I've Married Marjorie Part 17

"I wish you hadn't reminded me. I'd forgotten all about hating you for your horrid ways. It was just before he came to. He thought he was talking to you, and he said, 'You had no right to force her to do that work, Ellison, it will kill her.'"

"And was that all?" asked Marjorie.

"Wasn't that enough? And I ask you, Marjorie Ellison, isn't it true?

Hasn't Francis forced you to come over here and do his cooking for him?

Oh, Francis, I can't understand it in you," said poor Peggy, looking up at him appealingly. "You that were always so tender and kind with every one, to make a poor little thing like Marjorie work at cooking and cleaning for great rough men."

Francis had colored up while she spoke. One hand, behind his back, was clenching and unclenching nervously. He was fronting the two girls, but turned a little away from Marjorie and toward Peggy, so Marjorie could see it. Aside, from that he was perfectly quiet, and so far as any one could see, entirely unmoved. Only Marjorie knew he was not unmoved. That dark, thin, clenching hand--she had seen it before, restless and betraying, and she knew it meant that Francis was angry or unhappy. She felt curiously out of it all. She had made up her mind once and for all to go through with her penance, if one could call it that. Her mind was so unsettled and hard to make up that, once made up on this particular point, she felt it would be more trouble to stop than to go on. She leaned a little back against Peggy's guarding arm, and let the discussion flow on by her.

"Marjorie is free to go at any time; she knows that," he said.

Marjorie looked at him full. She said nothing whatever. But Peggy's Irish wit jumped at the right solution.

"Yes, free to go, no doubt, but with what kind of a string to it?" she demanded triumphantly. "I'll wager it's like the way mother makes me free of things. 'Oh, sure ye can smoke them little cigarette things if ye like--_but_ if ye do it's out of my door ye'll go!'"

Marjorie thought it was time to take a hand here. Francis was standing there, still, not trying to answer Peggy. He seemed to Marjorie pitifully at their mercy; why, she did not know, for he had neither said nor looked anything but the utmost sternness. And Marjorie herself knew that he was not being kind or fair--that he had not been, in his exaction. Still she looked at that hand, moving like a sentient thing, and spoke.

"Peggy, some day I'll tell you all about it, or Francis will. You and Francis have been friends for a long, long time, and I don't want you to be angry with him because of me--just a stranger. And for the present, I can tell you only this, that Francis is right, I am doing this of my own free will. You are a darling to come and care about what happens to me."

Peggy was softened at once. She pulled Marjorie to her and gave her a sounding kiss.

"And you're a darling, too, and you're not a stranger--don't we love you for Francis's sake--oh, there, and I was forgetting! I suppose I'm not to be down on you, Francis. But I couldn't help thinking things were queer. It's not the customary way to let your bride spend her honeymoon, from all I've heard. Oh, and it's five o'clock, and it takes an hour and a half to get back, though I borrowed the priest's housekeeper's bicycle."

She sprang up, dropping from her lap the bundle of ap.r.o.ns which Marjorie had waited for.

"Mind, Francis, I've not forgiven you yet," she called back. "When poor Mr. Logan is better I'll have the whole story out of him, or my name's not Margaret O'Mara."

She was on her bicycle and away before they could answer her.

"And it's time I went over to the cook-shed," said Marjorie evenly, rising, too, and beginning to unfasten the bundle of ap.r.o.ns. They were a little hard to unfasten, from the too secure knots Mrs. O'Mara had made, and she dropped down again, bending intently over them to get them free. Suddenly they were pushed aside, and Francis had flung himself down by her, with his head on her knees, holding her fast.

"Oh, Marjorie, Marjorie!" he said. "Don't stay. I can't bear to have you acting like this--like an angel. I've been unfair and unkind--it didn't need Peggy to tell me that. Go on away from me. And forgive me, if you can, some time."

She looked down at the black head on her knees. It was victory, then--of a sort. And suddenly her perverse heart hardened.

"Please get up, Francis," she said in the same cold and even voice she had used before. "I haven't time for this sort of thing; it's time I went over and got the men their supper. They'll be ready for it at six, Pennington said."

He rose quietly and stood aside, while she took off the ap.r.o.n of Mrs.

O'Mara's that she had been making shift with, and put one of the new ones on in its place, and went out of their cabin. She never looked back. She went swiftly and straight to the cook-shed and began work on the evening meal. There was a feeling of triumph in her heart. And nothing on earth would tempt her to go now. Francis was beginning to feel his punishment. And she wasn't through with him yet.

She found an oven which sat on top of the burners, and had just managed to lift it into its place when Pennington walked leisurely in behind her.

"I had to come back to get your husband," he explained, "and I thought I'd see if you were in any troubles. Let me set that straight for you."

He adjusted it as it should be, and lingered to tell her anything else she might wish to know.

"I'm going to give them codfish cakes for breakfast," she confided to him, "a great many! But what on earth can I have for their dinners?"

"There is canned corn beef hash," he suggested. "That would do all right for to-night. Or you might have fish."

