CHAPTER X

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Of course, for the time being, there was Sandy Arnold on the crest of one of his financial waves.

Kathryn was level-headed enough not to lose sight of receding waves but then, on the other hand, the crest of a receding wave was better than to be left on the sands––fat and forty! And Northrup was displaying dangerous traits. A distinct chill shook Kathryn.

She turned her thought to Northrup. Northrup had seemed safe. He belonged to all that was familiar to her. He would be famous some day––that she might interfere with this never occurred to the girl. She simply saw herself in a gorgeous studio pouring tea or dancing, and all the people paying court to her while knowing that they ought to be paying it to Northrup.

“But he always gets a grubby hole to work in.” Kathryn fidgeted. “I daresay he is working now in some smudgy old place.”

But this thought did not last. She could insist upon the studio. A man owes his wifesomethingif he will have his way about his job.

Just at this point a tap on the door brought a frown to Kathryn’s smooth forehead.

“Oh! come in,” she called peevishly.

A drab-coloured woman of middle age entered. She was one of the individuals so grateful for being noticed at all that her cheerfulness was a constant reproach. She had been selected by Kathryn’s father to act as housekeeper and chaperon. As the former she was a gratifying success; as the latter, a joke and one to be eliminated as much as possible.

For the first time in years Kathryn regarded her aunt now with interest.

“Aunt Anna”––Kathryn never indulged in graceful tact with her relations––“Aunt Anna, how oldareyou?”

Anna Morris coloured, flinched, but smiled coyly.

“Forty-two, dear, but it was only yesterday that my dressmaker said that I should not tell that. It is not necessary, you know.”

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“I suppose not!” Kathryn was regarding the fatness of the woman who was calmly setting the disorderly room to rights. “Aunt Anna, why didn’t you marry?”

The dull, fat face was turned away. Anna Morris never lost sight of the fact that when Kathryn married she would face a stern situation unless Kathryn proved kinder than any one had any reason to expect her to be. So her remarks were guarded.

“Oh! my dear, my dear,whata question. Well, to be quite frank, I discovered at eighteen that some men could stir my senses”––Anna Morris tittered––“and some couldn’t. At twenty-two the only man who could stir me was horribly poor; the other stirring ones had been snapped up. You see, there was no one to help me with my affairs. Your father neverdidunderstand. The only thing he was keen about was making money enough to marry your mother. Then you were born and your mother died and––well, there was nothing for me to do but come here and help him out. One has plain duties. I always had sense enough”––Anna Morris moved about heavily––“to realize that senses do not stir when poverty pinches, and this housewascomfortable; and dutycanfill in chinks. I always contend”––the dull eyes now confronted Kathryn––“that thereisa dangerous age for men and women. If they get through that alive and alone––well, there is a kind of calm that comes.”

“I suppose so.” Kathryn felt a sinking in the region of the heart. “Are you ever lonely?” she asked suddenly. “Ever feel that you let your own life slip when you helped Father and me?”

Anna Morris’s lips trembled as they always did when any one was kind to her; but she got control of herself at once––she could not afford the comfort of letting herself go!

“Oh, I don’t know. Yes; sometimes. But who isn’t lonely at times? Marriage can’t prevent that and even your own private life, quite your own, is bound to have some lonely spells. There are all kinds of husbands. Some float about, heaven knows where; their wives must be lonely; and then the settled sort––dear me! I’ve often seen women terribly124lonely right in the rooms with their husbands. I have come to the conclusion that once you pass the dangerous age you’re as well placed one way as another. That is, if you are a woman.”

Kathryn was looking unusually serious. While she was in this mood she clutched at seeming trifles and held them curiously.

“What was Brace’s father like?” she suddenly asked.

Anna Morris started.

“Why, what ails you, Kathie?” she asked suspiciously. “You’ve never taken any interest before. Why should you? A young girl and all that––why should you?”

“Tell me, Aunt Anna. I’ve often wondered.”

Anna Morris sat down heavily in a chair. The older Northrup had once had power to stir her; was one of the men too poor for her to consider.

“Well,” she began slowly, tremblingly, “he wasn’t companionable at the last, but I shall always seehisside. Helen Northrup is a fine woman––I can understand how many take her part, but being married to her kind must seem like mental Mormonism.Shecalls it developing––but a man like Thomas Northrup married a woman because she was the kind he wanted and he couldn’t be expected to keep trace of all the kinds of women Helen Northrup ran into and––out of!”

