lost myself in conjecture, but I began to see clearly, differently.
+My own act, my desertion of him, after what he had mutely promised, was
+becoming a base thing in my eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I asked Delia Beaseley once, if she had heard any word from Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, not a word," she said decidedly, "and remembering how he looked
+when he braced up and walked into this very basement twenty-seven years
+ago, I don't expect to hear from him. I ain't judgin' you, my dear,
+but you 've done an awful thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what of his act?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, there are two ways of looking at that," was all she would say.
+She used Cale's very words, when he told his story.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I asked once again, if she had heard from the Doctor?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No. He was going out to California. He come to see me before he
+went, and he said he 'd about given up the farm plans; that he could
+n't see his way clear to carry them out for the present. And I don't
+mind telling you, that he said he would put half the interest money on
+that 'conscience fund', as he calls it, that he thinks your father
+provides to ease his soul, to helping me here in my work."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I remembered what I had advised on that memorable evening in
+Lamoral&mdash;and I wondered at the ways of life.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+We "brought the girl through" with help of nurse and doctor. She and
+her child were saved, saved for good as I have every reason to believe,
+for I have kept in touch with her ever since. I am her friend, why
+quite such a friend, I do not feel called upon to explain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I answered the door bell one day when the baby upstairs was ten days
+old&mdash;and found myself face to face with Cale.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0303"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+When I saw him, I acknowledged to myself my weakness. Deep down in my
+heart I had been longing, with a desire which was prayer, that I might
+have some word from Lamoral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale&mdash;Cale, dear, come in." I caught his hand, which was not
+outstretched to mine, to draw him in. "If we were n't the observed of
+all in this court I would kiss you on the spot." He continued to stare
+at me; he did not speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale, forgive me for my hardness of heart&mdash;say you forgive me, for I
+can't forgive myself; I was&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He interrupted me, speaking quietly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know what you was; you can't tell me nothin' 'bout <I>thet</I>, Marcia.
+I ain't laid up nothin' you said to me, nor nothin' you said against
+nobody; but I ain't fergiven yer fer leavin' me without knowin' of your
+whereabouts&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale, I had to be alone&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't care whether you had to be alone or not," he said testily;
+"you might have let me know where you was goin'. You was n't fit to go
+alone, nor be alone. My hair 's turned gray thinkin' what might
+happen. Where was you?" he demanded sternly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was in Iberville."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I led him unresisting into the back room; it was my turn to place some
+one in the rocking-chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Iberville! How in thunder did you get to Iberville when you did n't
+go on the train?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did you know I did n't go on the train?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The baggage-master told me. How did you go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the apple-boat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, I 'm stumped. How long did you stay there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nearly four weeks. Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why? Because I 'd been doing detective work on my own account. (How
+my heart sank at those words; Mr. Ewart had not attempted to find me
+then!). I 've been doin' it for the last six weeks. This is the third
+time I 've been in New York."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But not here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, here&mdash;in this very house. I give Mis' Beaseley the credit; she
+knows how to hold her tongue. I see she ain't told you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No. But you have n't been here since I 've been in the house?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I just got here to-day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did you happen to come this third time, Cale?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I come because the Doctor told me to try it again here&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Doctor? Is he at home?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess he is by this time; I left him at Lamoral yesterday&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At Lamoral?" On hearing that word, a trembling I could not control
+seized upon me. If only Cale would speak of Mr. Ewart!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Lamoral. I 've been lyin' right and left to Angélique an'
+Pierre, an' Marie, an' Mère Guillardeau an' all the folks 'round that's
+been inquirin'; but I didn't lie to the Doctor&mdash;not much!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How&mdash;how did the Doctor happen to be in Lamoral?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess you fergot he said he 'd like enough come back by the C.P."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I was silent. I saw that Cale did not intend to speak Mr. Ewart's name
+first. He was leaving it to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, Marcia, I 'm goin' to talk to you for once in my life like
+a Dutch uncle. I don't mean to live through another six weeks like
+those I 've been through, if I should live to be a hundred."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sorry, Cale, to have been the cause of any anxiety, any suffering
+on your part&mdash;but I, too, suffered&mdash;and far more than you can ever
+know." I spoke bitterly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ain't denyin' you suffered&mdash;but there 's others to consider; others
+have suffered, too, I guess, in a way <I>you</I> don't know nothin' about,
+bein' a woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you mean, Cale?" I asked, trying to make him speak Mr. Ewart's
+name.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mean? Marcia Farrell, you know what I mean. Ain't you got a woman's
+heart beatin' somewhere in your bosom?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Cale, don't!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've got to, Marcia; you 've got to see things different, or you 'll
+rue the day you ever blinded yourself to facts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is Mr. Ewart ill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ill?" There was a curious twitch to his mouth as he repeated that
+word. "Wal, it depends on what you call 'ill'. That's a pretty mild
+word for some sorts of diseases&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Cale, tell me quick&mdash;don't keep me waiting any longer&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any longer for what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know, Cale, I want to hear of him&mdash;know about him&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you do, do you? Wal, it 's pretty late in the day for you to show
+some feelin'. Look here, Marcia, I ain't goin' to meddle. I meddled
+once thirty years ago when I tried to persuade your mother she loved
+George Jackson, an' I 've lived to curse the day I did it. I ain't
+goin' to fall inter the same trap <I>this</I> time, you bet yer life on
+thet; but I 'm goin' to speak my mind 'fore I leave you here. Will you
+answer me one plain question, an' answer it straight?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll try to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Do</I> you think different from what you did? Have you come to see
+things any different from what you put 'em to me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wal, thet's to the point; now we can talk. The Doctor and Ewart was
+talkin' this over 'fore I come away; I heard every word. I was right
+there, and they asked me to be. Gordon Ewart told the Doctor that when
+he fust see him aboard ship, that was nineteen years ago, he made his
+acquaintance because he knew he was the man who had brought you inter
+this world. He never let him go. He kept in touch with him. He come
+to be his closest friend. An' he never told that he, Gordon Ewart, is
+the one that puts that money regularly into the Doctor's hands, without
+his knowin' who it comes from, for the sake of helpin' others&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he did not think of me." I could not help it; I spoke bitterly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No. He did n't want to think of you. He wanted to ferget there was
+anybody or anything in this world to remind him of what he 'd suffered
+from Happy Morey; an' he tried his best. An' he told the Doctor that
+when he 'd thought he 'd conquered, when he come to see things
+different too, he come back to settle in the old manor an' carry out
+his ideas. An' the very fust night, he found you there. He said he
+knew then, he couldn't get away from his past; it was livin' right
+there along with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marcia, I ain't meddlin', and mebbe I 'm to blame; but when I told you
+what I did, I done for the best as I thought. The Doctor done for the
+best as he thought. He believed you were Ewart's daughter, and he see
+what we all could n't help seein'&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, Cale?" I longed to hear from Cale's lips that he had seen Mr.
+Ewart's love for me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You <I>know</I>, Marcia Farrell, I ain't goin' ter tell you. The Doctor
+said he thought fust along, it was because Ewart knew he was your
+father; but he said his eyes was opened mighty sudden&mdash;an' it 'bout
+made him sick, for he thinks a sight of you, Marcia. I see from the
+fust how things was driftin' with George, and as him an' me had
+recognized one 'nother from the fust, an' as he did n't say he knew
+you, I kept still. I was n't goin' to meddle, an' I ain't goin' to
+meddle now&mdash;only I 'm goin' straight off to tell him where you are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he has n't tried to find me&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, nor he never will. Your mother 'bout killed him when he was a
+boy, an' he is n't goin' to run after you who has 'bout killed him
+again as a man. You don't know nothin' what you 've done. I 've been
+through hell with him these last six weeks, an' I went through it with
+him once before twenty-eight years ago, an' that hell compared with
+this was like a campfire to a forest-roarer.&mdash; Now you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale&mdash;Cale, what have I done?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 've done what will take the rest of your life to undo. I ain't
+goin' to meddle, I tell you, but I 'm tellin' you just as things stand.
+My part's done&mdash;for I 've found you; an' I 'm goin' to tell him so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stood up; as it were, shook himself together, and without any
+ceremony started for the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale, don't go yet&mdash;I want to tell you; you don't see my position&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Position be hanged. I guess folks that find their lives hangin' by a
+thread don't stop to argify much 'bout 'position'; they get somewhere
+where they can <I>live</I>&mdash;thet 's all they want."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was at the front door by this time. I grasped his arm and held it
+tight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will come again, Cale, you must."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm goin' home to Lamoral as quick as the Montreal express can get me
+there. I can't breathe here in this hole!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He loosened his shirt collar and took off his coat. It was an
+unseasonable day in November&mdash;an Indian summer day with the mercury at
+eighty-four. The life of the East Side was flooding the streets. He
+turned to me as he stood on the low step. "I hope it won't be goodby
+for another six weeks, Marcia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cale, oh, Cale&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was off down the court with a long stride peculiar to himself. I
+saw him step over a bunch of babies playing in the mud at the corner of
+the court. He turned that corner into the street. I went in and shut
+the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Delia Beaseley was out for the entire forenoon, but Jane, who had
+returned from her two weeks vacation, was upstairs. I had plenty of
+time to think, to feel. I must have sat there in the back room for an
+hour or more, then the front door bell rang again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I answered it&mdash;and found Mr. Ewart.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0304"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Are you alone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish to see you for a few minutes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come into the back room."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I led the way. I heard him shut the front door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no word of welcome on the part of either, no hand extended.
+All I could see, as he stood there momentarily on the step, was the set
+face, the dark hollows beneath his eyes, the utter fatigue in his
+attitude. He stood with his hand on the door jamb, bracing himself by
+it. So he must have stood long years before when he came to seek my
+mother. That was my thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not sit down; but I&mdash;I had to; I had not strength left to stand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm going to ask you a few questions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes." My tongue was dry; my lips parched. It was with difficulty I
+could articulate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did you think I promised you, even if without words, that last
+time I saw you in camp?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did you promise me when you looked into my eyes, there on the
+shore of the cove?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All." I had no other word at my command.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what did 'all' mean to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could not answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did it mean that you were to be my wife, that I was to be your
+husband?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you came to think otherwise&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How could it be, oh, how could it be?" I cried out wildly, the dumb
+misery finding expression at last. "How could it be when you are my
+mother's husband&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stop! Not here and now. I will not hear that&mdash;not here, where I
+found her dead in this basement; not now, when I have come to find her
+child. Listen to me. Answer me, as if before the judgment seat of
+your truest womanhood and our common humanity. Is she a wife who never
+loves the man who loves her, and is married to her in the law? Answer
+me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is he a husband who never receives the pledge of love from the woman
+he loves, and to whom he is married in the law? Answer me again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can words merely, the 'I promise', the 'I take', make marriage in its
+truest sense? Tell me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was the woman who never loved me, my wife in any true sense for all
+the spoken words?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," I answered again, but my voice faltered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was the man who loved her, her husband simply by reason of those few
+spoken words?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;but&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I know what you would say; the words, at least, were spoken that
+made us before the world man and wife in the law&mdash;but how about the
+'before God'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I could not answer. The man who was cross-questioning me was trying to
+get at the truth as I saw it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The law can be put aside, and I put it aside; I was divorced from her.
+But what difference, except to you, does that make? Marcia Farrell, I
+was never your mother's husband. Had I been, had I taken her once in
+my arms as wife, can you think for one moment that I would have stayed
+in the manor, continued in your presence&mdash;watching, waiting, longing
+for some sign of love for me on your part? You cannot think it&mdash;it is
+not possible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice shook with passion, with indignation. He bent to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me, in mercy tell me, what stands between us two? Speak out now
+from the depths of your very soul. Lay aside fear; there is nothing to
+fear, believe me. I am fighting now not only for my life, but for
+yours which is dearer to me than my own. Speak."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I took courage. I looked up at him as he bent over me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you loved my mother in me&mdash;I was afraid it was not I you
+loved, not Marcia Farrell, but Happy Morey."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You thought <I>that</I>!&mdash;And I never knew." He spoke rapidly, with a
+catch in his voice which sounded like a half laugh or a sob.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He straightened himself suddenly, then, as suddenly, he bent over me
+again, took my face between his hands and looked into my eyes, as if by
+looking he could engrave his words on my brain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I swear to you by my manhood, that I have loved and love you for
+yourself, for what you are. I swear to you by my past life, a life
+that has never known the love of a woman, that the past no longer
+exists for me; that it no longer existed for me from the moment I saw
+you coming down stairs that first night at Lamoral. I waited this time
+to make sure that a woman loved me as I wanted to be loved, as I must
+be loved&mdash;and I waited too long. You are not like your mother, except
+in looks. You are you&mdash;the woman I want to make my wife, the woman I
+look to, to make life with me. Marcia! Let the past bury its
+dead&mdash;what do we care for it? We are living, you and
+I&mdash;living&mdash;loving&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew me up to him&mdash;and life in its fulness began for me....
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"And now put on your hat, give me your coat, and come with me," he said
+a half an hour afterwards.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To the City Hall to get our marriage licence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, now, before luncheon. Tell Jane you will not return&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But my bag&mdash;shall I take that? And Delia, what will&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Delia must look out for herself; you can explain by letter. Tell Jane
+to have your bag sent this afternoon to this address." He gave me a
+card on which he scribbled, "Check room of the Grand Central Station".
+"We can be married at the magistrate's office&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I must have shown some disappointment at this decision, for he asked
+quickly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it, Marcia? Tell me. Remember, I can bear nothing more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I took a lighter tone with him. I saw that the nervous strain under
+which he was suffering must be relieved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am disappointed, yes, downright disappointed. Even if you don't
+want to make certain promises, I confess I do. I want to say 'I
+promise'; I want to hear myself saying 'I take you' and 'till death do
+us part'. I want to say those very words; I would like the whole world
+to hear. Why, think of it, I am going to be your wife! Do you grasp
+that fact?" I said, smiling at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I won an answering smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have your own way; I may as well succumb to the inevitable now as at
+any time, for you will always have it with me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I would n't be so mean as to want it all the time, besides it
+would be so monotonous; but I do want it this once&mdash;the great and only
+'once' for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where do you want to be married? Have you any preference?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A decided one. I want to be married in the chapel of St. Luke's, and
+I want Doctor Rugvie to give me away. As you both came down last night
+from Lamoral, I don't believe he is away from the city, now is he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is up at St. Luke's. He said he should be there till five. I was
+to telephone him there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then at five it shall be," I declared, with an emphasis that made him
+smile again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At five you shall be married; but, remember, I am the party of the
+second part." He spoke half whimsically; I was so glad to hear that
+tone in his voice. I welcomed the joy that began to express itself
+normally in merry give and take.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, first, Mr. Ewart&mdash;always first&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't see it so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not at present, but you will when I am Mrs. Ewart. I want to ask you
+a question."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, anything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you ever seen those papers that Doctor Rugvie has in his
+possession?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, and I never want to. They are yours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I don't want to see them either. You do not know their contents?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; only that there is a marriage certificate among them and a paper
+or two for you." I noticed he avoided mentioning my mother's name.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gordon&mdash;" I called him so for the first time, and was rewarded with a
+kiss, after which intermezzo, I finished what I had to say:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;You say let the past bury its dead; so long as those papers exist,
+it will, in a way, live. I would like to know that they do not exist."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are sure you do not care to know your parentage?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No. Why should I? What is that to me? It is enough that I am to be
+your wife&mdash;and what my mother said, or did not say, could not influence
+me now. She never could have anticipated <I>this</I>. Besides, there might
+be some mention by her of my parentage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You express my own thought, my own desire, Marcia. Shall we ask John
+to destroy them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and the sooner the better."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew a long breath of relief.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then that chapter is closed&mdash;and I have you to myself, without
+knowledge of any other tie. I thank God that I have come into my own
+through you alone. Come, we must be going."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll just run up stairs and tell Jane that I shall not come back
+here, and, Gordon&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want something else with all my heart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, more? I am growing impatient."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want Delia Beaseley and Cale for witnesses&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is wonderful how a man can make plans and a woman undo them when
+she has her way! I was intending to be married by a magistrate, and
+then carry you off unbeknown to Cale and Company, and telephone to them
+later. Now, of course, they shall be with us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I left word with Jane to tell her mother to be at St. Luke's chapel
+promptly that afternoon at five; it was a matter of great importance
+and that Mr. Ewart would be there. At which Jane looked her amazement,
+but had the good sense to say nothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We left the house together. Together we rode up the Bowery. We
+procured our licence, and together we rode on the electrics up to the
+Bronx and, afterwards, had our luncheon at the cafe in the park on the
+heights. As the short November afternoon drew to a close, we rode down
+to St. Luke's. It was already five when we entered the chapel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Delia, Cale and the Doctor were there, waiting for us; but they spoke
+no word of greeting, nor did we. They followed us in silence to the
+altar where, with our three friends close about us, we were made man
+and wife.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the end of the short service, the two men grasped my husband by the
+hand. But still no word was spoken. It remained for Cale to break the
+silence; he turned to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guess you 've found the trail all right this time, Marcia." His voice
+trembled; he tried to smile; and I&mdash;I just threw my arms around his
+neck and gave him what he termed the surprise of his life: a hearty
+kiss. The Doctor, of course, claimed the same favor, and Delia
+Beaseley dissolved suddenly into tears&mdash;poor Delia, I am sure I read
+her thought at that moment!&mdash;only to laugh with the next breath, as did
+all the rest of us, for Cale spoke out his feelings with no uncertain
+sound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I guess I 'll say goodby till I can see you again in the old manor,
+Mis' Ewart, an' I hope you 'll be ter home soon as convenient. I ain't
+had a square meal fer the last six weeks. Angélique has filled the
+sugar bowl twice with salt by mistake, an' put a lot of celery salt
+inter her doughnuts three times runnin'&mdash;an' all on account of her
+bein' so taken up with Pete. An' he ain't much better even if he was a
+widower; he fed the hosses nine quarts of corn meal apiece for three
+days runnin' ter celebrate, an' the only thing thet saved 'em was, thet
+he had sense enough left not ter wet it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My husband assured him that we should be at home soon&mdash;perhaps in a day
+or two.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor insisted that Cale and Delia should come home with him to
+dinner, in order that Cale might have one "square meal" before he left
+on the night train. They accepted promptly. It was an opportunity to
+talk matters over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We bade them goodby at the entrance to the hospital; then my husband
+and I went down and into the great city, the heart of which had been
+shown to us because we had seen, at last, into our own.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0305"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+V
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+I have been his wife for nearly two years. I am sitting by the window
+in the living-room at Lamoral, while writing these last words. My
+baby, my little daughter, now four months old, lies in her bassinet
+beside me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I believe Gordon's dearest wish was for a son, but I had set my heart
+on a daughter, and I really think he would have welcomed twins, or even
+triplets, of the feminine gender, if I had expressed a preference for
+them! A little daughter it is, however, and her father kneels beside
+her to worship and adore. Sometimes I detect the traces of tears when
+his face emerges from her still uncertain embrace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our little daughter, born to such a heritage of love! I look at her
+often when she is asleep and wonder what her life will be. So far as
+her father and I can make it, it shall be a joy; and yet&mdash;and yet! To
+this little soul, as to every other new-born, life will interpret
+itself in its own terms, despite father-love, and mother-love and the
+love of friends&mdash;of whom she has already a host!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cale has constituted himself prime minister of the nursery ever since
+her advent, and advises me on all occasions. She is sovereign in the
+house. Angélique and Marie fell out on the subject of which should
+launder the simple baby dresses, and, in consequence, we had an
+uncomfortable household for a week. Pete and his son, no longer
+"little" Pete, are her slaves. And as for the dogs, they guard the
+room when she takes her frequent naps, three lying outside the
+threshold, and one within, by the crib, to make known to us when she
+wakes. Of course, each dog has his day&mdash;otherwise there would be no
+living in the house with them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Only this morning, Mère Guillardeau, now over a hundred, drove over to
+see her and brought with her a tiny pair of dainty moccasins that her
+nephew, André, sent down from the Upper Saguenay. Even the bassinet,
+in which she is at this moment lying, was woven by our Montagnais
+postman's squaw-wife and sent to me in anticipation of her coming. We
+must try not to spoil her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our first summer was spent in Crieff with Jamie and Mrs. Macleod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jamie showed me the great Gloire de Dijon roses growing on the stone
+walls of his home, and the ivy covering the gate that gives passage
+from the lower side of the garden to the meadows and the
+bright-glancing Earn. Before you step out through it, it frames the
+misty blue Grampians beyond the river. Jamie used to describe all this
+to me that winter in Lamoral; but the reality is more beautiful than
+any description.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor was with us for three weeks in August. We celebrated
+Jamie's birthday by repeating Gordon's celebration of it so long ago.
+We went over the moors and through the bracken to the "Keltic". We
+made our fire beneath the same tree, under which Gordon camped to the
+little boy's delight, nineteen years before, and we swung our gypsy
+kettle and made refreshing tea. We had a perfect day together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was on that occasion Jamie confided in me. He told me his decision
+to return to England was not wholly influenced by his publishers, but
+because of his interest in Bess Stanley who, he had heard, was seen a
+good deal in the company of a distant cousin of my husband's&mdash;another
+Gordon Ewart, named from his father from whom my Gordon bought the
+manor and seigniory of Lamoral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He discerned that the only wise thing for him was to be on the spot,
+"to head the other off" as he put it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I can be only one half day with Bess now and then, I can make her
+forget every other man," he declared solemnly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I laughed inwardly, but I knew he spoke the truth. Jamie Macleod is
+fascination itself when he exerts himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am going to win, you know, in the end," he said. "Another Ewart
+shan't cut me out again&mdash;" He spoke mischievously, audaciously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you big fraud! It's well I understand you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I, you, Marcia&mdash;I 'll cable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do, that's a dear. I shall be so anxious."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Yesterday I received the cablegram; Jamie has won.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I can't help wondering about those other "Gordon Ewarts", distant
+cousins of my husband. Can it be?&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No, no! I will not even speculate. That past is forever laid, thank
+God.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I write "forever"&mdash;but perhaps that is not possible, for I have lived
+through a strange experience that makes me doubt at times. When my
+nestling was on her way to us, when a perfect love enfolded me, a love
+that protected, guarded, surrounded me with everything that life can
+yield, then it was that, at times, I felt again a stranger in this
+world; nor love of husband, nor love of friends, nor my love for them,
+for my home, nor my very passion of anticipated motherhood, could
+banish that feeling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I never told my husband. He will read it here for the first time. I
+accounted for it by reason of my condition in which every nerve centre
+was alive for two. It may be my mother felt this before me&mdash;I do not
+know. But when my baby came, when I could touch the little bundle
+beside me, when I gave her the first nourishment from the fountain of
+her life, the feeling left me. I have not experienced it since.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During this last winter I have occupied my enforced leisure in writing
+out these life-lines of mine. I have written them for my daughter. It
+may be that she, too, sheltered as she now is, may sometime find
+herself lost in the wilderness we call Life, may read these life-lines
+and, hearing her mother's cry, may find by means of it the trail&mdash;as
+her mother found it before her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My husband, entering quietly without my hearing him, leaned over my
+shoulder, as I was writing those last words, and took my pen from my
+fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not yet, Marcia; you have n't gained your strength."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I seized a pencil, and while I try to finish now, scribbling, he is
+holding the end of it, ready to lift it from the paper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please, Gordon&mdash;just a few more words&mdash;only a few about the new farm
+project, and Delia, and the Doctor and Mrs. Macleod,"&mdash;I hear him laugh
+under his breath when I couple those two names; we are still hoping in
+that direction,&mdash;"and those dear Duchênes&mdash;and you, of course&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The pencil is being lifted&mdash;I struggle to write&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Gordon, you tyrant!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<HR>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+BOOKS BY
+<BR>
+MARY E. WALLER
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+THE WOOD-CARVER OF 'LYMPUS<BR>
+A DAUGHTER OF THE RICH<BR>
+THE LITTLE CITIZEN<BR>
+SANNA OF THE ISLAND TOWN<BR>
+A YEAR OUT OF LIFE<BR>
+FLAMSTED QUARRIES<BR>
+A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS<BR>
+MY RAGPICKER<BR>
+THROUGH THE GATES OF THE NETHERLANDS<BR>
+OUR BENNY<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Cry in the Wilderness, by Mary E. Waller
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Cry in the Wilderness, by Mary E. Waller
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Cry in the Wilderness
+
+Author: Mary E. Waller
+
+Illustrator: Arthur I. Keller
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2011 [EBook #34396]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "What a wilderness was this Seigniory of Lamoral! and
+yet--I liked it." Frontispiece. _See Page 92_.]
+
+
+
+
+A CRY IN
+
+THE WILDERNESS
+
+
+BY
+
+MARY E. WALLER
+
+
+Author of "The Wood-carver of 'Lympus," "Flamsted Quarries," "A Year
+Out of Life," etc.
+
+
+
+WITH FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR BY
+
+ARTHUR I. KELLER
+
+
+
+
+TORONTO
+
+MCCLELLAND & GOODCHILD
+
+LIMITED
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1912,_
+
+BY MARY E. WALLER.
+
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+Published, October, 1912
+
+
+
+THE COLONIAL PRESS
+
+C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+THE JUGGERNAUT
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+THE SEIGNIORY OF LAMORAL
+
+
+BOOK THREE
+
+FINDING THE TRAIL
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+THE JUGGERNAUT
+
+
+
+
+A Cry in the Wilderness
+
+
+
+I
+
+"You Juggernaut!"
+
+That's exactly what I said, and said aloud too.
+
+I was leaning from the window in my attic room in the old district of
+New York known as "Chelsea"; both hands were stemmed on the ledge.
+
+"You Juggernaut of a city!" I said again, and found considerable
+satisfaction in repeating that word. I leaned out still farther into
+the sickening September heat and defiantly shook my fist, as it were
+into the face of the monster commercial metropolis of the New World.
+
+I felt the blood rush into my cheeks--thin and white enough, so my
+glass told me. Then I straightened myself, drew back and into the
+room. The quick sharp clang of the ambulance gong, the clatter of
+running hoofs sounded below me in the street.
+
+"And they keep going under--so," I said beneath my breath; and added,
+but between my teeth:
+
+"But _I_ won't--I _won't_!"
+
+Turning from the window, I took my seat at the table on which was a
+pile of newspapers I kept for reference, and searched through them
+until I found an advertisement I remembered to have seen a week before.
+I had marked it with a blue pencil. I cut it out. Then I put on my
+hat and went down into the city that lay swooning in the intense,
+sultry heat of mid-September.
+
+The sun, dimmed and blood red in vapor, was setting behind the Jersey
+shore. The heated air quivered above the housetops. Wherever there
+was a stretch of asphalt pavement, innumerable hoof-dents witnessed to
+the power of the sun's rays. The shrivelled foliage in the parks was
+gray with dust.
+
+I knew well enough that on the upper avenues for blocks and blocks the
+houses were tightly boarded as if hermetically sealed to light and air;
+but I was going southward, and below and seaward every door and window
+yawned wide. To the rivers, to the Battery, to the Bridge, the piers,
+and the parks, the sluggish, vitiated life of the city's tenement
+districts was crawling listless. The tide was out; and I knew that
+beneath the piers--who should know better than I who for six years had
+taken half of my recreation on them?--the fetid air lay heavy on the
+scum gathered about the slime-covered piles.
+
+The advertisement was a Canadian "want", and in reading it an
+overpowering longing came upon me to see something of the spaciousness
+of that other country, to breathe its air that blows over the northern
+snow-fields. I had acted on an impulse in deciding to answer it, but
+that impulse was only the precipitation of long-unuttered and unfilled
+desires. I was realizing this as I made my way eastward into one of
+the former Trinity tenement districts.
+
+I found the flag-paved court upon which the shadows were already
+falling. It was not an easily discoverable spot, and I was a little in
+doubt as to entering and inquiring further; I didn't like its look. I
+took out the advertisement; yes, this was the place: "No. 8 V----
+Court."
+
+"Don't back down now," I said to myself by way of encouragement and,
+entering, rang the bell of an old-fashioned house with low stoop and
+faded green blinds close shut in sharp contrast to the gaping ones
+adjoining. The openly neglected aspect of its neighbors was wanting,
+as was, in fact, any indication of its character. Ordinarily I would
+have shunned such a locality.
+
+The door was opened by a woman apparently fifty. Her strong
+deeply-lined face I trusted at once.
+
+"What do you want?" The voice was business-like, neither repellent nor
+inviting.
+
+"I 've come in answer to this," I said, holding out the clipping. The
+woman took it.
+
+"You come in a minute, till I get my glasses."
+
+She led the way through a long, unlighted hall into a back room where
+the windows were open.
+
+"You set right down there," she said, pushing me gently into a
+rocking-chair and pressing a palm-leaf fan into my hand, "for you look
+'bout ready to drop."
+
+She spoke the truth; I was. The sickening breathlessness of the air,
+nine hours of indoor work, and little eaten all day for lack of
+appetite, suddenly took what strength I had when I started out.
+
+As the woman stood by the window reading the slip in the fading light,
+my eyes never left her face. It seemed to me--and strangely, too, for
+I have always felt my independence of others' personal help--that my
+life itself was about to depend on her answer.
+
+"Yes, this is the place to apply; but now the first thing I want to
+know is how you come to think you 'd fit this place? You don't look
+strong."
+
+"Oh, yes, I am;" I spoke hurriedly, as if a heavy pressure that was
+gradually making itself felt on my chest were forcing out the words;
+"but I haven't been out of the hospital very long--"
+
+"What hospital?"
+
+"St. Luke's."
+
+"What was the matter with you?"
+
+"Typhoid pneumonia with pleurisy."
+
+"How long was you there?"
+
+"Ten weeks, to the first of July; I've been at work since--but I want
+to get away from here where I can breathe; if I don't I shall die."
+
+There was a queer flutter in my voice. I could hear it. The woman
+noticed it.
+
+"Ain't you well?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I am, and want work--but away from here."
+
+There must have been some passionate energy left in my voice at least,
+for the woman lifted her thick eyebrows over the rim of her spectacles.
+
+"H'm--let's talk things over." She drew up a chair in front of me. "I
+won't light up yet, it's so hot. I guess we 'll get a tempest 'fore
+long."
+
+She sat down, placing her hands on her knees and leaning forward to
+look more closely at my face. I seemed to see her through a fog, and
+passed my hand across my eyes to wipe it away.
+
+"There 's no use beating 'round the bush when it comes to business,"
+she said bluntly but kindly; "I 've got to ask you some pretty plain
+questions; the parties in this case are awful particular."
+
+"Yes." I answered with effort. The fog was still before my eyes.
+
+"You see what it says." She began to read the advertisement slowly:
+"'Wanted: A young girl of good parentage, strong, and country raised,
+for companion and assistant to an elderly Scotchwoman on a farm in
+Canada, Province of Quebec. Must have had a common school education.
+Apply at No. 8 V---- Court, New York City.' You say you 've been in
+St. Luke's?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you know the one they call Doctor Rugvie there? He 's the great
+surgeon."
+
+"No, I don't know him; but I 've heard so much of him. He was pointed
+out to me once when I was getting better."
+
+"Well, by good rights you ought to be applying for this place to him."
+
+"To him?" I asked in surprise. I could n't make this fact rhyme in
+connection with this woman and Canada.
+
+"Yes, to him; I'm only a go-between he trusts. He 's in Europe now and
+is n't coming home till late this year, so he left this with me," she
+indicated the advertisement, "and told me not to put it in till a week
+ago. I ain't had many applications. Folks in this city don't take to
+going off to a farm in Canada, and those I 've had would n't have
+suited. But, anyway, Doctor Rugvie is reference for this place that's
+advertised, and I guess he 's good enough for anybody. I thought I 'd
+tell you this to relieve your mind. 'T ain't every girl would come
+down here to this hole looking for a place.-- Where was you born?"
+
+"Here in New York, but I have lived most of my life in the country,
+northern New England, just this side of the Canada line. I 've been
+here seven years, five in the Public Library; that's my reference."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Twenty-six next December--the third."
+
+"I would n't have thought it. Mother living?"
+
+"No; she died when I was born."
+
+"Any father?"
+
+"I--I don't know whether my father is living or not."
+
+I began to wish I had n't come here to be questioned like this; yet I
+knew the woman was asking only what was necessary in the circumstances.
+I feared my answers would seal my fate as an applicant.
+
+"What was your father's name?"
+
+"I don't know." Again I caught the sound of that strange flutter in my
+voice. "I never knew my father."
+
+"Humph! Then your mother wasn't married, I take it."
+
+The statement would have sounded heartless to me except that the
+woman's voice was wholly businesslike, just as if she had asked that
+question a hundred times already of other girls.
+
+"Oh, yes--yes, she was."
+
+"Before you was born?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What was her husband's name then?"
+
+"Jackson."
+
+"Christian name?"
+
+"George."
+
+"Jackson--Jackson--George Jackson." The woman repeated the name,
+dwelling upon it as if some memory were stirred in the repetition.
+"And you say you don't know who your father was?"
+
+"No--". I could n't help it--that word broke in a half hysterical sob.
+I kept saying to myself: "Oh, why did I come--why did I come?"
+
+"Now, look here, my dear," and it seemed as if a flood of tenderness
+drowned all those business tones in her voice, "you stop right where
+you are. There ain't no use my putting you into torment this way,
+place or no place--Doctor Rugvie wouldn't like it; 't ain't human. If
+you can tell me all you know, and want to, just you take your own
+time,"--she laid a hand on my shoulder,--"and if you don't, just set
+here a while till the tempest that's coming up is over, and I 'll see
+you safe home afterwards. You ain't fit to be out alone if you are
+twenty-six. You don't look a day over twenty. There 's nothing to
+you."
+
+She leaned nearer, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting in her
+palms. I tried to see her face, but the fog before my eyes was growing
+thicker, the room closer; her voice sounded far away.
+
+"See here--will it make it any easier if I tell you I 've got a girl
+consider'ble older than you as has never known her father's name
+either? And that there ain't no girl in New York as has a lovinger
+mother, nor a woman as has a lovinger daughter for all that?"
+
+I could not answer.
+
+A flash of red lightning filled the darkening room. It was followed by
+a crash of thunder, a rush of wind and a downpour as from a
+cloud-burst. I saw the woman rise and shut both windows; then for me
+there was a blank for two or three minutes.
+
+She told me afterwards that when she turned from the window, where she
+stood watching the rain falling in sheets, she saw me lying prone
+beside her chair. I know that I heard her talking, but I could not
+speak to tell her I could.
+
+"My gracious!" she ejaculated as she bent over me, "if this don't beat
+all! Jane," she called, but it sounded far away, "come here quick.
+Here, help me lift this girl on to the cot. Bring me that camphor
+bottle from the shelf; I 'll loosen her clothes.--Rub her hands.--She
+fell without my hearing her, there was such an awful crash.--Light the
+lamp too...
+
+"There now, she's beginning to come to; guess 't was nothing but the
+heat after all, or mebbe she 's faint to her stomach; you never can
+tell when this kind 's had any food. Just run down and make a cup of
+cocoa, but light the lamp first--I want to see what she 's like."
+
+I heard all this as through a thick blanket wrapped about my head, but
+I could n't open my eyes or speak. The woman's voice came at first
+from a great distance; gradually it grew louder, clearer.
+
+"Now we 'll see," she said.
+
+She must have let the lamplight fall full on my face, for through my
+closed and weighted lids I saw red and yellow. I felt her bend over
+me; her breath was on my cheek. Still I could not speak.
+
+"She 's the living image," I heard her say quite distinctly; "I guess I
+'ve had one turn I shan't get over in a hurry."
+
+I found myself wondering what she meant and trying to lift my eyelids.
+She took my hand; I knew she must be looking at the nails.
+
+"She 's coming round all right--the blood 's turning in her nails."
+She took both my hands to rub them.
+
+I opened my eyes then, and heard her say: "Eyes different."
+
+Then she lifted my head on her arm and fed me the cocoa spoonful by
+spoonful.
+
+"Thank you, I 'm better now," I said; my voice sounded natural to
+myself, and I made an effort to sit up. "I 'm so sorry I 've made you
+all this trouble--"
+
+"Don't talk about trouble, child; you lay back against those pillows
+and rest you. I 'll be back in a little while." She left the room.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+When she returned, shortly after, I had regained my strength. She
+found me with my hat on and sitting in the rocking-chair. The woman
+drew up her own, and began in a matter-of-fact voice:
+
+"Now we 'll proceed to business. I 've been thinking like chain
+lightning ever since that clap of thunder, and I can tell you the storm
+'s cleared up more 'n the air. I ain't the kind to dodge round much
+when there 's business on hand. Straight to the point is the best
+every time; so I may as well tell you that this place,"--she held out
+the advertisement,--"is made for you and you for the place, even if you
+ain't quite so strong as you might be."
+
+I felt the tension in my face lessen. I was about to speak, but the
+woman put out her hand, saying:
+
+"Now, don't say a word--not yet; let me do the talking; you can have
+your say afterwards, and I 'll be only too glad to hear it. But it's
+laid on me like the Lord's hand itself to tell you what I 'm going to.
+It 'll take long in the telling, but if you go out to this place, you
+ought to know something why there is such a place to go to, and to
+explain that, I 've got to begin to tell you what I 'm going to. You
+'re different from the others, and it's your due to know. I should
+judge life had n't been all roses for you so far, and if you should
+have a few later on, there 'll be plenty of thorns--there always is.
+So just you stand what I 'm going to tell you. This was n't in the
+bargain when I told Doctor Rugvie I 'd see all the applicants and try
+to get the right one,--but I can make it all right with him. It's a
+longer story than I wish 't was, but I 've got to begin at the
+beginning.
+
+"And begin with myself, too, for I was country raised. Father and
+mother both died when I was young, and I brought myself up, you might
+say. I come down here when I was nineteen years old, and it wasn't
+more 'n a year 'fore I found myself numbered with the outcasts on this
+earth--all my own fault too. I 've always shouldered the blame, for a
+woman as has common sense knows better, say what you 've a mind to; but
+the knowledge of that only makes green apples sourer, I can tell you.
+
+"I mind the night in December, thirty years ago, when I found myself in
+the street, too proud to beg, too good to steal. There was n't nothing
+left--nothing but the river; there 's always enough of that and to
+spare. So I took a bee line for one of the piers, and crouched down by
+a mooring-post. I 'd made up my mind to end it all; it did n't cost me
+much neither. I only remember growing dizzy looking down at the foam
+whirling and heaving under me, and kinder letting go a rope I 'd
+somehow got hold of...
+
+"The next thing I knew I was hearing a woman say:
+
+"'You leave her to me; she'll be as quiet as a lamb now.' She put her
+arms around me. 'You poor child,' she said, 'you come along with me.'
+And I went.
+
+"Well, that woman mothered me. She took in washing and ironing in two
+rooms on Tenth Avenue. She never left me night or day for a week
+running till my baby come. And all she 'd say to me, when I got sort
+of wild and out of my head, was:
+
+"'You ain't going to be the grave of your child, be you?' And that
+always brought me to myself. I was so afraid of murdering the child
+that was coming. That's what she kept saying:
+
+"'You ain't going to be so mean as not to give that innercent baby a
+chance to live! Just you wait till it comes and you 'll see what life
+'s for. 'T ain't so bad as you think, and some folks make out; and
+that child has a right to this world. You give it the right, and then
+die if you think it's best.' So she kept at me till my baby come, and
+then--why, I got just fierce to live for its sweet little sake.
+
+"'Bout six months after that I got religion--never mind how I got it; I
+got it, that's the point, and I 've held on to it ever since. And when
+I 'd got it, the first thing I did was to take my baby in my arms and
+go down to that pier, clear out to the mooring-post, and kneel right
+down there in the dark and vow a vow to the living God that I 'd give
+my life to saving of them of His poor children who 'd missed their
+footing, and trying to help 'em on to their feet again.
+
+"And I 've kept it; brought my girl right up to it too. She 's been my
+mainstay through it all these last ten years. I took in washing and
+ironing in the basement of this very house,--my saving angel helped me
+to work,--and when it was done, late at night between eleven and
+twelve, I 'd go down to the rivers, sometimes one, sometimes t' other,
+and watch and wait, ready to do what come in my way.
+
+"At first the police got on to my track thinking something was wrong;
+but it took 'bout two words to set 'em right, as it did every other man
+that come near me; and soon I went and come and no questions asked.
+
+"One night I 'd been down to one of the North River piers. It was in
+December, and a howling northeaster had set in just before sundown. It
+was sleeting and snowing and blowing a little harder than even I could
+stand. I had just crossed the street from the pier and was thanking
+God, as I covered my head closer with my shawl, that, so far as I knew,
+no one of His children was tired of living, when something--I did n't
+see what for I was bending over against the wind--went by me with a
+rush, and I thought I heard a groan. I turned as quick as a flash, and
+see something dark running, swaying, stumbling across the street,
+headed for the pier. That was enough for me.
+
+"I caught up my skirt and give chase. How the woman, for it was one,
+could get over the ground so fast was a mystery, except that she was
+running with the wind. She was on to the pier in no time. I cried
+'Stop!' and 'Watch!' I don't think she heard me. Once she nearly
+fell, and I thought I had her I was so close to her; but she was up and
+off again before I could lay hand on her. Then I shouted; and the Lord
+must have lent me Gabriel's trump, for the woman turned once, and when
+she see me she threw out her hands and fairly flew.
+
+"The Sound steamer had n't gone out, the night was so thick and bad,
+and the cabin lights alongside shone out bright enough for me to mark
+her as she dodged this way and that trying to get to the end of the
+pier.
+
+"She knew I was after her, and I was n't going to give up. But when I
+see the make-fast, and all around it the yeasting white on water as
+black as ink, and she standing there with her arms up ready to jump, my
+knees knocked together. Somehow I managed to get hold of her
+dress--but she did n't move; and all of a sudden, before I could get my
+arms around her, she dropped in a heap, groaning: 'My child--my child--'
+
+"I 've always thought 't was then her heart broke.
+
+"A deck-hand on the steamer heard me screech, and together we got her
+on the floor of the lower deck. We did what we could for her, and when
+she 'd come to, they got me a hack and I took her home, laid her on my
+bed, and sent the hackman for Doctor Rugvie. He 's been my right-hand
+man all these years. He stayed with her till daylight. He told me she
+'d never come through alive; the heart action was all wrong.
+
+"After he 'd gone, she spoke for the first time and asked for some
+paper and a pencil. I propped her up on the pillows, and all that day
+between her pains she was writing, writing and tearing up. Towards
+night she grew worse. I asked her name then, and if she had any
+friends. She looked at me with a look that made my heart sink; but she
+give me no answer. About six, she handed me a slip of paper--'A
+telegram,' she said, and asked me if I would send it right off. I
+could n't leave her, but when the Doctor come about eight, I slipped
+out and sent it. The name on it was the one you say was your mother's
+husband's and the message said:
+
+"'I am dying and alone among strangers. Will you come to me for the
+sake of my child,' and she give me the address.
+
+"Come here, my dear," said the woman suddenly to me. I was staring at
+her, not knowing whether I drew breath or not; "come here to me."
+
+I rose mechanically. The woman drew me down upon her knee and put her
+two strong arms about me. I knew I was in the presence of revelation.
+
+"At midnight her child, a girl, was born--the third of December just
+twenty-six years ago. Doctor Rugvie fought for her life, but he could
+n't save her. At one she died--of a broken heart and no mistake, so
+the Doctor said. She refused to give him her name and he left her in
+peace--that's his way. But before she died she give him an envelope
+which she filled with some things she 'd been writing in the afternoon,
+and said:
+
+"'Keep them--for my daughter. I trust you.'
+
+"Oh, my dear, my dear, the sorrow in this God's earth! I ain't got
+used to it yet and never shall. That dying face was like an angel's.
+Doctor Rugvie said he 'd never seen the like before. She spoke only
+once to him in all her agony, then she said: 'The little life that is
+coming is worth all this--all--all.'
+
+"The next morning there come a telegram from somewhere in New
+England--I forget where--'Will be with you at two.'
+
+"And sure enough, a little after two, a young feller come to the door.
+He did n't look more 'n twenty, but it seemed from his face as if those
+twenty years had done something to him 't would generally take a man's
+lifetime to do, and said he 'd come to claim her who was his wife.
+That's just what he said, no more, no less: 'I've come to claim her who
+was my wife. Where is she?' And he give me the telegram.
+
+"It was 'bout the hardest thing I 've ever had to do, but I had to tell
+him just as things was. I thought for a minute he was going to fall he
+shook so; but he laid hold of the door-jamb and, straightening himself,
+looked me square in the eye just as composed as Doctor Rugvie himself,
+and says:
+
+"'In that case I have come to claim the body of her who was my wife.'
+
+"Those are his very words. I took him into the back room and left 'em
+alone together. I did n't dare to say a word for his face scairt me.
+
+"When he come out he said he would relieve me of all further
+responsibility, which I took pains to inform him included a day-old
+baby, thinking that would fetch some explanation from him. But he did
+n't seem to lay any weight on _that_ part of it. He made all the
+arrangements himself, and I took a back seat. I see I was n't any more
+necessary to him than if I had n't been there. He went out for an hour
+and come back with a nurse; and at six that afternoon he drove away in
+a hack with her and the baby, an express cart with the body following
+on behind.
+
+"I told him the last thing 'fore he went that his wife had given an
+envelope with some papers to Doctor Rugvie, and that they were for his
+child. He turned and give me a look that was beyond me. I never could
+fathom that look! It said more 'n any living human being's look that I
+ever see--if only I could have read it! But he never spoke a word, not
+even a word of thanks--not that I was expecting or wanted any after
+seeing his face as he stood hanging on to the door-jamb. I knew then
+he did n't really see me nor anything else except the body of his wife
+somewhere in that basement. He did everything as if he 'd been a
+machine instead of a human being; and when I see him drive off I did
+n't know much more 'n I did when I took the woman in, except that she
+was married."
+
+She was silent. I drew a long breath.
+
+"Is that all you know?" I felt I could not be left so, suspended as it
+were over the abyss of the unknown in my life.
+
+She sighed. "My dear, this great city is full of just such mysteries
+that no human being can fathom. I, for one, don't try to. I can only
+lend a helping hand, and ask no questions; 't ain't best. Well, I 've
+been talking a blue streak for a half an hour, but I 've had to. When
+you laid there on the cot, you was the living image of that other, only
+thinner, smaller like. You told me you was born in this city
+twenty-six years ago come the third of next December; that you did n't
+know who your father was, but that your mother was married. Her
+husband's name was the same as the one on the telegram. I 've put two
+and two together, and perhaps I 've made five out of it. Anyway it's
+your right to know. I 'm sure Doctor Rugvie will back me up in this."
+
+For a moment I made no answer. Then I spoke:
+
+"Are you sure there is no more? You can't recall anything that Doctor
+Rugvie said about that paper in the envelope?"
+
+"Well, yes, I can; a little more. After all, it's what will help you
+most--and yet I ain't sure--"
+
+"Tell me, do--do." My hands clasped each other nervously.
+
+"Why, it's just this: Doctor Rugvie was called away out of the city on
+a case as soon as he 'd got through here, and meantime the young feller
+had come and gone. When the Doctor come back I told him what had been
+going on while he was away, and I give him the envelope. He told me he
+found her marriage certificate in it--but not to the man whose name was
+on the telegram. I never could make head nor tail of it."
+
+"Married--my mother married--" I repeated. I drew away from the
+woman's restraining arms and slipping to my knees beside her, buried my
+face in her lap and began to sob. I could not help it. I was broken
+for the time both physically and mentally by the force of my unpent
+emotion.
+
+The woman laid her hand protectingly, tenderly on my quivering
+shoulders, and waited. She must have seen spring freshets before, many
+a one during the past thirty years, and have known both their benefit
+and injury to the human soul. Gradually I regained my control.
+
+"Oh, you don't know what this means to me!" I exclaimed, lifting my
+face swollen with weeping to the kindly one that looked down into mine.
+"You don't know what this means to me--it has lifted so much, so
+much--has let in so much light just at a time when I needed it so--when
+everything looked so black. Sometime I will tell you; but now I want
+to know when, where, how I can get hold of that marriage certificate.
+It belongs to me--to me."
+
+I rose with an energy that surprised the woman and, stooping, took her
+face between my hands and kissed her. I smiled down into that face.
+She sat speechless. I smiled again. She passed her hand over her eyes
+as if trying to clear her mind of confusing ideas. I spoke again to
+her:
+
+"The tempest is over; why should n't we look for a bright to-morrow?"
+I could hear the vibrant note of a new hope in my voice. The woman
+heard it too. She continued to stare at me. I drew up my chair to
+hers and, laying my hand on her knee, said persuasively:
+
+"Now, let's talk; and let me ask some questions."
+
+"To be sure; to be sure," the woman replied. I know she was wondering
+what would be the next move on the part of her applicant.
+
+"Don't you want to know my name?" I said. "That's rather an important
+matter when you take a new position; and you said the place was mine,
+didn't you?"
+
+The woman smiled indulgently. "To be sure it's yours; and what is your
+name?" she asked, frankly curious at last.
+
+"Marcia Farrell, but I took my great-grandmother's maiden name. There
+are none of the family left; I 'm the last."
+
+"What was you christened?"
+
+"I never was christened. And what is your name?"
+
+"Delia Beaseley."
+
+"And your daughter's?"
+
+"Jane."
+
+"And when does Doctor Rugvie return?"
+
+"The last of November. You want that certificate?"
+
+"I must have it; it is mine by right." I spoke with decision.
+
+"Well, you 'll get it just as soon as the Doctor can find it; like
+enough it's locked up in some Safe Deposit with his papers; you mustn't
+forget it's been nearly twenty-six years since he's had it.--I can't
+for the life of me think of that name."
+
+"Never mind that now; tell me about the place. Where is it? Who are
+the people? Or is there only one--it said 'an elderly Scotchwoman'.
+Do you know her?"
+
+"No, my dear, I don't know any one of them, and Doctor Rugvie does n't
+mean I should; that's where he trusts me. I can tell you where the
+place is: Lamoral, Province of Quebec; more 'n that I don't know."
+
+"But," I spoke half in protest, "does n't Doctor Rugvie think that any
+one taking the position ought to know beforehand where she is going and
+whom she 's going to live with?"
+
+"He might tell you if he was here himself, and then again he mightn't.
+You see it's this way: he trusts me to use my common sense in accepting
+an applicant, and he expects the applicant to trust his name for
+reference to go to the end of the world if he sends her there, without
+asking questions."
+
+"Oh, the old tyrant!" I laughed a little. "What does he pay?" was my
+next question.
+
+"Doctor Rugvie! You think _he_ pays? Good gracious, child, you _are_
+on the wrong track."
+
+"Then put me on the right one, please." I laid my hand on the hard
+roughened one.
+
+"I s'pose I might as well; I don't believe the Doctor would mind."
+
+"Of course he would n't." I spoke with a fine, assumed assurance.
+Delia Beaseley smiled.
+
+"You know I told you that young feller who come here went away without
+saying so much as 'Thank you'?"
+
+I merely nodded in reply. That question suddenly quenched all the new
+hope of a new life in me.
+
+"Along the first of the New Year, that was twenty-five years ago, I got
+a draft by mail from a national bank in this city; the draft was on
+that bank; it was for five hundred dollars. And ever since, in
+December, I have had a check for one hundred in the same way. I always
+get Doctor Rugvie to cash them for me, and he says no questions are
+answered; after the first year he did n't ask any. The Doctor 's in
+the same boat. He 's got a draft on that same bank for five hundred
+dollars every year for the last twenty-five years. He says it's
+conscience money; and he feels just as I do, that it comes either from
+the man who claimed to be the woman's husband, or from that other she
+was married to according to the certificate.--I can't think of that
+name!
+
+"He don't care much, I guess, seeing the use he 's going to put the
+money to. He 's hired a farm for a term of years, up in the Province
+of Quebec, somewhere near the St. Lawrence, with some good buildings on
+it; and when he knows of somebody that needs just such a home to pick
+up in he is going to send 'em up there. And the conscience money is
+going to help out. This is the place where you 're to help the
+Scotchwoman, as I understand it. Now that's all I can tell you, except
+the wages is twenty-five dollars a month besides room and keep. I
+s'pose you 'll go for that?"
+
+"Go! I can't wait to get away; I 'd like to go to-morrow, but I must
+stay two or three weeks longer in the library. But, I don't
+understand--how am I to accept the place without notification? And you
+don't know even the name of the Scotch-woman?"
+
+"I 'll tend to that. My girl writes all the letters for me, and the
+letters to this place go in the care of the 'Seigniory of Lamoral',
+whatever that may mean. They get there all right. You come round here
+within a week, and I 'm pretty sure that the directions will be here
+with the passage money."
+
+I felt my face flush from my chin to the roots of my hair; and I knew,
+moreover, that Delia Beaseley was reading that sign with keen
+accustomed eyes; she knew there was sore need for just that help.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Do you who are reading these life-lines know what it is to be alone in
+a world none too mindful of anyone, even if he be somebody? Never to
+experience after the day's work the rest and joy of home-coming to
+one's own?
+
+Do you know what it is to acknowledge no tie of blood that binds one
+life to another and makes for a common interest in joy or sorrow? To
+ask yourself: Do I belong here? To wonder, perhaps, why, in fact, you
+are here? To feel your isolation in a crowded thoroughfare, your
+remoteness in the midst of an alien family life? To feel, in truth, a
+stranger on this earth?
+
+If you have known this, if you have experienced this, or, even if, at
+times, you have been only dimly conscious of this for another, then you
+will understand these my life-lines, and it may be they will interpret
+something of yourself to yourself.
+
+
+Delia Beaseley walked with me as far as the Bowery. There I insisted
+on her leaving me. I assured her I was used to the streets of New York
+in the evening. However, she waited with me for the car.
+
+When I said good night to the woman, who twenty-six years ago saved
+another woman, "one who had missed her footing",--those words seem to
+ring constantly in my ears,--in order that I, Marcia Farrell, that
+stranger's child, might become the living fact I am, I began to realize
+that during the last hour I had been acting a part, and acting it well;
+that, without sacrificing the truth at any stage of the evening's
+developments, I had been able to obtain all this information, which
+pointed to a crisis in my life, yet had given but little return in
+kind. I felt justified in withholding it.
+
+Now, as soon as I had left her and entered the car, there was a
+reaction from the intensity of my emotion. I felt a strange elation of
+spirit, a rising courage to face the new conditions in that other
+country, and a consequent physical recuperation. The lassitude that
+had burdened me since my long illness seemed to have left me. My mind
+was alert. I felt I had been able to take advantage of a promising
+circumstance and, in so doing, the mental inertia from which I had been
+suffering for three months was overcome.
+
+Without being able to find any special reason for it, my life began to
+assume importance in my thoughts. I suppose this is the normal
+condition of youth; only, I never felt that I had had much youth. With
+the thought of this new future, unknown, untried as it was, opening
+before me, I experienced an unaccountable security, an unwonted
+serenity of existence. All these thoughts and feelings crowded upon me
+as I rode up through the noisy Bowery.
+
+All my life hitherto had been undefined to me on the side of expansion;
+only its limitations impressed me as being ever present, sharply
+outlined, hedging me in with memories that gave no scope for
+anticipation. Sometimes it seemed to me as if I had always been old;
+the seven years in New York, my daily encounter with metropolitan life
+and its problem of "keep" had intensified this feeling.
+
+When I came down to the city to look for work I was nearly twenty. I
+had left what to me was a makeshift for a home--and I regretted
+nothing. I had done my whole duty there in caring for my grandfather,
+imbecile for years, and my aunt, the last of my family, until they
+died. Then I was free.
+
+After paying all the debts, I found I had just thirty dollars of my
+own. With these I started for the city. On my arrival this amount was
+diminished by nine.
+
+At twenty I was facing life for the first time alone, unfriended, in
+new conditions; poor, too, but that I had always been. I knew that
+money must be had somehow, must be forthcoming in a few days at most.
+But at that time my spirit was indomitable, my courage high. I was my
+own mistress; and my only feeling, as I sat in the Grand Central
+Station on that morning of my arrival, reading through the various
+columns of "wants" in the early newspapers, was that I had escaped, at
+last, from all associations that were hateful to me.
+
+I was thinking of all this as the car passed with frequent haltings
+along the noisy Bowery, and of that first experience of this city: its
+need-driven herds of human beings, the thoroughfares crowded with
+traffic, its nightmare crossings, the clank and deafening roar of the
+overhead railroad, when, suddenly, mingled with the steam rising from
+the pavements, that were cooling rapidly after the recent shower, I
+smelt the acrid heaviness of fresh printer's ink. That smell
+visualized for me the column of leaded "Wants," the dismal
+waiting-room, the uncompromising daylight that spared no wrinkle, no
+paint, no moth-spot on the indifferent faces about me. That was nearly
+seven years ago--and now--
+
+I found I was at Union Square, and got out; walked a block to Broadway
+and waited on the corner for an uptown car. During that minute of
+waiting, a woman spoke to me:
+
+"If I take a car here can I get up to West Sixty-first street?"
+
+"Yes." My answer was short and sharp. I had heard the kind of
+question put in that oily voice too many times to pay any further heed
+to it. I stepped out into the street to take the car.
+
+"If you 're going up that way I might as well go 'long too. I like
+comp'ny," said the woman, keeping abreast of me and nudging me with an
+elbow.
+
+The car was nearly full, and the crowd waiting for it made a running
+assault upon the few vacancies. Just before it stopped I saw some one
+leave the seat behind the motor-man; I made a rush to secure the place.
+As I sat down the woman mounted the step.
+
+"You don't get rid of me so easy, duckie," she said with a leer.
+
+I turned squarely to her, looking beneath the wide brim of the tawdry
+bedraggled hat to find her eyes; her gin-laden breath was hot on my
+cheek.
+
+"You go your way and I 'll go mine," I said in a low hard voice.
+
+With a curse the woman swung off the step just as the two signal bells
+rang.
+
+I took off my hat. The night was cooling rapidly after the tempest.
+The motion of the car created a movement of air against my face. It
+was grateful to me. I drew a long breath of relief; these evening
+rides in the open cars were one of my few recreations.
+
+As the car sped along the broad thoroughfare, now so long familiar to
+me, so wonderful and alluring to my country eyes in those early years,
+so drearily artificial and depressing in the later ones, I found myself
+dwelling again on that first experience in this city; I recalled the
+first time I was accosted by a woman pander. It was when I was reading
+the wants that morning of my arrival. I looked up to find her taking a
+seat beside me--a woman who tried by every dives' art of which she was
+possessed to entice me to go with her on leaving the station. Oh, she
+was awful, that woman! I never knew there were such till then.
+
+The searchlight of memory struck full upon my thought at that time: And
+they said my mother was like this!
+
+That thought, horrible as it was to me, was my safeguard then and has
+been ever since. Such as they said my mother was, I would never be.
+Nor am I aware that any moral factor was the lever in this decision.
+Rather it was my pride that had been scourged for many years by a
+girl's half knowledge of her mother's career, my sensitiveness that was
+ever ready at the least outside touch to make me close in upon myself,
+the horror of thinking it might be possible that my name could be used
+as I had heard my mother's, that had panoplied my nature and warped it
+until that nature had narrowed to its armor. I was proud, sensitive,
+cold, or thought I was--and I was glad of it.
+
+It had come to a point, at last, now when I was nearly twenty-six, that
+in what I termed my strength, lay my weakness. But of this I was, as
+yet, unaware.
+
+I shut my eyes as the car sped onwards that I might not see the swift
+succession of glaring lights--the many flashing, changing,
+nerve-tormenting electric signs and advertisements, the brilliant
+globes, stars, and whirligigs of all kinds. How they tired me now!
+And the summer theatre throngs streaming in under the entrance arches
+picked out in glowing red and white, the saloons flashing a well-known
+signal to customers--I knew it all and was glad to close my eyes to it
+all. Now and then I caught a strain of music from the orchestra of
+some roof-garden.
+
+At Seventy-second Street I changed for Amsterdam Avenue. I wanted to
+get away to the heights. The air was becoming fresher and I needed
+more of it. Another twenty minutes and the car stopped near the brow
+of the hill. I left it and walked a cross block till I came to
+Morningside Heights, the small, irregular, but beautiful promenade
+behind St. Luke's.
+
+I leaned on the massive stone coping that crowns the wall of the
+escarpment; below me the hill sloped sharply to the flats of the
+Harlem. I looked off over the city.
+
+East, and north-east in the direction of the Sound, great cloud masses,
+the wrack of the tempest, were piled high towards the zenith; but
+beneath them there was a clear zone near the city's level. A moon
+nearly two thirds to the full, was heralding its appearance above them
+by lighted rifts, bright-rimmed haloes, and the marvellous play of
+direct shaft light that struck downwards behind the clouds into the
+clear space above the city and shot white radiance upon its roofs. The
+sky, also, while yet the moon was invisible, was radiant, but with
+starlight.
+
+Against this background, I watched the glow-worm lights of the elevated
+trains winding along the high invisible trestle-work. Beneath me lay
+Morningside Park, the foliage and its shadows blackened in masses
+beneath the glaring white of the arc-lights; and beyond, in seemingly
+interminable perspective, the long converging lines of parallel street
+lights led my gaze across the city to some large, unknown, uncertain
+flarings somewhere near the East River shore.
+
+And from all this wide-stretching housing-place of a vast population,
+there rose into my ears a continuous, dull, peculiar sound, as of the
+magnified stertorous breathing of a hived and stifled humanity.
+
+I had come here many times in the last four years, at all seasons, at
+all times. I drew strength and inspiration from this view in all its
+aspects, until my almost fatal illness in the late spring. After that
+there came upon me a powerful longing for change. I wanted to get away
+from this city, its sights and sounds; to escape from the conditions
+that were sapping my life. And the way was, at last, opened. How I
+exulted in this thought!
+
+There were others on the promenade, and I was withdrawn from thought of
+myself by hearing voices, a man's and a woman's, below me on the
+winding walk that leads down the slope past the poplars to the level of
+the Harlem streets. The woman's was pleading, strident from
+excitement; it broke at last in a dry hard sob. The man's was hateful;
+the tones and accents like a vicious snarl.
+
+I turned away sickened, indignant.
+
+"It's always so in this city!" I said to myself while I walked rapidly
+towards the hospital. "If I get a chance for a breath of fresh air, or
+if I take a walk in the park, or have an outlook that, for a moment, is
+free from all suggestions of crime and horror--then beware! For then I
+have to shut my ears not to hear the fatal sounds of human brutishness;
+or I hear a shot in the park, and a life goes out in some
+thick-foliaged path; or I have to turn away my eyes from a sight in the
+gutter that offends three of my senses--and so my day is ruined. It's
+merciless, merciless--and I loathe it!" I cried within myself as I
+passed the hospital.
+
+I lifted my eyes to the massive purity of noble St. Luke's, the windows
+rising tier upon tier above me. A light showed here and there. At the
+sight my mood softened.
+
+"Oh, I know it is merciful too--it is merciful," I murmured; then I
+stopped short and turned back to the entrance. I entered the main
+vestibule, mounted the marble steps that lead to the chapel, opened the
+noiseless heavily-padded doors, and sat down near the entrance.
+
+The air was close and hot after the outer freshness; the lights few.
+The stained-glass window behind the altar was a meaningless confused
+mass of leaded opacity. I knew that the daylight was needed to ensoul
+it, to give to the dead unmeaning material its spiritual symbolism.
+And because I knew this, I realized, as I sat there, what a long
+distance in a certain direction I had travelled since that morning in
+the Grand Central Station, seven years ago.
+
+But the air was very close. I felt depressed, disappointed, that the
+time and the place yielded me nothing. I was faint, too; I had taken
+nothing but the cocoa since noon. Without realizing it, another
+reaction from that strange elation of spirit was setting in. I knew I
+ought to be in the attic room in Chelsea rather than where I was. It
+was already nine, and an hour's ride before me on the surface car.
+
+I went out to Amsterdam Avenue. No car was in sight. I walked on down
+the hill, knowing that one would soon overtake me.
+
+A man and woman were just behind me talking--at least, the woman was.
+I recognized her voice as one of those I had heard on the winding path
+by the poplars. A moment after, they passed me in a noticeably
+peculiar fashion: the man sauntering by on my right, the woman hurrying
+past on my left. At the same moment I heard the car coming down the
+hill. I turned at once, but only to see the man, who had passed me,
+running swiftly along the pavement and up the hill to meet it; the
+woman was running after him.
+
+I saw that the car was over full. The platform and steps were black
+with human beings clinging to the guard rails like swarming bees
+alight. I saw the man struggle madly to catch the guards and gain a
+footing on the lower step, the woman still running beside him and
+holding him by the coat. Then I was aware of a sudden sweeping
+movement of the man's free arm, the roar of the car as it sped down the
+incline, and of the woman lying, hatless from the force of the man's
+blow, on the pavement beside the track. He had freed himself so!
+
+Before I could reach her the woman was up and off again, running
+hatless after the quickly receding car. Only one cry, no scream,
+escaped her.
+
+I shivered. There was nothing to be done with such as these, no rescue
+possible. A sudden thought half paralyzed me; I stood motionless: Had
+my own mother ever been cast off like this? Had such treatment been
+the cause of her seeking the river? Had I, Marcia Farrell, been
+fathered by such a brute?
+
+For the second time in my life, I felt my hardness of heart towards the
+mother I had never known soften with pity; a sob rose in my throat. I
+shook my shoulders as if freeing them from some nightmare clutch, and
+hurried to the next corner to meet the car that was following the other
+closely.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+I unlocked my attic room in the fourth storey of the old Chelsea house
+and lighted the lamp. In contrast to what both ear and eye had been
+witness during the evening: Delia Beaseley's account of my mother's
+rescue and death, and that scene of life's brutality on Columbia
+Heights, the sight of the small plain interior gave me, for the first
+time in all the seven years, a home-sense, a feeling of welcome and
+refuge.
+
+I looked at the cretonne-covered cot, the packing boxes curtained with
+the same, the white painted hanging box-shelves, the one chair--a flour
+barrel, cut to the required form, well padded and upholstered; all
+these were the work of my hands in free hours. And I was about to
+exchange the known for the unknown! This thought added to my
+depression.
+
+I put out the lamp and sat down by the one window. The night air was
+refreshingly cool. The many lights on the river gleamed clear; the
+roar in the streets was subdued. Gradually, my antagonism to the
+physical features of the metropolis, to its heedless crowds, its
+overpowering mechanism, its thoroughfares teeming with human beings who
+passed me daily, knowing little of their own existence and nothing of
+mine, its racial divergencies, grew less intense; in fact, the whole
+life of this city, in its aspect of mere Juggernaut, was being
+unconsciously modified for me as I realized I was about to go forth
+into a strange country.
+
+I was recalling those ten weeks of mortal weakness and suffering at St.
+Luke's, the kindness of nurses and physicians. No matter if I had paid
+my way; theirs was a ready helpfulness, a steady administration of the
+tonic of human kindness that never could be bought and paid for in the
+Republic's money. I thought of Delia Beaseley and her noble work among
+those "who had missed their footing". I relived in imagination that
+rescue of my own mother, with all of the horror and all of the merciful
+pity it entailed. I found myself wondering if Doctor Rugvie would be
+able to lay his hand on those papers immediately after his arrival. I
+dwelt upon the many kindly advances from my co-workers in the Library;
+few of these women I had met, for I felt strangely old, apart from
+them, and the struggle to live and at the same time accomplish my
+purpose had been so hard. My landlady, too, came in for a share of my
+softening mood; exacting, but scrupulously honest, she had lodged under
+this same roof a generation of theological students, yet her best dress
+remained a rusty alpaca. I thought of the various types of students
+for the ministry--
+
+I smiled at that thought, a smile that proved the latent youth in me
+was sufficiently appreciative, at least of that phase of life.
+
+I left the window and, after closing the lower half of the inside
+shutters, partly undressed and relighted the lamp. Then I took two
+paper-covered blank books from my trunk. I sat down in my one easy
+chair of home manufacture and, resting my feet on the cot, began to
+read.
+
+These two books were my journal, my confidante, my most intimate
+companion for seven years. I had written in them intermittently only,
+and, as I turned a page here and there, my eye dwelt longest, not on
+the few high lights, as it were, in my uneventful life of work and
+struggle, but on the many shadows they deepened and emphasized.
+
+
+Nov. 4, 1902. My first day in New York. I took a hack from the
+station to this house in the old "Chelsea district" they call it. My
+first hack-ride; it was pretty grand for me, but I was afraid to try
+the street cars after a horrid woman had tried her best to get me to go
+with her after I left the station--oh, it was awful! I never knew
+there could be such women before--not that kind. I shall look for work
+to-morrow.
+
+Nov. 5. I have to pay a dollar and a half for this room in the attic.
+There isn't any heat, and there is no gas in it. I have to furnish it
+myself. My landlady is a queer little old woman, Mrs. Turtelot, who
+has kept lodgers here for thirty years. She has her house filled with
+the students from the Theological Seminary near by. It's lucky I have
+this place to come to. I wondered to-day how girls ever get on in this
+city, without having someone to go to they know is all right. She
+seems like a Frenchwoman, perhaps a French Canadian. I think she must
+be, for her mother used to work at Seth White's tavern up home; it was
+through his neighbors I got her address. She says the students have to
+furnish their own bed clothes and towels. I 'm glad I brought mine
+with me. It's awfully cold here to-night, but Mrs. Turtelot has given
+me a lamp, till I can get one, and that warms up some. Anyway, I feel
+safe here from that other kind. I 'll soon earn enough to fix up a
+little.
+
+Nov. 6. I 've been tramping about all day answering advertisements.
+Mrs. Turtelot told me not to go into any strange place, like up stairs,
+and not to go over a door sill. I have n't found that so easy.
+
+I 've been afraid all day of getting lost, but she told me to-night to
+ask every time for West Twenty-third Street and follow it to the river;
+then I could always find my way here.
+
+I slept in her room on the sofa the first night; she says I can sleep
+with her for a few nights till I can get a cot. A student is leaving
+here in a few days and he will sell his second hand. But I don't want
+to sleep with her, and I asked her as a favor to let me have two
+pillows. She didn't have any extra ones, but let me have hers; so I
+have a good bed on the floor. Could n't find work.
+
+Nov. 8. Mrs. T. told me to-day that it is a bad time of year to find
+work. It is late in the season and help is being turned off, and,
+besides, it is going to be a hard winter, so everybody says. What do
+the turned-off ones do, then, for a living?-- No job yet! But I won't
+go out to service in a private family unless I have to. I 've had
+enough of that in the past.
+
+Nov. 9. Since I came here I have answered fifty-two advertisements. I
+get the same answer every time: "You have n't been trained and you have
+n't had any experience." How am I to get training and experience if I
+don't have the chance? That's what I want to know.
+
+Nov. 10. I 've bought the cot and the mattress. I paid four dollars
+for them. There is a small stove hole in the chimney on one side of my
+room; when I get to earning, I 'm going to have a little stove here and
+do my own cooking. Thank fortune, I can cook as well as chop wood if I
+have to! So far I 've heated my things on Mrs. T.'s stove. She lives,
+that is, cooks, eats, sleeps, and washes in her back basement; the
+front one she rents to a barber. He makes his living from the students
+round here and the professors at the Seminary. She says the students
+cook most of their meals in their rooms on their gas stoves. I wish I
+had one.
+
+Nov. 13. A bad lot of a date! No work yet, and I 've tramped all day
+in the slush and snow. I dried my things down in Mrs. T.'s room. I
+did n't dare to spend any more in car fares, for I must have a stove.
