CHAPTER III

25

“How has it worked out?” Northrup heard the words as if another spoke them.

“I guess, friend, that’s what no one actually knows.” Peter pulled on his pipe. “Larry is on and off. Maclin, over to the mines, seems to do the ordering of Larry’s coming and going. Darned funny business, I say. However, there you are. When Larry is home I guess the way Mary-Clare holds her head and laughs gets on his nerves. No man likes to feel that he can’t clutch hold of his wife, but it comes to that, say what you will, Mary-Clare keeps free of things in a mighty odd fashion; I mean the real part of her; the other part goes regular enough.

“She don’t slacken up on her plain duty. What the ole Doc left she shares right enough with Larry; she keeps the house like it should be kept, and she’s a good second to Polly here, where fodder is concerned. But something happened when Larry was last home that leaked out somehow. A girl called Jan-an let it slip. Not a quarrel exactly, but a thing that wasn’t rightfully settled. Larry was ordered off, sudden, by Maclin, but take it from me, when Larry comes back he’ll get his innings. Larry isn’t what you could call a sticker, but he gets there all the same. He ain’t going to let any woman go too far with him. That’s where Larry comes out strong––with women.”

“I don’t know as you ought to talk so free, brother.” Polly looked dubious.

“In the meantime,” Northrup said quietly, “the little wife lives alone in the yellow house, waiting?” He hadn’t heard Polly’s caution.

He was thinking of Mary-Clare’s look when she confronted him the day of his coming. Was she expecting her husband? Had she learned to love him? Was she that kind of woman? The kind that thrives on neglect and indifference?

“Not alone, as you might say,” Heathcote’s voice drawled. “There’s Noreen, her little girl, you know. Noreen seems at times to be about a thousand years older than her mother, but by actual count she’s going on six, ain’t that it, Polly?”

26

Again Northrup felt as he had that day by the lightning-shattered tree.

“Her little girl?” he asked slowly, and Aunt Polly raised her eyes to his face. She looked troubled, vaguely uneasy.

“Yep!” Peter rose stiffly. He wanted to go to bed. “Noreen’s the saving from the litter. How many was there, Polly?”

Polly got upon her feet, the trouble-look growing in her eyes.

“Noreen had a twin as was dead,” she said tenderly. “Then the last one lived two hours––that’s all, brother.” She walked to the window. “The storm is setting this way,” she went on. “Just listen to that lake acting up as if it was the ocean.”

The riotous swish of the water sounded distant but insistent in the warm, quiet room, and faintly, at rare intervals, the bell, rung by unseen forces, struck dully. It had given up the struggle.

Northrup, presently, had a strong inclination to say to his host that he had changed his mind and must leave on the morrow. That course seemed the only safe and wise one.

“But why?” Something new and uncontrolled demanded an answer. Why, indeed? Why should anything he had heard cause him to change his plans? This hectic story of a young woman had set his imagination afire, but it must not make a fool of him. What really was taking place became presently overpoweringly convincing.

“I am going to write!”

That was it! The story had struck his dull brain into action and he had been caught in time, before running away. He had gained the thing he had been pursuing, and he might have let it escape! The woman of the yellow house became a mere bearer of a rare gift––his restored power! He was safe; everything was safe. The world had righted itself at last. It wasn’t the woman with the dun-coloured ending to her story that mattered; it was the story.

“I think I’ll turn in,” he said, stifling a yawn, “Good-night.”

27

“Don’t hurry about breakfast,” Aunt Polly said gently. “Breakfast is only a starter, I always hold. It’s like kindlings to start the big logs. Sleep well, and God bless you!”

She smiled up at her guest as if he were an old friend––come back!

Up in his room Northrup had difficulty in keeping himself from work. He dared not begin; if he did he would write all night. He must be sure. In the meantime, he wrote to his mother:

By the above heading you’ll see how far I’ve got on my way, searching for my lost health. I’m really in great shape. Manly was right: I had to let go! I’m struggling now between two courses. Apparently I was in a blue funk; all I needed was to find it out. Well, I’ve found it out. Shall I come home and prove it by doing the sensible thing, or shall I go on and make it doubly sure? If anything important turns up I would telegraph, but in case Idogo on I want to do the job thoroughly and for a time lose myself. I will wait your word, Mother.

By the above heading you’ll see how far I’ve got on my way, searching for my lost health. I’m really in great shape. Manly was right: I had to let go! I’m struggling now between two courses. Apparently I was in a blue funk; all I needed was to find it out. Well, I’ve found it out. Shall I come home and prove it by doing the sensible thing, or shall I go on and make it doubly sure? If anything important turns up I would telegraph, but in case Idogo on I want to do the job thoroughly and for a time lose myself. I will wait your word, Mother.

Northrup was not seeking to deceive any one. He might strike out for new places in a week, or he might, if the mood held, write in King’s Forest. It all depended upon the mood. What really mattered was an unfettered state.

The vagrant in him, that had been starved and denied, rose supreme. Now that he was sure that he was going to write, had a big theme, there was excuse for his desire to be free. He would return to his chink in the wall, as Manly explained, better fitted for it and with a wider vision. He had a theory that a writer was, more or less, like a person with a contagious disease: he should be exiled until all danger to the peace and happiness of others was past. If only the evenly balanced folks would see that and not act as if they were being insulted!

While he undressed, Northrup was sketching his plot mentally. In the morning it would befixed; it would be more like copying than creating when a pen was resorted to.

“I’ll take that girl in the yellow house and do no end of things with her. Dual personality! Lord, and in this stagnant28pool! All right. Dual personality. Now she must get a jog about her husband and wake up! Two men and one woman. Triangle, of course. Nothing new under God’s heaven. It’s the handling of the ragged old things. I can make rather a big story out of the ingredients at hand.”

Northrup felt that he was going to sleep; going to rise to the restored desire for work. No wonder he laughed and whistled––softly; he had overtaken himself!

Three days later a telegram came from Mrs. Northrup.