“I don’t know what you mean, Aunt Anna. Do talk sense.”

Kathryn was almost excited. It was like reading what wasn’t intended for innocent young girls to know.

“Well, first, Helen Northrup was just like all loving young girls, I guess––but when she didn’t findallshe wanted, she took to developing, as she called it. Formypart I believe when a woman finds her husband isn’tallshe expected, she ought to accept her lot and make the best of it.”

“And Brace’s mother started out to make her own lot? I see.”

Kathryn nodded her head.

“Well, something like that. She took to writing. Thomas125Northrup didn’t know what ailed her and I don’t wonder. She should have spent herself onhiscareer, not making one for herself. But I must say when Brace was born she stopped that nonsense but she evolved then into a mother!” Anna sniffed. “A man can share with his children, but when it comes to giving up everything, well!”

“What did he do, Aunt Anna?”

“He went away.”

“With a woman?”

“Yes.”

“One he just met when Mrs. Northrup became a mother?”

“He knew her before, but if Helen Northrup had been all she should have been to him–––”

“I begin to see. And then?”

“Well, then he died and proved how noble he was at heart. When he went off, Helen Northrup wouldn’t take a cent. She had a little of her own and she went to work and Brace helped when he grew older––and then when Thomas Northrup died he left almost all his fortune to his wife. He never considered her anything else. I call his a really great nature.” Poor Anna was in a trembling and ecstatic state.

“I call him a––just what he was!” Kathryn was weary of the subject. “I think Brace’s mother was a fool to let him off so easy. I would have bled him well rather than to let the other woman put it all over me.”

“My dear, that’s not a proper way for you to talk!” Aunt Anna became the chaperon. “Come, get dressed now, dearie. There’s the luncheon, you know.”

“What luncheon?”

“Why, with Mr. Arnold, my dear, and he included me, too! Such a sweet fellow he is, and so wise and thoughtful.”

“Oh!”

There had been a time when she and Sandy Arnold met clandestinely––it was such fun! He included Aunt Anna now. Why?

And just then, as if it were a live and demanding thing, her eyes fell on Northrup’s last book. She scowled at it. It was a horrible book. All about dirty, smudgy people126that you couldn’t forget and who kept springing out on you in the most unexpected places. At dinners and luncheons they often wedged in with their awful eyes fixed on your plate and made you choke. They probably were not true. And those things Brace said! Besides, if they were true, people like that were used to them––they had never known anything else!

And then Brace had said some terrible things about war; that war going on over the sea. Of course, no one expected to have a war, but it was unpatriotic for any one to say what Brace had about those perfectly dear officers at West Point and––what was it he said?––oh, yes––having the blood of the young on one’s soul and settling horrid things, like money and land, with lives.

At this Kathryn tossed the book aside and it fell at Anna’s feet. She picked it up and handled it as if it were a tender baby that had bumped its nose.

“It must be perfectly wonderful,” she said, smoothing the book, “to have an autographed copy of a novel. It’s like having a lock of someone’s hair. WhereisBrace, Kathryn?”

This was unfortunate.

“That is my business and his!” Kathryn spoke slowly. Her eyes slanted and her lips hardened.

“My darling, I beg your pardon!” And once more Anna Morris was shoved into the groove where she belonged.

Later that day, after the luncheon with Sandy––Anna had been eliminated by a master stroke that reduced her to tears and left Sandy a victim to Kathryn’s wiles––Kathryn called upon Helen Northrup.

She was told by the smiling little maid to go up into the Workshop. This room was a pitiful attempt to lure Brace to work at home; in his absence Helen sat there and scribbled. She wrote feeble little verses with a suggestion of the real thing in them. Sometimes they got published because the suggestion caught the attention of a sympathetic publisher, and these small recognitions kept alive a spark that was all but extinguished when Helen Northrup chose, as women of her time did, a profession or––the woman’s legitimate sphere!

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There had been no regret in Helen’s soul for whatever part she played in her own life––her son was her recompense for any disappointment she might have met, and he was, she devoutly believed, her interpreter. She loved to think in her quiet hours that her longings and aspirations had found expression in her child; she had sought, always, to consider his interests wisely––unselfishly, of course––and leave him as free to live his own life as though she were not the lonely, disillusioned woman that she was.