+
+I know to a cent just what I 've spent since I came, but I 'm going to
+put it down so I can see the figures; it will make me more cautious
+about spending. The car fare is more than I meant it should be, but,
+to save it, I walked the first three days from Eighty-sixth Street and
+Fourth Avenue--a bakery that advertised for a woman to sell the early
+morning bread in the shop; three hours of work only, at twenty cents an
+hour--down as far as the Washington Market where they wanted a girl to
+sell flowers in a sidewalk booth, for two weeks before Christmas. I
+found then that the soles of my boots were beginning to wear and that
+it saves something to ride.
+
+ Car fare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ .75
+ Bread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
+ Cheese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
+ 1 tin pail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
+ 6 eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
+ 1 can baked beans . . . . . . . . . . . .17
+ 2 pints soup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
+ Oil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
+ Tin lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
+ Cot and mattress . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.00
+ Room rent, two weeks in advance . . . . 3.00
+ Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $9.51
+
+
+And I have ten dollars and ninety-three cents left. I can hold the
+fort another two weeks on this.
+
+Nov. 15. No work yet. I 'm going to keep a stiff upper lip and find
+work, or starve in doing it. This city _sha'n't_ beat _me_, not if I
+can use my two arms and hands and legs, two eyes, one tongue and a
+brain! No!
+
+Nov. 17. I scrubbed down the three flights of stairs for Mrs. T.
+to-day. She has the rheumatism in her wrists, and I was glad to do it
+for her to help pay for her loan of the pillows and for letting me heat
+my things on her stove. I must buy my own to-morrow. I feel ashamed
+to ask favors of her any longer, for I have put off the buying of it
+till I could get work.
+
+Friday. Now I have just four dollars left; for I bought it to-day and
+set it up myself. A little second hand one with one hole on top--and
+no coals to put in it! I don't dare use the last four dollars, for the
+rent is due soon and I have to pay in advance. I suppose it's all
+right to secure herself, but it's hard on me.
+
+Nov. 30. I believe I 'm hungry, and I don't remember to have been
+hungry before in all my life, without having enough ready to fill my
+stomach. But I don't dare to spend another cent till I get work. It
+must come, _it must_--
+
+I 've lived three days on a half a pound of walnuts, half a pound of
+cheese and a loaf of bread--and walked my feet sore looking for a
+place. I know I could have had two places, but I dared not engage to
+the women. That woman in the Grand Central Station haunts me; these
+two women had a look of her! One wanted me in private manicure rooms
+to learn the trade; she said I had the right kind of fingers after the
+rough had worn off. The other wanted me to show rooms to rent in a
+queer looking house. Mrs. T. told me to keep away from it and all like
+it.
+
+Dec. 1. I 'm not only hungry, I 'm cold too. I bought two pails of
+coals, and paid high for them so Mrs. T. says. They say there is going
+to be a coal famine from the great strike. It makes me mad that it
+should all pile up on me in this way! Why can't I have work? Why,
+when I am willing, can't I find a place?
+
+An awful feeling comes over me sometimes, when I am turned down at a
+place I 've applied for: I want to throttle the first well-dressed man
+or woman I meet and say, "Give me work or I 'll make it the worse for
+you!" Then I turn all dizzy and sick after that feeling, and hate
+myself for the thought; it's so unjust.
+
+Dec. 10. I asked Mrs. T. if I might n't pay by the week and at the end
+of each week. I think she knew what the trouble was. She hesitated
+for a minute, and that was enough for me.
+
+"Oh, I _can_ pay you," I said, "only it's a little more convenient."
+
+"Then I 'd like you to," she said in her queer dry voice.
+
+I hated her at that moment. I went up stairs to my bare room and took
+off the knit woollen petticoat I made for myself at home, just before
+coming down; I took that and a set of gold beads, that were my
+grandmother's, and went out with them to a pawnbroker's just around the
+corner on the avenue. I got eight dollars for the two of them, and
+made the time in which to redeem them one month. Then I went back to
+the house and paid her. She looked surprised, but her skinny hand
+closed upon the money as if she, too, had no more for the morrow. I
+don't know that she has. The students come and go.
+
+Dec. 14. I stood on Twentieth Street near Broadway to-day, watching
+the teamsters unload the heavy drays at the back of a department store.
+I found myself envying them--they had work.
+
+Dec. 15. I am not up to date with my clothes, and I have no money to
+make myself so. I find it is for this reason I am "turned down" at so
+many places where I apply. I read it in men's eyes, in the women's
+hard stare.
+
+Dec. 17. A man offered to clothe me for a position in a shop, if I
+would--
+
+I know I looked at him; I think I saw him, or perhaps the beast that
+was in him. Then I saw queer lights before me, red and yellow--if I
+had been a man I would have taken him by the throat. When, at last, I
+could see again, the man was gone. Good riddance! There is such a
+thing as day nightmare.
+
+Dec. 19. I am beginning to understand how it is done; how the fifteen
+dollar waists, the diamond rings, the theatre, and the suppers after,
+can be had without work.
+
+Dec. 20. The strike is on. I should have to do without coals, strike
+or no strike, for I have nothing to buy them with. Mrs. Turtelot
+offered to let me heat my food on her stove--my food! I 've lived on
+one loaf of bread and a can of baked beans for seven days--and to-day I
+'ve been down to the Washington Market just to smell the evergreens
+that, for all I have no home, give me a homesick longing for the
+country. But I will not go back; I 'll starve here first.
+
+Afterwards I walked up to Twenty-third Street, and lost myself there in
+the holiday crowds. What throngs!--jostled, pushed, beset by vendors,
+loaded with bundles, yet so good natured! No one looked hungry. I
+stood on the kerb to watch the men selling toys and birds; to listen to
+the strange cries, the shrilling of the wooden canaries and the trill
+of the real ones; to peep into the rabbit hutch, and the basket of
+kittens; to stroke an armful of sleeping puppies; to smell the
+fragrance of roses and violets and carnations; to smile a little at the
+slow-moving turtles, the leaping frogs, the Jack-in-the-box, the
+mechanical toys of all kinds that performed on the sidewalk, each the
+centre of a small crowd. Then, at twilight, the flare from the
+chestnut vendor's stand, the little electric lights of the Punch and
+Judy sidewalk show, the electric torches that the children were
+carrying, the brilliant whirligigs for advertisements, gave to the
+whole scene a strange unreal appearance. Men, women, children,
+Christmas trees, dogs, birds, electric cars, rabbits, kittens, a goat,
+cabs, automobiles, express carts, surged into the flare and glare,
+first of one light then of another, till what was shadow and what was
+substance I failed to make out.
+
+Dec. 21. At last, oh, at last, there is work for me,--for me, too,
+among all these millions! But it makes me sick to know there must be
+some who are trying and never find.
+
+I have taken a place in a small writing-paper factory. It's down near
+Barclay Street, in the loft of a crazy old building, three wooden
+flights from the street. The loft is lighted at both ends by windows
+and in the top by skylights. It is heated by a large cylinder stove in
+the centre, and a small glue box-pot at one end. The air is close, but
+I don't care much, for it is so warm. I get four dollars a week.
+
+I can manage to live, at least, on this. I can think about nothing
+else to-night.
+
+Jan. 15, 1903. The coal strike is on. It is cold in the loft, for we
+have to be saving of fuel. It takes all I can save to buy three
+pailfuls of coal a week for my little stove. I kindle my fire at
+night, heat water, cook my cereal, or bean soup, and am comfortable
+till morning; the room is decently warm to dress in. I am off to work
+at seven. Fuel and rent and some necessary underclothes leave little
+for food. I cannot redeem my petticoat, and gold beads which my
+grandmother had from her mother, Marcia Farrell.
+
+July 6. Hot, hotter, hottest in the old fire-trap of a loft. The sun
+beats down through the skylights till we get sick. Two of the girls
+fainted this afternoon.
+
+Aug. 4. I discovered the Public Library to-day! It means so much to
+me that I simply can't write a word about it.
+
+Nov. 4. Just a year ago to-day since I came here. I am able to draw a
+free breath for the first time, to look about me and plan a little for
+my future. I 've made up my mind to study for the examinations for a
+place in the Public Library. My district school was no bad training,
+after all, for this work. It taught me one lesson: to put my mind on
+what was given me to do--and I have not forgotten it.
+
+The extra time for study at night will take more fuel and oil, but I
+can make that up by living a few more days every week on bean soup. I
+'ve made living on four dollars a week an art this last year. An art?
+Yes, rather than a science; and, like an art, it accomplishes
+surprisingly satisfactory results--results that science, with all its
+proven facts, from which it deduces laws of hygiene, fails to produce.
+
+I honestly believe that I 'm better fed than half the theological
+students. They scrimp and save--for a theatre ticket! They're a queer
+lot! I 've asked half a dozen to tell me what they 're aiming at, and
+not one of the six could give me a sensible answer. If they had said
+right out--"It's an easy way to get a small living," I would have
+respect for them. We all have to earn our living in one way or another.
+
+March, 1904. Desk assistant in a branch of the Library--at last!
+
+October, 1906. When I came down here I made a vow to put everything
+behind me; forget what I had left in New England, the memories of those
+hard-worked years, and start afresh; cut loose from all the old
+associations. I have succeeded fairly well. This new life of books is
+a wonderful one. I like my work as desk assistant in the Library, and
+I get nine dollars a week. This is wealth for me; I am saving. I have
+so much besides: the river and the ferries for a change; one trip up
+the Hudson--a thing to live on for years until I get another. Sometime
+I mean to travel--sometime! Meanwhile, I go on saving in every
+possible way.
+
+Jan. 8, 1907. What luck for me! I don't have to buy a book. The
+whole Library is mine for the asking. How I have read these last three
+years! As if I could never read enough; read while I 've been standing
+and eating; read before getting up and long after I have been in bed.
+It has been a hunger and thirst for this kind of food--and there has
+been enough of _this_! Enough!
+
+Feb. 1908. I am studying French now daily, and beginning Latin by
+myself, for I want to take the higher examinations for the cataloguing
+department. That will mean more pay and the prospect of a vacation
+sometime.
+
+March 16, 1908. How I gloat like a miser over my savings-bank book!
+Just one hundred and seventy-five dollars to my credit. I have visions
+of--oh, so much in ten years!
+
+May, 1908. I was at the Metropolitan this morning. I feel rich when I
+realize that all this treasure-house is open to me--is mine for the
+entering. I am taking the whole museum, room by room. A year's work
+on Sundays.
+
+August, 1908. I have not seen fit to change my method of expenditure
+since I entered the Library; I have continued to spend as I spent when
+I had four dollars a week, with the exception that I allow,
+necessarily, a little more for clothing.
+
+For housing:--
+
+ Room, $1.50 a week.
+ Fuel and oil in winter, $ 0.75
+ Oil in summer, .26
+
+
+Now for my art:--
+
+I have allowed for my food exactly one dollar a week and allow the same
+now. I go down to the Washington Market early in the morning. I revel
+in the sight of the fresh vegetables, of the flowers and fruits. The
+market-people know me now, and many a gift-flower I have brought back
+with me to my room, and several times a pot of herbs or spring bulbs;
+now and then a few sprays of parsley or thyme. These I look upon as my
+commission! Without leaving the market, I buy a loaf of bread for ten
+cents; a knuckle of veal, or a beef bone, a pound and a half of
+sausages, or a pound of salt pork, for fifteen cents; I vary my
+purchases from time to time that I may have variety. Ten cents for
+vegetables--I vary these, also, as much as possible; these, with a
+pound of rice, nine cents, a half a pound of butter, eighteen cents,
+and a quart of beans for another ten cents, give me satisfying
+combinations. When eggs are cheap I vary this diet with them, lettuce
+and bacon. I buy things that are cheapest in their season. In summer,
+I drop out all meat and substitute milk. I allow myself one pound of
+sugar a week; no tea, no coffee; the city water is the only thing of
+which I can have enough free. With what is left of my hundred
+cents,--for in my art it is the cents with which I reckon, not
+dollars,--I buy fruit in its season, a bit of cheese, sometimes even a
+Philadelphia squab! At times, they are cheaper than meat in the
+Market. In the season I can get one for ten cents.
+
+I have an extra treat when I buy that last, for the old man at the
+poultry stall, who draws the chickens and various fowl, is a model from
+the old Italian masters. An Italian himself, he speaks little English,
+wears a skull cap and, to my delight, looks like one of Fra Angelico's
+saints. I learn all this from the Metropolitan Museum, and apply it in
+the Washington Market!
+
+At times I haunt the fish stalls, select good sea food for a change,
+and am rewarded by the play of color on the zinc counters--the mottled
+green of live lobsters, the scarlet of boiled ones, the silver and rose
+of pompano, the pomegranate of salmon. I have stood by the half hour
+to watch the slow-moving turtles, the scuttling crabs in the tanks. I
+have good friends throughout the Market--men and women. They confide
+in me at times, like the cod-and-hake man, dealer in dried fish, who
+told me he had "a girl once down on Cape Cod". He seemed relieved by
+this confession. He was serving me at the time, and his two hundred or
+more pounds, his red face and his cordiality were delightful. My
+butter-egg-and-cheese man also confides to me that he is a commuter;
+has purchased a home on the instalment plan; has three children, and
+his wife runs a private laundry.
+
+What remains of the four dollars after the weekly bills are paid, I lay
+aside for clothes. I make my own shirt waists. It took me eleven
+months to earn a good skirt of brown Panama cloth; but it has lasted me
+four years.
+
+I think I live well, _considering_; but, in living thus, there is no
+denying I cross the bridge of mere sustenance every day, and am obliged
+to burn my bridge behind me! I don't like it--but am thankful for
+work. I 'm not beneath adding to my reserve fund five cents at a time.
+
+Dec. 18, 1908. They 're nice boys, the theological students--but
+queer, some of them. I 've watched different sets of them come and go
+during these six years. Two or three have attempted to make a little
+love to me; a few have adopted me--so they said--for their sister. I
+'m forgotten with their graduation and their flitting! One or two are
+really friends; they 're younger than I, of course, and I can patronize
+and quiz them.
+
+Johnny is my favorite. There is little theological nonsense about him,
+and there is an inquisitive disposition to see New York and make the
+most of his time here. He 's from the north part of the state; likes
+books, likes people, likes a good time, whenever he can get it, on his
+limited income to which he adds by helping the basement barber two days
+in the week, canvassing for books in the summer, and on Saturdays
+waiting on the patrons of a book stall in a corridor of one of the big
+hotels.
+
+Taken altogether, Johnny is a man who has not as yet found his calling,
+although he is anchored for the present, through affection for his
+father, to "Chelsea" and a career that, at times, irks him. We 've had
+many a good talk about this matter. I tell him he 's not dragging
+anchor, but weighing it.
+
+I like to see New York through Johnny's eyes--Adirondack eyes, keen,
+honest, and blue; they take in all the metropolitan sights, from the
+Hippodrome, to the Bowery vaudevilles and the Cathedral of St. John.
+
+It's fun to "do" the city with him, with no expense except car fares.
+
+Jan. 1909. Johnny and I stood outside the Metropolitan Opera House
+this evening, to see the hodge-podge of carriages and automobiles
+arrive with their contents: the women who toil not, neither do they
+spin anything except financial webs for men's undoing. It was a queer
+sight! Hundreds of women passed me. As I looked at them, I saw the
+same long, pointed, manicured nails, the same jewelled fingers, the
+incurving fronts, the distorted busts, the lined and rouged faces--like
+those I loathed so when I first came to this city. I asked myself,
+"What's the difference between the two kinds? Is it money alone that
+makes it?"
+
+"But are there two kinds?" I was asking myself again, when Johnny, who
+has an eye for good clothes on man and woman, called my attention to a
+woman's opera cloak. It was worth a man's ransom. From a deep yoke of
+Russian sable depended the long cape of pale green satin covered with
+graduated flounces, from eight to fourteen inches deep, of Venetian
+point. And taking in all this, I saw--
+
+Well, I don't know that I dare to set down in words, even for my own
+enlightenment, what I saw in that Vision. But, suddenly, all the rich
+robings, opera cloaks, clinging gowns of silk, velvet and chiffon, the
+diamond tiaras, the jewelled necklaces, the French lingerie even--all
+dropped from every one in that procession; and there, on a New York
+sidewalk, in the harsh glare of electric lights, amidst the hiss and
+cranking of their automobiles, the clank of silver-mounted harness and
+the champing of bits, the shouts and calls and myriad city noises, I
+saw them for what they really are:--women, like unto all other women;
+women made originally for the mates of men, for mothers, for
+burden-bearers, with prehensile hands to grasp, then lead and uplift,
+and so aid in the work of the world.
+
+And what more I saw in the Vision I may scarcely write down; for,
+therein, I was shown for these same women both unfathomable depths and
+scarce attainable heights, both degradation and transfiguration, the
+human bestial and the humanly divine--the Vampire, the Angel.
+
+And I was shown in that Vision the Calvaries of maternity common to
+all, whether the conception be immaculate, so-called if within the law,
+or maculate, so-called if without the law. I saw, also, the
+Gethsemanes of motherhood common to all. I saw, moreover, the three
+Dolorous Ways which their feet--and the feet of all women, because
+women--are treading, have ever trod, must ever tread, that the seed
+which shall propagate the Race may be trodden deep for germination.
+
+Moreover, I saw in that Vision the women treading the seed in the Ways.
+One of the Ways was stony, and those therein walked with bleeding feet
+for their labor was in vain; the land was sterile. And the second was
+deeply rutted with sand, and those therein labored heavily with sweat
+and toil; the fruition was but for a day. And the third Way was heavy
+with deeply-furrowed fertile soil, and those that trod it toiled long
+and late that the seed might not fail of abundant harvest.
+
+Furthermore, I saw that every woman was treading one of these three
+Ways; and silk, and chiffon, or velvet gown, opera cloaks of sable and
+satin, diamond tiaras and jewelled necklaces could avail them naught.
+Trammelled by these or by rags--it matters not which--they must tread
+the Ways.
+
+I pressed my hand over my eyes to clear them of this Vision; for, at
+last, I understood. I knew that I, too, being a woman, must tread one
+of the three Dolorous Ways even as my mother had trodden one before me.
+But which?
+
+I could bear it no longer. "Come away, Johnny," I said abruptly.
+
+April, 1909. I am beginning to be so tired of the confusion of the
+streets. The work at the Library has become irksome. I am tired of
+reading, too, and feel as if my last prop had been taken from under me,
+when I have no longer the desire to read.
+
+I handle the books, place them, record dates, handle books again, place
+them, record dates, handle books again--the very smell of the booky
+atmosphere is sickening to me.
+
+I suppose I need rest. But how can I rest when I have my daily living
+to earn? I won't touch those hundred and seventy-five dollars if I
+never have a vacation. I should lose all my courage if I had to spend
+a dollar of that money, except for the final end--nine years hence.
+Even the thought of stopping work makes me feel weary.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+July 1. So the money is gone! I have been trying to face this fact
+the last hour. The long sickness of ten weeks has taken it all, for I
+was too proud to go to the hospital without paying my way. I let no
+one know how matters stood with me. I have come out of St. Luke's
+feeling so weak, so indifferent to life, to everything I thought made
+my own small life worth living.--And it is so hot here! So breathless!
+A great longing has come upon me to get away somewhere. Since I have
+been so sick things look different to me. The energy of life seems to
+have gone out of me, and I want to creep away into some place far, far
+away from this city, where I can live a more normal life.
+
+But how can I make the break? Where can I go? How begin all over
+again in this awful struggle to get work, and succeed in anything? My
+courage has failed me.
+
+
+I closed the books. I was wondering if I should destroy them and in
+this fashion burn all my bridges behind me.
+
+"No," I spoke aloud; "I 'll save them, but I will never keep another
+journal."
+
+I opened to a blank page, took pen and ink and wrote on it:
+
+September 18th, 1909. I have decided to accept a place at service (at
+last!) on a farm in Canada, Province of Quebec, Seigniory of Lamoral
+(?). Wages twenty-five dollars a month, besides room and board.
+
+And underneath:
+
+12 midnight. My last word in this book. Within the past six hours I
+have experienced something of what I call "heaven and hell". I have
+travelled a long road since I came to this city on November 4, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+A few evenings afterwards Delia Beaseley came up to see me. She
+brought the passage money and a note of instruction. It was directly
+to the point: I was to take a sleeping car on the Montreal express;
+then the day local boat down the St. Lawrence to Richelieu-en-Bas. At
+the landing I was to enquire for Mrs. Macleod, and someone would be
+there to meet me. A time-table was enclosed. The note was signed
+"Janet Macleod ".
+
+"This must be the 'elderly Scotchwoman,' Delia," I said after reading
+the note twice.
+
+"I'm thinking it's her--but then you never can tell."
+
+"How did she send the passage money?"
+
+"By post office order. It would n't have hurt her to send a bit of a
+welcome word, to my thinking." She spoke rather grimly.
+
+"I 'm not going for the welcome, you know; it's work and a change I
+want--and right thankful I am to get the chance."
+
+"Well you may be, my dear, in these times," she said, softening at once.
+
+"I shall write you, Delia, all about everything; you know you want to
+hear all about things."
+
+"Would I own to being a woman if I did n't?" She laughed her hearty
+laugh; then, with a little hesitancy: "And, my dear, I 'd think kindly
+of you for writing me, and I 'd like to know that all is going well
+with you, but you know there's Doctor Rugvie to reckon with, and he
+won't hold to much correspondence, I 'm thinking, between me
+and--what's the name of that place? I can't pronounce it--"
+
+"Richelieu-en-Bas."
+
+"Rich--I can't get the twist of it round my English tongue; say it
+again, and may be I 'll catch it."
+
+I repeated it twice for her, but her results were not equal to her
+efforts. We both laughed.
+
+"Never mind, Delia; and don't tell me Doctor Rugvie is going to say to
+whom I shall write or to whom I shan't--especially if it's my friend,
+Delia Beaseley."
+
+"Well, I can't say, my dear; but I 'll speak to him about it when he
+gets home--"
+
+"Now, no nonsense from a sensible woman, Delia Beaseley; I should think
+I was going into a land of mysteries to hear you talk."
+
+She laughed again. "I don't say as it's a mystery, but I can't help
+thinking he wants to keep the matter quiet like, you see."
+
+"But I don't see--and I don't intend to," I said obstinately.
+
+Delia changed the subject. "It's well you 've got your passage money.
+It's quite dear travelling that way."
+
+"Never was in a Pullman in my life, Delia, but you may believe I shall
+enjoy it."
+
+She beamed on me. "That's right, my dear, take all the pleasure you
+can, and, of course, if Doctor Rugvie did n't mind--well, I must own up
+to it that I 'd like to hear from you, and what you make of it up
+there."
+
+"So you shall, Delia; no secrets between you and me; there can't be; we
+'ve known each other too long--ever since I was born into the world."
+
+She looked a little mystified at my statement, but accepted it
+evidently with appreciation.
+
+"Jane or me 'll be down to the station to see you off," she said as she
+bade me good night.
+
+During the next two weeks and at odd times, I did a good bit of
+reference work on my own account in looking up the histories of the
+Canadian "Seigniories"; but at the end of that time I was ready to set
+out for that other country only a little wiser for my research.
+
+A week later, Delia Beaseley was at the Grand Central to see me start
+on my journey northwards.
+
+"I feel as if I were setting out on a real series of adventures,
+Delia!" I exclaimed when I met her. I took both her hands in mine.
+"If only I were a man I should take stick and knapsack and find my way
+on foot. I 'd camp on the shore of the Tappan Zee, wander through the
+Catskills, and stop over night at the old Dutch farmhouses, follow the
+shores of Lake Champlain and cross the border high of heart, even if
+footweary!"
+
+Delia smiled indulgently upon me.
+
+"Such fancies will help you out a good bit, my dear; it's well you have
+a word or two of French to get along with. I used to hear it when I
+was a girl in Cape Breton."
+
+I caught the shadow of a memory settle in her eyes. We were at the
+gate. The train was made up.
+
+"I must say goodby here, my dear; they won't let me in to the train."
+
+I took both her hands again. "Goodby, Delia Beaseley," I began; then
+something choked me. I so wanted to thank her for all her goodness to
+me. "I wish I knew what to say--how to thank--"
+
+"There, there, my dear, I 'm the one to be thankful. I 've been
+reaping a harvest just from one little seed I sowed near twenty-six
+years ago--and I never thought to see so much as a blade of grass!
+That's all. I 'm wonderful grateful it's been given me to see such a
+harvest."
+
+"Oh, Delia, if I only amounted to something, so that you could be proud
+of your little harvest--"
+
+"Now, don't, my dear, don't; don't say nothing more, but just go
+straight forward with God's blessing, which is the same as mine this
+time, and--don't forget me if ever you need a friend."
+
+My eyes filled with unaccustomed tears. A curious thought: New York,
+the Juggernaut, the fetich of millions, just when I was ridding myself
+of the horror of its awful presence, was about to bind me to it through
+this new-old friend!
+
+I caught her rough toil-worn hand in both mine and pressed my lips to
+it; then I dropped it, and walked rapidly down the platform to the
+train. Not once did I look behind me.
+
+
+For a little while after entering the luxurious sleeping car, I felt
+awkward, uncomfortable; I had never been in one before. But when I was
+settled in my ample, high-backed section, and the train began to move
+slowly out of the station and through the tunnel, I felt more at ease.
+After that, with every mile that the train, moving more and more
+swiftly, put between me and the city's sights and sounds, I felt a
+rising of spirits, an ease of mind and body I had never before
+experienced.
+
+Within an hour all depression had vanished; hopes and anticipations for
+the new environment filled the foreground of my thoughts. Without
+adequate reason, I believed that the change I was making was for my
+good; that with new faces about me, with new and closer interests
+which, alone as I was in the world, I must substitute for a home, I was
+about to escape from all former associations and the memories they
+fostered.
+
+Only one thought troubled me, that was the connection by Delia Beaseley
+of Doctor Rugvie's name with that of George Jackson--my mother's
+husband. I had hoped never to hear that name again.
+
+For an hour I peered at the dark Hudson, the shadowed hills; the night
+fell, blotting out the landscape wholly and shutting me into the warm
+brilliantly lighted car with a sense of cosy security.
+
+I looked at the few people I could see over the high sections. Three
+women were opposite to me, two of them young. I found myself
+calculating the cost of their dresses and accessories, their furs and
+hats. I reckoned the amount to be something like my wages on the farm
+for six years. How easily and unconsciously they wore their good
+clothes! One of the two younger held my attention. She was fair,
+slender, long-throated, and carried herself with noticeable erectness.
+I caught bits of their conversation carried on in low pleasing voices:
+
+"It will be such a surprise to them."
+
+"... the C. P. steamer--"
+
+"Oh, fancy! They must have known--"
+
+"... you know I am glad to be at home this winter..."
+
+"Where is it? ..."
+
+"Somewhere in Richelieu-en-Bas--"
+
+I was all ears. Richelieu-en-Bas was my destination. Their voices
+were so low I could catch but little more.
+
+"Just fancy! But you would never know from him--"
+
+"When is Mr. Ewart coming over?"
+
+"Bess!" The fair one held up a warning finger; "your voice carries
+so." She rose and reached for her furs from the hook. "Let's go into
+the forward car and see the Ellwicks."
+
+The others rose too; shook themselves out a little; patted hair rolls,
+changed a hairpin, took down their furs and left the car--tall graceful
+women, all of them.
+
+Since my illness I had squeezed out from my earnings enough for the
+passage money, fourteen dollars, and eight besides. I did n't want to
+begin by being indebted to any one in the Seigniory of Lamoral for that
+amount; and I did n't want it deducted from my first wages. I pleased
+myself with the fancy that, soon after my arrival, I should give the
+money into some one's hands with an appropriate word or two, to the
+effect that I had chosen to pay my own travelling expenses. That
+sounded better than passage money which was reminiscent of the steerage.
+
+They should understand that if I were at service, I had a little
+moneyed independence of my own--the pitiful eight dollars with which to
+go out into the new country. Immigrants have come in with less than
+this--nor been deported. Well, I ran no risk of being deported from
+Canada.
+
+I asked the porter to make my berth early. About nine I lay down,
+tired and worn out with the excitement of the past three weeks. I drew
+the curtains close to shut out the night, and lay there passively
+content, listening to the steadily accented _clankity-clank-clank_ of
+the Montreal night express.
+
+I liked the sound; it soothed me. This swift on-rush into the night
+towards Canada, the even motion, began to rest the long over-strained
+nerves. During these hours, at least, I was care free. I slept.
+
+For the first time for months that sleep was long, unbroken, dreamless.
+I awoke refreshed, strengthened. Drawing the window curtains aside, I
+looked out upon a world newly bathed in the early morning lights.
+
+At the sight, my enthusiasm, which I thought quenched forever in the
+overwhelming flood of adverse circumstance, was rekindled; my
+imagination stimulated. Dawn was breaking clear and golden behind the
+mountains across Lake Champlain. Green those mountains are in the
+October sunlight, green and yellow and frost-wrought crimson; but now
+they loomed dark against the horizon's deepening gold. A few small
+dawn clouds of pure rose and one, gigantic, high-piled, of smoke gray,
+hung motionless above the mist-veiled waters of the lake.
+
+I watched the coming of this day with charmed eyes. The sun rose
+clear, undimmed over the shadowed mountains. The lake mists felt its
+beams; dispersed suddenly in silver flocculence; and the path across
+the blue waters was free for the morning glory that was advancing apace.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+THE SEIGNIORY OF LAMORAL
+
+
+
+I
+
+"Richelieu--Richelieu-en-Bas."
+
+The captain of the local freight and passenger boat, that had taken six
+hours to make its trip down the St. Lawrence from Montreal, pointed
+encouragingly to the low north bank of the river. I looked eagerly in
+that direction.
+
+"Richelieu-en-Haut is back there," with a sweep of his hand northwards,
+"six miles back on the railroad."
+
+The little steamer was running, at that moment, within twenty feet of
+the low bank which, I saw at once, had been converted into a meandering
+village street, built up only on one side. A double row of trees
+shaded both houses and highway. We were within confidential speaking
+distance of the few people I saw in the street, and apparently on
+intimate terms with the front rooms of the tiny houses. We sailed past
+the market-place square, past the long low inn with double verandas,
+past the post office, and drew to the landing-place which the steamer
+saluted.
+
+This salute was the signal for the appearance of what appeared to me
+the entire population of the place. There were people under the
+lindens, people at the doors and open windows, people in boats rowing
+towards us; one man was poling a scow in which were a cow and two
+horses. There were men with handcarts, boys with baskets, old women
+and young girls, all talking, gesticulating freely.
+
+The handcarts were drawn up to the landing-place; the steamer was made
+fast to an apology for a mooring-post; the gangway heaved up. Several
+sheep on the lower deck were run down it by a forced method of
+locomotion, their keepers hoisting their hind legs, and steering them
+wheelbarrow fashion into the street where some children attempted to
+ride them. All about me I heard the chatter of Canadian French, not a
+word of which I understood.
+
+A ponderous antiquated private coach, into which were harnessed two
+fine shaggy-fetlocked horses,--I learned afterwards these were
+Percherons, with sires from Normandy,--stood in the street directly
+opposite the boat; a small boy was holding their heads. I wondered if
+that were my "Seigniory coach"!
+
+My trunk was literally shovelled out down the gangway, and I followed.
+I stood on the landing-place and looked about me. I was, in truth, in
+that other country for, oh, the air! It was like nothing I had ever
+known! So strong, so free, so soft, as if it were blowing straight
+from the great Northland, over unending virgin plains, through primeval
+unending forests, that the dwellers on this great water highway might
+enjoy something of its primal purity and strength.
+
+I was filling my lungs full of it and thinking of my instructions to
+ask for Mrs. Janet Macleod, when a tall man, loosely jointed but
+powerfully built, made his way to me through the crowd.
+
+"I take it you 're the gal Mis' Macleod 's lookin' fer?"
+
+It was simply the statement of a foregone conclusion, but the drawling
+nasal intonation, the accent and manner of speech, told me that it was
+native to my northern New England, where I have lived two-thirds of my
+life; it was the speech of my own people. I laughed; I could not have
+helped it. It was such a come-down from my high ideas of "Seigniory
+retainers" of foreign birth, with which romance I had been entertaining
+myself ever since I had fed my fancy on what the New York Public
+Library yielded me.
+
+"Yes, I 'm the one, Marcia Farrell. Is this our coach?"
+
+The man gave me a keen glance from under his bushy eyebrows; indeed, he
+looked sharply at me a second time. If he thought I was quizzing him
+he was much mistaken.
+
+"Yes, that's our'n,"--I noticed he placed an emphasis on the
+possessive,--"and we 'd better be gettin' along 'fore dark; the
+steamer's late. You and the coach ain't just what you 'd call a
+perfect fit--nor I could n't say as you was a misfit," he added, as he
+opened the door for me to get in. "Guess Mis' Macleod was expectin'
+somebody with a little more heft to 'em; you don't look over tough?"
+The statement was put in the form of a question. "But your trunk 'll
+fill up some."
+
+He hoisted it endwise with one hand on to the front seat; took his
+place beside it; gathered up the reins, and said to the boy:
+
+"Let 'em go, Pete. You get up behind."
+
+But the horses did not go. They snorted, threw up their heads,
+flourished their long tails, one of them showed his heels, and both
+cavorted to the wild delight of the assembled crowd.
+
+Some emphatic words from the coachman, and judicious application of the
+whiplash, soon showed the young thoroughbreds what was wanted of them,
+and they trotted slowly, heavily, but steadily, down the road beside
+the river, Pete, who was behind on a curious tail extension, shouting
+to the small boys as he passed them.
+
+After the horses had settled down to real work, my driver turned to me.
+
+"Did you come through last night clear from New York?"
+
+"Yes, and I 'm glad to get here; this air is wonderful."
+
+"Thet 's what they all say when they strike Canady fer the fust time.
+I take it it's your fust time?"
+
+"Yes, I 'm a stranger here."
+
+"Speakin' 'bout air--I can't see much difference 'twixt good air most
+anywheres. Take it, now, up in New England, up north where I was
+raised, you can't get better nowheres. Thet comes drorrin' through the
+mountains and acrosst the Lake, an' it can't be beat."
+
+I made no reply for I feared he would ask me if I knew "New England up
+north".
+
+He turned to look at me, evidently surprised at my short silence. He
+saw that I was being jolted about on the broad back seat, owing to the
+uneven road.
+
+"Sho! If I did n't have the trunk, I 'd put you here on the front seat
+'longside of me to kinder steady you."
+
+"How far is it to the Seigniory of Lamoral, Mr.--?" I ventured to ask,
+hoping for a flood of information about the Seigniory and its occupants.
+
+"Call me Cale," he said shortly; "thet 's short fer Caleb, an' what all
+the Canucks know me by. Mis' Macleod, she ain't but jest come to it;
+she balked consider'ble at fust, but it rolls off'n her tongue now
+without any Scotch burr, I can tell you! You was askin' 'bout the
+Seigniory of Lamoral--I dunno jest what to say. The way we 're
+proceedin' now it's 'bout an hour from here, but with some hosses it
+might take a half, an' by boat you can make it as long as you 're a
+mind ter."
+
+"It's a large place?"
+
+"Thet depends on whether you 're talkin' 'bout the old manor or the
+Seigniory; one I can show you in ten minutes, t' other in about three
+days." He turned and looked at me again with his small keen gray eyes.
+
+"Where was _you_ raised?" He spoke carelessly enough; but I knew my
+own. He was simulating indifference, and I put him off the track at
+once.
+
+"I was born in New York City."
+
+"Great place--New York."
+
+He chirrupped to the colts, and we drove for the next fifteen minutes
+without further conversation.
+
+The boat, owing to heavy freight, was an hour late in leaving Montreal,
+and two hours longer than its usual time, in discharging it at a dozen
+hamlets and villages along the St. Lawrence. In consequence, it was
+sunset when we left the landing-place, and the twilight was deepening
+to-night, as we turned away from the river road and drove a short
+distance inland. Once Caleb drew rein to light a lantern, and summon
+Pete from the back of the coach to sit beside him and hold it.
+
+It grew rapidly dark. Leaning from the open upper half of the coach
+door, I could just see between the trees along the roadside, a sheet of
+water.
+
+"Hola!" Cale shouted suddenly with the full power of his lungs.
+"Hola--hola!"
+
+It was echoed by Pete's shrill prolonged "Ho--la-a-a-a-a!"
+
+"Ho-la! Ho!" came the answer from somewhere across the water. Cale
+turned and looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Thet 's the ferry. We ferry over a piece here; it's the back water of
+a crick thet makes in from the river 'long here, fer 'bout two mile."
+He turned into a narrow lane, dark under the trees, and drove to the
+water's edge.
+
+By the flare of the lantern I could see a broad raft, rigged with a
+windlass, slowly moving towards us over the darkening waters. Another
+lantern of steady gleam lighted the face of the ferryman. It took but
+a few minutes to reach the bank; the horses went on to the boards with
+many a snort and much stamping of impatient hoofs. Pete took his place
+at their heads.
+
+"_Marche!_"
+
+We moved slowly away towards the other bank. There was no moon; the
+night air was crisp with coming frost; an owl hooted somewhere in the
+woods.
+
+We were soon on the road again, as ever beneath trees. It seemed to me
+as if we were turning to the river again. I asked Cale about it.
+
+"You 've hit it 'bout right, in the dark too. We foller back a quarter
+of a mile, an' then we 're there."
+
+That quarter of a mile seemed long to me.
+
+"Here we are," said Cale, at last.
+
+I looked out. I could see the long low outlines of a house showing
+dimly white through the trees, for there were trees everywhere. A
+flaring light, as from a wood fire, illumined one window.
+
+We drew up at a broad flight of low steps. A door into a lighted
+passageway was opened. I saw there were at least four people in it;
+one, a woman in a white cap, came out on the upper step.
+
+"Have you brought Miss Farrell, Cale?" she said.
+
+"Yes, Mis' Macleod, fetched her right along; but the boat was good
+three hours late.--Pete, open the door; I 'll hold the hosses."
+
+I went up the steps, not knowing what to say, for the mere inflection
+of her voice, the gentle address, the prefix "Miss" to my name, told me
+intuitively that I was with gentle people, and my service with them was
+to be other than I fancied.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+"I hope you will soon feel at home in the old manor." With these words
+I was made welcome. Mrs. Macleod led the way into the house.
+
+"Jamie," she said to a young man, or youth, I could not tell which,
+"this is Miss Farrell. My son," she added, turning to me.
+
+"Call me Marcia," I said to her. She smiled as if pleased.
+
+"You will be feeling very tired after your long journey--and I 'm
+thinking jolly hungry after coming up in the old boat; that was
+mother's doings."
+
+"Now, Jamie--!" she spoke in smiling protest.
+
+O Jamie, Jamie Macleod! Your thin bright eager face was in itself a
+welcome to the old manor of Lamoral.
+
+"I 'm not tired, but I confess to having a good appetite; this Canada
+air would make an angel long for manna," I said laughing.
+
+"Wouldn't it though--oh, it's great!" he responded joyfully.
+"Angelique, here, will help you out in that direction--she's our cook;
+Angelique, come here." He gave his command in French.
+
+The short thickset French Canadian of the black-eyed-Susan type, came
+forward, with outstretched hand, from the back of the passageway; there
+was good friendship in her hearty grip.
+
+"And Marie will take charge of you till supper time," said Mrs.
+Macleod, smiling; "Jamie is apt to run the house at times because he
+can speak with the servants in their own tongue."
+
+"Now, mother!" It was Jamie's turn to protest.
+
+Mrs. Macleod spoke to the little maid, who was beaming on me, in
+halting French.
+
+"Do you speak French?" she asked me.
+
+"No, I can read it, that 's all."
+
+"Oh, well, with that you can soon understand and speak it; my Scotch
+tongue is too old to be learning new tricks; fortunately I understand
+it a little. Marie will take you to your room."
+
+Marie looked on me with an encouraging smile, and led the way up stairs
+through a wide passageway, down three steps into another long corridor,
+and opened a door at the end. She lighted two candles and, after some
+pantomime concerning water, left me, closing the door behind her.
+
+And this was my room. I looked around; it took immediate possession of
+me in spirit--a new experience for me and a wholly pleasing one.
+
+There were two windows in one end; the walls were sloping. I concluded
+it must be in the gable end of some addition to the main building. The
+walls were whitewashed; the floor was neatly laid with a woven rag
+carpet of peculiar design and delicate coloring; the cottage bedroom
+set was painted dark green. There was a plain deal writing table with
+writing pad and inkstand, and a dressing table on which stood two white
+china candlesticks. Counterpane, chair cushions, and window hangings
+were of beautiful old chintz still gay with faded paroquets and vines,
+trees, trellises, roses and numerous humming-birds, on a background of
+faded crocus yellow.
+
+There was a knock at the door. On my using one of the few words in
+French at my command, "Entrez," Marie burst in with delighted
+exclamations and a flood of unintelligible French. But I gathered she
+was explaining to me Pierre who followed her, cap in one hand, and in
+the other, the handle of my trunk which he was dragging behind him.
+This was evidently Pierre, father, in distinction from Pierre, son.
+
+"Big Pete and little Pete," I translated for their benefit; whereupon
+Marie clapped her hands and Peter the Great came forward man fashion to
+shake hands before he placed my trunk. As the two spoke together I
+heard the name "Cale".
+
+"What a household!" I said to myself after they had gone, and while I
+was doing over my hair. "I wonder if there are any other members? And
+what is my place in it going to be?"
+
+It kept me guessing until I had made myself ready for supper.
+
+Soon there was another knock. Marie's voice was heard; her tongue
+loosed in voluble expression of her evident desire to conduct me down
+stairs to the dining-room.
+
+"Here are more of us!" was Jamie Macleod's exclamation, as I entered
+the long low room. Four fine dogs--he told me afterwards they were
+Gordon setters--rose slowly from the rug before the fireplace. "But
+they 're Scotch and need no introduction. Come here, comrades!"
+
+The four leaped towards me; snuffed at me with evident curiosity;
+licked my hands and were about to spring on me, but a word from their
+master sent them back to the rug.
+
+He showed me my place at the long narrow table; drew out the chair for
+his mother and, when she was seated, spoke to the dogs who, with
+perfect decorum, sedately settled themselves on their haunches in twos,
+one on each side of Mrs. Macleod at the head of the table, one on each
+side of her son at her right. They looked for all the world like the
+Barye bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum! After all, I could not get
+rid of all the associations, nor did this one bring with it anything
+but pleasure, that the great city had yielded me this much of
+instruction.
+
+I was looking at the dogs and about to speak, when I noticed that Mrs.
+Macleod had bent her head and folded her hands. I caught Jamie looking
+at me out of the corner of his eye. For the first time in my life I
+heard "grace" said at a table. I felt myself grow red; I was
+embarrassed. Jamie saw my confusion and began to chat in his own
+bright way.
+
+"I asked mother if she had written definitely what we 'd asked you up
+here for into the wilds of Canada."
+
+"Now, Jamie! You will be giving Miss--Marcia," she corrected herself,
+"to understand I asked her here under false pretence. To tell the
+truth, I did n't quite see how to explain myself at such a distance."
+She spoke with perfect sincerity. "Moreover, Doctor Rugvie told me
+that Mrs. Beaseley was absolutely trustworthy, and I relied on her--but
+you don't know Doctor Rugvie?"
+
+"Of him, yes; I saw him once in the hospital."
+
+"So you 've been in the hospital too?"
+
+It was Jamie who put that question, and something of the eager light in
+his face faded as he asked it.
+
+"Yes, last spring; I was there ten weeks."
+
+"Then you know," he said quite simply, and looked at me with inquiring
+eyes.
+
+Why or how I was enabled to read the significance of that simple
+statement, I cannot say; I know only in part. But I do know that my
+eyes must have answered his, for I saw in them a reflection of my own
+thought: We both, then, have known what it is, to draw near to the
+threshold of that door that opens only outward.
+
+"You don't indeed look strong; I noticed that the first thing," said
+Mrs. Macleod.
+
+"Oh, but I am," I assured her; "you will see when you have work for me.
+I can cook, and sew--and chop wood, and even saw a little, if
+necessary."
+
+Mrs. Macleod looked at me in absolute amazement, and Jamie burst into a
+hearty laugh. It was good to hear, and, without in the slightest
+knowing why, I laughed too--at what I did not know, nor much care. It
+was good to laugh like that!
+
+"And to think, mother, that you told me to come down heavy on the
+'strong and country raised'! Oh, this is rich! I wrote that
+advertisement, Miss Far--"
+
+"Please call me Marcia."
+
+"May I?" He was again eager and boyish.
+
+"Why not?" I said. He went on with his unfinished sentence.
+
+"--And I pride myself that I rose to the occasion of mother's command
+to make it 'brief but explicit'."
+
+"Poor girl, you 've had little chance to hear anything explicit from me
+as yet." Mrs. Macleod smiled, rather sadly I thought. "But you shall
+know before you go to bed. I could n't be so thoughtless as to keep
+you in suspense over night."
+
+"Oh, I can wait," I said; "but what I want to know, Mr. Macleod--"
+
+"Please call me Jamie," he said, imitating my voice and intonation.
+
+"May I?" I replied, mimicking his own. Then we both fell to laughing
+like two children, and it seemed to me that I felt what it is to be
+young, for the first time in my life. The four dogs wagged their
+tails, threshing the floor with them like flails and keeping time to
+our hilarity; Mrs. Macleod smiled, almost happily, and Marie came in to
+see what it was all about.
+
+"What do you want to know?" he said at last, mopping the tears from his
+eyes with his napkin.
+
+"Why you advertised your mother as 'an elderly Scotchwoman'?"
+
+"Because that sounded safe."
+
+Again we laughed, it seemed at almost nothing. The dogs whined as if
+wanting to join in what fun there was; the fire snapped merrily on the
+hearth, and the large coal-oil lamp, at the farther end of the long
+table, sent forth a cheerful light from under its white porcelain
+shade, and showed me the old room in all its simple beauty.
+
+Overhead, the great beams and the ceiling were a rich mahogany color
+with age. The sides were panelled to the ceiling with the same wood.
+Between the two doors opening into the passageway, was a huge but
+beautifully proportioned marble chimney-piece that reached to the beams
+of the ceiling. The marble was of the highest polish, white, pale
+yellow, and brown in tone. Above the mantel, it formed the frame of a
+large canvas that showed a time-darkened landscape with mounted
+hunters. The whole piece was exquisitely carved with the wild grape
+vine--its leaves and fruit.
+
+On each side were old iron sconces. Above the two doors were the
+antlers of stags. The room was lighted by four windows; these were
+hung with some faded chintz, identical in pattern and color with that
+in my bedroom; they were drawn. I wondered, as I looked at this beauty
+of simplicity, what the other rooms in the house would show. I noticed
+there was no sideboard, no dresser; only the table, and heavy chairs
+with wooden seats, furnished the room.
+
+The food was wholesome and abundant. I found myself wondering that I
+could eat each mouthful without counting the cost.
+
+"I 'll stay here with the dogs and smoke," Jamie said, as we left the
+table.
+
+We crossed the passageway, which I noticed was laid with flagging and
+unheated, to the room opposite the dining-room.
+
+Here again, there were the wood ceilings and panelled walls, the latter
+painted white. The great chimney-piece was like its fellow in the
+dining-room; only the carvings were different: intricate scrollwork and
+fine groovings. There was a canvas, also, in the marble frame, but it
+was in a good state of preservation; it showed a walled city on a
+height and a river far below. I wondered if it could be Quebec.
+
+The room was larger than the other, but much cosier in every way.
+There were a few modern easy chairs, an ample old sofa--swans carved on
+the back and arms--a large library table of black oak with bevelled
+edges, also beautifully carved; and around the walls of the room, in
+every available space, were plain low bookshelves of pine stained to
+match the table. On the floor were the same woven rugs of rag carpet,
+unique of design and beautiful in coloring--dark brown, pale yellow,
+and white, with large squares marked off in narrow lines of rose. The
+furniture, except for the sofa which was upholstered in faded yellow
+wool damask, was covered with flowery chintz like that in the
+dining-room, and at the windows were the same faded yellow hangings. A
+large black bear skin rug lay before the hearth. There were no
+ornaments or pictures anywhere. On the mantel were two pots of
+flourishing English ivy. A stand of geraniums stood before one of the
+four windows.
+
+There were sconces on each side of the chimney-piece, but of gilt
+bronze. Each was seven-branched, and it was evident that Marie had
+just lighted all fourteen candles.
+
+Mrs. Macleod drew her chair to the hearth, and I took one near her.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"It is a good time to speak of some matters between ourselves; Jamie
+will not be coming in for an hour at least." She turned and looked at
+me steadily.
+
+"I don't know how much or how little you know of this place, and
+perhaps it will be best to begin at the beginning. Mrs. Beaseley wrote
+me you were born in the city of New York."
+
+"Yes; twenty-six years ago next December."
+
+"So Mrs. Beaseley wrote, or rather her daughter did for her. She said
+you were an orphan."
+
+"Yes." I answered so. How could I answer otherwise knowing what I
+did? But I felt the blood mount to my temples when I stated this half
+truth.
+
+"You say you do not know Doctor Rugvie?"
+
+"No; only of him."
+
+"I wish you did." (How could she know that my wish to see him and know
+him must be far stronger than hers!)
+
+"He will be coming out here later on in the winter--are you cold?" she
+asked quickly, for I had shivered to cover an involuntary start.
+
+"No, not at all; but I think it must be growing colder outside."
+
+"It is. Cale said we might have heavy frost or snow before morning.
+You will find the changes in temperature very sudden and trying here in
+spring and autumn. About Doctor Rugvie; he is a good man, and a great
+one in his profession. We made his acquaintance many years ago in
+Scotland, in my own home, Crieff. He had lodgings with us for ten
+weeks, and since then he has made us proud to be counted among his
+friends."
+
+She rose, stirred the fire and took a maple stick from a large
+wood-basket.
+
+"Let me," I said, taking it from her.
+
+"You really don't look strong enough."
+
+"Oh, but I am; you 'll see."
+
+"By the way, don't let my son do anything like this. He is often
+careless and over confident, and he must not strain himself--he is
+under strict orders." She was silent for a moment then went on:
+
+"My son is not strong, as you must see." She looked at me appealingly,
+as if hoping I might dispute her statement; but I could say nothing.
+
+"A year ago," she spoke slowly, as if with difficulty, "he was in the
+Edinboro' Hospital for five months; he inherits his father's
+constitution, and the hemorrhages were very severe. Doctor Rugvie came
+over to see him, and advised his coming out here to Canada to live as
+far as possible in the pine forests. He has been away all summer. He
+is to go away again next year with one of the old guides.
+
+"I want you to remain with me as companion and assistant here in the
+house; the service is large and, as you will soon find," she added with
+a smile, "extremely personal. They are interested in us and our
+doings, and we are expected to reciprocate that interest. It will be a
+comfort to Jamie to know you are with me, and that I am not alone in
+this French environment." She interrupted herself to say:
+
+"Did Mrs. Beaseley tell you anything about this place? You can speak
+with perfect freedom to me. We have no mysteries here." She smiled as
+if she read my thoughts.
+
+"She told me she knew nothing of the place, except that Doctor Rugvie
+had hired a farm in Canada with some good buildings on it, and that he
+intended to use it for those who might need to be built up in health."
+
+"She has stated it exactly. My son and I are the first
+beneficiaries--only, this is not the farm."
+
+"Not the farm!" I exclaimed. She looked amused at my surprise. "What
+is it then? Do tell me."
+
+"There is very little to tell. A friend of Doctor Rugvie's, an
+Englishman who was with him for a week in Scotland while he was with
+us, is owner of the Seigniory of Lamoral; it is his, I think, by
+inheritance, although I am not positive; and this is the old manor
+house. The estate is very large, but has been neglected; I have
+understood it is to be cultivated; some of it is to be reforested and
+the present forest conserved. He will be his own manager and will make
+his home here a great part of the year. Mean while, he has installed
+us here in his absence, through Doctor Rugvie, of course, and given
+over the charge of house and servants to Jamie and me."
+
+"And what is the owner's title?"
+
+"He has none that I know of. The real 'Seignior' and 'Seignioress'
+live in Richelieu-en-Bas in the new manor house--I say 'new', but that
+must be seventy-five years old. This is only a part of the original
+seigniory."
+
+"I don't understand these seigniories, and I tried to read up about
+them before I came here."
+
+"It is very perplexing--these seigniorial rights and rents and
+transferences. I don't make any pretence of understanding them."
+
+"Are the farm buildings occupied now?"
+
+"No; Doctor Rugvie wants to attend to those himself. It is his
+recreation to make plans for this farm, and he will be here himself to
+see that they are begun and carried out right. He tells me he has
+always loved Canada."
+
+"And what am I to do for you? I want to begin to feel of a little
+use," I said half impatiently.
+
+"You are doing for me now, my dear." (How easily Delia Beaseley's name
+for me came from the "elderly Scotchwoman's" lips!) "Your presence
+cheers Jamie; the young need the young, and belong to the young--"
+
+"But," I protested, "I am not young; I am twenty-six."
+
+"And Jamie is twenty-three. But when you laughed together to-night,
+you both might have been sixteen. It did me good to hear you; this old
+house needs just that--and I can't laugh easily now," she added. I
+heard a note of hopelessness in her voice.
+
+How lovely she was as she sat by the fire in the soft radiance of
+candle light! "Elderly"!--She could not be a day over fifty-seven or
+eight. The fine white cap rested on heavy, smoothly parted hair; the
+figure was round to plumpness; the dress, not modernized, became her;
+her voice was still young if a little weary, and her brown eyes bright,
+the lids unwrinkled.
+
+"Do you know Delia Beaseley well? Doctor Rugvie says she is a fine
+woman."
+
+"She is noble," I said emphatically; "I feel that I know her well,
+although I have seen her only a few times."
+
+"Is she a widow?"
+
+The door opened before I could gather my wits to answer. I felt
+intuitively that I could not say to this Scotchwoman, that Delia
+Beaseley was neither widow nor wife. I welcomed the sudden inrush of
+all four dogs and Jamie behind them, with the smell of a fresh pipe
+about him.
+
+"I positively must have my second short pipe here with you. I kept
+away in deference to the new member of the family." He flourished his
+pipe towards me. "I always smoke here, don't I, mother?"
+
+"In that case, I will stay in my room after supper unless you continue
+to smoke your first, second, and third--"
+
+"Only two; Doctor Rugvie won't allow me a third--"
+
+"Doctor Rugvie is a tyrant, and I 've said the same thing before," I
+declared firmly.
+
+"Now, look here, Marcia," he said solemnly, "we will call a halt right
+now and here." He settled his long length in the deep easy chair on
+the other side of the hearth, refilled and relighted his pipe. "Doctor
+Rugvie is my friend, my very special friend; whoever enters this house,
+enters it on the footing of friendship with all those who are my
+friends--"
+
+"Hear, hear! Another tyrant," I said, turning to his mother who was
+enjoying our chaff.
+
+"--Whose name is legion," he went on, ignoring my interruption. "I'll
+begin to enumerate them for your benefit. There are the four dogs,
+Gordon setters of the best breed--and Gordon's setters in fact." He
+made some pun at which his mother smiled, but it was lost on me. "They
+'re not mine, they 're my friend's, and that amounts to the same thing
+when he 's away."
+
+"And who is this friend of dogs and of man?"
+
+"He? Guy Mannering, hear her! Why there's only one 'he' for this
+place and that's--"
+
+"Doctor Rugvie?"
+
+"Doctor Rugvie!" he repeated, looking at me in unfeigned amazement;
+then to his mother:
+
+"Have n't you told her yet, mother?"
+
+"I doubt if I mentioned his name--I had so many other things to say and
+think of." She spoke half apologetically.
+
+"The man who owns this house, Miss Farrell,"--he was speaking so
+earnestly and emphatically that he forgot our agreement,--"the man who
+owns these dogs, the lord of this manor, such as it is, and everything
+belonging to it, lord of a forest it will do your eyes and lungs and
+soul good to journey through, the man who is master in the best sense
+of Pete and little Pete, of Angelique and Marie, of old Mere
+Guillardeau, of a dozen farmers here on the old Seigniory of Lamoral,
+my friend, Doctor Rugvie's friend and friend of all Richelieu-en-Bas,
+is Mr. Ewart, Gordon Ewart--and you missed my pun! the first I've made
+to-day!--and I hope he will be yours!"
+
+"Well, I 'll compromise. If he will just tolerate me here for your
+sakes, I 'll be his friend whether he is mine or not--for I want to
+stay."
+
+I meant what I said; and I think both mother and son realized, that
+under the jesting words there was a deep current of feeling. Mrs.
+Macleod leaned over and laid her hand on mine.
+
+"You shall stay, Marcia; it will not depend on Mr. Ewart, your
+remaining with us. When the farm is ready, Doctor Rugvie will place us
+there, and then I shall need your help all the time."
+
+Again, as at the station with Delia Beaseley's blessing ringing in my
+ears, I felt the unaccustomed tears springing in my eyes. Jamie leaned
+forward and knocked the ashes from his pipe; he continued to stare into
+the fire.
+
+"And who are the others?" I asked unsteadily; my lips trembled in spite
+of myself.
+
+"The others? Oh--," he seemed to come back to us from afar, "there is
+Andre--"
+
+"And who is Andre?"
+
+"Just Andre--none such in the wide world; my guide's old father, old
+Mere Guillardeau's brother, old French voyageur and coureur de bois; it
+will take another evening to tell you of Andre.-- Mother," he spoke
+abruptly, "it's time for porridge and Cale."
+
+"Yes, I will speak to Marie." She rose and left the room by a door at
+the farther end.
+
+"Remark those fourteen candles, will you?" said Jamie, between puffs.
+
+"I have noticed them; I call that a downright extravagance."
+
+"I pay for it," he said sententiously; then, with a slight flash of
+resentment; "you need n't think I sponge on Ewart to the extent of
+fourteen candles a night."
+
+I laughed a little under my breath. I knew a little friction would do
+him no harm.
+
+"And when those fourteen candles burn to within two inches of the
+socket, as at present, it is my invariable custom, being a Scotsman, to
+call for the porridge--and for Cale, because he is of our tongue, and
+needs to discourse with his own, at least once, before going to bed. I
+say a Scotsman without his nine o'clock porridge is a cad."
+
+"Any more remarks are in order," I said to tease him.
+
+"You really must know Cale--"
+
+"I thought I made his acquaintance this afternoon."
+
+He laughed again his hearty laugh. "I forgot; he drove you out. We
+did n't send Pete because we thought you might not understand his
+lingo. But you must n't fancy you know Cale because you 've seen him
+once--oh, no! You 'll have to see him daily and sometimes hourly; in
+fact, you will see so much of him that, sometimes, you will wish it a
+little less; for you are to understand that Cale is omnipresent, very
+nearly omnipotent here with us, and indispensable to _me_. You will
+accept him on my recommendation and afterwards make a friend of him for
+your own sake."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Cale?--He 's just Cale too. His name is Caleb Marstin; 'hails', as he
+says, from northern New England. I have noticed he does n't care to
+name the locality, and I respect his reticence; it's none of my
+business. He says he has n't lived there for more than a quarter of a
+century and has no relations. He can tell you more about forests,
+lumber and forestry, in one hour than a whole Agricultural College. He
+has been for years lumbering in northern Minnesota and across the
+Canadian border. He 's here to help reforest and conserve the old
+forest to the estate; he 's--in a word, he 's my right hand man."
+
+"Is Mr. Ewart lord of Cale too?"
+
+At my question, Jamie's long body doubled up with mirth.
+
+"Have n't seen each other yet and don't know each other. Gordon Ewart
+is n't apt to acknowledge any one as his master, especially in the
+matter of forestry, and Cale never does; result, fun for us when they
+do know each other."
+
+"How did you happen to get him here?"
+
+"Oh, a girl I know, who visits in Richelieu-en-Bas, said her father,
+who is a big lumber merchant on the States' border, knew of good men
+for the place. Ewart had told me that this was my first business, to
+get a man for the place; so I wrote to him, and he replied that Cale
+was coming east in the spring and he had given him my name. That's
+how."
+
+Mrs. Macleod came in, followed by Marie with steaming porridge, bowls
+and spoons on a tray; Cale was behind her. Jamie looked up with a
+smile.
+
+"Cale, this is Miss Farrell, the new member of our Canadian settlement.
+I take it you have spoken with her before."
+
+There was no outstretched hand for me; nor did I extend mine to him.
+We were of one people, Cale and I: northern New Englanders, and rarely
+demonstrative to strangers. We are apt to wait for an advance in
+friendship and then retreat before it when it is made, for the simple
+reason that we fear to show how much we want it! But I smiled up at
+him as he took his stand by the mantel, leaning an elbow on it.
+
+"Yes, Cale and I have made each other's acquaintance." I noticed that
+when I looked up at him and smiled, he gave an involuntary start. I
+wondered if Jamie saw it.
+
+"Yes, we had some conversation, such as 'twas, on the way. 'T ain't
+every young gal would ride out inter what you might call the
+unbeknownst of a seigniory in Canady with an old feller like me."
+
+A slow smile wrinkled his gaunt whiskered cheeks, and creased a little
+more deeply the crowsfeet around the small keen grey eyes that, I
+noticed, fixed themselves on me and were hardly withdrawn during the
+five minutes he stood by the mantel gulping his porridge.
+
+After finishing it, he bade us an abrupt good night and left.
+
+"What's struck Cale, mother?" Jamie asked as soon as he had left the
+room; "this is the first time I 've ever known his loquacity to be at a
+low ebb. It could n't be Marcia, could it?"
+
+"I don't think Marcia's presence had anything to do with it; he is n't
+apt to be minding the presence of any one. I think he has something on
+his mind."
+
+"Then he 'd better get it off; I don't like it," said Jamie brusquely;
+"here they come--"
+
+In came Angelique and Marie, Pierre the Great, and Pierre the Small, to
+bid us good night; it was their custom; and after the many
+"bonne-nuits" and "dormez-biens", they trooped out. We took our
+lighted candlesticks from the library table where Marie had placed
+them; Jamie snuffed out the fourteen low-burning lights in the sconces,
+drew ashes over the embers, put a large screen before the fire, and we
+went to our rooms.
+
+Mine greeted me with an extra degree of warmth. Marie had made more
+fire; the air was frosty. I drew apart the curtains and looked out.
+There was only the blackness of night beyond the panes. I drew them to
+again; unlocked my trunk to take out merely what was necessary for the
+night, undressed and went to bed.
+
+I must have lain there hours with wide open eyes; there was no sleep in
+me. Hour after hour I listened for a sound from somewhere; there was
+absolute silence within the manor and without. I had opened my window
+for air, and, as I lay there wide awake, gradually, without reason, in
+that intense silence, the various nightly street sounds of the great
+city, five hundred miles to the southward, began to sound in my ears;
+at first far away, then nearer and nearer until I heard distinctly the
+roar of the elevated, the multiplied "honk-honk" of the automobiles,
+the rolling of cabs, the grating clamor of the surface cars, the clang
+of the ambulance, the terrific clatter of the horses' hoofs as they
+sped three abreast to the fire, the hoarse whistle of tug and ferry;
+and, above all, the voices of those crying in that wilderness.
+
+Again I felt that awful burden, that blackness of oppression, which was
+with me for weeks in the hospital--the result of the intensified life
+of the huge metropolis and the giant machinery that sustains it--and,
+feeling it, I knew myself to be a stranger even in the white walled
+room in the old manor house of Lamoral.
+
+It must have been long, long after midnight when I fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+There was a soft white light on walls and ceiling when I awoke. I
+recognized it at once: the reflection from snow. I drew aside both
+curtains and looked out.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful!" I exclaimed, drawing long deep breaths of the fine
+dry air.
+
+It was the so-called "feather-snow" that had fallen during the night.
+It powdered the massive drooping hemlock boughs, the spraying
+underbrush, the stiff-branched spruce and cedars that crowded the tall
+pines, overstretching the steep gable above my windows.
+
+Just below me, about twenty feet from the house, was the creek, a
+backwater of the St. Lawrence, lying clear, unruffled, dark, and
+mirroring the snow-frosted cedars, hemlocks, and spraying underbrush.
+Across its narrow width the woods came down to the water, glowing
+crimson, flaunting orange, shimmering yellow beneath the light snow
+fall. Straight through these woods, and directly opposite my windows,
+a broad lane had been cut, a long wide clearing that led my eyes
+northward, over some open country, to the soft blue line of the
+mountains. I took them to be the Laurentides.
+
+From a distance, in the direction of the village, came the sudden
+muffled clash of bells; then peal followed peal. The sun was fully an
+hour high. As I listened, I heard the soft _drip_, _drip_, that
+sounded the vanishing of the "feather-snow".
+
+I stood long at the window, for I knew this glory was transient and
+before another snowfall every crimson and yellow leaf would have fallen.
+
+While dressing, I took myself to task for the mood of the night before.
+Such thoughts could not serve me in my service to others. I was a
+beneficiary--Mrs. Macleod's word--as well as Jamie and his mother, and
+I determined to make the most of my benefits which, in the morning
+sunshine, seemed many and great. Had I not health, a sheltering room,
+abundant food and good wages?
+
+I could not help wondering whose was the money with which I was to be
+paid. Had it anything to do with Doctor Rugvie's "conscience fund"?
+Did Mrs. Macleod and Jamie bear the expense? Or was it Mr. Ewart's?
+
+"Ewart--Ewart," I said to myself; "why it's the very same I heard in
+the train."
+
+Then and there I made my decision: I would write to Delia Beaseley
+that, as Mrs. Macleod said Doctor Rugvie would be here sometime later
+on in the winter, I would wait until I should have seen him before
+asking him for my papers.
+
+"I shall ask her never to mention my name to him in connection with
+what happened twenty-six years ago; I prefer to tell it myself," was my
+thought; "it is an affair of my own life, and it belongs to me, and to
+no other, to act as pioneer into this part of my experience--"
+
+Marie's rap and entrance with hot water, her voluble surprise at
+finding me up and dressed, and our efforts to understand each other,
+diverted my thoughts. I made out that the family breakfasted an hour
+later, and that it was Marie's duty to make a fire for me every
+morning. I felt almost like apologizing to her for allowing her to do
+it for me, who am able-bodied and not accustomed to be waited on.
+
+I took rain-coat and rubbers, and followed her down stairs. She
+unbolted the great front door and let me out into the early morning
+sunshine. I stood on the upper step to look around me, to take in
+every detail of my surroundings, only guessed at the night before.
+
+Maples and birch mingled with evergreens, crowding close to the house,
+filled the foreground on each side. In front, an unkempt driveway
+curved across a large neglected lawn, set with lindens and pines, and
+lost itself in woods at the left. Between the tree trunks on the lawn,
+at a distance of perhaps five hundred feet, I saw the broad gleaming
+waters of the St. Lawrence broken by two long islands. Behind the
+farther one I saw the smoke of some large steamer.
+
+I looked up at the house. It was a storey and a half, long, low,
+white. The three large windows on each side of the entrance were
+provided with ponderous wooden shutters banded with iron. There were
+four dormers in the gently sloping roof and two large central chimneys,
+besides two or three smaller ones in various parts of the roof. Such
+was the old manor of Lamoral.
+
+A path partly overgrown with bushes led around the house; following it,
+I found that the main building was the least part of the whole
+structure. Two additions, varying in length and height, provided as
+many sharp gables, and gave it the inconsequent charm of the unexpected.
+
+Beyond, in a tangle of cedars and hemlocks, were some low square
+out-buildings with black hip-roofs. Still following the path, that
+turned to the left away from the outbuildings, I found myself in the
+woods that from all sides encroached upon the house. It was a joy to
+be in them at that early hour. The air was filled with sunshine and
+crisp with the breath of vanishing snow. The sky was deep blue as seen
+between the interlocking branches, wet and darkened, of the crowding
+trees.
+
+Before me I saw what looked to be another out-building, also white, and
+evidently the goal for this path through the woods. It proved to be a
+small chapel, half in ruins; the door was time-stained and barred with
+iron; the window glass was gone; only the delicate wooden traceries of
+the frame were intact. I mounted a pile of building stone beneath one
+of the windows, and by dint of standing on tiptoe I could look over the
+window ledge to the farther end of the chapel. To my amazement I saw
+that it had been, in part, a mortuary chapel. Several slabs were lying
+about as if they had been pried off, and the deep stone-lined graves
+were empty. The place fairly gave me the creeps; it was so unexpected
+to find this reminder in the hour of the day's resurrection.
+
+What a wilderness was this Seigniory of Lamoral! And yet--I liked it.
+I liked its wildness, the untrammelled growth of its trees, underbrush
+and vines; the dignified simplicity of its old manor that matched the
+simple sincerity of its present inmates. I felt somehow akin to all of
+it, and I could say with truth, that I should be glad to remain a part
+of it. But I recalled what Mrs. Macleod said about our removal to the
+farm, and that remembrance forbade my indulging in any thoughts of
+permanency.
+
+"Stranger I am in it, and stranger I must remain to it, and at no
+distant time 'move on,' I suppose." This was my thought.
+
+A noise of soft runnings-to-and-fro in the underbrush startled me. I
+jumped down from the pile of stones and started for the house, but not
+before the dogs found me and announced the fact with continued and
+energetic yelpings. Jamie greeted me from the doorway.
+
+"Good morning! You 've stolen a march on me; I wanted to show you the
+chapel in the woods. You will find this old place as good as a two
+volume novel."
+
+"What a wilderness it is!"
+
+"That's what Cale is here for. He is only waiting for Ewart to come to
+bring order out of this chaos. I hope you noticed that cut through the
+woods across the creek?"
+
+"Yes, it's lovely; those are the Laurentians I see, are n't they?"
+
+"You 're right. The cut is Cale's doing. He said the first thing
+necessary was to let in light and air, and provide drainage. But he
+won't do much more till Ewart comes--he does n't want to."
+
+"When is Mr. Ewart coming?"
+
+"We expect him sometime the last of November. He was in England when
+we last heard from him--here's Marie; breakfast is ready." He opened
+the door to the dining-room and Mrs. Macleod greeted me from the head
+of the table.
+
+I loved the dining-room; the side windows looked into a thicket of
+spruce and hemlock, and from the front ones I could see under the
+great-branched lindens to the St. Lawrence.
+
+After breakfast Mrs. Macleod showed me what she called the "offices",
+also the large winter kitchen at the end of the central passageway, and
+the method by which both are heated: a range of curious make is set
+into the wall in such a way that the iron back forms a portion of the
+wall of the passageway.
+
+"We came out here early in the spring and found this arrangement
+perfect for heating the passageway. Angelique has moved in this
+morning from the summer kitchen; she says the first snowfall is her
+warning. I have yet to experience a Canadian winter."
+
+She showed me all over the house. It was simple in arrangement and
+lacked many things to make it comfortable. Above, in the main house,
+there were four large bedrooms with dormer windows and wide shallow
+fireplaces. The walls were whitewashed and sloping as in my room. The
+furniture was sparse but old and substantial. There were no bed
+furnishings or hangings of any kind. All the rooms were laid with rag
+carpets of beautiful coloring and unique design.
+
+"Jamie and I have rooms in the long corridor where yours is," said Mrs.
+Macleod; "it's much cosier there; we actually have curtains to our
+beds, which seems a bit like home."
+
+I was looking out of one of the dormer windows as she spoke, and saw
+little Pete on the white Percheron, galloping clumsily up the driveway.
+He saw me and waved a yellow envelope. I knew that little yellow flag
+to be a telegram. A sudden heart-throb warned me that it might bring
+some word that would shorten my stay in this old manor, and banish all
+three to Doctor Rugvie's farm.
+
+A few minutes afterwards, we heard Jamie's voice calling from the lower
+passageway:
+
+"Mother, where are you?--Oh, you 're there, Marcia!" he said, as I
+leaned over the stair rail. "Here 's a telegram from Ewart, and news
+by letter--no end of it. Come on down."
+
+"Come away," said Mrs. Macleod quickly. I saw her cheeks flush with
+excitement. On entering the living-room we found Jamie in high
+feather. He flourished the telegram joyously.
