A Cry in the Wilderness

"You mean the farm arrangement?"

"Yes, and us—he 's been such a friend to mother and me. Oh, he 's great!" He was lost suddenly in one of his silences. I had already learned never to permit myself the liberty of breaking them.

We drove into the village, and, while Jamie was with the grocer, "stoking ", as he put it for the coming week, I was wondering what to make of Delia Beaseley's theory about the "conscience money" and its connection with the farm. Was it to aid in carrying out the Doctor's plans for helpfulness? From what Jamie Macleod had told me, I came to the conclusion that neither he nor his mother knew anything of that financial source. How strange it seemed to know of this tangled skein of circumstance, the right thread of which I could not grasp!

While thinking of this, I became aware of the noise of a cheap graphophone carrying a melody with its raucous voice; the sounds came from a cabaret just below the steamboat landing-place. I listened closely to catch the words; the melody, even in this cheap reproduction, was a beautiful one.

"O Canada, pays de mon amour—"

I caught those words distinctly, and was amusing myself with this expression of patriotism when Jamie came out of the shop.

"What's up?" he asked, noticing my listening attitude.

"Hark!" He listened intently.

"Oh, that!" he said with a smile of recognition as he stepped into the wagon; "you should hear Ewart sing it. I 've heard him in camp and seen old André fairly weep at hearing it. I see you are discovering Richelieu-en-Bas; but you should make acquaintance with the apple-boat."

"What's that?"

"It's a month too late now for it; it moors just below the cabaret by the lowest level of the bank. It's a fine old sloop, and the hull is filled with the reddest, roundest, biggest apples that you 've ever seen. I come down here once a day regularly while she is here, just to get the fragrance into my nostrils, to walk the narrow plank to her deck, and touch—and taste to my satisfaction. We put in ten barrels at the manor."

I could see that picture in my mind's eye: the old apple-boat, the heaped up apples, the hull glowing with their color, the green river bank, the blue waters of the St. Lawrence, the islands for a background—and the October air spicy with the fragrance of Pomona's blessed gift!

We put the old cart-horse through his best paces in order to be at home before sunset. We had all the books to arrange in the next two days for we had left them until the last. Pete was opening the boxes when we came away.

VI

After supper we went over the house to see the various furnishings by firelight. Pete had built roaring fires in each bedroom to take off the chill, and was to keep them going till the rooms should be occupied on the night of the fifteenth; this was necessary against the increasing cold.

I confess I had worked to some purpose, and Mrs. Macleod and every member of the household seconded me with might and main. Now, in a body, the eight of us trooped from room to room, to enjoy the sight of the labor of our hands. Angélique was stolidly content. Marie was volubly enthusiastic. Cale, his hands in his pockets, took in all with keen appreciative eyes, and expressed his satisfaction in a few words:

"'T ain't every man can get a welcome home like this."

"You 're right, Cale," said Jamie, "and there are n't so many men it's worth doing all this for."

We stood together, admiring,—and I was happy. I had spent but eighty-seven dollars, "pièces", and the rooms did look so inviting! The windows and beds were hung with the English chintz, which was old fashioned, a mixture of red and white with a touch of gray. I had sent to Montreal for fine lamb's wool coverlets for every bed. The village furnished plain deal tables for writing. Jamie stained them dark oak, and I put on desk pads and writing utensils. Two easy chairs cushioned with the chintz were in each room. The old English-ware toilet sets of white and gold looked really stately on the old-fashioned stands. Mrs. Macleod sewed, with Marie's help, until she had provided every window with an inner set of white dimity curtains, every washstand, every bureau and table with a cover. She made sheets by the dozen which Angélique and Marie laundered. Pete had polished the fine old brass andirons, that furnished each fireplace, till they shone. My bedroom foot-rugs were pronounced a success, and graced the rag carpets beside each bed; they were of coarse gray and white fur. Marie had found in the garret some long-unused white china candlesticks of curious design, like those in my room; a pair stood on each bureau.

We were standing about in the Doctor's room, admiring. The firelight played on the white walls, deepened the red in the hangings to crimson, shone in the ball-topped andirons, and lighted the pleased satisfied faces about me. A sudden thought struck a chill to my heart:

"What a contrast between this room and that poor basement in V– Court where, twenty-six years ago, the man who is going to enjoy this comfort fought for my mother's life, and succeeded in giving me mine!"

I left the room abruptly. Jamie called after me:

"Where are you going, Marcia?"

"Down stairs to begin with the books."

"Hold on till I come; you can't handle them alone. Cale, put the screens before the fires. Come on down, mother."

The passageway was stacked high with books along the walls. Cale had brought them in, and these were not the half. I was looking at them when the others came down.

"You took them out, Cale, how many do you think there are?"

"I cal'lated 'bout three hundred in a box. We 've opened five, and there 's two we ain't opened."

Jamie started to gather up an armful, but Cale took them from him. His tenderness and care of him were wonderful to see.

"No yer don't! If there 's to be any fetchin' and carryin', I 'm the one ter do it."