She had never known how early Brace had understood the conditions in his home––mothers and fathers rarely do. Only once during his boyhood had Brace ventured upon the subject over which he spent many confused and silent hours.

When he was fourteen he remarked, in that strained voice that he believed hid any emotion:

“I say, Mother, a lot of fellows at our school have fathers and mothers who live apart––most of the fellows side with their mothers!”

These words nearly made Helen ill. She could make no reply. She looked dumbly at the boy facing her with a new and awful revealment. She understood that he wanted her toknow, wanted to comfort her; and she knew, with terrifying certainty, that she could not deceive him––she was at his mercy!

She was wise enough to say nothing. But after that she felt his suddenly acquired strength. It was shown in his tenderness, his cheerfulness, his companionship, and, thank God! in his silence.

But while Helen gloried in her boy she still was loyal to the traditions of marriage, and her little world never got behind her screen. She had divorced her husband because he desired it––then she went on alone. When her husband died away from home, his body was brought to her. It had been his last request and she paid all respect to it with her boy close beside her. And then she forgot––really, in most cases––the things that she had been remembering. She erected over her dead husband, not a stone, but a livingunreality. It answered the purpose for which it was designed;128it made it possible for her to live rather a full life, be a comrade to her son––a friend indeed––and to share all his joys and many of his confidences, and to impress upon him, so she trusted, that he must not sacrifice anything for her.

Why should he, indeed? Had she not interests enough to occupy her? The sight of a widowed mother draining the life-blood from her children had always been a dreadful thing to Helen Northrup, and so well had she succeeded in her determination to leave Brace free that the subject rarely came into the minds of either.

But Brace’s latest move had disturbed Helen not a little. It startled her, made her afraid, as that remark of his in his school days had done. Did he chafe under ties that he loved but found that he must flee from for awhile? Why did he and Kathryn not marry? Were they considering her? Was she blinded?

Helen had been going over all this for days before the visit of Kathryn, and during the night preceding the call she had awakened in great pain; she had had the pain before and it had power to reduce her to cowardice. It seemed to dare her, while she lay and suffered, to confide in a physician!

There was an old memory of one who had suffered and died from–––“Find out the truth about me!” each dart of fire in the nerves cried, and when the pain was over Helen Northrup had not dared to meet the challenge and go to Manly or another! At first she tried to reason with herself; then she compromised.

“After all, it is so fleeting. I’ll rest, take better care of myself. I’m not so young as I was––Nature is warning me; it may not be the other.”

Well, rest and care helped and the attacks were less frequent. That gave a certain amount of hope.

When Kathryn entered the Workshop she found Helen on the couch instead of at the flat-topped desk. She looked very white and blue-lipped but she was smiling and happily glad to see her visitor. She was extremely fond of Kathryn.129Early in life she had prepared herself to accept and love any woman her son might choose––she would never question the gift he offered! But when Kathryn was offered, she was overjoyed. Kathryn was part of the dear, familiar life; the daughter of old friends. Helen Northrup felt that she was blessed beyond all mothers. The thing, to her, seemed so exactly right. That the marriage did not take place had hardly disturbed her. Kathryn was young, Brace was winning, not only a home for the girl, but honour, and there was always time.Timeis such a splendid heritage of youth and such a rare relic of age.

“Why, my dearie-dear!” exclaimed Kathryn, kneeling beside the couch. “Whatisit?”

“Nothing, dear child; nothing more than a vicious touch of neuralgia.”

“Have you seen Doctor Manly?” Kathryn patted the pillows and soothed, by her touch, the hot forehead. Kathryn had the gift of healing in her small, smooth hands, but not in her soul.

She had always been jealous of the love between Brace and his mother. It was so unusual, so binding, so beyond her conception; but she could hide her feelings until by and by.

“Now, dearie-dear, wemustsend for Doctor Manly. Of course Brace ought to know. He would never forgive us if he did not know. I hate to trouble you but, my dear, you look simply terrifyingly ill.” Like a lightning flash Kathryn’s nimble wits caught a possibility.

