"Wisdom, slow product of laborious years,The only fruit that life's cold winter bears,Thy sacred seeds in vain in youth we lay,By the fierce storm of passion torn away;Should some remain in rich, gen'rous soil,They long lie hid, and must be raised with toil;Faintly they struggle with inclement skies,No sooner born than the poor planter dies."
"Wisdom, slow product of laborious years,The only fruit that life's cold winter bears,Thy sacred seeds in vain in youth we lay,By the fierce storm of passion torn away;Should some remain in rich, gen'rous soil,They long lie hid, and must be raised with toil;Faintly they struggle with inclement skies,No sooner born than the poor planter dies."
With such word-comfort did Farwell dig, from other's experiences, crude guidings for himself! And at that moment a stir outside the open door caused him to turn and confront what, in the excited moment, seemed an apparition from the past, which, for him, was sealed and barred.
"Good Lord!" he ejaculated under his breath and started to his feet. A visitor from the Lodge apparently had descended upon him.
"I beg pardon," he said aloud, and then a laugh, familiar and ringing, brought the colour to his pale, thin face.
The girl came in, threw back the veil from her merry face, and confronted Farwell.
"Miss Priscilla Glenn, sir! Behold her in the battered finery of the place she is going to—to grace some day!"
Then Priscilla wheeled about lightly and displayed her gown to Farwell's astonished eyes.
"Cast-offs," she explained; "the Honourable Mrs. Jones from the States left them with Mrs. McAlpin for the poor. Just imagine the 'poor' glinting around in this gay silk gown all frayed at the hem and in holes under the arms! The hat and veil, too, go with the smart frock; likewise the scarf of rainbow colours. But, oh! Mr. Farwell, how do I look as a real lady in my damaged outfit?"
Farwell stared without speaking. He had grown so used to the change in the girl since the time when he had prevailed upon Glenn to loosen the rein upon her, that the even stream of their intercourse had been unruffled. He had passed from teacher to friendly guide, from guide to good comrade; but here he was suddenly confronting her—man to woman!
All his misfortune and limitations had but erected a shield of age about him beneath which smouldered dangerously, but unconsciously, all the forbidden and denied passions and sentiments of a male creature of early middle life.
In thinking afterward of the shock Priscilla gave him, Farwell was always glad to remember that his first thought was for her, her danger, her need.
"I declare!" he exclaimed. "I did not know you, Priscilla Glenn."
His tone had a new ring in it, a vibration of defence—the astonished male on guard against the attack of a subtle force whose power he could not estimate.
"And no wonder. I did not know myself when I first saw myself. Do you know, Mr. Farwell, I never thought about my—my face, much, but it is really a—very nice face, isn't it? As faces go, I mean?"
"Yes," Farwell returned, looking at her critically and speaking slowly. "Yes, you are very—beautiful. I had not thought of it before, either."
"Drop me down, now, in the States, Mr. Farwell, and I fancy that with my looks and my dancing I might—well, go! What do you think?"
She was preening herself before a small mirror and did not notice the elderly man, who, under her fascination, was being transformed.
"You're a regular Frankenstein," he muttered, while the consciousness of the blue eyes in the dusky skin, the long slenderness of her body, and the hue of her strange hair grew upon him. "Do you know what a Frankenstein is?"
"No." And now Priscilla, weary of her play and self-contemplation, turned about and took a chair opposite Farwell. "Tell me."
So he told her, but she shook her head.
"You've only helped me to find myself; you did not make me," she said with a little sigh. "Oh, Mr. Farwell, I do—much thinking up at Lonely Farm. The winters are long, and the nights, too. You know there is a queer little plant beside the spring at the foot of our garden; it has roots long enough and thick enough for a thing twice its size. It grew strong and sure underground before it ventured up. It blossomed last summer; an odd flower it had. I think I am like that. You've taught me to—well, know myself. I shall not shame you, Master Farwell. You know we of the lonesome In-Place make friends with strange objects; everything in nature talks to us, if we will but listen. You have taught me to listen, too. Back a piece in the woods are a strong young hemlock and a little white birch. For years I have watched and tended them. When I was a small girl I likened the hemlock to you, sir, and there was I, leaning and huddling close to you, like the ghostly stripling of the woods. Well, I noticed to-day, Mr. Farwell, the birch stands quite securely; it doesn't bend for support on the hemlock, but it is standing friendly all the same. I think"—and here Priscilla clasped her hands close and outstretched them—"I think I am soon going away!"
