A Cry in the Wilderness

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!"