Helen smiled. Then spoke slowly:

“Now, my dear, when Brace comes home, I promise to see Doctor Manly. These attacks are severe––but they pass quickly and there are long periods when I am absolutely free from them.”

“You mean, you have attacks?” Kathryn looked appalled.

“Oh, yes; off and on. That fact proves how unimportant they are.”

Kathryn was again taking stock.

She believed that Brace was still at that place from which130the letter came! She was fiendishly subject to impressions and suspicions.

“Now if he is still there”––thoughts ran like liquid fire in Kathryn’s brain––“whydoes he stay? It isn’t far.” She had made sure of that by road maps when the letter first came. “I could motor out there and see!” The liquid fire brought colour to the girl’s face.

She was dramatic, too, she could always see herself playing the leading parts in emotional situations. Just now, like more flashes of lightning, disclosing vivid scenes, she saw herself, prostrated by fear and anxiety for Helen Northrup, finding Brace, confiding in him because she dared not take the chances of silence and dared not disobey and go to Doctor Manly.

Brace would be fear-filled and remorseful, would see at last how she, Kathryn, had his interests in mind. He would cling to her. Sitting close by the couch, her face pressed to Helen Northrup’s shoulder, Kathryn contemplated the alluring and passionate scenes. Brace had always lacked passion. She had always to hold Arnold virtuously in check, but Brace was able to control himself. But––and here the vivid pictures reeled on, familiarity had dulled things, long engagements were flattening––Brace would at last see her as she was. She’d forgive anything that might have happened––of course, anythingmighthave happened––she, a woman of the world, understood.

And––Kathryn was brought to a sudden halt––the reel spun on but there was no picture!

Suppose, after all, there was nothing really to be frightened about in these attacks? Well, that would be found out after Brace had been brought home and might enhance rather than detract from––her divine devotion.

Presently Kathryn became aware of the fact that Helen Northrup had been speaking while the reel reeled!

“And then that escapade of his when he was only seven.” Helen patted the golden head beside her while her thoughts were back with her boy. “He was walking with me when suddenly he looked up; his poor little face was all twisted!131He just said rather impishly, ‘I’m going! I am really!’ and he went! I was, naturally, frightened, and ran after him––then, when I caught sight of him, a long way ahead, I stopped and waited. When he thought I was not following, he waded right out into a puddle; he even had a scrappy fight with a bigger boy who contested his right to invade the puddle. It was so absurd. Kathryn, I actually went home; I felt sure Brace would find his way back and he did. I was nearly wild with anxiety, but I waited. He came back disgustingly dirty, but hilariously happy. He expected punishment. When none was meted out to him––he told me all about it––it seemed flat enough when he saw how I took it. Why, I never even mentioned the mud on him. He was disappointed, but I think he understood more than I realized. When he went to bed that night, he begged my pardon!”

Kathryn got up and walked about the room. She was staging another drama. Brace was now playing in puddles––not such simple ones as those of his childhood. He was having his little fight, too, possibly; with whom?

Well, how perfectly thrilling to save him!

Such a girl as Kathryn has as cheap an imagination as any lurid factory girl, but it is kept as safely from sight as the contents of her vanity bag.

“Kathryn, have you heard from Brace?”

The girl started almost guiltily. Helen hated to ask this, she feared Kathryn might think her envious; but Kathryn rose and drew a chair to the couch.

“No, dearie-dear,” she said sweetly.

“So you don’t know just where he is?”

“How could I know, dearie thing?”

So they were not keeping things from her; shutting her out! Helen Northrup raised her head from the pillow.

“We’re in the same boat, darling,” she said, so glad to be in the same boat. “Lately I’ve had a few whim-whams.” Helen felt she could be confidential. “I suppose I am touching the outer circle of old age, and before it blinds me, I’m going to have my say. It would be just like you and Brace to forget yourselves and think of me. And if I do not look out,132I’ll be taking your sacrifice and calling it by its wrong name. You and Brace must marry. I half believe you’ve been waiting for me to push you out of the nest. Well, here you go! Your own nest will be sacred to me, another place for me to go to, another interest. I’ll be having you both closer. Now, don’t cry, little girl. I’ve found you out and found myself, too!”

Kathryn was shedding tears––tears of gratitude for the material Helen was putting at her disposal.