"And I 'm the one to place and classify. I want to prove that I did n't work five years in the New York Library for nothing." I stayed with Cale while he was gathering up the books.

"I cal'late you was paid a good price fer handlin' other folks' brains." Cale spoke tentatively, and I humored him; I like to give news of myself piece-meal.

"Of course, I did, Cale; I had nine dollars a week."

"Hm—pretty small wages fer a treadmill like thet!" He spoke almost scornfully.

"Oh, that was better than I had in the beginning. What would you say to four dollars a week, Cale?"

"With room and keep?"

"Not a bit of it; board and room and clothes had to come out of that."

"Hm—". He looked at me keenly, but made no reply. "You tend ter putting 'em on the shelves, an' I 'll take 'em all in. 'T ain't fit work fer women, all such liftin'; books has heft, if what's in 'em is pretty light weight sometimes."

"What would you say about the owner of all these books, Cale? Let's guess what he 's like," I said, laughing, as I lingered to hear what he would say. But he was non-committal.

"I could n't guess fer I ain't seen the insides. I 'm glad he 's coming, though; I want ter get down to some real work 'fore long. Wal, we 'll see what he 's like in two days now. Pete an' I have got to drive over ter Richelieu-en-Haut—durn me, if I can see why they don't call it Upper Richelieu!—an' meet the Quebec express."

"They won't get here till long after dark, then."

"No.—Here, jest put a couple more on each arm, will you?"

I accommodated him, and we went into the living-room. Jamie looked rather glum. Sometimes, I know, he feels as if he had no place in all this preparation.

"Now, Jamie, let me plan—" I began, but he interrupted me:

"Maîtresse femme," he muttered; then he smiled on me, but I paid no heed.

"You sit at the library table; Cale will bring in the books and pile them round it; you will sort them according to subject, and I will put them on the shelves."

"Go ahead, I 'm ready."

To help us, we pressed Angélique and Marie into service. In a little while we had five hundred books piled about the table. These were as many as Mrs. Macleod and I could handle for the evening, so we dismissed the others.

It was pleasant work, filling the empty shelves; moreover, I was in my element. It was good to see books about again; I owed so much to them.

"This is what the room needed," I said, placing the last of the historical works on a lower shelf.

"Yes; what a difference it makes, doesn't it? Oh, I say, mother, here 's one of your late favorites!"

"What is it?"

"Memoirs of Doctor Barnardo."

"I must read them again."

"Who was Doctor Barnardo?" I asked; I was curious.

"If you don't know of him and his London work, then you have a treat before you in this book." Mrs. Macleod spoke with unusual enthusiasm.

"And he was Ewart's friend too. I might have known I should find this among his books. It always seems to me as if it were 'books and the man'. Show me what books are a man's familiars, and I 'll tell you his characteristics."

"No, really, can you do that?" I asked, surprised at this dictum from such youthful lips.

"Yes, in a general way I can. Look at this for instance." He held out a volume. "The man who has this book for an inner possession, and also on his shelves, is a thinker, broad-minded, scholarly, human to an intense degree—"

"What is it?" I said, impatient to see.

"Something you don't know, I 'll wager; it is n't a woman's book."

"Now, Jamie Macleod, read your characteristics of men, if you can, by the books they read and love, but, please, please, keep within your masculine 'sphere of influence', and don't presume to say what is or what is n't a woman's book. I know a good deal more about those than you do—what is the book anyway?" I confess his overbearing ways about women provoke me at times. But he paid no heed to my little temper.

"It's dear old Murray's 'Rise of the Greek Epic'—it comes next to the Bible. It's an English book; you would n't be apt to read it."

"Oh, would n't I?" I exclaimed, and determined another forty-eight hours should not pass without my having made myself familiar with the rise of the Greek epic, and the fall of it, for that matter. I swallowed my indignation, for the truth was I had not heard of it.

"And here 's another—American, this time, and right up to date. I 'll wager you never heard of this either. Would n't I know just by the title it would be Ewart's!"

"How would you know?"

"Oh, because any man of his calibre would have it."

And I was no wiser than before. I was beginning to realize that there was a whole world of experience of which I knew nothing; that, in my struggle to exist in the conditions of the city so far away, I had grown self-centered and, in consequence, narrow, not open to the world of others. Jamie Macleod, with his twenty-three years, was opening my inward eye. I can't say that what I saw of myself was pleasing.

"What is the book?" I asked, after a moment's silence in which Mrs. Macleod was busy with the "Memoirs", and Jamie was looking over titles.

"'The Anthracite Coal Industry'."

"Well, give it to me; I 'll classify it with 'Economics and Sociology'. There will be more of this kind, I 'm sure. Let's go on with the work or we shan't be through before midnight. Look up the 'Lives' and 'Letters', and 'Autobiographies' next. I want to put them on the upper shelf—"

"I know;" he nodded approvingly; "so they will be at your elbow when, of a winter's evening, you want to reach out your hand, without much trouble, and find a companion. Well, give me a little time to look them over."

