A Cry in the Wilderness

VII

The snow fell lightly but steadily all night and the next day. Just after sunset the leaden skies cleared, and the starred firmamental blue of a Canadian winter night replaced them. Before six, Cale and Peter were off on their nine mile drive to Richelieu-en-Haut to meet the Quebec express. They drove in a low comfortable double "pung", lined with fur rugs and piled with robes; a skeleton truck trailed behind for luggage. The yoke of bells jangled cheerfully in the dry crisping air, for the Percherons were lively—the French coach horses were not ready for the northern snows—and freely tossed their heads as they played a little before plunging into the light drifts.

After supper I went to my room, making the excuse that I had a bit of work to finish. All my thoughts centered on Doctor Rugvie whose coming was so momentous to me. While I sewed, I made a dozen plans for approaching him on the subject of the papers, and rejected each in turn as not serving my purpose. Finally, my work being finished, I sat quiet, with a tensity of quietness that showed itself in my listening attitude and tightly clasped hands. It was nearly time for the sound of the returning bells. At last,—it was nearly nine,—I heard them close to the house and, hearing them, I knew intuitively that my life, hitherto so detached from others, was about to be linked through strange circumstance—the Doctor's coming—to some unknown personality in the past. I knew this; how I knew, I cannot say.

I heard Jamie calling to me from the lower passageway. I opened my door but did not cross the threshold. I stood listening.

Suddenly the dogs went mad with joy. I heard Jamie's voice in joyous greeting. I heard men's voices, Cale's loudest in giving some order to Peter; then Mrs. Macleod's. The confusion grew apace when Angélique and Marie joined their French welcome to the English one. Listening so, I felt shut out from it all; felt myself a stranger again in the environment to which I had so soon wonted myself. Then I heard Jamie's voice calling:

"Marcia, Marcia Farrell, where are you?"

He was at the foot of the stairs looking up at me as I came down, and scarcely waited for me to reach the last step before saying:

"Ewart, this is Miss Farrell; Marcia—my friend, the 'lord of the manor'." He spoke with such teasing emphasis that I could have boxed his ears.

I think the "lord of the manor" intended to shake hands with me; at least, his hand was promptly extended; but before I could take it, it dropped at his side, for Jamie was claiming me for the second introduction:

"Allow me to present to you the result of the advertisement, Doctor!"

"What?" The pleasant voice held a note of surprised interrogation. My hand was taken in a firm professional clasp, and I looked up into the face of the great surgeon who had troubled himself with me so far as to give me the chance to exist. For the life of me, I could not find the right word of welcome in these circumstances, and the only result of the instantaneous mental effort to find it was, that those words of Delia Beaseley's, which I heard as I was regaining consciousness in V– Court: "She's the living image", flashed into my consciousness with the illuminating suddenness of a re-appearing electric signboard. And, seeing them, rather than hearing them, I looked up into the fine homely face and smiled my welcome. It was the only one I had at my command just then.

Something indefinable, intangible, perhaps best expressed as the visible diffused wave-current of consciousness' wireless telegraphy, showed in his face. Puzzled, concentrated thought was evident from the sudden contraction of the forehead. Nor did the look "clear up"; it remained as he greeted me—and I knew he had not the key to interpret the message, sent thus to him across an interval of twenty-six years.

"Well, Mrs. Macleod, it's surely a success," he said, releasing my hand.

"Success? Oh, no end!" Jamie interrupted him in his joyous excitement. "You 'll see!"

"Come, Boy, give your mother a chance," said the Doctor, laughing.

"We have practical witness that Marcia is all that Jamie claims she is." Mrs. Macleod spoke enthusiastically for her, and to cover my embarrassment I suggested that the Doctor should go at once to his room.

"Oh, she 's canny! She wants you to see the improvements," Jamie cried, as he rushed upstairs two steps at a time after Mr. Ewart who, attended by the dogs, was investigating the region of the bedrooms. I think he doubted their comfort. The Doctor followed, and soon I heard his voice praising everything, with Jamie's lending a running accompaniment of jesting comment. It occurred to me then, that I had not heard the "lord of the manor" utter a word. Cale and Peter came in with the trunks, chests, gun-cases, with bags of ice-hockey sticks, kits, snow-shoes and skis—indeed, all the sporting paraphernalia for a Canadian winter.

Within ten minutes, my clean passageway, laid with the brand-new rag carpet, was piled high with these masculine belongings, and the snow from eight masculine boots was melting and wetting the pretty strip into dismal sogginess! I began to understand why the passageways in the manor were laid with flagging, and I determined I would have the lower carpet taken up in the morning, that Jamie might not laugh at me.

