At the Crossroads Part 13

"I don't know, Jan-an. 'Pon my soul, girl, I'd give a good deal to know, but I don't. I'm like you, just feeling things."

Jan-an rose stiffly as if she were strung on wires. Her joints cracked as they fell into place, but once the long body stood upright, Northrup noticed that it was not without a certain rough grace and it looked strong and capable of great endurance.

"I've been following you since the first day when you landed," Jan-an spoke calmly. There was no warning or distrust in the voice, merely a statement of fact. "And I'm going to keep on following and watching, so long as you stay."

"Good! I'll never be really lonely then, and you'll sooner get to trusting me."

"I ain't much for trusting till I knows."

The girl turned and strode away. "Well, if you ever need me, try me out, Jan-an. Good-bye."

Northrup felt ill at ease after Jan-an pa.s.sed from sight.

"Of all the messes!" he thought. "It makes me superst.i.tious. What's the matter with this Forest?"

And then Maclin again came into focus. Around Maclin, apparently, the public thought revolved.

"They don't trust Maclin." Northrup began to reduce things to normal.

"He's got them guessing with his d.a.m.ned inventions and secrecy. Then every outsider means a possible accomplice of Maclin. They hate the foreigners he brings here. They have got their eyes on me. All right, Maclin, my ready-to-wear villain, here's to you! And before we're through with each other some interesting things will occur, or I'll miss my guess."

In much the same mood of excitement, Northrup had entered upon the adventure of writing his former book, with this difference: He had gone to the East Side of his home city with all his anchors cast in a familiar harbour; he was on the open sea now. There had been his mother and Kathryn before; the reliefs of home comforts, "fumigations"

Kathryn termed them; now he was part of his environment, determined to cast no backward look until his appointed task was finished in failure or--success.

The chapel and the day had soothed and comforted him: he was ready to abandon the hold on every string. This s.p.a.ce of time, of unfettered thought and work, was like existence in a preparation camp. This became a fixed idea presently--he was being prepared for service; fitted for his place in a new Scheme. That was the only safe way to regard life, at the best. Here, there, it mattered not, but the preparation counted.

CHAPTER VI

When Mary-Clare awoke the next morning she heard Larry still moving about overhead as if he had been doing it all night. He was opening drawers; going to and fro between closet and bed; pausing, rustling papers, and giving the impression, generally, that he was bent upon a definite plan.

Noreen was sleeping deeply, one little arm stretched over her pillow and toward her mother as if feeling for the dear presence. Somehow the picture comforted Mary-Clare. She was strangely at peace. After her bungling--and she knew she had bungled with Larry--she _had_ secured safety for Noreen and herself. It was right: the other way would have bent and cowed her and ended as so many women's lives ended. Larry never could understand, but G.o.d could! Mary-Clare had a simple faith and it helped her now.

While she lay thinking and looking at Noreen she became conscious of Larry tiptoeing downstairs. She started up hoping to begin the new era as right as might be. She wanted to get breakfast and start whatever might follow as sanely as possible.

But Larry had gone so swiftly, once he reached the lower floor, that only by running after him in her light apparel could she attract his attention. He was out of the house and on the road toward the mines!

Then Mary-Clare, seized by one of those presentiments that often light a dark moment, closed the door, s.h.i.+vering slightly, and went upstairs.

The carefully prepared bedchamber was in great disorder. The bedclothes were pulled from the bed and lay in a heap near by; towels, the soiled linen that Larry had discarded for the fresh, that had been placed in the bureau drawers, was rolled in a bundle and flung on the hearth.

This aspect of the room did not surprise Mary-Clare. Larry generally dropped what he was for the moment through with, but there was more here than heedless carelessness. Drawers were pulled out and empty.

The closet was open and empty. There was a finality about the scene that could not be misunderstood. Larry was gone in a definite and sweeping manner.

Dazed and perplexed, Mary-Clare went to the closet and suddenly was made aware, by the sight of an empty box upon the floor, that in her preparation of the room she had left that box, containing the old letters of her doctor, on a shelf and that now they had been taken away!