“Go on,” it said simply. Mrs. Northrup knew when it was wisest to let go. But this was not true of Kathryn Morris, the other woman most closely attached to Northrup’s life. Kathryn never let go. When she lost interest in any one, or anything, she flung it, or him, from her with no doubtful attitude of mind. Kathryn meant to marry Northrup some day and he fully expected to marry her, though neither of them could ever recall just when, or how, this understanding had been arrived at.

It was, to all appearances, a most fitting outcome to close family interests and friendships. It had just naturally happened up to the point when both would desire to bring it to a culmination. The next step, naturally, must be taken by Kathryn for, when Northrup had ventured to suggest, during his convalescence, a definite date for their wedding, Kathryn had, with great show of tenderness, pushed the matter aside.

The fact was, marriage to Kathryn was not a terminal, but a way station where one was obliged to change for another stretch on a pleasant and unhampered journey, and she had no intention of marrying a possible invalid or, perhaps, a dying man.

So while Northrup struggled out of his long and serious illness, Kathryn played her little game under cover. Some women, rather dull and stupid ones, can do this admirably if they are young enough and lovely enough to carry it through, and Kathryn was both. She had also that peculiar asset of looking divinely intuitive and sweet during her silences, and it would have taken a keen reader of human29nature to decide whether Kathryn Morris’s silences brooded over a rare storeroom of treasure or over a haunted and empty chamber.

Without any one being aware of the reasons for his reappearance, a certain Alexander Arnold materialized while Northrup had been at his worst. Sandy Arnold had figured rather vehemently in the year following Kathryn’s “coming out,” but had faded away when Northrup began to show signs of becoming famous.

Arnold was a man who made money and lost it in a breath-taking fashion, but gradually he was steadying himself and was more often up than down––he was decidedly up at the time of Northrup’s darkest hour; he was still refusing to disappear when Northrup emerged from the shadows and showed signs of persisting. This was disconcerting. Kathryn faced a situation, and situations were never thrilling to her: she lacked the sporting spirit; she always played safe or endeavoured to. Sandy was still in evidence when Northrup disappeared from the scene.

Mrs. Northrup read Brace’s letter to Kathryn, and something in the girl rose in alarm. This ignoring of her, for whatever reason, was most disturbing. Brace should have taken her, if not his mother, into his confidence. Instead he had “cut and run”––that was the way Kathrynthoughtof it. Aloud she said, with that ravishing look of hers:

“How very Brace-like! Getting material and colour I suppose he calls it. I wish”––this with a tender, yearning smile––“I wish, for your sake and mine, dear, that his genius ran in another direction, stocks or banking––anything with an office. It is so worrying, this trick of his of hunting plots.”

“I only hope that he can write again,” Mrs. Northrup returned, patting the letter on her knee. Once she had wanted to write, but she had had her son instead. In her day women did not have professionsandsons. They chose. Well, she had chosen, and paid the price. Her husband had cost her much; her son was her recompense. He was her interpreter, also.

“Where do you think he’ll go?” Kathryn asked.

30

“He’ll tell us when he comes home.” There was something cryptic about Helen Northrup when she was seeking to help her son. Kathryn once more bridled. She was direct herself, very direct, but her advances were made under a barrage fire.

Her next step was to go to Doctor Manly. She chose his office hour, waited her turn, and then pleaded wakefulness and headache as her excuse for the call.

Manly hated wakefulness and headaches. You couldn’t put them under the X-ray; you couldn’t operate on them; you had to deal with them by faith. Kathryn was not lacking in imagination and she gave a fairly accurate description of long, black hours and consequent pain––“here.” She touched the base of her brain. She vaguely recalled that the nerve centres were in that locality.

Manly was impressed and while he was off on that scent, somehow Northrup got into the conversation.

“I cannot help worrying about Brace, more for his mother’s sake than his.” Kathryn looked very sweet and womanly, “He has been so ill and the letter his mother has just receivedisdisturbing.”

Here Kathryn quoted it and Manly grinned.

“That’s all right,” he said, shaking a bottle of pills. “It does a human creature no end of good to run away at times. I often wonder why more of us don’t do it and come back keener and better.”

“Some of us have duties.” Kathryn looked noble and self-sacrificing.

“Some of us would perform them a darned sight better if we took the half holiday now and then that the soul, or whatever you call it, craves. Now Northrup ought to look to his job––itisa job in his case. You wouldn’t expect a travelling salesman to hang around his shop all the time, would you?”

Kathryn had never had any experience with travelling salesmen––she wasn’t clear as to their mission in life. So she said doubtfully:

“I suppose not.”

31

“Certainly not! An office man is one thing; a professional man, another; and these wandering Johnnies, like Northrup, still another breed. He’s been starving his scent––that’s what I told him. Too muchwomanin his––and I don’t mean to hurt you, Kathryn, but you ought to get it into your system that marrying a man like Northrup is like marrying a doctor or minister; you’ve got to have a lot of faith or you’re going to break your man.”

Kathryn’s eyes contracted, then she laughed.

“How charming you are, Doctor Manly, when you’re making talk. Are those pills bitter?” Kathryn reached out for them. “Not that I mind, but I hate to be taken by surprise.”

“They’re as bitter as––well, they’re quinine. You need toning up.”

“You think I need a change?” The tone was pensive.

“Change?” Manly had a sense of humour. “Well, yes, I do. Go to bed early. Cut out rich food; you’ll be fat at forty if you don’t, Miss Kathryn. Take up some good physical work, not exercises. Really, it would be a great thing for you if you discharged one of your maids.”

“Which one, Doctor Manly?”

“The one who is on her feet most.”

And so, while Northrup settled down in King’s Forest, and his mother fancied him travelling far, Kathryn set her pretty lips close and jotted down the address of Helen Northrup’s letter in a small red book.

32CHAPTER III

Mary-Clare stood in the doorway of the little yellow house. Her mud-stained clothes gave evidence that the recent storm had not kept her indoors––she was really in a very messy, caked state––but it was always good to breathe the air after a big storm; it was so alive and thrilling, and she had put off a change of dress while she debated a second trip. There was a stretching-out look on Mary-Clare’s face and her eyes were turned to a little trail leading into the hilly woods across the highway.