As Cale set down the last chest, he must have taken note of my despair, for he spoke encouragingly:

"Makes a lot of difference in a house havin' so many men folks round."

"I should think so, Cale, look at that carpet!"

"Sho! It don't look more 'n fit for mop-rags, an' they in the house scurce ten minutes. Guess 't 'll have ter come up ter-morrer, an' I 'll see that 't is up."

"And it will stay up; but it did look so neat and cosy—and now see that!" I included in a glance the entire mass of luggage and sporting outfit.

"Good deal of truck for one man, but I guess he can handle it all; seems a likely enough sort of feller. I had to introduce myself, you might say, for he an' Pete was talkin' so fast in French that I could n't get in a word edgewise at furst. You 'd have thought the old manor barns was afire, and they was trying to get the hosses out. I managed to have my say, though, 'fore we struck the river road."

"I have n't had a good look at him—Jamie did n't give me the chance."

"Wal, I can't say as I have neither. He 's pretty quiet, but I noticed he hit the nail on the head every time he did speak. The one they call Doctor Rugvie is some different; he was like a schoolboy let loose when he got into the pung. Guess Mr. Ewart won't wait long 'fore he 'll have a sleigh, as is a sleigh, to match the French coach hosses, from what I heard. The Doctor had his little joke about a pung for a manor house. I 've got to go over again ter-morrer to get the rest of the truck."

"Oh, Cale, more!"

He nodded, and, with a significant upward motion of his thumb, made his exit at the kitchen end. I slipped into the dining-room to see that all was in readiness for the extra supper. I actually did not know what to do with myself, what was my place, or where I belonged in the household, now that the owner of Lamoral and his friend were here. I looked about: the flames from the pine cones were leaping in the fireplace, the curtains were drawn close, the room was filled with a resinous forest fragrance, for I had placed large branches of white pine in some antiquated milk jugs of glazed red clay, which I found in one of the unused dairy rooms, and set them on each end of the mantel.

When I heard Jamie and the Doctor on the stairs, I left by way of the kitchen and, passing through that and the bare offices between it and the living-room, slipped into the latter to inspect it. Here also the fire was blazing, the wax candles in the sconces were lighted. The yellow sofa was drawn in front of the fireplace, but good eight feet from it. At either end were the easy chairs, and at the right of the chimney, nearest the door into the kitchen offices, was a low ample tea table covered with a white linen cloth, set with plain white china, a nickel-plated tea-kettle and lamp. Behind the sofa, along the length of its straight long back, stood the library table furnished with writing pad and inkstand, a wooden bookrack filled with Jamie's favorites and mine, and a bowl of red geranium blossoms. I was satisfied with my work.

Around the room, even between the windows, the more than two thousand books in their cases formed a rich dado of finely blended colors—the deep royal blue and dark reds in morocco, the yellow-white imitation of parchment,—parchment itself in several instances,—the light faun and reddish brown of half calf; even shagreen was there, and the limp bronze-gilt leather of Chinese bindings. Jamie told me that many of the editions were rare.

It seemed to me in my ignorance, that there could be no more beautiful room than this simple, book-lined, wood-panelled parlor in the old manor of Lamoral. I felt an ownership in it, for I had helped in part to create the intimate atmosphere that I knew must be like home,—something I had dreamed of, but never expected to make real. The owner, whose voice I heard for the first time talking to the dogs as he came down stairs, presented himself to me at that moment as an outsider, an intruder. I waited until I heard him close the dining-room door; then I went up stairs again to my own room.

VIII

I did not light the candles. The firelight showed through the mica in the stove grate. I sat down by the window and looked out. A full moon shone high and clear above the dark irregular outline of the massed treetops in the woods across the creek, now covered with ice and blanketed with white. The great hemlock branches, crowding close to the house, were drooping, snow-laden. The moonlight, reflected in them, flashed diamond dust from the upper branches; beneath the lower ones it cast violet shadows on the snow.

"What next?" I was thinking, and might have spared myself the trouble of that thought, for just then Mrs. Macleod knocked at the door and came in.

"In the dark? Marcia, my dear, we need you down stairs."

"Of course I 'll come, Mrs. Macleod, if you wish me to, but I don't quite see how, as your companion and assistant, I am needed now down stairs. I shall feel as if I were not earning my salt, just playing lady."