Her eyes were tear-dimmed, her face very earnest.
"I wish—you would give up the childish folly, Priscilla." A fear rose in Farwell's eyes. "What could you, such an one as you have become, do out—in the States? It is madness—sheer, brutal madness."
Priscilla shook her head.
"You think it childish folly? Why, I have never lost sight of it for a day. You have not understood me if you have imagined that. I have always known I must go. Lately I have felt the nearness of the going, and it is thehowto break away and begin that puzzle me. I am ready."
"Priscilla, you are a wild child still, playing with dangerous tools. You cannot comprehend the trouble into which you are willing, in your blindness, to plunge. Why, you are a—a woman; a beautiful one! Do you know what the world does with such, unless they are guarded and protected?"
"What does it do?" The true eyes held Farwell commandingly, and with a sense of dismay he looked back at the only world he really knew: the world of his own ungoverned passions and selfishness. A kind of shame came over him, and he felt he was no safe guide. There were worlds and worlds! He had sold his birthright; this woman, bent upon finding hers, might inherit a fairer kingdom.
"What does it do, Master Farwell?"
"I do not know. It depends upon—you. It is like a great quarry—I have read somewhere something like this—we must all mould and chisel our characters; some of us crush them and chip them. It isn't always the world's fault. God help us!"
Priscilla looked at him with large, shining eyes and the maternal in her rose to the call of his sad recognition of failure where she was to go with such brave courage.
"Do not fear for me," she said gently; "'twould be a poor return if I failed, after all you have done for me."
"I—what have I done?"
"Everything. Have you ever thought what sort I would have been had Lonely Farm been my only training?" she smiled faintly, and her girlish face, in the setting of the faded hat and soiled veil, struck Farwell again by its change, which now seemed to have settled into permanency. Of course it was only the ridiculous fashion of the world he once knew, but he could not free himself of the fancy that Priscilla was more her real self in the shabby trappings than she had ever been in the absurd costumes of the In-Place.
With the acceptance of the fact that the girl really meant to get away and at once, a wave of dreariness swept over him. He thought of the time on ahead when his last vital interest would be taken from him. Then he aroused from his stupor and brought his mind to bear upon the inevitable; the here and now.
"It's a big drop in your ambition, Priscilla," he said; "you used to think you could dance your way to your throne."
"There is no throne now, Master Farwell. I'm just thinking all the time of My Road."
"But there's the Heart's Desire at the end, you know."
"Yes; but I do not think I would want it to be a throne."
"What then?"
"Oh! love—my own life—the giving and giving just where I long to give. It's splendid to tramp along your road, if itisyour road, and be jolly and friendly with those you care for. It will all be so different from Kenmore, where one has to take what one must."
"I wonder how Jerry-Jo will feel about all this?"
"Jerry-Jo! And what right has he to think at all—about me?"
The girl's eyes flashed with mischief and daring.
"Jerry-Jo!" she laughed with amusement. "Just big, Indian-boy Jerry-Jo! We've played together and quarrelled together, but you're all wrong, Master Farwell, if you think he cares about me! He knows better than that—far, far, better."
But even as she spoke the light and fun left her eyes. She looked older, more thoughtful.
"Isn't it queer?" she said after a pause.
"What, Priscilla?"
"Oh, life and people and the things that go to their making? You're quite wrong about Jerry-Jo. I'm sure you're wrong."
Then suddenly she sprang up.
"I must go," she said abruptly; "go and exchange these rags for my own plain things. I only wanted to surprise you, sir; and how deadly serious we have grown."