Noreen came to the door and stood close to her mother. Noreen was only six, but at times she looked ageless. When the child abandoned herself to pure enjoyment, she talked baby talk and––played. But usually she was on guard, in a fierce kind of blind adoration for her mother. Just what the child feared no one could tell, but there was a constant appearance of alertness in her attitude even in her happiest moments.

“I guess you want the woods, Motherly?” The small up-turned face made the young mother’s heart beat quicker; the tie was strong between them.

“I do, Noreen. It has been ten whole days since I had them.”

“Well, Motherly, why don’t you go?”

“And leave my baby alone?”

“I’ll get Jan-an to come!”

“Oh! you blessed!” Mary-Clare bent and kissed the worshipping face. “I tell you, Sweetheart. Mother will take a bite of lunch and go up the trail, if you will go to Jan-an. If you cannot find her, then come up the trail to Motherly––how will that do?”

33

“Yes,” Noreen sweetly acquiesced. “I’ll come to the––the–––” she waited for the word.

“Yawning Gap,” suggested the mother, reverting to a dearly loved romance.

“Yes. I’ll come to the Yawning Gap and I’ll give the call.”

“And I’ll call back:Oh! wow!––Oh! wo!” The musical voice rose like a flute and Noreen danced about.

“And I’ll answer:wo wow!––oh!” The piping tones were also flute-like, an echo of the mother’s.

“And then, down will fall the drawbridge with a mighty clatter.” Mary-Clare looked majestic even in her muddy trousers as she portrayed the action. “And over the Gap will come the Princess Light-of-my-Heart with her message.”

“Ah! yes, Motherly. It will be such fun. But if Jan-an can come here to stay, then what?” the voice faltered.

“Why, Light-of-my-Heart, I will return strong and hungry, and Jan-an and my Princess and I will sit by the fire to-night and roast chestnuts and apples and there will be such a story as never was before.”

“Both ways are beautiful ways, Motherly. I don’t know which is bestest.”

It was always so with Mary-Clare and Noreen, all ways were alluring; but the child had deep intuitions, and so she set her face at once away from the little yellow house and the mother in the doorway, and started on her quest of Jan-an.

When the child had passed from sight Mary-Clare packed a bit of luncheon in a basket and ran lightly across the road. She looked back, making sure that no one was watching her movements, then she plunged into the woods, her head lowered, and her heart throbbing high.

The trail was not an easy one––Mary-Clare had seen to that!––and as no one but Noreen and herself ever trod it, it was hardly discernible to the uninitiated. Up and up the path led until it ended at a rough, crude cabin almost hidden by a tangle of vines.

Looking back over the years of her married life, Mary-Clare often wondered how she could have endured them but34for the vision and strength she received in her “Place,” as she whimsically called it––getting her idea from a Bible verse.

Among the many things that old Doctor Rivers had given Mary-Clare was a knowledge and love of the Bible. He had offered the book to her as literature and early in life she had responded to the appeal. The verse that had inspired her to restore a deserted cabin to a thing of beauty and eventually a kind of sanctuary, was this:

And the woman fled into the wilderness where she hath a place prepared of God that they should feed her there.

And the woman fled into the wilderness where she hath a place prepared of God that they should feed her there.

The words, roughly carved, were traced on the east wall of the cabin and under a picture of Father Damien.

The furniture of the shack was made by Mary-Clare’s own hands. A long table, some uneven shelves for books she most loved, a chair or two and a low couch over which was thrown a gay-patched quilt. Once the work of love was completed, Nature reached forth with offerings of lovely vines and mountain laurel and screened the place from any chance passer-by.

A hundred feet below the cabin was a little stream. That marked the limit of even Noreen’s territory unless, after due ceremony, she was permitted to advance as far as the cabin door. The pretty game was evolved to please the child and secure for the mother a privacy she might not have got in any other way.

As Mary-Clare reached the “Place” this autumn day, she was a bit breathless and stepped lightly as one does who approaches a shrine; she went inside and, kneeling by the cracked but dustless hearth, lighted a fire; then she took a seat by the rough table, clasped her hands upon it and lifted her eyes to the words upon the opposite wall.

Sitting so, a startling change came over the young face. It was like a letting down of strong defences. The smile fled, the head bowed, and a pitiful look of appeal settled from brow to trembling lips.

Mary-Clare had come to a sharp turn on her road and, as35yet, she could not see her way! She had drifted––she could, with Larry away––but now he was coming home!

She had tried, God knew, for three long months to be sure. Shemustbe sure, she was like that; sure that shefelther way to be therightway; so sure that, should she find it later the wrong way, she could retrace her steps without remorse. It was the believing, at the start, that she was doing right, that mattered.

Sitting in the quiet room with the autumn sunlight coming through the clustering vines at window and door and falling upon her in dancing patterns, the woman waited for guidance. The room became a place of memory and vision.

Help would come, she still had the faith, but it must come at once for her husband might at any hour return from one of his mysterious business trips and there must be a decision reached before she met him. She could not hope to make him understand her nor sympathize with her; he and she, beyond the most ordinary themes, spoke different languages. She had learned that.

She must take her stand alone; hold it alone; but the stand must seem to her right and then she could go on. Like the flickering sunbeams playing over her, the past came touching her memory with light and shade, unconsciously preparing her for her decision. She was not thinking, but thought was being formed.

The waves of memory swept Mary-Clare from her moorings. She was no longer the harassed woman facing her problem in the clear light of conviction; but the child, whose mistaken ideals of love and loyalty had betrayed her so cruelly. Why had she who early had been taught by Doctor Rivers to “use her woman brain,” gone so utterly astray?

Why had she married Larry when she never loved him; felt him to be a stranger, simply because he had interpreted the words of a dying man for her?

In the light of realization the errors of life become our most deadly accusers. We dare not make others pay for the folly that we should never have perpetrated. Mary-Clare, the woman, had paid and paid, until now she faced bankruptcy;36she was prepared still to do her part as far as in her lay––but she must retrace her steps, be sure and then go on as best she could.