Now, can any one tell me why the spirit of revolt at the change in my position in this house, through the coming of the owner and his friend, should have materialized in just this ungracious speech? I was ashamed of myself the moment I had given it utterance. Such a mean sentiment! Not worthy of a woman of twenty-six. I was thankful she could not see my face.

She hesitated before replying. When she spoke I heard a note of displeasure in her voice.

"I need you now, perhaps, more than before. With these guests in the house, there is more responsibility than during the last three weeks."

"If only they were guests!" The perverse spirit was still at work within me. "But we are the guests now, and I don't quite see what my work is to be; my position seems to be an anomalous one."

"It may seem so to you," she replied quietly. I knew by the tone of her voice she was exercising great self control, and that had the candles been lighted I should have seen her cheeks flush a deep pink; "but evidently it is perfectly clear to Doctor Rugvie. The position is his creation. I think you can trust him.– Are you coming?"

The rebuke was well deserved, and, in accepting it, my respect for her was doubled.

"Just let me get my work," I said, fumbling in my basket for some petty crochet. She said nothing, and in silence we went down stairs together, she little realizing that, in referring to Doctor Rugvie as the one to whom I was indebted for being here, she twisted some fibre in my mental make-up and caused it to vibrate painfully. Had I but known it, I had been keyed to this moment ever since hearing Delia Beaseley's account of my mother's death—keyed too long and at too high a pitch. Something had to give way; hence my mood of apparent revolt, because I could not live in unchanged circumstances in this manor of Lamoral.

As we entered the living-room the three pipes were in full blast.

"Permitted?" said the Doctor, waving his towards us as he rose. Mr. Ewart, also, rose and came towards us. In the manner of his action I saw that, already, he had taken his rightful place as host. He held out his hand in greeting, and I took it.

"Sit here, Miss Farrell, by me," he motioned to the corner of the sofa next his easy chair, "and tell me how you have managed to accomplish a home—in three weeks. Mrs. Macleod and Jamie have been giving you all the credit for this transformation. How did you do it?"

He put me at ease at once, for what he said sounded both cordial and sincere. The tone of voice challenged me instantly to be as sincere with him.

"Perhaps it's because I never have had the chance to make what you call a 'home' before, and besides," I looked up from my sofa corner and dared to say the truth, "it was such a pleasure to spend some money that I did n't have to earn by hard work; this was play for me. But, truly, Mrs. Macleod and Jamie are not fair to themselves; they not only helped, but inspired me."

"Oh, woman, woman!" said the Doctor, laughing; "shopping is the characteristic symptom of the sex!"

"Talk about inspiration," said Jamie; "Marcia put mother and me through our best paces. I can tell you we conjugated: I must hustle, Thou must hustle, He must hustle, We must hustle, You must hustle, They must hustle, for three weeks," he said emphatically.

"You seem to have thriven on it," said the Doctor.

"Your work was in the New York Library, Miss Farrell?" It was Mr. Ewart who spoke.

"Yes, in a branch; I was there for five years."

"Who told you that, Gordon?" Jamie demanded.

"Who?—Who but Cale?"

Mrs. Macleod laughed outright at that, and Jamie and I joined her; we could not help it. The mere inflection of Mr. Ewart's voice, told us he had succumbed on the way over to our omniscient One. I saw that, quiet as he was, he had a keen sense of humor.

"Yes," he continued, "Cale made my acquaintance on the platform, and half way on the road he took occasion to give me some information concerning my household."

"Oh, I know that too," I said, "for Cale confided to me immediately on his arrival that, to use his own expression, he could n't get in a 'word edgewise', on account of the rapidity with which you and Peter were carrying on a conversation in French. I think he is jealous of every tongue but his own."

"We had better compare notes, Miss Farrell. I concluded that Cale was a firm friend of yours from his remarks."

"What did he say? Do tell me."

"I will—if you 'll agree to tell me his comments on my talk with Pierre. I believe Pierre's words fell over themselves, he had so much to tell me."

"Hear—hear!" This from Jamie.

"I agree; tell me, please."

"I think it was just before we entered the river road—"

"I know it was, for he told me so," I said, enjoying the fun.

"Oh, he did! Well, perhaps you will be so good as to tell me, if he told you what he told me you told him?"

"You would n't ask that if you knew Cale," said Jamie, shaking his head dubiously.

"No, he did n't," I said. "Cale is a genuine Yankee. What did he say?"

"You hear that, Ewart? What did I tell you?"