She passed out of the cottage without a word more. Farwell watched her across the Green and up to the Lodge. He was disturbed and restless. The old fever of escape overcame him. With the thought of Priscilla's flight into the open, he strained against the trap that Ledyard had caught him in. The guide who, he knew, never permitted him to escape his vigilance, became a new and alarming obstacle, and Farwell set his teeth grimly. Then he muttered:
"Curse him! curse him!" and an emotion which he had believed was long since dead rose hotly in his consciousness. Before the dread spectre, suddenly imbued with vitality, Farwell reeled and covered his face. Murder was in his heart—the old madness of desire to wipe out, by any means, that which barred his way to what he wanted.
"My God!" he moaned; "my God! I—I thought I—was master. I thought it was dead in me."
Farwell ate no evening meal that night. Early he closed and locked his outer door, drew the dark green shades, and lighted his lamp. His hands were clammy and cold, and he could not blot out with book or violin the horror of Charles Martin's face as it looked up at him that night so long ago. Way on toward morning Farwell paced his room trying to forget, but he could not.
But Priscilla, after leaving Farwell, dressed again in her plain serviceable gown and hat, had made her way toward the farm. Her happy, light-hearted mood was past; she felt unaccountably gloomy, and as she walked on she sought to explain herself to herself, and presently Jerry-Jo came into focus and would not stir from her contemplation. Yes, it was Jerry-Jo's personality that disturbed her, and it was Farwell's words that had torn the shield she herself had erected, and set the truth free. Yes, she had played with Jerry-Jo; she had tested her coquetry and charm upon him for lack of better material. In her outbreaks of youthful spirits she had claimed him as prey because the others of his sex were less desirable. Jerry-Jo had that subtle, physical attraction that responded to her youthful allurements, but the young fellow himself, taken seriously, repelled her, and Farwell had taken Jerry-Jo seriously!
That was it! She was no longer a child. She was a woman and must remember it. Undoubtedly Jerry-Jo himself had never given the matter a moment's deep thought. Well, she must take care that he never did. Jerry-Jo in earnest would be unbearable.
And then, just as she reached the pasture bars separating her father's farm from the red rock highway, Jerry-Jo McAlpin strode in sight from the wood path into which the highway ran. She waited for him and gave him a nervous smile as he came near. His first words startled her out of her dull mood.
"I've been up to the Hill Place. Him and her's there for a few days."
"Him and her!" Priscilla repeated, her face flushing. "Oh, him and her!"
"Sure!" McAlpin was holding her with a hard, fixed gaze.
In the mesh that was closing about Priscilla, strangely enough names were always largely eliminated. They might have altered her course later on, might have held her to the past, but Kenmore dealt briefly with personalities and visualized whatever it could. The name Travers had rarely, if ever, been spoken in Priscilla's presence. "The Hill Place folks" was the title found sufficient for general use.
"And I was remembering," Jerry-Jo went on, "how once you said you wanted to thank him for—for the books. We might take the canoe, come to-morrow, and the day is fine, and pay a visit."
Still Priscilla did not notice the gleam in McAlpin's keen eyes.
"Oh! if I only dared, Jerry-Jo! What an adventure it would be, to be sure. And how good of you to think of it."
"What hinders?"
"Father would never forgive me!"
"And are you always to be at the beck and whistle of your father even in your pleasures?"
Priscilla was in just the attitude of mind to receive this suggestion with appreciation.
"There's no reason why I shouldn't go if I want to," she said with an uplift of her head.
"And—don't you want to?" Jerry-Jo's eyes were taking in the loveliness of the raised face as the setting sun fell upon it.
"Yes, I do want to! I'll go, Jerry-Jo."
Then McAlpin came close to her and said in a low voice:
"Priscilla, give us a kiss for pay."
So taken out of herself was the girl, so overpowered by the excitement of adventure, that before she realized her part in the small drama of passionate youth, she gave a mocking laugh and twisted her lips saucily.
Jerry-Jo had her in his arms on the instant, and the hot kiss he pressed on her mouth roused her to fury.
"If you ever touch me again," she whispered, struggling into freedom, "I'll hate you to the last day of my life!"
So had she spoken to her father years ago; so would she always speak when her reservations were threatened. "I declare I am afraid to go with you to-morrow."
McAlpin fell back in shamed contrition.
"You need not be afraid," he muttered. "I reckon I was bidding you—good-bye. Him and me is different. Once you see him and he sees you, it's good-bye to Jerry-Jo McAlpin."