Always, in those old childish days, there had been the grim spectre of Larry’s mother. Her name was never mentioned but to the imaginative, sensitive Mary-Clare, she became, for that very reason, a clearly defined and potent influence. She was responsible for the doctor’s lonely life in King’s Forest; for Larry’s long absences from home; for the lines that grew between the old doctor’s eyes when he laid down the few simple laws of conduct that formed the iron code of life:

Never lie. Never break a promise. Never take advantage for selfish gain. Think things out with your woman brain, and never count the cost if you know it is right.

Larry’s mother, so the child believed, had not kept the code––therefore, Mary-Clare must the more strictly adhere to it and become what the other had not! And how desperately she had struggled to reach her ideal. In the conflict, only her sunny joyous nature had saved her from wreck. Naturally direct and loyal, much of what might have occurred was prevented. Passionate love and devout belief in the old doctor eliminated other dangers.

It was well and right to use your “woman brain,” but when in the end you always came to the conclusion that the doctor’s way was your way, life was simplified. If one could not fully understand, then all the more reason for relying upon a good guide, a tested friend; but above all other considerations, once the foundation was secure was this: she must make up to her adored doctor and Larry for what that unmentioned, mysterious woman had denied them.

It had all seemed so simple, when one did not know!

That was it. Breathing hard, Mary-Clare came back to the present. She could not know until she had lived, and being married did not stop life. And now, Mary-Clare could consider, as if apart from herself, from the girl who had married Larry because he had caught the dying request of the old doctor. She had wanted to do right at that last tragic moment.37She had done it with the false understanding of reality and found out the truth––by living. It had seemed to her, in her ignorance, the only way to relieve the suffering of the dying: to help Larry who was deprived of everything.

Mary-Clare must not desert, as the unmentioned woman had.

But life, living––how they had torn the blindness from her! How she had paid and paid until that awful awakening after the birth and death of her last child, three months before! She had tried then to make Larry understand before he went away, but she could not! Larry always ascribed her moods, as he called them, to her “just going to have a child,” or “getting over having one.”

He had gone away tolerant, but with a warning: “A man isn’t going to stand too much!”

These words had been a challenge. There could be no more compromising. Pay-day had come for her and Larry.

But the letters!

At this thought Mary-Clare sat up rigidly. A squirrel, that had paused at her quiet feet, darted affrightedly across the cabin floor.

The letters! The letters in the box hid on the shelf of the closet in the upper chamber. Always those letters had driven her back from the light which experience shed upon her to the darkness of ignorance.

Larry had given the letters to her at the time when she questioned, after the doctor’s death, Larry’s right to hold her to her marriage vows. How frightened and full of despair she had been. She had felt that perhaps Larry had not understood. Why had the doctor never told her of his desire for her and Larry to marry? Then it was that Larry had gone away to bring proof. He had never meant to show it to her, but he must clear himself at the critical moment.

And so he brought the letters. Mary-Clare knew every word of them. They were burned into her soul: they had been the guides on the hard road she had travelled. The doctor had always wanted her and Larry to marry; believed that they would. But she must be left free; no word must38be spoken until she was old enough to choose. To prove his faith and love in his adopted child, Rivers had, so the letters to Larry revealed, left his all to her. In case she could not marry Larry, he confided in her justice to share with him.

The last dark hour had broken the old doctor’s self-control––he had voiced what heretofore he had kept secret. The letters stood as silent proof of this. And then the old, rigid code asserted its influence. A promise must be kept!

And so the payment began, but it was not, had never been, the real Mary-Clare who had paid. Something had retreated during the bleak years, that which remained fulfilled the daily tasks; kept its own council, laughed at length, and knew a great joy in the baby Noreen, seemed a proof that God was still with her while she held to what appeared to be right.

And then the last child came, looked at her with its deep accusing eyes and died!

In that hour, or so it seemed, the real Mary-Clare returned and demanded recognition. There was to be no more compromise; no more calling things by false names and striving to believe them real. There was but one safe road: truth.

And Larry was coming home. He had not understood when he went away: he would not understand now. Still, truth must be faced.

The letters!

Mary-Clare now leaned on the table, her eyes fixed upon the wall opposite. The roughly carved words caught and held her attention. Gradually it came to her, vaguely, flickeringly, like a will-o’-the-wisp darting through a murky night, that if life meant anything it meant a faith in what was true. She must not demand more than that; a sense of truth.

As a little child may look across the familiar environment of its nursery and contemplate its first unaided step, so Mary-Clare considered her small world: her unthinking world of King’s Forest, and prepared to take her lonely course. The place in which she had been born and bred: the love and friends that had held her close suddenly became strange to her. What was to befall her, once she let go the conventions that upheld her?

39

Well, that was not for her to ask. There was the letting go and then the first unaided step. Nothing must hold her back––not even those letters that had sustained her! In recognizing her big problem in her small and crude world, Mary-Clare had no thought of casting aside her obligation or duties––her distress was founded upon a fear that those blessed, sacred duties would have none of her because she had not that with which to buy favour.

There was Noreen––she was Larry’s, too. Through the years Mary-Clare had remembered that almost fiercely as she combated the child’s aversion to her father. Suddenly, as small things do occur at strained moments, hurting like a cruel blow, a scene at the time when Noreen was but four years old, rose vividly before her. Larry, sensing the baby’s hatred, had tried to force an outward show of obedience and affection. He had commanded Noreen to come and kiss him.

Like a bird under the spell of a serpent, Noreen had stood affrighted and silent. The command was repeated, laughingly, jeeringly, but under it Mary-Clare had recognized that ring of brutality that occasionally marked Larry’s easy-going tones. Then Noreen had advanced step by step, her eyes wide and alert.

“Kiss me!”

“No!”

The words had been explosive. Then Larry had caught the child roughly, and Noreen had struck him!

Maddened and keen to the fact that he had been brought to bay, Larry had struck back, and for days the mark of his hand had lain across the delicate cheek. After that, when their wills clashed, Noreen, her eyes full of fear and hate, would raise her hand to her cheek––weighing the cost of rebellion. That gesture had become a driving force in Mary-Clare’s life. She must overcome that which lay like a hideous menace between Larry and Noreen! She was accountable for it; out of her loveless existence Noreen had birth––she was a living evidence of the wrong done.