I watched him for a few minutes, as he took up book after book, examined the title, sometimes turned the leaves rapidly, and again opened to some particular page and lost himself for a moment. Jamie was showing me another side than that to which I had grown accustomed in our daily intercourse. I sat down while I was waiting, for I was tired. Mrs. Macleod was reading.

"Are you ready now?" I asked, after waiting a quarter of an hour, and still no sound from behind the pile of books across the table.

"M-hm, in a minute."

His mother looked up, and we both saw that he was absorbed in something. Mrs. Macleod smiled indulgently.

"That's always his way with a book—lost to everything around him. He would n't hear a word we said if we were to talk here for an hour."

"I 'll make him hear." I spoke positively, and again Mrs. Macleod smiled.

"Jamie—I would like a few books, the 'Lives' and 'Letters'."

For answer he burst into a roar that roused the dogs under the table. He slapped his hand on his knee, threw his leg over the arm of the easy chair, and settled into an attitude that indicated, there would be no more work gotten out of him for the rest of the evening. Suddenly he shouted again.

"Here 's a man for you!" he said joyfully.

"Who?" I demanded, but might have spared myself the question. There was another interval of silence, followed by an uproarious outburst:

"Oh, I do love Stevenson's 'damns'! They 're great! Hear this—"

He read a portion of a letter which included a choicely selected expletive.

"Jamie!" It was a decided protest on his mother's part; but I laughed aloud, for I, too, knew what he meant. I, too, loved the varied and picturesque "damns" of those letters that had been so much to me in the past few years. As I looked at Jamie, another Scotsman, with the thin bright eager face, I knew at once that, without realizing it, I had connected his appearance with that of Robert Louis Stevenson, his countryman. And how like the two spirits were!

"I wonder," I said to myself, "I wonder if this same Jamie Macleod also has the inner impulse to write!" And, having said that in thought, I looked at Jamie Macleod through different glasses.

We let him mercifully alone; but I went on with my work, reading titles, classifying, placing, finding genuine pleasure in speculating on the "calibre" of the owner.

At nine, Marie entered with the porridge; Cale followed her.

"Here endeth the first chapter," I said to Cale. "We 'll try to get all the books on the shelves to-morrow; then we can have one day of rest before they come."

"You kinder speak as if two extra men in the fam'ly would make some difference," said Cale, smiling down at me from his place by the mantel.

"It will make a difference I shall not like, Cale. There 'll be no more cosy evening-ends with porridge, after the lord of the manor comes."

"What's that you say?" Jamie was roused at last. I thought I could do it.

"Nothing in particular; only Cale and I were saying how different it would be when Mr. Ewart comes."

"You bet it will!" said Jamie emphatically. "You won't know this house,"—he took up his porridge,—"and Ewart won't know it either since you 've had your hand on it, Marcia." This I perceived to be a sop.

"Thet's so," said Cale, with emphasis. "I never see what a difference all thet calico an' fixin's has made; an' my room looks as warm with them red blankets and foot-rugs! It beats me how a woman can take an old house like this, an' make it look as if it had been lived in always. I thank you," he said, looking hard at me, "fer all the comfort you 've worked inter my room."

"You have n't thanked me the way I want to be thanked, Cale," I said, smiling up at him.

"I done the best I could," he replied with such a crestfallen air that we laughed.

"The only way you can thank me is to call me 'Marcia'. I 've wanted to ask you to, ever since our first drive together up from the steamboat landing."

"Sho!—Have you?"

He looked at me intently for a minute; then he spoke slowly and we all knew with deep feeling: "You 're name 's all right; but you've made such a lot of happiness in this house since you come, I 'd like ter have my own name fer you—"

"What's that?" I said.

"I 'd like ter call you 'Happy', if you don't mind."

I know I turned white, but I controlled myself. Was it possible he knew! It could not be. I dared not assume that he knew and refuse him. I made an effort to answer in my usual voice:

"Of course I don't, Cale—only, I hardly deserve it; all I 've done is just in 'the day's work', you know."

"Not all," he said, putting down his emptied bowl and turning to the door; "no wages thet I ever heard of will buy good-will an' the happiness you 've put inter all this work."

"Oh, Cale, I don't deserve this—" But he was gone without the usual good night to any of us.

"You do too," said Jamie shortly, and, reaching for his pipe, went off into the dining-room.

Mrs. Macleod laid her hand on my shoulder. "They mean it, Marcia; good night, my dear."

For the first time she leaned over and kissed me. I ran up to my room without any good night on my part. I needed to be alone after what Cale had said. Did he know? Could he know? Or was it merely chance that he chose that name? Over and over again I asked myself these questions—and could find no answer.

Late at night I made ready for bed. I drew the curtains and looked out. The window ledge was piled two inches high with snow; against the panes I saw the soft white swirl and heard the hushed, intermittent brushing of the drifting storm.

VII

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

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

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

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

"Marcia, Marcia Farrell, where are you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, Cale, more!"

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