Something in the words and tone of humility brought Priscilla, with a bound, back to a kindlier mood. After all, it was a tribute that McAlpin was paying her. She must hold him in check, that was all.
They parted with no great change. There had been a flurry, but it had served to clear the atmosphere—for her at least.
But Nathaniel, that evening in the kitchen, managed to arouse in the girl the one state of mind needed to drive her on her course.
"What was the meaning of that scuffling by the bars a time back?" he asked, eyeing Priscilla with the old look of suspicious antagonism. Every nerve in the girl's body twitched with resentment and her spirit flared forth. She shielded herself behind the one flimsy subterfuge that Glenn could never understand or tolerate.
"A kiss you mean. What's a kiss? You call that a scuffle?"
Theodora, who was washing the tea dishes while Priscilla wiped them, took her usual course and began to cry dispiritedly and forlornly.
"What's between you and—McAlpin?" Nathaniel asked, scowling darkly.
"Between us? What need for anything between us?"
Priscilla ceased smiling and looked defiant.
"Maybe you better marry that half-breed and have done with it."
"It's more like—wouldhemarry me?"
This was unfortunate.
"And why not?" Nathaniel shook the ashes from his pipe angrily. "A little more such performance as I saw to-day and no decent man will marry you! As for Jerry-Jo, he'll marry you if I say so! You foul my nest, miss, and out you go!"
"Husband! husband!" And with this Theodora dropped a cup, one of Glenn's mother's cups, and somehow this added fire to his fury.
"And when the time comes, wife, you make your choice: Go with her, who you have trained into what she is, or stay with me who has been defied in his own home, by them nearest and closest to him."
Priscilla breathed fast and hard. The tangible wall of misunderstanding between her and her father stifled her to-night as it never had before. Again she realized the finality of something—the breaking of the old ties, the helpless sense of groping for what lay hidden, but none the less real, just on before.
The next day was gloriously clear and threateningly warm. Such days do not come to Kenmore in September except to lure the unheeding to acts of folly. And at two o'clock in the afternoon Priscilla, from the kitchen door, saw Jerry-Jo paddling his canoe in still, Indian fashion around Lone Tree Island. Theodora was off erranding, and Nathaniel, as far as human knowledge went, was in some distant field; he had started off directly after dinner. Priscilla was ready for her adventure. With the natural desire of youth, she had decked herself out in her modest finery—a stiffly starched white gown of a cheap but pretty design, a fluff of soft lace at throat and wrist, and, over it, the old red cape that years before had added to her appearance as she danced on the rocks. Perhaps remembering that, she had utilized the garment and was thankful that cloth lasted so long in Kenmore!
The coquetry of girlhood rose happily in Priscilla's heart. Jerry-Jo had become again simply a link in her chain of events; he had lost the importance the flash of the evening before had given him; he was not forgiven, but for the time he was, as a human being, forgotten. He was Jerry-Jo who was to paddle her to her Heart's Desire! That was it, and the old words, set to music of her own, were the signals used to attract McAlpin's attention. But the merry call brought Glenn from out the barn just as the canoe touched the rocks lightly, and Priscilla prepared to step in.
"Where you two going?" he shouted in the tone that always roused the worst in Priscilla's nature. Jerry-Jo paused, paddle in air, but his companion whispered:
"Go on!" To Nathaniel she flung back: "We're going to have a bit of fun, and why not, father? I'm tired of staying at home."
This was unfortunate: on the home question Glenn was very clear and decided.
"Come back!" he ordered, but the little canoe had shot out into the Channel. "Hi, there McAlpin, do you hear?"
"Go on!" again whispered Priscilla, and Jerry-Jo heard only her soft command, for his senses were filled with the loveliness of her charming, defiant face set under the broad brim of a hat around which was twined a wreath of natural flowers as blue as the girl's laughing eyes.
Nathaniel, defied and helpless, stood by the barn door and impotently fumed as the canoe rounded Lone Tree Island and was lost to his infuriated sight.
"You'll catch it," Jerry-Jo comforted when pursuit was impossible, and he had the responsibility of the rebel on his hands. "I wouldn't be in your place, and you need not drag me in, for I'd have turned back had you said the word."