+
+"Oh, I say, mother, it's great! Ewart telegraphs he will be here by
+the fifteenth of November and that Doctor Rugvie will come with him.
+And here 's a letter from him, written two weeks ago, and he says that
+by now all the cases of books should be in Montreal, plus two French
+coach horses at the Royal Stables. He says Cale is to go up for them.
+He tells me to open the cases, and gives you free hand to furbish up in
+any way you see fit, to make things comfortable for the winter."
+
+"My dear boy, what an avalanche of responsibility! I don't know that I
+feel competent to carry out his wishes." She looked so hopelessly
+helpless that her son laughed outright.
+
+"And when and where do I come in?" I asked merrily; "am I to continue
+to be the cipher I 've been since my arrival?"
+
+"You forgot Marcia, now did n't you, mother?"
+
+"I think I did, dear. Do you really think you can attempt all this?"
+she asked rather anxiously.
+
+"Do it! Of course I can--every bit, if only you will let me."
+
+"Hurrah for the States!" Jamie cried triumphantly; "Marcia, you're a
+trump," he added emphatically.
+
+Mrs. Macleod turned to me, saying half in apology:
+
+"I really have no initiative, my dear; and when so many demands are
+made upon me unexpectedly, I simply can do nothing--just turn on a
+pivot, Jamie says; and the very fact that I am a beneficiary here would
+be an obstacle in carrying out these plans. It is so different in my
+own home in Crieff."
+
+I heard the note of homesickness in her voice, and it dawned upon me
+that there are others in the world who may feel themselves strangers in
+it. My heart went out to her for her loneliness in this far away land
+of French Canada.
+
+"Well, so am I a beneficiary; so is Cale and the whole household; and
+if only you will let me, I 'll make Mr. Ewart himself feel he is a
+beneficiary in his own house," I retorted gayly. "And as for Doctor
+Rugvie, we 'll see whether his farm will have such attractions for him
+after he has been our guest."
+
+Mrs. Macleod laid her hand on my shoulder and smiled, saying with a
+sigh of relief:
+
+"If you will only take the generalship, Marcia, you will find in me a
+good aide-de-camp."
+
+Jamie said nothing, but he gave me a look that was with me all that day
+and many following. It spurred me to do my best.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+How I enjoyed the next three weeks! Jamie said the household activity
+had been "switched off" until the arrival of the letter and telegram
+from Mr. Ewart; these, he declared, made the connection and started a
+current. Its energy made itself pleasurably felt in every member of
+the household. Cale was twice in Montreal, on a personally conducted
+tour, for the coach horses. Big Pete was putting on double windows all
+over the house, stuffing the cracks with moss, piling cords of winter
+wood, hauling grain and, during the long evenings, enjoying himself by
+cutting up the Canadian grown tobacco, mixing it with a little
+molasses, and storing it for his winter solace. Angelique was making
+the kitchen to shine, and Marie was helping Mrs. Macleod.
+
+For the first week Jamie and I lived, in part, on the road between
+Lamoral and Richelieu-en-Bas. With little Pete for driver, an old
+cart-horse and a long low-bodied wagon carried us, sometimes twice a
+day, to the village. We spent hours in the one "goods" shop of the
+place. It was a long, low, dark room stocked to the ceiling on both
+walls and on shelves down the middle, with all varieties of cotton,
+woolen and silk goods, some of modern manufacture but more of past
+decades. In the dim background, a broad flight of stairs, bisecting on
+a landing, led to the gallery where were piled higgledy-piggledy every
+Canadian want in the way of furnishings, from old-fashioned bellows and
+all wool blankets, to Englishware toilet sets that must have found
+storage there for a generation, and no customer till Jamie and I
+appeared to claim them. There, too, I unearthed a bolt of English
+chintz.
+
+In a tiny front room of a tiny house on the marketplace, I found an old
+dealer in skins. He and his wife made some up for me into small
+foot-rugs for the bedrooms. Acting on Angelique's suggestion, I
+visited old Mere Guillardeau's daughter. I found her in her cabin at
+her rag carpet loom, and bought two rolls which she was just about to
+leave with the "goods" merchant to sell on commission. I wanted them
+to make the long passageways more comfortable.
+
+I revelled in each day's work which was as good as play to me. I
+gloried in being able to spend the money for what was needed to make
+the house comfortable, without the burden of having to earn it; just as
+I rejoiced in the abundant wholesome food that now nourished me,
+without impoverishing my pocket. There were times when I found myself
+almost grateful for the discipline and denial of those years in the
+city; for, against that background, my present life seemed one of
+care-free luxury. I began to feel young; and it was a pleasure to know
+I was needed and helpful.
+
+The shortening November days, the strengthening cold, that closed the
+creek and was beginning to bind the river, the gray unlifting skies, I
+welcomed as a foil to the cosy evenings in the dining-room where Mrs.
+Macleod and I sewed and stitched, and planned for the various rooms,
+Jamie smoked and jeered or encouraged, and the four dogs watched every
+movement on our part, with an ear cocked for little Pete who was
+cracking butternuts in the kitchen.
+
+The life in the manor was so peaceful, so sheltered, so normal. Every
+member of the household was busy with work during the day, and the
+night brought with it well-earned rest, and a sense of comfort and
+security in the flame-lighted rooms.
+
+Often after going up to my bedroom, which Marie kept acceptably warm
+for me, I used to sit before the open grate stove for an hour before
+going to bed, just to enjoy the white-walled peace around me, the night
+silence without, the restful quiet of the old manor within. At such
+times I found myself dreading the "foreign invasion", as I termed in
+jest the coming of the owner of Lamoral and Doctor Rugvie. To the
+first I gave little thought; the second was rarely absent from my
+consciousness. "How will it all end?" I asked myself time and time
+again while counting off the days before his arrival. What should I
+find out? What would the knowledge lead to?
+
+"Who am I? Who--who?" I said to myself over and over again during
+those three weeks of preparation. And at night, creeping into my
+bed--than which there could be none better, for it was in three layers:
+spring, feather bed and hair mattress--and drawing up the blankets and
+comforter preparatory for the sharp frost of the early morning, I cried
+out in revolt:
+
+"I don't care a rap who I may prove to be! If only this peaceful sense
+of security will last, I want to remain Marcia Farrell to the end."
+
+But I knew it could not last. I hinted as much to Jamie Macleod only
+three days before the fifteenth of November. We were making our last
+trip to the village for some extra supplies for Angelique. We were
+alone, and I was driving.
+
+"Jamie," I said suddenly, after the old and trustworthy cart-horse,
+newly and sharply shod for the ice, had taken us safely over the frozen
+creek, "I wish this might last, don't you?"
+
+He looked at me a little doubtfully.
+
+"You mean the kind of life we 're living now? Yes,"--he
+hesitated,--"for some reasons I do; but there are others, and for those
+it is better that the change should come."
+
+"What others?" I was at times boldly inquisitive of Jamie; I took
+liberties with his youth.
+
+"You would n't understand them if I told you. Wait till the others
+come and you 'll see, in part, why."
+
+"Do you know," I continued, my words following my thought, "that you
+'ve never told me a thing about Doctor Rugvie and Mr. Ewart?"
+
+"Not told you anything? Why, I thought I 'd said enough that first
+evening for you to know as much of them as you can without seeing them."
+
+"No, you have n't; you 've been like a clam so far as telling me
+anything about their looks, or age, or--or anything--"
+
+"Oh, own up, now; you mean you want to know if they 're married or
+single?" He was beginning to tease.
+
+"Of course I do. This old manor has had a good many surprises for me
+already in these three weeks, you, for one--"
+
+He threw back his head, laughing heartily.
+
+"--And the 'elderly Scotchwoman', and Cale for a third; and if you
+would give me a hint as to the matrimonial standing of the two from
+over-seas, I should feel fortified against any future petticoat
+invasion of their wives, or children, or sweethearts."
+
+Jamie laughed uproariously.
+
+"Oh, Guy Mannering, hear her! I thought you said you saw Doctor Rugvie
+in the hospital."
+
+"So I did; but it was only a glimpse, and a long way off, as he was
+passing through another ward."
+
+He turned to me quickly. "It's Doctor Rugvie you want to know about
+then? Why about him, rather than Ewart?"
+
+"Because,--('Be cautious,' I warned myself),--I happen to have known of
+him."
+
+"Well, fire away, and I 'll answer to the best of my knowledge. I
+believe a woman lives, moves and has her being in details," he said a
+little scornfully.
+
+"Have you just found that out?" I retorted. "Well, you have n't cut
+all your wisdom teeth yet. And now, as you seem to think it's Doctor
+Rugvie I 'm most interested in, we 'll begin with your Mr. Ewart." I
+changed my tactics, for I feared I had shown too much eagerness for
+information about Doctor Rugvie.
+
+"My Mr. Ewart!" He smiled to himself in a way that exasperated me.
+
+"Yes, your Mr. Ewart. How old is he? For all you 've told me he might
+be a grandfather."
+
+"Ewart--a grandfather!" Again he laughed, provokingly as I thought. I
+kept silence.
+
+"Honestly, Marcia, I don't know Ewart's age, and"--he was suddenly
+serious--"for all I know, he may be a grandfather."
+
+"For all you know! What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean I never seriously gave Gordon Ewart's age a thought. When I am
+with him he seems, somehow, as young as I--younger in one way, for he
+has such splendid health. But I suppose he really is old enough to be
+my father--forty-five or six, possibly; I don't know."
+
+"Is he married?"
+
+Jamie brought his hand down upon his knee with such a whack that the
+old cart-horse gave a queer hop-skip-and-jump. We both laughed at his
+antic.
+
+"There you have me, Marcia. I 'm floored in your first round of
+questions. I don't know exactly--"
+
+"Exactly! It seems to me that, marriage being an exact science, if a
+man is married why he is--and no ifs and buts."
+
+"That's so." Jamie spoke seriously and nodded wisely. "I never heard
+it put in just those words, 'exact science', but come to think of it,
+you 're right."
+
+"Well, is he?"
+
+"Is he what?"
+
+"Married. Are we to expect later on a Mrs. Ewart at Lamoral?"
+
+"Great Scott, no!" said Jamie emphatically. "Look here, Marcia, I hate
+to tell tales that possibly, and probably, have no foundation--"
+
+"Who wants you to tell tales?" I said indignantly. "I won't hear you
+now whatever you say. You think a woman has no honor in such things."
+
+"Oh, well, you 'll have to hear it sometime, I suppose, in the
+village--"
+
+"I won't--and I won't hear you either," I said, and closed my ears with
+my fingers; but in vain, for he fairly shouted at me:
+
+"I say, I don't know whether he 's married or not--"
+
+"And I say I don't care--"
+
+"Well, you heard that anyway," he shouted again diabolically; "here 's
+another: they say--"
+
+"Keep still; the whole village can hear you--"
+
+"We 're not within a mile of the village; take your fingers out of your
+ears if you don't want me to shout."
+
+"Not till you stop shouting." He lowered his voice then, and I
+unstopped my ears.
+
+"I say, Marcia, I believe it's all a rotten lot of damned gossip--"
+
+"Why, Jamie Macleod! I never heard you use so strong an expression."
+
+"I don't care; it's my way of letting off steam. Mother is n't round."
+
+We both laughed and grew good-humored again.
+
+"I never thought a Scotsman, who takes porridge regularly at nine
+o'clock every evening, could swear--"
+
+"Oh, did n't you! Where are _your_ wisdom teeth? Live and learn,
+Marcia."
+
+"Quits, Jamie." He chuckled.
+
+"Honestly, Marcia, I could n't answer you in any other way. Ewart has
+never opened his lips to me about his intimate personal life; he has no
+need to--for, of course, there is a great difference in our ages even
+if he is such a companion. And then, you know, I only saw him that one
+week in Crieff when he was with us, and I was a little chap--it was
+just after father left us--and he was no end good to me. And the
+second time was this year in June when he stayed a week here and then
+took me up to Andre. He was with us a month in camp; that is where I
+came to know him so well. He 's an Oxford man, and that's what I was
+aiming at when--when my health funked. He seems to understand how hard
+it is to me to give it all up. I don't object to telling you it was
+Doctor Rugvie who was going to put me through."
+
+"Oh, Jamie!" It was all I could say, for I had known during our few
+weeks of an intimacy, which circumstances warranted, that some great
+disappointment had been his--wholly apart from his being handicapped by
+his inheritance.
+
+"About Ewart," he went on; "you know a village is a village, and a dish
+of gossip is meat and drink for all alike. It's only a rumor anyway,
+but it crops out at odd times and in the queerest places that he was
+married and divorced, and that he has a son living whom he is educating
+in Europe. I don't believe one bally word of it, and I don't want you
+to."
+
+"Well, I won't to please you."
+
+"Now, if you want to know about Doctor Rugvie, I can tell you. He
+lives, you might say, in the open. Ewart strikes me as the kind that
+takes to covert more. Doctor Rugvie is older too."
+
+"He must be fifty if he 's a day."
+
+"He 's fifty-four--and he is a widower, a straight out and out one."
+
+"I know that."
+
+"Oh, you do! Who told you?"
+
+"Delia Beaseley."
+
+"Is she a widow?" Jamie asked slyly.
+
+"Now, no nonsense, Jamie Macleod." I spoke severely.
+
+"Nonsense! I was only putting two and two together logically; you said
+the Doctor trusted her--"
+
+"And well he may. No, she is n't a widow," I said shortly.
+
+"That settles it; you need n't be so touchy about it."
+
+"Has he any children?" I asked, ignoring the admonition.
+
+"No; that's his other great sorrow. He lost both his son and daughter.
+Do you know, I can't help thinking he 's doing all this for them?"
+
+"You mean the farm arrangement?"
+
+"Yes, and us--he 's been such a friend to mother and me. Oh, he 's
+great!" He was lost suddenly in one of his silences. I had already
+learned never to permit myself the liberty of breaking them.
+
+We drove into the village, and, while Jamie was with the grocer,
+"stoking ", as he put it for the coming week, I was wondering what to
+make of Delia Beaseley's theory about the "conscience money" and its
+connection with the farm. Was it to aid in carrying out the Doctor's
+plans for helpfulness? From what Jamie Macleod had told me, I came to
+the conclusion that neither he nor his mother knew anything of _that_
+financial source. How strange it seemed to know of this tangled skein
+of circumstance, the right thread of which I could not grasp!
+
+While thinking of this, I became aware of the noise of a cheap
+graphophone carrying a melody with its raucous voice; the sounds came
+from a cabaret just below the steamboat landing-place. I listened
+closely to catch the words; the melody, even in this cheap
+reproduction, was a beautiful one.
+
+"_O Canada, pays de mon amour_--"
+
+I caught those words distinctly, and was amusing myself with this
+expression of patriotism when Jamie came out of the shop.
+
+"What's up?" he asked, noticing my listening attitude.
+
+"Hark!" He listened intently.
+
+"Oh, that!" he said with a smile of recognition as he stepped into the
+wagon; "you should hear Ewart sing it. I 've heard him in camp and
+seen old Andre fairly weep at hearing it. I see you are discovering
+Richelieu-en-Bas; but you should make acquaintance with the apple-boat."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"It's a month too late now for it; it moors just below the cabaret by
+the lowest level of the bank. It's a fine old sloop, and the hull is
+filled with the reddest, roundest, biggest apples that you 've ever
+seen. I come down here once a day regularly while she is here, just to
+get the fragrance into my nostrils, to walk the narrow plank to her
+deck, and touch--and taste to my satisfaction. We put in ten barrels
+at the manor."
+
+I could see that picture in my mind's eye: the old apple-boat, the
+heaped up apples, the hull glowing with their color, the green river
+bank, the blue waters of the St. Lawrence, the islands for a
+background--and the October air spicy with the fragrance of Pomona's
+blessed gift!
+
+We put the old cart-horse through his best paces in order to be at home
+before sunset. We had all the books to arrange in the next two days
+for we had left them until the last. Pete was opening the boxes when
+we came away.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+After supper we went over the house to see the various furnishings by
+firelight. Pete had built roaring fires in each bedroom to take off
+the chill, and was to keep them going till the rooms should be occupied
+on the night of the fifteenth; this was necessary against the
+increasing cold.
+
+I confess I had worked to some purpose, and Mrs. Macleod and every
+member of the household seconded me with might and main. Now, in a
+body, the eight of us trooped from room to room, to enjoy the sight of
+the labor of our hands. Angelique was stolidly content. Marie was
+volubly enthusiastic. Cale, his hands in his pockets, took in all with
+keen appreciative eyes, and expressed his satisfaction in a few words:
+
+"'T ain't every man can get a welcome home like this."
+
+"You 're right, Cale," said Jamie, "and there are n't so many men it's
+worth doing all this for."
+
+We stood together, admiring,--and I was happy. I had spent but
+eighty-seven dollars, "_pieces_", and the rooms did look so inviting!
+The windows and beds were hung with the English chintz, which was old
+fashioned, a mixture of red and white with a touch of gray. I had sent
+to Montreal for fine lamb's wool coverlets for every bed. The village
+furnished plain deal tables for writing. Jamie stained them dark oak,
+and I put on desk pads and writing utensils. Two easy chairs cushioned
+with the chintz were in each room. The old English-ware toilet sets of
+white and gold looked really stately on the old-fashioned stands. Mrs.
+Macleod sewed, with Marie's help, until she had provided every window
+with an inner set of white dimity curtains, every washstand, every
+bureau and table with a cover. She made sheets by the dozen which
+Angelique and Marie laundered. Pete had polished the fine old brass
+andirons, that furnished each fireplace, till they shone. My bedroom
+foot-rugs were pronounced a success, and graced the rag carpets beside
+each bed; they were of coarse gray and white fur. Marie had found in
+the garret some long-unused white china candlesticks of curious design,
+like those in my room; a pair stood on each bureau.
+
+We were standing about in the Doctor's room, admiring. The firelight
+played on the white walls, deepened the red in the hangings to crimson,
+shone in the ball-topped andirons, and lighted the pleased satisfied
+faces about me. A sudden thought struck a chill to my heart:
+
+"What a contrast between this room and that poor basement in V----
+Court where, twenty-six years ago, the man who is going to enjoy this
+comfort fought for my mother's life, and succeeded in giving me mine!"
+
+I left the room abruptly. Jamie called after me:
+
+"Where are you going, Marcia?"
+
+"Down stairs to begin with the books."
+
+"Hold on till I come; you can't handle them alone. Cale, put the
+screens before the fires. Come on down, mother."
+
+The passageway was stacked high with books along the walls. Cale had
+brought them in, and these were not the half. I was looking at them
+when the others came down.
+
+"You took them out, Cale, how many do you think there are?"
+
+"I cal'lated 'bout three hundred in a box. We 've opened five, and
+there 's two we ain't opened."
+
+Jamie started to gather up an armful, but Cale took them from him. His
+tenderness and care of him were wonderful to see.
+
+"No yer don't! If there 's to be any fetchin' and carryin', I 'm the
+one ter do it."
+
+"And I 'm the one to place and classify. I want to prove that I did
+n't work five years in the New York Library for nothing." I stayed
+with Cale while he was gathering up the books.
+
+"I cal'late you was paid a good price fer handlin' other folks'
+brains." Cale spoke tentatively, and I humored him; I like to give
+news of myself piece-meal.
+
+"Of course, I did, Cale; I had nine dollars a week."
+
+"Hm--pretty small wages fer a treadmill like thet!" He spoke almost
+scornfully.
+
+"Oh, that was better than I had in the beginning. What would you say
+to four dollars a week, Cale?"
+
+"With room and keep?"
+
+"Not a bit of it; board and room and clothes had to come out of that."
+
+"Hm--". He looked at me keenly, but made no reply. "You tend ter
+putting 'em on the shelves, an' I 'll take 'em all in. 'T ain't fit
+work fer women, all such liftin'; books has heft, if what's in 'em is
+pretty light weight sometimes."
+
+"What would you say about the owner of all these books, Cale? Let's
+guess what he 's like," I said, laughing, as I lingered to hear what he
+would say. But he was non-committal.
+
+"I could n't guess fer I ain't seen the insides. I 'm glad he 's
+coming, though; I want ter get down to some real work 'fore long. Wal,
+we 'll see what he 's like in two days now. Pete an' I have got to
+drive over ter Richelieu-en-Haut--durn me, if I can see why they don't
+call it Upper Richelieu!--an' meet the Quebec express."
+
+"They won't get here till long after dark, then."
+
+"No.--Here, jest put a couple more on each arm, will you?"
+
+I accommodated him, and we went into the living-room. Jamie looked
+rather glum. Sometimes, I know, he feels as if he had no place in all
+this preparation.
+
+"Now, Jamie, let me plan--" I began, but he interrupted me:
+
+"Maitresse femme," he muttered; then he smiled on me, but I paid no
+heed.
+
+"You sit at the library table; Cale will bring in the books and pile
+them round it; you will sort them according to subject, and I will put
+them on the shelves."
+
+"Go ahead, I 'm ready."
+
+To help us, we pressed Angelique and Marie into service. In a little
+while we had five hundred books piled about the table. These were as
+many as Mrs. Macleod and I could handle for the evening, so we
+dismissed the others.
+
+It was pleasant work, filling the empty shelves; moreover, I was in my
+element. It was good to see books about again; I owed so much to them.
+
+"This is what the room needed," I said, placing the last of the
+historical works on a lower shelf.
+
+"Yes; what a difference it makes, doesn't it? Oh, I say, mother, here
+'s one of your late favorites!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Memoirs of Doctor Barnardo."
+
+"I must read them again."
+
+"Who was Doctor Barnardo?" I asked; I was curious.
+
+"If you don't know of him and his London work, then you have a treat
+before you in this book." Mrs. Macleod spoke with unusual enthusiasm.
+
+"And he was Ewart's friend too. I might have known I should find this
+among his books. It always seems to me as if it were 'books and the
+man'. Show me what books are a man's familiars, and I 'll tell you his
+characteristics."
+
+"No, really, can you do that?" I asked, surprised at this dictum from
+such youthful lips.
+
+"Yes, in a general way I can. Look at this for instance." He held out
+a volume. "The man who has this book for an inner possession, and also
+on his shelves, is a thinker, broad-minded, scholarly, human to an
+intense degree--"
+
+"What is it?" I said, impatient to see.
+
+"Something you don't know, I 'll wager; it is n't a woman's book."
+
+"Now, Jamie Macleod, read your characteristics of men, if you can, by
+the books they read and love, but, please, please, keep within your
+masculine 'sphere of influence', and don't presume to say what is or
+what is n't a woman's book. I know a good deal more about those than
+you do--what is the book anyway?" I confess his overbearing ways about
+women provoke me at times. But he paid no heed to my little temper.
+
+"It's dear old Murray's 'Rise of the Greek Epic'--it comes next to the
+Bible. It's an English book; you would n't be apt to read it."
+
+"Oh, would n't I?" I exclaimed, and determined another forty-eight
+hours should not pass without my having made myself familiar with the
+rise of the Greek epic, and the fall of it, for that matter. I
+swallowed my indignation, for the truth was I had not heard of it.
+
+"And here 's another--American, this time, and right up to date. I 'll
+wager you never heard of this either. Would n't I know just by the
+title it would be Ewart's!"
+
+"How would you know?"
+
+"Oh, because any man of his calibre would have it."
+
+And I was no wiser than before. I was beginning to realize that there
+was a whole world of experience of which I knew nothing; that, in my
+struggle to exist in the conditions of the city so far away, I had
+grown self-centered and, in consequence, narrow, not open to the world
+of others. Jamie Macleod, with his twenty-three years, was opening my
+inward eye. I can't say that what I saw of myself was pleasing.
+
+"What is the book?" I asked, after a moment's silence in which Mrs.
+Macleod was busy with the "Memoirs", and Jamie was looking over titles.
+
+"'The Anthracite Coal Industry'."
+
+"Well, give it to me; I 'll classify it with 'Economics and Sociology'.
+There will be more of this kind, I 'm sure. Let's go on with the work
+or we shan't be through before midnight. Look up the 'Lives' and
+'Letters', and 'Autobiographies' next. I want to put them on the upper
+shelf--"
+
+"I know;" he nodded approvingly; "so they will be at your elbow when,
+of a winter's evening, you want to reach out your hand, without much
+trouble, and find a companion. Well, give me a little time to look
+them over."
+
+I watched him for a few minutes, as he took up book after book,
+examined the title, sometimes turned the leaves rapidly, and again
+opened to some particular page and lost himself for a moment. Jamie
+was showing me another side than that to which I had grown accustomed
+in our daily intercourse. I sat down while I was waiting, for I was
+tired. Mrs. Macleod was reading.
+
+"Are you ready now?" I asked, after waiting a quarter of an hour, and
+still no sound from behind the pile of books across the table.
+
+"M-hm, in a minute."
+
+His mother looked up, and we both saw that he was absorbed in
+something. Mrs. Macleod smiled indulgently.
+
+"That's always his way with a book--lost to everything around him. He
+would n't hear a word we said if we were to talk here for an hour."
+
+"I 'll make him hear." I spoke positively, and again Mrs. Macleod
+smiled.
+
+"Jamie--I would like a few books, the 'Lives' and 'Letters'."
+
+For answer he burst into a roar that roused the dogs under the table.
+He slapped his hand on his knee, threw his leg over the arm of the easy
+chair, and settled into an attitude that indicated, there would be no
+more work gotten out of him for the rest of the evening. Suddenly he
+shouted again.
+
+"Here 's a man for you!" he said joyfully.
+
+"Who?" I demanded, but might have spared myself the question. There
+was another interval of silence, followed by an uproarious outburst:
+
+"Oh, I do love Stevenson's 'damns'! They 're great! Hear this--"
+
+He read a portion of a letter which included a choicely selected
+expletive.
+
+"Jamie!" It was a decided protest on his mother's part; but I laughed
+aloud, for I, too, knew what he meant. I, too, loved the varied and
+picturesque "damns" of those letters that had been so much to me in the
+past few years. As I looked at Jamie, another Scotsman, with the thin
+bright eager face, I knew at once that, without realizing it, I had
+connected his appearance with that of Robert Louis Stevenson, his
+countryman. And how like the two spirits were!
+
+"I wonder," I said to myself, "I wonder if this same Jamie Macleod also
+has the inner impulse to write!" And, having said that in thought, I
+looked at Jamie Macleod through different glasses.
+
+We let him mercifully alone; but I went on with my work, reading
+titles, classifying, placing, finding genuine pleasure in speculating
+on the "calibre" of the owner.
+
+At nine, Marie entered with the porridge; Cale followed her.
+
+"Here endeth the first chapter," I said to Cale. "We 'll try to get
+all the books on the shelves to-morrow; then we can have one day of
+rest before they come."
+
+"You kinder speak as if two extra men in the fam'ly would make some
+difference," said Cale, smiling down at me from his place by the mantel.
+
+"It will make a difference I shall not like, Cale. There 'll be no
+more cosy evening-ends with porridge, after the lord of the manor
+comes."
+
+"What's that you say?" Jamie was roused at last. I thought I could do
+it.
+
+"Nothing in particular; only Cale and I were saying how different it
+would be when Mr. Ewart comes."
+
+"You bet it will!" said Jamie emphatically. "You won't know this
+house,"--he took up his porridge,--"and Ewart won't know it either
+since you 've had your hand on it, Marcia." This I perceived to be a
+sop.
+
+"Thet's so," said Cale, with emphasis. "I never see what a difference
+all thet calico an' fixin's has made; an' my room looks as warm with
+them red blankets and foot-rugs! It beats me how a woman can take an
+old house like this, an' make it look as if it had been lived in
+always. I thank _you_," he said, looking hard at me, "fer all the
+comfort you 've worked inter my room."
+
+"You have n't thanked me the way I want to be thanked, Cale," I said,
+smiling up at him.
+
+"I done the best I could," he replied with such a crestfallen air that
+we laughed.
+
+"The only way you can thank me is to call me 'Marcia'. I 've wanted to
+ask you to, ever since our first drive together up from the steamboat
+landing."
+
+"Sho!--Have you?"
+
+He looked at me intently for a minute; then he spoke slowly and we all
+knew with deep feeling: "You 're name 's all right; but you've made
+such a lot of happiness in this house since you come, I 'd like ter
+have my own name fer you--"
+
+"What's that?" I said.
+
+"I 'd like ter call you 'Happy', if you don't mind."
+
+I know I turned white, but I controlled myself. Was it possible he
+knew! It could not be. I dared not assume that he knew and refuse
+him. I made an effort to answer in my usual voice:
+
+"Of course I don't, Cale--only, I hardly deserve it; all I 've done is
+just in 'the day's work', you know."
+
+"Not all," he said, putting down his emptied bowl and turning to the
+door; "no wages thet I ever heard of will buy good-will an' the
+happiness you 've put inter all this work."
+
+"Oh, Cale, I don't deserve this--" But he was gone without the usual
+good night to any of us.
+
+"You do too," said Jamie shortly, and, reaching for his pipe, went off
+into the dining-room.
+
+Mrs. Macleod laid her hand on my shoulder. "They mean it, Marcia; good
+night, my dear."
+
+For the first time she leaned over and kissed me. I ran up to my room
+without any good night on my part. I needed to be alone after what
+Cale had said. Did he know? _Could_ he know? Or was it merely chance
+that he chose that name? Over and over again I asked myself these
+questions--and could find no answer.
+
+Late at night I made ready for bed. I drew the curtains and looked
+out. The window ledge was piled two inches high with snow; against the
+panes I saw the soft white swirl and heard the hushed, intermittent
+brushing of the drifting storm.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+The snow fell lightly but steadily all night and the next day. Just
+after sunset the leaden skies cleared, and the starred firmamental blue
+of a Canadian winter night replaced them. Before six, Cale and Peter
+were off on their nine mile drive to Richelieu-en-Haut to meet the
+Quebec express. They drove in a low comfortable double "pung", lined
+with fur rugs and piled with robes; a skeleton truck trailed behind for
+luggage. The yoke of bells jangled cheerfully in the dry crisping air,
+for the Percherons were lively--the French coach horses were not ready
+for the northern snows--and freely tossed their heads as they played a
+little before plunging into the light drifts.
+
+After supper I went to my room, making the excuse that I had a bit of
+work to finish. All my thoughts centered on Doctor Rugvie whose coming
+was so momentous to me. While I sewed, I made a dozen plans for
+approaching him on the subject of the papers, and rejected each in turn
+as not serving my purpose. Finally, my work being finished, I sat
+quiet, with a tensity of quietness that showed itself in my listening
+attitude and tightly clasped hands. It was nearly time for the sound
+of the returning bells. At last,--it was nearly nine,--I heard them
+close to the house and, hearing them, I knew intuitively that my life,
+hitherto so detached from others, was about to be linked through
+strange circumstance--the Doctor's coming--to some unknown personality
+in the past. I knew this; how I knew, I cannot say.
+
+I heard Jamie calling to me from the lower passageway. I opened my
+door but did not cross the threshold. I stood listening.
+
+Suddenly the dogs went mad with joy. I heard Jamie's voice in joyous
+greeting. I heard men's voices, Cale's loudest in giving some order to
+Peter; then Mrs. Macleod's. The confusion grew apace when Angelique
+and Marie joined their French welcome to the English one. Listening
+so, I felt shut out from it all; felt myself a stranger again in the
+environment to which I had so soon wonted myself. Then I heard Jamie's
+voice calling:
+
+"Marcia, Marcia Farrell, where are you?"
+
+He was at the foot of the stairs looking up at me as I came down, and
+scarcely waited for me to reach the last step before saying:
+
+"Ewart, this is Miss Farrell; Marcia--my friend, the 'lord of the
+manor'." He spoke with such teasing emphasis that I could have boxed
+his ears.
+
+I think the "lord of the manor" intended to shake hands with me; at
+least, his hand was promptly extended; but before I could take it, it
+dropped at his side, for Jamie was claiming me for the second
+introduction:
+
+"Allow me to present to you the result of the advertisement, Doctor!"
+
+"What?" The pleasant voice held a note of surprised interrogation. My
+hand was taken in a firm professional clasp, and I looked up into the
+face of the great surgeon who had troubled himself with me so far as to
+give me the chance to exist. For the life of me, I could not find the
+right word of welcome in these circumstances, and the only result of
+the instantaneous mental effort to find it was, that those words of
+Delia Beaseley's, which I heard as I was regaining consciousness in
+V---- Court: "She's the living image", flashed into my consciousness
+with the illuminating suddenness of a re-appearing electric signboard.
+And, seeing them, rather than hearing them, I looked up into the fine
+homely face and smiled my welcome. It was the only one I had at my
+command just then.
+
+Something indefinable, intangible, perhaps best expressed as the
+visible diffused wave-current of consciousness' wireless telegraphy,
+showed in his face. Puzzled, concentrated thought was evident from the
+sudden contraction of the forehead. Nor did the look "clear up"; it
+remained as he greeted me--and I knew he had not the key to interpret
+the message, sent thus to him across an interval of twenty-six years.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Macleod, it's surely a success," he said, releasing my hand.
+
+"Success? Oh, no end!" Jamie interrupted him in his joyous
+excitement. "You 'll see!"
+
+"Come, Boy, give your mother a chance," said the Doctor, laughing.
+
+"We have practical witness that Marcia is all that Jamie claims she
+is." Mrs. Macleod spoke enthusiastically for her, and to cover my
+embarrassment I suggested that the Doctor should go at once to his room.
+
+"Oh, she 's canny! She wants you to see the improvements," Jamie
+cried, as he rushed upstairs two steps at a time after Mr. Ewart who,
+attended by the dogs, was investigating the region of the bedrooms. I
+think he doubted their comfort. The Doctor followed, and soon I heard
+his voice praising everything, with Jamie's lending a running
+accompaniment of jesting comment. It occurred to me then, that I had
+not heard the "lord of the manor" utter a word. Cale and Peter came in
+with the trunks, chests, gun-cases, with bags of ice-hockey sticks,
+kits, snow-shoes and skis--indeed, all the sporting paraphernalia for a
+Canadian winter.
+
+Within ten minutes, my clean passageway, laid with the brand-new rag
+carpet, was piled high with these masculine belongings, and the snow
+from eight masculine boots was melting and wetting the pretty strip
+into dismal sogginess! I began to understand why the passageways in
+the manor were laid with flagging, and I determined I would have the
+lower carpet taken up in the morning, that Jamie might not laugh at me.
+
+As Cale set down the last chest, he must have taken note of my despair,
+for he spoke encouragingly:
+
+"Makes a lot of difference in a house havin' so many men folks round."
+
+"I should think so, Cale, look at that carpet!"
+
+"Sho! It don't look more 'n fit for mop-rags, an' they in the house
+scurce ten minutes. Guess 't 'll have ter come up ter-morrer, an' I
+'ll see that 't is up."
+
+"And it will stay up; but it did look so neat and cosy--and now see
+that!" I included in a glance the entire mass of luggage and sporting
+outfit.
+
+"Good deal of truck for one man, but I guess he can handle it all;
+seems a likely enough sort of feller. I had to introduce myself, you
+might say, for he an' Pete was talkin' so fast in French that I could
+n't get in a word edgewise at furst. You 'd have thought the old manor
+barns was afire, and they was trying to get the hosses out. I managed
+to have my say, though, 'fore we struck the river road."
+
+"I have n't had a good look at him--Jamie did n't give me the chance."
+
+"Wal, I can't say as I have neither. He 's pretty quiet, but I noticed
+he hit the nail on the head every time he did speak. The one they call
+Doctor Rugvie is some different; he was like a schoolboy let loose when
+he got into the pung. Guess Mr. Ewart won't wait long 'fore he 'll
+have a sleigh, as is a sleigh, to match the French coach hosses, from
+what I heard. The Doctor had his little joke about a pung for a manor
+house. I 've got to go over again ter-morrer to get the rest of the
+truck."
+
+"Oh, Cale, more!"
+
+He nodded, and, with a significant upward motion of his thumb, made his
+exit at the kitchen end. I slipped into the dining-room to see that
+all was in readiness for the extra supper. I actually did not know
+what to do with myself, what was my place, or where I belonged in the
+household, now that the owner of Lamoral and his friend were here. I
+looked about: the flames from the pine cones were leaping in the
+fireplace, the curtains were drawn close, the room was filled with a
+resinous forest fragrance, for I had placed large branches of white
+pine in some antiquated milk jugs of glazed red clay, which I found in
+one of the unused dairy rooms, and set them on each end of the mantel.
+
+When I heard Jamie and the Doctor on the stairs, I left by way of the
+kitchen and, passing through that and the bare offices between it and
+the living-room, slipped into the latter to inspect it. Here also the
+fire was blazing, the wax candles in the sconces were lighted. The
+yellow sofa was drawn in front of the fireplace, but good eight feet
+from it. At either end were the easy chairs, and at the right of the
+chimney, nearest the door into the kitchen offices, was a low ample tea
+table covered with a white linen cloth, set with plain white china, a
+nickel-plated tea-kettle and lamp. Behind the sofa, along the length
+of its straight long back, stood the library table furnished with
+writing pad and inkstand, a wooden bookrack filled with Jamie's
+favorites and mine, and a bowl of red geranium blossoms. I was
+satisfied with my work.
+
+Around the room, even between the windows, the more than two thousand
+books in their cases formed a rich dado of finely blended colors--the
+deep royal blue and dark reds in morocco, the yellow-white imitation of
+parchment,--parchment itself in several instances,--the light faun and
+reddish brown of half calf; even shagreen was there, and the limp
+bronze-gilt leather of Chinese bindings. Jamie told me that many of
+the editions were rare.
+
+It seemed to me in my ignorance, that there could be no more beautiful
+room than this simple, book-lined, wood-panelled parlor in the old
+manor of Lamoral. I felt an ownership in it, for I had helped in part
+to create the intimate atmosphere that I knew must be like
+home,--something I had dreamed of, but never expected to make real.
+The owner, whose voice I heard for the first time talking to the dogs
+as he came down stairs, presented himself to me at that moment as an
+outsider, an intruder. I waited until I heard him close the
+dining-room door; then I went up stairs again to my own room.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+I did not light the candles. The firelight showed through the mica in
+the stove grate. I sat down by the window and looked out. A full moon
+shone high and clear above the dark irregular outline of the massed
+treetops in the woods across the creek, now covered with ice and
+blanketed with white. The great hemlock branches, crowding close to
+the house, were drooping, snow-laden. The moonlight, reflected in
+them, flashed diamond dust from the upper branches; beneath the lower
+ones it cast violet shadows on the snow.
+
+"What next?" I was thinking, and might have spared myself the trouble
+of that thought, for just then Mrs. Macleod knocked at the door and
+came in.
+
+"In the dark? Marcia, my dear, we need you down stairs."
+
+"Of course I 'll come, Mrs. Macleod, if you wish me to, but I don't
+quite see how, as your companion and assistant, I am needed now down
+stairs. I shall feel as if I were not earning my salt, just playing
+lady."
+
+Now, can any one tell me why the spirit of revolt at the change in my
+position in this house, through the coming of the owner and his friend,
+should have materialized in just this ungracious speech? I was ashamed
+of myself the moment I had given it utterance. Such a mean sentiment!
+Not worthy of a woman of twenty-six. I was thankful she could not see
+my face.
+
+She hesitated before replying. When she spoke I heard a note of
+displeasure in her voice.
+
+"I need you now, perhaps, more than before. With these guests in the
+house, there is more responsibility than during the last three weeks."
+
+"If only they _were_ guests!" The perverse spirit was still at work
+within me. "But we are the guests now, and I don't quite see what my
+work is to be; my position seems to be an anomalous one."
+
+"It may seem so to you," she replied quietly. I knew by the tone of
+her voice she was exercising great self control, and that had the
+candles been lighted I should have seen her cheeks flush a deep pink;
+"but evidently it is perfectly clear to Doctor Rugvie. The position is
+his creation. I think you can trust him.-- Are you coming?"
+
+The rebuke was well deserved, and, in accepting it, my respect for her
+was doubled.
+
+"Just let me get my work," I said, fumbling in my basket for some petty
+crochet. She said nothing, and in silence we went down stairs
+together, she little realizing that, in referring to Doctor Rugvie as
+the one to whom I was indebted for being here, she twisted some fibre
+in my mental make-up and caused it to vibrate painfully. Had I but
+known it, I had been keyed to this moment ever since hearing Delia
+Beaseley's account of my mother's death--keyed too long and at too high
+a pitch. Something had to give way; hence my mood of apparent revolt,
+because I could not live in unchanged circumstances in this manor of
+Lamoral.
+
+As we entered the living-room the three pipes were in full blast.
+
+"Permitted?" said the Doctor, waving his towards us as he rose. Mr.
+Ewart, also, rose and came towards us. In the manner of his action I
+saw that, already, he had taken his rightful place as host. He held
+out his hand in greeting, and I took it.
+
+"Sit here, Miss Farrell, by me," he motioned to the corner of the sofa
+next his easy chair, "and tell me how you have managed to accomplish a
+home--in three weeks. Mrs. Macleod and Jamie have been giving you all
+the credit for this transformation. How did you do it?"
+
+He put me at ease at once, for what he said sounded both cordial and
+sincere. The tone of voice challenged me instantly to be as sincere
+with him.
+
+"Perhaps it's because I never have had the chance to make what you call
+a 'home' before, and besides," I looked up from my sofa corner and
+dared to say the truth, "it was such a pleasure to spend some money
+that I did n't have to earn by hard work; this was play for me. But,
+truly, Mrs. Macleod and Jamie are not fair to themselves; they not only
+helped, but inspired me."
+
+"Oh, woman, woman!" said the Doctor, laughing; "shopping is the
+characteristic symptom of the sex!"
+
+"Talk about inspiration," said Jamie; "Marcia put mother and me through
+our best paces. I can tell you we conjugated: I must hustle, Thou must
+hustle, He must hustle, We must hustle, You must hustle, They must
+hustle, for three weeks," he said emphatically.
+
+"You seem to have thriven on it," said the Doctor.
+
+"Your work was in the New York Library, Miss Farrell?" It was Mr.
+Ewart who spoke.
+
+"Yes, in a branch; I was there for five years."
+
+"Who told you that, Gordon?" Jamie demanded.
+
+"Who?--Who but Cale?"
+
+Mrs. Macleod laughed outright at that, and Jamie and I joined her; we
+could not help it. The mere inflection of Mr. Ewart's voice, told us
+he had succumbed on the way over to our omniscient One. I saw that,
+quiet as he was, he had a keen sense of humor.
+
+"Yes," he continued, "Cale made my acquaintance on the platform, and
+half way on the road he took occasion to give me some information
+concerning my household."
+
+"Oh, I know that too," I said, "for Cale confided to me immediately on
+his arrival that, to use his own expression, he could n't get in a
+'word edgewise', on account of the rapidity with which you and Peter
+were carrying on a conversation in French. I think he is jealous of
+every tongue but his own."
+
+"We had better compare notes, Miss Farrell. I concluded that Cale was
+a firm friend of yours from his remarks."
+
+"What did he say? Do tell me."
+
+"I will--if you 'll agree to tell me his comments on my talk with
+Pierre. I believe Pierre's words fell over themselves, he had so much
+to tell me."
+
+"Hear--hear!" This from Jamie.
+
+"I agree; tell me, please."
+
+"I think it was just before we entered the river road--"
+
+"I know it was, for he told me so," I said, enjoying the fun.
+
+"Oh, he did! Well, perhaps you will be so good as to tell me, if he
+told you what he told me you told him?"
+
+"You would n't ask that if you knew Cale," said Jamie, shaking his head
+dubiously.
+
+"No, he did n't," I said. "Cale is a genuine Yankee. What did he say?"
+
+"You hear that, Ewart? What did I tell you?"
+
+"Oh, you've been telling, too, have you, Jamie Macleod? He gave me to
+understand that it was he who brought you from the steamboat to the
+house; that you were born in New York; that you had been in the Public
+Library of that city; that in consequence what you did n't know about
+books was, in his estimation, not worth knowing; that you were just as
+handy with hammer and tacks as you were with books, and that you had
+been 'fixin' up' the old manor till it shone. I gathered further, that
+he expected me to be properly appreciative of the benefits conferred
+upon me in this matter. As, up to that time, I had heard nothing of
+your arrival in Richelieu-en-Bas, and as my friend here, Doctor Rugvie,
+was likewise in the dark in regard to your personality, you may imagine
+our curiosity; in fact, he wanted to rouse it, and took the best way to
+do it."
+
+"He can do that," said Mrs. Macleod, smiling at this description of
+Cale's powers; "but he rarely satisfies us in regard to himself. Of
+course, Jamie and I respect his reticence, but I should like to know if
+he has been married. He is such a character! I should like to know
+more of his life."
+
+"I must take a good look at him to-morrow," said the Doctor, filling
+his pipe.
+
+"I should n't know him if I met him on the road," said Mr. Ewart; "for
+his cap was drawn over his forehead, and his beard and side whiskers
+were a mask. Won't he come in with us for a few minutes, Jamie?-- By
+the way, you say that he is always with you at porridge, a custom I
+hope you will not depart from, now I am here, Mrs. Macleod."
+
+"I shall want some too," said the Doctor, whimsically; "it will be like
+those never-to-be-forgotten days in Crieff fifteen years ago."
+
+Mrs. Macleod said nothing; but she turned to him with such an indulgent
+smile, that I knew she would give the great man anything in reason or
+unreason for what he had been, and was, to her son and to herself.
+
+Jamie jumped up impulsively.
+
+"Tell me what he said, Marcia, about Gordon's talk with Pierre, and
+then I 'll go and have him in--without the porridge, though, for it's
+too late to-night."
+
+"He said that if the old manor barns had been 'afire', and Mr. Ewart
+and Pierre had been trying to get the horses out, they could n't have
+talked faster."
+
+"That's one on you, Ewart," said Jamie, gleefully. Mr. Ewart laughed.
+"I hope to make a friend of Cale; I like him."
+
+Jamie left the room, and the talk drifted to other things.
+
+"Have you seen Mere Guillardeau lately?" Mr. Ewart asked of Mrs.
+Macleod.
+
+"Not since the last of October; but Marcia has seen her recently."
+
+He looked at me inquiringly.
+
+"I bought the rag carpet strips of her daughter."
+
+"Is the old woman well?"
+
+"Yes, she is wonderful for her age."
+
+"Ninety-nine next year," said Mr. Ewart. "What a century she has
+lived!"
+
+"Andre pere must be ninety, then," said Doctor Rugvie. "How well I
+remember him! He is Mere Guillardeau's brother, as perhaps you know,"
+he said turning to me. "Jamie must have told you of Andre."
+
+"Yes, of Andre father and Andre son; you know them both?"
+
+It was the first time I had spoken directly with the Doctor, although
+he was the one in the room upon whom all my thoughts centered.
+
+"For many years; I saw him first in Tadoussac, just after the Columbian
+Exposition in Chicago. Afterwards, for six consecutive summers I was
+in camp with him and his son on the Upper Saguenay. There 's none like
+him. By the way, Miss Farrell, has Jamie ever told you how the old
+guide Andre went to the World's Fair at Chicago?"
+
+"No."
+
+"We 'll get him to tell you--and us; I can never hear it too many
+times. It's unique, and it takes Jamie to tell it well. Andre told me
+years ago, and last summer he told Jamie and Mr. Ewart. Jamie wrote me
+about it."
+
+"I shall never forget that night," said Mr. Ewart.
+
+He laid his pipe on the mantel and stood back to the fireplace, his
+hands clasped behind him. He was not so tall as Jamie or Doctor
+Rugvie; not so thin as the former, nor stout like the latter. He had
+kept his body in good training for, as he stood there, despite the few
+gray hairs on the temples, he looked like a man of thirty, rather than
+one who might be father to Jamie.
+
+Jamie came in at this moment, looking thoroughly cross as well as
+crestfallen.
+
+"He won't come," he announced bluntly, taking his seat and leaning
+forward to the fire, his long arms resting on his knees, his hands
+clasped and hanging between them. He glared at the andirons.
+
+"What's the matter, Jamie?" I asked; I knew something had gone wrong.
+
+"He says he does n't belong here, and all that rot. Confound it all!
+When you come up against Cale's crotchets you might as well go hang
+yourself for all you can move him."
+
+I looked at Mr. Ewart. I saw the gray eyes flash suddenly.
+
+"We must change all that, Jamie. Just give him leeway till I 've
+looked about a bit and struck root into my--home." I noticed the
+slight hesitation before the word "home". "By the way, it's early yet."
+
+"Early!" Jamie was rousing himself from his private sulk. "You might
+like to know that generally we have porridge at nine and are in bed by
+half-past."
+
+"We 'll change all that too, Mrs. Macleod--with the Doctor's
+permission, of course," he said, sitting down beside her. "We 're not
+going to lose the pleasure of these long winter evenings. After
+porridge, we 'll have grand bouts of chess, Jamie, and a little
+music--I see that Miss Farrell has not included a piano in her
+furnishings--"
+
+"Not for eighty-seven dollars," I said, hoping he would appreciate the
+financial fact; but he only looked a little mystified, and went on:
+
+"--And hours with the books, and some snowshoeing on fine moonlight
+nights; you 'll see that the winter is none too long in Canada--_O pays
+de mon amour_!" he said smiling. Clasping his hands behind his head,
+he looked steadily at the leaping flames.
+
+The tone in which he said all this would have heartened a confirmed
+pessimist; upon Jamie Macleod it acted like new wine. His face grew
+radiant, and the look he gave his friend held something of worship in
+it.
+
+Doctor Rugvie groaned audibly as he laid aside his pipe.
+
+"What is it, _mon vieux_?" said Mr. Ewart.
+
+"You make me envious," he said, rising and putting on another log; "but
+if I can be with you only one week, I 'm going to make the most of it.
+No turning in before eleven-thirty while I 'm here."
+
+"I 'll make it one with you any time you say, John." Underneath the
+banter we heard the undercurrent of deep affection. "You 'll be up
+here two or three times during the winter, and next summer you 've
+promised to camp with Jamie and the Andres, father and son, and me, for
+two months on the Upper Saguenay. Speaking of Andre, pere, Jamie, have
+you redeemed the promise you gave me last summer?"
+
+Jamie twisted his long length in his chair before answering. "Yes, in
+a way."
+
+"What does 'in a way' mean? What promise?" asked the Doctor eagerly.
+Mr. Ewart answered for him.
+
+"It was about Andre--old Andre's story of his voyage to the Columbian
+Exposition in 'ninety-three. Have you written it up?"
+
+"In a way I have, yes."
+
+"Well, Jamie Macleod," I exclaimed, half impatiently, "for lack of
+originality, commend me to you to-night!"
+
+I was afraid I should not hear the story. I exulted in the thought
+that my intuition concerning a second R. L. Stevenson in Jamie Macleod,
+was to prove correct. Jamie looked over at me and smiled provokingly.
+
+"Come on, Boy, out with it!" said the Doctor encouragingly. "I 'm
+willing to be bored with your literary style for the sake of hearing
+dear old Andre's story rehashed by a young aspirant for honors."
+
+"Have you seen anything of this?" Mr. Ewart turned to Mrs. Macleod.
+
+"I 've neither seen nor heard anything of this kind," she replied with
+an amazed look at her son. Jamie smiled again, this time quizzically.
+
+"What's this you 've been keeping from your mother, Boy?"
+
+"Oh, Jamie, do read it to us!" I begged.
+
+Jamie laughed aloud then, much to the two men's delight, as I could
+see, and said--tease that he is:
+
+"I 've been waiting for Marcia to ask me; she is n't apt to ask favors
+of any one; but I say,--" he looked half shamefacedly at his
+friends,--"it's rough on me to read anything of mine before such
+critics as you and Gordon, Doctor Rugvie."
+
+"Do you good," growled the Doctor; "get you used to publicity. If we
+have a genius in the family, it's best he should sprout his pin
+feathers in our presence before he becomes a full-fledged Pegasus. We
+could n't hold you down then, you know."
+
+"You 've had a lot of faith in me, Doctor--you and Ewart; after all,
+Oxford mightn't have done what that has for me. I 'll read it--but I
+shall feel like a fool, I know."
+
+"It won't hurt you to feel that way once in a while at twenty-three;
+it's educative," said the Doctor dryly.
+
+In the general laughter that followed, Jamie left the room. He was
+gone but a minute. When he came in, I saw he was nervous. He cleared
+his throat once or twice, after taking his seat at the left of the
+fireplace, and glanced anxiously at the candles; but they were fresh at
+nine, and good for two hours longer. Doctor Rugvie looked at his watch.
+
+"Half-past ten; I 'll keep time, Jamie."
+
+"What do you call it, Jamie?" Mr. Ewart asked, to ease the evident
+embarrassment in which the young Scotsman found himself.
+
+"'Andre's Odyssey'."
+
+"Good! I like that," said the Doctor; "that's just what it was.
+Nothing like a good title to work up to."
+
+"Of course, I embellished a little here and there, but I stuck to the
+facts and in many places to Andre's words; and I tried to make the
+whole in Andre's spirit."
+
+"Intentions all right, Boy--let us judge of the result," said the
+Doctor. He settled comfortably in his chair, leaned his head on the
+back and gazed steadily at the wooden ceiling; but I think he managed
+to keep an eye on Jamie.
+
+And, oh, that bright eager face, the firelight enhancing its
+brightness! The hand that trembled despite his effort at control, the
+slight flush on the high cheek bones from which the summer's tan had
+not yet house-worn! The expressive unsteady voice that gradually
+steadied itself as, in the interest of reading, self-consciousness was
+forgotten!
+
+I bent low over my crochet; I did not want to look again at him, for I
+was glad, so glad for him, for his mother, for his two friends, who had
+had such faith in him, for myself that I could count him as a friend.
+This was, indeed, the beginning of fulfilment.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+For five and twenty years no man had seen in Tadoussac old Andre's face
+nor heard his voice upon the river's lower course. Both long and late
+within their icy caves the winters dwelt. The spring-tides, messaging
+the wild emancipated water's glee, rushed down to meet the short-lived
+summer joy, and autumn after autumn fled with torch of flaming leaf,
+reversed, death-heralding, far up the Saguenay's dark winding
+gorge--yet Andre came no more in all that time.
+
+And now, behold them both, in Tadoussac! old Andre and his dog, Pierre,
+le brave, or was it Pierre's son?--lean-ribbed, thin-haunched and
+tragic-eyed, with fell of wolf, Pierre! How well they all remembered
+him, le brave! The frosts were in his bones, oh, long ere this; so
+Pierre's offspring, then?--as large as life! And Andre, too, old guide
+and voyageur!
+
+Of notches six times ten had Andre cut within the shaft of one great
+pine that sings above that wonderful caprice of pool, and quiet river
+reach, and torrent wild, men long have called the Upper Saguenay. That
+very day when his boy's heart beat wild to suffocation, as upon the
+bank he landed his first salmon--nom de Dieu, no sunset glow e'er
+equalled in his eyes that palpitant and silver-scaled mass of vibrant
+rose!--the sap from that first notch had oozed; and now they said in
+Tadoussac that Andre never knew his age!
+
+Oh, fools! What matter of a few years more or less? He counted all
+his years by his heart's youth, as here he was in Tadoussac to prove.
+
+"And whither away?"--"To see Mere Guillardeau?"--"To visit once again
+in Richelieu-en-Bas?"--"Or else Trois Rivieres where long ago the
+maskinonge leaped for him?" "To see the Seigniory of Lamoral where
+lived his grandpere's seignior, lived and died?"--"A pilgrimage?
+Sainte Anne de Beaupre, then?"--"Or Indian Lorette just by Quebec?"
+The questions multiplied. "Come, tell us all." And Andre told them
+all.
+
+"'Tis true," he said, "that there upon the Upper Saguenay strange tales
+are rife. From o'er the distant sea the English came to camp within
+the wilds, and I was guide. I listened to their tales whene'er the
+camp-fire crackled and the snow, the feather-snow that melted from the
+pines, fell hissing on the glowing arch of logs."
+
+How Andre loved that sound! How dear to him was that one time in all
+the year's full round, when freeze the nights, the sap grows chill and
+numb; when warms the rising sun at early dawn and that sweet ichor
+runs! It kept him young; within him stirred his youthful forest hopes
+and joys with that first mounting life. And loud he laughed, nor gave
+the secret of his youth, his woodsman's lasting joys.
+
+He told them how with mien impassive he had listened well, reflected
+long on what the English said, till May clouds, mirrored in the
+darkling pools, foreshadowed substance for those haunting dreams of
+glories human eyes had never seen; for far away upon the Lake there
+stood a city marvellous, the English said,--and they to Andre never yet
+had lied,--and who beheld it saw with naked eye the glories of the New
+Jerusalem.
+
+And Andre, marking how the little runs were earlier loosened from their
+icy chains, how soft beneath the black and sodden leaves the water
+trickled free with here and there a bubble rising, proving spring had
+come--old Andre, listening so, the echo caught of that far song of
+storm-tossed Michigan as its wild waters, mingling with the rest,
+pursued their steady seaward course and swept with undertones enticing
+past the gorge of Saguenay and sang in Andre's ear:
+
+ "Viens, viens, tu trouveras
+ La bas, la bas,
+ Le royaume cher et merveilleux
+ Du bon Dieu."
+
+
+What wonder that his simple woodsman's heart was moved to quick
+response! That ere one moon had waxed and waned his dugout was
+prepared for its long journey inland, west by south, along the waterway
+of two great Lands! He showed it now in Tadoussac with pride: this
+fruit of two Canadian winters' toil. Its ample hull was shiny black
+with age. Its prow sharp-nosed and long to cleave, pike-like, the
+rapids' wave, capricious, treacherous. Its stern was truncated like
+tail of duck, the waters never closed but on it pressed, and sped it on
+the river's lower course.
+
+For twenty years he watched the sturdy growth of one great tree that
+towered above its mates; and when the noble bole, both straight and
+strong, was grown to such proportions that he deemed it fit to brave
+the rapids, such its curve, he laid the monarch low, and hewed, and
+shaped, and burned, and thickly overlaid with pitch, and launched it on
+the Lower Saguenay--a fine, well-balanced craft, his floating camp; and
+this was thirty years or more agone.
+
+His destination now made known, upon the river bank a crowd eyed him
+agape. With pride he showed to wondering Tadoussac how he had made
+provision for his voyage.
+
+Along one side was lashed a sapling pine with seamless sail,
+three-cornered and close furled; 'twas fashioned from the stout flap of
+a tent. Along the other stretched two pockets strong of moose skin,
+hair side out to shed the rain. The topmost one he filled with ample
+store of salmon smoked on his own spit of ash, and good supply of that
+brown wrinkled leaf whose qualmy fragrance, issuing from the bowl of
+his loved pipe, had ever proved in camp and wild the solace of his
+lonely life.
+
+Within the other pocket he had placed his comrade-breadwinner, his
+trusted gun. Its shining barrel glistened cunningly from out the soft
+black depths, and knowingly, for many a winged voyager of the air would
+it bring low to beat the lucent wave to crimson froth before the voyage
+were done. Both oars and paddles of well-seasoned ash he laid within
+the dugout's ample hulk.
+
+Then he was ready to set out, and seek that shining wonder-city by the
+Lake--a "New Jerusalem", the English said, and they to Andre never yet
+had lied. His old-time friends were gathered at the pier to bid him on
+his quest "God Speed". They cast the painter loose.
+
+"Adieu--adieu," a hand clasp here and there, and then again: "Adieu!"
+
+Pierre, with forepaws stemmed against the prow, bayed musical farewell.
+Old Andre turned and murmuring, "Adieu," broke forth exultantly in
+joyous song:
+
+ "Je chercherai
+ La bas, la bas
+ La ville de Dieu, la merveilleuse;
+ Si je la trouve, quand je serai
+ De mon retour,
+ Elle chante toujours, mon ame joyeuse,--
+ Les gloires de Dieu, les gloires de Dieu."
+
+
+So aged Andre, guide and voyageur, his parchment face alight with
+inward joy, fared forth to seek that City in the West.
+
+
+For you who love the sunlight on the wave, who hail with joy the
+sunrise ever new; for you to whom the starlight brings a thought of
+that high peace that guides the wanderer; for you who watch the coming
+of the day with eyes that see the miracle of life; for you who share in
+all the fair delights of sunlight, moonlight, starlight, twilight,
+dawn, and feel their charm in every mood and tense of nature's
+perfecting--for you alone I sing this voyage over inland seas.
+
+
+By sunlight, moonlight, starlight, Andre fared along the river called
+"the Queen's Highway"; and soon there frowned upon him, dark, superb,
+the crested towering headland of Tourmente that signals to the Plains
+of Abraham. And ever westwards, west by south, he fared until he saw
+the shipping of Quebec like some huge cobweb outlined intricate in
+black against the golden gleaming west.
+
+The sunset gun resounded in mid-air as Andre anchor dropped below the
+town. The man-of-war's huge bulk belched answering flame, and ere the
+cannon's echoing roar had ceased, a sharp report was heard, a pigmy
+sound that woke its pigmy echo from the Rock. So Andre fired salute
+and quickly ran aloft his tiny Union Jack. 'Twas seen along the quays;
+the sailors cheered and cheered, until Pierre bayed musical response.
+
+Then Andre, when the moon had fully risen, stretched out along the
+stern and smoked his pipe, Pierre at his feet, and watched the Rock
+that, like a jewel many facetted, now held, now flashed at every point
+the lights along the Terrace in the Upper Town. He heard a merry song,
+a peal of bells, a strain of distant music, plash of oars--then
+silence. One by one the lights went out; the moon was riding high and
+full above the scarp and ramparts of the Citadel; beneath, the river
+rolled its silvered flood.
+
+
+Then onwards, ever onwards toward the West fared steadily this old
+French voyageur, and as he passed the dreaded Raven Cape he trolled a
+catch, "_Un noir corbeau_", to ward all ill and evil from his sturdy
+craft. So sped unharmed, swift-paddling toward the broad and sunlit
+shallows of Saint Peter's lake, and ever westwards to the Royal Isle
+where Montreal's green height looks down upon its shadowy reflex in
+Saint Lawrence's wave.
+
+On, on he sped and ever to the West, land-locked at times in
+prairie-bound canals; then pulling vigorously, the rapids past, along
+the River's narrowing polished curve, with oar stroke, swift and
+sweeping, keeping time to hit of merry raftsmen on the Sault.
+
+Fresh-hearted Andre! All the wholesome joys to which his simple life
+was consecrate were his as on he voyaged; his eventide brought joy and
+calm and light-of-evening peace. But once he would have tarried--as
+alights a wearied sea-mew on some lonely isle--when, paddling slow and
+noiselessly he steered his craft among the leafy waterways of that
+Arcadian Venice of our North: the Thousand Isles. His woodsman's heart
+beat high when, gliding silently past sunny glades and darkling glens,
+he heard the wavelets lap the crinkling sands and saw the water glint
+against the slopes fringed deep with June's lush green.
+
+At times he paused, the paddle braced, and leaned thereon his weight;
+the while, his lungs inflate, he drew deep breaths of fragrance
+balsamic that flowed in counter currents, sensate, warm, from out the
+depths of cedar thickets gray, and red, and white. And then away, away
+he sped past gardens gay with summer blooms, past emerald lawns set
+round by sapphire waves. And here and there an islet laughed at him--a
+tiny patch of verdure overhung by one white birch that glistered in the
+sun.
+
+And every night a strange enchantment wrought upon his spirit when,
+beneath the stars, on some long reach that narrowed suddenly, embraced
+by banks converging, forest clad, the dugout drifted 'twixt two
+firmaments. Then Andre dreamed of pool and river reach and ancient
+pine o'er-hanging torrents wild, far distant on the Upper Saguenay; and
+summer dwellers on those Fortunate Isles were ware at midnight of a
+singing voice and fragment of a song, like some last chord drawn
+lingeringly across responsive strings:
+
+ "Je cherche, je cherche, la bas, la bas,
+ La ville de Dieu, la merveilleuse;
+ Si je la trouve, quand je serai
+ De mon retour je chante toujours
+ Les gloires de Dieu, les gloires de Dieu."
+
+
+Ontario, Ontario, all hail thou lovely Lake that in thy breast doth
+hide the many secrets of Niagara! Upon thy waves, soft thrilling
+joyously with rush of thunderous waters from afar, see, like a gull,
+the white three-cornered sail dip lightly to the fair breeze from the
+North!
+
+"La bas, la bas," sang Andre o'er and o'er, and e'en Pierre bayed long
+into the West, awoke shrill echoes from the border farms at early dawn,
+and told his nightly tale to waning summer moons till cliff and shore
+gave back the sound in echoes manifold.
+
+And what of nights within some sheltered cove when storm and darkness
+claimed both sea and sky? And what of days when furious cross-winds
+rose, and smote the lake that hissed and writhed and roared beneath the
+scourge that welted its white breast? Then Andre crossed himself and
+told his beads; Pierre crouched low adown within the hull; the dugout
+rocked safe moored within the cove or, drawn up on a strip of pebbly
+beach, with softly-grating keel in rhythmic beats told off the lapsing
+surges till the West translucent 'neath the lifting cloud mass gleamed,
+and in the sedges near the shore he heard the reed birds whistle
+plaintively and low.
+
+
+Three moons had waxed and waned since, far away upon the Upper
+Saguenay, the pools foreshadowed substance of those haunting dreams of
+glories human eye had never seen--thrice thirty days ere Andre neared
+his goal. At last, emerging from the narrow strait of savage Mackinac,
+he set his sail and voyaged ever southwards day by day with many a tack
+cajoling every breeze. The white fish leaped within the dugout's wake;
+the gulls' harsh cry was heard above the mast; at times a passing
+steamer's paddles throbbed an hour and broke the dead monotony of sea
+and sky on lonely Michigan.
+
+On silent sea, neath silent skies he voyaged, till lo! one silent morn
+ere rise of sun, the light mists, veiling yet disclosing, crept
+slow-curling o'er the surface of the Lake to meet the brightening east,
+and there dissolved in sudden glory, leaving Andre rapt, with dripping
+oars suspended and with eyes intent upon a vision marvellous!--The
+softened radiance of breaking day shone clear, subdued, on dome and
+tower and arch, on rich facade and many-columned gate of that ethereal
+Wonder-City white, the fundaments of which in amethyst and chrysopras
+were seen deep down beneath the surface of the Lake that, motionless,
+reflected heaven on earth and earth in heaven!
+
+And Andre, gazing so, bared his gray head, the slow tears coursing down
+his furrowed cheeks, and, folding on his breast his calloused hands,
+prayed low and fingered o'er his wellworn beads.
+
+
+Old Andre moored his dugout to the pier, and leaving tragic-eyed Pierre
+within as sentinel, slow-blinking towards the east, he turned his steps
+to that high-columned gate, the prototype of heaven on this our earth,
+and passed beneath the portal as the sun rose o'er the Lake in gorgeous
+crimson state.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+I can still hear in memory the sudden hiss from a bursting air-pocket
+in the forelog; it broke the silence which followed Jamie's reading.
+At the sound, it seemed as if we drew a freer breath.
+
+Was it Jamie Macleod who was sitting there with flushed cheeks, bright
+eyes, dilated pupils, and eager inquiring look which asked of his
+friends their approval or criticism? Or was it some changeling spirit
+of genius that for the time being had taken up its abode in the frail
+tenement of his body?
+
+His mother leaned to him and laid her hand on his shoulder.
+
+"My dear boy," was all she said, for they were rarely demonstrative
+with each other; but, oh, the pride and affection in her voice! I saw
+Jamie's mouth twitch before he smiled into her eyes.
+
+"You 've made us live it, Boy," said the Doctor quietly and with deep
+feeling; "but I never thought you could do it--not so, for all the
+faith I 've had in you."
+
+Jamie drew a long breath of relief; he spoke eagerly:
+
+"It was the trial trip, Doctor, and I did hope it would stand the test
+with you and Ewart."
+
+Mr. Ewart rose and crossed the hearth to him. He held out his strong
+shapely hand. Jamie's thin one closed upon it with a tense nervous
+pressure, as I could see.
+
+"I congratulate you, Macleod." The tone of his voice, the address as
+man to man, expressed his pride, his love, his admiration.
+
+Jamie smiled with as much satisfaction as if for the first time there
+had been conferred upon him manhood suffrage, the freedom of the city
+of London, and a batch of Oxford honors. Then, satisfied, he turned to
+me. I spoke lightly to ease the emotional tension that was evident in
+all the rest of us:
+
+"You 've imposed upon me, Jamie Macleod. You 're classed henceforth
+with frauds and fakirs! How could I know when you were scrapping with
+me the last three weeks over such prosaic things as rag carpets, toilet
+sets and skins, that you were harboring all this poetry!"
+
+"Then you think it's poetry? You 've found me out!" Jamie said,
+showing his delight. "Honestly, Marcia, you like it? I want you to,
+though I say it as should n't."
+
+"Yes, I do," I answered earnestly; "I can understand the song the
+better for it."
+
+"What song?" the Doctor asked, before Jamie could speak.
+
+"'_O Canada, pays de mon amour_'," I quoted.
+
+"You know that?" Mr. Ewart spoke quickly.
+
+"Only as I have heard it through the graphophone, in the cabaret below
+the steamboat landing."
+
+"I say, Marcia, that's rough on the song!--Gordon," he exclaimed, "do
+you sing it for us, do; then she 'll know how it ought to sound."
+
+"It's the only possible epilogue for the 'Odyssey'--what a capital
+title, Boy! Sing it, Ewart."
+
+"Wait till I have a piano."
+
+"You don't need it. You used to sing it in camp."
+
+"But I had Andre's violin."
+
+"I have it! Pierre will fiddle for you." Jamie jumped to his feet.
+"Hark!"
+
+We listened. Sure enough, from some room behind the kitchen offices,
+probably in the summer kitchen, we could hear the faint but merry
+sounds of a violin.
+
+"They 're celebrating your home-coming, Ewart! I knew they were up to
+snuff when Angelique gave me an order for a half a dozen bottles of the
+'vin du pays', you remember, Marcia? They 're at it now. I might have
+known it, for they have n't come in to say good night."
+
+"Let's have them all in then," said Mr. Ewart. "They 'll stay up as
+long as we do."
+
+"Will you sing for them?" Mrs. Macleod put the question directly to
+her host.
+
+"For you and them, if you wish it," was the cordial reply. "Jamie, you
+'re master of ceremonies and have had something up your sleeve all this
+evening; I know by your looks. Bring them in."
+
+Jamie laughed mischievously. "Oh, I 'll bring them in," he said. I
+knew then that, unknown to his mother and me, he had planned a surprise.
+
+"Get Cale in, if you can," Mr. Ewart called after him.
+
+"Oh, Cale 's abed before this; _he_ does n't acknowledge you as his
+lord of the manor, not yet."
+
+"That was remarkable, Gordon," said the Doctor, as soon as the door
+closed on Jamie.
+
+"Yes, he has given me a surprise. Of course you realized that whole
+description was in metre?"
+
+"I was sure of it after the first page or two, but I could scarcely
+trust my ears. What the boy has done is to make of it a true Canadian
+idyl. I wish Drummond might have heard it."
+
+"I believe Jamie knows 'The Habitant' book of poems by heart. Have you
+ever read it, Miss Farrell?"
+
+"Yes, in New York; and Jamie has promised to give me a copy for a
+Christmas remembrance."
+
+"I 'll add one to it," said the Doctor, "'The Voyageur,' then you will
+probe a little deeper into Ewart's love and mine for Canada."
+
+"Oh, thank you; these two will be the beginning of my private library."
+
+"I 'll give you an autograph copy of 'Johnnie Courteau,' if you like; I
+knew Drummond," said Mr. Ewart.