“My dear little Kathryn! It is going to be all right, all right. Why, childie, when he comes home I am going to insist upon the wedding. I am not a young woman, really, though I put up a bit of a bluff––and the time isn’t very long, no matter how you look at it––so, darling, you and Brace must humour me, do the one big thing to make me happy––you must be married!”

Kathryn looked up. The tears hung to her long lashes.

“You want this?” she faltered with quivering lips.

Helen believed she understood at last.

“My darling!” she said tenderly, “it is the one great longing of my heart.”

Then she dropped back on her pillow and closed her eyes while the pain gripped her. But the pain, for a moment, seemed a friend, not a foe. It might be the thing that would open the door––out.

Helen had spoken truth as truth should be but never quite is, to a mother. She had taken her place in the march, her colours flying. But her place was the mother’s place, lagging in the rear.

Such an effort as she had just made caused angels to weep over her.

133CHAPTER X

By a kind of self-hypnotism Northrup had gained his ends so far as drifting with the slow current of King’s Forest was concerned, and in his relation toward his book. The unrest, as to his duty in a world-wide sense, was lulled. Whatever of that sentiment moved him was focussed on Maclin who, in a persistent, vague way became a haunting possibility of danger almost too preposterous to be considered seriously. Still the possibility was worth watching. Maclin’s attitude toward Northrup was interesting. He seemed unable to ignore him, while earnestly desiring to do so. The fact was this: Maclin looked upon Northrup as he might have upon a slow-burning fuse. That he could not estimate the length of the fuse, nor to what it was attached, did not mend matters. One cannot ignore a trail of fire, and a guilty conscience is never a sleeping one.

The people on the Point had long since come to the conclusion that Northrup was a trailer of Maclin, not their enemy. The opinion was divided as to his relations with Mary-Clare, but that was a different matter.

“I’ll bet my last dollar,” Twombley muttered, forgetting that his last dollar was a thing of the past, “that this young feller will find out about those inventions. Inventions be damned! That’s what I say. There’s something going on at the mines that don’t spell inventions.”

This was said to Peneluna who was aging under the strain of unaccustomed excitement.

“When he lands Maclin,” she said savagely, “I’ll grab Larry. Larry is a fool, but from way back, Maclin is the sinner. Queer”––she gave a deep sigh––“how a stick muddling up a biling brings the scum to the surface! I declare!134I wish we had something to grip hold of. Suspicioning your neighbours ain’t healthy.”

Jan-an, untroubled by moral codes, was unconditionally on Northrup’s side. She patched her gleanings into a vivid conclusion and announced, much to Peneluna’s horror:

“Supposin’ we are goin’ ter hell ’long of not knowin’ where we are goin’, ain’t it a lot pleasanter than the way we was traipsin’ before things began to happen?”

Poor Jan-an was getting her first taste of romance and tragedy and she was thriving on the excitement. When she was not watching the romance in the woods with Mary-Clare and Noreen, she was actively engaged in tragedy. She was searching for the lost letters and she did not mince matters in her own thoughts.

“Larry stole ’em!” she had concluded from the first. “What’s old letters, anyway? But I’ll get those letters if I die for it!”

She shamelessly ransacked Larry’s possessions while she cleaned his disorderly shack, but no letters did she find. She became irritable and unmoral.

“Lordy!” she confided to Peneluna one day while they were preparing Larry’s food, “don’t yer wish, Peneluna, that it wasn’t evil to poison some folks’ grub?”

Peneluna paused and looked at the girl with startled eyes.

“If you talk like that,” she replied, “I’ll hustle you into the almshouse.” Then: “Who would you like to do that to?” she asked.

“Oh! folks as just clutter up life for decent folks. Maclin and Larry.”

“Now, see here, Jan-an, that kind of talk is downright creepy and terrible wicked. Listen to me. Are you listening?”

Jan-an nodded sullenly.

“I’m your best friend, child. I mean to stand by yer, so you just heed. There are folks as can use language like that and others will laugh it off, but you can’t do it. The best thing for you to do is to slip along out of sight and sound as135much as yer can. If you attract attention––the Lord above knows what will happen; I don’t.”

Jan-an was impressed.

“I ain’t making them notice me,” she mumbled, “but yer just can’t take a joke.”

Noreen and Jan-an, in those warm autumn days––and what an autumn it was!––often came to the little chapel where Northrup wrote.