A fleeting contempt stirred the beauty of the girl's face for a moment, and then she told him of that which was seething in her heart.
"What does it matter, Jerry-Jo? All my life, ever since I can remember, I have been growing surely to what is now near at hand. I cannot abide my father; nor can he find comfort in me. Why should I darken the lives of my parents and have no life of my own? The lure of the States has always been in my thought and now it calls near and loud."
McAlpin stared helplessly at her, and her beauty, enhanced by her unusual garments, moved him unwholesomely.
"What you mean?" he muttered.
"Only this: It would be no strange thing did a boy start for the States. A little money, a ticket on a steamer, and—pouf! Off the boys and men go to make their lives. Well, then, some day you will—find me gone, Jerry-Jo. Gone to make my life. Will you miss me?"
This question caused McAlpin to stop paddling.
"You won't be—let!" he murmured; "you—a girl!"
"I, a girl!" Priscilla laughed scornfully. "You will see. This day, after I have thanked him up yonder, I am going to ask his mother to help me get away. Surely a lady such as she could help me. I will not ask much of her, only the guiding hand to a safe place where I can—live! Oh! can you understand how all my life I have been smothered and stifled? I often wonder what sort I will be—out there! I'm willing to suffer while I learn, but Jerry-Jo"—and here the excited voice paused—"I have a strange feeling of—myself! I sometimes feel as if there were two of me, the one holding, demanding, and protecting the other. I will not have men always making my life and shielding me; the woman of me will have its way. Men and boys never know this feeling."
And Jerry-Jo could, of course, understand nothing of this, but the thing he had set out to do, more in rude, brutish fun than anything else, assumed graver purpose. A new and ugly look grew in his bold eyes, a sinister smile on his red mouth, which showed the points of his white, fang-like teeth. But Priscilla, too absorbed with her own thoughts, did not notice.
It was four o'clock when the canoe touched the landing spot of Far Hill Place, and Priscilla sprang out.
"I'll bide here; don't be long," said McAlpin.
But Priscilla paused and glanced up at the sky.
"It's darkening," she faltered, a shyness overcoming her. "I smell—thunder. Don't you think you better come up with me Jerry-Jo? Suppose they are not at home?"
"They'll be back soon in that case, and as for a shower, that would hasten them and you would be under shelter. I can turn the canoe over me and be dry as a mouse in a hayrick. I'll not go with you, not I. Do your own part, with them looking on as will enjoy it."
"I believe you are—jealous, Jerry-Jo." This was said idly and more to fill in an awkward pause than for anything else.
"And much good that would do me, after what you've just said. If you're bound for the devil, Priscilla, 'tis little power I have to stay you."
"I'm not—for the devil!" Priscilla flung back, and started sturdily up the hill path toward the house hidden among the trees.
Out of McAlpin's sight, the girl went more slowly, while she sought to arrange her mode of attack. If her host were what he once was, he would make everything easy after she recalled herself to him. As for the mother, Priscilla had only a dim memory of her, but something told her that the call would be a happy and memorable one after the first moment.
A bit of tune cheered the girl; a repeating of the Road Song helped even more, for it resurrected most vividly the young fellow who had introduced music and happiness into her life.
"I'll be doshed!" she cried. The word had not passed her lips for years; it brought a laugh and a complete restoration of poise. So she reached the house. Smoke was issuing from the chimney. A fire had been made even on this hot day, but like enough it was to dry the place after the years of closed doors and windows. Evidently it was a many-houred fire, for the plume of smoke was faint and steady. The broad door was set wide but the windows were still boarded up at the front of the house, though the side ones had escaped that protection.
Priscilla knocked and waited. No reply or sound came in response, and presently a low muttering of distant thunder broke.
"That will bring them in short order," she said, "and surely they will not object if I make myself comfortable until they come."
She went inside. The room had the appearance of one from which the owner had long been absent, that unaccountable, vacant look, although a work-bag hung on the back of a chair by the roaring fire, and a blot of oil lay on the table near the lamp which had evidently been recently filled. Back of these tokens lay a wide sense of desolation.