+
+To say I was pleased, would not express the pleasure those two men gave
+me in just thinking of me in this way. I thanked them both, a little
+stiffly, I fear, for I am not used to gifts; but my face must have
+shown them how genuine was my feeling for the favors. They both saw my
+slight confusion and interpreted it, for Mr. Ewart said, smiling:
+
+"If you don't mind I will add to the unborn library Drummond's other
+volume; I 'm going to try to live up to Cale's expectation of me
+concerning your connection with books. They will help you to remember
+this evening."
+
+"As if I needed anything to remember it!" I exclaimed, at ease again.
+"It's like---it's like--"
+
+"Like what, Marcia?" Mrs. Macleod put this question.
+
+"Tell us, do," the Doctor added; "don't keep me in suspense; my
+temperament can't bear it." He looked at me a little puzzled and
+wholly curious. I was glad to answer both Mrs. Macleod and him
+truthfully:
+
+"Like a new lease of life for me." My smile answered the Doctor's, and
+I was interested to see that the same wireless message I was
+transmitting again across the abyss of time, failed again of
+interpretation. I turned to Mrs. Macleod.
+
+"I think I may be needed in the kitchen." I rose to leave the room.
+
+"Are you in the secret too?" Mr. Ewart asked.
+
+"No, but I 've been recalling certain commissions Angelique gave
+me--extra citron, pink coloring for cakes, and powdered sugar for
+which, as yet, we have had no use in the house. But I want to be in
+the secret, for Jamie--"
+
+The sentence remained unfinished, for Jamie flung open the door with a
+flourish, and stout Angelique, flushed with responsibility and the "vin
+du pays", entered carrying a huge round platter, whereon was a cake of
+noble proportions ornamented with white frosting in all sorts of
+curlycues and central "_Felicitations_" in pink. Behind her came Marie
+with a tin tray, laid with an immaculate napkin--one of our new
+ones--filled with pressed wine-glasses and decanters of antiquated
+shape. Following her was little Pete, carrying on each arm an enormous
+wreath of ground pine and bittersweet. Big Pete brought up the rear,
+his face glowing, his black eyes sparkling, his earrings twinkling. He
+was tuning his violin.
+
+All rose to greet them; but ignoring us, with intense seriousness, they
+ranged themselves in a row near the door. They still held their
+offerings. Pierre, drawing his bow across the strings, nodded his
+head. Thereupon they began to sing, and sang with all their hearts and
+vocal powers to the accompaniment of the violin:
+
+"_O Canada, pays de mon amour!_"
+
+With the first words, Mr. Ewart's voice, full, strong, vibrant with
+patriotism, joined them; his fine baritone seemed to carry the melody
+for all the others. The room rang to the sound of the united voices.
+I saw Cale at the door, listening with bent head. Jamie stood beside
+him, triumphant and happy at the success of his surprise party.
+
+How Angelique sang! Her stout person fairly quivered with the
+resonance of her alto. Marie's shrill treble rose and fell with
+regular staccato emphasis. Pierre, father, roared his bass in harmony
+with Pierre, son's falsetto, and beat time heavily with his right foot.
+
+At the finish, the Doctor started the applause in which Jamie and Cale
+joined. With a sigh of absolute satisfaction, Angelique presented her
+cake to Mr. Ewart who, taking it from her with thanks, placed it on the
+library table and paid her the compliment of asking her to cut it.
+Marie passed around the tray and decanted the "vin du pays". Little
+Peter, following instructions given him in the kitchen, hung a wreath
+from each corner of the mantel. Compliments and congratulations on the
+cake, the wine, the wreaths, the song, the master's home-coming, the
+refurbished manor house, were exchanged freely, and we all talked
+together in French and English. My broken French was understood
+because they were kind enough to guess at my meaning--the most of it.
+
+Then the healths were drunk, to Mr. Ewart, to the Doctor, to Jamie,
+Mrs. Macleod and me; and we drank theirs. Finally, Mr. Ewart went to
+Cale, whom Jamie had persuaded to step over the threshold, and gave his
+health, touching glasses with him:
+
+"To my fellow laborer in the forest." He repeated it in French for the
+benefit of the French contingent.
+
+Cale, touching glasses, swallowed his wine at one gulp and abruptly
+left the room. He half stumbled over little Pierre who was sitting in
+the corner by the door, supremely happy in the remains of his huge
+piece of cake, which at his special request was cut that he might have
+the pink letters "Felici", and in the two lumps of white sugar which
+Mr. Ewart dropped into a glass of wine highly diluted with water.
+
+Oh, it was good to see them! It was good to hear their merry chat; to
+be glad in their rejoicing over the return and final settlement of Mr.
+Ewart among them, their "lord of the manor", as they persisted in
+calling him to his evident disgust and amusement. But their joy was
+genuine, a pleasant thing to bear witness to in these our times.
+
+And if Father Pierre in his exuberance of congratulation repeated
+himself many times; if Angelique asked Mr. Ewart more than once if the
+cake was exactly to his taste; if Marie grew doubly voluble with her
+"Dormez-biens", and little Pierre was discovered helping himself
+uninvited to another piece of cake--an act that roused Angelique to
+seeming frenzy--Mr. Ewart closed an eye to it all, for, as they
+trooped, still voluble, out of the room, he knew as well as we that
+their measure of happiness was full, pressed down and running over.
+Oh, their bonhomie! It was a revelation to me.
+
+The embers were still bright in the fireplace but the candles were
+burning low in the sconces; it was high time at half-past eleven for
+the whole household to say good night.
+
+"A home-coming to remember, Gordon," I heard Doctor Rugvie say, as I
+left the room.
+
+"I can't yet realize it; but I 've dreamed--"
+
+I caught no more, for the door closed upon them.
+
+The two men must have talked together into the morning hours, for I
+heard them come upstairs long after I was in bed. Not until the house
+was wholly quiet could I get to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+I was up betimes the next morning, but Cale had been before me and
+taken up the offending rag carpet from the passageway. When I went
+into the kitchen, Angelique told me that the seignior--she persisted in
+calling him that--and the Doctor had had their coffee and early
+doughnuts and were off in the pung, the seignior driving; that they
+said they would be at home for dinner. I found Cale and Pierre, acting
+under orders in the early morning, taking the trunks up to the
+bedrooms, placing the guns in the racks, removing the various sporting
+implements to a room behind the kitchen, and the chests to a storeroom.
+At breakfast we three were alone together as usual. The four dogs were
+absent.
+
+Mrs. Macleod and I spent the entire forenoon bringing order again into
+the various rooms. In the meantime, Jamie was dreaming and reading in
+the living-room. I had been there just a month and a day, and could
+not help wondering who would pay me! I needed the money for some
+heavier clothing.
+
+The two friends appeared promptly for dinner and brought with them
+appetites sharpened by the increasing cold. They had been in
+Richelieu-en-Bas and arranged for a telephone for the manor, called on
+some English friends visiting at the new manor house in the village,
+and stopped at some of the seigniory farmhouses on the way home. I
+found Mere Guillardeau had been remembered at this early date.
+
+"Are you busy this afternoon, Miss Farrell?" said the Doctor, as we
+rose from our first meal together and went into the living-room.
+
+"Not unless Mrs. Macleod needs me?" I looked at her inquiringly.
+
+"No, there is nothing more, Marcia; you did a good day's work in a few
+hours this morning," she replied in answer to my look.
+
+"Can I be helpful to you in any way?" I said, turning again to the
+Doctor.
+
+"Yes--I think you can." He smiled quizzically, looking down upon me
+from his substantial height. "You may not know--of course you don't,
+how could you know, never having heard much of an old fellow like me--"
+
+"Oh, have n't I?"
+
+"Have you? Then the Boy here has been giving me away. Has he ever
+told you I am something of a whip?"
+
+"No, not that."
+
+"Well, then, I am going to prove it to you. I propose to show the two
+French coach horses how to draw a pung,--Ewart does n't yet own a
+sleigh, you know in Canada,--and I wish you would lend me your company
+for an hour or so."
+
+If the Doctor expected an enthusiastic response he must have been
+disappointed. Not that I did n't want the ride in the pung, but it
+occurred to me that here was my opportunity, offered without my seeking
+it, to ask of him all that I had been planning to ask during many
+weeks. As this door of opportunity was so suddenly opened to me, I
+felt the chill of the unknown creeping towards me over its threshold.
+I answered almost with hesitation:
+
+"Certainly, I will go, unless Mrs. Macleod--"
+
+"Mrs. Macleod says she does n't need you." He spoke quickly, his keen
+eyes holding mine for a moment.
+
+"I say, that's a jolly cool way you have at times, Marcia!" Jamie
+exploded in his usual fashion when he is ruffled. "But you 'll get
+used to it, Doctor--I have."
+
+"A martyr, eh, Boy?" The Doctor looked amused.
+
+"Well, rather--at times."
+
+"Don't mind Jamie's martyrdoms, Doctor Rugvie; tell me when you want me
+to be ready."
+
+"In half an hour. I don't want to start too late; be sure to take
+enough wraps."
+
+I left them to go upstairs, wondering on the way what wraps I should
+take--I, who possessed only sufficient clothing to help out a New York
+winter, but no furs, no fur coat, no warm moccasins, no mittens, only
+an unlined gray tweed ulster that with a grey sweater had done duty for
+four years.
+
+"I want my pay more than I want a pung ride," I growled, as I was
+trying to make the one thick veil I owned do double duty for head and
+ears protector. I folded a square of newspaper and laid it over my
+chest under my sweater; I put on two pairs of stockings. Thus
+fortified against the Canadian cold, I went downstairs promptly on time.
+
+Mr. Ewart came out into the passageway; the Doctor was talking with
+Mrs. Macleod in the living-room.
+
+"Why, Miss Farrell," he exclaimed, "I see you don't realize our
+climate; you can't go without more wraps--"
+
+He hesitated, grew visibly embarrassed. I knew by his manner he had
+unwittingly probed my poverty to the quick, and I crimsoned with shame;
+yes, I was ashamed that my lack should thus be made known to
+him--ashamed as when Delia Beaseley's keen eyes read my need of money.
+
+"Oh, I don't need to bundle up--I have been accustomed to go without
+such heavy clothing," I said, with ready lie to cover my confusion.
+
+The Doctor came out and took his fur-lined coat from a wooden peg under
+the staircase. Mr. Ewart turned abruptly and reached for something on
+an adjoining peg; it was a fur coat of Canadian fox, soft and fine and
+warm.
+
+"You are to wear this, otherwise the Doctor won't let you go," he said
+quickly, decidedly, shaking it down and holding it ready for me to slip
+in my arms.
+
+For a second, a second only, I hesitated, searching for some excuse to
+give up the drive and so avoid acceptance of this favor; then I slipped
+into it, much to Jamie's delight who, appearing at the living-room
+door, cried out:
+
+"My, Marcia, but you 're smart in Ewart's togs! We 'll have some of
+our own if this is the kind of weather they treat us to in Canada. I
+'ve been hugging the fire all the morning."
+
+He saved the situation for me and I was grateful to him; but Mr. Ewart
+looked at him, almost anxiously, saying:
+
+"I should have been getting the heater put up this forenoon, instead of
+rushing off the first thing this morning. A poor host thus far, Jamie,
+but I 'll make good hereafter."
+
+The Doctor looked me over carefully.
+
+"You 're safeguarded with that; the sleeves are so long and ample they
+are as good as a modern muff--go back, Boy,"--he spoke brusquely, as he
+opened the outer door,--"this is no place for you."
+
+Cale vacated the pung, and the Doctor and I filled it. He took the
+reins; the beautiful creatures rose as one in the exuberance of life;
+shook their heads, and the bells with them, as they poised a moment on
+their hind feet; then they planted their hoofs in the crisping snow,
+and we were off.
+
+"Your ears must have burned more than a little this forenoon, Miss
+Farrell," he said, after driving in silence for ten minutes during
+which time he proved conclusively to the French horses that he was a
+"whip" of the first order, and to be respected henceforth as such. It
+was a pleasure to see his management of the high-lifed animals.
+
+"Mine? I was n't conscious of anything unusual about them."
+
+"We were speaking of you and your evident executive ability, and we
+took the time on our drive to try to settle a little business matter
+that concerns you. ("Ah, wages," I thought with satisfaction.) We
+tried to agree but we failed; and although we did not come to blows
+over the question, it was not settled to my satisfaction, at least.
+You don't mind my speaking very frankly?"
+
+"No, indeed; I wish you would." I looked up at him over the turned-up
+fur collar of Mr. Ewart's fox skins--"pelts" is our name for them in
+New England--and smiled merrily. I was right glad to get down, at
+last, to some business basis and know where I stood. Again I saw the
+perplexed look in his eyes.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, naturally, you know, I look for pay day to help out."
+
+"Naturally," he repeated gravely; then laughed out, a hearty,
+good-comrade laugh. "Just how long have you been here?"
+
+"A month yesterday."
+
+"And wages overdue!"
+
+I nodded emphatically. I felt as if I could tell this man beside me,
+with his wide experience of humankind, about the pitiful sum of
+twenty-two dollars I had saved from my wreck of life in New York; about
+my scrimpings; even of the two pair of stockings, and the square of
+newspaper reposing at that very minute on my chest and crackling
+audibly when I drew a deeper breath. There was no feeling of
+soul-shame on account of my poverty with him, any more than I should
+have felt physical shame at the nakedness of my body if subject to one
+of his famous surgical operations. Had not this man helped to bring me
+into the world? Should I have been here but for him? Had he not known
+me as an entity before I knew anything of the fact of life? This idea
+of him disarmed my pride.
+
+"H'm," he said at last, thoughtfully, "I must live up to my reputation
+of owing no man or woman over night. You shall have it so soon as we
+get back to the house--and well earned too," he added; "I had no idea
+an advertisement could bring about such a satisfactory result."
+
+"Do you mean me or the refurbished house?"
+
+"I mean you. And now that we 're alone, do you mind telling me
+something of how it came about? I 'll own to asking you to come with
+me that we might have a preliminary chat together."
+
+"I thought so."
+
+"Oh, you did! Well, commend me to one of my compatriots to ferret out
+my intentions. I heard Cale say you were born in New York."
+
+"Yes, twenty-six years ago, but I have lived most of my life in the
+country, in northern New England."
+
+"Wh--?" he caught himself up in his question, and I ignored it.
+
+"That climate is really just as severe as the Canadian, so I feel quite
+at home in this."
+
+"May I ask if your parents are living?"
+
+"No, they 're not living; my mother died when I was born. I told Delia
+Beaseley so when I applied for this place."
+
+("Now is my time; courage!" I exhorted myself in thought.)
+
+"I 'm glad you know Delia Beaseley, she 's a fine woman."
+
+"A noble one," I said, heartily.
+
+"Yes, noble--and good."
+
+"And good," I repeated.
+
+"I think I 'll tell you a little how good."
+
+"I think I know."
+
+"You do?" He looked surprised.
+
+"Yes, she told me something of her life." He turned squarely to me
+then.
+
+"How came she to?" He asked bluntly.
+
+"Now, courage, Marcia Farrell, out with it," I said to myself, but
+aloud:
+
+"She said I resembled some one whom she knew years ago--some one who,
+she said, had 'missed her footing'."
+
+"She said that?"
+
+I nodded. "Then she spoke of her own life and what came of it--how she
+had tried to save others; and one thing led on to another until I felt
+I had always known her."
+
+He turned again to look at me, and it was given me to read his very
+thought:--Have you ever come near missing your footing? Did Delia
+Beaseley save you from any pitfall?
+
+I answered his unspoken thought:
+
+"Oh, you may take my word for it I am wholly respectable--always have
+been. I could n't have answered your advertisement if I had n't been."
+
+"The deuce you are! Well, young lady, I 'll ask you not to answer a
+man's thoughts again before he has given them expression; it's
+uncanny." He was growling a little.
+
+I laughed aloud, for it delighted me to puzzle him a bit, especially
+with the revelation of my identity in prospect. I was enjoying the
+pung ride too. We were on the river road. The black tree trunks,
+standing out against the white snow-covered expanse of the St.
+Lawrence, seemed to speed past us. The sharp bits of ice-snow flew
+from the fleet horses' hoofs, and now and then one stung my cheek.
+
+"Cale informed me that you worked in the New York Library; may I ask
+how you happened to answer the advertisement?"
+
+"I wanted to get away from the city--far away."
+
+"Tired of it--like the rest of us?"
+
+"Yes--and I was ill." He gave me a look that was suddenly wholly
+professional.
+
+"Long?"
+
+"Ten weeks."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"Typhoid pneumonia with pleuri--"
+
+"And you were going to come out with me for a spin in that ulster!"
+
+He roared so at me that the horses, taking fright at the sound of his
+voice, plunged suddenly and gave him plenty to do to calm them into a
+trot again. I enjoyed the equine gymnastics so promptly provided for
+his diversion.
+
+"I was at St. Luke's." I volunteered this information when he was free
+to receive it.
+
+"St. Luke's, eh? That's where you heard of this old curmudgeon."
+
+"Yes, there; and from Delia Beaseley, and Jamie, and Mrs. Macleod."
+
+"By the way, you and Jamie seem to be great friends."
+
+"I love him," I said emphatically.
+
+"H'm, lucky dog; better not tell him so."
+
+"Why not?" I asked, at once on the defensive.
+
+The Doctor compressed his lips in a fashion that said as plainly as if
+he had spoken, "Unsophisticated at twenty-six; I don't believe her!"
+
+"I love Cale, too, and he is my own kind."
+
+"Cale 's all right; I 'm going to know him better before the week is
+out. And how about Mrs. Macleod?"
+
+"Mrs. Macleod is Jamie's mother, and I like her and respect her--but
+she 's not easy to love."
+
+"That's true--she is not easy to love. About the salary," he said
+changing the subject; "I intended to pay it myself until you were
+installed on the farm; it is a favor to me to be allowed to help out
+Mrs. Macleod. I knew from private sources that she needed someone to
+cheer her here in this Canadian country; it's a great change from her
+home in Crieff, and then she carries Jamie on her heart all the time.
+I insisted this morning on taking charge of the whole business, you
+included," he smiled ruefully, "but Ewart would n't hear to it. He
+argues that so long as you are in his house, and your work is--well, we
+'ll call it home-making, he, being the beneficiary has the sole right
+to pay for his benefits."
+
+"That's just what I told Mrs. Macleod and Jamie I would try to make of
+you and him--"
+
+"The dickens you did! A beneficiary of me, eh?"
+
+"Yes, and I shall try to," I said earnestly. The Doctor grew serious
+at once.
+
+"It will not be a hard task, Miss Farrell; I begin to dream of what the
+farm will be like with you to help make it a home for me and, in time,
+many others, as I hope."
+
+"Doctor Rugvie, would you mind calling me by my first name?"
+
+"Yes, I should mind very much, because it's exactly what I have wanted
+to do, but did not feel at liberty to."
+
+"In my position it is better that all in the house should call me
+Marcia."
+
+"Your position?" He looked around at me with a queer twist of his
+upper lip. "What is your position?"
+
+"According to the advertisement it was for service on a farm in Canada."
+
+"And now you find yourself in an anomalous one? Is that the trouble?"
+
+"Yes, just it. I don't know what is to be required of me--I really
+don't see how I am to earn my salt."
+
+"Don't bother yourself about that." He frowned slightly. "I confess
+this insistence on Ewart's part to pay you, complicates matters a
+little. _I_ wanted to be boss this time."
+
+"And I hoped you would be mine, anyway," I said mutinously. "I am far
+from satisfied to have my business dealings with Mr. Ewart, a stranger
+and an alien."
+
+"It will be only for a time; I am going to tell you, all of you, about
+my farm plans this evening. I have n't spoken yet to Ewart very freely
+about them."
+
+The horses were turned homewards, and I felt that little time was left
+me to ask any intimate questions of the Doctor concerning myself. I
+could not find the right word--and I knew I was not trying with any
+degree of earnestness. "I 'll put it off till the last of the week," I
+said to myself; then I began to speak of that self, for I knew the
+Doctor was waiting for this and, wisely, was biding my time. I was
+grateful to him.
+
+I told him of my hard-worked young years and my longing to get away to
+independence. I entered into no family details; it was not necessary.
+I told him something of my struggle in New York and of my place in the
+Branch Library; of my long illness and how it had left me: tired out,
+listless, practically homeless and in need of immediate money. I told
+him how I sought Delia Beaseley on the strength of the advertisement;
+how she helped me; how I felt I had found release from the city and its
+burden of livelihood, and how happy I was with my new duties in the old
+manor house; how the fact that it was an old manor fed the vein of
+romance in me which neither hard work nor illness had been able to work
+out; how I enjoyed Jamie and Mrs. Macleod, Angelique, and Pierre and
+all the household--and how I had dreaded his coming, yet longed for it,
+because it would unsettle my future which was not to be in the manor
+house of Lamoral.
+
+I told him all this, freely; but to speak of my mother, of my birth, of
+the papers, and of what I wanted them for, was beyond me. The secret
+of the Past, projected on the possible Future, loomed gigantic,
+threatening. I would let well enough alone.
+
+"You poor child," he said, when I finished. That was all; but I knew
+that henceforth I should have a friend in Doctor Rugvie. He drove the
+rest of the way in silence.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+When I joined them an hour after supper, they were talking about the
+heater that had been put up in the living-room while we were away. The
+warmth from it was delightful, but the blazing fire in the fireplace
+gave the true cheer to the room, added charm for the eye. The Doctor
+looked up as I came in.
+
+"Have you ever seen a stove like this--Marcia?" There was a twinkle
+both in his voice and his eye, as he called me for the first time by my
+Christian name. He was tease enough to try it in the presence of the
+rest of the household.
+
+"Oh, yes, my grandfather had two in his farmhouse. There is nothing
+like them for an even heat; it never burns the face. The top is a
+lovely place to fry griddlecakes."
+
+"You seem to know this species root and branch, Miss Farrell," said Mr.
+Ewart. "After that remark may I challenge you to make a few for us
+some night for supper?"
+
+"You won't have to challenge, for I like them myself; and if you 'll
+trust me we 'll have a griddlecake party here in this room some
+evening."
+
+"My first innings, Marcia!" cried Jamie.
+
+"I 'll have to let that go unchallenged, Macleod, seeing I 'm host; but
+you took unfair advantage of me. I 'll get even with you sometime."
+
+"Where did you get your idea, Gordon?" The Doctor turned to his friend.
+
+"I was born with it, you might say. I don't remember the time when we
+did n't have two or three in my father's house, and I 've never found
+anything equal to them for heating. They 're all out of date now;
+there is no manufactory for them. I had trouble in finding these, but
+I unearthed three last spring when I was in northern Vermont. I knew
+we should need them, and they keep all night, you know. I 'm going to
+have one put up in the bathroom--these oil stoves are an abomination."
+
+"Amen," said the Doctor.
+
+"So say we all of us.-- Hark, hear that wind!" said Jamie.
+
+The stove was of soapstone, square, with hinged top that, opening
+upward, gave room for the insertion of a "chunk"--a huge, unsplittable,
+knotty piece of maple, birch, or beech. Cale came in with one while we
+were listening to the roar of the gale; it was a section of a maple
+butt.
+
+"There, thet 'll last all night an' inter the forenoon," he said,
+lowering it carefully into the glowing brands in the box. "I 'll shet
+up the drafts, an' you 'll have a small furnace with no dust nor dirt
+to bother with; an' the ashes is good fertilizer--can't be beat for
+clover."
+
+"Let's take a household vote on the subject of modern improvements for
+the manor," said Mr. Ewart, helping himself to a cigar and then passing
+the box to Cale who had turned to leave the room.
+
+Cale took one with an "I thank _you_" this being a habit of speech to
+emphasize the last word, and was about to go out.
+
+"Stay a while with us, Cale," said Mr. Ewart, speaking as a matter of
+course; "I want the opinion of every member of my household--my
+Anglo-Saxon one, I mean."
+
+The two men stood facing each other, and between them I saw a look pass
+that bespoke mutual confidence. I thought they must have made rapid
+progress in one short day.
+
+"Wal, I don't mind if I do. It's flatterin' to a man, say what you 've
+a mind ter, ter have his advice asked on any subject--let alone what
+interests him."
+
+"That's a fine back-handed compliment for you, Ewart," said Jamie,
+whose delight in Cale's acquiescence was very evident.
+
+"I took it so," said Mr. Ewart quietly, drawing up a chair beside his
+and motioning to Cale who, after a slight hesitation, sat down.
+
+How cosy it was around the fire! Since our return from the pung ride,
+the wind had risen, keen and hard in the northwest and, crossing the
+Laurentians, was swooping down upon the river lands, swaying the great
+spruces in the woods all about us till it seemed as if ocean surf were
+breaking continuously just without the walls of the manor and, now and
+then, spending its force upon them until the great beams quivered under
+the impact. Every blast seemed to intensify our comfort within.
+
+"The telephone will be a great convenience," Mrs. Macleod remarked from
+the corner of the sofa, looking up from her knitting; "it will save so
+many trips to the village in weather like this."
+
+"Is it a long distance one, Gordon?" said Jamie who was lolling on the
+other end.
+
+"Yes; I thought we might as well connect with almost anywhere. Our
+household is rather cosmopolitan. Does this suit you?"
+
+"Suits me to a dot. I can talk with my 'best girl', as they call her
+in the States, when she is on the wing--as she is now."
+
+"Oh, ho, Boy! Has it come to this so soon?" The Doctor sighed
+audibly, causing us to laugh.
+
+"Jamie's 'best girl' changes with the season and sometimes the
+temperature, Doctor," said Mrs. Macleod, smiling at some remembrance.
+"Do you recall a little girl who with her mother had lodgings at
+Duncairn House, just opposite ours in Crieff?"
+
+The Doctor nodded. "Yes, and how Jamie Macleod enticed her away one
+summer afternoon to the meadows and banks of the Earn just below the
+garden gate, and the hue and cry that was raised when the two failed to
+make their appearance at supper time? Somebody--I won't say who--went
+to bed without porridge that night. What was her name, Boy?"
+
+I saw, we all saw, just the least hesitation on Jamie's part to answer
+with his usual assurance. We saw, also, the touch of red on his high
+cheek bones deepen a little.
+
+"Bess--Bess Stanley."
+
+"There is a Miss Stanley who visited at the new manor last summer--any
+relation, do you know?" asked Mr. Ewart.
+
+"Same," Jamie answered concisely, meanwhile puffing vigorously at his
+pipe.
+
+"The plot thickens, Mrs. Macleod," said the Doctor dubiously.
+
+"Is she tall and slender and fair, Jamie?" I put what I considered an
+opportune question; I knew it would both surprise and irritate him as
+well as rouse his curiosity of which he has an abundance. I really
+spoke at a venture because the name recalled to me the two girls in the
+sleeping-car and their destination: Richelieu-en-Bas.
+
+He turned to me with irony in his look. "She is all you say. May I
+make so bold as to enquire of you whether you speak from knowledge, or
+if you simply made a good guess?"
+
+"From knowledge--first hand, of course," I said with assurance.
+
+He sat up then, eyeing me defiantly, much to the others' amusement.
+
+"Perhaps you can give me further information about the young lady--all
+will be gratefully received."
+
+"No, nothing--except that I believe it was she through whom you
+obtained Cale, was n't it?" I heard Cale chuckle.
+
+"Look here, Marcia," he began severely enough, then burst into one of
+his hearty laughs that dissolves his irritation at once; "you 'll be
+telling me what she wrote me in my last letter if you 're such a mind
+reader. I say," he said, settling himself into a chair beside me, "let
+up on a man once in a while in the presence of such a cloud of
+witnesses, won't you? Take me when I 'm alone. The truth is, Ewart,
+Marcia gives herself airs because she is three years my senior. She
+takes the meanest kind of advantage; and I can't hit back because she
+'s a woman. But about that telephone, Ewart; are they going to run it
+on the trees."
+
+"It's the only way at this season."
+
+"Could n't it remain so the year round?" I asked.
+
+"Why?" said Mr. Ewart.
+
+"Because the poles will just spoil everything; as it is, it is--"
+
+"Is what, Marcia? Out with it," said Jamie encouragingly.
+
+"Perfect as it is," I said boldly, willing they should know what I
+thought of this wilderness of neglect that surrounded us in the heart
+of French Canada.
+
+"Guess we can keep it perfect, as you say, Marcia, 'thout havin' to rub
+the burrs off'n our coats every time we go round the house," said Cale.
+"We 're going to do some pretty tall cuttin' inter some of this
+underbrush and dead timber next week if the snow ain't too deep."
+
+"Oh, Cale, it will spoil it!"
+
+"Wal, thet 's as you look at it; but 't ain't good policy to keep a
+fire-trap quite so near to a livin'-place; makes insurance rates
+higher."
+
+"How would you feel then about having a modern hot water heater put
+into the old manor, Miss Farrell?" Mr. Ewart put the question to me.
+
+"Put it to a vote," I replied.
+
+"All in favor, aye," he continued.
+
+There was silence in the room except for one of the dogs that, asleep
+under the table, stirred uneasily and whined as if rousing from a dream
+of an unattainable bone.
+
+"It's a vote against. How about piping in gas?"
+
+"No!" we protested as one.
+
+"Settled," he said smiling. We saw that our decision pleased him.
+
+"Confess, now, Gordon, you did n't want any such innovations yourself,"
+said the Doctor.
+
+"I did n't, for I like my--home, as it is," he said simply.
+
+"I like to hear you use that word 'home', Gordon," said the Doctor,
+looking intently into the fire; "as long as I 've known you, I think I
+'ve never heard you use it."
+
+"No." The man on the opposite side of the hearth spoke decidedly, but
+in a tone that did not invite further confidence. "I 've never
+intended to use it until I could feel the sense of it."
+
+"Another who has felt what it is to be a stranger in this world," I
+thought to myself. And the fact that there were others, made me, for
+the moment, feel less a stranger. I was glad to hear him speak so
+frankly.
+
+The Doctor looked up, nodding understandingly.
+
+"Now I want some advice from all this household," he said earnestly,
+and I thought to change the subject; "it's about the farm I 've hired
+and the experiment with it. Give it fully, each of you, and, like
+every other man, I suppose I shall take what agrees with my own way of
+looking at it. My plans were so indefinite when I wrote to you to hire
+it, Gordon, that I went into no detail; and I 'm not at all sure that
+they are so clear to me now. Here 's where I want help."
+
+"That's not like you, John; what's up?" said his friend.
+
+"I want to start the thing right, and I 'm going to tell you just how I
+'m placed; a deuce of a fix it is too."
+
+Cale put on a log and left the room, saying good-night as he passed
+out. I gathered up my sewing--I was hemming some napkins--and made a
+motion to follow him.
+
+The Doctor rose. "Marcia,"--he put out a hand as if to detain me; he
+spoke peremptorily,--"come back. There are no secrets among us, and I
+want you to advise with."
+
+There seemed nothing to do but to obey, and I was perfectly willing to,
+because I wanted to hear all and everything about the farm project that
+threatened to break up my pleasant life in the manor.
+
+I took up my work again.
+
+"Put down your work, Marcia; fold your hands and listen to me. I want
+your whole attention."
+
+I obeyed promptly. Jamie gleefully rubbed his hands.
+
+"It takes you, Doctor, to make Marcia mind."
+
+"I 'm a man of years, Boy," the Doctor retorted, thereby reducing Jamie
+to silence.
+
+We sat expectant; but evidently the Doctor was in no hurry to open up
+his subject. After a few minutes of deep thought, he spoke slowly,
+almost as if to himself:
+
+"I'm wondering where to begin, what to take hold of first. The
+ordering of life is beyond all science--we 've found that out, we
+so-called 'men of science'. The truth is, I believe I have a
+'conscience fund' in the bank and on my mind. I know I am speaking
+blindly, and perhaps reasoning blindly, and it's because I want you to
+see things for me more clearly than I do, and through a different
+medium, that I am going to tell you, as concisely as I can--and without
+mentioning names--of an experience I had more than a quarter of a
+century ago. I 've had several of the kind since, they are common in
+our profession--but the result of this special experience is unique."
+He paused, continuing to look steadfastly into the fire.
+
+In the silence we heard the sweep of the wind through the woods, now
+and then the scraping swish of a pine branch brushing the roof beneath
+it.
+
+"I recall that it was in December. I was twenty-nine, and had just got
+a foothold on the first round of the professional ladder. Near
+midnight I was called to go down into one of the slum districts--I
+don't intend to mention names--of New York. There in a basement, I
+found a woman who had just been rescued from suicide."
+
+He paused, still keeping his gaze fixed intently on the fire. And I?
+
+At the first words a faint sickness came upon me. Was I to hear this
+again?--here, remote from the environment from which I had so recently
+fled? Could it be possible that I was to hear again that account of my
+mother's death? I struggled for control. They must not know, they
+should not see that struggle. Intent on keeping every feature passive,
+hoping that in the firelight whatever my face might have shown would
+pass unnoticed, I waited for the Doctor's next word.
+
+"It seems unprofessional, perhaps, to enter into any detail, but we are
+far away from that environment now--and in time, too, for it was over a
+quarter of a century ago. She was very young, nineteen perhaps, and
+about to become a mother. I remained with her till morning. I knew
+she would never come through her trial alive. I went again in the
+evening and stayed with her till her child was born and--to the end
+which came an hour afterwards. During all those twenty-four hours she
+spoke but twice. She gave me no name, although I asked her; no name of
+friends even--God knows if she had any, or why was she there?
+
+"Now, here is my dilemma: in the morning, I signed the death
+certificate and then went out of the city on a case that kept me
+forty-eight hours. On my return, the woman, who had rescued this poor
+girl,--a woman who took in washing and ironing in that basement--told
+me a man had appeared at the house to claim the body he said was his
+wife's. She gave me the man's name, but the name of this man was not
+the name of the husband according to a marriage certificate which I
+found in an envelope the young woman entrusted to me for her child. At
+any rate, he had claimed the body and taken it away.
+
+"Now, ordinarily the living waves of existence close very soon over
+such an episode--all too common; and, so far as I am concerned, in such
+and other similar cases I forget; it is well that I can. But I 've
+never been permitted to forget this!"
+
+He made this announcement emphatically, looking up suddenly from the
+fire, and glancing at each of us in turn.
+
+"And, moreover, I don't believe I am ever going to be permitted to
+forget. Some one intends I shall remember!
+
+"With me it was merely a charity case--one, it is true, that called
+forth my deepest sympathy. The circumstances were peculiar. The woman
+was young, rarely attractive in face, refined, well dressed. Her
+absolute silence concerning herself during all that weary time; her
+heroic endurance and, I may say, angelic acceptance of her
+martyrdom--and all this in such an environment! How could it help
+making a deep impression? Still, I am convinced I should have
+forgotten it, had it not been for a constant reminder.
+
+"In the first week of the next February, I received a notification from
+a national bank in the city that five hundred dollars had been
+deposited to my credit. The woman who lived in that basement received
+during the first week of the New Year a draft on that bank--and mailed
+by the bank--for the same amount. She consulted me about accepting it.
+When I attempted to investigate at the bank, I found that no
+information would be given and no questions answered--only the
+statement made that the money was mine to do with what I might choose.
+Next December, and a year to a day from the death of that young woman,
+I received a similar notification, and the woman a draft for one
+hundred. Since that time, now over twenty-five years ago, no December
+has ever passed that the regular notification has not been mailed to me
+and to the woman. I wrote to the man who had claimed the body, and
+whose name and address the woman, who lived in the basement,
+remembered. The letter was never answered. I waited a year, and wrote
+the second time. The letter came back to me from the dead letter
+office. I invested the increasing amount after two years and let it
+accumulate at compound interest. As you will see, these donations have
+amounted now to a tidy sum. I believe it to be 'conscience
+money'--either from the man who claimed the body as that of his wife,
+or from the woman's husband according to the marriage certificate. Or
+are both men one and the same?
+
+"I hired the farm of you, Gordon, merely telling you it was one of my
+many philanthropic plans that, thus far, I have been unable to carry
+out. As yet I have not used that money for any benefactions. Would
+you hold it longer, or would you apply it to my farm project which is
+to provide a home for the homeless, and for those whose home does not
+provide sufficient change for them? I have thought sometimes I would
+limit the philanthropy to those who need up-building in health.-- What
+do you say, Gordon?"
+
+He looked across the hearth to his friend who was leaning back in his
+chair, his arm resting on the arm, his hand shading his eyes from the
+firelight.
+
+"I should like to think it over, John; it is a peculiar case. Have you
+ever thought of the child? Do you know anything about it? Was it a
+boy or a girl?"
+
+"A girl. No, I never thought of the child--poor little bit of life's
+flotsam. We don't get much time to think of all those we help to float
+in on the tide. Now this is what I am getting, by looking at the
+matter through others' eyes--you mean she should be looked up, and the
+money go to her?"
+
+"That was my first thought, but, as I said, I must think it over. The
+two men, at least, the two names of possibly the same man, complicate
+matters."
+
+"That's what puzzles me," said Jamie. The Doctor turned to him.
+
+"How do you look at it, Boy, you, with your twenty-three years? The
+world where such things happen is n't much like that world of Andre's
+Odyssey, is it?"
+
+Jamie answered brightly, but his voice was slightly unsteady:
+
+"Yes, it's the same old world; it's a wilderness, you know, for all of
+us, only there are so many paths through it, across it, and up and down
+it--paths and trails and roads that cross and recross; so many that end
+in swamp and bog; so many that lead nowhither; so many that are lost on
+the mountain. And so few guideposts--I wish there were more for us
+all! You may bet your life that man--whether the girl's husband or
+lover--has had to tread thorns until his feet bled before he could
+clear his way through. Those five hundred dollars, in yearly deposits,
+he intends shall be guideposts, and he trusts you to put them up in the
+wilderness where they will do the most good.--I 'd hate to be that man!
+Would you mind telling me, Doctor, how she attempted to make way with
+herself?"
+
+"Tried to drown herself from one of the North River piers."
+
+"And her child too," said Jamie musingly; "there came near being two
+graves in _his_ wilderness." He thought a moment in silence. "Make
+the home on the farm with the money, Doctor Rugvie; use the interest in
+helping others who have lost their way in the wilderness."
+
+"Good advice, Boy, I 'll remember to act on it." The Doctor spoke
+gratefully, heartily. His glance rested affectionately upon the long
+figure on the sofa. Was he wondering, as I was, how Jamie at
+twenty-three could reach certain depths which his particular plummet
+could never have sounded? I intended to ask him what he thought of
+Jamie's outlook on life, sometime when we should be alone together.
+
+"Mrs. Macleod," he said, "do you think with your son?"
+
+She hesitated. It is her peculiarity that a direct question, the
+answer to which involves a decision, flusters her painfully.
+
+"I shall have to think it over, like Mr. Ewart," she replied.
+
+"And you, Marcia," he turned to me. Out of my knowledge I answered
+unhesitatingly:
+
+"It's not of the child I 'm thinking; she could n't accept the money
+knowing for what it is paid. Nor am I thinking about those women who
+need 'guide-posts', Jamie. I 'm thinking of that other woman who lived
+in the basement and took in washing and ironing, the one who rescued
+that other from her misery and cared for her with your help, Doctor
+Rugvie--should n't she be remembered? She, who is living? If I had
+that money at my disposal, I would found the farm home and put that
+woman at the head of it. You may be sure she would know how to put up
+the guideposts--and in the right places too."
+
+I spoke eagerly, almost impulsively.
+
+The Doctor looked at me comprehendingly--he knew that I knew that it
+was of Delia Beaseley he had been speaking--and smiled.
+
+"Another idea, Marcia, also worth remembering and acting upon with
+Jamie's."
+
+I turned suddenly to Mr. Ewart, not knowing why I felt impelled to;
+perhaps his silence, his noticeable unresponsiveness to his friend's
+proposition, impressed as well as surprised me; at any rate I looked up
+very quickly and caught the look he gave me. It half terrified me.
+What had I said to offend him? The steel gray eyes were almost black,
+and the look--had it possessed physical force, I felt it would have
+crushed me. It was severe, indignant, uncompromising. I was
+mystified. The look was more flashed at me than directed at me for the
+space of half a second--then he spoke to Jamie.
+
+"You are right, Jamie, about the wilderness; we 'll talk this matter
+over sometime together before John goes,"--I perceived clearly that
+Mrs. Macleod and I were shut out of future conferences,--"and I know we
+can make some plan satisfactory to him and to us all. Count on me,
+John, to help you in carrying out the best plan whatever it may be. In
+any case, it will mean that we are to have more of your company, and
+that's what I want." He spoke lightly.
+
+Doctor Rugvie smiled, then his features grew earnest again.
+
+"Gordon, I want to put a question to you, and after you to Jamie."
+
+"Yes; go ahead."
+
+"I have given you the mere outlines of a bare and ugly episode of New
+York city. That man, or those two men, or that dual entity, has never
+ceased to perplex me. How does it look to you, knowing merely the
+outlines?"
+
+"As if the woman had been dealing with two different men," he replied
+almost indifferently.
+
+The Doctor looked at him earnestly, and I saw he was puzzled by his
+friend's attitude. "That may be--one never can tell in such cases," he
+answered quietly; but I could feel his disappointment.
+
+"That's queer, Ewart," said Jamie, gravely; "to me it looks as if two
+men had done a girl an irreparable wrong." Perhaps we all felt that
+the conversation had been carried a little too far in this direction.
+The Doctor turned it into other channels, but it lagged. I felt
+uncomfortable, and wished I had insisted upon going up to my room when
+the subject of the farm was broached. After all, we had come to no
+decision, and I doubted if the Doctor was much the wiser for all our
+opinions.
+
+Marie's entrance with the porridge relieved the tension somewhat, and I
+was glad to say good night as soon as I had finished mine.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Doctor Rugvie had opened an easy way of approach for me to ask him what
+I would, but that question put by Mr. Ewart in regard to the child,
+whether it was a boy or a girl, seemed to block the way, for a time at
+least, impassably. If I were to make inquiry now of the Doctor
+concerning my identity and ask the name of my father, naturally he
+would infer, after Mr. Ewart's remark, that the question of the
+property was my impelling motive. My reason told me the time was ripe
+to settle this personal question, but something--was it intuition? I
+believe in that, if only we would follow its lead and leave reason to
+lag in chains far behind it--seemed to paralyze my power of will in
+making any move to ascertain my paternal parentage. And yet I had
+dared to respond to that demand in Jamie's advertisement "of good
+parentage"!
+
+"Well, I am myself," I thought, half defiantly, "and after all, it's
+not what those who are dead and gone stood for that counts. It's what
+I stand for; and what I am rests with my will to make. They 'll have
+to accept me for what I am."
+
+I was in the kitchen, concocting an old-fashioned Indian pudding and
+showing Angelique about the oven, as these thoughts passed through my
+mind. At that moment Jamie opened the door and looked in.
+
+"I say, Marcia--awfully busy?"
+
+"No, not now; what do you want?"
+
+"You--I 'm lonesome. Come on into the living-room--I 've built up a
+roaring fire there--and let's talk; nobody 's around."
+
+"Where 's Doctor Rugvie?"
+
+"Gone off with Cale to the farm. He 'll get pneumonia if he does n't
+look out; the place is like an ice-house at this season."
+
+I slipped the pudding into the oven. "Now look out for it and keep
+enough milk in it till it wheys, Angelique." I turned to Jamie.
+"Where's Mr. Ewart?"
+
+"Oh, Ewart's off nosing about in Quebec for some old furniture for his
+den. Pierre drove him to the train just after breakfast. He told
+mother he would be back in time for supper."
+
+"That's queer," I said, following him through the bare offices, one of
+which was to be the den, into the living-room where stale cigar smoke
+still lingered. "Whew! Let's have in some fresh air."
+
+I opened the hinged panes in the double windows; opened the front door
+and let in the keen crisp air.
+
+"There, now," I closed them; "we can 'talk' as you say in comfort. I
+did n't air out early this morning, for when I came in I found Mr.
+Ewart writing. He looked for all the world as if he were making his
+last will and testament. I beat a double-quick retreat."
+
+"I 'll bet you did. I 'd make tracks if Ewart looked like that." He
+drew up two chairs before the fire. "Here, sit here by me; let's be
+comfy when we can. I say, Marcia--"
+
+He paused, leaning to the fire in his favorite position: arms along his
+knees, and clasped hands hanging between them. He turned and looked at
+me ruefully.
+
+"We all got beyond our depth, did n't we, last night?"
+
+"I thought so."
+
+"The Doctor 's a dear, is n't he?"
+
+"He 's the dearest kind of a dear, and I could n't bear to see him
+snubbed by your lord of the manor."
+
+Jamie nodded. "That was rather rough. I don't understand that side of
+Ewart--never have seen it but once before, and I would n't mind, you
+know, Marcia," he lowered his voice, "if I never saw it again. It made
+no end of an atmosphere, did n't it?"
+
+"Thick and--muggy," I replied, searching for the word that should
+express the mental and spiritual atmospheric condition, the result of
+Mr. Ewart's attitude in last evening's talk. "And it has n't wholly
+cleared up yet."
+
+He nodded. "I believe that's why he took himself out of the way this
+morning. Look here--I 've a great overpowering longing to confide in
+you, Marcia." He laughed.
+
+"Confide then; I 'm a regular safe deposit and trust company. Tell me,
+do; I'm dying to talk."
+
+"Oh, you are!" He turned to me with his own bright face illumined.
+"Is n't it good that we 're young, Marcia? I feel that forcibly when I
+am with so many older men."
+
+"I 'm just beginning to feel young, Jamie; to see my way through that
+wilderness you spoke of."
+
+I knew his sympathy, his understanding, not of my life but of the
+condition of mind to which that life had brought me. It is this quick
+understanding of another's "sphere", I may call it, that makes the
+young Scotsman so wonderfully attractive to all who meet him.
+
+"You know what the Doctor said about the world of which he told us last
+night and of Andre's world?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Well, one night in camp--last summer, you know, it was just before
+Ewart left me there--old Andre told us what happened years ago up there
+in the wilds of the Saguenay. He said one day two Indian guides,
+Montagnais, came to his camp. The oldest, Root-of-the-Pine, a friend
+of Andre's, brought him word from old Mere Guillardeau, Andre's
+sister--you know her--who is living here in Lamoral. She told him to
+receive two of the English, a man and a woman, as guests for a month.
+The Indian told Andre they were waiting across the portage.
+
+"Andre said he went over to meet them, and they stayed with him not
+only one month, but four. He told us the girl had a voice as sweet as
+the nightingale's; that her eyes were like wood violets, her laugh like
+the forest brook. He said they loved each other madly, so madly that
+even his old blood was stirred at times. He was alone with them there
+in that wilderness for all those months, caring for them, fishing,
+hunting, picking the mountain berries, till the first snow flew. Then
+they took their flight.
+
+"Mere Guillardeau had sent in her message: 'Ask no questions. You can
+confess and be shriven when you come to Richelieu-en-Bas.' He obeyed
+to the letter.
+
+"He knew, he said, that they were not married, but he caught enough of
+their English to know they were looking forward to being married when
+it should be made possible for them. Whence they came, he never knew;
+whither they went, he never asked. They came, as birds come that mate
+in the spring; they went, as the late birds go after the mating season
+is over, with the first snow-fall; but, Marcia--"
+
+"Yes, Jamie."
+
+"You won't mind my speaking out after what was said last evening?"
+
+"I mind nothing from you."
+
+"Andre told us that before they left he knew a nestling was on its way;
+the slender form, like a willow shoot, as he expressed it, was rounder,
+and the face of the girl was the face of a tender doe. You should have
+heard him tell it--there in the setting of forest, lake and mountain!
+
+"'All this happened long, long ago,' he said, 'but still I hear her
+voice in the forest; still I see her eyes in the first wood violets;
+see her smile that made sunshine in the darkest woods. Still I hear
+her light steps about the camp and follow her still in thought across
+the last portage when we carried her in our arms; still see her waving
+her hand to me from the canoe that floated like a brown leaf on the
+blue lake waters. Wherever she may be, may the Holy Virgin, Our Lady
+of the Snows, guard her--and her child! I have waited all these years
+for her to come again.'
+
+"Marcia--Andre called their love 'forest love'. Sometimes I think he
+spoke truly; untaught, he knew the difference."
+
+I listened, caught by the pathos of the tale, the charm of old Andre's
+words; but in love I was untaught. I wondered how Jamie could know the
+"difference".
+
+"But now to my point. Of course I listened all eyes and ears to Andre.
+When he finished, the camp fire was low. The full moon had risen above
+the waters of the lake and lighted the tree-fringed shore. I turned to
+Ewart, and caught the same look on his face that I saw last night when
+the Doctor was telling his story: the look of a man who is seeing
+ghosts--more than one. For three days I scarce got a decent word when
+he was with me, which was seldom; he was off by himself in the forest.
+So you see _this_, last night's occurrence, does not wholly surprise
+me."
+
+We sat for a while without talking. Jamie took his pipe, filled and
+lighted it with a glowing coal.
+
+"Jamie," I said at last. He nodded encouragingly.
+
+"You know you told me about that queer rumor that crops out at such odd
+times and places--about Mr. Ewart's having been married and divorced,
+and the boy he is educating, 'Boy or girl?' you know he said--"
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"Might n't it be--I know you did n't believe it, but would n't it be
+possible that there is some truth in that, distorted, perhaps, but
+enough to make him suffer when there is any reference to love that has
+brought with it misery and suffering?"
+
+"It may be you 're right; I had n't thought of it in that light. Of
+course, I never heard of the rumor till I came back from camp in
+September; then it seemed to be in the air. I wonder if the Doctor has
+ever heard anything."
+
+"Probably his coming home so soon and making his home here started the
+gossip. Jamie--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You said he never spoke much to you about his personal affairs--that
+you don't know so very much of his intimate personal life. Does n't
+that prove that he has had some trouble, some painful experience?"
+
+"Woman's logic, but I suppose he has. Most men have been through the
+wilderness, or been lost in it, by the time they are forty. I should
+think if--mind you, I say 'if'--he was ever married, ever divorced,
+ever had a child somewhere, he might find his special trail difficult
+at times; but he has n't lost it! Ewart does not lose a trail so
+easily! Look at his experience--Oxford, London, Australian
+sheep-ranchman, forester here in Lamoral! And he 's so tender with
+everything and everybody. That's what makes him so beloved here in
+this French settlement."
+
+"Except towards the Doctor last night."
+
+"That's so; but he is tender just the same. I 've seen that trait in
+him so many times."
+
+"I should think he might be--and like adamant at others," I said, and
+began to put the room to rights.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+"We shall miss the Doctor no end," said Jamie ruefully.
+
+We caught the last wave of his hand; the pung's broad fur-behung back
+could no longer be seen; the jingle of the bells grew fainter; soon
+there was silence.
+
+"He promised to come again in February. And, now, what next?" I
+turned to Mrs. Macleod who was standing with Jamie at the window.
+
+"There does n't seem to be any 'next'?" she answered with such evident
+dejection that Jamie and I laughed at her.
+
+"Take heart, mither," her son admonished her, using for the first time
+in my presence the softer Scotch for mother.
+
+"It's been such a pleasant week for us--and I find Mr. Ewart so
+different; not that I mean to criticize our host," she added hastily
+and apologetically. She seemed to take pleasure in refusing to be
+comforted for the loss of the Doctor's cheering presence.
+
+"Of course he 's different; there can't be two Doctor Rugvies in this
+needy world; but you wait till you know Ewart better, mother. Talk
+about 'what next'! You 'll find as soon as Ewart sets things humming
+here there 'll be plenty of the 'next'; Cale can give you a point or
+two on that already. By the way, he seems to have sworn allegiance to
+Ewart; he does n't have time for me now."
+
+"But what are we women to do here?" I exclaimed half impatiently. My
+busy working life in the city, with the consequent pressure that made
+itself felt every hour of the day, and burdened me at night with the
+dreadful "what next if strength and health should fail?", had unfitted
+me in part for the continued quiet of domesticity. I found myself
+beginning to chafe under it, now that the house was settled. I wanted
+more work to fill my time.
+
+"Better ask Ewart," said Jamie to tease me.
+
+"I will." I spoke decidedly and gave Jamie a surprise. "I 'll speak
+to him the very first time I get the chance. He has n't given me one
+yet."
+
+"You 're right there, Marcia. I noticed you and the Doctor were great
+chums from the first, but Ewart has n't said much to you--he is so
+different, though, as mother says. It takes time to know Ewart, and
+sometimes--"
+
+"What 'sometimes'?"
+
+"Sometimes when I think I know him, I find I don't. That interests me.
+You 'll have the same experience when you get well acquainted with him."
+
+"There is no monotony about that at any rate."
+
+"I should say not." He spoke emphatically.
+
+Mrs. Macleod turned to me.
+
+"I 'm sure I feel just as you do, Marcia, about the 'what next'. I
+don't know of anything except to keep house and provide for the meals--"
+
+"That's no sinecure in this climate, mother. Such appetites! Even
+Marcia is developing a bank holiday one."
+
+"And gaining both color and flesh," said Mrs. Macleod, looking me over
+approvingly. I dropped her a curtsey which surprised her Scotch
+staidness and amused Jamie.
+
+"Are you _sure_ you are twenty-six?" He smiled quizzically.
+
+"As sure as you are of your three and twenty years."
+
+Jamie turned from the window, took a book and dipped into it. I
+thought he was lost to us for the next two hours. Mrs. Macleod left
+the room.
+
+"Sometimes I feel a hundred." Jamie spoke thoughtfully.
+
+"And I a hundred and ten." I responded quickly to his mood.
+
+"You 're bound to go me ten better. But no--have you, though?"
+
+I nodded emphatically.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Oh, in New York."
+
+"Why in New York?"
+
+"You don't know it?"
+
+"No; but I mean to."
+
+"I wish you joy."
+
+"Tell me why in New York."
+
+"You would n't understand."
+
+"Would n't I? Try me."
+
+I looked up at him as he stood there thoughtful, his forefinger between
+the leaves of the book. _He_ had no living to earn. _He_ had not to
+bear the burden and heat of an earned existence. How could he
+understand? So I questioned in my narrowness of outlook.
+
+"I felt the burden," I answered.
+
+"What burden?"
+
+"The burden of--oh, I can't tell exactly; the burden of just that
+terrible weight of life as it is lived there. Before I was ill it
+weighed on me so I felt old, sometimes centuries old--"
+
+Jamie leaned forward eagerly, his face alive with feeling.
+
+"Marcia, that's just the way I felt when I was in the hospital. I was
+bowed down in spirit with it--"
+
+"You?" I asked in amazement.
+
+"Yes, I; why not? I can't help myself; I am a child of my time. Only,
+I felt the burden of life as humanity lives it, not touched by locality
+as you felt it."
+
+"But you have n't really lived that life yet, Jamie."
+
+"Yes, I have, Marcia."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I wonder now if _you_ will understand? I get it--I get all that
+through the imagination."
+
+"But imagination is n't reality."
+
+"More real than reality itself sometimes. Look here, I 'm not a
+philanthropic cad and I don't mean to say too much, but I can say this:
+when a thinking man before he is twenty-five has run up hard against
+the only solid fact in this world--death, he somehow gets a grip on
+life and its meaning that others don't."
+
+I waited for more. This was the Jamie of whom the depth of simplicity
+in "Andre's Odyssey" had given me a glimpse.
+
+He straightened himself suddenly. "I want to say right here and now
+that if I have felt, and feel--as I can't help feeling, being the child
+of my time and subject to its tendencies--the burden of this life of
+ours as lived by all humankind, thank God, I can even when bowed in
+spirit, feel at times the 'rhythm of the universe' that adjusts,
+coordinates all--" He broke off abruptly, laughing at himself. "I 'm
+getting beyond my depth, Marcia?"
+
+I shook my head. He smiled. "Well, then, I 'll get down to bed rock
+and say something more: you won't mind my mooning about and going off
+by myself and acting, sometimes, as if I had patented an aeroplane and
+could sustain myself for a few hours above the heads of all humanity--"
+
+I laughed outright. "What do you mean, Jamie?"
+
+"I mean that as I can't dig a trench, or cut wood, or run a motor bus,
+or be a member of a life-saving crew like other men, I 'm going to try
+to help a man up, and earn my living if I can, by writing out what I
+get in part through experience and mostly through imagination. There!
+Now I 've told you all there is to tell, except that I 've had
+something actually accepted by a London publisher; and if you 'll put
+up with my crotchets I 'll give you a presentation copy."
+
+"Oh, Jamie!"
+
+I was so glad for him that for the moment I found nothing more to say.
+
+"'Oh, Jamie,'" he mimicked; then with a burst of laughter he threw
+himself full length on the sofa.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" I demanded sternly.
+
+"At what Ewart and the Doctor would say if they could hear us talking
+like this so soon as their backs were turned on the manor. I believe
+the Doctor's last word to you was 'griddlecakes', and Ewart's to me:
+'We 'll have dinner at twelve--I 'm going into the woods with Cale'.
+Well, I 'm in for good two hours of reading," he said, settling himself
+comfortably in the sofa corner. I had come to learn that this was my
+dismissal.
+
+Before Mr. Ewart's return, I took counsel with myself--or rather with
+my common-sense self. If I were to continue to work in this household,
+I must know definitely what I was to do. The fact that I was receiving
+wages meant, if it meant anything, that I received them in exchange for
+service rendered. The Doctor left the matter in an unsatisfactory,
+nebulous state, saying, that if Ewart insisted on paying my salary it
+was his affair to provide the work; and thereafter he was provokingly
+silent.
+
+I had been too many years in a work-harness to shirk any responsibility
+along business lines now, and when, after supper, I heard Jamie say
+just before we left the dining-room: "I'm no end busy this evening,
+Gordon, I 'll work in here if you don't mind; I 'll be in for
+porridge," I knew my opportunity was already made for me. I told Mrs.
+Macleod that, as she could not tell me what was expected of me, I
+should not let another day go by without ascertaining this from Mr.
+Ewart. Perhaps she intentionally made the opening for my opportunity
+easier, for when I went into the living-room an hour later, I found Mr.
+Ewart alone with the dogs. He was at the library table, drawing
+something with scale and square.
+
+"Pardon me for not rising," he said without looking up; "I don't want
+to spoil this acute angle; I 'm mapping out the old forest. I 'm glad
+you 're at liberty for I need some help."
+
+"At liberty!" I echoed; and, perceiving the humor of the situation, I
+could not help smiling. "That's just what I have come to you to
+complain of--I have too much liberty."
+
+"You want work?"
+
+It was a bald statement of an axiomatic truth, and it was made while he
+was still intent upon finishing the angle. I stood near the table
+watching him.
+
+"Yes." I thought the circumstances warranted conciseness, and my being
+laconic, if necessary.
+
+"Then we can come to an understanding without further preliminaries."
+He spoke almost indifferently; he was still intent on his work. "Be
+seated," he said pleasantly, looking up at me for the first time and
+directly into my face.
+
+I did as I was bidden, and waited. I am told I have a talent for
+waiting on another's unexpressed intentions without fidgetting, as so
+many women do, with any trifle at hand. I occupied myself with looking
+at the man whom Jamie loved, who "interested" him. I, too, found the
+personality and face interesting. By no means of uncommon type,
+nevertheless the whole face was noticeable for the remarkable moulding
+of every feature. There were lines in it and, without aging, every one
+told. They added character, gave varied expression, intensified
+traits. Life's chisel of experience had graven both deep and fine; not
+a coarse line marred the extraordinary firmness that expressed itself
+in lips and jaw; not a touch of unfineness revealed itself about the
+nose. Delicate creases beneath the eyes, and many of them, mellowed
+the almost hard look of the direct glance. Thought had moulded; will
+had graven; suffering had both hardened and softened--"tempered" is the
+right word--as is its tendency when manhood endures it rightly. But
+joy had touched the contours all too lightly; the face in repose showed
+absolutely no trace of it. When he smiled, however, as he did, looking
+up suddenly to find me studying him, I realized that here was great
+capacity for enjoying, although joyousness had never found itself at
+home about eyes and lips. He laid aside the drawing and turned his
+chair to face me.
+
+"Doctor Rugvie--and Cale," he added pointedly, "tell me you were for
+several years in a branch of the New York Library. Did you ever do any
+work in cataloguing?"
+
+"No; I was studying for the examinations that last spring before I was
+taken ill."
+
+"Then I am sure you will understand just how to do the work I have laid
+out for you. I have a few cases still in storage in Montreal--mostly
+on forestry. Before sending for them, I wanted to see where I could
+put them."
+
+"Cut and dried already! I need n't have given myself extra worry about
+my future work," I thought; but aloud I said:
+
+"I 'll do my best; if the books are German I can't catalogue them. I
+have n't got so far."
+
+"I 'll take care of those; there are very few of them. Most of them
+are in French; in fact, it is a mild fad of mine to collect French
+works, ancient and modern, on forestry. I 'll send for the books after
+the office has been furnished and put to rights. I am expecting the
+furniture from Quebec to-morrow. And now that I have laid out your
+work for you for the present, I 'll ask a favor--a personal one," he
+added, smiling as he rose, thrust his hands deep into his pockets and
+jingled some keys somewhere in the depths.
+
+"What is it?" I, too, rose, ready to do the favor on the instant if
+possible, for his wholly businesslike manner, the directness with which
+he relied upon my training to help him pleased me.
+
+"I 'd like to leave the settling of my den in your hands--wholly," he
+said emphatically. "You have been so successful with the other rooms
+that I 'd like to see your hand in my special one. How did you know
+just what to do, and not overdo,--so many women are guilty of
+that,--tell me?"
+
+He spoke eagerly, almost boyishly. It was pleasant to be able to tell
+him the plain truth; no frills were needed with this man, if I read him
+rightly.
+
+"Because it was my first chance to work out some of my home ideals--my
+first opportunity to make a home, as I had imagined it; then, too,--"
+
+I hesitated, wondering if I should tell not only the plain truth, but
+the unvarnished one. I decided to speak out frankly; it could do no
+harm.
+
+"I enjoyed it all so much because I could spend some
+money--judiciously, you know,"--I spoke earnestly. He nodded
+understandingly, but I saw that he suppressed a smile,--"without having
+to earn it by hard work; I 've had to scrimp so long--"
+
+His face grew grave again.
+
+"How much did you spend? I think I have a slight remembrance of some
+infinitesimal sum you mentioned the first evening--"
+
+"Infinitesimal! No, indeed; it was almost a hundred--eighty-seven
+dollars and sixty-three cents, to be exact."
+
+"Now, Miss Farrell!" It was his turn to protest. He went over to the
+hearth and took his stand on it, his back to the fire, his hands
+clasped behind him. "Do you mean to tell me that you provided all this
+comfort and made this homey atmosphere with eighty-seven dollars and
+sixty-three cents?--I'm particular about those sixty-three cents."
+
+"I did, and had more good fun and enjoyment in spending them to that
+end, than I ever remember to have had before in my life. You don't
+think it too much?"
+
+I looked up at him and smiled; and smiled again right merrily at the
+perplexed look in his eyes, a look that suddenly changed to one of such
+deep, emotional suffering that my eyes fell before it. I felt
+intuitively I ought not to see it.
+
+"Too much!" he repeated, and as I looked up again quickly I found the
+face and expression serene and unmoved. "Well, as you must have
+learned already, things are relative when it comes to value, and what
+you have done for this house belongs in the category of things that
+mere money can neither purchase nor pay for."
+
+"I don't quite see that; I thought it was I who was having all the
+pleasure."
+
+His next question startled me.
+
+"You are an orphan, I understand, Miss Farrell?"
+
+"Yes." Again I felt the blood mount to my cheeks as I restated this
+half truth.
+
+"Then you must know what it is to be alone in the world?"
+
+"Yes--all alone."
+
+"Perhaps to have no home of your own?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To feel yourself a stranger even in familiar places?"
+
+"Oh, yes--many times."
+
+"Surely, then, you will understand what it means for a lonely man to
+come back to this old manor, which I have occupied for years only at
+intervals, and more as a camping than an abiding place, and find it for
+the first time a home in fact?"
+
+"I think I can understand it."
+
+"Very well, then," he said emphatically and holding out his hand into
+which I laid mine, wondering as I did so "what next" was to be expected
+from this man, "I am your debtor for this and must remain so; and in
+the circumstances," he continued with an emphasis at once so frank and
+merry, that it left no doubt of his sincerity as well as of his
+appreciation of the situation, "I think there need be no more talk of
+work, or wages, or reciprocal service between you and me as long as you
+remain with us. It's a pact, is n't it?" he said, releasing my hand
+from the firm cordial pressure.
+
+"But I want my wages," I protested with mock anxiety. "I really can't
+get on without money--and I was to have twenty-five dollars a month and
+'board and room' according to agreement."
+
+He laughed at that. I was glad to hear him.
+
+"Oh, I have no responsibility for the agreement or what the
+advertisement has brought forth; it was one of the great surprises of
+my life to find you here. By the way, I hear you prefer to receive
+your pay from the Doctor?"
+
+"Did he tell you that?" I demanded, not over courteously.
+
+"Professionally," he replied with assumed gravity. "I insisted on
+taking that pecuniary burden on myself, as I seemed to be the first
+beneficiary; but I 've changed my mind, and, hereafter, you may apply
+to the Doctor for your salary. I 'll take your service gratis and tell
+him so. Does this suit you?"
+
+"So completely, wholly and absolutely that--well, you 'll see! When
+can I take possession of the office? It needs a good cleaning down the
+first thing." I was eager to begin to prove my gratitude for the
+manner in which he had extricated me from the anomalous position in his
+household.
+
+"From this moment; only--no manual labor like 'cleaning down'; there
+are enough in the house for that."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" I replied, laughing at such a restriction. "I 'm used
+to it--
+
+"I intend you to be unused to it in my house--you understand?"
+
+There was decided command in these words; they irritated me as well as
+the look he gave me. But I remembered in time that, after all, the old
+manor of Lamoral was his house, not mine, and it would be best for me
+to obey orders.
+
+"Very well; I 'll ask Marie and little Pete to help me."
+
+Marie appeared with the porridge, a little earlier than usual on
+Jamie's account, and Mr. Ewart asked her to bring a lighted candle.
+
+"Come into the office for a moment," he said, leading the way with the
+light.
+
+He stopped at the threshold to let me pass. The room was warm; the
+soapstone heater was doing effective work. The snow gleamed white
+beneath the curtainless windows, and the crowding hemlocks showed black
+pointed masses against the moonlight. There was some frost on the
+panes.
+
+"It looks bare enough now," he said, raising the candle at the full
+stretch of his arm that I might see the oak panels of the ceiling; "I
+leave it to you to make it cheery. Here 's something that will help
+out in this room and in the living-room."
+
+He took a large pasteboard box from the floor, and we went back into
+the other room. Jamie and Mrs. Macleod were there.
+
+"Now, what have you there, Gordon?" said the former, frankly showing
+the curiosity that is a part of his make-up.
+
+"Something that should delight your inner man's eye," he replied.
+Going to the table, he opened the box and took from it some of the
+exquisite first and second proofs of those wonderful etchings by Meryon.
+
+We looked and looked again. Old Paris, the Paris of the second
+republic, lay spread before us: bridges, quays, chimney-pots, roofs,
+river and the cathedral of Notre Dame were there in black and white,
+and the Seine breathing dankness upon all! I possessed myself of one,
+the Pont Neuf, and betook myself to the sofa to enjoy it.
+
+"You know these, Miss Farrell?"
+
+"Only as I have seen woodcuts of them in New York."
+
+"They are my favorites; I want nothing else on my walls. Will you
+select some for this room and some for the den? I will passepartout
+them; they should have no frames."
+
+"You 're just giving me the best treat you could possibly provide," I
+said, still in possession of the proof, "and how glad I am that I 've
+had it--"
+
+"What, Marcia?" This from Jamie.
+
+"I mean the chance to extract a little honey from the strong."
+
+Mrs. Macleod and Jamie looked thoroughly mystified, not knowing New
+York; but Mr. Ewart smiled at my enthusiasm and scripture application.
+He understood that some things during the years of my "scrimping" had
+borne fruit.
+
+"I believe you 're more than half French, Ewart," said Jamie, looking
+up from the proof he was examining; "I mean in feeling and sympathy."
+
+"No, I am all Canadian."
+
+"You mean English, don't you?"
+
+"No, I mean Canadian."
+
+This was said with a fervor and a decision which had such a snap to it,
+that Jamie looked at him in surprise. Without replying, he continued
+his examination of the proof, whistling softly to himself.
+
+Mr. Ewart turned to Mrs. Macleod and said, smiling:
+
+"I want all members of my household to know just where I stand; in the
+future we may have a good many English guests in the house.--Please,
+give me an extra amount of porridge, Mrs. Macleod."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+With the coming of the furniture and the furnishing of the office, my
+hands were full for the next week. During the time, Mr. Ewart was in
+Ottawa on business, and I worked like a Trojan to have everything in
+readiness on his return. I was determined he should be the first to
+see the transformation of his special room, and forbade Jamie to open
+the door so much as a crack that might afford him a peep.
+
+"It does n't seem much like the manor with Ewart away and you invisible
+except at meals," he growled from the arm-chair he had placed just
+outside the sill of the office door. He begged me to leave the door
+open just a little way, enough to enable him to have speech with me--a
+privilege I granted, but reluctantly, for I was putting the books on
+the shelves and giving the task my whole attention. The last day of
+the week was with us, and Mr. Ewart was expected in a few hours. I
+stopped long enough, however, to peep at him through the inch-wide
+opening. He was drawing away at a cold pipe and looked wholly
+disconsolate.
+
+"A new version of Omar Khayyam," I said.
+
+ "'A pipe, you know ... and Thou
+ Beside me, chatting in the wilderness.'"
+
+
+"I suppose you 'll let me in when Ewart comes."
+
+"I 've nothing to say about that; it is n't my den."
+
+"I was under the impression it was wholly yours, judging from your
+possession of it."
+
+"Now, no sarcasm, Jamie Macleod; work is work, and there 's been a lot
+to do in here--not but what I 've taken solid comfort in putting this
+room into shape."
+
+"Oh, yes, we have seen that; even Cale remarked to me the other night
+that he 'guessed' Mr. Ewart knew a good thing when he saw it, as he had
+a general furnisher and library assistant all in one, who was working
+for his interest about as hard as she could."
+
+"Good for Cale, he is a discerning person. But he seems to be
+following suit pretty closely along his lines."
+
+"I hear you 're to catalogue the books that are in the den."
+
+"That is my order."
+
+"Don't you want me to help you? Old French is n't so easy sometimes,"
+he asked, coaxing.
+
+"Oh, no; I 've help enough in Mr. Ewart. He knows it a good deal
+better than you do."
+
+"'Sass'," was Jamie's sole reply, a word he had borrowed from Cale's
+vocabulary; he used it to characterize my attitude towards his
+acquirements.
+
+I worked on in silence till the books were housed; then I drew a long
+breath of satisfaction.
+
+"What's that sigh for?" was the demand from the other side of the door.
+
+"For a noble deed accomplished, my friend."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"Now move away your chair, I 'm coming out."
+
+"Come on."
+
+There was no movement of the chair, and, to punish him, I locked the
+door on the inside and went out through the kitchen up to my room.
+
+I recall that afternoon: the heavy first-of-December skies; the
+gray-black look on the hemlocks; the faded trunks of the lindens; the
+dullness of the unreflecting snow; the intermittent soughing of the
+wind in the pines. All without looked drear, jaded, almost lifeless;
+the cold was penetrating. I determined that all within should be
+bright with home cheer on the master's return. Did he not say I had
+made a home of the old manor?
+
+I recall dressing myself with unusual care and wishing I had some
+light-colored gown to help brighten the interior for him.
+
+For him! I was looking in the mirror and coiling my hair when I
+realized my thought; to my amazement my own face seemed to me almost
+the face of a stranger. I saw that its thin oval had rounded, the
+cheeks gained a faint color; animation was in every feature, life
+anticipant in the eyes.
+
+"That's what the change has done so soon; pure air, home life, good
+food and an abundance of it."