"Where would I get it?"

"Indians. They come by with strings of fish to sell, often. I think I can go out and send one your way."

"You speak as if there were Indians around every corner," she said.

"No-o, not exactly," he answered her slowly. "But the truth is that I saw one, with a string of fish, crossing up from the stream, not long ago. As I was riding and he walking, I think it likely that I shall intercept him on my way back. That is, if you want the fish."

"Oh, indeed, I do," she a.s.sured him eagerly. "That is--do you think the Indian--he won't hurt me, will he? And do you think he would clean them for me?"

"I think I can arrange that with him," Pennington, who was rapidly a.s.suming the shape of a guardian angel to Marjorie, a.s.sured her.

"And now I must go and tell your husband that he's wanted down where the men are."

"Thank you," she said, looking up at his plump, tanned, rather quaint face--so like, as she always thought, a middle-aged rector's in an English novel--with something grotesque and yet pathetic about it. "I don't know what I'd do without your help. In a day or so I may get to the point where I'll be very clever, and very independent."

She smiled up at him, and he looked down at her with what she characterized in her own mind as his motherly expression. "You're such a little thing!" he said as if he couldn't help it. Then, after a hasty last inquiry as to whether there was anything more he could do, he went off in search of Francis.

She looked after him with a feeling of real affection.

"He's the nearest I have to a mother!" she said to herself whimsically, as she addressed herself to the preparation of the evening meal. She had conceived the brilliant plan of doing the men's lunches, where it was possible, the night before. In this way, she thought, though it might take a little more time in the afternoon, it would make things easier in the mornings. Such an atmosphere of hurry as she had lived in that morning, while it had been rather fun for once, would be too tiring in the long run, she knew. And the run would be long--three months.

The Indian came duly with the fish, all cleaned and ready to fry. She was baking beans in the oven for to-morrow's luncheons. So she baked the potatoes, too, and hunted up some canned spinach, and then--having miscalculated her time--conceived the plan of winning the men's hearts with a pudding. She was sure Pierre's cookery had never run to such delicacies. And even then there was time to spare. The men were late, or something had happened. So she looked to be sure that there was nothing more she could do, and then strayed off to the edges of the woods, looking for flowers. She found clumps of bloodroot, great anemone-flowers that she picked by the handful. There were some little blue flowers, also, whose name she did not know; and sprays of wintergreen berries and long gra.s.ses. Greatly daring, she put one of the low, flat vases she had found in her cabin in the center of the men's trestle-table, and filled it with her treasure-trove. Then, a little tired, she sat down by the table herself, resting for a moment before the drove should come home.

They were in on her before she knew it. She thought afterward that she must have fallen asleep. How dainty and how winning a picture of home she made for the rough men, she never thought. But the men did, and the foremost one, a big, rough Yankee, instinctively halted on tiptoe as he saw her, leaning back in her chair with her eyes shut. Marjorie was not in the least fragile physically, but she was so little and slender that, in spite of her wild-rose flush and her red lips, she always impressed men with a belief in her fragility.

"Look at there, boys!" he half said, half whispered; and the crew halted behind him, looking at Marjorie as if she were some very wonderful and lovely thing.

The steps, or perhaps the eyes fixed admiringly on her, woke Marjorie.

She opened her eyes, and smiled a little. She had gone to sleep very pleased, on account of the flowers, and of having arranged her work so it fitted in properly.

"Oh, you've come!" she said, smiling at them as a friendly child might smile, flushed with sleep. "Did you have a hard day? Everything's ready."

She was up and out in the cook-shed, half-frightened of their friendly eyes, before they could say any more. That is, to her.

"Gosh, that's some wife of yours!" said one of them to Francis, who was a little in the rear of the others. "But ain't she a little thing?"

Francis simply said "Yes" constrainedly. He had heard all that before.

Pennington, who did not as a rule like girls, had been telling him what a lucky devil he was, as they went over to the working place together.

He also had said that Marjorie was a little thing. And the note in his voice as he said it had insinuated to Francis, who was all too sensitive for such insinuations, that she was scarcely the type of woman to cook for a men's camp. Francis felt quite remorseful enough already. He sat down with the rest, while Marjorie brought in first the big platter of fish, then the vegetables, and a big pitcher of cocoa which she had made.

"Some eats!" said another of the crew, and Marjorie dimpled appreciatively. While she went out again, after something she had forgotten, one of the Frenchmen whispered bashfully to Pennington, who was Francis's a.s.sistant. He smiled his slow, half-mocking, half-kindly smile, and pa.s.sed it on to Francis.

"Ba'tiste says that he wonders if the lady would sit down and eat with us. Do you think she would, Ellison? It's a long time since any of us had a lady keep house for us."

"I'll ask her," said Francis, the taciturn. He would rather have done a good many things than go to Marjorie with a request, as things stood between them, but there was nothing else for it. He came on her, standing on tiptoe at the cupboard, like a child, trying to reach down a cup. She had counted one too few.

He stood behind her and took it down, reaching over her head.