I've Married Marjorie Part 13

If his heart smote him, as Marjorie's little, indomitable figure mounted the stairs, shoulders back and head high, he made no sign of it. Instead, in spite of the preponderance of men, he went back to the dance, and danced straight through till the end had come.

Marjorie went to bed, as she had said she would do. She did not go to sleep. Marjorie, as has been said, was not brave--that is, she could and did do brave things, but she always did them with her heart in her slippers. She did not know what the cooking would be, but she was sure it would be worse than she could imagine, and too much for her strength. The only comfort was the recollection that the dear brown cabin was hers to live in, every moment that she was not at work. She would have that rest and comfort. There was the shelf of books chosen for her by the far-off Francis who was not doubtful of her, and loved her and dreamed about her, and built a house all around the vision of her. And there might be times when she could hurry up a great deal, and lie on the window-seat and look out at the woodlands and dream.

She finally went to sleep. She wakened with a start, early, vaguely remembering that there was a great deal to do. Full remembrance came as she sprang out of bed and ran down the hall to her bath. She had to pack, and after luncheon Francis would carry her off to imprisonment with hard labor. And--why on earth was she doing it, when she could still go back with Logan? For a long half hour she struggled with herself, one minute deciding; to go back, the next deciding to stay.

Finally she faced the thing. She would see it through, if it killed her. She would make Francis respect her, if it took six months instead of three at hard labor. She would take the wages for the work she had done, and go back home a free, self-respecting woman.

She dressed herself quickly, and went down to breakfast, braced to play her part before the O'Maras. Short as her time with them, she was fond of them already.

"I think your devotion is a bit hard on yer wife," remarked Mrs.

O'Mara, whom Peggy had put in possession of the facts. "If I were her, I'd value an affection more that had less o' dishwashin' in it!"

"She's helping me over a pretty hard place." Francis said this calmly.

But he flushed in a way that, as Marjorie knew, meant he was disturbed.

"You know every man counts just now, and labor is cruelly scarce. I'm doing mine and a day-laborer's work besides, now. And the contract has to be finished."

"Well, of course, there's a gown or so for her in it," said Mrs. O'Mara comfortably. "And 'tis no more than a woman should do, to help out her man if he needs it. Have ye any ap.r.o.ns or work-dresses, me dear, for if not Peggy and me will make ye some. We've a bolt of stuff."

"No, and I'd be very glad if you would," said Marjorie, feeling the thing more irrevocable every moment.

"And rest this morning, and I'll pack for you," said Peggy affectionately. She led Marjorie out to the swing herself, and went upstairs to pack before she went to help her mother with the breakfast dishes.

Marjorie was too restless to lie still. She went out and walked about the place, and came back and lay down, and so put in the interminable hours till luncheon. After luncheon Francis appeared like the messenger of doom he was, put her and a small bag in the side-car and carried her off to her place of servitude.

The ride, in spite of all, was pleasant. For a while neither of them spoke. Then Francis did.

"I feel as if this was unfair to you--for apparently the O'Maras think, and I suppose everybody will, that you really are doing this to show your fondness for me. I shall have to ask you to let them think so."

"I have," she answered curtly.

"You don't understand. I--I am going to have to stay in the cabin with you. . . . There is the little upstairs balcony, I can bunk in that.

You know--the one over the door, with the little winding stair leading up to it. I--I'm sorry."

This was one more thing Marjorie hadn't counted on. But after all what did it matter? She expected to be so deadly tired from the work she had promised to do that she would never know whether Francis was in the house at all. And if there really were bears once in awhile it would really be better not to be all alone with them.

"Very well," she said. She looked hungrily at the thick trees they were speeding through. She supposed she would never have time to lie out under a tree, or go hunting for flowers and new little wood-paths again. She had read stories of lone, draggled women in logging-camps, toiling so hard they hadn't even time to comb their hair, but always wore it pulled back tight from their forehead. This wasn't a logging-camp, but she supposed there was very little difference.

She was very quiet for awhile. Francis, turning finally, a little uneasy, found that she was quietly crying. It happened that he had never seen her cry before.

"Please, Marjorie!" he begged in a terrified voice. "Please stop! Is there anything I can do?"

"You have done everything," she said in a little quiet voice that tried not to break, but did, most movingly, on the last word.

She said nothing more after that. After awhile she got hold of herself, dried her eyes, and began to watch the woods desperately again, as if she would never see them any more. If she had but known it, she was making Francis suffer as much as she was suffering herself.

"I'll bring the rest of your things over now," he said, when he had carried her little bag in and put it on her bed. He went out and left her alone, in the little wood-walled bedroom with its high, latticed windows, and Indian blankets and birch-bark tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. She lay on the bed apathetically awhile, then she began to notice things a little.

There was a kodak on her bureau. There were snowshoes, too small for a man surely--if you could tell of a thing the size of snowshoes--hanging on the wall. There was a fishing-rod case, with something hanging near it that she imagined was a flybook. There was a little trowel, and a graceful birch-bark basket, as if some one might want to go out and bring home plants. She got up finally, her curiosity stronger than her unhappiness, and investigated.

There was dust on everything. That is, except in one particular. On top of each article she had noticed was a square, clean place about the size of an envelope. There had been a note lying or pinned to each one of the things.

