The Forester's Daughter Part 30

His voice broke, and it was a long time before he could finish. "You're not at fault, I know that, but if you _can_ stay on a little while and make it an ounce or two easier for her and for her mother, I wish you'd do it."

Wayland extended his hand impulsively. "Of course I'll stay. I never really thought of leaving." In the grip of McFarlane's hand was something warm and tender.

He rose. "I'm terribly obliged," he said; "but we mustn't let her suspect for a minute that we've been discussing her. She hates being pitied or helped."

"She shall not experience a moment's uneasiness that I can prevent,"

replied the youth; and at the moment he meant it.

Berrie could not be entirely deceived. She read in her father's face a subtle change of line which she related to something Wayland had said.

"Did he tell you what was in the telegram? Has he got to go away?" she asked, anxiously.

"Yes, he said it was from his father."

"What does his father want of him?"

"He's on his way to California and wants Wayland to go with him; but Wayland says he's not going."

A pang shot through Berrie's heart. "He mustn't go--he isn't able to go,"

she exclaimed, and her pain, her fear, came out in her sharpened, constricted tone. "I won't let him go--till he's well."

Mrs. McFarlane gently interposed. "He'll have to go, honey, if his father needs him."

"Let his father come here." She rose, and, going to his door, decisively knocked. "May I come in?" she demanded, rather than asked, before her mother could protest. "I must see you."

Wayland opened the door, and she entered, leaving her parents facing each other in mute helplessness.

Mrs. McFarlane turned toward her husband with a face of despair. "She's ours no longer, Joe. Our time of bereavement has come."

He took her in his arms. "There, there, mother. Don't cry. It can't be helped. You cut loose from your parents and came to me in just the same way. Our daughter's a grown woman, and must have her own life. All we can do is to defend her against the coyotes who are busy with her name."

"But what of _him_, Joe; he don't care for her as she does for him--can't you see that?"

"He'll do the right thing, mother; he told me he would. He knows how much depends on his staying here now, and he intends to do it."

"But in the end, Joe, after this scandal is lived down, can he--will he--marry her? And if he marries her can they live together and be happy?

His way of life is so different. He can't content himself here, and she can't fit in where he belongs. It all seems hopeless to me. Wouldn't it be better for her to suffer for a little while now than to make a mistake that may last a lifetime?"

"Mebbe it would, mother, but the decision is not ours. She's too strong for us to control. She's of age, and if she comes to a full understanding of the situation, she can decide the question a whole lot better than either of us."

"That's true," she sighed. "In some ways she's bigger and stronger than both of us. Sometimes I wish she were not so self-reliant."

"Well, that's the way life is, sometimes, and I reckon there's nothin'

left for you an' me but to draw closer together and try to fill up the empty place she's going to leave between us."

XIV

THE SUMMONS

When Wayland caught the startled look on Berrie's face he knew that she had learned from her father the contents of his telegram, and that she would require an explanation.

"Are you going away?" she asked.

"Yes. At least, I must go down to Denver to see my father. I shall be gone only over night."

"And will you tell him about our trip?" she pursued, with unflinching directness. "And about--me?"

He gave her a chair, and took a seat himself before replying. "Yes, I shall tell him all about it, and about you and your father and mother. He shall know how kind you've all been to me."

He said this bravely, and at the moment he meant it; but as his father's big, impa.s.sive face and cold, keen eyes came back to him his courage sank, and in spite of his firm resolution some part of his secret anxiety communicated itself to the girl, who asked many questions, with intent to find out more particularly what kind of man the elder Norcross was.

Wayland's replies did not entirely rea.s.sure her. He admitted that his father was harsh and domineering in character, and that he was ambitious to have his son take up and carry forward his work. "He was willing enough to have me go to college till he found I was specializing on wrong lines. Then I had to fight in order to keep my place. He's glad I'm out here, for he thinks I'm regaining my strength. But just as soon as I'm well enough he expects me to go to Chicago and take charge of the Western office. Of course, I don't want to do that. I'd rather work out some problem in chemistry that interests me; but I may have to give in, for a time at least."

"Will your mother and sisters be with your father?"

"No, indeed! You couldn't get any one of them west of the Hudson River with a log-chain. My sisters were both born in Michigan, but they want to forget it--they pretend they have forgotten it. They both have New-Yorkitis. Nothing but the Plaza will do them now."

"I suppose they think we're all 'Injuns' out here?"

"Oh no, not so bad as that; but they wouldn't comprehend anything about you except your muscle. That would catch 'em. They'd worship your splendid health, just as I do. It's pitiful the way they both try to put on weight. They're always testing some new food, some new tonic--they'll do anything except exercise regularly and go to bed at ten o'clock."

All that he said of his family deepened her dismay. Their interests were so alien to her own.

"I'm afraid to have you go even for a day," she admitted, with simple honesty, which moved him deeply. "I don't know what I should do if you went away. I think of nothing but you now."

Her face was pitiful, and he put his arm about her neck as if she were a child. "You mustn't do that. You must go on with your life just as if I'd never been. Think of your father's job--of the forest and the ranch."

"I can't do it. I've lost interest in the service. I never want to go into the high country again, and I don't want you to go, either. It's too savage and cruel."

"That is only a mood," he said, confidently. "It is splendid up there. I shall certainly go back some time."

He could not divine, and she could not tell him, how poignantly she had sensed the menace of the cold and darkness during his illness. For the first time in her life she had realized to the full the unrelenting enmity of the clouds, the wind, the night; and during that interminable ride toward home, when she saw him bending lower and lower over his saddle-bow, her allegiance to the trail, her devotion to the stirrup was broken. His weariness and pain had changed the universe for her. Never again would she look upon the range with the eyes of the care-free girl.

The other, the civilized, the domestic, side of her was now dominant. A new desire, a bigger aspiration, had taken possession of her.

Little by little he realized this change in her, and was touched with the wonder of it. He had never had any great self-love either as man or scholar, and the thought of this fine, self-sufficient womanly soul centering all its interests on him was humbling. Each moment his responsibility deepened, and he heard her voice but dimly as she went on.

"Of course we are not rich; but we are not poor, and my mother's family is one of the oldest in Kentucky." She uttered this with a touch of her mother's quiet dignity. "Your father need not despise us."

"So far as my father is concerned, family don't count, and neither does money. But he confidently expects me to take up his business in Chicago, and I suppose it is my duty to do so. If he finds me looking fit he may order me into the ranks at once."

"I'll go there--I'll do anything you want me to do," she urged. "You can tell your father that I'll help you in the office. I can learn. I'm ready to use a typewriter--anything."

He was silent in the face of her nave expression of self-sacrificing love, and after a moment she added, hesitatingly: "I wish I could meet your father. Perhaps he'd come up here if you asked him to do so?"

He seized upon the suggestion. "By George! I believe he would. I don't want to go to town. I just believe I'll wire him that I'm laid up here and can't come." Then a shade of new trouble came over his face. How would the stern, methodical old business man regard this slovenly ranch and its primitive ways? She felt the question in his face.