Looking back now, Mary-Clare realized that on the day40when Larry struck Noreen he had struck the scales from her eyes. From that hour she had bunglingly, gropingly, felt her way along. The only fact that upheld her now was that she knew she must take her first lonely step, even if all her little unknowing, unthinking world dropped from her.

Again the squirrel darted across the floor and Mary-Clare looked after it lingeringly. Even the little wild thing was company for her in her hard hour. Then she looked up at the face of Father Damien. It was but a face––the meaning of what had gone into its making Mary-Clare could not understand––but it brought comfort and encouragement.

The reaction had set in. Worn-out nerves became non-resistant; they ceased to ache. Then it was that Noreen’s shrill voice broke the calm:

“Motherly, Motherly, he’s come: he’s come home!”

Mary-Clare rose stiffly; her hands were spread wide as if to balance her on that dangerous, adventurous trail that lay between her past and the hidden future. There lay the trail: within her soul was a sense of truth and she had strength and courage for the first step. That was all.

“I’m coming, Noreen. I’m coming!” And Mary-Clare staggered on.

41CHAPTER IV

Mary-Clare met Noreen at the brook, smiling and calm. The child was trembling and pale, but the touch of her mother’s hand reassured her. It was like waking from a painful dream and finding everything safe and the dream gone.

“I was just coming down the path with Jan-an, Motherly, when I saw him going in the house.”

“Daddy, dear?”

“Yes, Motherly, Daddy. He left a bag in the house; looked all around and then came out. I was ’fraid he was coming to you, so I ran and ran, but Jan-an said she’d stay and fix him if he did.”

“Noreen!” The tone was stern and commanding.

“Well, Motherly, Jan-an said that, but maybe she was just funny.”

“Of course. Just funny. We must always remember, Noreen, that poor Jan-an is just funny.”

“Yes, Motherly.”

Things were reduced to normal by the time the little yellow house was reached. Jan-an was there, crouched by the fireplace, upon which she had kindled a welcoming fire after making sure Larry had not gone up the secret trail.

Rivers was not in evidence, though a weather-stained bag, flung hastily on the floor, was proof of his hurried call. He did not appear all day. As a matter of fact, he was at the mines. Failing to find his wife, he had availed himself of the opportunity of announcing his presence to his good friend Maclin, and getting from him much local gossip, and what approval Maclin vouchsafed.

All day, with Jan-an’s assistance, Mary-Clare prepared for the creature comforts of her husband; while Noreen42made nervous trips to door and window. At night Jan-an departed––she seemed glad to go away, but not sure that she ought to go; Mary-Clare laughed her into good humour.

“I jes don’t like the feelings I have,” the girl reiterated; “I’m creepy.”

Mary-Clare packed a bag of food for her and patted her shoulder.

“Come to-morrow,” she said, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, she kissed the yearning, vacant face. “You’re going to the Point, Jan-an?” she asked, and the girl nodded.

Noreen, too, had to be petted into a calmer state––her old aversion to her father sprang into renewed life with each return after an absence. In a few days the child would grow accustomed to his presence and accept him with indifference, at least, but there was always this struggle.

Mary-Clare herself wondered where Larry was; why he delayed, once having come back to the Forest; but she kept to her tasks of preparation and reassuring Noreen, and so the day passed.

At eight o’clock, having eaten supper and undressed the child, she sat in the deep wooden rocker with Noreen in her arms. There was always one story that had power to claim attention when all others failed, and Mary-Clare resorted to it now. Swaying back and forth she told the story of the haunt-wind.

“It was a wonderful wind, Noreen, quite magical. It came from between the south and the east––a wild little wind that ran away and did things on its own account; but it was a good little wind for all that foolish people said about it. It took hold of the bell rope in the belfry, and swung out and out; it swung far, and then it dropped and fluttered about quite dizzily.”

“Touching Jan-an?” Noreen suggested sleepily.

“Jan-an, of course. Making her beautiful and laughing. Waking her from her sad dream, poor Jan-an, and giving her strength to do really splendid things.”

“I love the wild wind!” Noreen pressed closer. “I’m not afraid of it. And it found Aunt Polly and Uncle Peter?”

43

“To be sure. It made Aunt Polly seem as grand and big as she really is––only blind folks cannot see––and it made all the blind folkssee herfor a minute. And it made Uncle Peter––no; it left Uncle Peter as he is!”

“I like that”––drowsily––“and it made us see the man that went to the inn?” Noreen lifted her head, suddenly alert.

“What made you think of him, Noreen?” Mary-Clare stopped swaying to and fro.

“I don’t know, Motherly. Only it was funny how he just came and then the haunt-wind came and Jan-an says she thinks heisn’t. Really we only think we see him.”

“Well, perhaps that’s true, childie. He’s something good, I hope. Now shut your eyes like a dearie, and Mother will rock and sing.”

Mary-Clare fixed her eyes on her child’s face, but she was seeing another. The face of a man whose glance had held hers for a strange moment. She had been conscious, since, of this man’s presence; his name was familiar––she could not forget him, though there was no reason for her to remember him except that he was new; a something different in her dull days.

But Noreen, eyes obediently closed, was pleading in the strange, foolish jargon of her rare moments of relaxation:

“You lit and lock, Motherly, and I’ll luck my lum, just for to-night, and lall aleep.”

“All right, beloved; you may, just for to-night, suck the little thumb, and fall asleep while Mother rocks.”

After a few moments more Noreen was asleep and Mary-Clare carried her to an inner room and put her on her bed. She paused to look at the small sleeping face; she noted the baby outlines that always were so strongly marked when Noreen was unconscious; it hurt the mother to think how they hardened when the child awakened. The realization of this struck Mary-Clare anew and reinforced her to her purpose, for she knew her hour was at hand.

A week before she had dismantled the room in which she now stood. It had once been Doctor Rivers’s chamber; later it had been hers––and Larry’s. The old furniture was44now in the large upper room, only bare necessities were left here.

