A Cry in the Wilderness Part 25

I told him of my hard-worked young years and my longing to get away to independence. I entered into no family details; it was not necessary.

I told him something of my struggle in New York and of my place in the Branch Library; of my long illness and how it had left me: tired out, listless, practically homeless and in need of immediate money. I told him how I sought Delia Beaseley on the strength of the advertis.e.m.e.nt; how she helped me; how I felt I had found release from the city and its burden of livelihood, and how happy I was with my new duties in the old manor house; how the fact that it was an old manor fed the vein of romance in me which neither hard work nor illness had been able to work out; how I enjoyed Jamie and Mrs. Macleod, Angelique, and Pierre and all the household--and how I had dreaded his coming, yet longed for it, because it would unsettle my future which was not to be in the manor house of Lamoral.

I told him all this, freely; but to speak of my mother, of my birth, of the papers, and of what I wanted them for, was beyond me. The secret of the Past, projected on the possible Future, loomed gigantic, threatening. I would let well enough alone.

"You poor child," he said, when I finished. That was all; but I knew that henceforth I should have a friend in Doctor Rugvie. He drove the rest of the way in silence.

XII

When I joined them an hour after supper, they were talking about the heater that had been put up in the living-room while we were away. The warmth from it was delightful, but the blazing fire in the fireplace gave the true cheer to the room, added charm for the eye. The Doctor looked up as I came in.

"Have you ever seen a stove like this--Marcia?" There was a twinkle both in his voice and his eye, as he called me for the first time by my Christian name. He was tease enough to try it in the presence of the rest of the household.

"Oh, yes, my grandfather had two in his farmhouse. There is nothing like them for an even heat; it never burns the face. The top is a lovely place to fry griddlecakes."

"You seem to know this species root and branch, Miss Farrell," said Mr.

Ewart. "After that remark may I challenge you to make a few for us some night for supper?"

"You won't have to challenge, for I like them myself; and if you 'll trust me we 'll have a griddlecake party here in this room some evening."

"My first innings, Marcia!" cried Jamie.

"I 'll have to let that go unchallenged, Macleod, seeing I 'm host; but you took unfair advantage of me. I 'll get even with you sometime."

"Where did you get your idea, Gordon?" The Doctor turned to his friend.

"I was born with it, you might say. I don't remember the time when we did n't have two or three in my father's house, and I 've never found anything equal to them for heating. They 're all out of date now; there is no manufactory for them. I had trouble in finding these, but I unearthed three last spring when I was in northern Vermont. I knew we should need them, and they keep all night, you know. I 'm going to have one put up in the bathroom--these oil stoves are an abomination."

"Amen," said the Doctor.

"So say we all of us.-- Hark, hear that wind!" said Jamie.

The stove was of soapstone, square, with hinged top that, opening upward, gave room for the insertion of a "chunk"--a huge, unsplittable, knotty piece of maple, birch, or beech. Cale came in with one while we were listening to the roar of the gale; it was a section of a maple b.u.t.t.

"There, thet 'll last all night an' inter the forenoon," he said, lowering it carefully into the glowing brands in the box. "I 'll shet up the drafts, an' you 'll have a small furnace with no dust nor dirt to bother with; an' the ashes is good fertilizer--can't be beat for clover."

"Let's take a household vote on the subject of modern improvements for the manor," said Mr. Ewart, helping himself to a cigar and then pa.s.sing the box to Cale who had turned to leave the room.

Cale took one with an "I thank _you_" this being a habit of speech to emphasize the last word, and was about to go out.

"Stay a while with us, Cale," said Mr. Ewart, speaking as a matter of course; "I want the opinion of every member of my household--my Anglo-Saxon one, I mean."

The two men stood facing each other, and between them I saw a look pa.s.s that bespoke mutual confidence. I thought they must have made rapid progress in one short day.

"Wal, I don't mind if I do. It's flatterin' to a man, say what you 've a mind ter, ter have his advice asked on any subject--let alone what interests him."

"That's a fine back-handed compliment for you, Ewart," said Jamie, whose delight in Cale's acquiescence was very evident.

"I took it so," said Mr. Ewart quietly, drawing up a chair beside his and motioning to Cale who, after a slight hesitation, sat down.

How cosy it was around the fire! Since our return from the pung ride, the wind had risen, keen and hard in the northwest and, crossing the Laurentians, was swooping down upon the river lands, swaying the great spruces in the woods all about us till it seemed as if ocean surf were breaking continuously just without the walls of the manor and, now and then, spending its force upon them until the great beams quivered under the impact. Every blast seemed to intensify our comfort within.

"The telephone will be a great convenience," Mrs. Macleod remarked from the corner of the sofa, looking up from her knitting; "it will save so many trips to the village in weather like this."

"Is it a long distance one, Gordon?" said Jamie who was lolling on the other end.

"Yes; I thought we might as well connect with almost anywhere. Our household is rather cosmopolitan. Does this suit you?"

"Suits me to a dot. I can talk with my 'best girl', as they call her in the States, when she is on the wing--as she is now."

"Oh, ho, Boy! Has it come to this so soon?" The Doctor sighed audibly, causing us to laugh.

"Jamie's 'best girl' changes with the season and sometimes the temperature, Doctor," said Mrs. Macleod, smiling at some remembrance.

"Do you recall a little girl who with her mother had lodgings at Duncairn House, just opposite ours in Crieff?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yes, and how Jamie Macleod enticed her away one summer afternoon to the meadows and banks of the Earn just below the garden gate, and the hue and cry that was raised when the two failed to make their appearance at supper time? Somebody--I won't say who--went to bed without porridge that night. What was her name, Boy?"

I saw, we all saw, just the least hesitation on Jamie's part to answer with his usual a.s.surance. We saw, also, the touch of red on his high cheek bones deepen a little.

"Bess--Bess Stanley."

"There is a Miss Stanley who visited at the new manor last summer--any relation, do you know?" asked Mr. Ewart.

"Same," Jamie answered concisely, meanwhile puffing vigorously at his pipe.

"The plot thickens, Mrs. Macleod," said the Doctor dubiously.

"Is she tall and slender and fair, Jamie?" I put what I considered an opportune question; I knew it would both surprise and irritate him as well as rouse his curiosity of which he has an abundance. I really spoke at a venture because the name recalled to me the two girls in the sleeping-car and their destination: Richelieu-en-Bas.

He turned to me with irony in his look. "She is all you say. May I make so bold as to enquire of you whether you speak from knowledge, or if you simply made a good guess?"

"From knowledge--first hand, of course," I said with a.s.surance.

He sat up then, eyeing me defiantly, much to the others' amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Perhaps you can give me further information about the young lady--all will be gratefully received."

"No, nothing--except that I believe it was she through whom you obtained Cale, was n't it?" I heard Cale chuckle.

"Look here, Marcia," he began severely enough, then burst into one of his hearty laughs that dissolves his irritation at once; "you 'll be telling me what she wrote me in my last letter if you 're such a mind reader. I say," he said, settling himself into a chair beside me, "let up on a man once in a while in the presence of such a cloud of witnesses, won't you? Take me when I 'm alone. The truth is, Ewart, Marcia gives herself airs because she is three years my senior. She takes the meanest kind of advantage; and I can't hit back because she 's a woman. But about that telephone, Ewart; are they going to run it on the trees."

"It's the only way at this season."

"Could n't it remain so the year round?" I asked.

"Why?" said Mr. Ewart.