"Oh, you've been telling, too, have you, Jamie Macleod? He gave me to understand that it was he who brought you from the steamboat to the house; that you were born in New York; that you had been in the Public Library of that city; that in consequence what you did n't know about books was, in his estimation, not worth knowing; that you were just as handy with hammer and tacks as you were with books, and that you had been 'fixin' up' the old manor till it shone. I gathered further, that he expected me to be properly appreciative of the benefits conferred upon me in this matter. As, up to that time, I had heard nothing of your arrival in Richelieu-en-Bas, and as my friend here, Doctor Rugvie, was likewise in the dark in regard to your personality, you may imagine our curiosity; in fact, he wanted to rouse it, and took the best way to do it."

"He can do that," said Mrs. Macleod, smiling at this description of Cale's powers; "but he rarely satisfies us in regard to himself. Of course, Jamie and I respect his reticence, but I should like to know if he has been married. He is such a character! I should like to know more of his life."

"I must take a good look at him to-morrow," said the Doctor, filling his pipe.

"I should n't know him if I met him on the road," said Mr. Ewart; "for his cap was drawn over his forehead, and his beard and side whiskers were a mask. Won't he come in with us for a few minutes, Jamie?– By the way, you say that he is always with you at porridge, a custom I hope you will not depart from, now I am here, Mrs. Macleod."

"I shall want some too," said the Doctor, whimsically; "it will be like those never-to-be-forgotten days in Crieff fifteen years ago."

Mrs. Macleod said nothing; but she turned to him with such an indulgent smile, that I knew she would give the great man anything in reason or unreason for what he had been, and was, to her son and to herself.

Jamie jumped up impulsively.

"Tell me what he said, Marcia, about Gordon's talk with Pierre, and then I 'll go and have him in—without the porridge, though, for it's too late to-night."

"He said that if the old manor barns had been 'afire', and Mr. Ewart and Pierre had been trying to get the horses out, they could n't have talked faster."

"That's one on you, Ewart," said Jamie, gleefully. Mr. Ewart laughed. "I hope to make a friend of Cale; I like him."

Jamie left the room, and the talk drifted to other things.

"Have you seen Mère Guillardeau lately?" Mr. Ewart asked of Mrs. Macleod.

"Not since the last of October; but Marcia has seen her recently."

He looked at me inquiringly.

"I bought the rag carpet strips of her daughter."

"Is the old woman well?"

"Yes, she is wonderful for her age."

"Ninety-nine next year," said Mr. Ewart. "What a century she has lived!"

"André père must be ninety, then," said Doctor Rugvie. "How well I remember him! He is Mère Guillardeau's brother, as perhaps you know," he said turning to me. "Jamie must have told you of André."

"Yes, of André father and André son; you know them both?"

It was the first time I had spoken directly with the Doctor, although he was the one in the room upon whom all my thoughts centered.

"For many years; I saw him first in Tadoussac, just after the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Afterwards, for six consecutive summers I was in camp with him and his son on the Upper Saguenay. There 's none like him. By the way, Miss Farrell, has Jamie ever told you how the old guide André went to the World's Fair at Chicago?"

"No."

"We 'll get him to tell you—and us; I can never hear it too many times. It's unique, and it takes Jamie to tell it well. André told me years ago, and last summer he told Jamie and Mr. Ewart. Jamie wrote me about it."

"I shall never forget that night," said Mr. Ewart.

He laid his pipe on the mantel and stood back to the fireplace, his hands clasped behind him. He was not so tall as Jamie or Doctor Rugvie; not so thin as the former, nor stout like the latter. He had kept his body in good training for, as he stood there, despite the few gray hairs on the temples, he looked like a man of thirty, rather than one who might be father to Jamie.

Jamie came in at this moment, looking thoroughly cross as well as crestfallen.

"He won't come," he announced bluntly, taking his seat and leaning forward to the fire, his long arms resting on his knees, his hands clasped and hanging between them. He glared at the andirons.

"What's the matter, Jamie?" I asked; I knew something had gone wrong.

"He says he does n't belong here, and all that rot. Confound it all! When you come up against Cale's crotchets you might as well go hang yourself for all you can move him."

I looked at Mr. Ewart. I saw the gray eyes flash suddenly.

"We must change all that, Jamie. Just give him leeway till I 've looked about a bit and struck root into my—home." I noticed the slight hesitation before the word "home". "By the way, it's early yet."

"Early!" Jamie was rousing himself from his private sulk. "You might like to know that generally we have porridge at nine and are in bed by half-past."