+
+I failed to read the first sign.
+
+There was nothing for it but to put on the well-worn skirt of brown
+panama serge, a clean shirt waist and a white four-in-hand. I promised
+myself not only a warm coat out of the first month's wages, but a
+light-colored inexpensive dress that would harmonize with the general
+feeling of youthfulness of which my inner woman was now aware. I sat
+down at the window to wait for the sound of the pung bells. Soon there
+was a soft tap at my door.
+
+"Come in." Jamie made his appearance with a bunch of partridge berries
+in his hand.
+
+"With Cale's compliments; he found them under the snow in the woods,
+and hopes you will do him the honor to wear them in your hair. He left
+them with me just before he went to meet Ewart; I had them under the
+arm-chair to present to you formally when you should come out of the
+den; instead of which, you ignominiously--"
+
+"Please, don't, Jamie--no coals of fire; give me the lovely things."
+
+"But, remember, you are to wear them in your hair, so Cale says."
+
+"It's perfectly absurd--but I must do it to please him. Who would
+credit him with such an attention?"
+
+"May I stay while you put them in?" he asked meekly.
+
+"Of course you may, you sisterless youth."
+
+I parted the bunch, and pinned a spray on each side, in the coils and
+plaits of my over heavy hair. Jamie said nothing till this finishing
+touch had been put to my toilet.
+
+"I say, it's ripping, Marcia. Cale will be your abject slave from
+henceforth. By the way, I 've never heard him call you 'Happy', as he
+proposed to do."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"I wonder what's the reason? Perhaps he thought he had been too fresh,
+and he does n't dare--There 's Ewart!" He was off on a run.
+
+I thought I would wait for the various greetings to be over before
+going down. I felt sure I should not see his hand withdrawn this time,
+as on the occasion of his first home-coming. When I heard his voice
+below in the hall, I was aware of a warm thrill of delight, a joyous
+expectancy of good, a feeling as if the home-coming were my own; for
+never in my life had I been welcomed as he was, with a shout from
+Jamie, an outburst from the dogs, and joyful ejaculations from
+Angelique and Marie.
+
+I went down, my cheeks glowing, my heart warm with the home-sense,
+and--I wondered at myself--my hand outstretched to his. When his
+closed upon it with the same cordial pressure of the week before, I
+knew for the first time in my life the joy of being "at home".
+
+And I failed to read the second sign.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+It was a busy winter and a joyous one for me; a short and happy one for
+Jamie, so he said. He was correcting proof for the first venture and
+collecting data for the second; trying his hand at a chapter here and
+there; alternately despairing, rejoicing, appealing to Mr. Ewart or me
+for criticism--something we were unable to give him, as from disjointed
+portions of his work we did not know the trend of his ideas; protesting
+one day that he could write nothing worth reading, then on the next
+proclaiming to the household, including Cale, his temporary triumph of
+mind over material. We enjoyed his moods, all of them, whether of
+despair or enthusiasm, guying him in the one and encouraging him in the
+other.
+
+The cataloguing took me well into the first week in January. Mr. Ewart
+was often in the den with me of an afternoon, and I was glad to take
+advantage of his knowledge of the language in translation, and the use
+of obsolete words. His own time seemed over full for those first few
+months. On Tuesday and Saturday mornings, he was always in the office
+to see the farmers on the estate and talk with them about his plans for
+future development. On other week-days, when weather permitted, he and
+Cale were much in the woods.
+
+I found that Mr. Ewart did not intend it should be all work and no play
+for me. Twice in December he drove me in the pung--no sleigh had as
+yet been purchased, although a piano filled a corner of the
+living-room; once, early in the morning, before the sun had a chance to
+warm and partly melt the ice-crystals that encased every branch, every
+twig and twiglet. On that morning, we drove without speech for miles
+behind the swiftly trotting French coach horses; the beauty about us
+was indescribable, and silence was the best appreciation. We sped
+through the woods'-road, a prismatic arcade of interlaced crystals;
+along the river bank beside the vast frozen expanse of the St.
+Lawrence, gleaming and glittering with blinding reflected radiance. It
+was so brilliant, that against it the trees by the roadside, laden as
+they were with ice, stood out black and gaunt. Then into
+Richelieu-en-Bas, where every roof, every fence, every post and rivet,
+looked to be pure rock crystal. Window-frames, eaves, doors, the old
+pump in the marketplace were behung with icicles. The world about us
+that morning was another world than the work-a-day one to which I was
+accustomed. I had seen this special condition of ice in northern New
+England, but never in such beauty and grandeur.
+
+We drove home before the ice began to soften. Afterwards, I sat for an
+hour at my open window, listening to the musical tinkle and metallic
+clink of the falling ice from the trees in the woods across the creek.
+
+With the reason given that Jamie and I needed exercise in the open
+every day,--our occupations being of the sedentary kind, as he
+said,--Mr. Ewart bade us fare forth with him to learn the art of
+snowshoeing. He was past master in it and a good teacher. By the
+middle of January we were well on our feet and independent of any help
+from him.
+
+Oh, the joy of the fleet tracks over the unbroken white! Oh, the
+coursing of the blood, the deep, deep breaths of what Mr. Ewart called
+the "iced wine" air! Oh, the blessed hunger that was satisfied with
+wholesome food after the invigorating exercise! Oh, the refreshing
+sleep, with the temperature at zero and the still air touching my
+cheeks under the fur robe across my bed! And with it all the sense of
+security, the sense of peace, of rest!
+
+In this atmosphere, the remembrance of the weary years in the great
+city grew dim. I rejoiced at it.
+
+I was beginning, also, to make myself easily understood with the
+French. Their language I loved; their literature I cultivated. It was
+a delight to be able to visit the tiny homes in the village, whither I
+was sent on one errand or another by Mr. Ewart, so getting extra rides
+in the pung and longer hours in the bracing air. It was an education
+to make the acquaintance of various families, learn the names of every
+member of the households, their interests and occupations. They were
+such tiny homes, made so high of stoop to avoid the rising spring flood
+that the great river is apt to send far and wide and deep into the
+village streets, covering the noble park and flooding first floors,
+respecting neither twin-towered church nor manor house; so low in the
+walls, few-windowed, and those double and packed with moss.
+
+And such expansive souls as I found in the tiny homes: the hostess of
+the inn, Mrs. Macleod's dressmaker who lived beneath the shadow of the
+great twin-towered church; the furrier and his wife on the
+market-square; from them I bought my warm coat; ancient Mere
+Guillardeau and her old daughter, weaver of rag carpets, and some of
+her friends who followed the same calling and showed me, during the
+short winter days, how to weave them on their rough looms.
+
+Of the three or four English families, with the exception of the
+postmistress, I knew nothing, or knew of them only through Mr. Ewart
+and Jamie. The "Seignior" and "Seignioress", so-called although
+English, were in Montreal for the winter. The old General and his wife
+were housed through infirmities. Now and then I saw a bevy of
+red-cheeked English girls, driving over from their home-school in Upper
+Richelieu for a jolly lark on their half-holiday. Of other English I
+heard nothing; there were none in Richelieu-en-Bas.
+
+As the season advanced and I was firm on my winter feet, I made many a
+snow-shoe call on the farmers' families who lived on the old seigniory
+lands. It was good to hear them tell their hopes and anticipations;
+for Mr. Ewart's plan to do away with the old seigniorial rents and
+leases, and make of each farmer, at present paying rent, a freeholder,
+was welcomed, with almost passionate enthusiasm, in this community,
+where, generally, change is looked at askance. It was not long before
+I discovered that, on entering these homes, I found myself anticipating
+some word of praise, some expression of loyalty and devotion to the man
+who was to give them a new outlook on life. I listened with willing
+ears and led them, many times of my own accord, to speak of him.
+
+In the long winter evenings I read thoroughly into the history of
+French Canada. It took me far afield, into English as well; into
+biography and the work of pioneers. It showed me the flaming
+enthusiasm of the fanatic, the faith of the apostle, the courage of
+high adventure, the chivalry of noble lives, the loyalty and devotion
+of the humble. It showed me, also, the cruelty of man to man, the
+divergence of race, the warring of nations, the battlefields, the
+conquests, the heavy hand of the conqueror, the red man's friendship,
+the red man's enmity, fire, sword, torture. But in and through and
+above all, it opened to me the high heart of the Canadian, the
+undaunted faith in established principles, and the patriotism that is a
+veritable passion.
+
+"O Canada, my Canada!" an old French Canadian once exclaimed to me as
+we sat by the box-stove in his little "cabin". "There is no land like
+it; no land where they live at peace as we do here; no land where they
+are so content by their own fireside." And he spoke the truth.
+
+I began to understand, through my intercourse with our neighbors on the
+estate and the village people, those words of Drummond--Drummond who
+has shown us the hearts of Canada's children:
+
+ "Our fathers came to win us
+ This land beyond recall--
+ And the same blood flows within us
+ Of Briton, Celt and Gaul--
+ Keep alive each glowing ember
+ Of our sireland, but remember
+ Our country is Canadian
+ Whatever may befall.
+
+ "Then line up and try us,
+ Whoever would deny us
+ The freedom of our birthright,
+ And they 'll find us like a wall--
+ For we are Canadian, Canadian forever,
+ Canadian forever--Canadian over all!"
+
+
+One night in February, just before the Doctor's mid-winter visit, a
+friend of the dead poet passed a night beneath the roof of the old
+manor house as Mr. Ewart's guest. After the yellow chintz curtains
+were close drawn, so shutting out the wintry night, and while the
+backlog was glowing, he read to us from those poems that at the
+author's will exact tears or smiles from their hearers. After the
+reading of "The Rossignol", Jamie took his seat at the piano and played
+softly that exquisite old French Canadian air "_Sur la montagne_".
+
+Mr. Ewart rose and, taking his stand beside him, sang the words of the
+poem which have been set to this music.
+
+ "Jus' as de sun is tryin'
+ Climb on de summer sky
+ Two leetle birds come flyin'
+ Over de mountain high--
+ Over de mountain, over de mountain,
+ Hear dem call,
+ Hear dem call--poor leetle rossignol!"
+
+They recalled to me that twin song of Bjoernson's which, despite its
+joyous note of anticipation, holds the same pathos of unsatisfied
+longing.
+
+The last note had scarcely been struck when Jamie broke into the jolly
+accompaniment to
+
+ "For he was a grand Seigneur, my dear,
+ He was a grand Seigneur."
+
+
+And, listening so to poems and music and the talk of these men of fine
+mind and high aspirations, to their hopes for Canada as a whole, to
+their expression of pride in her marvellous growth and their faith in
+her future, I said to myself:
+
+"Am I the girl, or rather woman now, who a few years ago made her way
+up from the narrow thoroughfares about Barclay Street to her attic room
+in 'old Chelsea'--up through the traffic-congested streets of New York,
+in the dark of the late winter afternoon, the melting snow falling in
+black drops and streams from the elevated above her; the avenues
+running brown snow-water; the rails gleaming; the steaming horses
+plashing through slush; the fog making haloes about the dimmed
+arc-lights; the hurrying, pressing tide of humanity surging this way
+and that and nearly taking her off her feet at the crossings; the whole
+city reeking with a warm-chill mist, and the shrieking, grinding,
+grating, whistling, roaring polyglot din of the metropolis half
+deafening her?"
+
+Thinking of this as I stared into the fire, listening to the good talk
+on many subjects, something--was it the frost of homelessness?--melted
+in my heart. The feelings and emotions that had been benumbed through
+the icy chill of circumstance, thawed within me. The tears, usually
+unready, filled my eyes. I bent my head that the others might not see,
+but they fell faster and faster. And with every one that plashed on my
+hands, as they lay folded in my lap, I felt the unbinding from my life
+of one hard year after another, until the woman who rose to bring in
+the porridge, in order to cover her emotion, was one who rose free of
+all thwarting circumstance. I had come into my own--a woman's own.
+
+But I failed to read the third sign.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+Doctor Rugvie's visit! It was fruitful of much, little as I
+anticipated that.
+
+I wrote regularly every month to Delia Beaseley telling her all that I
+knew would be of interest to her about my life at Lamoral, and assuring
+her that my lines had fallen in pleasant places. She wrote, at first,
+to tell me that my wish, in regard to keeping my identity from Doctor
+Rugvie for the present, would be respected; but in a later letter she
+urged me to make it known to him; to ascertain all the facts possible
+about my parentage. I replied that I preferred to wait.
+
+And why did I prefer to wait? I asked myself this question and found
+no answer. When the answer came, it was unmistakable in its leadings.
+
+"A letter from Doctor Rugvie; he is coming Monday!" I cried joyfully,
+flourishing the sheet in Jamie's face when he appeared at the door to
+ask for his mail.
+
+I was sitting on the floor by the shelves in the living-room, for I was
+busy cataloguing the books in the general and mixed collection, and
+searching for allied subjects. This work Mr. Ewart assigned to me
+after I had finished the "forestry" cataloguing.
+
+"Where 's mine?"
+
+"You have n't any, nor Mr. Ewart--from the Doctor, I mean."
+
+"You seem to be particularly elated over the fact."
+
+"Jamie, my friend, feel--" I held up the envelope to him; he took it
+and fingered it investigatingly.
+
+"What's this in it?"
+
+"That is an object which in international currency exchange we call a
+draft--the equivalent of my wages, Jamie; in other words, payment for
+industrial efficiency; do you hear?"
+
+"My, but you are a mercenary woman! One of the kind we read of in the
+States," he retorted.
+
+"Wait till you get your first check for royalties from London, then use
+that word and tone to me again if you dare."
+
+Mr. Ewart opened the door of the office.
+
+"What's this I hear about the Doctor and mercenary tendencies--the two
+don't go together as I happen to know." He spoke from the threshold.
+
+Jamie showed him the envelope, holding it high above my head.
+
+"This, Ewart, is the compensation for sundry days of so-called labor on
+the part of Miss Farrell--drives, snow-shoeing, tobogganing with Cale
+not discounted, of course. Shall I read it, Marcia?"
+
+"For all I care."
+
+Mr. Ewart looked on smiling at our chaff.
+
+"It's on the First National Bank of New York, Ewart, for the amount of
+fifty-two dollars and eighty-seven cents--how 's that about the cents,
+Marcia?"
+
+"Because the Doctor insists on paying me every two months and seems to
+call thirty days a month--why every two, I don't know, do you?" I said
+laughing, and looking up, questioning, into Mr. Ewart's face. What I
+saw there, what I am sure Jamie saw, was not encouraging for more
+jesting on Jamie's part or mine. He turned away abruptly and sat down
+at his desk before he spoke:
+
+"The Doctor wired me this afternoon that he would be here to-night
+instead of Monday, as he can get in an extra day. I can't say how
+sorry I am it has happened so, for I made arrangements to be in Quebec
+to-night and in Ottawa to-morrow night. I return Monday. Well, I must
+leave him in your hands--he won't lack entertainment. I wish, Jamie,
+it were possible for you to risk it and meet him with me this evening;
+but I suppose this night air is too keen--it's ten below now. I shall
+take the train he comes on and may not have time for a word of welcome."
+
+"I suppose it would be risking too much." Jamie spoke with something
+that sounded like a sigh. "I don't want the Doctor to roar at me the
+first thing because I am indiscreet--not after what he and his advice
+and kindness have done for me already."
+
+Mr. Ewart laid a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"You 're another man, Macleod, since coming here. We won't make any
+back tracks into that wilderness, will we?" He spoke so gently, so
+affectionately, that Jamie turned suddenly to him, exclaiming
+impulsively:
+
+"Gordon, if you were a woman I 'd kiss you for saying that."
+
+I knew what courage it gave him to hear this from his friend; and I
+wondered what kind of a man this might be who, one moment, could look
+stern and unyielding at our half childish chaffing, and in the next be
+all affectionate solicitude for this younger man who, at times, was all
+boy.
+
+"Then, Miss Farrell," he turned to me, "won't you come? Cale will
+drive me over in the double pung."
+
+There was no hesitation in my giving an affirmative answer.
+
+"We 'll have supper within an hour, please, Mrs. Macleod," he said, as
+she entered the room. He looked at the pile of books on the floor
+beside me.
+
+"It's too late for you to work any more." He stooped and, gathering up
+an armful, began to place them. "Will you be so kind as to speak to
+Marie and tell her to have four soapstones thoroughly heated, and ask
+Cale to warm the robes? It will be twenty below before you get back."
+
+"Just what I 've wanted to do all winter," I exclaimed; "a drive on
+such a clear, full-moon night to Richelieu-en-Haut will be something to
+remember."
+
+"I hope to make it so; for it's a typical Canadian midwinter night--a
+thing of splendor if seen with seeing eyes."
+
+"Then you won't expect me to talk much, will you?"
+
+"No,"--he smiled genially, and Jamie audaciously winked at me behind
+his back,--"it's apt to make my teeth ache, and although yours are as
+sound as mine, I don't believe they can stand prolonged exposure to
+severe cold any better. But how about Cale? There is no ice embargo
+on his flow of speech."
+
+Jamie burst into a laugh. "You 're right, Gordon, he 'll do all the
+talking for both, and for the Doctor too. By the way, mother," he
+said, turning to Mrs. Macleod and at the same time holding out a hand
+to help me up from the floor--an attention I ignored to save his
+strength--"something Cale said the other day, but casually, led me to
+think he may be a benedict instead of a bachelor; you have n't found
+out yet?"
+
+"No, but sometime it will come right for me to ask him. He has
+consideration for women in just those little things that would lead me
+to believe that he has been married--"
+
+"Oh, I say, mother, that's rough on Ewart and me. Give us a point or
+two on the 'little things', will you?"
+
+"Stop teasing, Jamie; I still think, as I thought from the first, that
+he has been--"
+
+"Perhaps more than once, mother! Perhaps he 's a widower, or even a
+grass widower--I 've heard of such in the States--or he might be a
+divorce, or a Mormon, or a swami gone astray--"
+
+"Havers!" she exclaimed, with a show of resentment which caused her son
+to rejoice, for it was only when thoroughly out of patience with him
+that she used the Scotch.
+
+"You 're too absurd," I said with a warning look.
+
+"Mother is for stiff back-boned unrelentingness in such things," he
+remarked soberly, after she and Mr. Ewart left the room; "and I 've put
+my foot into it too," he added dolefully. "Why, the deuce, did n't you
+stop me in time?"
+
+"How did I know how far your nonsense would lead you?"
+
+"Well, I don't care--much; I can't step round on eggs just because of
+what I 've heard--"
+
+"If only you had n't said anything about 'grass widower'!"
+
+"Don't rub it in so," he said pettishly, and by that same token I knew
+he was repentant because, without intention, he might have spoken in a
+way to hurt momentarily his friend.
+
+
+"Beats all how dumb critters scent a change," said Cale, just after
+supper. He was loaded with the robes he had been warming. Pierre was
+waiting in the pung, having brought the horses around a little early.
+Little Pete with a soapstone was following Cale. "They begun to be
+uneasy 'bout two hours ago; I take it they heard Mr. Ewart say he was
+leavin' on the night express, and begun to get nerved up."
+
+"So they did, Cale; they were in the office, all four of them, and
+heard every word. Look at them!"
+
+Cale stopped on his way to the front door and looked up the stairway.
+Mr. Ewart was coming down, a dog on each side of him, and two behind
+fairly nosing his heels. They made no demonstration; were not
+apparently expectant; but, as Cale remarked 'they froze mighty close to
+him', sneaking down step by step beside and behind him, ears drooping,
+tails well curled between their legs--four despairing setters!
+
+We watched them. Mr. Ewart paid no heed to them. They heeled along in
+the passageway almost on their bellies when he took his fur coat from
+the hook. He had another on his arm which he held open for me.
+
+"I really am warmly enough dressed," I said.
+
+"I don't doubt it--for now; but you 'll be grateful enough to me three
+hours later for insisting on your wearing it--in with you!" He moved a
+dog or two from under his feet, gently but forcibly with the tip of his
+boot; whereupon they literally crawled on the floor.
+
+"If you don't mind, Cale,"--he spoke purposely in a low monotone, but
+with a look of amusement,--"if you don't mind having the dogs in with
+you under the robes on the front seat, I 'm willing to have them go,
+but I don't want them to run with the pung."
+
+I noticed no movement on the part of the dogs except an intense
+quivering of the whole body. One who does not understand doghood might
+have fancied they were shivering at the prospect of the eighteen-mile
+drive in the cold.
+
+"I ain't no objection," said Cale; "the fact is there ain't no better
+foot-warmer 'n a dog on a cold night, an' I was goin' ter ask if I
+could n't have the loan of one of 'em fer ter-night."
+
+"Well, they can all go--"
+
+The last word was drowned in a chaos of frantically joyous barks. They
+leaped on him, caressed him, stood up with their forepaws stemmed on
+the breast of his fur coat, licked his boots, his hands, and attempted
+his face--but of that he would have none.
+
+"Be still now--and come on, comrades!" he said. The four made a mad
+but silent rush for the door. Cale gave them right of way; Pierre
+swore great French oaths wholly disproportionate to the occasion, for
+the outrush of the dogs caused the French coach horses to plunge only
+twice. At last we were in--the dogs in front with Cale, and Mr. Ewart
+and I on the back seat, so muffled in furs, fur robes, fur caps, coats
+and mittens, that we humans were scarce to be distinguished from our
+canine neighbors.
+
+We no longer used the frozen creek for a crossing, but drove a mile up
+the road to the highroad bridge. The night was very cold. The moon
+had not yet risen. The stars shone with Arctic splendor. Cale drove
+us rapidly over the dry, hard-packed snow--to my amazement in silence.
+Through the woods, down the river road we sped, and on through
+Richelieu-en-Bas. The light in the cabaret by the steamboat landing
+shone dimly; the panes were thick with frost. Here and there a bright
+lamp gleamed from some window, but, as a whole, the village was dark.
+We drove on to the open country towards Richelieu-en-Haut six miles
+away, sometimes through a short stretch of deep woods where the horses
+shied at the misshapen stumps, snow-covered. Then out into the open
+again, the flat expanse of white seemingly unbroken. Here and there,
+far across the snow-fields, I caught a glimpse of a light from some
+farmhouse. Once we heard the baying of a hound, at which all four
+setters came suddenly to life from beneath the robes and barked
+vindictive response.
+
+To the north the sky was dark and less star-strewn than above.
+Suddenly I was aware of a wondrous change: the stars paled; the north
+glowed with tremulous light, translucent yellow that deepened to
+gold--an arc of gold spanning twenty degrees on the horizon. The glory
+quivered; ran to and fro; fluctuated from east to west, unstable as
+liquid, ethereal as gas; paled gradually; then, in the twinkling of an
+eye, dissolved, and in its dissolution sent streamer after streamer,
+rose, saffron, pale crocus and white, rapidly zenithward, rising,
+sinking, undulating, till the heavens were filled with marvellous
+light. Cale reined in the horses for a moment.
+
+"Guess this can't be beat by the biggest show on earth," he remarked
+appreciatively.
+
+"Look to the right--the east, Miss Farrell," said Mr. Ewart.
+
+I leaned forward to look past him. Over the white expanse, lightened
+in the rays of the northern aurora, the moon, nearly full, showed the
+half of its red-gold disk.
+
+The glory faded from the heavens; the moon, rising rapidly, sent its
+beams over the fields; the horses saw their shadows long on the off
+side. Cale chirruped to them, and we sped onwards to the station.
+
+I was happy! If Cale had called me by that name at this time I would
+have welcomed it. It applied to me. It was good to be alive; good to
+be out in such a world of natural glory; good to have, in the night and
+the silence, such companionship that understood my own silence of
+enjoyment.
+
+I was happy at the prospect of the Doctor's coming. The thought of the
+future removal to the farm no longer filled me with misgivings. "I
+shall still be near the manor, it will not be banishment in any sense."
+So I comforted myself.
+
+I turned to get a look over the ridge of fur at the man beside me. He
+had spoken but once, to ask if I were comfortable. I wondered if he
+were enjoying all this as much as I? He must have read my thought for
+he turned his face to me, saying:
+
+"I am enjoying all this on my own behalf, and doubly because your
+enjoyment of it is so evident."
+
+"How evident? You can't see that, and I have n't said a word."
+
+"Perhaps for that very reason."
+
+He leaned over and drew the robe farther about my exposed shoulder. I
+felt the strength of his arm as he pulled at the heavy pelt, the
+gentleness of his touch as he tucked it behind my back. So little of
+this thoughtfulness and care had been mine! Almost nothing of it in my
+life! No wonder that other women who are cared for, carried on loving
+hands, protected by the bulwark of a man's love, cannot understand what
+the simple adjustment of that robe around a chilled shoulder meant to
+me, Marcia Farrell!
+
+He was always doing something in general for my comfort and pleasure,
+but never anything special. Even this drive I owed to Jamie's physical
+inability to accept his friend's invitation. But this fact did not
+quench my joy.
+
+"Are you comfortable--feet warm?" he asked for the second time.
+
+"As warm as toast."
+
+What was it that I felt as I continued to sit silent by this man's
+side?--an alien, I had called him to the Doctor; fool that I was! I
+felt a peculiar sense of perfect physical rest I had never before
+experienced, a consciousness of happy companionship that needed no word
+to make itself understood. This sense of companionship, this rest of
+soul and body during the two hours I passed at this man's side--I
+enjoyed them to the full. The feelings and emotions of the woman who,
+only a few evenings before, had thrown off the yoke of burdening
+circumstance, who had broken, to her own physical benefit, with past
+associations and memories, found scope, in the protecting night and the
+silence, for perilous nights of imagination. Thoughts undreamed of
+hitherto, desires I had never supposed permissible in my narrow walk of
+life, proved their power over me at this hour. Hopes unbounded, if
+wholly unfounded,--for what had this man ever said to me since his
+home-coming that he had not said a dozen times to every member of his
+household?--imagined joys of another, a dual life--
+
+"Yes," I said to myself, giving rein to pleasing fantasy, "a dual life
+in one--our lives, his and mine, one and inseparable; why not, Marcia
+Farrell? Why should n't I grasp with both hands outstretched at all
+life may have to give me? Why not hold it fast even if it have thorns?"
+
+Imagination was carrying me out of myself. I called a halt to all this
+frenzy, as it at once appeared to me by the cold light of the moon, and
+brought myself down to earth and common sense with a jolt. I moved
+uneasily.
+
+"Are you cold?" Mr. Ewart asked, evidently noticing the movement.
+
+"No; but too much aurora, I 'm afraid."
+
+"Did you feel that too? I thought I would n't mention it, but
+something affected me powerfully for the moment, and there has been an
+aftermath of sensation since. If this display is wholly electrical, it
+may easily be that some human machines are tuned like the wireless to
+catch certain vibrations at certain times."
+
+I sat down hard, metaphorically, on eight feet of frozen earth upon
+hearing this explanation. "You little fool," I said to myself, but
+aloud:
+
+"Whatever it was, it was effectual; I have never experienced anything
+like it."
+
+"Never?"
+
+"No; have you?"
+
+The answer seemed long in coming.
+
+"Yes, many years ago; and it was here in this northern country too.
+Sometime I would like to tell you about it.--Cale," he spoke quickly,
+abruptly, "I hear the train. Keep the horses in the open roadway
+behind the station, then if they bolt at the headlight you can have
+free rein and a clear road. They 've never seen that light. We 'll
+get out here," he said, throwing off the robes as Cale drew rein at the
+edge of the platform, "and you can welcome the Doctor for me if I miss
+him."
+
+He whisked me out of the pung, giving me both hands as aid, and
+replaced the robes.
+
+"Keep the horses head on, and don't let the dogs run," were his last
+words to Cale.
+
+The Quebec express whistled at the curve an eighth of a mile distant
+from the junction; the sound fell strangely flat in the intense cold.
+Cale braced himself to handling the horses. I followed Mr. Ewart to
+the front of the platform.
+
+The engine was thundering past us, and the train drawing to a stop of
+fifteen seconds.
+
+"Take off your mitten," he said abruptly; I pulled it off with a jerk.
+He held out his ungloved hand, and I laid mine within it. The two
+palms, warm, throbbing with coursing life, met--
+
+"Goodby till Monday--and thank you for coming. There he is!"
+
+He had just time to see the Doctor appear on the platform at the other
+end of the car. Mr. Ewart called to him as he swung himself on to the
+already moving train:
+
+"John, look out for Miss Farrell--"
+
+The dazed Doctor failed to grasp the situation. Mr. Ewart waved his
+hand as he passed him; "Till Monday--Miss Farrell will explain."
+
+"Miss Farrell, eh?" The Doctor turned to me who was at his side by
+means of an awkward skip and a jump, cumbered as I was with the long
+coat. "Br-r-rre! Is this the weather you give me as a greeting?"
+
+"Why don't you say rather: 'Is this the weather you brave to meet me
+in?' Would n't that sound more to the point? Come on to the pung; the
+soapstones are fine."
+
+"Ah--that sounds more like Canadian hospitality. Come on yourself,
+Marcia Farrell; where's the pung?"
+
+"Behind the station, that is, if the horses have n't bolted with Cale
+and the four dogs. Here he is."
+
+Four canine noses were visible above the robes; eight delicate nostrils
+were flaring after the departing train. At the sound of the Doctor's
+voice a concerted howl arose from among the robes on the front seat--a
+howl expressive of disappointment, of betrayal by their master: "He is
+gone, we are left behind."
+
+"Shut up," said Cale shortly, with a significant movement of his foot
+beneath the robes.
+
+"Oh, Cale!" I made protest, for at that moment I sympathized. I should
+have felt the same had I been a dog; as it was--
+
+I looked after the swiftly receding train, a bright beaded trailing
+line of black in the white night. The Doctor was opening the robes.
+
+"In with you, and then we can talk; there 's no wind to prevent."
+
+As soon as he was seated beside me and the horses' heads turned
+homewards, he began to chat in his cheery way, he asking, I answering
+the many questions; he telling of Delia Beaseley and his delight to be
+in Canada again, I inquiring, until we found ourselves passing through
+Richelieu-en-Bas. And during all the time I was listening to his merry
+chat and chaffing, to his kindly expressed interest in all that
+pertained to my small doings at the manor, I was hearing the on-coming
+thunder of the engine and those last words: "Take off your
+mitten--Good-by till Monday--thank you for coming."
+
+
+During that hour and a half of our homeward drive, I gave no heed to
+the perfect Canadian night, its silver radiance, its snow gleam and
+sparkle enhancing the violet shadows. I was seeing only that
+long-stretching waste of white beyond the junction, that bright beaded
+trailing line of black, narrowing and foreshortened as it receded
+swiftly into the night.
+
+And where was the sense of physical rest? Why had this unrest I was
+experiencing taken its place? I was sitting beside as good a man, as
+fine a man, one more than that other's equal in achievement, as the
+world counts achievement. I was groping for a solution when the Doctor
+exclaimed: "There's the manor!"
+
+The white walls and snow-covered roof stood out boldly against the
+black massed background of spruce, hemlock and pine. The yellow chintz
+curtains were drawn apart, showing us both the gleam of lamplight and
+the leaping firelight. At the windows in the living-room were Jamie
+and his mother; at those of the dining-room both Angelique and Marie
+were visible for a moment. The Pierres, father and son, were at the
+steps to lend a helping hand.
+
+"We are at home again, Marcia," the Doctor spoke significantly. I
+responded, simulating joyousness:
+
+"Yes, and does n't it give us a warm cheery welcome?"
+
+But even as I replied, I was conscious that the old manor of Lamoral
+without its master would never be home for me.
+
+I went up the steps answering gayly to Jamie's "Is he here?" But by
+the emptiness of heart, by the emptiness of the passageway, by the
+empty sound of the various greetings, joyous and hearty as they in
+truth were, I knew I needed no fourth sign to interpret myself to
+myself.
+
+My woman's hour had struck--and with no uncertain sound.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+"And what next?" I asked myself after my head was on the pillow and
+while staring hour after hour at the opposite wall. Surely I had read
+enough of love! I had imagined what it might be like, even if I had
+never experienced it, even if I had thought little enough about it in
+connection with myself. I did not know it on what might be called the
+positive side, but I seemed to have some knowledge of it negatively. I
+knew it could be cruel, cruel as death; my own mother was a dead
+witness to that. I knew it could be brutal when passion alone means
+love; I was eye witness to this on Columbia Heights not so very long
+ago. I knew, or thought I knew, that it could be killed, or rather
+worn to a thread by the slow grinding of adverse circumstance. I
+recalled my own lack of affection after the years of sacrifice for the
+imbecile grandfather, my shiftless aunt.
+
+And now, in the face of such knowledge, to have this revelation! This
+sudden absorption in another of my humankind; all my thought at once,
+without warning, transferred to that other wherever he might be; all
+interest in life centering with the force of gravity in that other's
+life; "at home" only in that other's presence; at rest only by his
+side--
+
+"Now, look here, Marcia Farrell, don't you be Jane Eyrey," I said to
+myself in a low but stern voice. I sat up in bed and drew the extra
+comforter about my shoulders. "No nonsense at your age! You accept
+the fact that you love this man,--and you will have to whether you want
+to or not,--a man who has never spoken a word of love to you, who has
+treated you with the consideration, it is no more, no less than that,
+which he shows to every member of his household. Now, make the most of
+this fact, but without showing it. Don't make the youthful mistake,
+since you are no longer a girl, of fancying he is reciprocating what
+you feel, feeling your every feeling, thinking your every thought.
+And, above all, don't betray your self at this crisis of your life, to
+him or any member of his household--not to Delia Beaseley, not to
+Doctor Rugvie. Rest in his presence when you can. Rejoice to be near
+him--but inwardly, only, remember that!--when you shall find
+opportunity, but don't make one; discipline yourself in this, there
+will be need enough for it. 'Stick to your sure trot'; give full
+compensation in work for your wages--and enjoy what this new life may
+offer you from day to day. This new joy is your own; keep it to
+yourself. Now lie down for good and all, and go to sleep."
+
+Thereupon I snugged down among the welcome warmth of the bed-clothes,
+saying to myself:
+
+"I don't care 'what next'. I am so happy--happy--happy--"
+
+But, even as I spoke that word softly--oh, so softly!--laying the palm
+of my right hand, that still felt the strong throbbing of his, under my
+cheek, I remembered that Cale had never once called me by the name he
+had proposed, "Happy"; that Jamie noticed the omission and remarked on
+it.
+
+And what did Cale know? What could he know? There used to be a family
+of Marstins in our town before I was born. My aunt told me once that
+her sister married into the family; that, too, was before I was born.
+I never knew any one of the name, and I never cared to look at the old
+family headstones. The churchyard, because it held my mother, was
+hateful to me.
+
+And I? I was too cowardly to ask Cale why he omitted to call me by his
+chosen name; for by that name my mother was known among her own, so I
+was told--that mother whom I never knew, whose memory I never loved, of
+whom I was ashamed because people said she had belied her womanhood.
+
+But ever since Delia Beaseley opened my eyes to a portion of the truth
+concerning her, I had felt great pity for her. Now, at the thought of
+her, dying for love, for this very thing that had come to me like
+lightning out of the blue, dying without friends in that dull basement
+in V---- Court, my heartstrings contracted, literally, for I
+experienced a feeling of suffocation.
+
+"Mother, oh, mother," I cried out under my breath, "was it for this,
+that I know to be love, you gave your all, even life itself? Oh, I
+have understood so little--so little; I have been so hard, mother. I
+did n't know--forgive me, mother--forgive, I never knew--"
+
+It eased me to speak out these words, although I knew that in giving
+utterance to them my ears were the only ones the sound of my pleading
+could reach. Those ears, on which the word mother would have fallen so
+blessedly, would never hear, could never hear. Not so very far away,
+in northern New England, the snows lay white and deep, as white and
+deep as in Canada, on her neglected grave.
+
+Something Delia Beaseley quoted from my mother in her hour of trial
+flashed again into consciousness: "The little life that is coming is
+worth all this." And my mother must have said it knowing all the joy,
+the bliss, the suffering, both of body and of soul, that this love must
+in due time bring to her daughter, because she was a woman-child.
+
+What a Dolorous Way my mother must have trodden, must have been willing
+to tread for _this_!
+
+There are minutes, rare in the longest lives, when life becomes so
+intensified that vision clears almost preternaturally, sees through
+telescopic lenses, so to speak. At such moments, the soul becomes so
+highly sensitized that it may photograph for future reference the birth
+or passing of Love's star.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+"It's my innings now, while Ewart is away," said the Doctor; "Marcia,
+will you go skiing to-morrow with me and Cale?"
+
+"Did n't I promise you I would wait till you came?"
+
+"I know you did; but possession, you know, is nine tenths of the law,
+and Ewart has been having it all his own way here with you since I
+left. He did, however, give me a parting word to look out for you. I
+don't see that you need much looking after; a young lady perfectly able
+to look out for herself, eh, Mrs. Macleod?"
+
+"Perhaps the circumstances warranted some sort of chaperonage, Doctor,"
+said Mrs. Macleod, entering into his fun and frolic as into no one's
+else. "As Marcia sets it forth, she was alone, except for you, on the
+platform of the junction nine miles from home, with Cale braced in the
+pung on the highroad, ready for the horses to bolt."
+
+"Yes," said the Doctor, musing, "the circumstances were slightly out of
+the ordinary.--A full bowl, if you please, Marcia."
+
+We were sitting around the hearth in the livingroom on the following
+Sunday evening. Porridge had just been brought in and I was dispensing
+it. Mr. Ewart's insistence upon Cale's joining us at this hour every
+evening, and remaining with us when no guest was present--the Doctor we
+counted one of us--had for result that, many an evening, we listened
+delighted and interested to his stories of adventure in the new
+Northwest. He was, in truth, a man of the woods, a man also of their
+moods, and like them showing track and trail, leafy underbrush,
+primeval forest trees, and the darling flowers of the forest as well;
+but, also, like them, withholding from our eyes the secret springs of
+his life. We often wondered if ever he would disclose any one of them.
+
+"A Yankee brother to old Andre," was Jamie's definition of him. He
+seldom spoke of matters personal to himself, so seldom that Jamie's
+great joke, perpetrated in his mother's presence and mine, was to the
+effect that "Ewart and Cale and Marcia are all enlisted in the
+reserves, mother; and only you, the Doctor, and I are able to fight in
+the open." The full significance of which good-natured raillery I
+understood, and answered him accordingly:
+
+"All in good time, Jamie. There is so little to tell, it's worth while
+to keep you guessing."
+
+I was serving Cale with his portion of porridge when he spoke,
+answering the question put by the Doctor to _me_. Cale had been
+gradually appropriating me since my coming, and I had no cause to
+resent his right of proprietorship.
+
+"Guess 'twill take two ter hold her up the fust few times; but Marcia's
+nimble on her feet; she 'll outstrip us soon. She 's a mighty good one
+on snowshoes."
+
+"Ewart taught you, did n't he?" said the Doctor, turning to me and
+holding out his bowl the second time. "Just a spoonful more, if you
+please. I take it this oatmeal came direct from Scotland, did n't it,
+Mrs. Macleod?" She nodded a pleased affirmative.
+
+"Yes, and a fine teacher he is too," I responded heartily. I was
+determined the Doctor should not find me backward or awkward when his
+friend's name was mentioned. With the thought that to-morrow that
+friend would be with me--us--again, I found my spirits rising. It was
+hard to repress them. Perhaps the Doctor's keen eye noticed something
+in my manner, for he spoke with emphasis:
+
+"Well, something has made you over; there 's no exercise like it in
+this northern climate."
+
+"I guess 't ain't all snow-shoeing," said Cale sententiously.
+
+"You 're right, Cale," I said.
+
+"Account for it then, Cale; I 'd like to hear."
+
+"We 'll give Doctor Rugvie the recipe for all the future farm-folks,
+won't we?" I nodded understandingly at Cale.
+
+"So we will--so we will," he replied thoughtfully. "Out with it, Cale.
+What is it has changed Marcia so?"
+
+"Wal, if you want to know I can give it ter you--a reg'lar tonic to be
+taken daily in big doses. It's old-fashioned, mebbe, but genu_ine_,"
+he said with so comical an emphasis and inflection that we laughed.
+"It can't be beat, you 'll see. Take equal parts of dry clean air, so
+bracin' thet sometimes a man feels as if he was walkin' on it, good
+food and plenty of it, good comp'ny. Shake 'em well together to get
+out the lumps, and mix well in--a good home. I take it thet's about
+it, Doctor?"
+
+"Cale, you old Hippocrates," said the Doctor, delighted at Cale's gift
+of speech, for he had heard him discourse only on "hosses" when he was
+with us the first time, "you 'd be worth three thousand dollars a year
+to me as consulting hygienist. Do you want the job?"
+
+"No." He spoke decidedly. "This job 's good enough fer me. I hope 't
+will be for life now."
+
+"Ewart's colors again, eh, Jamie?" He turned to Jamie with a lift of
+his eyebrows.
+
+"Winning all along the course, Doctor."
+
+"How do you know all that, Cale?" The Doctor dropped his chaffing and
+looked over earnestly at Cale beside the chimney-piece.
+
+"Know what?"
+
+"The fact that those special ingredients must be mixed in a good home
+to prove so effectual as in Marcia's case?" He turned to examine me.
+
+"How do I know it?" He spoke slowly, almost with hesitation, and
+beneath his bushy eyebrows I thought I saw a suspicious glitter in his
+small keen gray eyes, but it may have been imagination. "I have n't
+always been a lonely man, you know--"
+
+"That's just what I don't know, Cale." The Doctor spoke with the
+encouragement of good fellowship, not as one willing or wanting to ask
+his confidence, but as one hoping in friendship to receive it. I am
+sure we all felt with the Doctor at this moment, for Cale's reticence
+had been a matter of concern to Jamie and Mrs. Macleod. But Jamie had
+respected his silence.
+
+Cale set his emptied bowl on the tray and sat down again, making
+himself comfortable by crossing his legs. He heaved a sigh of
+satisfaction. Mrs. Macleod, Jamie and I read that sign; Cale was ready
+to expand a little more in the cheerful atmosphere of friends and
+fireside. We three knew that what he had to retail would be well worth
+hearing. Jamie settled himself in the sofa corner as usual. The
+Doctor insisted on carrying the tray to the kitchen.
+
+"Ah, this is good," he said, seating himself by me and spreading his
+hands to the blaze. "We shan't be interrupted, and the rest of the
+evening is ours. It's a bitter night, too, which, by contrast, makes
+this comfort delectable."
+
+We waited, expectant, for Cale.
+
+"You 've been wonderin' now fer 'bout six months, Mis' Macleod, you an'
+Jamie, whether I was a married man or not, now, hain't you?" He smiled
+as he spoke, the creases about his eyes deepening slowly.
+
+Mrs. Macleod, with an embarrassment we all enjoyed seeing, moved to a
+seat beside him; saying gently, if deprecatingly:
+
+"Yes, I could n't help it, Cale."
+
+"How could you, bein' a woman?" he replied as gently. "An' you too,
+Marcia?"
+
+"Of course; don't I belong to the weaker sex? But here is Jamie,
+although a man--"
+
+"Oh, I say, Marcia, that's not playing fair," Jamie growled at me as if
+indifferent; but I knew his curiosity was at the flood, and Cale knew
+it too. I feared he might tease without satisfying.
+
+"Yes, I 'm married, Mis' Macleod, an' it seems as if I 'd always been
+married."
+
+Jamie's recent remark about Cale's being a widower, grass-widower,
+divorce, Mormon, etc., came back to me, and I could hardly keep from
+laughing aloud at Mrs. Macleod's look of dismay and amazement.
+
+"I say I'm married, fer you see that once married is always married
+with _me_," he repeated emphatically.
+
+The Doctor nodded approvingly. "No uncertain note about that, Cale."
+
+"No sir--_ee_," Cale nodded understandingly at him in turn, much to
+Jamie's delight. "A marriage when it _is_ a marriage--'fore God an'
+men, an' 'fore the altar of two lovin' hearts, is fer good--fer this
+world anyway, an' fer the next if there is one. 'T ain't often you can
+come acrosst 'em now-a-days. I guess some men, put it to 'em on a
+sudden, could n't say under oath whether they was married or single,
+seein' this divorce business mixes things up worse 'n a progressive
+euchre party. I 'm only speakin' fer myself, mind you, an' I don't set
+up fer judgin' others."
+
+"Good for you, Cale! Those are my sentiments," said the Doctor
+laughing heartily at Cale's idea of the "progressive euchre party".
+
+"It's what keeps me young," Cale continued earnestly; "fer jest the
+thought of the one woman I loved, an' love now with all the love thet
+'s in me, warms me jest as this blaze would thaw freezin' sap; it keeps
+me, as you might say, kinder thawed out with folks, an' a durned cussed
+tough world."
+
+He paused a moment and, leaning forward, clasped his hands around his
+crossed knees. I had seen him do this only when he was bracing himself
+to say something of deep significance. He faced me squarely, with the
+same keen look that I detected on the first night of my arrival.
+
+"I 've been wonderin', Marcia, if you did n't hail from somewheres near
+my place, Spencerville, in northern New England, jest over the
+line--though come ter think of it, you said you was born in New York,
+did n't you?"
+
+Brought to bay by this question, put to me suddenly without warning, I
+brought all my self control to bear on my voice and answered:
+
+"Yes, I was born there, but my home for two thirds of my life was in
+the vicinity of Spencerville."
+
+"I thought so," said Cale almost indifferently. "You had a way with
+you like the folks round there--not that I know any of your
+generation," he added hastily. "I left there over a quarter of a
+century ago. Only, now and then, your ways take me back into another
+generation where my wife belonged," he said, as if explaining why he
+had taken the liberty to approach me with the direct question. I
+forced myself to put on a bold front and ask:
+
+"Who was your wife, Cale? I may know of the family."
+
+"I have my doubts about _thet_," he said with considerable emphasis.
+"Girls of your age ain't apt to know of folks thet lived, an' loved,
+an'--I was goin' to say 'lost', but she ain't never thet to me, 'fore
+they was born. My wife's name, Marcia, was Morey, Jemimy Morey--one of
+three--"
+
+"Triplets? Yes _marm_," he said, in reply to Mrs. Macleod's look of
+surprise. "Job Morey, her father, was a poor man, poor, as we used ter
+say, as Job's turkey. He 'd had a hard time, no mistake. He 'd had
+five boys ter raise on a farm thet was half rocks. Then come the war
+an' the two oldest had ter go. The third an' fourth was drafted an'
+Job hired the money to pay bounty; but the cuss turned bounty jumper
+an' they had ter go. Thet was the year when there was a bleedin' heart
+an' a rag of crape in most every house in the village. Two on 'em come
+home ter die, an' the t' other two was never heard from; it most killed
+Aunt Sally. They 'd had poor luck with four boys, an', by George,
+after the youngest of them five was fifteen if Aunt Sally did n't have
+triplets--gals all on em!
+
+"Mother said half the women in the village was there ter help. She
+said she was out in the woodshed cuttin' up some kindlin'--Job never
+was known ter be forehanded in anythin'--an' Job come out the kitchen
+end without seein' her. She heard him give a groan an' say, all to
+himself he s'posed, as plain as could be: 'O Lord, three more mouths
+ter fill, an' so little ter fill 'em with!' Then, turnin' an' seeing
+mother, he smiled as well as he could in the circumstances, an' tried
+ter put a good face on it by sayin':
+
+"'Well, Aunt Marthy, I ain't got all the material goods thet Old
+Testament Job had, but I 've got one of his latter day blessings, three
+daughters, an' I guess, if Sally don't mind, I 'll name 'em after 'em.'
+
+"Thet 'show they come by their names: Keziah, Jemimy, and
+Keren-happuch, which was the most outlandish name fer about the
+prettiest baby, mother said, thet ever she 'd set eyes on. They
+shortened it to 'Happy' mighty quick.
+
+"Aunt Sally who 'd never been strong sence the girls was born, broke
+right down under her trouble, when she lost her last boy, and never
+rallied. She died when the girls was n't more 'n ten year old, an'
+after thet, those six little hands worked early an' late to keep the
+house for their father. An' they kept it well too.
+
+"Many 's the time after chores was done, I 'd sly over to Job's to
+fetch wood an' carry water for the sake of gettin' a smile from my pet,
+thet was Jemimy--a fair-skinned, blue-eyed little thing thet looked as
+if a breath of wind would blow her over. I watched her grow up like
+one of them pink-and-white wind-flowers thet come so early in spring,
+an' I used ter pull whole basketfuls for her, jest ter see her flush up
+so pleased like, an' get a kiss for my pains.
+
+"I was ten years older than her--old enough ter know what would happen
+when Jemimy was ten years older too. She growed right inter my life,
+an' I growed right inter hers, so 't was nat'ral enough when she was
+seventeen for us ter say we belonged to one another.
+
+"Job never could get ahead, and the farm was mortgaged clear up to the
+handle. I had n't much neither, for I had mother ter support and
+worked out by the month, an' Jemimy said 't was no time ter think of
+gettin' married; we 'd better wait till we could get a little ahead.
+She said she 'd heard of a place in the mills down Mass'chusetts way,
+an' although I stood out against it, she had set her heart on goin' an'
+earnin' a little extra, an' I let her have her way. Keziah married
+jest 'bout thet time a poor shote of a feller, an' went out West with
+him on ter some gov'ment lands. Happy was ter keep the house.
+
+"Jemimy promised faithfully ter write, an' so she did, though 't was
+hard work after mill hours, she said, for she was so tired; but she
+loved me too well to have me fret an' worry, so she wrote pretty
+reg'lar every two weeks.
+
+"She 'd been away 'bout seven months an' Job was lookin' like a man
+with some backbone in him, for half of Jemimy's pay kept comin' reg'lar
+an' Happy made everything she come nigh like sunshine, when one evenin'
+Job come over an' asked me how long it had been sence I heard from
+Jemimy. 'Goin' on four weeks,' says I. 'She told me not to expect
+much this month she 's so busy.'
+
+"'We ain't heard for six weeks,' says Job, 'an' t'other night I had a
+dream; 't war n't much of a dream neither--only I can't get rid of it,
+work it off nor sleep it off, neither. S'posin' you write.'
+
+"You may be pretty sure I did, an', not gettin' an answer, I drove down
+ter the nearest station an' sent a telegram, an' thet not gettin' an
+answer neither, I jest put myself aboard the next train for Lowell.
+Fust time I 'd been on the cars too, but they could n't go fast enough
+for me.
+
+"I went straight ter the mill she 'd been workin' in, an' asked fer the
+boss. Then I put the question thet had been hangin' round me like a
+nightmare for twenty-four hours back.
+
+"'Can you tell me where ter find Jemimy Morey?'
+
+"There was a cur'ous sort er smile went curlin' round the man's lips as
+he opened a great ledger, an' read an entry thet made me set down on a
+chair handy, feelin' weak as water:
+
+"'Entered February 2.--Left July 19.'
+
+"Thet was all, but 't was enough.
+
+"'Where 's she gone ter?' says I.
+
+"'We don't keep run of the hands after they 've left unless they go ter
+another mill, an' she ain't,' says he, clappin' to the ledger with a
+bang thet said plain as could be, 'Time 's up.'
+
+"'I guess you 'll have ter let me see the women, fer it's a life an'
+death matter ter me', says I, fer his drivin' ways madded me, an' I was
+pretty green an' did n't know as much as I might have.
+
+"The strength seemed ter come floodin' right in ter me when I 'd said
+thet, and I guess there must have been a kinder 'knock-yer-down' look
+in my eyes, fer the feller sort o' winced--there war n't but us two in
+the office--an' said:
+
+"'It's against the rules an' 't won't do no good, but if you 'll feel
+any better you can this time.'
+
+"You see I thought if I could see the women, I 'd ask 'em, an' p'raps
+they 'd know 'bout her. But, Lord! when I see thet great room
+stretchin' away ter nothin', an' them hundreds of girls and women
+a-workin', tendin' them looms as if their life depended on them wooden
+bolts shovin' back'ards an' for'ards like lightnin', I jest set down on
+the first bench I come ter sicker 'n death.
+
+"A great wave of black an' a wave of green went through the room. My
+pulses kept time to the _rick-rack_ of the flyin' shuttles, an' my head
+swum with the dizzyin' of the wheels an' the pumpin' of the shafts.
+
+"'Good God,' I thought, 'is this the place she 's been breathin' out
+her sweet life in!'
+
+"I tried ter think, but could n't, the floor jarred so with the rumble
+of the great machines; an' the air grew as thick with dust as a barn
+floor in threshin' time; an' right through it all, a scorchin' August
+sun burned in great quiverin' furrers; an' from outside where it
+slanted on the river rushin' through the mill-sluices, it sent a
+blindin' reflection whirlin' an' eddyin' along the glarin' white
+ceilin's till I felt like a drownin' man bein' sucked under...
+
+"I got out somehow, fer I found myself on the street. I went ter every
+mill in the place--an' might have spared myself the trouble.
+
+"Then I took the houses by rote, askin' at each one for Jemimy Morey.
+Up one street, down another, I went, the little red brick boxes lookin'
+as like as one honeycomb ter another; most of 'em was empty--all at the
+mills except the old women and babies; the fust could n't give me no
+kind of an answer, an' the second I stumbled over.
+
+"It was gettin' towards six, an' I war n't no nearer findin' what I 'd
+come fer than when I started, when I heard a factory bell ringin' an'
+asked what it meant. They told me a quarter ter six an' shuttin' off
+steam. I started on a dead run fer the little footbridge thet led from
+the canal alongside, to the mill gates. There I took my stand jest as
+the six o'clock whistle blew and the great mill gates was hoisted, an'
+the women an' children come flockin' out an' over the bridge.
+
+"I asked every squad of 'em--they could n't get by me without answerin'
+me fer 't was only a foot-bridge--if they knew a mill hand by name
+Jemimy Morey?
+
+"For five minutes I got pretty much the same answer, then a little slip
+of a gal no higher'n my elbow says: 'What d' you want of her? You
+can't see her for she 's up at Granny's sick of the fever, an' nobody
+dass n't go near her.'
+
+"There 's no use my tellin' you how I found her nor what we said--only
+'t war n't exactly what I 'd planned all through hayin' time when,
+noonin's, I 'd stretch out in the shadder of a hayrick an', buryin' my
+face in the coolin' grass, think how 't would seem to have _her_ hand
+strokin' my forehead an' smoothin' all care away by her lovin' ways.
+
+"Jest as soon as she was strong enough, I took her home; an' without
+much ceremony, she sittin' in the arm-chair an' I standin' by her side,
+we was made man an' wife.... Oh, we was happy! an' thet choice of our
+happiness, for we both knew it war n't for long. I 've sometimes
+thought we took out a mortgage on our future bliss we was so happy....
+Six months from the day I took her home, the church bell tolled
+nineteen--an' might have tolled a thousand for all I heard."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+There was a long silence; no one cared to break it. As for me, I felt
+as if stricken dumb by what I was hearing. I knew, intuitively, what I
+was about to hear. Mrs. Macleod put her hand on Cale's hard brown fist
+as it lay on his knee. I am sure the sympathetic pressure prolonged
+the silence. Doctor Rugvie and Jamie were staring into the fire. I
+could not take my eyes from Cale's face; I was as if fascinated. He,
+on the contrary, never looked once my way.
+
+His voice grew husky towards the last; it was not till he had cleared
+his throat several times that he could speak.
+
+"I ain't said much 'bout Happy,--that's short for Keren-happuch, the
+name she always went by,--but she was the fust thing I took any
+interest in after thet. My wife charged me over an' over again to look
+out fer her, an' I 'd begun ter think 't was time.
+
+"There ain't no telling jest what Happy was. She war n't what you 'd
+call real harn'some, not at fust; but she had a way with her thet was
+winnin', an' a laugh thet always put me in mind of our old North Crick
+in August when it goes gurglin' an' winnerin' over its stony bed. She
+had a smile, too, to match the laugh. There ain't no tellin' what she
+was like. She was jest Happy, an' there warn't a likely chap this side
+of the border and t'other, thet knew her, who had n't tried ter get
+some hold on her. But 't war n't no use; she jest laughed 'em off,
+fust one, then t' other--but still they kept tryin' till she was
+twenty-one.
+
+"On her birthday she come over to me jest 'bout dusk as I was milkin'
+in the shed,--I can see her now, standin' by old Speckles' head an'
+hangin' on tight ter both her horns as if fer support--an' turnin'
+sudden ter me with a kind o' laugh, thet sounded a good deal more like
+a choked-down sob, she says:
+
+"'Brother Si.'
+
+"My name is Silas C., but when I left what used ter be home ter me, I
+war n't willin' ter have strangers call me by the name thet belonged
+ter those I loved, so I 've been Cale to all the rest fer a good many
+years now.
+
+"'Brother Si,'says she, 'you loved my sister; won't you tell me what
+ter do?'
+
+"'What's up?' says I, fer I could n't collect myself she come on me so
+sudden, an' I knew by her looks she meant business. Then she blurted
+it all out:
+
+"'George Jackson has asked me to marry him--an' father wants me to. I
+don't know whether I ought ter.' She wound up with a sigh.
+
+"'Why not?' says I, fer I war n't master enough of my feelin's to say
+any more.
+
+"'Well, I don't know exactly--only, I 'm afraid I don't love him as I
+'d ought ter.'"
+
+Cale moved uneasily. He leaned his elbows on his knees, resting his
+chin in the palms of his hands. He continued in a lower voice:
+
+"May the Lord forgive me, but I thought I was doin' fer the best to
+argue her inter thinkin' she loved him, an' if she did n't, then she
+would after marriage. An' I'd ought 'er known better! I ain't never
+fergiven myself fer meddlin'.
+
+"George Jackson was nigh ter me, although he was born in Canady an' I
+in New England. His farm was a border one, just over the line. There
+was about three hundred acres of extra good farmin' land and some heavy
+timber. My five acres was on the border, too, an' many a time we 've
+clasped hands over the old stone wall on our boundary, an' I 've said,
+laughin': 'Blood 's thicker 'n water, boy!'
+
+"I used ter work fer him a lot. He was his own master for he was an
+orphan; an' I had mother, an' thet kinder drew us closer, fer mother
+mothered him. There war n't a likelier young feller anywheres round.
+He was ten years younger 'n me, an' I 'd half brought him up in the
+farmin' line--proud of him, too, if I do say it.
+
+"There war n't a gal in our village or out of it fer a good many miles
+round thet had n't tried fer him but Happy--an' she was the only one he
+'d ever had eyes fer. Thet's the way it mostly goes in life. He was
+two years younger 'n she was--an' smart! He 'd been through the
+Academy, an' would have made something of himself besides a farmer if
+he had n't got bewitched, like most men sometimes in their lives, by a
+gal.
+
+"I 'd seen which way the wind was blowin' fer quite a while, but kept
+still, fer George never wanted ter be interfered with, an' Happy was as
+shy as a wood thrush. The long an' short of it is, they was engaged,
+an' Job seemed ter think his luck had come at last. But it war n't so
+with Happy. She never seemed the same after thet. She kept sayin' she
+wanted ter see a little more of the world before she settled down.
+An', sure enough, in September she got a chance; fer Keziah, who 'd
+lost her husband an' been awful sick with chills an' fever, come back
+ter the old place, an', as there war n't enough fer one more, Happy
+teased Job ter let her go down with a neighbor's gal to Boston an' work
+in a store there. 'Only fer a little while,' she said.
+
+"George set his face against her goin' like flint, tellin' her he had
+enough fer all. But I, knowin' what she said ter me thet night in the
+milkin' shed, advised him ter let her go an' have her way, tellin' him
+she 'd be all the happier afterwards, an' be contented ter settle down.
+
+"Wal, she went, an' all Job's peace of mind went with her. You see he
+was gettin' on in years, nigh on ter seventy-one, an' down with the
+rheumatiz all thet winter an' spring. The next July he come down with
+a kind of typhus, an' they sent fer Happy ter come home.
+
+"The minute I see her, I knew she war n't the same Happy as went away.
+She wore ear-jewels an' a locket, an' had plenty of city airs and ways;
+but the old laugh an' smile war n't all there. She was harn'some,
+though, at last! Harn'some as a picture, an' nobody blamed George fer
+puttin' up with what he did fer the sake of gettin' her. She led him a
+chase thet summer. She give him every chance ter break with her; but
+he would n't, an' she dass n't, fer Job had set his heart on the match,
+an' was thet weak an' childish thet he kept harpin' on their marriage
+from mornin' till night, an' thet kept up George's courage more 'n
+anything else. So things went on fer most two months.
+
+"One afternoon, late in September--I shall never ferget the day fer 't
+was Sunday, an' it seems as if the Sabbath was the devil's own day
+after all--George an' me took the team ter go up ter the north pasture
+to ketch his colts. Word had come down thet they 'd broke loose an'
+needed ter be tended to thet very night; so, without sayin' nothin' ter
+nobody, fer 't was only our own business if we _did_ go on Sunday, we
+set out.
+
+"On the way up George told me he an' Happy was ter be married the next
+week, an' I, fer one, was mighty glad on 't, fer I longed ter see her
+settled down an' like herself again.
+
+"The north pasture lays up over the hill good two mile from the farm,
+an' when we 'd gone 'bout half way, George reined up, an' says:
+
+"'Let's hitch the team here an' go over ter the pasture crosslots. It
+ain't more 'n half as fur, an' I 'm afraid it 'll get too dark ter
+hitch 'em if we drive round the road.'
+
+"'All right,' says I; an' we set off, George takin' the five-rail
+fences at one bound an' walkin' as if on air.
+
+"He was jest lettin' down the bars an' callin' the colts by name, when
+we heard a team comin' from the north. Both of us stopped ter listen
+an' see what 't was, fer there war n't but one road over the hill on
+the north side, an' thet was so steep it war n't travelled many times a
+year. We could look right down the slope of the pasture onter the road
+'bout a hundred foot below, an', in a minute, a team hove in sight--the
+horse followin' pretty much his own lead an' feelin' his way down as
+best he could.
+
+"There was a man an' a woman in the buggy pretty well occupied with one
+'nother, fer his arm was round her, an' her head was leanin' on his
+shoulder. Somehow I did n't like the look of it, an' I was jest
+turnin' ter George ter say so, when I heard sech an oath from his lips
+as gives me the creeps every time I think on 't.
+
+"There war n't no time ter say a word, fer I see what he see jest as
+plain as the sun in the sky:--the woman liftin' her face a little an'
+the man kissin' her over 'n over again.... 'T was Happy.
+
+"'Do you see thet?' says George, turnin' ter me with a glare like a
+madman.
+
+"'Yes,' says I, fer I could n't get out another word.
+
+"'You lie!' says he, 'an' if you say thet again it 'll be the last word
+as leaves your body alive!'
+
+"An' with thet he sprung at me like a tiger, an' the Lord only knows 't
+was my great pity fer him thet held my hand. But he did n't touch
+me--oh, no! His hand dropped as if it had been shot, an', leanin' all
+white an' quiverin' up against the fence, he dropped his head onter his
+folded arms an' burst inter great sobs thet shook the rails. It was
+like one of them spring freshets thet tears up the face of nature, an'
+I knew he 'd be the better fer it, fer he was only a boy in his years,
+if he was a man in his love.
+
+"'You ain't goin' ter let 'em go?' was the first words I could muster
+courage to say, as I see him turnin' back ter the pasture bars again.
+
+"'Yes, I 'm goin' ter let them go--ter the devil,' he muttered, between
+his teeth; then, turnin' ter me, as cool an' calm as if there war n't a
+woman nor a sarpent in the world, he says:
+
+"'You know, Si, there 's the colts ter be ketched, an' it's gettin'
+late.'
+
+"An', by the Lord Harry, they was ketched! I never see sech racin' an'
+tearin' an' rarin'! He was all over the pasture ter once, so it
+seemed, headin' 'em off, hangin' on ter their manes, throwin' himself
+astride of fust one then 'nother. I thought the old pasture would be
+ploughed ready fer spring sowin', the way their heels tore up the sod.
+I dass n't help him fer I knew the madness thet had been on him, an'
+the heat he was in, was workin' off thet way. So I kept out of his
+way, an' within three quarters of an hour he 'd got those four colts
+well in hand an' started fer home.
+
+"Mother told me the rest.
+
+"'Job had two sinkin' spells thet Sunday afternoon,' she said, 'an'
+there war n't a drop of sperits in the house. I 'd used up the last of
+the elderberry wine,' she said, 'an' long 'bout three o'clock, I told
+Happy she 'd better run down to Seth White's an' get some brandy. She
+come back in a hurry an' said he had n't a drop of anything in the
+house, an' she 'd run down to the Crick House,--'t war n't more 'n a
+mile--an' get some.
+
+"'Thet's the last I see of her till half past eight,' said mother, 'an'
+when she did come she was all of a shake. She said she 'd hurried so,
+an' had ter wait at the tavern till they 'd sent down ter the next
+village. I thought 't was kinder queer,' mother used ter say, 'fer 't
+was the fust time I 'd ever known the Crick House to run dry of a
+Sunday.
+
+"'I did n't say nothin', but took the bottle an' started upstairs,
+leavin' her settin' there on the settle. Job was ramblin' some, an'
+Keziah had all she could do to keep him pacified.'
+
+"George and me,"--Cale interrupted his story to explain to us,--"had
+moved Job over inter the north chamber over the kitchen, fer 't was
+handier ter tend him there; an' all the cookin' was done in the
+woodshed. But you could hear every sound in the kitchen plain as could
+be.
+
+"'Job was jest fallin' asleep,' mother said, 'when I heard George come
+in through the woodshed an' shut the door with a bang thet pretty nigh
+raised the roof, an' started Job off again; an' I jest riz up out of my
+chair ter give them young folks a piece of my mind when, all of a
+suddin', I heard Happy cry out sharp, as if somebody was hurtin' her:
+
+"'"Oh, don't--don't!"
+
+"'Then I knew there was trouble brewin'. I held up my finger ter
+Keziah ter keep still, an' slippin' down the back stairs, thet led
+inter the kitchen, laid my eye to the crack in the door thet was part
+open.
+
+"'I could see Happy crouchin' on the settle with both hands over her
+face, an' George, standin' over her, had laid a pretty heavy hand on
+her shoulder.
+
+"'"Who was thet devil?" says he, in a hoarse voice like a crow's-caw.
+There was only a groan fer answer.
+
+"'"Tell me the truth," says he with a great shudderin' breath thet
+seemed ter go down clean ter his finger-tips, fer she shook like a leaf
+under the power of his hands. "Are you fit ter be my wife?"
+
+"'"Fit ter be your wife!" she shrieked, and with a bound thet shook his
+hand free of her an' left her standin' face ter face with him. Then,
+liftin' both her round white arms, she opened her little palms upwards
+jest as if', mother said, 'she was tryin' ter reach the horns of the
+altar, an' it sounded as if she was prayin': "As there 's my mother's
+God in heaven above me, I am clean an' fit ter be your wife, George
+Jackson, an' the wife of any honest man livin', an' if you 'll take me,
+knowin' what you do--an' you 've seen all there was of harm--I 'll
+marry you ter-morrow."
+
+"'Her arms dropped by her side as if she had n't a mite of strength
+left in her body, an' she looked at him with a look thet will ha'nt me
+ter my dyin' day.'
+
+"Mother said: 'If I 'd had a daughter, I 'd ruther laid her in her
+grave than seen her marry any man with thet look on her face.'
+
+"'"So help me God, Happy, I 'll save you from yourself an' marry you
+ter-morrow," says George, slow an' solemn. An' at those words, Job riz
+right up in bed an' hollered "Amen, amen!" till the rafters rung.'
+
+"Mother 's told me the story over 'n over again, an' always in them
+same words," said Cale thoughtfully. "She used ter say she guessed
+Happy made a clean breast of it to George after hearin' that 'Amen'.
+
+"Sure enough they was married the next day--late in the afternoon--when
+Job had a lucid spell an' cried fer joy. 'I can leave you now, Happy,'
+was all he said as he give 'em his blessin'. When night come on he
+wandered again. He 'd had watchers more 'n three weeks, an' Keziah was
+all tuckered out, an' mother too. I said I 'd watch thet night, but
+Happy stuck to it she was goin' ter.
+
+"'But, Happy--' says mother, with a meanin' look an' smile.
+
+"'I know, Aunt Marthy.' She answered, sorter hesitatin'; then, settin'
+the bowl of porridge she had in her hand down on the table, she
+beckoned mother out inter the shed an', shuttin' the door tight, flung
+her arms round mother's neck an' begged her ter speak ter George, an'
+ask him ter let her watch jest this one night with her father.
+
+"'He can't deny me thet, Aunt Marthy, an' if you had a daughter placed
+as I am, would n't you do as much fer her?'
+
+"Mother said she 'd never ferget the scairt look on the girl's face,
+nor the feel of her two hands, like chunks of ice, round her neck.
+
+"'My heart ached fer her,' mother said, 'an' I told her I 'd speak ter
+George, an' I knew 't would be all right.'
+
+"An' so 't was. He was only too glad to do anything fer her ter make
+her feel easier in her mind; he said he 'd stretch out on the sofy in
+the parlor, so as to be on hand if they wanted him.
+
+"Mother set up till twelve, an' then Happy brought her up a steamin'
+bowl of catnip tea.
+
+"'Take it, Aunt Marthy,' she said, coaxin', 'it 'll do you good.'
+
+"'Bless your thoughtful little soul,' says mother, an' gulped it down
+as innercent as a lamb."
+
+At this point Cale rose, with one stride reached the fireplace and gave
+the backlog a mighty kick that sent the sparks in showers up the
+chimney; then, seating himself again, he went on in a hard unyielding
+voice:
+
+"I ain't made up my mind whether I 've fergiven her or not. I s'pose I
+have, seein' what the gal must have suffered after thet; but it was my
+innercent lovin' mother--an' how she could have done it beats all
+creation! But she was desp'rit.
+
+"George got up twice in the night, but all was quiet. He even walked
+round the house an' stood under the winder, hopin', as he told me
+afterwards, to see her shadder on the curtain. The second time he went
+out, he saw her pull aside the square of cotton an' look out. It was
+nigh mornin' then and the lamp still burnin'. 'Bout half after five he
+crept out in his stockin' feet, milked, an' turned the cows out; then
+he come back, laid down, an' just after daybreak shet his eyes fer the
+first time.
+
+"When he woke it was 'bout eight o'clock, an' still nary a sound in the
+house, fer Keziah had n't nothin' on her mind, 'cause mother took it
+all off. Again he slipped out of doors an' see a dull red spot on the
+curtain; it looked as if the light was burnin'. He thought she 'd
+fallen asleep. On thet, he creeps up the back stairs an' looks inter
+the chamber. There was mother stretched out on the cot unconscious,
+her face as white an' drawn as the square of cotton beside it. Job was
+breathin' heavy in the bed; the lamp was smellin' with the vilest smell
+and--Happy was gone."
+
+"Gone!" Jamie echoed.
+
+"Yes, gone fer good--an' ter this day I can't quite make up my mind
+whether I 've fergiven her or not.
+
+"Mother come to in something less than half an hour and before the
+doctor got there. We braced her up with a pint of strong coffee, an',
+natcherly, she could n't remember nothing after she 'd took the catnip
+tea--_and_ the laudanum.
+
+"George rode right an' left, to get track of her, or rather them, fer
+we all knew there was a man in the case after what we see. He
+telegraphed ter them big cities, an' hired detectives fer the dirty
+work; but they could n't get no clew. The folks at the Crick House
+said there 'd been a man there sketching but they had n't seen him
+sence Sunday night, when he left on foot. The gal, they said, had n't
+been near the house, an' Seth White told mother, it was he give her the
+brandy himself; so you can make what you can of it.
+
+"'I 'm her husband, an' she belongs ter me,' was all George would say,
+when we tried to make him give her up an' git a bill of divorce.
