At the Crossroads Part 23

As she might have spoken to Noreen, so Mary-Clare spoke now to the woman who had only viewed life as Moses had the Promised Land, from her high mount.

"And so, can you not see, dear Aunt Polly, it isn't a thing that laws can touch; it isn't being good or bad--it is too big a Thing to call by name. Peneluna could starve and still keep it. She could be lonely and serve, but she _knew_. I don't love Larry, I cannot help it. All my life I am going to keep all of the promise I can, Aunt Polly, but I'm going to--to keep myself, too! A woman can give a man a good deal--but she can't give him some things if she tries to! Look at the women; some of them in the Forest. Aunt Polly, if marriage means what they look like----" Mary-Clare shuddered.

Aunt Polly had suddenly grown tender and far-seeing. She let go the sounding words that Church and State had taught her.

"Little girl," she said, and all her motherhood rushed forward to seize, as it had ever done, those "sc.r.a.ps" of others' lives, "suppose the time should come when there would be in your life another--someone besides Larry? Why has all this come so sudden to you?"

Northrup seemed to loom in the room, just beyond the fire's glow. Her fear was taking shape.

"Oh! dearie, I might then ask Larry to release me from my promise. My doctor used to say one could do that, but if he would not, why, then--I'd keep my bargain as far as I could. But----" and here Mary-Clare rose and flung her arms above her head. The action was jubilant, majestic. "Oh! the wonder of it all; to be free to be myself and prove what I _think_ is right without having to take another's idea of it. I'll listen; I'll try to understand and be patient--but it cannot be wrong, Aunt Polly, the thing I've done--since this great feeling of wings has come to me instead of heavy feet! Why, dear, I want something more than--than the things women _think_ are theirs. We don't know what is ours until we try."

"And fail, my child?" Aunt Polly was crying.

"Yes; and fail sometimes and be hurt--but paying and going on."

"And leaving your man behind you?"

"Aunt Polly"--Mary-Clare looked down upon the kind, quivering face--"a woman's man cannot be left behind. He'll be beside her somehow. If she stays back, as I've tried to do, she wouldn't be his woman! That's the dreadful trouble with Larry and me. But, dearie, it isn't always a man in a woman's life."

"But the long, lonely way, child!" Polly was retracing her own denied womanhood.

"It need not be lonely, dear, when we women find--other things. They will count. They must."

"What other things, Mary-Clare?"

"That's what we must be finding out, dear. Love; the man: some day they will be the glory, making everything more splendid, but not--the all. I think I should have died, Aunt Polly, had I kept on."

Like an inspired young oracle, Mary-Clare spoke and then dropped again by the fire.

"I've somehow learned all this," she whispered, "in my Place up on the hill. It just came to me, little by little, until it convinced me. I had to tell Larry the truth."

"Mary-Clare, I do not know; I don't feel able to put it into words, but I do believe you're going to make sad trouble for yourself, child.

Such a thing as this you have done has never been done before in the Forest."

"Maybe."

A door upstairs slammed loudly and both women started nervously.

"I must tell Peter to fix the latch of the attic door to-morrow," Aunt Polly said, relieved to be back on good, plain, solid ground. "The attic winders are raised and the wind's rising. It will be slam, slam all night, unless----" she rose quickly.

"Just a minute, Aunt Polly, I'm so tired. Please let me lie here on the couch and rest for an hour and then I'll slip home."

"Let me put you to bed properly, child. You look suddenly beat flat.

That's the way with women. They get to thinking they've got wings when they ain't, child, they ain't. You're making a terrible break in your life, child. Terrible."

Mary-Clare was arranging the couch.

"Come, dear," she wheedled, "you tuck me up--so! I'll bank the fire when I go and leave everything safe. A little rest and then to-morrow!--well, you'll see that I have wings, Aunt Polly; they are only tired now--for they are new wings! I know that it must seem all madness, but it had to come."

Aunt Polly pulled the soft covering over the huddled form--only the pale, wistful face was presently to be seen; the great, haunting eyes made Aunt Polly catch her breath. She bent and kissed the forehead.