Mary-Clare looked about and her face lost its smile; her head lowered––it was not easy, the task she had set for herself, and after Larry’s visit to the mines it would be harder. She had hoped to see Larry first, for Maclin had a subtle power over him. Without ever referring to her, and she was sure he did not in an intimate sense, he always put Larry in an antagonistic frame of mind toward her. Well, it was too late now to avert Maclin’s influence––she must do the best she could. She went back to the fire and sat down and waited.

It was after ten o’clock when Larry came noisily in. Rivers took his colour from his associates and their attitude toward him. He was a bit hilarious now, for Maclin had been glad to see him; had approved of the results of his mission––though as for that Larry had had little to do, for he had only delivered, to certain men, some private papers and had received others in return; had been conscious that non-essentials had been talked over with him, but as that was part of the business of big inventions, he did not resent it. Maclin had paid him better than he had expected to be paid, shared a good dinner with him and a bottle of wine, and now Rivers felt important and aggressive. Wine’s first effect upon him was to make him genial.

He had meant to resent Mary-Clare’s absence on his arrival, but he had forgotten all about that. He meant now to be very generous with her and let bygones be bygones––he had long since forgotten the words spoken just before he left for his trip. Words due, of course, to Mary-Clare just having had a baby. Almost Larry had forgotten that the baby had been born and had died.

He strode across the room. He was tall, lithe, and good-looking, but his face betokened weakness. All the features that had promised strength and power seemed, somehow, to have missed fulfilment.

Mary-Clare tried to respond; tried to do her full part––it would all help so much, if she only could. But this mood45of Larry’s was fraught with danger––did she not know? Success did not make him understanding and considerate; it made him boyishly dominant and demanding.

“Well, old girl”––Rivers had slammed the door after him––“sitting up for me, eh? Sorry; but when I didn’t find you here, I had to get over and see Maclin. Devilish important, big pull I’ve made this time. We’ll have a spree––go to the city, if you like––have a real bat.”

Mary-Clare did not have time to move or speak; Larry was crushing her against him and kissing her face––not as a man kisses a woman he loves, but as he might kiss any woman. The silence and rigidity of Mary-Clare presently made themselves felt. Larry pushed her away almost angrily.

“Mad, eh?” he asked with a suggestion of triumph in his voice. “Acting up because I ran off to Maclin? Well, I had to see him. I tried to get home sooner, but you know how Maclin is when he gets talking.”

How long Larry would have kept on it would have been hard to tell, but he suddenly looked full at Mary-Clare and––stopped!

The expression on the face confronting his was puzzling: it looked amused, not angry. Now there is one thing a man of Larry’s type cannot bear with equanimity and that is to have his high moments dashed. He saw that he was not impressing Mary-Clare; he saw that he was mistaking her attitude of mind concerning his treatment of her––in short, she did not care!

“What are you laughing at?” he asked.

“I’m not laughing, Larry.”

“What are you smiling at?”

“My smile is my own, Larry; when I laugh it’s different.”

“Trying to be smart, eh? I should think when your husband’s been away months and has just got back, you’d meet him with something besides a grin.”

There was some justice in this and Mary-Clare said slowly: “I’m sorry, Larry. I really was only thinking.”

Now that she was face to face with her big moment, Mary-Clare realized anew how difficult her task was. Often, in46the past, thinking of Larry when he was not with her, it had seemed possible to reason with him; to bring truth to him and implore his help. Always she had striven to cling to her image of Larry, but never to the real man. The man she had constructed with Larry off the scene was quite another creature from Larry in the flesh. This knowledge was humiliating now in the blazing light of reality grimly faced and it taxed all of Mary-Clare’s courage. She was smiling sadly, smiling at her own inability in the past to deal with facts.

Larry was brought to bay. He was disappointed, angry, and outraged. He was not a man to reflect upon causes; results, and very present ones, were all that concerned him. But he did, now, hark back to the scene soon after the birth and death of the last child. Such states of mind didn’t last for ever, and there was no baby coming at the moment. He could not make things out.

“See here,” he said rather gropingly, “you are not holding a grouch, are you?”

“No, Larry.”

“What then?”

For a moment Mary-Clare shrank. She weakly wanted to put off the big moment; dared not face it.

“It’s late, Larry. You are tired.” She got that far when she affrightedly remembered the bedroom upstairs and paused. She had arranged it for Larry––there must be an explanation of that.

“Late be hanged!” Larry stretched his legs out and plunged his hands in his pockets. “I’m going to get at the bottom of this to-night. You understand?”

“All right, Larry.” Mary-Clare sank back in her chair––she had fallen on her adventurous way; she had no words with which to convey her burning thoughts. Already she had got so far from the man who had filled such a false position in her life that he seemed a stranger. To tell him that she did not love him, had never loved him, was all but impossible. Of course he could not be expected to comprehend. The situation became terrifying.

“You’ve never been the same since the last baby came.”47Larry was speaking in an injured, harsh tone. “I’ve put up with a good deal, Mary-Clare; not many men would be so patient. The trouble with you, my girl, is this, you get your ideas from books. That mightn’t matter if you had horse sense and knew when to slam the covers on the rot. But you try to live ’em and then the devil is to pay. Dad spoiled you. He let you run away with yourself. But the time’s come–––”

The long speech in the face of Mary-Clare’s wondering, amazed eyes, brought Larry to a panting pause.

“What you got a husband for, anyway, that’s what I am asking you?”

Mary-Clare’s hard-won philosophy of life stood her in poor stead now. She felt an insane desire to give way and laugh. It was a maddening thing to contemplate, but she seemed to see things so cruelly real and Larry seemed shouting to her from a distance that she could never retrace. For a moment he seemed to be physically out of sight––she only heard his words.

“By God! Mary-Clare, what’s up? Have you counted the cost of carrying on as you are doing? What am I up against?”

“Yes, Larry, I’ve counted the cost to me and Noreen and you. I’m afraid this is what we are all up against.”

“Well, what’s the sum total?” Larry leaned back more comfortably; he felt that Mary-Clare, once she began to talk, would say a good deal. She would talk like one of her books. He need not pay much heed and when she got out of breath he’d round her up. His interview with Maclin had not been all business; the gossip, interjected, was taking ugly and definite form now. Maclin had mentioned the man at the inn. Quite incidentally, of course, but repeatedly.

