A Cry in the Wilderness

"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.