+
+"Wal," said Cale sententiously, looking hard at the Doctor, "there 's
+two ways of lookin' at thet, but it took him some time ter see it; an'
+it war n't till he 'd travelled fer four months, east, north, south,
+an' west as fur as the Rockies, thet he come home an' settled down to
+farmin' again; but it would n't work. He war n't the same man; lost
+his interest, an' was lettin' things go ter the dogs. He never took
+ter drink, thet I know of. But there war n't no use talking ter him.
+He was his own master an' would n't be interfered with.
+
+"It might have been nine months after he 'd come home, mebbe 't was a
+year, I don't remember, when he come to me one day with a telegram in
+his hand--it had come up on the stage--an' handed it to me with the
+face of a man ready ter face death or of a dead man jest come ter life,
+I could n't say which.
+
+"'Read it,' says he, shakin' like a man in drink; 'I can't.' An' I
+read:
+
+"'I am dyin' and alone among strangers; will you come to me fer the
+sake of my child.' There was an address thet made George groan, fer he
+'d been all over thet great Babel of New York, an' knew jest the kind
+of place she was in.
+
+"Wal, he went; an' three days afterwards he come home with the dead
+body of the woman, as was his wife an' yet was n't--jest accordin' as
+you look at it--an' a live child thet was hers an' not his 'n,
+whichever way you look at it.
+
+"Sech things ain't nothin' new to you, I s'pose?" Cale turned to the
+Doctor.
+
+"What became of the man?" said the Doctor, without answering his
+question. During this recital his eyes never left Cale's face.
+
+"Dunno."
+
+"You don't know! What do you mean by that, Cale?" said Jamie.
+
+"I mean," he answered slowly, "thet George Jackson never did nothin' by
+halves. He come ter me one day--the day after the funeral--an' said he
+was goin' away. An' he did; sold out an' went away."
+
+"Did the child live?" Doctor Rugvie's voice broke the silence somewhat
+sharply. I caught the flight of his thought; I am sure Jamie did also.
+
+"Yes, lived ter be a blessing ter all she come nigh. She war n't more
+'n three days old when he brought her home to Keziah. Happy was dead
+when he found her; more 'n thet he never told us. He left something
+for them with Lawyer Green--he told me he should do it. They lived on
+thet in part; it helped ter support 'em, fer they was in a tight place.
+Thet was how Job's luck came at last, poor soul--little enough it was.
+He kept on fer years, I heard, but was always weak-minded after he was
+told what had happened. They said he always used ter call the baby
+'Happy', an' could n't bear her out of his sight. Then, when she was
+'bout fourteen, he turned against her, an' kept thinkin' it was Happy
+herself; kept harpin' on her marriage to George, an' flingin' of what
+she 'd done inter her face, till the child could n't stand it no more.
+She never knew the whole truth, they said, till she was fifteen; then
+somebody was willin' ter tell her"--Cale smiled grimly--"as _they_ see
+it, an' it 'bout finished what Job begun. I heard she never tasted a
+morsel of food for two days. The last I heard about her was, she was
+keepin' the district school. It's been most ten years now sence I
+heard anything; you don't often meet a man from our way up in Manitoba
+or the river basin of British Columbia, an' I never was no hand at
+writin'. Sometime I mean ter look her up. I ain't been able ter do
+fer her as I 'd ought ter, fer I had bad luck fer too many years--them
+pesky western wildcat banks cleaned me out twice."
+
+"By what name was the child christened?" asked the Doctor.
+
+"Never was christened thet I know of."
+
+"Oh, Cale, if only they had been happier!" It was Jamie who spoke with
+almost a groan.
+
+"Wal, thet's the mystery of it," was his quiet answer. Gathering his
+loose-jointed frame together, he rose. "Guess I 'll go an' look after
+the hosses; it's goin' ter be a skinner of a night." At the door he
+turned.
+
+"I know I ain't told you nothin' livenin', but it's life, an' I could
+n't tell it no other way. It ain't jest the thing ter air fam'ly
+troubles, but it's all past; an' what I 've told, I 've told ter my
+friends, an' I 'll thank _you_ ter let what I 've said be 'twixt us
+four."
+
+We sat in silence for a while after he had left the room. I was
+wondering how I could make excuse to get away from them all, get away
+by myself and have it out with myself, when Jamie broke the silence:
+
+"Doctor Rugvie, I 've been putting two and two together. You know what
+you told us the last time you were here about that New York episode?
+Do you suppose Cale's story is the key to that?"
+
+"Possibly it might be, if those episodes were not of common
+occurrence--there are so many all the time."
+
+"I know; but this fitted in almost every detail. I would n't ask him
+how long ago all this happened."
+
+"Nor I," was the Doctor's reply, and his answer gave a glimpse of his
+thought. "I will when it comes right."
+
+"Dear old Cale," I murmured. I felt it incumbent on me to say
+something, lest my unresponsiveness be noticed.
+
+The Doctor rose and took a cigar from the box on the mantel, saying
+almost to himself:
+
+ "'There may be heaven, there must be hell,
+ Meantime there is our earth here--well!'
+
+"Good night, Mrs. Macleod, good night, Boy--Marcia, good night."
+
+He spoke in his usual voice, but with noticeable abruptness.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+So Cale knew. This was my first thought when I found myself alone in
+my room. Cale, then, was the husband of my mother's sister, Jemima
+Morey, who died before I was born, whose name I had heard but two or
+three times. My Aunt Keziah's mind grew dull in the strain of
+circumstance; she was never given a full supply of brains, and her
+memory weakened as she aged. Had she lived,--I shuddered at the
+thought,--she would have been imbecile like my grandfather and,
+doubtless, have lived to his age, ninety. In that case there would
+have been no life for me here.
+
+"But I _am_ here. I am going to remain here till I am sent away.
+Nothing that Cale has said shall influence me in this. All that is
+past--a part of another generation. I have put it all out of my life,
+once and for all. I live now and here, in Lamoral. I am not my
+mother; I am Marcia Farrell. I have not her life to answer for, and
+her life--oh, what she must have suffered!--shall no longer influence
+mine.
+
+"I am free! I declare myself free from the bondage of past memories,
+free, and I will to remain so."'
+
+This was my declaration of independence--independence of heredity and
+its accredited influence; of memories that control the mentality which
+governs life; freedom from the actuality of past environment. I drew a
+long free breath. My individual womanhood, this "I" of me, Marcia
+Farrell, not a composite of ancestral inheritance, asserted itself.
+
+What if my nose resembles my great-grandmother's? I asked, unfurling my
+revolutionary flag over the moat--untechnically "ditch"--of the
+stronghold, considered by some impregnable, of present day scientific
+discovery.
+
+What if I happen to have a temper like my maternal great-aunt's? What
+if I have a fighting instinct like my paternal ancestors, who may have
+come over with William the Conqueror as swordsmen or cooks--I don't
+care which?
+
+What if I handle my crochet needle in a manner very like the brandished
+spear of Goths, Vandals, and Huns, from all of whom it is perfectly
+possible that I may count my descent?
+
+What if I show distinctive animal characteristics? Jamie declares I
+run like a doe and look like a greyhound!
+
+What do I care if, millions of years ago when things on this earth were
+stickier and hotter than the worst dog-day in New York, this thing that
+has, in the end, become Marcia Farrell, this half-perfected mechanism
+of body and mind, had gills like a fish? What do I care if it had?
+
+This "I" of me is distinct from every other "I" on this inhabited
+globe. This "I" of me has its special work to do, not another's, not
+my ancestors'. Humble enough it is. It has to feed and clothe my body
+by labor, the brain regulating the handicraft. It has eyes to see all
+the beauty, all the ugliness of Life; ears to hear all its harmonies,
+all its discords; a mind to comprehend how some detail of chaos may
+find rebirth in order. This "I" of me, my soul, receives through the
+instruments of the senses, impressions of infinite chaos ordered into
+laws, not necessarily final, laws beneficial to man and his
+universe.--Am I to deny the existence of what is called the strange
+unknown ether, simply because, for ages, the instrument of the wireless
+was not on hand to give expression to its transmitting power?
+
+I repeated to myself, that I had my own life to live, not my
+mother's--oh God, forbid! Not my grandfather's--oh, in mercy not! Not
+my myriad of ancestors' lives; were this so, the mechanism of the brain
+would give under the strain. But just my own, mine, Marcia Farrell's,
+here, from day to day in Lamoral; a life lived in thankfulness of
+spirit for a shelter that is a home; in thankfulness for the modicum of
+intellect--with its accompanying physical fitness--that enables me to
+earn my living; in thankfulness for friends; in thankfulness--yes, I
+dare say it, even in the shadow of Cale's story of my mother's short
+life--that I love, that I can love.
+
+This is the full text of my declaration of independence, made at twelve
+of the clock,--I heard it striking in the kitchen below,--on the night
+of the twentieth of February, nineteen hundred and ten.
+
+From that hour, I lost all desire to know my parentage, to question
+Doctor Rugvie, to see the papers; all desire to establish the fact that
+I was a legitimate child. And I lost it because a greater interest,
+the dominating interest of love, was claiming all my thoughts, ruling
+my desires, regulating my wishes. My hour had struck and, knowing it,
+I regulated my clock by Mr. Ewart's timepiece, which is another way of
+saying I lived, henceforth, not only in his home, but in him and his
+interests.
+
+All that Cale told us I had known in part, but never had I known the
+circumstances in detail, freed from the accumulation of gossip. Now,
+with Delia Beaseley's relation of my birth and its attendant
+circumstances, the account, except on two points, seemed complete. On
+one, I intended to ask explanation from Cale, when an opportunity
+offered; in the second matter, the identity of my father, I took no
+interest. But to Cale I would speak. Dear old Cale! Had he known me
+all these months? Why had n't he spoken to me and told me?
+
+As I thought it over, I saw that I had given him no opportunity to
+question me, or to speak to me, concerning his surmise. He should have
+it soon--and again look me squarely in the eyes. Dear old Cale!
+
+It was noticeable the next day, that the Doctor was fairly well
+occupied with his own thoughts. During the hour in which I took my
+first lesson with skis, I caught him, more than once, looking at me as
+if searching for enlightenment on some subject, or object, projected,
+obscure and undefined, from his consciousness. My own high spirits
+were seemingly inexplicable to him. How could he know that my elation
+was due to the fact, that the express from Montreal would arrive in
+eight hours!
+
+"Cale," he said abruptly, while helping me out of some particularly
+awkward floundering, "when does the mail leave the house for the south
+bound trains?"
+
+"We cal'late ter get it off 'bout noon; little Pete takes it over."
+
+The Doctor looked at his watch. "Sorry, Marcia, to cut short this fun,
+especially after my urgent invitation, but I must get some letters off
+by that mail. We 'll try it again to-morrow."
+
+"Don't mind me, but I don't want to go in; it's great sport, the best
+yet. Cale, you can stay a little longer, can't you?"
+
+"To be sure; I ain't nothing special on hand fer the rest of the
+forenoon."
+
+"Then I 'll cut and run," said the Doctor, without ceremony and
+evidently pressed for time. He "cut" accordingly, his skis carrying
+him down the incline with what seemed to me dubious velocity.
+
+I turned to Cale and gave him my mittened hand. He guided me well and
+carefully. I landed, rather to my own surprise, right side up. I was
+well pleased with this progress; in all conditions of my partial
+equilibrium, I found the sport exciting.
+
+"You don't look like the same gal I drove up from the steamboat landing
+thet night four months ago." He looked down at me admiringly from his
+great height. "Your cheeks are clear pink and white, and your eyes
+shine; who 'd ever think they was the faded out brown ones, with great
+black hollers under 'em, thet I see lookin' 'round to find out what
+kind of a God's country you was in?"
+
+"I like your compliments. Tell me, Cale,"--I smiled straight up into
+his rugged face, in order to get a look at the small keen gray eyes
+beneath the bushy eyebrows--"how did you come to think it was I? Tell
+me."
+
+The tanned cheeks above the whiskers looked suddenly rather yellow. I
+could n't see his mouth for the frosted beard, but I saw his eyes fill.
+The hand that was still holding mine to help me up the incline,
+tightened its clasp. He hesitated a moment before he could answer:
+
+"I did n't know, Marcia, not for plumb sure; an' yet I _felt_ sure, for
+you was the livin' image of Happy Morey."
+
+"Am I so very like her--in all ways?"
+
+"Like her in looks, all but the eyes; they 're different. But you
+ain't much like her in your ways--she was what you might call
+winnin'er; you have ways of your own."
+
+"Did you open the windows of your life so wide for us last night, Cale,
+just to entice me to fly in and find refuge with you?"
+
+"Marcia," his voice trembled slightly, "I stood it jest as long as I
+could. I knew _you_ did n't know me from Adam; but I felt as if I
+could n't live another day in the house with you, 'thout makin' myself
+known ter you; an' I took thet way ter do it an', meanwhile, satisfy
+somebody's curiosity 'bout me, fer Jamie can't be beat by any woman for
+_thet_. I did n't go off half-cock though, last night, you may bet
+your life on thet."
+
+"I know you did n't, Cale--and can't we keep this between ourselves?"
+
+"Jest as you say, Marcia. What you say ter me won't go no further.
+There ain't no one nigher to me than you in all this world--
+
+"Nor than--" I began. I was about to say, "than you to me"; but I cut
+short the words that would have perjured the new joy in my heart.
+
+Cale apparently took no notice of the unfinished sentence.
+
+"Sometime I want ter know 'bout your life these last ten years--I can't
+sorter rest easy till I know."
+
+"There is so little to tell. Aunt Keziah died eight years ago; then I
+went down to New York to earn my living, and worked there till I came
+here--on a venture."
+
+"It's the best you ever made," he said emphatically. "Get sick of it
+there?"
+
+"Yes, I should have died if I 'd stayed in that city any longer; it was
+too much for me."
+
+I felt his hand grasp mine still more closely.
+
+"So 'twas, so 'twas," he said to himself; then to me:
+
+"Guess we won't lose track of one 'nother again, Marcia."
+
+"Not if I can help it, Cale; it is n't my fault that we see each other
+for the first time in twenty-six years."
+
+"So 't ain't, so 't ain't, poor little soul." I heard a catch in his
+voice, but I did not spare him.
+
+"How old was I when you left home?"
+
+"'Bout three months, if I remember right."
+
+"Did you ever see me--then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You did n't have any interest in me?"
+
+"Not much, I 'll own up." Then he added weakly, for he wanted to spare
+me the truth by gently lying out of it, "I 've heard men don't take to
+new-born babies as women do; they 're kinder soft ter handle."
+
+"And you saw me for the first time in my life at the steamboat landing?"
+
+"Yes--an' my knees fairly give way beneath me, for I saw Happy standin'
+before me an' speakin' in the voice I remember so well."
+
+"A long while, twenty-six years, Cale?"
+
+"Don't, Marcia, don't rub it in so!" He was half resentful; and I,
+having brought him to this point, was satisfied to relent.
+
+"Cale," I said, withdrawing my hand and facing him, as well as I could
+with my new foot appendages to steer, "I 'll forgive you for not paying
+any attention to me for twenty-six years, on one condition--"
+
+"What is thet?" His eagerness was almost pathetic.
+
+"That you 'll take me for just what I am, who I am, Marcia Farrell--not
+Happy Morey; if you don't I shall be unhappy. And you 're to love me
+for myself, do you hear? Just for myself, and not because I 'm the
+living image of my mother. Now don't you forget. I give you warning,
+I shall be insanely jealous if you love me for anybody but myself--and
+I take it for granted you _do_ love me, don't you, Cale?"
+
+"You know I do, Marcia."
+
+I had him at my mercy and I was merciful.
+
+"Well, then, if I did n't have all this paraphernalia on my feet, I
+would venture to throw my arms around your neck and give you a good
+hug--Uncle Cale. As it is I might flop suddenly and fall upon your
+breast."
+
+"Guess I could stand it if you did,"--he smiled happily, the creases
+around his eyes deepening to wrinkles,--"but 'twixt you and me, this
+ain't exactly the place nor the weather for any palaverin'--"
+
+"Palavering! Well, you are ungallant, Cale; I don't dare to call you
+'Uncle' now, for fear I might make a slip before the entire family, and
+that would complicate matters, would n't it?"
+
+"Guess 't would," he replied earnestly; "complicate 'em in a way 't
+would take more 'n a lawyer's wits ter uncomplicate."
+
+"Then let's go home and see what the Doctor is doing."
+
+"He 's great!"
+
+"Wait till I tell you sometime a secret about him--and me: you 'll
+think he is greater."
+
+"You don't mean thet, Marcia!"
+
+"Mean what?" I asked a little shortly, for I felt annoyed at his tone
+of protest and resentment.
+
+"Mean? Wal, thet the Doctor 's sweet on you--"
+
+"Silas C. Marstin, I am angry with you, yes, angry! Do you want to
+spoil all my fun,--yes, and my happiness,--by just mentioning such an
+impossible thing?"
+
+"God knows I don't." He spoke, as it seemed, almost on the verge of
+tears.
+
+"Then never, never--do you hear?--think or mention such a thing again.
+Promise me."
+
+"I won't, so help me--"
+
+"That 'll do; that's right. Now be sensible and get these skis off, so
+I can walk to the house like a woman instead of a penguin."
+
+"You ain't goin' to lay it up against me?" he pleaded, as we neared the
+house.
+
+"No, of course not; only, remember, you 're under oath. I mean all
+this." I nodded at him gravely.
+
+"An' I mean it too; you won't have nothing to complain of so fur as I
+'m concerned."
+
+"Dear old Cale!" I whispered to him as I entered the house, where I
+found Jamie in a state of suppressed excitement for I had given him no
+opportunity to advance his theories about what he had heard the night
+before from Cale.
+
+"I say, Marcia, come on into the office and let's talk; the Doctor is
+in the living-room, writing for all he is worth."
+
+"I can't; I 'm busy." At which he went off in a huff.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+"Let me take your mail out to little Pete," I said to the Doctor, who
+was superscribing his last letter, when I came in from the morning's
+sport.
+
+"Thanks, very much."
+
+He spoke abstractedly; ran over the addresses on several envelopes and
+handed them to me. I could not help seeing that the one on top was
+addressed to Delia Beaseley. I fancy he intended I should see it. I
+felt sure he had written to her for some of the forgotten details of
+that night in December more than twenty-six years ago.
+
+"He's on the track of that child--me! Cale's story has given him the
+clew," I said to myself, on noticing his absorption in his own thoughts
+during dinner and his preoccupation in the afternoon. In the evening
+he drove over with Cale to meet Mr. Ewart.
+
+I rather enjoyed the course events were taking; it would interest me to
+watch developments of the Doctor's detective work. In a way, it had
+all the fascination of a drama of which I felt myself no longer to be
+an actor, but a spectator.
+
+Jamie cornered me, after the Doctor and Cale drove off to the junction.
+
+"No, you don't!" he said, laughing, as he extended his long arms across
+the doorway of the living-room to bar my exit. "You will act like a
+Christian and love your neighbor as yourself this time. Sit down and
+talk--or I sha'n't be able to finish my last chapter."
+
+Of course I sat down, knowing perfectly well what I was about to
+hear--at least, I thought I did.
+
+"Marcia--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that what Cale told
+us, and what Doctor Rugvie told us, are two acts in a long
+drama--tragedy, if you like."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You _are_ cool, I must say!" He spoke with irritation. "Do you mean
+to tell me that life, presented in such a manner as those two
+men--opposite as the poles in standing--presented it, does n't interest
+you?"
+
+"I have n't the imagination of genius, Jamie."
+
+"Now you know perfectly well there is no imagination about it. It's
+life, just as Cale said; and it's my belief the Doctor will, in the
+end, get some track of that girl. If he does, it will be all up with
+the farm. Did you think of that?"
+
+"No!" I spoke the truth. I was amazed. It never occurred to me to
+connect the farm project with anything Cale had said.
+
+"I 'll wager he 'll compare notes with Cale on the way over to the
+station, and I 'm going to refer to the farm plan, if I have the chance
+after they get back, to see what he 'll say."
+
+"He won't think you 're interfering, will he?"
+
+"He can't." He spoke decidedly. "The farm project affects _me_, don't
+you see?"
+
+"Not exactly; how?"
+
+"Why, if--of course it's only an 'if'--the Doctor should find this
+girl, he would n't for a moment think of taking that money, which in
+justice if not in the law belongs to her, to further any of his plans.
+He is n't that kind of a man."
+
+"Of course not; but I don't see how--"
+
+"That's where you are obtuse. Look here, Marcia, how long do you
+suppose I can stand it to vegetate here in Canada? It's healthy, I
+agree to that, and doing me no end of good; but I can't see myself
+living here--existing, yes; but living, no! I'm better, stronger; and
+even if I were n't, I would n't play the coward either in life or
+death. As it is, I want to live my life full in my own way, among my
+own. I want to be in the thick of the fray, even if by being there I
+should go under a little sooner. I want to mingle with the multitude
+of men--see into their lives, give them something of mine in reality
+and through the imagination, and get their point of view into my life.
+I can't stay on indefinitely here in Canada; and if--if--"
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If the girl should be found, the farm project would amount to nothing.
+The Doctor sees, just as you and I see, that Ewart is not enthusiastic
+about it, and he is n't going to settle on Ewart's land with an
+unwelcome philanthropic scheme. And then--"
+
+"What?" I was becoming impatient.
+
+"Why, then, if it should fall through,--and I 'm selfishly hoping it
+may,--I'm not in the least bound, don't you know, to stay on here as
+Ewart's guest. I can go home."
+
+"Home!" I echoed. The thought of losing Jamie had never occurred to
+me. And if he went, then his mother, also, would go. If they both
+went, I should have necessarily to leave Lamoral, for I was merely an
+entail of their presence. Leave Lamoral! I sickened at the thought.
+
+"Oh, no, no, Jamie!" I cried out, rebelling against the prospect of a
+new upheaval in my life. "I can't spare you--I can't live here without
+you--"
+
+With every thought centered in Mr. Ewart at that moment, and
+comprehending as I did the logical result of Mrs. Macleod's leaving the
+manor and all that it would mean to me, I did not realize what
+impression my impulsive words might make on her son. In the silence
+that followed my protest, I had time to realize what I had said.
+
+"I did n't for a moment suppose you felt like this, Marcia."
+
+In a flash I understood the twist in his interpretation of my words and
+feeling.
+
+"You don't understand--" I began vehemently, then found myself
+hesitating like a schoolgirl who does not know her lesson. I was
+ashamed of myself, for Jamie was on the wrong track and must be put
+right at all costs.
+
+"I think I do." He spoke gently, almost pityingly as it seemed to me
+then. I boiled inwardly.
+
+"No, you don't; but there 's no time to explain now--I hear the bells--"
+
+"You have good ears; I don't."
+
+"They 're coming! Where 's Mrs. Macleod?"
+
+"Well, they 're not returning from an ocean voyage, even if they are
+coming; there is no need to run up the Union Jack-- Hold on a minute!"
+He barred the door again with his long arms.
+
+"Let me out--they 're at the door--"
+
+"What if they are?"
+
+I slipped quickly under his arm into the passageway. The dogs were
+frantic with joy. I wanted to show mine as plainly, perhaps then Jamie
+might understand! I flung open the door, and, as it happened my voice
+was the only one to welcome them.
+
+"You 're back so soon!"
+
+"You may well say that," said the Doctor, running up the steps and
+seeming to bring the whole Arctic region of cold in with him; "I drove
+over and made good time, I thought; but Ewart took the reins on the way
+back, and we came home at a clip--nine miles in fifty-two minutes!
+That's a record. Now, Ewart," he turned to speak to his friend who had
+stopped to give some order to Cale, "see how well I have heeded your
+injunction to 'look out' for Miss Farrell."
+
+"And the horses did n't bolt," I said, as I put my hand into his
+outstretched one.
+
+"Have you gotten over the effects of the aurora?"
+
+The hearty gladness in his voice was reward enough for the restraint I
+put on myself. I wanted to give him both hands and tell him in so many
+words that, with his coming, I was "at home" again.
+
+"No, and never shall," I responded joyfully.
+
+"Nor I either.-- Where 's Jamie? Oh, Mrs. Macleod," he said, spying
+her on the upper landing, "I 've taken you unawares for the first
+time.--Down, comrades, down!--Jamie Macleod, is this the way you
+welcome a wanderer to his own hearth?"
+
+Jamie's hand grasped his and pumped it well.
+
+"It's queer, Gordon, but you seem to look at your three days of absence
+from the same point of view that Marcia does."
+
+"How 's that?" he asked quickly, turning to me.
+
+"Just Jamie's nonsense; it's only that I was on the lookout for you,
+and heard the bells when he failed to."
+
+I knew I was growing reckless, but I did not care--why should I?--if he
+knew I was glad to see him at home again. I did not care if they all
+knew it--I must put Jamie right somehow. And what was there to hide?
+Not my gladness, not my joy, the new elements in my new life--this
+something I had never before experienced. Somehow, all my resolutions
+to keep this joy "to myself" went to the winds.
+
+Mr. Ewart made no reply, but I knew I added to his evident pleasure in
+his return, by my ready and frankly expressed acknowledgement that I
+was "on the lookout" for him.
+
+That evening was one never to be forgotten. It was a time when the
+friendship of the four men, Mr. Ewart, Cale, Doctor Rugvie, and Jamie
+Macleod, towards me, found expression both in jest and earnest; a time
+when Mrs. Macleod's kindly, if always a little remote interest in me
+was doubly grateful, for sure of it and its protection I could let the
+new life, that shortly before had awakened in me, flood my whole being
+and expand heart, soul and mind with its vital flux. I felt that I
+made my own place in this household; that I pleased them all; that they
+liked my speech, whether merry or grave; that they liked my ways
+because mine, whether I was lighting cigars and pipes for them, or
+frying griddlecakes at ten o'clock at night on the top of the soapstone
+stove, in redemption of my promise made months past. The truth is I
+felt at home, wholly, completely; and they, recognizing it, were glad
+for me.
+
+With Cale, that evening, I was tender, teasing, arrogant by turns; I
+had him at my mercy--and his lips were sealed! With Jamie I was
+absolutely nonsensical, as I dared to be in view of his twisted
+interpretation of my apparently sentimental, "I can't live without you
+here etc." I bothered and puzzled him, much to the others' amusement.
+Into the Doctor's spirit of banter I entered with the enjoyment of a
+not very "old" girl. I caught him looking at me with the same
+perplexed expression that he wore when I first smiled at him three
+months before--and I kept on smiling, as I had cause, hoping the
+message, oft repeated, would carry in time to his consciousness the
+recognition that I was, indeed, the daughter of her whom he had
+befriended more than a quarter of a century ago. The emphatic
+statement made by Cale and Delia Beaseley that I was her "living
+image", encouraged me in this line of procedure. To the Master of
+Lamoral I gave willing service, frying for him delectable griddlecakes,
+turning them till a golden brown, flapping them over skilfully on his
+warm plate, and deluging them with incomparable maple syrup from his
+own sugar "bush". He received this service in the spirit in which I
+gave it, and the cakes with the appreciation of a man and connoisseur.
+Mrs. Macleod seconded my efforts in this special line of cooking and
+enjoyed the fun as much as any one of us.
+
+"There 's no use, I 'm 'full up'," said Jamie with a sigh of
+exhaustion; he dropped into the sofa corner.
+
+"I kept tally for you, Boy," said the Doctor.
+
+"How many?"
+
+"Eighteen! Apply to me if you 're in trouble at one-thirty to-night."
+He looked at his watch.
+
+"You scored seventeen fully ten minutes ago, mon vieux," said Mr. Ewart
+laughing.
+
+"Slander, Marcia! Don't believe it. Three of mine would make only one
+of yours, Gordon Ewart;--I 've camped enough with you to know your
+'capacity', as the freight cars have it. Marcia Farrell, your last
+'batch' has been 'petering out', as we say at home. You dropped only
+one small spoonful for each of the last twenty cakes; the ones you made
+for Ewart had a complement of two big spoonfuls--they were corkers, no
+mistake. Hold up your head, Boy!" he admonished the collapsed object
+on the sofa. "Never say die--here are just four more for us four,
+amen."
+
+A dismal groan was his only answer. Mr. Ewart, taking turner and bowl
+from me, declared a truce. The Doctor set the plates on the table.
+When all was clear about the hearth, on which Cale laid a pine log for
+a treat, Mr. Ewart announced that he had a surprise in his pocket.
+
+"Jamie, your birthday falls on the twelfth of August, does n't it?"
+
+"Yes; how did you remember that, Gordon?"
+
+"You had a birthday when I was in Crieff with you seventeen years
+ago--and we celebrated. Have you forgotten?"
+
+"Forgotten!" Jamie came bolt upright, the cakes were as naught, the
+remembrance of them faded. "Do you think I could ever forget that?
+You took, or rather trotted me for a long walk over the moors--oh, the
+pink and the purple heather of them, the black blackness of their bogs,
+the green greenery of their bracken higher than my head!--to the
+'Keltie'; and you held me over the pool to see the whirl and dash of
+the plunging torrent. I remember the spray made me catch my breath.
+Then you took me down to the bank of the 'burnie', and found a place to
+camp--my first camp with you--under a big elm; and there you discovered
+a flat stone, and two crooked branches for crotches. You took from
+your mysterious game-basket a gypsy kettle and, filling it at the
+'burnie' with the water that tastes like no other in the world, you
+hung it from the crotch over the flat stone that was our hearth. You
+made heaven on that spot for a seven-year-old boy, because you let him
+touch off the fagots. You boiled the water, made tea--such tea!--and
+brought out of that same basket bannocks and fresh gooseberry jam--
+Oh, don't, don't mention that birthday! You make me homesick for it;
+even Marcia's griddlecakes can't help me!"
+
+"We 'll celebrate again this year in the wilds of the Upper Saguenay."
+Mr. Ewart took from his pocket a paper and, unfolding it, read the
+terms of a lease of a fish and game preserve in the northern wilderness.
+
+"And the Andres, father and son, shall be our guides, our cooks, our
+factotums. The son is half Montagnais; his mother was of that tribe."
+
+"Oh, Ewart!" Jamie's eyes glistened, but his volubility was checked;
+he felt his friend's thought of him too deeply.
+
+"I secured it while I was away; I have wanted it for the last five
+years. The Doctor has promised us six weeks, and the camp will be more
+attractive"--he looked at Mrs. Macleod--"and keep us longer, if you and
+Miss Farrell will be my guests, and make a home for us in the
+wilderness. Will you?"
+
+For once in her life Mrs. Macleod did not balk at this direct question
+involving a decision. I record it to her credit.
+
+"And you?" He turned to me without apparent eagerness, but I caught
+the flash of pleasure in his eyes when I answered promptly, with
+enthusiasm:
+
+"It will be something to dream of till it is a reality. I 'll begin
+making my camp outfit to-morrow; and Andre pere shall teach me to fish
+and paddle a canoe; his son shall teach me woodcraft, and some
+Montagnais squaw shall show me how to weave baskets. In those same
+baskets I will gather the mountain berries for such of the family as
+may crave them, and--and that wilderness shall be made to blossom like
+the rose and prove to us, at least, a land flowing with milk and honey."
+
+Mr. Ewart's question about a "home in the wilderness" was the motor
+power for my flight.
+
+"Amen and amen," cried the Doctor, approving of my soaring. "We 'll
+return to the Arcadia of the woodsman's simple life."
+
+"Humph!" said Cale. "You'd better add all them contraptions of veils,
+an' nettin's, and smudge kettles, an' ointments, an' forty kinds of
+made-up bait--so made-up thet I 've seen a trout, a three pounder, wink
+at me when he see some of it and wag away up stream as sassy as you
+please--an' a gross of joss sticks. By George, I 've seen mosquitoes
+as big as mice--"
+
+"Cale," I made protest; "you spoil all."
+
+"Better wait till you are there, Marcia, before you rhapsodize any
+more; you did it well, though, I 'll admit," said Jamie, with his most
+patronizing air.
+
+"So did you rhapsodize over Scotland," I retorted; "and I 'll
+rhapsodize if I never go; and you 're not to quench my enthusiasm with
+any of your Scotch mist that I am told is nothing less than a downpour."
+
+"By the way, when is your birthday, Marcia?" said the Doctor,
+carefully, oh, so carefully, knocking the ash from his cigar into the
+fireplace. The act was so very cautious that it betrayed to me his
+restrained expectancy of my answer! "I have an idea it's the last of
+June."
+
+How light I was of heart in answering him, in giving him the clew he
+was seeking as I would have made him a gift, fully, freely--for what
+was it to me now, whether he knew or not?
+
+"Next December, when the north wind blows over the Canada snows, you
+may remember me, if you will."
+
+"What date?"
+
+I waited intentionally for him to ask that question. I felt that Cale
+was holding his breath; but I did n't care, and replied without
+hesitation:
+
+"The third--twenty-seven years. What an age!"
+
+They laughed at me, one and all, the Doctor perhaps a little more
+heartily than the others. After that he sat, with one exception,
+silent; but Jamie spoke half impatiently:
+
+"Why did n't you give us a chance to celebrate last December?"
+
+"Nobody asked me about it."
+
+The Doctor spoke for the only time then. "I 'll make a mem of it," he
+said gayly, taking out his notebook and writing in it. And I saw
+through his every move--the dear man!
+
+"You might have given us the pleasure of remembering it," said Mrs.
+Macleod reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, I celebrated it in my own way--and for the first time in my life,"
+I replied, treasuring in my heart that hour in the office with Mr.
+Ewart when he took my gift of service "gratis".
+
+"Might a common mortal, who has both eyes and ears and generally can
+see through a barn door if it is wide open, ask in what manner you
+celebrated that you escaped notice of every member of this household?"
+Jamie spoke ironically.
+
+"Jamie, I outwitted even you that time. Of course I 'll tell you: I
+made a gift to some one, which was a good deal more satisfactory than
+to receive one myself."
+
+"The deuce you did! Perhaps you 'll tell me what it was and who was
+the man? I was n't aware of any extra purchases in the village."
+
+"Not now." I spoke decidedly. "Let's talk about the camp. I can't
+wait for the spring. When can we go?" I asked Mr. Ewart.
+
+"Not before the first of July, but we can remain until into September."
+
+The words were commonplace enough; but the tone in which they were
+spoken belonged to another day, another hour, to that moment when he
+accepted my gift of service "gratis". He, at least, knew how I
+celebrated that third of December!
+
+Content, satisfied, I began to jest with Jamie. We made and enlarged
+upon the most ideal plans it ever befell mortals to make. The others
+listened to our chaffing and found amusement in it, for we tried to
+outdo each other in camp-hyperbole. The Doctor, Mr. Ewart and Cale,
+whose presence Mr. Ewart insisted upon having the entire evening,
+smoked in silence. I knew where the Doctor's thoughts were. I would
+have given a half-hour of that evening's enjoyment--at least I think I
+would--to have read Mr. Ewart's.
+
+Late, very late, Cale rose, put a chunk into the soapstone, and said
+good night. I followed him into the kitchen. I wanted to speak with
+him, for I saw something was out of gear.
+
+"What's the matter, Cale?" I whispered, as he fumbled about for the
+candle somewhere on the kitchen dresser.
+
+"Marcia," he whispered in turn, "I 've pretty nigh lied myself inter
+hell for you ter-night. On the way over ter the junction the Doctor
+put his probe inter what's 'twixt you an' me mighty deep; but I was a
+match fer him! An' then I come home jest ter hear you give yourself
+all away! What in thun--"
+
+"Sh, Cale! Somebody 's coming--"
+
+"Wal, a gal's 'bout the limit when--" I heard him say in a tone of
+utter disgust, and, laughing to myself, I ran up stairs.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+After the Doctor's departure on the Saturday of that week, I wrote to
+Delia Beaseley, telling her how far I had ventured upon the disclosure
+of the fact that I was the daughter of her whom she had helped to save,
+and that she was now free to tell him whatever he might ask in regard
+to me, as far as she could answer; but that on no consideration was she
+to speak of the papers in his possession; and if he spoke to her of
+them, she was to say that he must settle that with me; that on no
+account was she to learn anything of their contents. I wrote her this
+as a precautionary measure only, for I was convinced the Doctor would
+not mention those papers. They belonged to me, to me alone. It was a
+matter of business.
+
+She wrote in answer that she would do as I requested.
+
+The spring was both long and late in coming. Day after day, week after
+week the wind held steadily from the east or northeast. When, at last,
+it turned right about face, and the sun, climbing high in the north,
+warmed the breast of mother-earth, already swelling with its hidden
+abundance, the waters were loosened and the great river and all its
+tributaries were in ice-throes, travailling for deliverance.
+
+Then it was that the plank sidewalks throughout the length and breadth
+of Richelieu-en-Bas were securely chained to each householder's fence
+or tree, to prevent them from sailing away on the rising flood. Then
+it was that rowboats were in evidence in many a front yard. The creek
+was impassable; the high-road bridge was threatened. Cale and Mr.
+Ewart seemed to live in rubber boots, both by day and by night. Pierre
+called frantically on all the protecting saints to withhold rain at the
+time of the "debacle": the breaking up of the river. His son came in
+twice a day, on an average, with soaked stockings and knickerbockers
+wet through and through; was duly castigated--lightly, I say to his
+father's credit--and as regularly comforted by Angelique with flagons
+of spiced hot milk or very sweet ginger tea. It finally dawned upon us
+that the youngster deliberately waded through slush to obtain the
+creature comforts. After that, they were withheld.
+
+Cale looked grim and Mr. Ewart anxious for one twenty-four hours. All
+night they were out on horseback with lanterns and ropes. Then the
+heavy rainclouds dispersed without the dreaded deluge; the sun shone
+clear and warm; the small ice jams gave way, and the great floes went
+charging down on the black waters towards the sea.
+
+During this time of east wind, rain and snow, Jamie often chafed
+inwardly, for the weather kept him housed; but he busied himself with
+his work and soon became wholly absorbed, lost to what went on around
+him.
+
+And what was going on around him? Just this: two lives, a man's and a
+woman's, long bound by the frost of circumstance, like the ice-bound
+river in full view from the manor, were in the process of being warmed
+through and through, thawed out; the ice obstructing each channel was
+beginning to move, that the courses of their lives, under the power of
+love's rays, might, at last, flow unhindered each into the other. So
+it seemed to me, at least, during those weeks of waiting for the spring.
+
+Did I know he loved me? Yes, I knew it; was sure of it; but no word
+was spoken, for no word was needed then. We understood each other. We
+were man and woman, not boy and girl. We recognized what each of us
+was becoming to the other in the daily intimate household ways of
+life--an enduring test; in the community of our human interests, in the
+common wealth of our friends, of our books. His best friends were
+mine; mine were his--all except Delia Beaseley; sometime I intended he
+should know her.
+
+I thought at first that would come about through the farm project; but
+Mrs. Macleod, Jamie and I had to acknowledge, soon after the Doctor
+returned, that the development of this plan was at a standstill.
+Naturally this pleased both mother and son. For them it meant the
+prospect of a return in the near future to their home in Scotland;
+finally to England, and London. Jamie confided to me he should cast
+anchor there for a time, his second book having been accepted by a good
+publisher in that city.
+
+He found opportunity in my presence to ask Doctor Rugvie, just before
+he left us, about his further plans for the farm scheme, and was told
+rather brusquely that certain complications had arisen, which must be
+cleared up before he could proceed to develop them. Not once did he
+drive over to the farm on his last visit. As for Mr. Ewart, he never
+mentioned the subject. Jamie was wise enough to refrain from asking
+questions of him.
+
+The Doctor's announcement kept Jamie guessing for weeks, his curiosity
+being unsatisfied; but as for me--I laughed in my sleeve, for I knew
+how that "third of December" birthday on my innocent part, had
+disarranged the good Doctor's philanthropic scheme, for the present at
+least. I was curious to know how he would proceed to "clear away"
+those complications.
+
+The fear of leaving Lamoral for good was diminishing; I knew that what
+held me there, held Mr. Ewart also. I rested content in this knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+It was the second week in May when the seigniory farmers began to
+arrive and closet themselves with Mr. Ewart in the office. The "going"
+was atrocious, and the appearance at the side door of the clay-clogged
+cariole, buggy, _caleche_ and farm-cart, bore witness to this fact.
+
+Jamie and I were on the watch for each arrival. We knew nearly all of
+these habitant-farmers. They hitched their "team", and spent hours
+with Mr. Ewart. Sometimes, when we were in the living-room, we could
+hear voices from the office in lively and earnest discussion. We
+remarked the air of pride and satisfaction with which each one
+unhitched his horse, climbed into his special conveyance, slapped the
+reins on his animal's back and was off with a merry "Bonnes nouvelles!"
+to his habitant-wife who, while waiting for her husband, had been in
+the kitchen exchanging courtesies with Angelique, and feasting on
+freshly fried doughnuts and hot coffee. The notary from
+Richelieu-en-Bas, as well as the county surveyor, were also closeted
+with Mr. Ewart; they arrived after breakfast and left before supper.
+At dinner they were our guests, but no business topics were mentioned.
+
+By Saturday, the routine of visitation was concluded. The notary
+departed with his green baize bag apparently bursting with documents.
+It was Angelique who informed us after his departure that the seignior
+had been receiving the seignioral rents with his own hand.
+
+The next morning at the breakfast table, Mr. Ewart asked me if I would
+help him to audit some accounts, the farmers having just paid their
+half-yearly rents.
+
+"At what hour?" I asked.
+
+"I shall need your help for the entire forenoon and probably for an
+hour or two after dinner. Shall we say at nine?"
+
+"Can't I help?" said Jamie, rather half-heartedly I must confess.
+
+Mr. Ewart took in the situation by the tone, and smiled as he answered:
+
+"No; you 're too busy with your work; the prose of figures would n't
+appeal to you just now."
+
+"Would n't they though! Try me on a check from my publisher."
+
+"It's the point of view, after all, that changes proportions, is n't
+it? Are you going to work in here?"
+
+"Yes; I need about four by eight feet of surface to keep my ideas from
+jostling one another, and this dining-room table is about the right fit
+when I 'm comparing pages of manuscript with first galley proofs."
+
+"Good luck, then; we 'll not disturb you till dinner."
+
+An hour later when I went into the office, I found Mr. Ewart at his
+desk. Beside him was a large tin box, twice as large as a bread-box.
+On top lay two pairs of his thick driving-gloves. I must have looked
+my surprise, for he laughed as he rose to place two chairs, one on each
+side of the only table in the room--a fine old square one of ancient
+curly birch, generally bare, but now covered with a square of oil cloth.
+
+"What next? I can't wait for developments to explain all this
+paraphernalia," I said; my curiosity was thoroughly roused.
+
+"These." He held out a pair of the driving-gloves. "You are to put
+them on, please, and not to take them off till I give you permission."
+
+Mystified, I obeyed. He set down the tin box on the table between us;
+opened wide both windows to let in the tonic air, that began to hint of
+real spring, and, drawing on the other pair of gloves, took his seat
+opposite me at the table. I could not help laughing.
+
+"How does this performance strike you?" he asked, amused at my
+amusement.
+
+"Like the prelude to some absolutely ridiculous rite, unknown to me."
+
+"That is just what it is." He spoke so emphatically, so earnestly,
+that I was still further mystified. "You have hit the bull's-eye. It
+is a ridiculous rite, and, thank God, it's for the last time that I am
+chief mummer in it. Here in this box, Miss Farrell," he went on
+unlocking it and displaying a conglomerate mass of silver and soiled
+paper money, "are rents, seigniorial rents, paid by men who farm it on
+the seigniory, whose fathers and fathers' fathers have worked this
+ground before them, men who should own this land, to a man who should
+not own it in the existing conditions--conditions that have no place in
+the body politic, here or anywhere else. It's a left-over from
+medievalism--and I am about to do away with this order of things, to
+prove myself a man."
+
+"You believe, then, in the ownership of the land by the many?" I asked
+eagerly. I was glad to get his point of view. The discussions between
+him, Doctor Rugvie and Jamie, were always of great interest to me.
+Although I knew something of his plans from the other two, he had never
+mentioned them to me. I saw he was speaking with great feeling.
+
+"Believe in it! It's the first article in my political and
+sociological creed. I 've come back here to Canada, where I was born,
+to incorporate it in action.-- And you 're wondering where you come
+in, in this experiment, I 'll wager," he said gayly.
+
+I answered him in the same vein: "I confess, I fail to see the
+connection between your driving-gloves on my hands, your strong box
+between us--and the first article of your creed."
+
+"Of course you don't!" He laughed aloud at my mental plight and his
+own manner of announcing his special tenet. "I 'll begin at the
+beginning and present the matter by the handle. I want you to grasp it
+right in the first place."
+
+"Thank you," I said meekly; "not being a feminine John Stuart Mill, I
+need all the enlightenment I can have on the presence of this worldly
+dross that lies between us. Facts contradict theories."
+
+With a sudden, almost passionate movement, he shoved the box to one
+side on the table; it was no longer between us. I knew there was
+significance in his impulsive action, but I failed to understand what
+it indicated.
+
+"It's taking rather a mean advantage of a woman, I own, to ask her on
+the spur of the moment to share a man's political and sociological
+views--but I want you to share mine, and enlightenment is your due."
+
+"And in the meantime am I to keep on the gloves?"
+
+He laughed again. "Yes; keep them on and help me out of this scrape--I
+have never felt so humiliated in my life as I have taking this money.
+Now I 'll be rational. You see, smallpox roams at times through
+Canada. This money has been stored in stockings, instead of banks,
+after having been hoarded, handled, greased, soiled by a generation or
+more. You 'll find dates of issue on these notes that are a good deal
+older than you, and silver minted in the early sixties. Now I want
+your help in counting over--auditing, we 'll call it--this mass of
+corruption. And I don't intend you shall run any risk in handling even
+a small part of it--hence the gloves and the fresh air. After we 're
+through with it, we will pack the filthy lucre in the box and express
+it to a Montreal bank. It is n't mine--at least I do not consider it
+so."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I am going to apply these half-yearly rents in reducing the
+interest on the money I am loaning these farmers, in order to enable
+them to buy the best implements and cultivate their land more
+intelligently. This I may say to you, but to no one else."
+
+"You are going to sell them the land?"
+
+"The greater part of it. The forest I keep, because I love that work
+and hope in time to make a sufficient income from it, in case of actual
+need. In fact, I 've been working all the week with the notary to get
+the deeds in order."
+
+"So that was their 'bonnes nouvelles'?"
+
+"You heard them?"
+
+"Yes. They looked so happy--"
+
+"Oh, I am glad; glad too, that you could see something of their
+pleasure in this special work of mine. Do you know,"--he leaned
+towards me over the table,--"that I have asked you to help me with this
+as a matter of pure sentiment?"
+
+His eyes sought mine, but I am sure they found only an enquiring turn
+of mind in them, for I could not imagine where the sentiment was in
+evidence.
+
+"I see I 'll have to explain," he said smiling. "I want you, an
+American with all the free inheritance of the American, to share with
+me in this last rite of mediaevalism, in order that in the future we may
+look back to it--and mark our own progress."
+
+Oh, that word "our"! Used so freely, it rejoiced me. He intended this
+affair to mark some epoch in his life and mine. I waited for him to
+say something further. But, instead, he turned to the business in hand
+and we set to work. To be sure the "auditing" on my part was a mere
+farce; for not only did Mr. Ewart do most of the counting, and making
+into bundles of a hundred, but he insisted on my not bending close over
+the currency to watch him. As I told him, "After asking me to help
+you, you keep me at arm's distance."
+
+Whereupon he smiled in an amused way, and said engagingly, but firmly:
+
+"There is no question of my keeping you at a distance. Don't mind my
+crotchets, Miss Farrell, I have a fancy to have you here with me at the
+obsequies of all this sixteenth-in-the-twentieth century nonsense. At
+forty-six, I still have my dreams. You 'll be good enough to indulge
+me, won't you?"
+
+"If that's all, I think I can indulge you. But is there nothing I can
+do to be of some real help?"
+
+"Nothing but to lend me your companionship during this trying ordeal.
+You might fill out some labels--you 'll find them in that handy-box on
+the desk--with the words 'hundred' and 'fifty', and I 'll gum them on
+to these slips for the money rolls."
+
+For a few minutes I busied myself with the labels. After that, I
+watched his swift counting of bills and silver, and his ordering them
+into neat packages and rolls. Before long, however, I took matters
+into my own gloved hand and, without so much as "by your leave", began
+the recount, labelling as I went on. Within an hour the work was
+finished and a smaller tin box packed.
+
+"How much did you make it?" he asked, before locking the box.
+
+"Three thousand four hundred and twenty-two, just."
+
+"The rate of interest I charge them is two per cent, and this amount
+will reduce that greatly."
+
+"Do you mean that you are letting them have the land, supplying money
+to help them cultivate it, and charging only two per cent interest?"
+
+"Why should I charge more? They are the ones who are doing the land
+good. You see, the use of this rent-accumulation to reduce their
+interest rate for the first year or two, is a part of my general
+scheme. They are to apply their half-yearly rents as purchase money
+for their land; this is in the deeds. Within a comparatively short
+period, this assures to each of them a freehold. The valuation I have
+put on their land is regulated by the amount of work they have put out
+on it, and the time they have lived on it.
+
+"Take old Mere Guillardeau, for instance. She has an 'arpent' now of
+her very own. She, and her father, and her father's father have lived
+on these seigniory lands for nearly two hundred years. I value that
+land by discounting the value of the service rendered to it in four
+generations. Her little 'cabane' is her own, having been built by her
+father. The land is worth to her all the accumulated value of those
+generations of toil; to me, who have never done anything for it,
+neither I nor my fathers, it is worth exactly ten dollars--now, don't
+laugh!--her yearly rent."
+
+"And that buys it!" I exclaimed, wondering what kind of finance this
+might be, frenzied or sane.
+
+"It is hers--and I have the pleasure of knowing it is hers while I am
+living. She and her old daughter of seventy drove out here the other
+day in Farmer Boucher's cart, and when she went home she carried the
+deed with her to have it registered. Old Andre's sister is a hundred
+years old in January--a hundred years, the product of one piece of
+land, for, practically they have lived from it with a yearly pig, a
+cow, a few hens and a garden. Ninety years of toil she has spent upon
+it. Would you, in the circumstances, have dared to make the time of
+purchase one year, six months even, and she nearly a centenarian?"
+
+"No." I was beginning to understand.
+
+"And take old Jo Latour. You know him well, for I hear from him how
+many times you have been there on snow-shoes to take him something
+'comforting and warming', as he says. Jo has rheumatism, the kind that
+catches him when he is sitting in his chair or stooping, and prevents
+his getting up; and at last, when he manages to stand upright, it won't
+let him bend or sit down again until after painful effort. What can he
+do? Boil maple syrup once a year, or chop a cord or two of wood at a
+dollar a cord? He is seventy-two and has no family as you know. What
+is he going to do when the pinch becomes too hard? He has a small
+woodlot, a little garden, a patch of tobacco--is happy all day long
+with his dog and pipe, despite that rheumatic crippling. I have valued
+his lot at twenty dollars, and a year's rent will pay for it--with the
+help of this," he added, touching the box.
+
+"I am learning how to take hold of the matter by the handle. Enlighten
+me some more, please."
+
+"I could go on for hours into more detail, but I am going to mention
+only two other families, to show how my plan works. There are
+Dominique Montferrand and Maxime Longeman, men of thirty or
+thereabouts, fine strong men with their broods of six and eight. They
+marry young; work hard and faithfully; shun the cabarets; save their
+surplus earnings. They were born on the land; they love it and give it
+of their best toil; it responds to good treatment. Their dairy is one
+of the best; their stock superior. They have seventy-five acres each.
+I asked them to value it themselves. They showed they appreciated the
+worth of the land by the price they set: four thousand dollars--four
+thousand 'pieces'. They would not cheapen it--not even for the sake of
+getting it more quickly. A man appreciates that spirit. I have set
+the period for half-yearly payments at ten years--and I will help out
+with improved farm implements at the rate of interest I mentioned.
+
+"In less than ten years, if the crops are good, it is theirs. If the
+crops are poor, they can still pay for it in the period set. They are
+young. They have something to work for during the best years of their
+lives."
+
+"But how do you feel about parting with all this land that was your
+ancestors? Are n't you, too, bound to it by ties of value given?"
+
+"Me? My ancestors!" he exclaimed. "Where did you get that idea? Who
+told you that this was ancestral land of mine?"
+
+"Mrs. Macleod, or Jamie, intimated it was yours by inheritance."
+
+"Hm--I must undeceive them. But _you_ are not to harbor such a thought
+for a moment."
+
+"I won't if you say so--but I would like to know how things stand." I
+grew bold to ask, at the thought of his expressed confidence in me.
+
+"Why, it's all so simple--"
+
+"More simple, I hope, than all that matter of seigniorial rights and
+transferences I read upon, in the Library before I came--and was no
+wiser than before."
+
+"And you thought-- Oh, this is rich!" he said, thoroughly amused.
+
+I nodded. "Yes; I thought you were a seignior. I dreamed dreams,
+before coming here of course, of retainers and ancestral halls, and
+then--I was met by Cale at the boat landing!"
+
+Mr. Ewart fairly shouted as he sensed my disappointment on the romantic
+side upon discovering Cale.
+
+"And the first thing you did, poor girl, was to lay a rag carpet strip
+in the passageway for my seigniorial boots--spurred, of course, in your
+imagination--to make wet snow tracks on! Oh, go on, go on; tell me
+some more. I would n't miss this for anything."
+
+Before I could speak there was a decided rap on the door.
+
+"That's Jamie," I said; "he has come for the fun."
+
+"Come in," cried Mr. Ewart. Jamie intruded his head; his rueful face
+caused an outburst on my part.
+
+"I say, Ewart, is it playing fair to a man to have all this unwonted
+hilarity in business hours, and keep me out?"
+
+"No more it is n't, mon vieux. Come in and hear about Miss Farrell's
+seigniorial romancing."
+
+"Go on, Marcia," said Jamie, sitting down by me.
+
+"You 've misled me, Jamie. Did n't you, or Mrs. Macleod, tell me when
+I first came that this Seigniory of Lamoral was Mr. Ewart's by
+inheritance?"
+
+"Well, it was in a way, was n't it, Gordon? It was a Ewart's?"
+
+"Not in a way, even. I never thought enough about your view of the
+matter to speak of it. Let's have a cigar, if Miss Farrell does n't
+object, and I 'll tell what there is to tell--there 's so little!"
+
+Jamie looked at me when Mr. Ewart rose to get the cigars--and looked
+unutterable things. I read his thought: "Now is our time to find out
+the truth of things heard and rumored."
+
+"I was born in Canada, Miss Farrell," he said, between puffs, "as Jamie
+knows, and educated in England. My mother's great-uncle, on her
+mother's side, was a Ewart of Stoke Charity, a little place in the
+south of England. While I was there, I was much with this great-uncle;
+I bear his name. He owned this estate of Lamoral in Canada, that is,
+two-thirds of the original seigniory; the other third belongs to the
+present seignior and seignioress in Richelieu-en-Bas. He purchased it
+from a Culbertson who inherited it from his grandfather, an officer of
+prominence in the French and Indian wars. At that time, many of the
+old French seigniories fell into the conqueror's hands, and, by the
+power of a might that makes right, were allotted to various English
+officers for distinguished services. The original Culbertson never
+lived here. His grandson, my great-uncle's friend, never cared enough
+for it to manage it himself; he left all to an agent and found it paid
+him but little--so little that he was willing enough to sell two-thirds
+of it, the neglected two-thirds, to my great-uncle.
+
+"On my great-uncle's death, his grandson, my contemporary, inherited
+it. I bought it of him ten years ago; but I have used it only as a
+camping-place when I have been over from England or the Island
+Continent. I paid for it with a part of what I earned on my sheep
+ranch in Australia--so linking two parts of the Empire in my small
+way--and I have never regretted it. That's all there is to tell of the
+'inheritance' romance, Miss Farrell."
+
+"Gordon--" Jamie stopped short; blew the smoke vigorously from his
+lips, and began again. "Would you mind telling me how you came to want
+to settle here?"
+
+"Why? Because I am a Canadian, not an Englishman."
+
+"Why do you always take pains to make that distinction?"
+
+"That's easy to explain. Because a Canadian is never an Englishman; he
+is Canadian heart and soul. You can't make him over into an
+Englishman, no matter if you plant him in Oxford and train him in
+Australia. I 've been enough in England to know that we are looked
+upon for what we are--colonials, Canadians, just the other side of the
+English pale although within the bounds of the British Empire. You
+feel it in the air, social, political and economic. No drawing-room in
+England accepts me as an Englishman--and I enter no drawing-room with
+any wish to be other than a Canadian of the purest brand. We 're not
+even English in our political rights over there. We are English only
+in the law, as is the pariah of India. We want to be just Canadians,
+inheritors of a land unequalled in its possibilities for human growth,
+for human progress, for the carrying out of just, wise laws, for a
+far-reaching economical largesse undreamed of in other lands--not
+excepting yours," he said, turning to me.
+
+"And would you mind telling me," I asked, emboldened by Jamie's
+personal question, "how it has come about that you look upon your
+special land ownership with such a broad human outlook?"
+
+"And this really interests you?" He asked me in some surprise.
+
+"It really interests me--why should n't it when I have my own
+livelihood to earn? The economic question, so-called, seems to me to
+resolve itself into the question: How are we, I and my brothers and
+sisters, who work in one way and another, going to feed and clothe
+ourselves--and yet not live by bread alone? But, I don't suppose you
+know that side of it, only theoretically?"
+
+"Yes, and no. I got all my inspiration about this land question in
+England."
+
+"In England!" Jamie repeated, showing his surprise. "That would seem
+the last place for the advancement of such theories about land as I
+have heard you explain more than once."
+
+"In this way. The object lesson came from England--but was upside down
+on my national retina. I had to re-adjust it in Canada. It's just
+here; the condition of England is this--I have seen it with both bodily
+and spiritual eyes:--That snug little, tight little island is what you
+might call in athletic parlance 'muscle bound'. I 'll explain. For
+more than a century she has colonized. What is left now? Her land
+owned by the few; her population, that which is left, rapidly
+pauperizing. England, with a land for the sustenance of millions, is
+powerless to help, to succor her own. She has too much unused land, as
+the muscle-bound athlete has too much muscle. It handicaps her in all
+progress. Her classes are now two: the very poor, and the poor who
+have no land; the rich who have practically all the land. In this
+condition of things her economical and political system is drained of
+it best.
+
+"Scotch, English, Irish--the clearest brains, the best muscle, the
+highest hearts, are coming over here to Canada. This land is the great
+free land for the many. In settling here, I wanted to add my quota of
+effort in the right direction. And I cannot see but that this little
+piece of earth, three thousand acres in all, on which, for two hundred
+years, men, women and children have succeeded one another, multiplying
+as generation after generation, have gone on caring for the land,
+living from it,--but never owning a foot of it,--is the best kind of an
+experiment station for working out my principles. I am about to apply
+the result of my English object lesson here in Lamoral. I have been
+telling Miss Farrell about the disposition I intend to make of it,
+gradually, of course. Perhaps you would like to hear sometime."
+
+"Will you tell me about it in detail?" Jamie asked eagerly.
+
+"I am only too pleased to find a listener, an interested one. Miss
+Farrell has proven a good one--I've kept you already two hours." He
+rose.
+
+"Is it possible!" I was genuinely surprised. "The time had seemed so
+short. I must go now and help Angelique with her new cake recipe--a
+cake we eat only in the States, and a good object lesson on the
+economic side." I rose and laid the gloves on the table. I had kept
+them on just a little longer than was necessary--because they were his!
+Foolish? Oh, yes, I knew it to be; but it was such a pleasure to
+indulge myself in foolishness that concerned nobody's pleasure but my
+own.
+
+"Sometime I want to ask you a few questions, Miss Farrell," said Mr.
+Ewart, as I turned to the door.
+
+"What about?" I was a little on the defensive.
+
+"I want to know how you came to have any such economic ideas in your
+thinking-box?"
+
+I turned again from the door to face him. "Have you ever lived in New
+York?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Have you ever been there?" There was a moment's hesitancy before he
+replied, thoughtfully:
+
+"Yes; I have been through it several times."
+
+"Then you must know something of the economic conditions of those four
+millions?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do I answer you, when I tell you I was one four-millionth for seven
+years? That I struggled for my daily bread with the other four
+millions; that after seven years I found myself going under in the
+struggle, poor, alone, ill, with just twenty-two dollars to show for
+the seven years of work? Can you wonder that I am interested in your
+work after _my_ object lesson?"
+
+For a moment there was silence in the office. I broke it.
+
+"My two friends," I said lightly, "I have upstairs in my purse a little
+sum of fourteen dollars that I received from Mrs. Macleod when I was in
+New York; that was my passage money to Lamoral. I was too proud to owe
+anything to any one unknown to me, so took fourteen dollars of my
+twenty-two--all I possessed after the seven years' struggle--and paid
+my own passage. I 've wondered again and again to whom I should return
+this money. I have never had the courage to ask. Will you tell me
+now?"
+
+"I knew nothing of the money, Miss Farrell, or of you." Mr. Ewart
+spoke at last in a steady, but strained voice. Jamie's eyes were
+reddened. He held out his hand and I put mine into it.
+
+"That was n't friendly of you, Marcia--you should have told us."
+
+"Whose money is it, Jamie?"
+
+"It's the Doctor's."
+
+"His own?"
+
+"His very own; he told me. Why?"
+
+"Because I am so thankful to know that it is not from that accumulated
+sum; you know what he said. I would not like to touch it, coming from
+such an unknown source, besides--"
+
+"Pardon me," said Mr. Ewart rising abruptly. Going to the side door he
+called to Cale who was passing round the house. "I have to speak with
+Cale."
+
+He left the room, and Jamie and I stared at each other, an
+interrogation point in the eyes of each.
+
+The tin box still stood on the table.
+
+"What's in that?" Jamie demanded.
+
+"Filthy lucre," I said, turning for the second time to leave the room.
+
+"Well, if Ewart's queer sometimes, as witness his abrupt departure, you
+'re queerer with your ideas of money."
+
+I laughed back at him as I went out of the office:
+
+"I can pay the Doctor now, Jamie. I 'm rich, you know."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+We saw little, if anything, of Mr. Ewart for the next week. His time
+was wholly occupied with the land business. He took his breakfast
+early, at five or thereabout, and rarely came home for dinner or
+supper. His return at night was also uncertain. Sometimes a telephone
+message informed us he was starting for Montreal, or Quebec. I think I
+saw him but once in the week that followed that morning in the office.
+Then it was late in the evening, on his return from Montreal. He
+seemed both tired and preoccupied. We were not at table with him
+during those seven days. I wondered, and Jamie guessed in vain,
+whether anything might be worrying him. It seemed natural that
+something should be the trouble during such a wholesale transference of
+land.
+
+Mrs. Macleod and I were busy all day in getting ready the camp outfit
+for the four of us. Cale was not to go, as his work was at home. It
+surprised me that he had so little to say about Mr. Ewart to whom he
+was devoted. Whenever, in the intimacy of our half-relation bond, I
+felt at liberty to question him about his employer, he always put me
+off in a manner far from satisfying and wholly irritating.
+
+I asked him once if he knew whether Mr. Ewart was a bachelor or a
+widower.
+
+He stared at me for a moment.
+
+"He ain't said one word ter me sence I come here as ter whether he is
+one or t'other," he answered, sharply for him.
+
+"That's all right, Cale; I bear you no grudge. But, in justice, you
+'ll have to admit that when you live month after month in the same
+house with a man and his friends, you can't help wanting to know all
+there is to know about him and them."
+
+"Wal, if you look at it thet way, I ain't nothing ter say. How 'bout
+yourself?" With that he deliberately turned his back on me, and left
+me wondering if by any incautious word, by my manner, by any small act,
+I might have betrayed the source of my new joy in life.
+
+By the first of June the Seigniory of Lamoral was a wonderfully active
+place. The farmers were making greater and more intelligent efforts in
+cultivating their lands than ever before. Mr. Ewart had established
+the beginning of a small school of agriculture and forestry.
+
+He used one of the vacant outbuildings for the classes. It was open to
+all the farmers and their families; and twice a week there were
+lectures by experts, hired by Mr. Ewart, with practical demonstration
+on soil-testing, selection of seed, hybridizing, and irrigation
+methods. They were well attended. The women turned out in full force
+when it was known that there would be three lectures on bee-culture,
+and the industry threatened to become a rage with the farmers' wives; I
+found from personal observation that the flower gardens were increased
+in number and enlarged as to acreage. Mr. Ewart said afterward, when
+the blossoming time was come, that the land reminded him of the
+wonderful flower gardens around Erfurt in Germany where honey is a
+staple of the country. It was proposed to hold a seigniory exhibition
+of fruits, vegetables and cereals, the last of September.
+
+The Canadian spring seems to lead directly in to summer's wide open
+door. In June, Jamie and I were often on horseback--I learning to ride
+a good Kentucky saddle horse that Mr. Ewart had added to the stables.
+We were much in the woods, picking our way along the rough beginnings
+of roads that Cale, with the help of a gang of Canuck workmen, was
+making at right angles through the heavy timber. He had been at work
+in this portion throughout the winter in order to bring the logs out on
+sledges over the encrusted snow.
+
+One afternoon in the middle of June, Mr. Ewart, whose continual
+flittings ceased with the first of the month, asked me to ride with him
+to the seigniory boundaries on the north--something I had expressed a
+wish to see before we left for camp, that I might note the progress on
+our return in September. He said it was a personally conducted tour of
+inspection of Cale's roads and trails.
+
+My old panama skirt had to serve me for riding-habit. A habitant's
+straw hat covered my head. Mr. Ewart rode hatless. I was anticipating
+this hour or two with him in the June green of the forest. I had not
+been alone in his presence since those hours in the office--and now
+there was added the intimacy of the woodsy solitude.
+
+"I am beginning to be impatient to show you the trails through that
+real wilderness on the Upper Saguenay; but those, of course, we take
+without horses," he said, as he held his hand for my foot and lifted me
+easily to the saddle.
+
+"I 've been marking off the days in the calendar for the last three
+weeks. It will be another new life for me in those wilds."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Have you decided which way to go?"
+
+"I think it will be the better way to go by train to Lake St. John--to
+Roberval. We can cross the lake there and reach our camp about as
+easily as by way of Chicoutimi. We shall have a lot of camp
+paraphernalia for so long a camping-out, and, besides, that route will
+show you and Jamie something of a wonderful country. Of course, we
+shall come back by the Saguenay; I 'm saving the best for the last."
+
+We forded our creek about a mile above the manor and entered the heavy
+timber.
+
+"And to think it is I, Marcia Farrell, who is going to enjoy all this!"
+I was joyful in the anticipation of spending eight weeks, at least, in
+the presence of this man; eight untrammelled weeks in this special
+wilderness to which he asked me in order that it might seem something
+of a home to him!
+
+"And why should n't it be you?"
+
+"I don't know of any reason why it should n't, except that it might so
+easily have been some one else. But I must n't think of that."
+
+"That is sensible; although I confess I don't like to think that you
+might so easily have been some one else. Hark! Hear that cuckoo--"
+
+We drew rein for a few minutes, there beneath the great trees. The
+western light was strong, for the sun was still two hours high. Then
+we rode on slowly over the wide rough clearings which Cale had run at
+right angles, north and south, east and west through the woods.
+
+"These are all to be grassed down next fall; in another year, if the
+grass catches well, they will make fine going for horses or for
+carriages, as well as good fire-lanes for which I have had them cut.
+In the second season I can turn some of the prize Swiss cattle in here
+to graze for extra feeding. They know so well how to do all this in
+Europe, and we can learn so much from those older countries! I am
+sure, too, if you knew France, you would say that these river counties
+in French Canada are so like the north of France--like Normandy! When
+I drive over the country hereabout, I can fancy myself there. I find
+the same expanse and quiet flow of the river, the highroads bordered by
+tall poplars, the villages sheltered from the north by a wood
+break--forest wood. Even the backwater of the river, like our creek,
+recalls those ancestral lands of my French brothers' forefathers:--the
+clear dark of the still surface, the lindens, their leaves as big as a
+palm-leaf fan, coming down to the water's edge, and a wood-scow poling
+along beneath them. I love every feature of this country!" he
+exclaimed with enthusiasm, "and I want you to." He turned in his
+saddle to look directly at me.
+
+"I do love it, what I know of it--and I wish I might sometime see those
+other countries you have spoken of, especially those flower gardens of
+Erfurt." I smiled at my thought.
+
+His words conjured in my imagination enticing pictures of travel--such
+as I had planned when in New York, when my ten years' savings should
+permit me to indulge myself in a little roaming. My dream that was! I
+was tempted to tell him of it then and there.
+
+"You know, Mr. Ewart, I spoke very freely to you and Jamie that morning
+in the office."
+
+"Yes; I am thankful you felt you could--at last. I have been waiting
+for some opportune hour when I could ask you a few personal questions,
+if you permit."
+
+"Well, that was one of my day dreams--at twenty-six," I said, wondering
+what his was, still unexpressed, at "forty-six". "The truth is, I
+wanted to break with every association in New York and with my past
+life--
+
+"Why, Miss Farrell? You are so young to say that; at your age you
+should have no past."
+
+I hesitated to answer. Thoughts followed one another with rapidity:
+"Shall I tell him? Lay before him what threatened to embitter my whole
+life? Shall I make known to him the weight of the burden that rested
+for so many years on my young shoulders--even before I went down into
+that great city to earn my livelihood? Shall I tell him that? How can
+he understand, not having had such experience? What, after all, is
+that to him, now?
+
+"Young?" I repeated, looking away from him westwards into the illumined
+perspective of forest greens. "When you were young, very young in
+years, was there never a time when you felt old, as if youth had never
+passed your way?"
+
+I heard a sudden, sharp-drawn breath. I turned to him on the instant,
+and in the quivering nostril, the frowning brows, the hard lines about
+the well-controlled lips, I read the confirmation of my intuition,
+expressed to Jamie so many months ago, that he had suffered. My
+question had probed, unintentionally, to the quick.
+
+With a woman's sympathetic insight, I saw that this man had never
+recovered from his past, never broken with it as, so recently, I had
+broken with mine. I felt that until he should make the effort, should
+gain that point of view, he could never feel free to love me as I loved
+him. The barrier of that past was between us. What it was I hardly
+cared to know. I was intent only upon helping him to free himself from
+the serfdom of memories.
+
+"Don't answer me--I don't want any," I said hastily, leaning over to
+lay my hand on the pommel of his saddle. It was the only demonstration
+I dared to make to express my understanding, my sympathy.
+
+In an instant his right hand closed hard upon mine; held it, hard
+pressed, on the pommel.
+
+"I think I want to answer you," he said, speaking slowly, deliberately,
+without the slightest trace of excitement in his passionless voice.
+
+He was looking into the woods--not at me--as he spoke, and I knew that
+at that moment his soul was wandering afar from mine; it was with some
+one in the past. Suddenly, a hot, unreasonable wave of jealousy
+overwhelmed me; I yielded to the impulse to pull my hand from under his.
+
+"It is not my hand he is clasping, and pressing with the strength of a
+press-block on the pommel; it's that other woman's!" I said to myself,
+making a second determined effort to release my hand.
+
+He whirled about in his saddle, looking me directly in the eyes. He
+read my thought of him.
+
+"Let your hand lie there, quietly, under mine," he said sternly; "it's
+_your_ hand, remember, not another's."
+
+The tense muscles of my hand relaxed. It lay passive under the
+pressure of his. I waited, quiescent. I realized that the Past had
+been roused from its lair. I must wait until it should seek covert
+again of its own accord, before speaking one word.
+
+"I want to answer you--and answer as you alone should be answered: Yes,
+I have felt old--centuries old--"
+
+He caught the bridle rein under the thumb of his right hand as it lay
+over mine. The left he thrust into his pocket; drew out a match-safe,
+a wax-taper. I, meanwhile, was wondering what it all meant; dreading
+developments, yet longing to know.