They knew this was forbidden; they knew that the mornings were to be undisturbed, but what could a man who loved children say to the two patient creatures crouching at the foot of the stone steps leading up to the church?

Northrup could hear them whisper––it blended with the twittering of the birds––he heard Noreen’s chuckle and Jan-an’s warning. Occasionally a flaming maple branch would fall through the window on to his table; once Ginger was propelled through the door with a note, badly printed by Noreen, tied to his collar.

“We’re here,” the strangely scrawled words informed him; “me and Jan-an. We’ve got something for you.”

But Northrup held rigidly to his working hours and finally made an offer to his most persistent foes.

“See here, you little beggars,” he said, including the gaunt Jan-an in this, “if you keep to the other side of the bridge, I’ll tell you a story, once a day.”

This had been the beginning of romance to Jan-an.

The story-telling, thus agreed upon, opened a new opportunity for meeting Mary-Clare. Quite naturally she shared with Noreen and Jan-an the hours of the late afternoon walks in the woods or, occasionally, by the fireside of her own home when the chilly gloaming fell early.

Often Northrup, casting a hurried thought to his past, and then forward to the time when all this pleasure must end, looked thoughtful. How circumscribed those old days had been; how uneventful at the best! How strange the old ways would seem by and by, touched by the glamour of what he was passing through now!

And, as was often the case, Manly’s words came out like136guiding and warning flashes. The future could only be made safe by the present; the past––well! Northrup would not dwell upon that. He would keep the compact with himself.

He went boldly to the yellow house when the mood seized him. His first encounters with Mary-Clare, after that night at the inn when he had watched her sleeping, had reassured him.

“She was not awake!” he concluded. The belief made it possible for him to act with assurance.

Peter and Polly preserved a discreet silence concerning affairs in the Forest. “You never can tell when a favouring wind will right things again,” Polly remarked. She cared more for Mary-Clare than anything else.

“Or upset ’em,” Peter added. He had his mind fixed upon Maclin.

“Well, brother, sailing safe, or struggling in the water, it won’t help matters to stir up the mud.”

“No; and just having Brace hanging around like a threat is something. I allas did hold to them referendum and recall notions. Once a feller knows he ain’t the only shirt in the laundry, he keeps decenter. So long as Maclin scents Brace, he keeps to his holdings. Did yer hear how he’s cleaning up the Cosey Bar? He thinks maybe he’s going to be attacked from that quarter. Then, again, he’s been offering work to the men around here––and he’s letting out that he never understood our side of things rightly and that he’s listening to Larry––get that, Polly?––listening to Larry and lettinghimmake the folks on the Point get on to the fact that he’s their friend. Gosh! Maclin their friend.”

And Mary-Clare all this time mystified her friends and her foes. She had foes. Men, and women, too, who looked askance at her. The less they knew, the more they had to invent. The proprieties of the Forest were being outraged. The women who envied Mary-Clare her daring fell upon her first. From their own misery and disillusionment, they sought to defend their position; create an atmosphere of137virtue around their barren lives, by attacking the woman who refused to be a martyr.

“You can’t tell me,” said a downtrodden wife of one of Maclin’s men, “that she turned her husband out of doors after wheedling him out of all he should have had from his father, unless she meant to leave the door open for another! A woman only acts as she has for some man.”

The women, the happy ones, drove down upon Mary-Clare from another quarter. The happy women are always first to lay down the laws for the unhappy ones. Not knowing, they are irresponsible. The men of the Forest did some laughing and side talking, but on the whole they denounced Mary-Clare because she was a menace to the Established Code.

“God!” said the speaker of the Cosey Bar, “what’s coming to the world, anyhow? There ain’t any rest and peace nowheres, and when it comes to women taking to naming terms, I say it’s time for us to stand for our rights fierce.”

Maclin had delicately and indirectly set forth Mary-Clare’s “terms” and the Forest was staggered.

But Mary-Clare either did not hear, or the turmoil was so insistent that she had become used to it. She suddenly displayed an energy that made her former activities seem tame.

She brought from the attic an old loom and got Aunt Polly to teach her to weave; she presently designed quaint patterns and delighted in her work. She invited several children, neglected little souls, to come to the yellow house and she taught them with Noreen. She resorted largely to the method the old doctor had used with her. Adapting, as she saw possible, her knowledge to her little group, she gave generously but held her peace.