“You see, Larry, I’ve got to tell you how it is, in my own way,” Mary-Clare was speaking. “I know my way makes you angry, but please be patient, for if I tried any other way it would hurt more.”

“Fire away!” Larry nobly suppressed a yawn. Had Mary-Clare said simply, “I don’t love you any more,” Larry48would have got up from the blow and been able to handle the matter, but she proceeded after a fashion that utterly confused him and, instead of clearing the situation, managed to create a most unlooked-for result.

“It’s like this, Larry: I suppose life is a muddle for everyone and we all do have to learn as we go on––nothing can keep us from that, not even marriage, can it?”

No reply came to this.

“It’s like light coming in spots, and then those spots can never be really dark again although all the rest may be. You think of those spots as bright and sure when all else is––is lost. That is the way it has been with me.”

“Gee!” Larry shrugged his shoulders.

“Larry, youmusttry to understand!” Mary-Clare was growing desperate.

“Then, try to talk American.”

“I am, Larry.MyAmerican. That’s the trouble––there is more thanonekind, you know. Larry, it was all wrong, my marrying you even for dear Dad’s sake. If he had been well and we could have talked it over, he would have understood. I should have understood for him that last night. Even the letters should not have mattered, they must not matter now!”

This, at least, was comprehensible.

“Well, youdidmarry me, didn’t you?” Larry flung out. “You’re my wife, aren’t you?” Correcting mistakes was not in Larry’s plan of life.

“I––why, yes, I am, Larry, but a wife means more than one thing, doesn’t it?” This came hopelessly.

“Not to me. What’s your idea?” Larry was relieved at having the conversation run along lines that he could handle with some degree of common sense.

“Well, Larry, marriage means a good many things to me. It means being kind and making a good home––a real home, not just a place to come to. It means standing by each other, even if you can’t have everything!”

Just for one moment Larry was inclined to end this shilly-shallying by brute determination. He was that type of man.49What did not come within the zone of his own experience, did not exist for him except as obstacles to brush aside.

It was a damned bad time, he thought, for Mary-Clare to act up her book stuff. A man, home after a three months’ absence, tired and worn out, could not be expected, at close upon midnight, to enjoy this outrageous nonsense that had been sprung upon him.

He must put an end to it at once. He discarded the cave method. Of course that impulse was purely primitive. It might simplify the whole situation but he discarded it. Mary-Clare’s outbursts were like Noreen’s “dressing up”––and bore about the same relation in Larry’s mind.

“See here,” he said suddenly, fixing his eyes on Mary-Clare––when Larry asserted himself he always glared––“just what in thunder do you mean?”

The simplicity of the question demanded a crude reply.

“I’m not going to have any more children.” Out of the maze of complicated ideals and gropings this question and answer emerged, devastating everything in their path. They meant one, and only one, thing to Larry Rivers.

There were some things that could illume his dark stretches and level Mary-Clare’s vague reachings to a common level. Both Larry and Mary-Clare were conscious now of being face to face with a grave human experience. They stood revealed, man and woman. The big significant things in life are startlingly simple.

The man attacked the grim spectre with conventional and brutal weapons; the woman backed away with a dogged look growing in her eyes.

“Oh! you aren’t, eh?” Larry spoke slowly. “You’ve decided, have you?”

“I know what children mean to you, Larry; I know what you mean by––love––yes: I’ve decided!”

“You wedged your way into my father’s good graces and crowded me out; you had enough decency, when you knew his wishes, to carry them out as long as you cared to, and now you’re going to end the job in your own way, eh?

“Name the one particular way in which you’re not going50to break your vows,” Larry asked, and sneered. “What’s your nice little plan?” He got up and walked about. “I suppose you have cut and dried some little compromise.”

“Oh! Larry, I wish you could be a little kind; a little understanding.”

“Wish I could think as you think; that’s what you mean. Well, by God, I’m a man and your husband and I’m going to stand on my rights. You can’t make a silly ass of me as you did of my father. Fathers and husbands are a shade different. Come, now, out with your plan.”

“I will not have any more children! I’ll do everything I can, Larry; make the home a real home. Noreen and I will love you. We’ll try to find some things we all want to do together; you and I can sort of plan for Noreen and there are all kinds of things to do around the Forest, Larry. Really, you and I ought to––ought to carry out your father’s work. We could! There are other things in marriage, Larry, but just––the one.” Breathlessly Mary-Clare came to a pause, but Larry’s amused look drove her on. “I’m not the kind of a woman, Larry, that can live a lie!”

A tone of horror shook Mary-Clare’s voice; she choked and Larry came closer, his lips were smiling.

“What in thunder!” he muttered. Then: “You plan to have us live on here in this house; you and I, a man and woman––and–––!” Larry stopped short, then laughed. “A hell of a home that would be, all right!”

Mary-Clare gazed dully at him.

“Well, then,” she whispered, and her lips grew deadly white, “I do not know what to do.”

“Do? You’ll forget it!” thundered Larry. “And pretty damned quick, too!”

But Mary-Clare did not answer. There was nothing more to say. She was thinking of the birth-night and death-night of her last child.

On and on the burning thoughts rushed in Mary-Clare’s brain while she sat near Larry without seeing him. As surely as if death had taken him, he, the husband, the father of Noreen, had gone from her life. It did not seem now as if51anything she had said, or done, had had anything to do with it. It was like an accident that had overtaken them, killing Larry and leaving her to readjust her life alone.

“Why don’t you answer?” Larry laid a hand upon Mary-Clare’s shoulder. “Getting sleepy? Come on, then, we’ll have this out to-morrow.” He looked toward the door behind which stood Noreen’s cot and that other one beside it.

“I’ve fixed the room upstairs for you, Larry.”

The simple statement had power to accomplish all that was left to be done. There was a finality about it, and the look on Mary-Clare’s face, that convinced Larry he had come to the point of conquest or defeat.

“The devil you have!” was what he said to gain time.

For a moment he again contemplated force––the primitive male always hesitates to compromise where his codes are threatened. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes; a ferocious curl of his lips––it would be such a simple matter and it would end for ever the nonsense that he could not tolerate.