+
+He reached for an overhanging branch of birch and broke off a small
+twig of tender young green. To do so, he removed his hand from mine
+which I kept on the pommel. I saw that the Past was still prowling,
+and it behooved me not to irritate, not to enrage by any show of
+distrust; nor did I feel any.
+
+He struck the taper. "This is against forest rules," he said, "but for
+this once I shall break them."
+
+He held the fresh green of the tiny birch twig in the flame. The young
+life dried within leaf and leaf-bud. The living green hung limp,
+blackened.
+
+"Such was my life when I was young," he said, calmly enough; but,
+suddenly, a dull red flush showed beneath the clear brown of his
+cheeks. It mounted to temples, forehead, even to the roots of his hair
+where a fine sweat broke out.
+
+And, seeing that, I dared--I could bear the sight no longer:--I took my
+hand from the pommel and laid it over the poor blackened twig, crushing
+it in my palm; hiding it from his sight, from mine.
+
+I believe he understood the entire significance of my action; for he
+turned his hand instantly, palm upwards, and caught mine in it. The
+limp bit of foliage lay between the two palms. He looked at me
+steadily; not a flickering of the eye, not a twitch of the eyelid.
+
+"I lost the woman I loved--how I lost her I need not say. That's all.
+But I have answered you."
+
+"Yes--but--"
+
+"What? Speak out--you must," he said hastily, with the first outward
+sign of nervous irritation.
+
+"Is--is she dead?"
+
+I felt my whole future was at stake when I put that question.
+
+"Yes!"--a pause,--"are you answered fully now?"
+
+"Fully.--Let me have the twig."
+
+He released my hand. I looked at the bit of birch closely,
+scrutinizingly. I found what I was hoping to find: a tiny sign of
+life, a wee nub of green; something ready, unseared, for another year.
+
+"I think I 'll take it home," I said, as if interested only in botany;
+"I find there is life left in it--a tiny bud that may be a shoot in
+time. I 'll see what I can do with it; the experiment is worth trying."
+
+He smiled for answer. He understood. The beast of the Past was again
+in its lair. I regained my usual good spirits and proposed that we see
+Mrs. Boucher's flower gardens before we turned homewards.
+
+"I like to hear you use that word--it is a new one for me."
+
+"For me, too; and if you don't object I would like you to know why it
+means so much to me. You see I am anticipating the personal questions."
+
+"I want to know--all that I may."
+
+"It is your right, now that I am in your home. Shall I find you in the
+office this evening?"
+
+"Yes; but rather late. Shall we say ten? I shall not be at home for
+porridge."
+
+"Any time will do."
+
+We rode out into the open, where the horses cantered quickly along the
+highroad to Farmeress Boucher's. There I dismounted to visit her
+gardens and bee-hives and share her enthusiasm over the new industry.
+
+We gave our horses the rein on the homeward way and rode in silence,
+except for one remark from Mr. Ewart.
+
+"We have not been over the roads, and Cale will be disappointed. We
+will go another time."
+
+"That will do just as well; I only want to be able to mark the progress
+in September when we return from camp."
+
+It was supper time when we reached the manor, but Mr. Ewart did not
+stay for any. He was off again--"on business" he said.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+"What shall I tell him? How shall I tell him? Shall what I tell him
+be all, or garbled? Is there any need to mention my mother? Shall I
+confess to non-knowledge of my father's name? What is it, after all,
+to him, who and what they were? It is I, Marcia Farrell, in whom his
+interest centres."
+
+I thought hard and thought long when I found myself alone after nine in
+my room. I came at last to the conclusion that there was no need to
+bring in my mother's name into anything I might have to say to him--not
+yet. I regretted that he was not present that evening when Cale told
+the terrible story of her short life. It would have been all
+sufficient for me to say to him after that, "I am her daughter." Only
+once, on the occasion of making myself known, had I mentioned her to
+Cale; not once referred to her, or her desperate course since that
+narration. And Cale, moreover, had sealed our lips--the four of us. I
+had no wish to speak of what was so long past. But, sometime, I
+intended to ask Cale if George Jackson ever obtained a divorce from my
+mother, and when. In a way, what people are apt to consider a
+birthright depended on his answer.
+
+Again and again during that hour of concentrated thought, there surged
+up into consciousness, like a repeating wave of undertone, the
+realization that all that belonged to a quarter of a century ago, all,
+all past; done with; their accounts settled. They were forgotten,
+mostly, by everyone; forgiven, perhaps, by the few, including Cale.
+Why should what my mother did, or did not do, figure as a factor in my
+present and future life? I determined to take my stand with Mr. Ewart
+on this, and this alone.
+
+I was sitting by the open window in the soft June dark and, while
+thinking, deliberating, weighing facts, choosing them, defining my
+position to myself, I was aware that I was listening to catch the first
+distant thud of a horse's hoofs approaching the manor from--somewhere.
+The night was clear but dark. There was no wind. I rose from my chair
+and leaned out, stemming both hands on the window ledge. Far away,
+somewhere on the highroad above the bridge, I heard the long drawn note
+of an automobile horn, and for the first time since my coming to
+Lamoral! I listened intently; the machine was coming nearer. At last,
+I could hear voices in the still night. There was another note of
+warning, sweet, mellow, far-reaching. I leaned still farther out in
+order to see if I could catch a glimpse of the light, for I knew it was
+coming towards the manor. It was a curious thing--but just that sound
+of an automobile, that action of mine in the dark warmth of a summer
+night, reacted in consciousness. The motor power invoked the
+perceptive--and I saw myself as I was nine months before, leaning out
+from my "old Chelsea" attic window into the sickening sultry heat of
+mid-September, and shaking my puny fist at the great city around me!
+
+For a moment I relived that hour and the six following. Then, in a
+flash of comprehension, I saw my way to tell the master of Lamoral
+something of any very self--of myself alone: I would put into his hand
+the journal in which I wrote for the last time on that memorable night,
+when the course of my life was altered, its channel deepened and
+widened by my acceptance of the place "at service" in Lamoral--the
+Seigniory of Lamoral.
+
+The automobile was coming up the driveway. Underbrush and undergrowth
+having been removed by Cale, I caught through the opening the bright
+gleam of its acetylene lamps. It stopped at the door; I could not
+distinguish the voices, for the throb of its engine continued. A
+moment--it was off again. I heard the front door open and close. He
+was at home and alone.
+
+I lighted my lamp; opened my trunk and took from the bottom the
+journal, the two blank books. I waited a few minutes till I heard the
+clock in the kitchen strike ten; then, softly opening my door, I went
+down the corridor, down stairs into the living-room, now wholly dark,
+and moved cautiously, in order not to stumble against the furniture, to
+the office door which was dosed. I rapped softly. It was flung wide
+open. The Master of Lamoral was standing on the threshold of the
+brilliantly lighted room, with both hands extended to welcome me.
+
+"I was waiting for you."
+
+But I did not give him mine. Instead, I laid the two blank books in
+his outstretched palms.
+
+"What's this?" he said, surprised and, it seemed, not wholly pleased.
+
+"Something of me I want you to give your whole attention to when it is
+convenient; it is my way of answering those personal unput questions.
+Good night."
+
+He looked at me strangely for a moment, then at the books in his two
+hands, as if doubtful about accepting them without further explanation
+on my part.
+
+"Good night," I said again, smiling at his perplexity.
+
+"I suppose it must be good night to one part of you, the corporal, at
+least; but not to this other," he said, with an answering smile. "Who
+knows but that I may say good morning to this?"--indicating the
+journal--"I shall not sleep until I have read it. So good night to
+this part of you standing before me--and thanks for giving this other
+part of yourself into my hands."
+
+For the fraction of a minute I hesitated to go. It was so pleasant
+standing there on the threshold of the room I had furnished for
+him--the room that found favor with every one who entered it; so
+pleasant to know that he and I were alone there together with the
+intimate recollection of the afternoon in the forest between us. I had
+to exercise all my fortitude of common sense to rescue me from
+overdoing things, from lingering or entering.
+
+I beat a hurried retreat through the living-room. I knew that he was
+still standing on the threshold, for the flood of light from the office
+was undimmed. The door must have been open when I reached the upper
+landing on the stairs; then, in the perfect quiet of the darkened
+house, I heard him shut it--so shutting himself in with that other part
+of me.
+
+I wondered what he would think of that intangible presence? Long after
+I was in bed I could not sleep. Was he reading it through by course,
+or dipping into it here and there as I did on that night nine months
+ago? Would he, could he, placed as he was, understand something of my
+struggle?
+
+I lost myself in conjecture. I opened my door a little way, for a
+"cross draft", I said to myself, so lying gently; in reality it was to
+enable me to hear when Mr. Ewart should come up to his room. I
+listened for some sound. I heard nothing but the indefinite murmur of
+summer-night woodsy whisperings. The kitchen clock struck the time for
+four successive hours--and then there was a faint heralding of dawn.
+At three the woods showed dark against the sky. My straining ears
+caught the sound of a door closing somewhere about the house. I heard
+the soft pattering of the dogs running to and fro without it--then
+silence, broken only by a cock crowing lustily out beyond the barns.
+
+He had gone out, and he had not come upstairs.
+
+Of the latter I made sure when I rose, sleepy and heavy-eyed, at seven
+that June morning, and looked into the wide open door of his room in
+passing. He had not used it.
+
+For weeks, yes, for months, he never mentioned that night or the
+journal. He never spoke of keeping or returning it. So far as I
+actually knew he might not have read it; but I was aware of a change in
+his manner to me. His kindness and thoughtfulness for his household
+were universal; they included me. From that day, however, when he made
+his appearance at breakfast, immaculate and seemingly as fresh as if
+from a good sleep, I became the object of his special thought, his
+special solicitude.
+
+I was sure Cale noticed this at once. It dawned upon Jamie slowly but
+surely, and a more bewildered youth I have never seen. I knew he was
+trying to rhyme ever present facts with my sentiment about leaving
+Lamoral as expressed to him so recently. Mrs. Macleod, if she
+perceived the change in Mr. Ewart's manner towards me, gave no sign
+that she did--and I was grateful to her. She and I were much together,
+for we were busy getting ready for the camp outing. We were to start
+within ten days. The Doctor wrote me that he envied me the extra four
+weeks; he promised his friend to be with him the first of August.
+
+When all was in readiness, Mr. Ewart, with the load of camp belongings,
+left three days in advance of us. We were to meet him at Roberval.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+In the wilds of the Upper Saguenay! By the lake that, in this
+narration at least, shall have no name. It is long, narrow, winding at
+its southern extremity; at its northern, it is expanded pool-like among
+forest-covered heights the reflection of which darkens and apparently
+deepens it where its waters touch the marginal wilderness! In camp by
+the margin of the lake, beneath some ancient pines, rare in that
+region, and surrounded by the spicy fragrance of balsam, spruce and
+cedar, that came to us warm from the depths of the seemingly
+illimitable forest behind us!
+
+What a day, that one of our arrival! We journeyed by steamer across
+Lake St. John. We came by canoe on the river, by portage; and again by
+canoe on river or lake, as it happened. We camped for one night in the
+open. On the second day there were several portages; many of our camp
+belongings were borne on the backs of sturdy Montagnais, friends of old
+Andre, and led by Andre the Second, a strapping youth of sixty. There
+followed a journey of nine miles up the lake, our lake; and, then, at
+last, in the glow of sunset, we had sight of old Andre coming to
+welcome us in his canoe that floated, a "brown leaf", on the golden
+waters! I heard the soft grating of the seven keels on the clear
+shining yellow sands of a tiny cove--and Mr. Ewart was first ashore,
+helping each of us out, welcoming each to this special bit of his
+beloved Canadian earth.
+
+"Our home for ten weeks, Miss Farrell," he exclaimed, giving me both
+hands. "Steady with your foot--you must learn to know the caprices of
+your own canoe--"
+
+"My own?"
+
+"Yes, this is yours for the season; we don't poach much on one
+another's canoe preserves here in Canada. This is our fleet."
+
+"The whole seven?"
+
+"Yes; Andre the First and Andre the Second have three between them, big
+ones; you, Jamie and I have one each, and there is one for Mrs. Macleod
+if she will do me the honor of allowing me to teach her to paddle."
+
+"This is great, mother!" said Jamie who had not ceased to wring old
+Andre's hand since the two found firm footing. "But first I must teach
+her to swim, Ewart."
+
+Poor Mrs. Macleod! I doubt if her idea of camping out was wholly
+rose-colored at that moment, for she was tired with the excitement, and
+constant travel in canoe and on foot of the last two days.
+
+"The camp will be the safest place for me at present," she said, trying
+to appear cheerful, but glancing ruefully at the three rough board
+huts, gray and weather beaten.
+
+"You 've done nobly, Mrs. Macleod, I appreciate your effort; and if you
+'ll take immediate possession of the right hand camp--it's yours and
+Miss Farrell's--I hope you will find a little comfort even in this
+wilderness. I 'll just settle with these Montagnais comrades, for
+after supper they will be on their way back to Roberval." Jamie
+interrupted him to say:
+
+"Mother, here 's Andre, Andre, mon vieux camarade. This is my mother,
+Andre; I told you about her last year."
+
+Old Andre's hand, apparently as steady as her own, was extended to meet
+Mrs. Macleod's. I saw how expressive was that handclasp. The only
+words she spoke were in her rather halting French:
+
+"My son's comrade--he is mine, I hope, Andre."
+
+What a smile illumined that parchment face! It was good to see in the
+wilderness; it was humanly comprehensive of the entire situation.
+
+"This is Miss Farrell," said Jamie; "she lives with us, Andre, in
+Lamoral."
+
+Never shall I forget the look, the voice, the words with which he made
+me welcome.
+
+"I have waited many years for you to come. I am content, _moi_."
+
+He heaved a long sigh of satisfaction. I think only Mrs. Macleod heard
+the words, for Jamie had run up to the camp. Andre took our special
+suit cases and carried them to the hut.
+
+We took possession and found everything needed for our comfort. Tired
+as we were, we could not rest until we had unpacked and settled
+ourselves with something like regularity for the night. And, oh, that
+first supper in the open! The sun was setting behind the forest; the
+lake waters, touched with faint color on the farther shore, were
+without a ripple; the ancient pines above us quiet. And, oh, that
+first deep sleep on my bed of balsam spruce! Oh, that first awakening
+in the early morning, the glory of sunrise, the sparkle and dance of
+the lake waters in my eyes!
+
+Oh, that joy of living! I experienced it then in its fulness for the
+first time; and my sleep was more refreshing, my awakening more joyful,
+because of the near presence of the man I loved with all my heart.
+
+It was a new heaven for me--because it was a new earth!
+
+While dressing that first morning, Andre's welcoming words came back to
+me: "I have waited many years for you to come." And the look on his
+face. What did he mean? I recalled that Jamie quoted him, almost in
+those very words, when he told us of that episode of "forest love"
+which bore fruit in the wilderness of the Upper Saguenay.
+
+Why should he welcome me with just those words? How many years had he
+"waited"? Had there been no woman in camp since then? It was hardly
+possible. I determined to ask Mr. Ewart, as soon as I should have the
+opportunity, if there had been women here before us, and to question
+Andre, also, as to what he meant by his words, but not until I should
+know him better. He would tell me.
+
+And Andre told me, but it was after long weeks of intimate acquaintance
+with the forest and with each other; after the fact that I was becoming
+all in all to the master of Lamoral, was patent to each of my friends
+in camp. I saw no attempt on Mr. Ewart's part to hide this fact. I
+believe I should have despised him if he had. Yet never once during
+those first five weeks did he mention my journal. Rarely was I alone
+with him; twice only on the trails through the forest; once in the
+canoe to the lower end of the lake and on the return; that was all.
+Never a word of love crossed his lips--but his thought of me, his
+manner, his care of me, his provision for my enjoyment of each day, his
+delight in my delight in his "camp", his pleasure in the fact that I
+was not only regaining what I had lost by the fearful illness of the
+year before--Doctor Rugvie told him of that--but storing up within my
+not over powerful body, balm, sunshine, ozone, and health abundant for
+the future.
+
+And what did I not learn from him! And from Andre with whom I spent
+hours out of every day! What forest lore; what ways of cunning from
+the shy forest dwellers; what tricks of line and bait for the
+capricious trout, the pugnacious _ouananiche_, the lazy pickerel! What
+haunts of beaver I was shown! How I watched them by the hour, lying
+prone in my Khaki suit of drilling,--short skirt, high laced-boots,--my
+feminine "bottes sauvages" as Andre called them,--and bloomers,--from
+some cedar covert.
+
+Those five weeks were one long dream-reality of forest life, and this
+was despite flies and mosquitoes which we treated in a scientific
+manner.
+
+One of the Montagnais brought us the mail once a week from Roberval.
+The first of August he brought up a telegram that announced the Doctor
+would be with us the next day. Mr. Ewart decided to meet him at the
+last portage. Andre the Second went with him. They would be back just
+after dark that same day, he said. Andre the First was left to reign
+supreme in camp during his absence.
+
+"I am only as old as my heart, mademoiselle; you know that is young,
+and you make it younger while you are here," he said that afternoon,
+when he and I were trimming the camp with forest greens for the
+Doctor's coming, and Jamie was laying a beacon pile near the shore,
+just north of the camp where there was no underbrush or trees. Andre
+told us its light could be seen far down the lake.
+
+After supper I lay down in my hammock-couch, swung beneath the pines at
+the back of the camp. As I rocked there in the twilight, counting off
+the minutes of waiting by my heartbeats, I heard Jamie and Andre
+talking as they smoked together, and rested after the exertions of the
+day.
+
+"How came you to think of it, Andre?"
+
+"How came le bon Dieu to give me eyes--and sight like a hawk?"
+
+"But why are you so sure?"
+
+"Why? Because what I see, I see. What I hear, I hear. It is the same
+voice I hear in the forest; the same laugh like the little forest
+brook; the same face that used to look at itself in the pool and smile
+at what it saw there; the same eyes--non, they are different. I found
+those others in the wood violets; these match the young chestnuts just
+breaking from the burrs after the first frost."
+
+"But, Andre, it was so many years ago."
+
+"To me it is as yesterday, when I see her paddling the canoe and
+swaying like a reed in the gentle wind."
+
+"And you never knew her name?"
+
+"No. She was his 'little bird', his 'wood-dove' to him; and to her he
+was 'mon maitre', always that--'my master' you say in English which I
+have forgotten, so long I am in the woods. They were so happy--it was
+always so with them."
+
+There was a few minutes of silence, then Jamie spoke.
+
+"Has Mr. Ewart ever spoken to you about what you told us that night in
+camp, Andre--about that 'forest love'?"
+
+"No, the seignior has never spoken, but,"--he puffed vigorously at his
+pipe,--"he has no need to speak of it; he thinks it now."
+
+"Why, now?" There was eager curiosity in Jamie's voice, and I knew
+well in what direction his thoughts were headed. I smiled to myself,
+and listened as eagerly as he for Andre's answer.
+
+"I have eyes that see; it is again the 'forest love' with him--"
+
+"Again?" Jamie interrupted him; his voice was suddenly a sharp
+staccato. "What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean what I say. The forest knows its own. She has come again; and
+my old eyes, that still see like the hawk, are glad at the sight of
+her--and of him. Have I not prayed all these years that Our Lady of
+the Snows might bless her--and _her child_?" There was no mistaking
+the emphasis on the last words.
+
+"Andre,"--Jamie's voice dropped to an excited whisper, but I caught
+it,--"you mean that?"
+
+"I mean _that_," he said.
+
+I heard him rise; I heard his steps soft on the cedar-strewn path.
+Jamie must have followed him, for in a moment I heard him calling from
+the shore:
+
+"Mother, Marcia, come on! Andre says it's time to light the beacon."
+
+I joined Mrs. Macleod, and in the dusk we made our way over to the pile
+of wood.
+
+"You are to light it, mademoiselle," said Andre, handing me the flaming
+pine knot. I obeyed mechanically, for Andre's words were filling all
+the night with confusing sounds that seemed to echo conflictingly from
+shore to shore.
+
+"Just here, by the birch bark, mademoiselle."
+
+The beacon caught; there was no wind. The bark snapped, curled and
+shrivelled; the branches crackled; the little flames leaped, the fire
+crept higher and higher till it lighted our faces and the waters in the
+foreground. We waited and watched till we heard a faint "hurrah", and
+soon, in the distance, a calcium light burned red and long. We went
+down again to the cove. Jamie was with his mother; I walked behind
+with Andre.
+
+"Andre," I whispered to him, "when you first saw me you said, 'I have
+waited many years for you to come'. Why did you say that?"
+
+"Why? Because I desired to speak the truth."
+
+"Am I like some one you have seen before? Tell me."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Who was she?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"Will you tell me sometime what you do know of her?"
+
+"Yes, I will tell you."
+
+"Soon?"
+
+"When you will?"
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"As you please. I will take you to the tree, my tree--and to hers; you
+shall see for yourself."
+
+"Thank you, Andre."
+
+"I must watch the fire," he said, and retraced his steps. Dear old
+Andre! It was such a pleasure to be able to talk with him in his own
+tongue.
+
+We heard the dip of the paddles, a call--our camp call. In a few
+minutes the Doctor was with us.
+
+I made excuse the next afternoon to go fishing with Andre. I kept
+saying to myself:
+
+"This thing is impossible; there can be no connection between me and
+any woman who may have been here in camp, and Mr. Ewart says several
+have been here to his knowledge. What if I do look like some other
+woman who, years ago, lived and loved here in this wilderness? What
+have I to do with her? I 'll settle this matter once for all and to my
+satisfaction; Andre will tell me. He is romantic; and that girl made a
+deep impression on him, especially in those circumstances. Now the
+thought of her has become a fixed idea."
+
+The Doctor sulked a little because he was not of my party.
+
+"I don't approve of your _solitude a deux_ parties; they 're against
+camp rules."
+
+"Just for this once. Andre is going to show me something I have wanted
+to see ever since I came."
+
+He was still growling after I was in the canoe.
+
+"Only this once!" I cried, waving my hand to him before we dipped the
+paddles.
+
+"She used to wave her hand like that," said Andre, paddling slowly
+until I got well regulated to his--what I called--rhythm.
+
+I stared at him. Was this an obsession with him? It began to look
+like it.
+
+We landed on the north shore of the lake. I followed him along a
+trail, that led through a depression between two heights, upwards to a
+heavily wooded small plateau overlooking the lake. I followed his lead
+for another quarter of a mile through these woods. I could see no
+trail. Then we came into a path, a good one. I remarked on it.
+
+"Yes: I have made it these many years. I come here every year."
+
+We heard the rush of a near-by torrent. The air swept cool over
+through the woods and struck full on our faces. In a few minutes we
+were facing it--a singing mass of water pouring down the smooth face of
+a rock like the apron of a dam; the face was inclined at an angle of
+fifty degrees. The torrent plunged into a basin set deep among rocks.
+Above this pool, above the surrounding trees, towered one great pine.
+Andre led me to it.
+
+"I have been coming here so many years--count," he said, pointing to
+the notches from the butt upwards to a height beyond my reach.
+
+This was the tree about which Jamie had sung, notched year after year
+by Andre, since he was ten, that he might know his age. And what an
+age! I counted: "Eighty notches."
+
+"Oh, Andre, all those years?"
+
+"But yes--and so many more." He held up his ten fingers.
+
+"And Mere Guillardeau will be a hundred her next birthday?"
+
+He nodded. "Yes; my sister is no longer in her first youth."
+
+He began to count backwards and downwards. I counted after him:
+"Twenty-seven." By the last notch there was a deep gash.
+
+"What is this?"
+
+"Twenty-seven years ago she was here, she whom you are like. I have
+waited twenty-seven years."
+
+"Tell me about it; I am ready to hear."
+
+"Come here." He beckoned to me from a group of trees, tamaracks, on
+the other side of the path. He went behind one. I followed him.
+
+"Read," he said. And I read with difficulty, although the lettering
+was cut deep, one word "Heureuse", and a date "1883. 9. 10."
+
+"'Heureuse'," I repeated. "Happy--happy; oh, I know how happy!"
+
+He looked at me significantly for a moment, and I knew that his "fixed
+idea" had possession of him. He regarded me, Marcia Farrell, as the
+child of that "forest love" of nearly twenty-seven years ago.
+
+"You say true; they were happy." Without preliminaries he told me the
+story he had related to Mr. Ewart and Jamie last year.
+
+"Has Mr. Ewart or Jamie ever seen this tree, Andre?"
+
+"No. I have told them both of my tree and the notches--but never of
+this other. You are the first to see it since her blue eyes watched
+him cut those letters. I have shown it to neither my young comrade nor
+to the seignior."
+
+"And you say I am so like her?"
+
+"As like as if you were her own child?"
+
+He put up his hand suddenly to "feel the wind". There was a sudden
+strange movement among the tree tops.
+
+"Come, come quickly, mademoiselle; we must get back. The wind is
+shifting to the southwest. It is blowing hot. I know the sign. The
+seignior will not want you to be out even with old Andre with this wind
+on the lake."
+
+I looked at the pool; it was black. The singing waters of the torrent
+showed unearthly white against the intensified green. The sky became
+suddenly overcast with swiftly moving clouds. In a moment the wind was
+all about us; the sound of its going through the forest filled the air
+with a confused roar. The great trees were already swaying, as we ran
+down the trail to the lake--and found Mr. Ewart just drawing his canoe
+and ours high up and away from the already uneasy water. He was
+breathing quickly.
+
+"There 's a storm coming, Andre--we saw it from the other side of the
+lake; coming hard, too, from the southwest. The lake will not be safe
+till it is over. We will stay here in the open even if we get wet. It
+is not safe in the woods; the trees are already breaking. I hear the
+crash of the branches."
+
+"And the seignior did not trust mademoiselle with me?" Evidently he
+was disgruntled. "True, I am no longer in my first youth" (I saw Mr.
+Ewart suppress a smile), "but years give caution, seignior--and I have
+many more than you."
+
+Mr. Ewart laughed pleasantly. The sound of it dissipated Andre's
+anger--the quick resentment of old age.
+
+"True, mon vieux camarade, you have the years; but I stand between you
+and mademoiselle when it comes to a matter of years. I must care for
+you both."
+
+"I am content that it should be so, _moi_." He squatted by the canoes
+which he lashed to a small boulder.
+
+No rain fell, but the wind was terrific in its force. We were obliged
+to lie flat on the sand. The air was filled with confused torrents of
+sound, so deafening that we could not make ourselves heard one to the
+other. It was over in ten minutes. The sky cleared, the sun shone;
+the lake waters subsided; the sounds died away, and very suddenly. In
+the minute's calm that followed it seemed as if, in all that land,
+there were no stirring of a leaf, a twig, or fin of fish, or wing of
+fowl. There was again a sudden change of wind, and we knew the very
+moment when the upper air currents, cool and crisp with a touch of
+Arctic frost, swept down upon the earth and brought refreshment. In
+another quarter of an hour there was no trace of the storm on the lake;
+but behind us, on each side of the trail, we saw great trees uprooted.
+
+"I can leave you and Andre now, and with a clear conscience, to your
+fishing," he said, as he ran down his canoe.
+
+I felt positively grateful to him for not insisting on taking me back
+with him; it would have hurt old Andre's pride as well as feelings.
+
+"We 'll bring home fish enough for supper," I said with fine amateur
+assurance.
+
+"I warn you 'We are seven' plus the two Montagnais; they stay to-night."
+
+"If I don't make good, Andre will." And Andre smiled in what I thought
+a particularly significant way.
+
+We watched the swift course of his canoe over the lake. Just as he was
+about to round a small promontory, that would hide him from our sight,
+he stood up, and swung the dripping paddle high above his head. I
+waved my hand in answering greeting.
+
+Andre turned to me with a smile. "The seignior has a look of that
+other--but he is not the same."
+
+What an obsession it was with this man of ninety! I watched him
+preparing lines and bait. The canoe had passed from sight.
+
+"Andre," I said, speaking on the impulse of the moment, "I want to go
+back to camp."
+
+"As you please, mademoiselle. I can fish on that side as well as
+this." Upon that he put up his pipe,--I verily believe it was still
+alive and his pockets must have been lined with asbestos,--and we
+embarked on our little voyage.
+
+I used my paddle mechanically, for I was thinking: "Is it for one
+moment probable I have any connection with that girl? Is that past, I
+am trying so hard to eliminate from my life, to present itself here as
+a quantity with which I must reckon--here in my life in this
+wilderness? Is there no avoiding it? Andre is so sure. Jamie knows
+he is sure; Mr. Ewart knows this too. They can say nothing to me about
+it--it is a matter of such delicacy; and they do not know who I am;
+even my journal does not tell that, and I knew this when I gave it into
+his hands.
+
+"But the Doctor--he knows. He knows from Cale and Delia Beaseley. He
+knows who I am; in all probability knows this very day, from those
+papers in his possession, my father's name; but he knows nothing of
+this new complication that Andre has brought about by his insistence
+that I am like some woman who camped here many years ago--
+
+"Twenty-seven years! That must have been just before I was born--and
+the date--and that word 'heureuse' with a queer capital H--oh--"
+
+Perhaps it was a groan that escaped my lips, for, like a searchlight,
+the logic of events illumined each factor in that tragedy in which my
+mother--
+
+My paddle fouled--the canoe careened--
+
+"Sit still, for the love of God, sit still!" Andre fairly shrieked at
+me.
+
+"It's all right, Andre," I said quietly, to calm him.
+
+"They say the lake has no bottom just here, mademoiselle--and if I had
+lost you for him--" he muttered, and continued to mutter, easing
+himself of his fright by swearing softly. He soon regained his
+composure; but was still frowning when I glanced behind me.
+
+What had this searchlight shown me?
+
+Just this:--that "heureuse" is French for happy--and the capital made
+it a proper name, "Happy". This word told me its own story. According
+to what Cale had said--and I had all detailed information from him--no
+trace of my mother was found although detectives had been put to work.
+She had simply dropped out of sight, not to come to the surface until
+that night in December when she tried to end her young life from the
+North River pier. Was she not for a part of that year and three months
+here in these wilds?
+
+Oh, what a far, far cry it must have been from this Canadian wilderness
+not made by man, to that other hundreds of miles away--that great
+metropolis, man made!
+
+We paddled for the rest of the way in silence.
+
+
+That evening we sat late around the camp fire, and before we separated
+for the night Mr. Ewart said, turning to me:
+
+"I want a promise from you, Miss Farrell."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Caution, caution!" said the Doctor.
+
+"That you will make no more _solitude a deux_ excursions, as John calls
+them, with old Andre. He is old, despite his seeming strength, and his
+age is beginning to tell on him. I see that he has failed much since
+last year."
+
+"You 're right there, Gordon; she should not risk it with him," said
+Jamie, emphatically. "I 've noticed the change from last year when I
+have been out with him on the trails. Why, he fell asleep only the
+other day with his line in his hand and his bait in the water!"
+
+"Did you see that?" said Mr. Ewart. "It happened, too, the other day
+with me. I was amazed, but not so much as I was last week when we were
+in the woods making the north trail. He sat down to smoke and,
+actually, his pipe dropped from his hand. I trod out the fire or there
+would have been a blaze. Apparently he was asleep. I watched him for
+an hour, when he seemed to come to himself. It was not a sleep; it was
+a lethargy. You say it is often so, John--the beginning of the end.
+We must not let him know anything of this--dear old Andre!"
+
+"He is already immortalized in that Odyssey of yours, Jamie. People
+won't forget him, for he lives again in that." The Doctor spoke with
+deep feeling.
+
+"And your promise, Miss Farrell?"
+
+"Since you insist, yes. But it is hard to give it; we have had so much
+pleasure together Andre and I; we have been great chums--dear old
+Andre!" Unconsciously I echoed Mr. Ewart's words.
+
+I am sure that was the thought of all of us; our good nights were not
+the merry ones of the last two months. We were saddened at the thought
+that he might not be with us again.
+
+For a moment or two Mr. Ewart and I stood alone by the embers of the
+camp fire; he was covering them with ashes.
+
+"Thank you for your promise. I don't care about experiencing another
+hour like that when I was crossing the lake this afternoon, with a
+young cyclone on its way. I have lost so much of life--I cannot lose
+you."
+
+His speech was abrupt; his voice low, but tense with emotion.
+
+"There will be no need of losing me. I will keep my promise." I spoke
+lightly, but I knew he knew the significance of my words, as I knew
+that of his, for with those words I gave myself to him. I felt
+intuitively that he would not speak of love to me, until he had broken
+completely with that past to which in thought he was still, in part, a
+slave. I was willing to wait patiently for his entire emancipation.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+"Marcia," said the Doctor one morning, after he had been enjoying,
+apparently, every minute of his vacation-life in the open, "will you
+come with me over the north trail as far as Ewart and Andre have made
+it? I want to show you something I found there the other day."
+
+Before I could answer, Jamie spoke:
+
+"How about your _solitude a deux_ principle, Doctor?"
+
+"It is wise to forget sometimes, Boy. Will you come this morning,
+Marcia?"
+
+I promptly said I would. I saw that he was slightly ruffled at Jamie's
+innocent jest; indeed, ever since his arrival, the Doctor had not been
+wholly like his genial self. Mrs. Macleod noticed it and spoke of it
+to me.
+
+"We don't realize, when we see him enjoying everything with the zest of
+a boy, how much he has on his mind. He told me the other day he must
+cut his vacation short; he is called to the Pacific coast for some of
+his special work."
+
+I said nothing at the time, because I could not agree with her. I
+noticed that, at times, there was a slight constraint in his manner
+towards me--me who was willing for him to know all there was to know,
+except the fact that I loved his friend. I was convinced that he
+wanted to air his special knowledge of me with me alone; that after he
+had freed his mind to me, there would be no constraint.
+
+Twice I caught him looking at Mr. Ewart, as if he were diagnosing his
+case, and I laughed inwardly. From time to time I surprised the same
+expression on his face when he was silent, smoking and, at the same
+time, watching me weave my baskets under the tutelage of a Montagnaise,
+the squaw of our postman. Mr. Ewart heard me express the wish to learn
+this handicraft, and within a week my teacher was provided. She
+remained in camp five days. Perhaps this opened the Doctor's eyes.
+Perhaps Jamie had spoken with him about what was evident to all. The
+Doctor grew more and more silent, more thoughtful, less inclined to
+jest with me. Added to this was the thought that we must break camp
+sooner than Mr. Ewart had intended. The "homing sense" was making
+itself felt, for September was with us. We saw some land birds going
+over early, and the first frost was a heavy one.
+
+The Doctor and I followed the north trail for half a mile; then the
+Doctor bade me rest, for it was rough going.
+
+"Marcia," he said abruptly, sitting down in front of me, his back
+against a tree, his hands clasping his knees, "let's have it out."
+
+I saw he felt ill at ease and could but wonder, for, after all, it was
+only I with whom he had to deal.
+
+"I am ready. I 've only been waiting for you all these weeks."
+
+"Do you know that I have been to Delia Beaseley for certain
+information?"
+
+"Yes; she wrote me. I wrote her to tell you all she knew of me."
+
+He seemed to breathe more freely after my speaking so frankly, as if I
+really would welcome anything he might have to say.
+
+"Ah--this clears the atmosphere; we can talk. Of course, you know with
+Cale's story dovetailing so perfectly into what I told you on my first
+making acquaintance with you, I simply had to put two and two together;
+besides, your smile was a constant reminder of some one whom I had
+known or met--but whom I could not recall try as hard as I might. The
+result of it all was that I went to Delia Beaseley and put a few
+questions. Now,"--he hesitated a moment; he seemed to brace himself
+mentally in order to continue,--"do you know positively whether your
+father is living or dead? Have you ever known?"
+
+"No; but dead to me even if living--that is why I said I was an orphan."
+
+"I understand; but you don't know either the one or the other for a
+fact?"
+
+"No; I have no idea."
+
+"You never knew his name?"
+
+"No; and none of the family knew it--you know what Cale said. He gave
+me the details for the first time."
+
+"You do not know, then, that I have in my possession some papers that
+might give the name?"
+
+"Yes; I know that. But I told Delia Beaseley not to mention that fact
+to you, or the papers in any way."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"_Why?_"
+
+I think all the bitterness of my past must have been concentrated in
+the tone in which I uttered that syllable. He did not press for the
+reason, and I did not offer to give it.
+
+"Did it ever occur to you that your father might be living?"
+
+"I have no father, living or dead," I replied passionately. "I own to
+no such possession. Does a man, simply because he chooses to pursue
+his pleasure, unmindful of results, acquire the right to fatherhood
+when he assumes no responsibility for his act?"
+
+"Marcia, poor child, has life been so hard for you? Has nothing
+compensated for just living?"
+
+He knew he was searching my very soul. I knew it; and the thought of
+my joy in life, in just living, because of my love that was filling
+every minute of the day and part of the night with a happiness so
+intense that, sometimes, I feared it could not endure from its sheer
+intensity, brought the tears to my eyes, softened my heart, turned for
+the moment the bitter to sweet.
+
+I answered, but with lips that trembled in spite of my efforts at
+control: "Yes, there is compensation, full, free, abundant. For all
+that life has taken out of me, it has replaced ten thousand fold.
+Perhaps I never had what we call 'life' till now."
+
+"Oh, child, I have seen this happiness in your face--would to God I
+might add to it!" His face worked strangely with emotion. "Marcia,
+dear, I am the friend, but also the surgeon. I have to use the knife--"
+
+"But not on me--not on me!" I cried out in protest. "Don't tell me you
+know who my father is or was--don't, if you are my friend; don't speak
+his name to me."
+
+"Why not, Marcia?"
+
+"I must not hear it; I will not hear it--will not, do you understand?
+I am trying to forget that past, live in my present joy--don't, please
+don't tell me." I covered my eyes with my hands.
+
+He drew down my hands from before my face.
+
+"Listen, my dear girl. There are rights--your rights I have every
+reason to believe, and legal, as it seems to me. This whole matter
+involves a point of honor with me. Let me explain--don't shrink so
+from hearing me; I won't mention any names. Let me ask you a
+question:--Did Delia Beaseley tell you there was a marriage certificate
+among those papers?"
+
+"Yes, but, thank God, she could not remember the name! It has been so
+many years--and all before I was born."
+
+"But I know it. It stands in black and white, and through that unlying
+witness you have rights--that money, you know--"
+
+"The 'conscience money'?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It is tainted, tainted, and my mother's blood is on it--I will not
+touch it. I will not have it. I have taken wages in Lamoral because
+Jamie assured me the money was your own--not one penny of it from that
+fund."
+
+"Yes, it is my own, and I never made a better investment with so few
+dollars. But, Marcia--"
+
+He hesitated; his face looked tense; his voice sounded as if strained
+to breaking. The knife was hurting him almost as much as it hurt me.
+I looked at him.
+
+"Don't look at me so; I can't do my duty if you do."
+
+"I don't want you to do your duty so far as I am concerned. I want you
+to show your friendship for me, by not telling me anything that you may
+know."
+
+"But, Marcia, it is time--"
+
+"But not now--oh, not now! You don't know what I have borne--I can
+bear no more--" I spoke brokenly.
+
+"My dear girl, what can you tell me that I do not know, I who was with
+your mother in her last hour--"
+
+I broke down then, sobbing, trying to explain but only half coherently:
+
+"She was here--twenty-seven years ago--with Andre--he showed me the
+tree--"
+
+"Marcia, calm yourself. Tell me, if you can, just what you mean."
+
+I struggled to regain my self-control, and when I could speak without
+sobbing, I explained in a few words my reason for thinking my mother
+was here long years before me with the man who was my father.
+
+The Doctor listened intently.
+
+"This makes the past clearer to me, Marcia, but at the same time it
+complicates the present, the future--"
+
+"Oh, don't let's talk about past or future!" I cried, nervously
+irritated by this constant reappearance of new combinations of my past
+in my present, and possible future. "Let me enjoy what is given me to
+enjoy now--it is so much!"
+
+"I must see my way, Marcia. A duty remains a duty, even if the doing
+of it be postponed. I am your friend. I cannot let you wreck your
+life---"
+
+"Wreck my life? What do you mean?" I demanded sharply. "How can I
+wreck it when for the first time I am in a safe harbor?"
+
+He could not, or would not, answer me directly.
+
+"Marcia, many a time when I have an operation to perform, the issue of
+which seems to me to be a clear one of death, I grow faint-hearted and
+say to myself: 'I will let the trouble take its natural course--it is
+death in the end, and, at least, not under my knife.' Then I get a
+grip on myself; look my duty squarely in the face--and do the best that
+lies in my trained hand, in my keen sight, in my knowledge of this
+frail body in which we dwell for a time. And sometimes it happens,
+that, instead of the issue death, of which I felt certain, there is
+life as the desired outcome--and I rejoice. I asked an old soldier
+once, a veteran of the Civil War, a three years man,--he is still
+living and now a minister of God's word,--how he felt in battle? Could
+he describe his feelings to me?
+
+"'Yes,' he said, 'I can. I don't know how it is with other men, but I
+used to have but one fear, that of being a coward. I prayed not to
+be.' That is the way I feel now towards you in relation to this
+matter. But for the present we will drop the subject; we will not
+discuss it further."
+
+He changed the subject at once, and I was grateful to him. He began to
+speak of Jamie.
+
+"He is getting very restless. He told me you knew something of his
+plans. What do you think of them?"
+
+"You mean his returning to England and settling for the winter in
+London? He told me that before we left Lamoral. I suppose he ought to
+go. At any rate, he is much stronger, better, is n't he?"
+
+"He is n't the same man. The truth is he was plucked away from the
+white scourge as a brand from the burning. I really believe he will
+not go back in the matter of health, although I wish he might remain
+another year here to clinch the matter for his own sake, and mine--"
+
+"And mine. I shall miss him so!"
+
+The Doctor looked at me rather curiously, but did not comment on what I
+said. I was wondering if he were at work reasoning to my conclusion
+about Mrs. Macleod's leaving Lamoral.
+
+"Well, my dear girl, it's a break-up all round. That's the worst of
+this camping-out business. Jamie is going so soon--
+
+"Soon? Do you mean he is going to leave Lamoral soon?"
+
+"Yes. He had letters last night from his publishers. The book
+requires his presence in London by September twenty-third. He will
+have to sail by the sixteenth. Mrs. Macleod is joyful at the prospect.
+Jamie told me to tell you. I think he hated to himself. He is very
+fond of you, Marcia."
+
+I smiled at my thoughts.
+
+"No fonder of me than I am of him. He has changed so much in these
+last nine months."
+
+"You, too, see that?"
+
+"Oh, yes, and his mother sees it. He has matured in every way."
+
+The Doctor smiled. "You talk as if you were his grandmother. I 'm
+proud of him, I confess. Had my boy lived--" His voice broke.
+
+"Dear Doctor Rugvie, it is all a wilderness, as Jamie said, is n't it?
+And we 're fortunate to find a trail, like this, that leads to
+camp--and friends," I said, pointing to the newly made path through the
+forest.
+
+"Yes, my dear,--and that reminds me I have n't shown you what I brought
+you here to see. Come."
+
+He penetrated farther into the woods and off the trail to the left.
+There we found a blasted tree in which was a great hollow.
+
+"It is filled with honey, Marcia, wild honey. I wonder that no track
+of bear is to be seen about here."
+
+"Who would ever think of finding such a store of sweet in this poor old
+lightning-blasted tree!" I exclaimed, looking more closely at it.
+"What a feast Bruin will have some day."
+
+"You see there is honey even in the wilderness, Marcia. I wanted to
+convince you that there is such--may you, also, find it so." He turned
+towards the camp, I following his lead.
+
+"By the way," he said, as he walked on rapidly, "do you know anything
+that could have given old Andre any physical or nervous shock recently?"
+
+"No--I don't recall anything, at least anything that he might feel
+physically. It's just possible a fright I gave him unintentionally
+that day of the storm may have affected him for a time. Why, does he
+show any effect of shock?"
+
+"Yes, decidedly. What was it?"
+
+I told him of my carelessness with the paddle while crossing the lake;
+of the careening of the canoe; of Andre's terrified shriek and his
+muttered fear of the depth of the lake.
+
+"That must have been it. I felt sure there was some nervous shock."
+
+"Oh, how could I do it! Dear old Andre--and I of all others!"
+
+"It's his age, Marcia; it was liable to come at any time; this is why
+Ewart felt so anxious about you that day and required the promise. Old
+as he is, he is tough as a pine knot, wiry as witch grass, with great
+powers of endurance, good eyesight, good teeth; he has seemed less than
+seventy till this year. Now he is breaking up. It would not surprise
+me if this were his debacle."
+
+"I can't bear to think of it. Why must all these changes come at once!
+What am I to do in the midst of this general debacle?"
+
+"Marcia," he stopped short, turned to face me, "remember that now and
+hereafter when you need a friend you will find one in me. Don't
+hesitate to come to me, to call on me whenever there may be need, or
+when there is no need. I had once, many years ago, not only a son but
+a darling daughter. She would have been about your age--a year
+younger."
+
+I could not thank him, grateful as I was, for I was inwardly rebellious
+that he should feel called upon to offer me the protection of his
+friendship, when he must see that his friend was the only one to give
+me the needed shelter---and that in Lamoral, because he loved me. For
+a moment his words seemed almost an insult to Mr. Ewart.
+
+Suddenly he laughed out--his hearty kindly laugh. It put new heart
+into me.
+
+"What is it?" I asked quickly, ready to respond to a little cheer.
+
+"Ewart is having his surprise too, but domestically. He had word in
+the mail from Cale last night, and according to his account everything
+is going to the dogs at Lamoral. Angelique has elected to fall in love
+with Widower Pierre and he with her. They are to postpone the marriage
+until the seignior returns, but beg he will consider the state of their
+affections and be considerate."
+
+I laughed with him. There was humor in this situation at Lamoral, for
+I had warned Cale before I left how this affair would terminate, and he
+had sniffed at my clairvoyance.
+
+"The truth is, Cale is homesick for the whole household."
+
+"Poor Cale! He is having a hard time. I ought to be at home to help
+him, to comfort him. Our new relationship means that I have found
+another friend."
+
+"And a faithful one."
+
+"You think we shall break camp very soon?"
+
+"Yes. I have to be off to-morrow--"
+
+"To-morrow! Why, you were to stay into the second week of September."
+
+"I have to leave sooner than I planned. The Montagnais brought up a
+telegram with the mail, and my answer goes back with me to-morrow. I
+'ve kept the Montagnais for guide, although I should not fear to risk
+it alone, now that I have been over the route so many times."
+
+"Then, if Mrs. Macleod and Jamie are to sail soon, I must go, too, I
+suppose."
+
+"Yes, Cale needs you; the whole household needs you. I proposed to
+Ewart that we all go together, then there will be no heart-breaking
+goodbys, except to Andre."
+
+I bit my lip to keep back any inquiry about Mr. Ewart's going with us,
+and was thankful I held my peace for the Doctor continued, tramping
+steadily on ahead of me:
+
+"But now Ewart will remain to the end--"
+
+"But has it come to this?" I cried. I was depressed at the turn of
+events.
+
+The Doctor stopped, turned and faced me, saying gravely:
+
+"It has, Marcia; I read the signs. We shall know when we get back. I
+was with him all last night; there is no help. But Ewart and I did not
+want you and Jamie and Mrs. Macleod to know it--not till morning. You
+thought he was out fishing when we left; so did Jamie. Ewart asked me
+to tell you on our way back."
+
+"Andre--"
+
+I could not speak another word. The old Canadian had so endeared
+himself to me during the many weeks in the wilds. Added to this was
+the thought of his probable connection with my mother's short-lived
+joy. It was all too sudden.
+
+"It _is_ the debacle, no mistake about that," I said stolidly, and set
+my teeth together that they should not chatter and betray my weakness
+of spirit.
+
+"Can't I stay and help to nurse him?"
+
+"No, Marcia, that won't do. Andre lies in a lethargy; his condition
+may not change for days, for weeks, although I doubt this. His son and
+Ewart will do all that is necessary. Ewart will never leave the two
+here alone. You would be an extra care for them. It is now
+exceptionally cold for the season in this latitude; the fall rains may
+set in any time. Don't propose such a thing to Ewart, I beg of you.
+But Ewart remains--that is the kind of friend Ewart is."
+
+The request was too earnest for me not to accede to it with as good a
+grace as possible.
+
+On our return we found that it was as the Doctor had predicted: the old
+guide was unconscious.
+
+Mr. Ewart decided the matter of breaking camp. We were to leave the
+next morning with the Montagnais and Andre the Second for guides.
+Andre's son was to accompany us only to the fourth portage. The
+Doctor, with the other Montagnais, was sufficient for the rest of the
+way. The camp belongings were to follow later with Mr. Ewart, whenever
+that should be.
+
+I remember that day as one of dreary confusion--packing, sorting,
+shivering a little in the chill air. The sun shone pale; it failed to
+warm the earth or our bodies. All the forest stirred at times
+uneasily. Andre's son declared it foretold long cold rains followed by
+sharp frost. And amid all the confusion of the day we could hear the
+undertone of our thought: "Old Andre is dying". Mr. Ewart would not
+permit us to see him.
+
+"It is better to carry with you only the memory of him as he has looked
+to us during all these weeks--young in his heart, joyful in our
+companionship."
+
+I saw the relief in Mr. Ewart's face when we were ready. He spoke
+cheerily to me who failed to respond with anything resembling
+cheerfulness.
+
+"It's a bad business in camp during the fall rains, and they are
+setting in early this year. I shall know you are safely housed--and
+there is so much to look forward to. Home will be a pleasant place for
+us, won't it?"
+
+"I thought this, also, was home to you--"
+
+"Only so long as you are here; my home henceforth is where you are."
+
+And, hearing those words, despite the chill air, despite the lack of
+warm sunshine, despite the fact that old Andre lay dying in his tent
+just beyond the camp, despite the fact that Jamie and Mrs. Macleod were
+to leave me alone in Lamoral, that the Doctor was going away for an
+indefinite time, my happiness was at the flood.
+
+For a moment only, we stood there on the shore of the little cove,
+together and alone--and glad to be! We stood there, man and woman
+facing each other, as primeval man and woman may have stood thousands
+of years ago on this oldest piece of the known earth, there in the
+heart of the Canadian wilderness. Something primeval entered into the
+expression of our love for each other; our souls were naked, the one to
+the other; our eyes promised all, the one to the other; our lips were
+ready for their seal of sacrament when the time should come that we
+might give it each to the other without witness.
+
+And no word was spoken, for no word was needed.
+
+The Doctor joined us rather inopportunely and, accounting for the
+situation, made no end of a pother with his traps and his canoe.
+
+Once more Jamie and I asked if we might not take one look at old Andre,
+but the Doctor put his foot down.
+
+"Better not. Remember him as you last saw him; it will be a memory to
+dwell with--this would not be."
+
+Jamie put on a brave face, but I knew he was ready for a good cry.
+
+"I am not reconciled to say goodby to you here, Gordon," he said.
+
+The two clasped hands.
+
+"Oh, I shall be running over to see you and Mrs. Macleod before long.
+Be sure, Mrs. Macleod, to have my room ready for me next summer in
+Crieff--and don't forget the green canopy over my bed. I have n't
+forgotten it."
+
+She smiled. "I shall never forget your kindness, never; but I can't
+help the longing for home."
+
+"There, there, no more you can't," said the Doctor brusquely. "No more
+leave-takings; they don't set well on my breakfast. We shall all be
+together again soon, please God. The ocean is but a pond and the
+crossing a five days' picnic now-a-days. You may follow us in a few
+days, Ewart. Meanwhile, I 'll see that your household is safely landed
+at Lamoral--if only the rain will hold off, we shall have cause for
+thankfulness," he added fervently. We all knew the Doctor was talking
+against time and parting. "Raincoats all in readiness?" And then, not
+waiting for an answer:
+
+"I shall run up to Lamoral after I get back from San Francisco, Gordon;
+I 'm not sure I shan't return by the Canadian Pacific."
+
+"Good luck, John, and goodby till then," said Mr. Ewart. "Bon voyage,
+Mrs. Macleod. Miss Farrell, I give you carte blanche for all wedding
+preparations. Tell Pierre to order from his tailor, and charge to me.
+I shall give them away.--Macleod, you full-fledged genius,"--he caught
+Jamie's hands in his,--"let me hear from you--a wireless will just suit
+my impatience. Oh, Miss Farrell, may I trouble you to see Mere
+Guillardeau and tell her of Andre? I will telegraph you before I
+return. Goodby--goodby."
+
+There was a hand-clasp all around again. The Montagnais and Andre's
+son took their places; pushed off. Our return voyage was begun.
+
+With the dip of the paddles I heard, as an undertone, old Andre's
+little song he used to sing to us in camp, the little French song that
+Jamie incorporated in his "Andre's Odyssey":
+
+ "I am going over there, over there,
+ To search for the City of God.
+ If I find over there, over there,
+ What I seek--oh afar, oh afar!--
+ I will sing, when I'm home from afar,
+ Of the wonders and glory of God."
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+Never, never so long as memory lasts, can I forget the separate stages
+of that return journey. On the first day we had dull overcast skies
+that threatened rain; the chill wind roughened the lakes and river, and
+made dismal crossings of the portages at one of which we bade goodby to
+Andre's son. We arrived the next afternoon at Roberval in a veritable
+deluge, the rain having set in while we were crossing Lake St. John.
+We left by train that evening for Chicoutimi. I remember our late
+arrival there, the rain still falling in torrents, and, at last, our
+fleeing the next morning for shelter to the great Saguenay steamer.
+
+On that third day we made the voyage down the Saguenay. It seemed to
+me as if I were embarking on some Stygian flood, for we looked into a
+rain-swept impenetrable perspective. The dark waters were beaten into
+quiescence, except for the current, by the weight of falling raindrops.
+That was all we saw at first. Despite the Doctor's assumed
+cheerfulness and his brave attempts to cheer us, we felt depressed. At
+last came the cessation of rain; the heavy clouds rolled upwards; the
+perspective cleared and showed the mighty river narrowed to a gorge
+with the dark outposts of Capes East and West looming vast, desolate,
+repellent before us.
+
+And always there continued that darkness around, above, beneath us,
+till, farther down, we swept into the deeper shadow of Capes Trinity
+and Eternity. In passing them, the pall of some impending calamity
+fell upon my spirit. I could not emerge from it, try as I might.
+
+Was anything about to happen to the man I loved, to him who was waiting
+there in the wilderness to entertain Death as his next guest? Should
+we four friends, who were making this journey, ever be together in the
+future?
+
+The Doctor kept a watchful eye on me. When the steamer drew to the
+landing at Tadoussac, I saw him and Jamie remove their hats and stand
+so, bareheaded, till the boat moved away. Mrs. Macleod and I, watching
+them, said to each other that they were thinking of Andre and his
+voyage of seventeen years ago, when he set out from Tadoussac to see
+the "New Jerusalem" by that far western lake.
+
+We were glad to take the Montreal express at Quebec which we saw under
+lowering skies and in a bitter northeast wind. Jamie had telegraphed
+to Cale from Roberval; he and little Pete were at the junction to meet
+us. His joy at our return was unmistakable, but his welcome was unique.
+
+"Wal, Mis' Macleod, I guess 't is 'bout time fer you an' Marcia ter be
+gettin' back ter the manor. Angelique an' Pete have got tied up
+already--gone off honey-moonin' to Sorel. I could n't hinder it no
+longer. Marie 's took a notion to visit her 'feller', as they say
+here, in Three Rivers, an' me an' Pete is holdin' the fort."
+
+How we laughed; we could not help it at Cale's plight. That laugh did
+us a world of good. Cale, after shaking hands with each of us, stowed
+us away in the big coach.
+
+"I 'll come over again fer the traps, Doctor."
+
+"All right, Cale. I can be of some use, even if I don't stay but one
+night at Lamoral. By the way, just leave these things of mine in the
+baggage-room; it will save taking them over. I have my handbag."
+
+"We ain't got so much grub as we might have, but I guess we can make
+out to get along, Marcia," said Cale, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, I 'll manage, Cale; don't worry. We 'll stop in the village for
+provisions, and it won't take me long to straighten things out."
+
+"Of course you did n't think we were coming down on you like the
+Assyrians of old," said Jamie, taking his seat beside Cale.
+
+"Why, no. I cal'lated you 'd be here likely enough in ten days. I
+guess Angelique and Pete would n't have got spliced quite so soon if
+they 'd thought you 'd come this week. They cal'lated ter be home by
+the time you got here."
+
+We were glad to find something at which we could laugh without
+pretence. Cale's description of the wedding in the church, at which he
+was best man; of his inability to understand a word of the service; of
+Pete's embracing him instead of Angelique when it was all over, and of
+little Pete dissolving in tears on his return to empty Lamoral and
+wetting Cale's starched shirt front before he could be comforted, was
+something to be remembered.
+
+"I must write this up for Ewart," said Jamie, that evening when we sat
+once again around a normal hearth.
+
+"He will enjoy it; no one better," said the Doctor who was busy looking
+up New York sailings. "Look here, Boy, you say you want a week, at
+least, in New York?"
+
+"Yes. I have never seen the place, and I don't want to go home without
+knowing something about it."
+
+"Well, in that case, I will make a proposition to you. Suppose you
+sail from New York instead of Montreal? You can have a week there,
+sail on the sixteenth and be in London on time, provided you leave here
+to-morrow night."
+
+"To-morrow night?" I echoed dismally.
+
+"Yes, it will have to be to-morrow night--or leave out New York.
+Better decide to go, Mrs. Macleod, for then I can entertain you for two
+days before I leave for San Francisco and, in any case, put my house at
+your disposal."
+
+Both Mrs. Macleod and Jamie hesitated; I felt they were considering me,
+not wishing to leave me alone in Lamoral.
+
+"Don't think of me," I said. "The sooner this parting from you and
+Jamie is over the better it will be for me." I fear I spoke too
+decidedly.
+
+"Marcia, my dear, I don't see how I can leave you here alone."
+
+"I 'm used to being alone." I answered shortly to hide my emotion.
+
+"Yes, better cut it short," Jamie said with a twitch of his upper lip.
+"We 'll accept your invitation, Doctor Rugvie--you 're always doing
+something for us; we 've come to expect it; I hope we shan't end by
+taking it for granted."
+
+"Nothing would please me better than that, Boy. You are a bit
+over-tired, to-night; better go to bed now, and do all there is to be
+done in the morning. I must go then."
+
+"What, can't you wait to go with us?" Jamie demanded.
+
+"No; I must be in New York to-morrow evening. I will meet you at the
+station the next day."
+
+"I believe I am a bit fagged--and I know mother is. That portage
+business is a strain on the best legs. But you were game, Marcia, no
+mistake."
+
+"Help me to be 'game' now--and go to bed. I 'll follow just as soon as
+I set the bread to rise."
+
+"It's too bad that I must leave you to this, Marcia," said Mrs. Macleod
+regretfully, as she kissed me good night--for the second time at
+Lamoral.
+
+"Oh, I can do all there is to be done."
+
+I returned her kiss. I was beginning to love this gentle, reticent
+Scotchwoman.
+
+"I don't want any good night from you, Marcia," said Jamie gruffly.
+"Oh, I hate the whole business!" He flung out of the room, and I rose
+to follow him and Mrs. Macleod.
+
+"Stay with me a little while, Marcia; you are not so tired as they are.
+Who knows whether I shall see you for a whole month or more?" The
+Doctor spoke earnestly.
+
+"You expect to be gone so long?"
+
+"Perhaps longer--it depends on what I find awaiting me. You permit
+another?" He reached for a cigar.
+
+"Let me light it for you."
+
+I performed the little service for him, which he loved to accept from
+me, and then sat down in Jamie's corner of the sofa.
+
+The Doctor puffed vigorously for a while. Then he spoke, suddenly
+looking at me:
+
+"After all, it is Ewart that makes Lamoral, is n't it, Marcia?"
+
+"Yes," I replied promptly. I was so glad to speak his name here in his
+own home. I was hoping his friend would feel inclined to talk of him.
+
+"I have never had an opportunity to realize this before; it is the
+first time I have been here without him."
+
+"I remember Jamie said, the night before you came last November, that I
+should n't know the house after Mr. Ewart took possession."
+
+The Doctor turned to me, smiling almost wistfully,
+ or so it seemed to me.
+
+"His presence makes the difference between the house and the home. Is
+n't that what Jamie meant?"
+
+"Yes, I am sure it is. Mr. Ewart himself calls the old manor 'home'
+now." I smiled at my thoughts. Had he not said, "My home is
+henceforth where you are"?
+
+"And I, for my part, am thankful to hear him use that word. Marcia,
+Ewart has been, in a way, a homeless man."
+
+"I thought so from the little he has said."
+
+"He was orphaned early in life. Has he ever spoken to you of his
+wife?" The question was put casually, but I knew intentionally.
+
+"Only once."
+
+"And once only to me, his friend--several years ago. He has suffered.
+I have known no detail, but whatever it was, it went deep."
+
+I was willing to follow his lead a little further and, although I
+realized the ice was thin, I ventured.
+
+"I wonder if you have ever heard any gossip--"
+
+"Gossip? What gossip?" The Doctor's words were abrupt, his tone
+resentful.
+
+"Something Jamie heard here in the village, and because he did not
+believe it, he told me, when I first came, that if I ever heard it I
+should not believe it either--"
+
+"About Ewart?" He ceased to puff at his cigar.
+
+"Yes; about his having been married and divorced, and that he has a
+child living, a boy whom he is educating in England."
+
+"That's all fool-talk about the boy." The Doctor spoke testily. "I
+don't mind telling you that he was married, as of course you know, and
+lost his wife. I don't mind telling you that he was divorced from her;
+I suppose that is a matter of public record somewhere. I don't know
+who she was--or what she was; he is loyal to that memory. But there is
+no boy in the case."
+
+He tossed his cigar into the fire and began tapping the floor rapidly
+with the tip of his boot.
+
+"I inferred, of course, from a remark he made to me then, that there
+was a child mixed up in the affair--"
+
+"All this must be the foundation for the rumors, then?" I said.
+
+"Yes; but if Ewart has a child, and I am convinced he has--"
+
+"You are?" I asked in amazement, thereby proving to the Doctor that I
+had never given credence to this part of the report.
+
+He nodded emphatically, looking away from me into the fire. "If he has
+a child, I know it to be a girl--no boy."
+
+"I had n't thought of that."
+
+"I see you have n't," he said dryly; then, clearing his throat, he
+turned squarely to me, speaking deliberately, as if hoping every word
+would carry conviction.
+
+"Marcia, if Ewart has a child, as I am convinced he has, it is a
+daughter,--" with a quick turn of his head he faced me, speaking
+distinctly but rapidly,--"and that daughter is you."
+
+It was said, the unheard-of. He had used his knife when I was off my
+guard. I was powerless to shrink from it, to protest against its use.
+All I could do was to bear.
+
+I heard one of the dogs whine somewhere about the house. I know I
+counted the vagrant sparks flying up the chimney. I heard the kitchen
+clock striking. I counted--ten. I remembered that I had forgotten to
+wind it, and must do so when I made the bread. I moistened my lips;
+they were suddenly parched. Then I spoke.
+
+"Why have you told me this?" I failed, curiously, to hear my own
+voice, and repeated the question.
+
+"Marcia, it had to be said--it was my duty."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why?" He turned to me with something like anger flashing in his eyes.
+"Because I don't choose to have you make a wreck of your life, as I
+told you only the other day--"
+
+"But if I choose--" I did not know what I was saying. I was merely
+articulating, but could not tell him so.
+
+"If you choose! Good God--don't you see your situation? Marcia, dear
+girl, come to yourself--you are not yourself."
+
+Without another word he rose quickly, and went out. I heard him go
+into the kitchen. He came back with a third of a glass of water.
+
+"Take this, Marcia."
+
+I obeyed. The bitter taste is even now, at times, on my tongue. Soon
+I was able to hear my own voice.
+
+"Thank you." I felt his finger on my wrist.
+
+"You are better now?"
+
+"Yes." I passed my hand across my eyes to clear my sight. I heard a
+heavy long-drawn sigh from the man standing in front of me.
+
+"Does he know?" was my first rational question.
+
+"Ewart _know_? Marcia, Marcia--think what you are saying! Ewart is a
+gentleman--the soul of honor--"
+
+"No, of course, he does n't. I did n't think.-- Why have n't you told
+him instead of me?"
+
+"Why? I tell you because you are a woman; because it is your right to
+withdraw from a situation that is untenable; you must be the first to
+know."
+
+"I see; I am beginning to understand."
+
+"Marcia, this is a confession. I blame myself for much of this. I am
+guilty of procrastinating in a matter of duty. Listen, my dear girl;
+you remember that night in February when you met me at the junction?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I remember--I wish I could forget." I felt suddenly so tired.
+
+"I heard all this in Ewart's voice when he bade me look out for you. I
+saw all this in your face when you greeted him on his return. I did
+not know then of your connection with Cale, with that sad affair of
+twenty-seven years ago; but, from the moment I knew your birthday, from
+that night when Cale's story fitted its key to mine, from the moment I
+learned the truth from Delia Beaseley about you, from the moment I
+examined those papers in my possession, I should have spoken; should
+have written you at least; should have warned--but I waited to make
+more sure."
+
+"_Are_ you sure?"
+
+I put that question as a drowning man catches at a floating reed.
+
+"No, I dare not say I am sure until Ewart himself confirms black and
+white--sees that certificate; but I must warn you just the same. It is
+my duty."
+
+I drew a longer breath. He was not wholly sure then. There was a
+reprieve, meanwhile--
+
+What "meanwhile"? I could not think; but I was aware that the Doctor
+was speaking again, thinking for me. I listened apathetically.
+
+"Marcia, I have to leave to-morrow morning. I must leave you with
+Cale. Thank God, you have him near you! It has been impressed upon me
+that you must be told all this before Ewart gets back. You are a
+woman--and your womanhood will dictate, will show you the way out.
+Come to me, come to my home--I shall not be there; come now, with Mrs.
+Macleod and Jamie. I will wire Ewart that you are with us for a little
+while. Get time to breathe, to think things out, to conquer, before he
+comes--"
+
+"No." I spoke with decision. I made a physical effort to speak so.
+"I shall remain where I am--for a while. I have Cale. When I go, he
+goes with me; but, oh, don't, don't say any more--I cannot bear it!"
+
+My words were half prayer, half groan. I felt suddenly weak, sick
+throughout my whole body.
+
+"I wish I might bear this for you, dear girl. I had to say it. I
+could not let you go on--"
+
+"I know, I know, you did your duty--but don't say anything more."
+
+I held out my hand. "I shall be up in the morning and get your
+breakfast; it's so early for you to start. The others won't be up."
+
+"I wish you would," he said eagerly. "I must satisfy myself that you
+are up and about before I go, otherwise--" He hesitated.
+
+"Don't worry. I shall be about just the same--only now--"
+
+"I know; you want to be alone--you can bear no more. Good night." He
+left the room abruptly.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+Mechanically I covered the dying fire with ashes; lighted my candle;
+snuffed out those in the sconces, and went out into the kitchen. I
+wound the clock and set my bread to rise. I heard one of the dogs
+whining in the dining-room; he had been unintentionally shut in. I let
+him out. He showed his gratitude in his dog's way and followed me,
+unbidden, upstairs to my room.
+
+I entered, and shut the door softly not to rouse Jamie and Mrs.
+Macleod. I heard the dog settle on the threshold. Somehow, the sound
+helped me to bear. It was something belonging to _him_ that was near
+me in my trouble.
+
+I sat down on the side of my bed--sat there, I think, all night. A
+round of thought kept turning like a mill-wheel in my head:--"The man I
+love is my father--Mr. Ewart, my father, is the man I love."
+
+It was maddening.
+
+The mill-wheel turned and turned with terrible rapidity. I held my
+head in both hands. Towards morning, when the light began to break, I
+looked about me. At sight of the familiar interior, the wheel in my
+head turned more slowly--stepped for a moment. In the silence I could
+think; think another thought: "The Doctor is not _sure_--"
+
+I rose, steadying myself by holding on to the footboard.
+
+"Not sure--not sure." The mill-wheel was at work again. "Not
+sure--not sure."
+
+"Of course _not_." I spoke aloud. The sound of my own voice gave me
+poise. The wheel turned slowly. In another moment my whole being was
+in revolt. I spoke again:
+
+"_It is not true_. Not until he tells me, will I believe. The Doctor
+is mistaken; black and white can lie--even after twenty-seven years.
+The man I love--and I cannot help loving him--is not the man who is
+responsible for me in this world."
+
+All my woman's nature cried out against this blasphemy of circumstances
+against my love--my love for Gordon Ewart, that was so true, so pure;
+pure in its depths of passion, true in its patience sanctified through
+endurance.
+
+"I will go to Cale. He will know. He will tell me. He will see it
+cannot be true. This love Mr. Ewart feels for me is not, never has
+been, a father's love. No two human beings could be so drawn the one
+to the other, as we have been, with _that_ tie between them. It is
+preposterous on the face of it. It is a monstrosity, born of
+conflicting circumstances."
+
+The energy of life was returning. I undressed. I bathed face and head
+and arms. I dressed again in fresh garments. I opened the door; the
+dog rose, wagging his tail. I slipped noiselessly down the back stairs
+and found that Cale had been before me. The fire was made; the water
+in the kettle boiling.
+
+I made the coffee; worked over my bread; fried the bacon; broke the
+eggs for the omelette; whisked up some "gems" and put them into the
+oven. The mill-wheel no longer turned. When Cale came in, I sent him
+upstairs with a pitcher of hot water for the Doctor.
+
+"Seems like home ter see you round again, Marcia," he said, as he took
+the pitcher.
+
+"It seems good to be at home again." I tried to speak cheerfully.
+
+Doctor Rugvie gave me one long searching look, when he took his place
+at the breakfast table. Then he paid his attention to the omelette
+which he ate with evident relish. We talked of this and that. I went
+out into the hall with him.
+
+"Goodby, Marcia." He put out his hand. "Wire me just a word from time
+to time--I have left the California address on the library table."
+
+"Goodby--I shall not forget."
+
+That was all. But I drew a long breath of relief when I could no
+longer see the carriage. I feel sure he, too, drew another.
+
+All the forenoon I was busy packing, helping Mrs. Macleod and Jamie. I
+gave myself not a moment's rest; I dared not. Only once, just after
+dinner, and three hours before they were to leave for Montreal, I went
+up to my room to be alone for a minute or two; to gain strength to go
+through the rest of the time, before parting with my friends.
+
+I had been there not five minutes when Mrs. Macleod rapped.
+
+"Come in," I said a little wearily.
+
+She entered and came directly to where I sat by the window. She put
+her arms around me,--motherly-wise as I fancied,--and spoke to me:
+
+"Marcia, my dear, I cannot leave you without telling you I have seen it
+all. I speak as an older woman to a younger. Dear child, I wish you
+joy; you deserve all that is in store for you--and there is so much for
+you, so much here in the old manor. I am so happy for you and with
+you, my dear."
+
+I lifted my face to hers and she kissed me.
+
+"I don't like to leave you here; it goes against me--there is no woman
+near you; and you cannot remain in the circumstances, you know, my
+dear, after Mr. Ewart returns. I only wish you would come with us.
+But that would never do; Mr. Ewart would be my enemy for life, and I
+could not blame him."
+
+"Cale will be here," I said. "I have been wanting to tell you
+something."
+
+I told her of my relation to him; what it meant to me. I told, and to
+her amazement, of my connection with her of whom both the Doctor and
+Cale had spoken--and I told it all with a flood of tears, my head on
+her shoulder, her arms around me.
+
+And she thought I was crying for that Past!
+
+Those tears saved my brain.
+
+When she left me, I had given her my promise that if ever I should need
+a home, I would make hers mine.
