Front matter (continued 7)

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.

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." 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