A Cry in the Wilderness Part 16

"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:

"Maitresse 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 Angelique 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 pa.s.s 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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tles.

"'The Anthracite Coal Industry'."

"Well, give it to me; I 'll cla.s.sify 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 t.i.tle, 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 att.i.tude 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 'd.a.m.ns'! 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 "d.a.m.ns" 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 gla.s.ses.