+
+"But you will hardly need it, my dear. Mr. Ewart will make this the
+one spot on earth for you--and it is right that your future should
+compensate for your past."
+
+Jamie whistled all day; it got at last on my nerves. When I begged him
+to stop, he looked at me reproachfully and said never a word, which was
+unlike Jamie Macleod who has a Scotch tongue--a long and caustic one on
+occasion.
+
+He steadily refused to say goodby to me, or more than, "I shall see you
+in Scotland next summer--you and Ewart; give my love to him."
+
+He put his hand from the coach window, and said in a low voice:
+
+"I made such an ass of myself, Marcia, you know how. Forgive me, won't
+you?"
+
+I forced a smile for answer. There is such a thing as the comedy of
+irony.
+
+When they drove away, I turned to the empty house--empty except for the
+dogs--with a sigh of relief. It was good to be alone.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+The ordering of the house kept me busy the next forenoon, but after
+dinner I told Cale I was going over to Mere Guillardeau's to tell her
+about her brother.
+
+"I may go as far as the village, Cale. Don't expect me till just
+before supper."
+
+"All right."
+
+I told but half of the truth. I determined to carry out a part of what
+I planned on that voyage down the Saguenay. If there were anything to
+learn from Mere Guillardeau, that would throw light on that "forest
+episode" connected with my mother, I wanted to know what it was.
+
+I found the old woman alone, at her loom.
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle, you are come to tell me of Andre, my brother? You
+are more than welcome. And how goes it with Andre and my nephew? Did
+he send me a pair of moccasins for my old feet, such as he sent by the
+seignior last year?"
+
+She left her work and, still holding my hand, drew me to the little
+porch, where we sat down on a bench beneath a mass of wild cucumber
+vines.
+
+I kept her hand in mine--that old hand, which for nearly one hundred
+years had wrought and toiled, dug, planted, watered, hoed, milked the
+cow, cut the wood, woven cloth and carpets, harvested her tobacco!
+That prehensile thing which, in its youth, clasped the hand of her
+"mate" at the altar, cooked for him, sewed for him, piecing together
+the skins from the wilds, when he was at home from the trappers'
+haunts; and, meanwhile, it had found time to rock the cradle for her
+seven children and sew the shrouds for six of them!
+
+To me it was a marvellous thing--that hand!
+
+I looked at it, while I was trying to find words to tell her of Andre.
+It was thin to emaciation, misshapen from hard work--a frail mechanism,
+but still powerful because of the life-blood coursing within it. The
+dark blue veins were veritable bas-reliefs.
+
+"Dear Mere Guillardeau, we have had such a lovely summer with
+Andre--dear old Andre, so young in heart."
+
+"It was ever like that. Is he well, my brother?"
+
+"I hope it may be well with him soon."
+
+The old woman looked at me earnestly with her small deep-set eyes,
+faded with having looked so long on the sunshine and shadows of life.
+
+"He is dead, my brother?"
+
+"No, not yet. Mr. Ewart wanted me to tell you just as it is." I gave
+her the details.
+
+She sat quietly, her hand still in mine. Into her faded eyes there
+crept a shadow of some memory.
+
+"I have not seen him for many years, mademoiselle."
+
+"Was that when he made his voyage to Chicago?"
+
+"Yes. On his return he spent the winter with me. We had comfort
+together. We could talk of old times; we knew Canada when we were
+young--that was long ago." She sat quiet, thoughtful. Then she spoke
+again.
+
+"You will tell me when the seignior sends word?"
+
+"Oh, yes; at once."
+
+"I will pray for him. I will have masses said for his soul."
+
+"Your grandfather was born in the seigniory of Lamoral, so Andre said."
+
+"Yes; and my father, and I, and my brothers and sisters. My
+grandfather's seignior was French. Afterwards, the English seigniors
+had no love for the place. It is our seignior, the Canadian, who cares
+for it. He carries it on his heart--and us, too, mademoiselle. You
+know this land is mine now?"
+
+"Yes; I am so glad for you. It should have been yours long ago."
+
+"Yes, it is mine now for a little while; afterwards it will be my
+daughter's."
+
+"Do you know the old manor well? Have you ever lived there?"
+
+"Yes, I have lived at the manor house."
+
+"When was that, mother?"
+
+"Let me think.--It was ten years, counting by seedtime and harvest,
+before Andre spent that winter with me. It was a hard one; he helped
+me as a brother should. It was then he was shriven. I was in one of
+the pews in our church, waiting my turn. There were hundreds come for
+the shriving. The priest stood in the aisle, the great middle aisle,
+and all the time there were two kneeling besides him, one confessing,
+the other waiting his turn."
+
+"Did they have no confessional?"
+
+"We confessed in the aisle, mademoiselle, before all the world,--we all
+knew we were sinners,--and the crowd was so great. Andre, too, I saw
+by the side of the priest, whispering in his ear."
+
+"Andre! What could his simple life show for sin?"
+
+"He is human like the rest of us, mademoiselle."
+
+She took her pipe from her pocket. It reminded me of Andre. I filled
+and lighted it for her, and placed it between her still strong teeth.
+
+"Andre's was the sin of silence, as was mine. I, too, confessed it."
+
+I wondered if she would tell me further. I waited in suspense for her
+next words.
+
+"You ask me have I ever lived at the manor? I lived there one
+winter--a cruel winter even for us Canadians. It is so long ago, I may
+speak of it now. My brother will never speak of it more. It eases me
+to speak of it. It was Martinmas when an Englishman came to this very
+door. It was after dark. He said he had permission from the English
+seignior, who was in England, to stay in the manor as long as he would.
+The agent of the estate was with him--a hard man. He said it was all
+right, and showed me a paper which I could not read. My daughter read
+for me. It was signed by the English seignior; he, too, was a Ewart.
+The English gentleman asked me if I would come and keep the house for
+him and his wife; he was here for her health. Would I stay till spring?
+
+"He offered me twenty _pieces_ the month, mademoiselle--twenty
+_pieces_! That meant ease of mind for me and my daughter. I was not
+to leave the manor to go home, he said. I must stay there on account
+of his wife.
+
+"I took time to think; but the twenty _pieces_, mademoiselle! My
+daughter said, 'Go; it will keep us for three years.'
+
+"I went because I was paid twenty _pieces_ the month--but,
+mademoiselle, I would have stayed and worked for her for nothing, for
+love of her alone. Mademoiselle, look in your mirror when you are at
+home. You will see her again--so much you are like her; but not in
+your ways. You remember the first time you came to my daughter to buy
+the carpets? I said to myself then, 'I have lived to see her again.'"
+
+"How long ago was this, Mere Guillardeau?"
+
+"I have said ten years, counting by seedtime and harvest, before Andre
+made that voyage into the west. I loved her--and my brother loved her.
+She made sunshine in the manor. It was not as it is now; there was
+little to do with. She made light of everything; made the best of
+everything. She had a cow, for the warm milk; and hens, for the
+new-laid eggs--all nourishing and good, mademoiselle. I milked the cow
+and tended to everything. I was strong. I did all the work. The
+agent bought provisions in the village and brought them to us. They
+came, also, from Montreal. The house was full of sunshine, the
+sunshine of love, mademoiselle.
+
+"They were not married--but how they loved each other! I carried their
+sin on my soul. I never confessed till Andre, too, confessed. We
+confessed the same sin--the sin of silence.
+
+"In the spring I sent them to Andre, into the wilderness of the
+northern rivers. My brother loved her too, my poor brother.
+
+"It is long past, mademoiselle, but I can not forget."
+
+"And the present seignior never knew of this?"
+
+"The present seignior? Oh, no; he did not own Lamoral then.
+Sometimes, it is true, I think I see in him a look of that other; but
+it is not he. I never knew their names.
+
+"After they left, that agent took that cow from me, mademoiselle, a
+fine cow she was. He is dead these many years, but he was a hard man;
+I have not forgotten or forgiven, mademoiselle." She crossed herself.
+"The cow was mine; he took her, mademoiselle; a fine cow with a bag as
+pink as thorn blossoms, and seven quarts to the milking--I cannot
+forget."
+
+I rose to go, for the old woman threatened to become garrulous.
+Moreover, I had heard enough. The Doctor was mistaken. I had learned
+what I came to find out. I felt fortified to speak with Cale.
+
+"Goodby, Mere Guillardeau."
+
+"Goodby, mademoiselle. You will come again and tell me of my brother?"
+
+"Yes; so soon as I have any word."
+
+She stood in the porch to watch me down the road. I went on to the
+village. As I neared the steamboat landing, I noticed a large river
+sloop, tacking in the light breeze to the bank. I stopped to watch it.
+Soon it was abreast of me. I walked rapidly on to keep up with it. It
+came to anchor nearly opposite the cabaret. Its white hull was filled
+with apples. There must have been a ton or two--early harvest apples,
+red, yellow, and green; Astrachan, Porters and early Pippins.
+
+Surely this was the apple-boat which Jamie delighted in and described
+with such enthusiasm! I walked to the bank. A low trestle, laid in a
+width of two boards, gave passage to the boat. What a picture it made!
+The low green bank, the white sloop, the blue lively waters of the St.
+Lawrence, and, beyond, the islands stacked with the second cutting of
+hay!
+
+I went on board; bought a few apples; promised to come for a bushel or
+two the next day, and asked a few questions of the owner and his wife,
+French both of them.
+
+"How long do you stay?"
+
+"Only a week. This cargo is perishable. We sell here, then we go back
+for the harvest of winter apples. We come again in October."
+
+She showed me with pride her cabin and the bunk under the companionway,
+wherein lay her eighteen-months-old baby. "We could not leave him,"
+she said, wiping a bead of perspiration from his forehead. "The others
+are at home; they take care of themselves."
+
+The little cabin was absolutely neat.
+
+I bade her goodby, made a few purchases in the village, and walked back
+to Lamoral with a lighter heart than I had carried since I left camp.
+The old place looked so beautiful in the mellow September sunlight.
+
+I felt less burdened, less restless, less desperate, less doubtful of
+the future, after that walk. But I determined to wait a few days
+before speaking to Cale. I wanted to go over the whole matter, collate
+facts, sort evidence, before speaking.
+
+We had five pleasant days together, Cale and I. We grew confidential,
+as became relations. We talked of the Macleods; Cale wagered the
+Doctor would marry Mrs. Macleod in the end. At which I sniffed, and
+pretended to think he would lose his wager, but deep down in my
+heart--well, I had my doubts.
+
+I told him of Andre, of the Doctor's enjoyment of camp life. He did
+not ask me about Mr. Ewart directly, and I volunteered no information,
+except that we might expect a telegram from him any day.
+
+On the sixth day word came:
+
+"Andre has crossed the last portage; return Wednesday."
+
+He would be here in five days! My first thought was of him, not of
+Andre.
+
+O Andre, dear old guide and voyageur! You were only a withered leaf
+falling from the great Ygdrasil Tree of Empire--falling there in the
+wilds of the Upper Saguenay. But it is by such as you--and succeeding
+generations of millions of such--that the great Tree of Empire has
+thriven, thrives, and still keeps in abundant foliage!
+
+I knew the time had come when I must tell Cale all.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+"Cale, I want to talk with you."
+
+"All right, Marcia. I see you 've had something on your mind, thet 's
+been worryin' you, since you 've come home; better get it off. Nothin'
+like lettin' off a little steam when there 's too many pounds pressure
+on."
+
+"Cale, you _are_ a comfort."
+
+"Am I? Wal, it's 'bout time I was something ter you."
+
+"Cale, have you any idea where my mother fled to when she left her
+home?"
+
+"No; an' nobody else."
+
+"You said George Jackson could get no trace of her?"
+
+"Tried four months, detectives an' all; 't was n't no use. She was
+gone."
+
+"But did you have any idea in your own mind, I mean, as to where she
+might have gone?"
+
+"Wal, I can't say exactly. I _did_ think 'bout thet time, thet mebbe
+they 'd crossed the line inter Canady; but it ain't likely they 'd go
+north with the winter before 'em. Fact is, George was in such a state,
+I did n't think nor care much 'bout Happy, if _he_ could only keep his
+head level through it all. An' he did; he had grit, an' no mistake.
+'T was an awful blow, Marcia."
+
+"It's my belief she came into Canada."
+
+"'Tis, is it? What makes you think thet?" he asked in genuine surprise.
+
+"Circumstantial evidence that is convincing. I believe she has been in
+this very house--for months too."
+
+He looked at me suspiciously. (We were in the dining room; one on each
+side of the table.) I saw his forehead knit; then he spoke in a low
+voice, but rather anxiously:
+
+"Here in this house? Ain't you got your circumstantial evidence a
+little mixed, Marcia?"
+
+"No; listen."
+
+I told him all, linking event to event, incident with incident till the
+chain was complete. I fitted his story into the Doctor's which he
+heard for the first time from me; I added Delia Beaseley's story, then
+Andre's, and, last, Mere Guillardeau's. I made no mention however of
+the marriage certificate and the Doctor's last talk with me.
+
+"Now, what do you think of it, Cale?"
+
+"I see which way you 're heading, Marcia, but--" he brought his fist
+down hard on his knee,--"you 're on the wrong track."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I know it." He spoke with loud emphasis.
+
+"You have no idea, now, who my father was, or is? Not now, after I
+have brought in all the evidence available; except--"
+
+"Except what?" He asked quickly.
+
+"Never mind that now. Tell me, have you any idea who he was, or is?"
+
+"No, and nobody else thet I know of. She had high ideas, Happy had. I
+never believed she took up with any low cuss, not much! She was n't
+the kind to fall des'pritly in love with anybody like thet. Besides,
+had n't she had a man that was a man, even if he was only a boy in his
+years, to love the very ground she trod on? Happy was one of the
+uncommon kind of gals; she would n't take up with anyone thet come
+along. Now thet I know all this from you, I guess her love for thet
+man, whoever he was, or is, went 'bout as deep with her, as George's
+love for her went with him. Oh, Lord! It makes me sick to think of
+Happy Morey tryin' to throw herself inter the North River."
+
+"Then,"--I spoke slowly, hesitatingly; I gathered all my strength to
+ask the crucial question--"you don't think that Mr. Ewart is my father?"
+
+He stared at me as if I had taken leave of my senses. He swallowed
+hard twice. He leaned forward on the dining-room table, both fists
+pressed rigidly upon it.
+
+"Do _you_ think thet? Have you been thinkin' thet all this time,
+Marcia Farrell?"
+
+"No. I not only do not think it, I do not believe it. I was told so."
+
+"Who told you?" he demanded. He continued to stare at me; his attitude
+remained unchanged.
+
+"Doctor Rugvie."
+
+"What the devil does he know about it?"
+
+"He has the certificate--my mother's marriage certificate."
+
+"To which one?"
+
+"To my father."
+
+"An' he says Ewart is your father?"
+
+"He believes he is from the evidence--"
+
+"Evidence be damned. Has he shown you the name?"
+
+"No, I could n't--I would n't let him tell me."
+
+"I glory in your spunk, Marcia."
+
+"Then you do not believe it, Cale?"
+
+"Believe!" He spoke in utter scorn, and I laughed out almost
+hysterically; the tension was relieved too quickly.
+
+"Look here, Marcia Farrell, or whatever your name happens to be, he is
+no more your father than I am." He lifted both fists and brought them
+down on the table with the solidity of a stone-breaker's hammer. "It's
+God's truth, I am tellin' you."
+
+I laughed again in the face of this statement that so suddenly
+buttressed, as with adamant, my broken life, my wrecked hopes.
+
+"Can you prove it, Cale?" I, too, leaned across the table, my hands
+gripping the edge.
+
+"Prove it? Wal, I guess I ain't takin' any chances at jest _this_
+cross roads. I ain't makin' any statements that I can't take my oath
+on."
+
+"Prove it, then, Cale--in mercy to me, prove it."
+
+He looked at me with inexpressible pity. His eyes filled.
+
+"You poor child! As if you had n't had enough, 'thout bein' murdered
+this way. What in thunder was the Doctor thinkin' of?"
+
+"He wanted to save me--"
+
+"Save you, eh? Wal, the next time he wants to save you he 'd better
+borrow the life-preserver from me. You can tell him thet."
+
+"Prove it, Cale."
+
+He drew a long breath and, reaching over, laid his right hand over mine.
+
+"Marcia, I ain't no right to speak--to break a promise; but, by God, I
+'ll do it this time to save you--whatever comes! Gordon Ewart ain't no
+more your father 'n I am, for he was your mother's husband."
+
+"My mother's husband?" I echoed, but weakly. I failed for a few
+seconds to comprehend.
+
+"Yes, your mother's husband. Gordon Ewart is George Jackson--George
+Gordon Ewart Jackson, thet is what he was christened, an' I 've known
+it sence the furst minute I set eyes on him in full lamplight, here in
+this very house on the fifteenth day of last November. Do you want any
+more proof?"
+
+There is a limit to human suffering; a time when a surcharge of misery
+leaves mind and heart and soul numb. It was so with me upon hearing
+Cale's statement.
+
+"Did he know you?" I asked almost apathetically.
+
+"Yes, but it took him twenty-four hours. I 've changed more 'n he has."
+
+"Why did n't he use his own name?"
+
+"It is his own. He sloughed off thet part of it thet hindered him from
+cuttin' loose from all thet old life, he said, an' made the new one
+legal."
+
+"Did he know me?"
+
+"I don't know for sure. He ain't the kind to rake over a heap of dead
+ashes for the sake of findin' one little spark. But, Marcia, I believe
+he knew you from the minute he first see you there in the passageway."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Because you are the livin' image of your mother, as I told you once
+before. But you act different. An' he loved her so, he could n't help
+but seein' her in you--"
+
+"Oh, my God!"
+
+I think it was a groan rather than an exclamation. My head dropped on
+Cale's hand, as it lay over mine. The flashlight of intuition showed
+me the truth: this man, my mother's husband, the man who was dearer to
+me than life itself, was again loving her, whom he had loved only to
+lose, in me--her daughter! He was loving me because of her, not
+because of myself.
+
+Oh, I saw it in every detail! I saw every ugly feature in every act of
+the whole tragedy; and I saw myself the dupe of that Past from which I
+had tried so hard to escape.
+
+I raised my head. My decision was made. I looked at Cale defiantly.
+I think every fibre of me, moral, physical, mental, spiritual, revolted
+then and there against being made longer a mere shuttlecock for the
+battledores of Fate.
+
+"Cale, when does the next afternoon train leave the junction--the one
+that connects with the Southern Quebec for New England?"
+
+"Don't, Marcia, in the name of all that's holy, don't do nothing rash.
+I meant it for the best--"
+
+"I know you did; but that won't prevent my going."
+
+"But, hear to reason, Marcia; wait till Ewart comes---hear what he has
+to say--I 'm placed where I can't speak. Wait a few days."
+
+His hand felt clammy cold under mine. I pulled mine away. I hurt him,
+but I did not care.
+
+"There is nothing to be said. I am going. When does that train leave?"
+
+"Seven-five. What will Ewart say? You are doing him a bitterer wrong
+than your mother before you."
+
+I laughed in his face. His voice grew husky as he spoke again:
+
+"Stay for my sake then, Marcia; just five days--I 'm as nigh ter you as
+any in this world."
+
+"Not so very, Cale."
+
+Out of the numbness of my body, out of my bitterness of heart, out of
+the depths of my misery, I spoke: "Cale, listen. For twenty-six years
+I was in this world, and four men--the one people call my father, you,
+my uncle-in-law who loved your wife, my mother's sister, Doctor Rugvie
+who brought me into this world and made but two attempts to find me,
+Mr. Ewart who as George Jackson brought me home in his arms, a baby
+three days old, and left me for good and all, worse than orphaned--all
+four of you, how much have you cared for me in reality? Answer me
+that."
+
+There was silence in the room. I heard Cale draw a heavy breath.
+
+"You don't answer," I went on unmercifully, "and I am going away. I,
+too, am going to 'cut loose'. I want you to go down to Mere
+Guillardeau's and tell her Andre is dead, and the seignior will be here
+in five days."
+
+"What--now?" He moistened his lips.
+
+"Yes, now."
+
+"But you had n't ought ter be alone."
+
+"I am not alone; the dogs are here and little Pete."
+
+He rose and crossed the room. At the door he turned; his voice
+trembled excessively, and I saw he was in fear.
+
+"Promise me you won't do nothing rash, Marcia."
+
+I laughed aloud. "I promise--now go."
+
+When I heard him drive away from the house, I went upstairs and began
+to pack my trunk. The sooner I could get out of Lamoral, the better
+for all concerned, Mr. Ewart included. Did he think for one moment
+that I would consent to being loved for my mother's sake? Did he think
+to make good, through me, the loss of the woman he loved? How had he
+dared, knowing, yes, _knowing_ all, to love me for that other who never
+loved him! Why did he try to force his love upon her and, by changing
+the very channels of nature, bring all this devastation of misery upon
+my life? Why, why?
+
+I packed rapidly. There was not so much to take with me. Then I went
+through the rooms one after another: the living-room--the office. I
+looked at the Meryon etchings--the Pont Neuf and Ste. Etienne--on its
+walls. Upstairs, too, I went; into Jamie's room, into Mrs. Macleod's,
+then to Mr. Ewart's. I stopped short on the threshold.
+
+"Why am I going in here?" I asked myself. "What am I doing here?" I
+stepped in; looked about at my own handiwork--then at the bed. I
+crossed quickly to it and laid my cheek down upon his pillow. It was
+only for a moment. I heard wheels on the driveway. Cale was returning.
+
+"I am ready, Cale. You can take us over with the trunk in the light
+wagon; little Pete can go with us."
+
+The look he gave me was pitiful, but it made no appeal to me.
+
+"You will have to wait good forty minutes if you go now."
+
+"I don't mind it. _You_ need not wait. I would rather not say goodby."
+
+"Where are you goin', Marcia?"
+
+"Don't ask me that, Cale; I don't want to lie to you. I shall send my
+trunk to Spencerville. This is all I will say."
+
+"What must I tell George?"
+
+For a moment I failed to comprehend that he meant Mr. Ewart.
+
+"Tell him what you please."
+
+I set some supper on the kitchen table for him and little Pete, against
+their return.
+
+Cale reharnessed and brought the wagon to the side door.
+
+We drove those nine miles in silence, except for little Pete who asked
+several pertinent questions as to the reason of my going. In passing
+through Richelieu-en-Bas, I looked for the apple-boat. It was still
+there. Little Pete begged Cale to stop to see it on their way home.
+
+"Not to-night, sonny, it 'll be dark," he said sternly; "we 'll try it
+another day." I thought the small boy was ready to cry at his friend's
+abrupt refusal.
+
+Cale left me at the junction, after he had seen me buy a ticket for
+Spencerville, and the trunk was checked to that place.
+
+He put out his hand. "Marcia, I can't defend myself; all you say is
+true--but I think you will come to see different, sometime. We 're all
+human an' liable to make mistakes, big ones, an' I can't see as you 're
+an exception."
+
+The simple dignity of this speech impressed me even in those
+circumstances. I put my hand in his.
+
+"'Sometime', Cale? It has always been 'sometime' with me. It is going
+to be 'never again' now; no more mistakes on my part."
+
+"You _will_ write me a word--sometime, won't you, Marcia?"
+
+"I won't promise, Cale. I want to be alone. After all, I am only
+going away from here as I came--to find work and a livelihood. Goodby."
+
+I think he understood. He did not bid me goodby, but went away down
+the platform, walking slowly, stooping a little, his head drooping, as
+if all courage had failed him. And my heart was hardened.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+I watched him and little Pete drive away down the highroad; watched
+them out of sight. Then I sat down on the bench outside the
+waiting-room to think, "What next?"
+
+I had no intention of going to Spencerville. My trunk would be safe
+there with the address of a neighbor of my aunt. What I most wanted
+was to be alone and time to think, time to regain strength for the
+struggle before me.
+
+I don't know that for ten minutes I thought at all. I suppose I must
+have, for I remembered that at this hour Jamie and Mrs. Macleod were to
+sail; that the Doctor was on his way to San Francisco. That Cale could
+do nothing by telegraphing them. And what would he telegraph?
+
+The ticket-agent and baggage-master locked the office door and came
+over to me.
+
+"I 'm going up the road a piece; the train is twenty minutes late. You
+won't mind sitting here alone?"
+
+"Oh, no. It is a lovely evening."
+
+"No frost to-night." He went off on the highroad in the opposite
+direction from Richelieu-en-Bas.
+
+The evening promised to be fine; the sun set clear in the sky.
+Somewhere in the distance, I heard a night hawk's harsh cry.
+
+The dusk fell; still I sat there, not thinking much of anything. I had
+my hand-bag with me and my warm coat. I opened my bag and took out an
+apple; I had eaten nothing since breakfast and felt faint. The apple
+was an Astrachan. I found myself calculating what it cost--this one
+apple. I must begin to count the cost again of every morsel, although
+I had all my wages with me. But ten weeks of sickness--and where would
+they be!
+
+I put my teeth into the apple-- A thought: the apple-boat--it was to
+leave soon--the week was up!
+
+I rose from the bench, not stopping to take a second bite; took my
+hand-bag; threw my coat over my shoulder, and started down the road to
+Richelieu-en-Bas.
+
+It was rapidly growing dark. One mile, two miles, three miles--the
+night was there to cover me. I was thankful. Five miles, six miles--I
+was entering the long street of the village. The lindens and elms made
+the road black. I strained my eyes to see the lights. That from the
+cabaret was the first--then a green one above the water, several feet
+it looked to be. It must be the apple-boat!
+
+It was just the time in the evening when the men flock to the cabaret.
+As I drew near it, I heard the sound of the graphophone. I listened,
+not stopping in my walk.
+
+ "_O Canada, pays de mon amour!_"
+
+
+I stopped then; and it seemed as if my heart stopped at the same time.
+
+Oh, it had been "_Canada, land of my love_" in the deepest sense--and
+now!
+
+I went on to the boat; crossed the trestle. At the sound of my
+footstep on the deck, the woman put her head up the companionway.
+
+"Who 's there?"
+
+"Some one who wishes to speak with you alone; I was here the other day."
+
+"I know your voice, but I don't know your name. You can talk; my
+husband is, at present, yonder in the cabaret; he will be in by
+half-past ten. We sail to-night if the wind holds good."
+
+"To-night?"
+
+"Yes; and what is that to you?" she asked suspiciously.
+
+"May I come into the cabin?"
+
+"But, yes. Come."
+
+I sat down on the stool she placed for me. I was tired with the long
+walk.
+
+"I have been called away from here, where I have been at service--"
+
+"You--at service?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"Yes; and I am going away to find another place. Will you take me with
+you in the boat? May I go with you to your home, wherever it is?"
+
+She looked at me suspiciously. "I don't know--my husband--"
+
+"I will pay you well, whatever you ask--"
+
+"It is n't that,"--she hesitated,--"but I don't know who you are."
+
+"I am myself," I said wearily; "I am tired of my place, and they don't
+want me to leave. I want to go--I am too tired to stay--"
+
+"Too hard, was it?"
+
+"Everything was too hard. I come from Spencerville, just over the
+line; you know it?"
+
+"Oh, yes. My cousin settled there when the new tannery was built last
+year."
+
+"All my family lived there. I am now alone in the world. I have sent
+my trunk on--but I want a complete rest before I go out to service
+again. I thought I could get it with you. I don't want to let the
+family know I have gone. The family are all away at present."
+
+"Where have you been at work?"
+
+"At the old manor of Lamoral, three miles away."
+
+"I have heard of it; they bought ten barrels of apples last year." She
+seemed to be thinking over some matter foreign to me, at that moment.
+
+"Won't you take me? I am so tired."
+
+"You say you can work?"
+
+"Try me."
+
+"We are going back for the second harvest. We live near Iberville. We
+have orchards there, and help is always scarce at this time. Will you
+help?"
+
+"Oh, yes; anything. I can do the housework for you, if necessary."
+
+"You don't look tough enough for that."
+
+"Try me."
+
+"I 'll speak to my husband when he comes in."
+
+"All I ask of you is, that you will not let him tell anyone here that I
+am on the boat."
+
+"He has a tight mouth--a good head; he will do as I say."
+
+"That settles it," I thought.
+
+"If you will stay here with my baby, I 'll just step over to the
+cabaret and call him out. We can talk better in the road."
+
+"Yes."
+
+She climbed the steps, and I heard her heavy tread on the deck--her
+steps on the trestle-boards. After that, nothing for a quarter of an
+hour, except the soft lap of the river running past the boat.
+
+They came back together, the man with a lantern which he hung at the
+stern.
+
+"He says, my Jean, that you can come with us, if you will hire out for
+a month."
+
+"Tell him I will hire out to you for that time. And how much shall I
+pay you for the passage?"
+
+"Jean says that's all right,--you can't leave us unless you can
+swim,--and we 're more than glad to get the help."
+
+"I can sleep on the deck; I have a warm coat."
+
+"Oh, no; my husband often sleeps on deck when we are at anchor; but
+to-night he will not sleep at all. We go to Sorel; we must be there by
+three in the morning. You can sleep in his bunk."
+
+She parted some curtains and showed me a two-and-a-half feet wide bunk
+beneath the sloping deck. I thanked her.
+
+"If the wind should come up heavy, I shall do the steering," she said.
+"I will be down after we get under way. I help Jean."
+
+She went up the tiny companionway, and I heard her talking in a low
+voice to "Jean". Soon there was a noise of trailing ropes, of a sail
+being hoisted; a sound of pushing and hauling--a soft swaying motion to
+the boat, then the ripple of the water under her bow.
+
+I lay down in the bunk; the sound of the ever-flowing river soothed me.
+I was worn out.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THREE
+
+FINDING THE TRAIL
+
+
+
+I
+
+A dream would seem more real to me than the experience of that night.
+
+I listened, half sleeping, half waking, to hear only the ripple of
+water under the bow. Towards morning the wind freshened. I heard
+great commotion overhead. Evidently Jean and Madame Jean were taking
+in sail. I knew we must be near Sorel. I went up on deck to ask if I
+could be of any help.
+
+"Not now," said Madame Jean who was busy with the gaskets; "but when we
+come in to Sorel there will be some merchants on the wharf to get the
+rest of our apples. If you will mind the baby then, I shall not have
+him on my hands if he wakes up."
+
+"To be sure I will. May I stay here on deck for a little air?"
+
+"But, yes; you cannot sleep in this noise."
+
+The morning stars paled. The light crept out of the east along the
+pathway of the great river. The sun rose, turning its waters to gold.
+
+We were late in getting into Sorel. While there I remained in the
+cabin with the baby who was still asleep. By seven o'clock we were off
+again--the merchants had been willing to lend a hand in unloading. We
+had a fair brisk wind for our sail up the Richelieu, or Sorel River.
+
+Madame Jean made us coffee, gave us doughnuts, cheese, and thickly
+buttered bread. The fresh milk for the baby was taken on at Sorel, and
+the little fellow, who could creep but not walk, gave me plenty to do.
+Madame Jean laughed at my attempts to confine him in one place; he
+seemed to be all over the deck at once. She called out merrily from
+the tiller:
+
+"Eh, mademoiselle, you have never had one, I can see! You have much to
+learn. Here, take the tiller for a moment, I will show you."
+
+She took a small-sized rope that had a hook at one end and a snap-catch
+at the other. She caught up the baby and, turning him over flat on her
+lap, showed me a stout steel ring sewed into the band of his blue denim
+creeper. Into this she fastened the snap and, hooking the other end
+into the belt of my skirt, set him down on the deck.
+
+"Voila!" she said triumphantly. I found the arrangement worked
+perfectly and relieved me from all anxiety. He was tethered; but he
+could roam at large, so he thought.
+
+All day we voyaged up the Richelieu between the rich Canadian
+farm-lands, the mountains, faintly blue on the horizon, rising more and
+more boldly in the south, as we approached the Champlain country. Just
+before sunset we glided up to an old wharf at Iberville.
+
+There followed a series of shouts and whistles from the head of it.
+There was a frantic waving of aprons. A rough farm wagon, drawn by an
+old pepper-and-salt horse and loaded with children, bore down upon us,
+rattling over the loose planks like a gun carriage. The old horse was
+spurred on by flaps and jerks of the reins which were handled by a
+fine-looking bareheaded girl on the board that served for a seat.
+
+There were answering shouts from Jean and Madame Jean; answering
+wavings of towels and shirts which had been drying on the rail--all
+equally frantic. Then the whole cartful tumbled out on the wharf,
+almost before the horse came to a halt, and, literally, stormed the
+sloop.
+
+Jean and his wife were lost to my sight in the children's embrace;
+fourteen arms were trying to smother both at the same time. I was
+holding the baby when the horde descended on him, and only the fact
+that I was a stranger prevented me from sharing the fate of their
+mother.
+
+"They are good children, eh?" said Madame Jean proudly, with a blissful
+smile. She smoothed her tumbled hair and twisted her apron again to
+the front of her plump person.
+
+I was properly introduced by my own name which I gave to madame and her
+husband. The whole family fairly pounced upon the few belongings in
+the boat and carried them to the great wagon. Madame Jean, holding the
+baby, sat in the middle enthroned on the pile of bunk cushions; the
+children crowded in around her. I was asked, as a compliment, to sit
+beside Monsieur Jean on the board seat which he covered with an old
+moth-eaten buffalo robe. He took the reins, and amid great rejoicings
+we jolted up the wharf into the main street of Iberville, the whole
+family exchanging greetings with every passer by, it seemed to me, just
+as fervently as if they had but recently returned from an ocean voyage.
+Our wagon--a chariot of triumph--rattled on through the town and out
+into the open country. They chatted all together and all at once. I
+failed to understand what it was about, for several of the children
+were very young and their French still far from perfect. Their voices
+were pitched on A sharp, and the effect was astonishing as well as
+ear-splitting.
+
+They paid no attention to me. I was grateful. I felt myself again a
+stranger in the midst of this alien family life.
+
+Two miles out from the town, we came to the roof-tree of the
+Duchenes,--this was their name,--and within half an hour we sat, eleven
+of us, around the kitchen table at supper. From beneath it, an old
+hound protruded his long nose, and caught with a snap the tidbits that
+were thrown to him. A huge Maltese cat settled herself across my feet.
+A canary shrilled over all the noise. In the midst of the merry
+meal--blackberries and milk, hot fried raised bread with maple
+syrup--the whole family was apparently thrown into convulsions by the
+appearance in the room of a pet goat and, behind him, the old
+pepper-and-salt horse that Monsieur Duchene had turned out in the yard
+to graze!
+
+There was a general uprising; charge and counter charge, shrieks,
+laughter. The baby and I were the only ones left at the table. Then,
+humiliating exodus of the beasts and triumphant entry of the family.
+The supper proceeded.
+
+And afterwards--never shall I forget that little scene!--after the
+dishes were washed, the goat fed, the horse bedded and the baby asleep,
+the seven children placed themselves in a row, the oldest girl of
+fifteen at the head, and waited for a signal from their father: a long
+drawn chord on a mouth harmonicum. Together parents and children sang
+the _Angelus_, sang till the room was filled with melody and, it seemed
+to me, the soft September night without the open door.
+
+This was my introduction to the family Duchene. I slept in an
+unfinished chamber. A sheet was tacked to the rafters over the bed.
+The window beside it looked into a mass of trees.
+
+Oh, those orchard slopes of Iberville! I made intimate acquaintance
+with them for the next four weeks. I worked hard. I was up at five to
+help Madame Jean with the breakfast and the housework, what there was
+of it; then we were all off to the orchards to pick the wholesome,
+beautiful fruit--Northern Spies, Greenings, Baldwins and Russets. To
+use Jamie's expression, their "fragrance is in my nostrils" as I write
+of them.
+
+At noon we had lunch--bread and butter, with jerked beef, cheese,
+apples, washed down with the sweetest of sweet cider from the mill.
+There was no stint of the simple fare. Then at work again--all the
+children joining, except the baby who roamed at will among the orchard
+grass with two small pigs that scampered wildly to and fro.
+
+It was work, work--picking, sorting, packing, till the shadows were
+long on the grass and the apple-cart was piled high with windfalls.
+The barrels were filled with picked fruit of the choicest. And after
+supper, regularly every evening, we sang the _Angelus_.
+
+This life was beneficial to me. I made no plans. I was glad to work
+hard in order to drown thought, to keep my body, as it were, numb. I
+really dared not think of _what was_, for then I could not sleep; could
+not be ready for the next day's work. To forget myself; this was my
+sole desire. Madame Duchene watched my work with ever increasing
+admiration. Monsieur Duchene wanted to engage me for another season.
+
+"But you must not leave us this winter, mademoiselle. We need you," he
+said one day, after nearly four weeks had passed. He was preparing to
+set out on his return voyage down the Sorel to Richelieu-en-Bas.
+
+"Others may need me, Monsieur Duchene. I have been so content in your
+home; it has done me good."
+
+"Mademoiselle has some sorrow? Can we help, my wife and I?"
+
+"You have helped me by trusting me, by letting me make one of your
+family all these weeks."
+
+"But you will keep the house till we return?"
+
+"I should like to do this for you, but I cannot stay so late here in
+the country. I must find employment for the winter."
+
+"We cannot afford to pay you, mademoiselle, but you shall have your
+keep, if you will, for your help and your company, while you stay."
+Madame Duchene spoke earnestly.
+
+"I cannot, dear Madame Duchene; it is time for me to go."
+
+"May I ask where, Mademoiselle Farrell?" she asked, with such gentle
+pity audible in her voice, such kindly thoughts visible in her bright
+blue eyes, that, for a moment, I wavered. This was, at least, a
+shelter, a "retreat" for both my soul and my body.
+
+"I do not know as yet."
+
+"What can we do for you?" she urged.
+
+"But one thing: say nothing to any one in Richelieu-en-Bas that you
+have seen me, that I have been with you--that you know me, even."
+
+"As you will."
+
+I remained with the children who declared they should be desolate if I
+went on the same day that father and mother left them. Together the
+children and I watched the apple-boat, loaded to the gunwale, sail away
+from Iberville wharf.
+
+Two days after that, the children drove me to the station. I took the
+day express to New York.
+
+I decided to go to Delia Beaseley.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Not in its aspect of Juggernaut did the great city receive me that hot
+September night at half-past eight, but as a veritable refuge where I
+could lose myself among its millions.
+
+I welcomed the roar of its thoroughfares, the noises of its traffic;
+they deafened my soul. Jamie's voice saying: "We shall see you in
+Crieff next summer--you and Ewart," grew faint and far away. Cale's
+voice pleading, Cale's voice warning me: "You are doing him a bitterer
+wrong than your mother before you," became less distinct.
+
+The flashing electric signs were welcome and the white glaring lights
+of Broadway. They dazzled me; they helped to blind my inner sight to
+that vision of Mr. Ewart, standing on the shore of the little cove, far
+away in that northern wilderness, and looking into my eyes with a look
+that promised life in full.
+
+I rode down the Bowery oblivious of myself; I was lost in wonder at the
+multitudes. I knew those multitudes were composed of individuals; that
+those individuals were distinct the one from the other. Each had his
+experience, as I was having mine. Life was interpreting itself to each
+in different terms: to some through drink; to others through
+prostitution; to a few--thank God, only a few!--through threatened
+starvation; to a host through the blessing of daily work; to hundreds
+of unemployed through the misery of suspense. And love, hate,
+faithfulness, treachery--all were there, hidden in the hearts of those
+multitudes.
+
+Some lines of William Watson's kept saying themselves over and over to
+me in thought, as I watched those throngs; as I listened to the glare
+of street bands, the grinding of hurdy-gurdies, and heard the flow of
+street life, which is _the_ life, of the foreign East Side;
+
+ "Momentous to himself, as I to me,
+ Hath each man been that ever woman bore;
+ Once, in a lightning-flash of sympathy,
+ I _felt_ this truth, an instant, and no more."
+
+
+"Momentous to himself." Oh yes--not a soul among those thousands who
+was not "momentous to himself", no matter how low soever fallen!
+"Momentous to himself"--I watched the throngs, and _understood_.
+
+I made my way into V--- Court, unafraid and unmolested. Delia Beaseley
+opened the door. At sight of her all the pent-up emotion of weeks
+threatened to find vent.
+
+"Delia, it is I, Marcia Farrell--"
+
+"Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried, as she drew me into the hall under
+the dim light. "It is good to see you again! But what is it?" she
+asked anxiously, lifting my hat from my face. "Are you sick?"
+
+I could not answer her. She led me into the back room I remembered so
+well. There, as once before, she pushed me gently into the
+rocking-chair. She removed my hat and brought a fan.
+
+"What is it, my dear? Can't you tell me?"
+
+Oh, how many times, during her life of helpfulness, she must have asked
+that question of homeless girls and despairing women!
+
+"Delia," I began; then I hesitated. Should I tell her, or carry in
+silence my trouble about with me? Before I could speak again, she had
+her arms--those motherly arms I had felt before--around me; my head was
+on her shoulder; my arms about her neck. I sobbed out my story, and
+she comforted me as only a woman, who has suffered, can comfort.
+
+"Let me stay a little while with you, Delia, till I get work again."
+
+"Stay with me! Bless your heart, I couldn't let you go if you wanted
+to. Here 's my Jane--she 's out now--ready to drop with the work and
+the heat; we 've had a long spell of it, and I not knowing where to
+turn for help just now, for I want her to go away on a vacation; she
+needs it. Just you stay right here with me, and I 'll pack Jane off
+to-morrow."
+
+"Have you--is any body with you?" I asked.
+
+"Yes." She nodded significantly. "There 's two of 'em on my hands
+now. One's got through, and the other is expecting soon. Both of 'em
+can't see the use of living, and Jane 's about worn out."
+
+"You will let me help? I can do something, if it's only the housework."
+
+"I can tend to that." She spoke decidedly. "What I want is to have
+you round 'em, comforting 'em, cheerin' 'em--"
+
+"_I_ comforting, _I_ cheering, Delia?"
+
+She nodded emphatically. "Yes, my dear, just that. Your work is cut
+out for you right here, for a few weeks anyway. You come upstairs with
+me now and set with one of 'em, and give her a bowl of gruel--I was
+just going to come up with one from the kitchen when you rung,--while I
+get Jane's things together; she 'll be in by ten. She 's over to one
+of the Settlement Houses helping out to-night."
+
+Somehow, on hearing this account of Jane's activity--tired Jane who
+could help and rescue at home, and then go out to the Settlement House
+to give of her best till ten at night--my own life dwindled into
+insignificance. The true spirit of the great city entered into me. I
+felt the power of it for good. I felt its altruism; I realized its
+deepest significance; and I saw wherein lay my own salvation from
+selfish brooding, from forbidden craving, from morbid thinking.
+
+"Let me have Jane's work," I said.
+
+We talked no more that night of matters that were personal. I gave my
+whole time and strength to help "bring her through", as Delia defined
+the state of things in regard to a girl, five years younger than I,
+"who had missed her footing".
+
+It was an anxious week. There was delirium, despair, suicidal intent;
+but we "brought her through".
+
+While watching by that girl's bedside, I relived that experience of my
+mother, the result of which was that I, Marcia Farrell, was there to
+help. In those night watches I had time for many thoughts. Cale's
+voice grew insistent, for the roar of the city was subdued at one and
+two in the morning:
+
+"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."
+
+Over and over again I heard those words. The undertone of metropolitan
+life, when at its lowest vitality, went on and on.--Two o'clock, three.
+The girl on the bed grew quiet; delirium ceased. Four--I heard the
+rattle of the milk-carts and the truck gardeners' wagons coming up from
+the ferries.
+
+"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Over
+and over again I heard it.
+
+Cale's voice was louder now, more and more insistent. All that day I
+heard it above the push-cart vendors' cries and the hurdy-gurdy's dance
+music, above the roar of the Second Avenue Elevated and the polyglot
+street clamor.
+
+Yes, I had to acknowledge it: my mother had wronged him. I visualized
+that act in her life. I saw her promising to marry him, although she
+was unwilling. I saw her giving herself in marriage to him in the
+presence of the minister and her sick father. I saw her young husband
+creeping out in the night to watch for her shadow on the curtain. I
+saw him lying down to sleep a little after his vigil--but I could not
+see my mother when she left the house. Not until she made sunshine in
+the old manor, where I was conceived, not until she made sunshine in
+the forest for old Andre, could I see her again in her youth and
+beauty, in the enjoyment of her stolen bliss.
+
+But I could see him whom she deserted. I saw him in the pasture among
+the colts. I saw him raving at being made her dupe; I saw him even
+raising his hand against Cale. I saw him in his fruitless search,
+east, west, north, south. I saw him leaving the very house in which I
+was watching. I saw him broken, changed, "cutting loose" from his old
+life, determined to relive in other conditions, in other lands. I saw
+him returning from that far Australian country to that house where my
+mother's steps had resounded on the old flagging in the passageway at
+Lamoral,--unknowing of her former presence there, unknowing that her
+daughter was there awaiting him,--to that place which I, also
+unknowing, had made home for him. I saw him living again in his love
+for me who was her daughter!--and he knew this! Knew I was her
+daughter.
+
+How had he dared? And he her husband--my mother's husband! The
+thought was staggering.
+
+I looked at the girl on the bed. She was asleep, but her respiration
+was rapid; she was breathing for two. "What if--"
+
+I dared scarcely formulate my thought. Was he her husband? Did merely
+the spoken word make Gordon Ewart and my mother, man and wife? What
+was it Cale said: she had pleaded so with his mother not to be with her
+husband that first night of her marriage. And there was no second.
+
+I began to see differently, as Cale predicted. Horror, shame,
+humiliation, despair, jealousy of my own mother--all this that
+obstructed vision, deflected, distorted it, was being cleared away.
+
+Had Mr. Ewart come to look at this matter in the same light, that he
+had never been my mother's husband? That words, alone, could never
+make him that?
+
+"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."
+Perhaps Cale was right.
+
+"Why was he silent?" I asked myself, and found the answer: he could not
+have gained my love, had I known. And he wanted my love--wanted me,
+and me alone of all the world for his mate. But how could he, knowing?
+
+I lost myself in conjecture, but I began to see clearly, differently.
+My own act, my desertion of him, after what he had mutely promised, was
+becoming a base thing in my eyes.
+
+I asked Delia Beaseley once, if she had heard any word from Mr. Ewart.
+
+"No, not a word," she said decidedly, "and remembering how he looked
+when he braced up and walked into this very basement twenty-seven years
+ago, I don't expect to hear from him. I ain't judgin' you, my dear,
+but you 've done an awful thing."
+
+"And what of his act?"
+
+"Well, there are two ways of looking at that," was all she would say.
+She used Cale's very words, when he told his story.
+
+I asked once again, if she had heard from the Doctor?
+
+"No. He was going out to California. He come to see me before he
+went, and he said he 'd about given up the farm plans; that he could
+n't see his way clear to carry them out for the present. And I don't
+mind telling you, that he said he would put half the interest money on
+that 'conscience fund', as he calls it, that he thinks your father
+provides to ease his soul, to helping me here in my work."
+
+I remembered what I had advised on that memorable evening in
+Lamoral--and I wondered at the ways of life.
+
+
+We "brought the girl through" with help of nurse and doctor. She and
+her child were saved, saved for good as I have every reason to believe,
+for I have kept in touch with her ever since. I am her friend, why
+quite such a friend, I do not feel called upon to explain.
+
+I answered the door bell one day when the baby upstairs was ten days
+old--and found myself face to face with Cale.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+When I saw him, I acknowledged to myself my weakness. Deep down in my
+heart I had been longing, with a desire which was prayer, that I might
+have some word from Lamoral.
+
+"Cale--Cale, dear, come in." I caught his hand, which was not
+outstretched to mine, to draw him in. "If we were n't the observed of
+all in this court I would kiss you on the spot." He continued to stare
+at me; he did not speak.
+
+"Cale, forgive me for my hardness of heart--say you forgive me, for I
+can't forgive myself; I was--"
+
+He interrupted me, speaking quietly:
+
+"I know what you was; you can't tell me nothin' 'bout _thet_, Marcia.
+I ain't laid up nothin' you said to me, nor nothin' you said against
+nobody; but I ain't fergiven yer fer leavin' me without knowin' of your
+whereabouts--
+
+"Cale, I had to be alone--"
+
+"I don't care whether you had to be alone or not," he said testily;
+"you might have let me know where you was goin'. You was n't fit to go
+alone, nor be alone. My hair 's turned gray thinkin' what might
+happen. Where was you?" he demanded sternly.
+
+"I was in Iberville."
+
+I led him unresisting into the back room; it was my turn to place some
+one in the rocking-chair.
+
+"Iberville! How in thunder did you get to Iberville when you did n't
+go on the train?"
+
+"How did you know I did n't go on the train?"
+
+"The baggage-master told me. How did you go?"
+
+"In the apple-boat."
+
+"Wal, I 'm stumped. How long did you stay there?"
+
+"Nearly four weeks. Why?"
+
+"Why? Because I 'd been doing detective work on my own account. (How
+my heart sank at those words; Mr. Ewart had not attempted to find me
+then!). I 've been doin' it for the last six weeks. This is the third
+time I 've been in New York."
+
+"But not here?"
+
+"Yes, here--in this very house. I give Mis' Beaseley the credit; she
+knows how to hold her tongue. I see she ain't told you."
+
+"No. But you have n't been here since I 've been in the house?"
+
+"No, I just got here to-day."
+
+"How did you happen to come this third time, Cale?"
+
+"I come because the Doctor told me to try it again here--"
+
+"The Doctor? Is he at home?"
+
+"Guess he is by this time; I left him at Lamoral yesterday--"
+
+"At Lamoral?" On hearing that word, a trembling I could not control
+seized upon me. If only Cale would speak of Mr. Ewart!
+
+"Yes, Lamoral. I 've been lyin' right and left to Angelique an'
+Pierre, an' Marie, an' Mere Guillardeau an' all the folks 'round that's
+been inquirin'; but I didn't lie to the Doctor--not much!"
+
+"How--how did the Doctor happen to be in Lamoral?"
+
+"Guess you fergot he said he 'd like enough come back by the C.P."
+
+I was silent. I saw that Cale did not intend to speak Mr. Ewart's name
+first. He was leaving it to me.
+
+"Look here, Marcia, I 'm goin' to talk to you for once in my life like
+a Dutch uncle. I don't mean to live through another six weeks like
+those I 've been through, if I should live to be a hundred."
+
+"I am sorry, Cale, to have been the cause of any anxiety, any suffering
+on your part--but I, too, suffered--and far more than you can ever
+know." I spoke bitterly.
+
+"I ain't denyin' you suffered--but there 's others to consider; others
+have suffered, too, I guess, in a way _you_ don't know nothin' about,
+bein' a woman."
+
+"What do you mean, Cale?" I asked, trying to make him speak Mr. Ewart's
+name.
+
+"Mean? Marcia Farrell, you know what I mean. Ain't you got a woman's
+heart beatin' somewhere in your bosom?"
+
+"Oh, Cale, don't!"
+
+"I 've got to, Marcia; you 've got to see things different, or you 'll
+rue the day you ever blinded yourself to facts."
+
+"Is Mr. Ewart ill?"
+
+"Ill?" There was a curious twitch to his mouth as he repeated that
+word. "Wal, it depends on what you call 'ill'. That's a pretty mild
+word for some sorts of diseases--"
+
+"Oh, Cale, tell me quick--don't keep me waiting any longer--"
+
+"Any longer for what?"
+
+"You know, Cale, I want to hear of him--know about him--"
+
+"Oh, you do, do you? Wal, it 's pretty late in the day for you to show
+some feelin'. Look here, Marcia, I ain't goin' to meddle. I meddled
+once thirty years ago when I tried to persuade your mother she loved
+George Jackson, an' I 've lived to curse the day I did it. I ain't
+goin' to fall inter the same trap _this_ time, you bet yer life on
+thet; but I 'm goin' to speak my mind 'fore I leave you here. Will you
+answer me one plain question, an' answer it straight?"
+
+"I 'll try to."
+
+"_Do_ you think different from what you did? Have you come to see
+things any different from what you put 'em to me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Wal, thet's to the point; now we can talk. The Doctor and Ewart was
+talkin' this over 'fore I come away; I heard every word. I was right
+there, and they asked me to be. Gordon Ewart told the Doctor that when
+he fust see him aboard ship, that was nineteen years ago, he made his
+acquaintance because he knew he was the man who had brought you inter
+this world. He never let him go. He kept in touch with him. He come
+to be his closest friend. An' he never told that he, Gordon Ewart, is
+the one that puts that money regularly into the Doctor's hands, without
+his knowin' who it comes from, for the sake of helpin' others--"
+
+"But he did not think of me." I could not help it; I spoke bitterly.
+
+"No. He did n't want to think of you. He wanted to ferget there was
+anybody or anything in this world to remind him of what he 'd suffered
+from Happy Morey; an' he tried his best. An' he told the Doctor that
+when he 'd thought he 'd conquered, when he come to see things
+different too, he come back to settle in the old manor an' carry out
+his ideas. An' the very fust night, he found you there. He said he
+knew then, he couldn't get away from his past; it was livin' right
+there along with him.
+
+"Marcia, I ain't meddlin', and mebbe I 'm to blame; but when I told you
+what I did, I done for the best as I thought. The Doctor done for the
+best as he thought. He believed you were Ewart's daughter, and he see
+what we all could n't help seein'--"
+
+"What, Cale?" I longed to hear from Cale's lips that he had seen Mr.
+Ewart's love for me.
+
+"You _know_, Marcia Farrell, I ain't goin' ter tell you. The Doctor
+said he thought fust along, it was because Ewart knew he was your
+father; but he said his eyes was opened mighty sudden--an' it 'bout
+made him sick, for he thinks a sight of you, Marcia. I see from the
+fust how things was driftin' with George, and as him an' me had
+recognized one 'nother from the fust, an' as he did n't say he knew
+you, I kept still. I was n't goin' to meddle, an' I ain't goin' to
+meddle now--only I 'm goin' straight off to tell him where you are."
+
+"But he has n't tried to find me--"
+
+"No, nor he never will. Your mother 'bout killed him when he was a
+boy, an' he is n't goin' to run after you who has 'bout killed him
+again as a man. You don't know nothin' what you 've done. I 've been
+through hell with him these last six weeks, an' I went through it with
+him once before twenty-eight years ago, an' that hell compared with
+this was like a campfire to a forest-roarer.-- Now you know."
+
+"Cale--Cale, what have I done?"
+
+"You 've done what will take the rest of your life to undo. I ain't
+goin' to meddle, I tell you, but I 'm tellin' you just as things stand.
+My part's done--for I 've found you; an' I 'm goin' to tell him so."
+
+He stood up; as it were, shook himself together, and without any
+ceremony started for the door.
+
+"Cale, don't go yet--I want to tell you; you don't see my position--"
+
+"Position be hanged. I guess folks that find their lives hangin' by a
+thread don't stop to argify much 'bout 'position'; they get somewhere
+where they can _live_--thet 's all they want."
+
+He was at the front door by this time. I grasped his arm and held it
+tight.
+
+"You will come again, Cale, you must."
+
+"I 'm goin' home to Lamoral as quick as the Montreal express can get me
+there. I can't breathe here in this hole!"
+
+He loosened his shirt collar and took off his coat. It was an
+unseasonable day in November--an Indian summer day with the mercury at
+eighty-four. The life of the East Side was flooding the streets. He
+turned to me as he stood on the low step. "I hope it won't be goodby
+for another six weeks, Marcia."
+
+"Cale, oh, Cale--"
+
+He was off down the court with a long stride peculiar to himself. I
+saw him step over a bunch of babies playing in the mud at the corner of
+the court. He turned that corner into the street. I went in and shut
+the door.
+
+Delia Beaseley was out for the entire forenoon, but Jane, who had
+returned from her two weeks vacation, was upstairs. I had plenty of
+time to think, to feel. I must have sat there in the back room for an
+hour or more, then the front door bell rang again.
+
+I answered it--and found Mr. Ewart.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Are you alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I wish to see you for a few minutes."
+
+"Come into the back room."
+
+I led the way. I heard him shut the front door.
+
+There was no word of welcome on the part of either, no hand extended.
+All I could see, as he stood there momentarily on the step, was the set
+face, the dark hollows beneath his eyes, the utter fatigue in his
+attitude. He stood with his hand on the door jamb, bracing himself by
+it. So he must have stood long years before when he came to seek my
+mother. That was my thought.
+
+He did not sit down; but I--I had to; I had not strength left to stand.
+
+"I 'm going to ask you a few questions."
+
+"Yes." My tongue was dry; my lips parched. It was with difficulty I
+could articulate.
+
+"What did you think I promised you, even if without words, that last
+time I saw you in camp?"
+
+"All."
+
+"What did you promise me when you looked into my eyes, there on the
+shore of the cove?"
+
+"All." I had no other word at my command.
+
+"And what did 'all' mean to you?"
+
+I could not answer.
+
+"Did it mean that you were to be my wife, that I was to be your
+husband?"
+
+"I thought so."
+
+"And you came to think otherwise--"
+
+"How could it be, oh, how could it be?" I cried out wildly, the dumb
+misery finding expression at last. "How could it be when you are my
+mother's husband--"
+
+"Stop! Not here and now. I will not hear that--not here, where I
+found her dead in this basement; not now, when I have come to find her
+child. Listen to me. Answer me, as if before the judgment seat of
+your truest womanhood and our common humanity. Is she a wife who never
+loves the man who loves her, and is married to her in the law? Answer
+me."
+
+"No."
+
+"Is he a husband who never receives the pledge of love from the woman
+he loves, and to whom he is married in the law? Answer me again."
+
+"No."
+
+"Can words merely, the 'I promise', the 'I take', make marriage in its
+truest sense? Tell me."
+
+"No."
+
+"Was the woman who never loved me, my wife in any true sense for all
+the spoken words?"
+
+"No," I answered again, but my voice faltered.
+
+"Was the man who loved her, her husband simply by reason of those few
+spoken words?"
+
+"No--but--"
+
+"Yes, I know what you would say; the words, at least, were spoken that
+made us before the world man and wife in the law--but how about the
+'before God'?"
+
+I could not answer. The man who was cross-questioning me was trying to
+get at the truth as I saw it.
+
+"The law can be put aside, and I put it aside; I was divorced from her.
+But what difference, except to you, does that make? Marcia Farrell, I
+was never your mother's husband. Had I been, had I taken her once in
+my arms as wife, can you think for one moment that I would have stayed
+in the manor, continued in your presence--watching, waiting, longing
+for some sign of love for me on your part? You cannot think it--it is
+not possible."
+
+His voice shook with passion, with indignation. He bent to me.
+
+"Tell me, in mercy tell me, what stands between us two? Speak out now
+from the depths of your very soul. Lay aside fear; there is nothing to
+fear, believe me. I am fighting now not only for my life, but for
+yours which is dearer to me than my own. Speak."
+
+I took courage. I looked up at him as he bent over me.
+
+"I thought you loved my mother in me--I was afraid it was not I you
+loved, not Marcia Farrell, but Happy Morey."
+
+"You thought _that_!--And I never knew." He spoke rapidly, with a
+catch in his voice which sounded like a half laugh or a sob.
+
+He straightened himself suddenly, then, as suddenly, he bent over me
+again, took my face between his hands and looked into my eyes, as if by
+looking he could engrave his words on my brain.
+
+"I swear to you by my manhood, that I have loved and love you for
+yourself, for what you are. I swear to you by my past life, a life
+that has never known the love of a woman, that the past no longer
+exists for me; that it no longer existed for me from the moment I saw
+you coming down stairs that first night at Lamoral. I waited this time
+to make sure that a woman loved me as I wanted to be loved, as I must
+be loved--and I waited too long. You are not like your mother, except
+in looks. You are you--the woman I want to make my wife, the woman I
+look to, to make life with me. Marcia! Let the past bury its
+dead--what do we care for it? We are living, you and
+I--living--loving--"
+
+He drew me up to him--and life in its fulness began for me....
+
+
+"And now put on your hat, give me your coat, and come with me," he said
+a half an hour afterwards.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To the City Hall to get our marriage licence."
+
+"To-day?"
+
+"Yes, now, before luncheon. Tell Jane you will not return--"
+
+"But my bag--shall I take that? And Delia, what will--"
+
+"Delia must look out for herself; you can explain by letter. Tell Jane
+to have your bag sent this afternoon to this address." He gave me a
+card on which he scribbled, "Check room of the Grand Central Station".
+"We can be married at the magistrate's office--"
+
+I must have shown some disappointment at this decision, for he asked
+quickly:
+
+"What is it, Marcia? Tell me. Remember, I can bear nothing more."
+
+I took a lighter tone with him. I saw that the nervous strain under
+which he was suffering must be relieved.
+
+"I am disappointed, yes, downright disappointed. Even if you don't
+want to make certain promises, I confess I do. I want to say 'I
+promise'; I want to hear myself saying 'I take you' and 'till death do
+us part'. I want to say those very words; I would like the whole world
+to hear. Why, think of it, I am going to be your wife! Do you grasp
+that fact?" I said, smiling at him.
+
+I won an answering smile.
+
+"Have your own way; I may as well succumb to the inevitable now as at
+any time, for you will always have it with me."
+
+"Oh, I would n't be so mean as to want it all the time, besides it
+would be so monotonous; but I do want it this once--the great and only
+'once' for me."
+
+"Where do you want to be married? Have you any preference?"
+
+"A decided one. I want to be married in the chapel of St. Luke's, and
+I want Doctor Rugvie to give me away. As you both came down last night
+from Lamoral, I don't believe he is away from the city, now is he?"
+
+"He is up at St. Luke's. He said he should be there till five. I was
+to telephone him there."
+
+"Then at five it shall be," I declared, with an emphasis that made him
+smile again.
+
+"At five you shall be married; but, remember, I am the party of the
+second part." He spoke half whimsically; I was so glad to hear that
+tone in his voice. I welcomed the joy that began to express itself
+normally in merry give and take.
+
+"No, first, Mr. Ewart--always first--"
+
+"I don't see it so."
+
+"Not at present, but you will when I am Mrs. Ewart. I want to ask you
+a question."
+
+"Yes, anything."
+
+"Have you ever seen those papers that Doctor Rugvie has in his
+possession?"
+
+"No, and I never want to. They are yours."
+
+"But I don't want to see them either. You do not know their contents?"
+
+"No; only that there is a marriage certificate among them and a paper
+or two for you." I noticed he avoided mentioning my mother's name.
+
+"Gordon--" I called him so for the first time, and was rewarded with a
+kiss, after which intermezzo, I finished what I had to say:
+
+"--You say let the past bury its dead; so long as those papers exist,
+it will, in a way, live. I would like to know that they do not exist."
+
+"You are sure you do not care to know your parentage?"
+
+"No. Why should I? What is that to me? It is enough that I am to be
+your wife--and what my mother said, or did not say, could not influence
+me now. She never could have anticipated _this_. Besides, there might
+be some mention by her of my parentage."
+
+"You express my own thought, my own desire, Marcia. Shall we ask John
+to destroy them?"
+
+"Yes, and the sooner the better."
+
+He drew a long breath of relief.
+
+"Then that chapter is closed--and I have you to myself, without
+knowledge of any other tie. I thank God that I have come into my own
+through you alone. Come, we must be going."
+
+"I 'll just run up stairs and tell Jane that I shall not come back
+here, and, Gordon--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I want something else with all my heart."
+
+"What, more? I am growing impatient."
+
+"I want Delia Beaseley and Cale for witnesses--"
+
+"It is wonderful how a man can make plans and a woman undo them when
+she has her way! I was intending to be married by a magistrate, and
+then carry you off unbeknown to Cale and Company, and telephone to them
+later. Now, of course, they shall be with us."
+
+I left word with Jane to tell her mother to be at St. Luke's chapel
+promptly that afternoon at five; it was a matter of great importance
+and that Mr. Ewart would be there. At which Jane looked her amazement,
+but had the good sense to say nothing.
+
+We left the house together. Together we rode up the Bowery. We
+procured our licence, and together we rode on the electrics up to the
+Bronx and, afterwards, had our luncheon at the cafe in the park on the
+heights. As the short November afternoon drew to a close, we rode down
+to St. Luke's. It was already five when we entered the chapel.
+
+Delia, Cale and the Doctor were there, waiting for us; but they spoke
+no word of greeting, nor did we. They followed us in silence to the
+altar where, with our three friends close about us, we were made man
+and wife.
+
+At the end of the short service, the two men grasped my husband by the
+hand. But still no word was spoken. It remained for Cale to break the
+silence; he turned to me.
+
+"Guess you 've found the trail all right this time, Marcia." His voice
+trembled; he tried to smile; and I--I just threw my arms around his
+neck and gave him what he termed the surprise of his life: a hearty
+kiss. The Doctor, of course, claimed the same favor, and Delia
+Beaseley dissolved suddenly into tears--poor Delia, I am sure I read
+her thought at that moment!--only to laugh with the next breath, as did
+all the rest of us, for Cale spoke out his feelings with no uncertain
+sound.
+
+"I guess I 'll say goodby till I can see you again in the old manor,
+Mis' Ewart, an' I hope you 'll be ter home soon as convenient. I ain't
+had a square meal fer the last six weeks. Angelique has filled the
+sugar bowl twice with salt by mistake, an' put a lot of celery salt
+inter her doughnuts three times runnin'--an' all on account of her
+bein' so taken up with Pete. An' he ain't much better even if he was a
+widower; he fed the hosses nine quarts of corn meal apiece for three
+days runnin' ter celebrate, an' the only thing thet saved 'em was, thet
+he had sense enough left not ter wet it."
+
+My husband assured him that we should be at home soon--perhaps in a day
+or two.
+
+The Doctor insisted that Cale and Delia should come home with him to
+dinner, in order that Cale might have one "square meal" before he left
+on the night train. They accepted promptly. It was an opportunity to
+talk matters over.
+
+We bade them goodby at the entrance to the hospital; then my husband
+and I went down and into the great city, the heart of which had been
+shown to us because we had seen, at last, into our own.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+I have been his wife for nearly two years. I am sitting by the window
+in the living-room at Lamoral, while writing these last words. My
+baby, my little daughter, now four months old, lies in her bassinet
+beside me.
+
+I believe Gordon's dearest wish was for a son, but I had set my heart
+on a daughter, and I really think he would have welcomed twins, or even
+triplets, of the feminine gender, if I had expressed a preference for
+them! A little daughter it is, however, and her father kneels beside
+her to worship and adore. Sometimes I detect the traces of tears when
+his face emerges from her still uncertain embrace.
+
+Our little daughter, born to such a heritage of love! I look at her
+often when she is asleep and wonder what her life will be. So far as
+her father and I can make it, it shall be a joy; and yet--and yet! To
+this little soul, as to every other new-born, life will interpret
+itself in its own terms, despite father-love, and mother-love and the
+love of friends--of whom she has already a host!
+
+Cale has constituted himself prime minister of the nursery ever since
+her advent, and advises me on all occasions. She is sovereign in the
+house. Angelique and Marie fell out on the subject of which should
+launder the simple baby dresses, and, in consequence, we had an
+uncomfortable household for a week. Pete and his son, no longer
+"little" Pete, are her slaves. And as for the dogs, they guard the
+room when she takes her frequent naps, three lying outside the
+threshold, and one within, by the crib, to make known to us when she
+wakes. Of course, each dog has his day--otherwise there would be no
+living in the house with them.
+
+Only this morning, Mere Guillardeau, now over a hundred, drove over to
+see her and brought with her a tiny pair of dainty moccasins that her
+nephew, Andre, sent down from the Upper Saguenay. Even the bassinet,
+in which she is at this moment lying, was woven by our Montagnais
+postman's squaw-wife and sent to me in anticipation of her coming. We
+must try not to spoil her.
+
+Our first summer was spent in Crieff with Jamie and Mrs. Macleod.
+
+Jamie showed me the great Gloire de Dijon roses growing on the stone
+walls of his home, and the ivy covering the gate that gives passage
+from the lower side of the garden to the meadows and the
+bright-glancing Earn. Before you step out through it, it frames the
+misty blue Grampians beyond the river. Jamie used to describe all this
+to me that winter in Lamoral; but the reality is more beautiful than
+any description.
+
+The Doctor was with us for three weeks in August. We celebrated
+Jamie's birthday by repeating Gordon's celebration of it so long ago.
+We went over the moors and through the bracken to the "Keltic". We
+made our fire beneath the same tree, under which Gordon camped to the
+little boy's delight, nineteen years before, and we swung our gypsy
+kettle and made refreshing tea. We had a perfect day together.
+
+It was on that occasion Jamie confided in me. He told me his decision
+to return to England was not wholly influenced by his publishers, but
+because of his interest in Bess Stanley who, he had heard, was seen a
+good deal in the company of a distant cousin of my husband's--another
+Gordon Ewart, named from his father from whom my Gordon bought the
+manor and seigniory of Lamoral.
+
+He discerned that the only wise thing for him was to be on the spot,
+"to head the other off" as he put it.
+
+"If I can be only one half day with Bess now and then, I can make her
+forget every other man," he declared solemnly.
+
+I laughed inwardly, but I knew he spoke the truth. Jamie Macleod is
+fascination itself when he exerts himself.
+
+"I am going to win, you know, in the end," he said. "Another Ewart
+shan't cut me out again--" He spoke mischievously, audaciously.
+
+"Oh, you big fraud! It's well I understand you."
+
+"And I, you, Marcia--I 'll cable."
+
+"Do, that's a dear. I shall be so anxious."
+
+
+Yesterday I received the cablegram; Jamie has won.
+
+I can't help wondering about those other "Gordon Ewarts", distant
+cousins of my husband. Can it be?--
+
+No, no! I will not even speculate. That past is forever laid, thank
+God.
+
+I write "forever"--but perhaps that is not possible, for I have lived
+through a strange experience that makes me doubt at times. When my
+nestling was on her way to us, when a perfect love enfolded me, a love
+that protected, guarded, surrounded me with everything that life can
+yield, then it was that, at times, I felt again a stranger in this
+world; nor love of husband, nor love of friends, nor my love for them,
+for my home, nor my very passion of anticipated motherhood, could
+banish that feeling.
+
+I never told my husband. He will read it here for the first time. I
+accounted for it by reason of my condition in which every nerve centre
+was alive for two. It may be my mother felt this before me--I do not
+know. But when my baby came, when I could touch the little bundle
+beside me, when I gave her the first nourishment from the fountain of
+her life, the feeling left me. I have not experienced it since.
+
+During this last winter I have occupied my enforced leisure in writing
+out these life-lines of mine. I have written them for my daughter. It
+may be that she, too, sheltered as she now is, may sometime find
+herself lost in the wilderness we call Life, may read these life-lines
+and, hearing her mother's cry, may find by means of it the trail--as
+her mother found it before her.
+
+My husband, entering quietly without my hearing him, leaned over my
+shoulder, as I was writing those last words, and took my pen from my
+fingers.
+
+"Not yet, Marcia; you have n't gained your strength."
+
+I seized a pencil, and while I try to finish now, scribbling, he is
+holding the end of it, ready to lift it from the paper.
+
+"Please, Gordon--just a few more words--only a few about the new farm
+project, and Delia, and the Doctor and Mrs. Macleod,"--I hear him laugh
+under his breath when I couple those two names; we are still hoping in
+that direction,--"and those dear Duchenes--and you, of course--"
+
+The pencil is being lifted--I struggle to write--
+
+"Oh, Gordon, you tyrant!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS BY
+
+MARY E. WALLER
+
+
+ THE WOOD-CARVER OF 'LYMPUS
+ A DAUGHTER OF THE RICH
+ THE LITTLE CITIZEN
+ SANNA OF THE ISLAND TOWN
+ A YEAR OUT OF LIFE
+ FLAMSTED QUARRIES
+ A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS
+ MY RAGPICKER
+ THROUGH THE GATES OF THE NETHERLANDS
+ OUR BENNY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Cry in the Wilderness, by Mary E. Waller
+
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