What this loss signified could hardly be estimated at first. So long had those letters been guide-posts and reinforcements, so long had they comforted and soothed her like a touch or look of her old friend, that now she raised the empty box with a sharp sense of pain. So might she gaze at Noreen's empty crib had the child been taken from her.

Then, intuitively, Mary-Clare tried to be just, she thought that Larry must have taken the letters because of old and now severed connections They _were_ his letters, but----

Here Mary-Clare, also because she was just, considered the other possible cause. Larry might use the letters against her in the days to come. Show them to others to prove her falseness and ingrat.i.tude. This possibility, however, was only transitory. What she had done was inevitable, Mary-Clare knew that, and it seemed to her right--oh! _so_ right. There was only one real fact to face. Larry was gone; the letters were gone.

Mary-Clare began to tremble. The cold room, all that had so deeply moved her was shaking her nerves. Then she thought that in his hurry Larry might have overturned the box--the letters might be on the shelf still. Quickly she went into the closet and felt carefully every corner. The letters were not there.

Then with white face and chattering teeth she turned and faced Jan-an. The girl had come noiselessly to the house and found her way to the room where she had heard sounds--she had seen Larry fleeing on the lake road as she came over the fields from the Point.

"What's up?" she asked in her dull, even tones, while in her vacant eyes the groping, tender look grew.

"Oh! Jan-an," Mary-Clare was off her guard, "the letters; my dear old doctor's letters--they are gone; gone." Her feeling seemed out of all proportion to the loss.

"Who took 'em?" And then Jan-an did one of those quick, intelligent things that sometimes shamed sharper wits--she went to the hearth.

"There ain't been no fire," she muttered. "He ain't burned 'em. What did he take them for?"

This question steadied Mary-Clare. "I'm not _sure_, Jan-an, that any one has _taken_ the letters. You know how careless I am. I may have put them somewhere else."

"If yer have there's no need fussing. I'll find 'em. I kin find anything if yer give me time. I have ter get on the scent."

Mary-Clare gave a nervous laugh.

"Just old letters," she murmured, "but they meant, oh! they meant so much. Come," she said suddenly, "come, I must dress and get breakfast."

"I've et." Jan-an was gathering the bedclothes from the floor. She selected the coverlid and brought it to Mary-Clare. "There, now," she whispered, wrapping it about her, "you come along and get into bed downstairs till I make breakfast. You need looking after more than Noreen. G.o.d! what messes some folks can make by just living!"

Things were reduced to the commonplace in an hour.

The warmth of her bed, the sight of Noreen, the sound of Jan-an moving about, all contributed to the state of mind that made her panic almost laughable to Mary-Clare.

Things had happened too suddenly for her; events had become congested in an environment that was antagonistic to change. A change had undoubtedly come but it must be met bravely and faithfully.

The sun was flooding the big living-room when Mary-Clare, Noreen, and Jan-an sat down to the meal Jan-an had prepared. There was a feeling of safety prevailing at last. And then Jan-an, her elbows on the table, her face resting in her cupped hands, remarked slowly as if repeating a lesson:

"He's dead, Philander Sniff. Went terrible sudden after taking all this time. I clean forgot--letters and doings. I can't think of more than one thing at a time."

Mary-Clare set her cup down sharply while Noreen with one of those whimsical turns of hers drawled in a sing-song:

"Old Philander Sniff, he died just like a whiff----"

"Noreen!" Mary-Clare stared at the child while Jan-an chuckled in a rough, loose way as if her laugh were small stones rattling in her throat.

"Well, Motherly, Philander was a cruel old man. Just being dead don't make him anything different but--dead."

"Noreen, you must keep quiet. Jan-an, tell me about it."

Mary-Clare's voice commanded the situation. Jan-an's stony gurgle ceased and she began relating what she had come to tell.

"I took his supper over to him, same as usual, and set it down on the back steps, and when he opened the door I said, like I allas done, 'Peneluna says good-night,' and he took in the food and slammed the door, same as usual."