Northrup often had a hearty laugh after attending one of the “school” sessions.

“It’s like tossing all kinds of feed to a flock of birds,” he told Aunt Polly, “and letting the little devils pick as they can.”

“I reckon they pick only as much as their little stomachs138can hold,” Aunt Polly replied, “and it makesmesmile to notice how folks as ain’t above saying lies about Mary-Clare can trust their children to her teaching.”

“Oh! well, lies are soon killed,” Northrup returned, but his smile vanished.

Mary-Clare was often troubled by Larry’s persistence at the Point. She could not account for it, but she did not alter her own way of life. She went, occasionally, to the desolate Point; she rarely saw Larry, but if she did, she greeted him pleasantly. It was amazing to find how naturally she could do this. Indeed the whole situation was at the snapping point.

“I do say,” Twombley confided to Peneluna, “it don’t seem nater for a woman not to grieve and fuss at such goings on.”

Peneluna tossed her head and sneezed.

“I ain’t ever understood,” she broke in, “why a woman should fuss and break herself on account of a man doing what he oughtn’t ter do. Lethimdo the fussing and breaking.”

“She might try and save him.” Twombley, like all the male Forest, was stirred at what he could not understand.

“Women have got their hands full of other things”––Peneluna sneezed again as if the dust of ages was stifling her––“and I do say that after a woman does save a man, she’s often too worn out to enjoy her savings.”

And Larry, carefully dressed, living alone and to all appearances brave and steady, simply, according to Maclin’s ordering, “let out more sheet rope” in order that Mary-Clare might sail on to the rocks and smash herself to atoms before the eyes of her fellow creatures.

Surely the Forest had much to cogitate upon.

“There is just one ledge of rocks for her kind,” said Maclin. “You keep yourself clear and safe, Rivers, and watch the wreck.”

Maclin could be most impressive at times and his conversation had a nautical twist that was quite effective.

Northrup at this time would have been shocked beyond measure had any one suggested that his own attitude of mind139resembled in the slightest degree that of Maclin, Twombley, and Rivers. He was too sane and decent a man to consider for a moment that Mary-Clare’s actions were based in the slightest degree upon his presence in the Forest. He knew that he had had nothing to do with the matter, but that was no reason for thinking that he might not have. Suggestion was enmeshing him in the disturbance.

He felt that Larry was a brute. That he had the outer covering of respectability counted against him. Larry always kept his best manners for public exhibition; his inheritance of refinement could be tapped at any convenient hour. Northrup knew his type. He had not recalled his father in years as he did now! A man legally sustained by his interpretation of marriage could make a hell or a heaven of any woman’s life. This truism took on new significance in the primitive Forest.

But in that Mary-Clare had had courage to escape from hell––and Northrup had pictured it all from memories of his boyhood––roused him to admiration.

She was of the mettle of his mother. She might be bent but never broken. She was treading a path that none of her little world had ever trod before. Alone in the Forest she had taken a stand that she could not hope would be understood, and how superbly she was holding it!

Knowing what he did, Northrup compared Mary-Clare with the women of his acquaintance; what one of them could defy their conventions as she was doing, instinctively, courageously?

“But she ought not to be permitted to think all men are like Rivers!”

This thought grew upon Northrup, and it was the first step, generously taken, to establish higher ideals for his sex. With the knowledge he had, he was in a position of safety. Not to be seen with Mary-Clare while the silly gossip muttered or whispered would be to acknowledge a reason for not meeting her––so he flung caution to the winds.

There were nutting parties for the children––innocent enough, heaven knew! There were thrilling camping suppers140on the flat ridge of the hills in order to watch the miracle of sunset and moonrise.

No wonder Jan-an cast her lot in with those headed, so the whisper ran, for perdition. She had never been so nearly happy in her life; neither had Mary-Clare nor Noreen nor––though he did not own it––Northrup, himself.

No wonder Maclin, and the outraged Larry, saw distinctly the ridge on which the wreck was to occur.

But no one was taking into account that idealism in Mary-Clare that the old doctor had devoutly hoped would save her, not destroy her. Northrup began to comprehend it during the more intimate conversations that took place when the children, playing apart, left him and Mary-Clare alone. The wonder grew upon him and humbled him. It was something he had never encountered before. A philosophy and code built entirely upon knowledge gained from books and interpreted by a singular strength and purity of mind. It piqued Northrup; he began to test it, never estimating danger for himself.