"We 'll change all that too, Mrs. Macleod—with the Doctor's permission, of course," he said, sitting down beside her. "We 're not going to lose the pleasure of these long winter evenings. After porridge, we 'll have grand bouts of chess, Jamie, and a little music—I see that Miss Farrell has not included a piano in her furnishings—"

"Not for eighty-seven dollars," I said, hoping he would appreciate the financial fact; but he only looked a little mystified, and went on:

"—And hours with the books, and some snowshoeing on fine moonlight nights; you 'll see that the winter is none too long in Canada—O pays de mon amour!" he said smiling. Clasping his hands behind his head, he looked steadily at the leaping flames.

The tone in which he said all this would have heartened a confirmed pessimist; upon Jamie Macleod it acted like new wine. His face grew radiant, and the look he gave his friend held something of worship in it.

Doctor Rugvie groaned audibly as he laid aside his pipe.

"What is it, mon vieux?" said Mr. Ewart.

"You make me envious," he said, rising and putting on another log; "but if I can be with you only one week, I 'm going to make the most of it. No turning in before eleven-thirty while I 'm here."

"I 'll make it one with you any time you say, John." Underneath the banter we heard the undercurrent of deep affection. "You 'll be up here two or three times during the winter, and next summer you 've promised to camp with Jamie and the Andrés, father and son, and me, for two months on the Upper Saguenay. Speaking of André, père, Jamie, have you redeemed the promise you gave me last summer?"

Jamie twisted his long length in his chair before answering. "Yes, in a way."

"What does 'in a way' mean? What promise?" asked the Doctor eagerly. Mr. Ewart answered for him.

"It was about André—old André's story of his voyage to the Columbian Exposition in 'ninety-three. Have you written it up?"

"In a way I have, yes."

"Well, Jamie Macleod," I exclaimed, half impatiently, "for lack of originality, commend me to you to-night!"

I was afraid I should not hear the story. I exulted in the thought that my intuition concerning a second R. L. Stevenson in Jamie Macleod, was to prove correct. Jamie looked over at me and smiled provokingly.

"Come on, Boy, out with it!" said the Doctor encouragingly. "I 'm willing to be bored with your literary style for the sake of hearing dear old André's story rehashed by a young aspirant for honors."

"Have you seen anything of this?" Mr. Ewart turned to Mrs. Macleod.

"I 've neither seen nor heard anything of this kind," she replied with an amazed look at her son. Jamie smiled again, this time quizzically.

"What's this you 've been keeping from your mother, Boy?"

"Oh, Jamie, do read it to us!" I begged.

Jamie laughed aloud then, much to the two men's delight, as I could see, and said—tease that he is:

"I 've been waiting for Marcia to ask me; she is n't apt to ask favors of any one; but I say,—" he looked half shamefacedly at his friends,—"it's rough on me to read anything of mine before such critics as you and Gordon, Doctor Rugvie."

"Do you good," growled the Doctor; "get you used to publicity. If we have a genius in the family, it's best he should sprout his pin feathers in our presence before he becomes a full-fledged Pegasus. We could n't hold you down then, you know."

"You 've had a lot of faith in me, Doctor—you and Ewart; after all, Oxford mightn't have done what that has for me. I 'll read it—but I shall feel like a fool, I know."

"It won't hurt you to feel that way once in a while at twenty-three; it's educative," said the Doctor dryly.

In the general laughter that followed, Jamie left the room. He was gone but a minute. When he came in, I saw he was nervous. He cleared his throat once or twice, after taking his seat at the left of the fireplace, and glanced anxiously at the candles; but they were fresh at nine, and good for two hours longer. Doctor Rugvie looked at his watch.

"Half-past ten; I 'll keep time, Jamie."

"What do you call it, Jamie?" Mr. Ewart asked, to ease the evident embarrassment in which the young Scotsman found himself.

"'André's Odyssey'."

"Good! I like that," said the Doctor; "that's just what it was. Nothing like a good title to work up to."

"Of course, I embellished a little here and there, but I stuck to the facts and in many places to André's words; and I tried to make the whole in André's spirit."

"Intentions all right, Boy—let us judge of the result," said the Doctor. He settled comfortably in his chair, leaned his head on the back and gazed steadily at the wooden ceiling; but I think he managed to keep an eye on Jamie.

And, oh, that bright eager face, the firelight enhancing its brightness! The hand that trembled despite his effort at control, the slight flush on the high cheek bones from which the summer's tan had not yet house-worn! The expressive unsteady voice that gradually steadied itself as, in the interest of reading, self-consciousness was forgotten!

I bent low over my crochet; I did not want to look again at him, for I was glad, so glad for him, for his mother, for his two friends, who had had such faith in him, for myself that I could count him as a friend. This was, indeed, the beginning of fulfilment.