It occurred to Marjorie that a man who had not noticed the dust might have overlooked one of the notes; and she commenced a detailed and careful search. The kodak told no tales, nor the snowshoes. The fishing-rod was only explanatory to the extent of being too light and small for a man, and the basket's only contents were two pieces of oilcloth, apparently designed to keep wet plants from dripping too much.

She rose and tiptoed out into the living-room. There might be more notes there. Her spirits had gone up, and she was laughing to herself a little--it felt like exploring Bluebeard's castle. She investigated the book case, shaking out every book. She ran up to the toy balcony and even pushed out the couch there, noticing for the first time that the balcony had curtains which could be drawn. But there was nothing behind couch or curtains. She put her hands on the little railing and looked down at the room below her, to see if she had missed anything.

And her eyes fell on a cupboard which was level with the wall at one side, and had so escaped her eye heretofore. Also there was a sc.r.a.pbasket which might tell tales.

She dashed down the little stair, and made for the sc.r.a.pbasket, but Francis was more thorough than she had thought, and it was empty. She opened the cupboard and looked in--there was a little flashlight lying near it, and she illuminated the dark with it. There in the cupboard lay a banjo.

"Gracious!" breathed Marjorie. "What a memory!" For she _could_ play the banjo, and it appeared that she must have said so to Francis in those first days. "He must have dashed home and made out lists every night!" she concluded as she dragged it out. It was unstrung, but new strings lay near it, coiled in their papers. And under the papers, so like them that he had forgotten to destroy it, lay a veritable note.

"It isn't really from him to me," she thought, her heart beating unaccountably as she sat back on her heels and tore the envelope open.

"It's from the Francis he thought he was, to the Marjorie he thought I was."

But she read it just the same.

"For my dear little girl, if she comes true," was the superscription.

"I don't know whether you'll find this first or last, honey. But it's for you to play on, sometimes, in the evenings, sitting on the window-seat with me, or out on the veranda if you'd rather. But wherever you sit to play it, I may stay quite close to you, mayn't I?"

She was tired and overstrained. That was probably why she put both arms around the banjo as if it was somebody that loved her, and cried on it very much as if it were a baby. And when she went back to her room to replace things as she had found them she carried it with her.

She was calmer after that, for some reason. She had the illogical feeling that some one had been kind to her. She put her things away in the drawers, and even had the courage to lay out for herself the all-enveloping gingham ap.r.o.n, much shortened, which Mrs. O'Mara had loaned her till she and Peggy could run up some more. She supposed Francis would want her to start in with the cooking that night. So she put on her plainest dress and easiest shoes, and then, there being nothing else to do, took the banjo out into the sitting-room and began to string it. And as she strung she thought.

She was going to have to be pretty close to Francis till her term of service was up; she might as well not fight him. It would make things easier all round if she didn't, as long as she had to keep on friendly terms before people.

The truth was, that she couldn't but feel softened to the man who had written that boyish, loving note. "Even if it wasn't to the her he knew now, it was to the Marjorie of last year, and she was a near relation," thought the Marjorie of this year whimsically.

So when Francis came back with the rest of her baggage he found her on the window-seat with the banjo in her lap, fingering it softly, and smiling at him. She could see that he was a little startled, but he had himself in hand directly, and came forward, saying, "So you found the banjo. I got it for you in the first place. Is it any good?"

"Oh, did you?" inquired his wife innocently. "Yes, it's a very good banjo. Maybe I'll find time to play it some day when the housework for the men is out of the way. What do I do when I begin? And hadn't we better go over now?"

"I didn't expect you to start till to-morrow," he explained. "I've taken one of the men off his regular work to attend to it till then."

"Oh, that's kind of you," she answered, still friendly and smiling to a degree that seemed to perplex him. "But perhaps you could take me over to-night and show me. I'll get supper for us two here, if you like, and afterward we can go over, and you can introduce me to your men as the new cook. I hope they'll like me as well as Pierre."

He looked at her still as if she were behaving in a very unexpected way. A tamed Marjorie was something new in his experience; and tameness at this juncture was particularly surprising. Francis was beginning to feel like a brute, which may have been what his wife intended.

"That's very kind of you," he managed to say. "You're sure you are not too tired for any of that?"

"Being tired isn't going to count, is it?" she asked, smiling. "No, I don't mind doing it. It will be like playing with a doll-house. You know, I love this little place."

In her wicked heart she was thinking, "He shall miss me--oh, if I can keep my temper and be perfectly lovely for three months he shall miss me so when I go and get my divorce that he will want to _die_!" And she looked up at him, one hand on the banjo, as if they were the best friends in the world.

"It isn't time to get supper yet, is it?" she pursued. "You used to like to hear me sing. Don't you want to sit down here by me while I see how the banjo works, just for a little while?"

"No!" said Francis abruptly. "I have to--I have to go and see after a lot more work."

He flung out the door, and it crashed after him. And Marjorie laughed softly and naughtily to herself over the banjo, and pushed the note that had dwelt within farther down inside her dress. "I wish I had the rest!" said she. "Let me see. The kodak was for both of us to go out and take pictures together, of course. The snowshoes--that would have had to wait till winter. The basket and trowel were so we could plant lots of lovely woodsy things we found around the cabin, to see if they would take root. And he must have been going to teach me to fish. I wonder why he wasn't going to teach me to shoot. There must be a rifle somewhere--maybe it hasn't lost its note, if it was hidden hard enough.

And he remembered how I liked 'surprises.' He certainly would have made a good lover if I hadn't----"