“Books are like people,” Mary-Clare said one day––she was watching Northrup build a campfire and the last bit of sunlight fell full upon her––“the words are the costumes.” She had marked the surprised look in Northrup’s eyes as she quoted rather a bald sentiment from an old book.

“Yes, of course, and that’s sound reasoning.” For a moment Northrup felt as though a clear north wind were blowing away the dust in an overlooked corner of his mind. “But it’s rather staggering to find that you read French,” he added, for the quotation had been literally translated. “You do, don’t you?”

“I do, a little. I’m taking it up again for Noreen.”

Noreen’s name was continually being brought into focus. It had the effect of pushing Northrup, metaphorically, into a safe zone. He resented this.

“She is afraid!” he thought. “Rivers has left his mark upon her mind, damn him!”

This sentiment should have given warning, but it did not.

141

“I study nights”––Mary-Clare was speaking quite as if fear had no part in her thought––“French, mathematics––all the hard things that went in and––stuck.”

“Hard things do stick, don’t they?” Northrup hated the pushed-aside feeling.

“Terribly. But my doctor was adamant about hard things. He used to say that I’d learn to love chipping off the rough corners.” Here Mary-Clare laughed, and the sound set Northrup’s nerves a-tingle as the clear notes of music did.

“I can see myself now, Mr. Northrup, sitting behind my doctor on his horse, my book flattened out against his back. I’d ask questions; he’d fling the answers to me. Once I drew the map of Italy on his blessed old shoulders with crayon and often French verbs ran crookedly up the seam of his coat, for the horse changed his gait now and then.”

Northrup laughed aloud. He edged away from his isolation and said:

“Your doctor was a remarkable man. His memory lives in the Forest; it’s about the most vital thing here. It and all that preserves it.” His eyes rested upon Mary-Clare.

“Yes. He was wonderful. Lately he seems more alive than ever. He had such simple rules of life––but they work. He told me so often that when a trouble or anything like that came, there were but two ways to meet it. If it was going to kill you, die at your best. If it wasn’t, get over it at once; never waste time––live as soon as possible.” Was there a note of warning in the words?

“And you’re doing it?”

An understanding look passed between them.

“Yes, Mr. Northrup, for Noreen.”

Back went Northrup to his place with a dull thud! Then Mary-Clare hurried to a safer subject.

“I wish you would tell me about your book, Mr. Northrup. I have the strangest feeling about it. It seems like a new kind of flower growing in the Forest. I love flowers.”

Northrup looked down at his companion. Her bared head, her musing, radiant face excited and moved him. He had forgotten his book.

142

“You’re rather like a strange growth yourself,” he said daringly.

Mary-Clare smiled gaily.

“You’ll have to blame my old doctor for that,” she said.

“Or bless him,” Northrup broke in.

“Yes, that’s better, if it is true.”

“It’s tremendously true.”

“A book”––again that elusive push––“must be a great responsibility. Once you put your thoughts and words down and send them out––there you are!”

“Yes. Good Lord! There you are.”

“I knew that you would feel that way about it and that is why I would like to hear you talk of it. It’s a story, isn’t it?”

“Yes, a story.”

“You can reach further with a story.”

“I suppose so. You do not have to knuckle down to rules. You can let your vision have a say, and your feelings.” Northrup, seeing that his book must play a part, accepted that fact.

“I suppose”––Mary-Clare was looking wistfully up at Northrup––“all the people in your books work out what you believe is truth. I can alwaysfeeltruth in a book––or the lack of it.”

In the near distance Noreen and Jan-an were gathering wood. They were singing and shouting lustily.

“May I sit on your log?” Northrup spoke hurriedly.

“Of course,” and Mary-Clare moved a little. “The sun’s gone,” she went on. “It’s quite dark in the valley.”

“It’s still light here––and there’s the fire.” Northrup was watching the face beside him.

“Yes, the fire, and presently the moon rising, just over there.”

Restraint lay between the two on the mossy log. They both resented it.

“You know, you must know, that I’d rather have you share my book than any one else.” Northrup spoke almost roughly.

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