Mary-Clare leaned back in her chair. She was so absolutely unafraid that she quelled Larry’s brute instinct and aroused in him a dread of the unknown. What would Mary-Clare do in the last struggle? Larry was not prepared to take what he recognized as a desperate chance. The familiar and obvious were deep-rooted in his nature––if, in the end, he lost with this calm, cool woman whom he could not frighten, where could he turn for certain things to which his weakness––or was it his strength––clung?

A place to come to; someone peculiarly his own; his without effort to be worthy of. Larry resorted to new tactics with Mary-Clare at this critical moment. The smile faded from his sneering lips; he leaned forward and the manner that made him valuable to Maclin fell upon him like a disguise. So startling was the change, that Mary-Clare looked at him in surprise.

“Mary-Clare, you’ve got me guessing”––there was almost surrender in the tone––“a woman like you doesn’t take the stand you have without reason. I know that. Naturally,52I was upset, I spoke too quick. Tell me now in your own way. I’ll try to understand.”

Mary-Clare was taken off guard. Her desire and sore need rushed past caution and carried her to Larry.

She, too, leaned forward, and her lovely eyes were shining. “Oh! I hoped you would try, Larry,” she said. “I know I’m trying and put things in a way that you resent, but I have a great, a true reason, if I could only make you see it.”

“Now, you’re talking sense, Mary-Clare,” Larry spoke boyishly. “Just over-tired, I guess you were; seeing things in the dark. Men know the world better than women; that’s why some things areasthey are. I’m not going to press you, Mary-Clare, I’m going to try and help you. Youaremy wife, aren’t you?”

“Yes, oh! yes, Larry.”

“Well, I’m a man and you’re a woman.”

“Yes, that’s so, Larry.”

Step by step, ridiculous as it might seem, Mary-Clare meant, even now, to keep as close to Larry as she could. He misunderstood; he thought he was winning against her folly.

“Marriage was meant for one thing between man and woman!”

This came out triumphantly. Then Mary-Clare threw back her head and spiritually retreated to her vantage of safety.

“No, it wasn’t,” she said, taking to her own hard-won trail desperately. “No, it wasn’t! I cannot accept that Larry––why, I have seen where such reasoning would lead. I saw the night our last baby came––and went. I’d grow old and broken––you’d hate me; there would be children––many of them, poor, sad little things––looking at me with dreadful eyes, accusing me. If marriage means only one thing––it means that to me and you, and no woman has the right to––to become like that.”

“Wanting to defy the laws of God, eh?” Larry grew virtuous. “We all grow old, don’t we? Men work for women; women do their share. Children are natural, ain’t they?53What’s the institution of marriage for, anyway?” And now Larry’s mouth was again hardening.

“Larry, oh! Larry, please don’t make me laugh! If I should laugh there would never be any hope of our getting together.”

For some reason this almost hysterical appeal roused the worst in Larry. The things Maclin had told him that day again took fire and spread where Maclin could never have dreamed of their spreading. The liquor was losing its sustaining effect––it was leaving Larry to flounder in his weak will, and he abandoned his futile tactics.

“Who’s that man at the inn?” he asked.

The suddenness of the question, its irrelevancy, made Mary-Clare start. For a moment the words meant absolutely nothing to her and then because she was bared, nervously, to every attack, she flushed––recalling with absurd clearness Northrup’s look and tone.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“That’s a lie. How long has he been here, snooping around?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, Larry.” This was not true, and Larry caught the quiver in the tones.

Again he got up and became the masterful male; the injured husband; the protector of his home. There were still tactics to be tested.

“See here, Mary-Clare, I’ve caught on. You never cared for me. You married me from what you called duty; your sense of decency held until your own comfort and pleasure got in between––then you were ready to fling me off like an old mit and term it by high-sounding names. Now comes along this stranger, from God knows where, looking about for the devil knows what––and taking what lies about in order to pass the time. I haven’t lived in the world for nothing, Mary-Clare. Now lay this along with the other woman-thoughts you’re so fond of. I’m going upstairs, for I’m tired and all-fired disgusted, but remember, what I can’t hold, no other man is going to get, not even for a little time while he hangs about. Folks are going to see just what is going on,54believe me! I’m going to leave all the doors and windows open. I’m going to give you your head, but I’ll keep hold of the reins.”

And then, because it was all so hideously wrong and twisted and comical, Mary-Clare laughed! She laughed noiselessly, until the tears dimmed her eyes. Larry watched her uneasily.

“Oh, Larry,” she managed her voice at last, “I never knew that anything so dreadfully wrong could be made of nothing. You’ve created a terrible something, and I wonder if you know it?”

“That’s enough!” Larry strode toward the stairway. “Your husband’s no fool, my girl, and the cheap, little, old tricks are plain enough to him.”

Mary-Clare watched her husband pass from view; heard him tramp heavily in the room above. She sat by the dead fire and thought of him as she first knew him––knew him? Then her eyes widened. She had never known him; she had taken him as she had taken all that her doctor had left to her, and she had failed; failed because she had not thought her woman’s thought until it was too late.

After all her high aims and earnest endeavour to meet this critical moment in her life Mary-Clare acknowledged, as she sat by the ash-strewn hearth, that it had degenerated into a cheap and almost comic farce. To her narrow vision her problem seemed never to have been confronted before; her world of the Forest would have no sympathy for it, or her; Larry had reduced it to the ugliest aspect, and by so doing had turned her thoughts where they might never have turned and upon the stranger who might always have remained a stranger.

Alone in the deadly quiet room, the girl of Mary-Clare passed from sight and the woman was supreme; a little hard, in order to combat the future: quickened to a futile sense of injustice, but young enough, even at that moment, to demand of life something vital; something better than the cruel thing that might evolve unless she bore herself courageously.

Unconsciously she was planning her course. She would55go her way with her old smile, her old outward bearing. A promise was a promise––she would never forget that, and as far as she could pay with that which was hers to give, she would pay, but outside of that she would not let life cheat her.

Bending toward the dead fire on the hearth, Mary-Clare made her silent covenant.

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