A Cry in the Wilderness Part 17

We let him mercifully alone; but I went on with my work, reading t.i.tles, cla.s.sifying, 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 a.s.sume 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 att.i.tude 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 circ.u.mstance--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 pa.s.sageway. 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 Angelique 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 embarra.s.sment 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 pa.s.sageway, 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 pa.s.sageways 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 ma.s.s 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."