"Poor, reaching-out child!" she whispered.

"For something that is _there_, Aunt Polly."

"G.o.d knows!"

"Of course He does. That's why He gave us the--reach. Good-night. Oh!

how I love you, Aunt Polly. Good-night!"

It was Northrup's door that had slammed shut. Aunt Polly went above, secured the innocent attic door, and then pattered down to her bedroom near Peter's, feeling that her house, at least, was safe.

It was silent at last. Northrup, in his dark chamber, lay awake and--ashamed, though heaven was his witness that his sin was not one he had planned. Aunt Polly had been on his mind. He hated to have her down there alone. Her sitting up for him had touched and--disturbed him; he had left his door ajar.

"I'll listen for a few minutes and if she doesn't go to bed, I'll go down and shake her," he concluded, and then promptly went to sleep and was awakened by voices. Low, earnest voices, but he heard no words and was sleepily confused. If he thought anything, he thought Peter had been doing what was needed to be done--driving Polly to bed!

And then Northrup _did_ hear words. A word here; a word there. He _knew_ things he had no right to know--he was awake at last, conscientiously, as well as physically. He got up and slammed the door!

But he could not go to sleep. He felt hot and cold; mean and indignant--but above all else, tremendously excited. He lay still a little longer and then opened his door in time to hear that "good-night, good-night"; and presently Aunt Polly's raid on the unoffending attic door at the other end of the corridor and her pattering feet on their way, at last, to her bedchamber.

"She's forgot to bank the fire." Northrup could see the glow from his post and remembered Uncle Peter's carefulness. "I'll run down and make things safe and lock the door." Northrup still held his respect for doors.

In heavy gown and soft slippers he noiselessly descended. The living-room at the far end was dark; the fire glowed at the other, dangerously, and one threatening log had rolled menacingly to the fore.

Bent upon quick action Northrup silently crossed the floor, grasped the long poker and pushed the blazing wood back past the safety line and held it there.

His face burned, but there was a hypnotic lure in that bed of red coals. All that he had just heard--a disjointed and rather dramatic revealment--was having a peculiar effect upon him. He had become aware of some important facts that accounted for things, such as Rivers's appearance on the Point. He had attributed that advent to Maclin's secret business; but it was, evidently, quite different.

What had occurred in the yellow house before the final break?

Northrup's imagination came to the fore fully equipped. Northrup was a man of the herd--at least he had been, until lately. He knew the tracks of the herd and its laws and codes.

"The brute!" he muttered under his breath; "and that kind of a girl, too. Nothing is too fine for some devils to appropriate and--smirch.

Poor little girl!"

And then Northrup recalled Mary-Clare as he had seen her that day as she emerged from the woods to meet him and her child. The glory of Peneluna's story was in her soul, the autumn sunlight on her face.

That lovely, smiling, untouched face of hers! Again and again that memory of her held his fancy.

"The cursed brute--hasn't _got_ her, thank G.o.d. She's out of the trap."

And, all unconsciously, while this moral indignation had its way, Northrup was drawing nearer to Mary-Clare; understanding her, appropriating her! G.o.d knew he meant no wrong. After all she had suffered he wasn't going to mess her life more--but he'd somehow make up to her what she'd a perfect right to. All men were not low and b.e.s.t.i.a.l. He had a duty--he would be above the touch of idle chatter; he would take a hand in the game!

And just then Northrup, controlled by the force of attraction, turned his head and looked at the face of Mary-Clare upon the couch near him!

In all his life Northrup had never looked upon the face of a sleeping woman, and it stirred him deeply. He became as rigid as marble; the heat beat upon him as it might have upon stone. And then--as such wild things do occur, his old, familiar dream came to him; he seemed _in_ the dream. He had at last opened one of those closed doors and was seeing what the secret room held! He was part of the dream as he was of his book in the making.

He breathed lightly; he did not move--but he was overcome by waves of emotion that had never before even lapped his feet.

At that instant Mary-Clare's eyes opened. For a moment they held his; then she turned, sighed, and he believed that she had not really awakened.