For a moment Priscilla hesitated before sitting down; her courage failed, but a second thought reconciled conditions with a brief stay after long absence, and she decided to wait.
And while she waited, suddenly and alarmingly, the storm burst! The darkness of the room and the wooded space outside had deceived her: there was no escape now!
She was concerned for the people she had come to see. Jerry-Jo, she knew, would crawl under his boat and be as dry as a tortoise in its shell. But those others!
With this thought she set about, mechanically, making the room comfortable. She piled on fresh wood and noticed that it was so wet that it sputtered dangerously. Presently the wind changed sharply, and a blast of almost icy coldness carried the driving rain halfway across the floor.
It was something of a struggle to close the heavy door, for it opened outward, and Priscilla was drenched by the time it was made secure. Breathing hard, she made her way to the fire and knelt before it. The glow drew her attention from the darkness of the space back and around her.
It was unfortunate and depressing, and she had no choice but to make herself as comfortable as she might, though a sense of painful uneasiness grew momentarily. At first she imagined it was fear of what she must encounter upon her return home; then she felt sure it was her dread of meeting the people for whom she had risked so much. Finally Jerry-Jo loomed in the foreground of her thought and an entirely new terror was born in her soul.
"Jerry-Jo!" she laughed aloud as his name passed her lips. "Jerry-Jo, to be sure. My! how thankful I'd be to see him this instant!"
And with the assertion she turned shudderingly toward the door. The gloom behind her only emphasized her nervousness.
"I'll—I'll have to go!" she whispered suddenly, while the wind and the slashing of sleety rain defied her. "It will be better out of doors, bad as it is!"
The grim loneliness of four walls, compared with the dangers of the open, was worse. But when Priscilla, trembling and panting, reached the door and pushed, she found that the storm was pitting its strength against hers and she could not budge it.
"Oh, well," she half sobbed; "if I must, I must." And she stealthily tiptoed back to the warmth and light as if fearing to arouse something, she knew not what, in the dim place.
There was no way of estimating time. The minutes were like hours and the hours were like minutes while Priscilla sat alone. As a matter of fact, it was after seven when steps, unmistakable steps, sounded on the porch and carried both apprehension and relief to the storm-bound prisoner inside.
"Thank heaven!" breathed she, and sprang to her feet. She was midway in the room when the door opened, and, as if flayed forward by the lashing storm, Jerry-Jo broke into the shadow and drew the heavy oak door after him. In a black panic of fear Priscilla saw him turn the key in the lock before he spoke a word to her; then he came forward, flung his wet cap toward the hearth, and laughed.
"What's the matter?" he asked quickly as Priscilla's white face confronted him. "Disappointed, I suppose. Do you begrudge me a bit of warmth and shelter? God knows I'm drenched to the bone. The rain came up from the earth as well as down from the clouds. It's a devil's storm and no mistake. What you staring at, Priscilla? Had you forgotten me? Thought me dead, and now you're looking at my ghost? Didn't I wait long enough for you? Where are the—others?"
This seemed to clarify and steady the situation and Priscilla gave a slight laugh:
"To be sure. You did not know. They—they were away. The storm came up suddenly. I had to wait. You are wet through and through, Jerry-Jo. It's good we have such a fire. You'll be comfortable in a moment. I'm glad you came; I was getting—afraid."
"Let's see if there is any oil in the lamp!" Jerry-Jo exclaimed. He was in no mood for darkness himself.
"They must have filled it before they went," Priscilla answered. "See, there is some oil on the table."
McAlpin struck a match and soon the room was flooded with a new brightness that reached even to the far corners and seemed to set free the real loneliness that held these two together.
"I—I managed to keep this dry," McAlpin spoke huskily. "I always have a bite with me when I take to the woods. Who can ever tell what may happen!"
He pushed a coarse sandwich toward Priscilla and began eating one himself.
"Go on!" he said.
"I'm not hungry, Jerry-Jo, and I want to start back home at once."
Jerry-Jo leered at her over his bread and meat.
"What's your hurry? I want to get warm and dry before I set out again. This is an all-nighter of a storm, if I know anything about it."
"Get dry, of course, Jerry-Jo. It won't take long with this heat; then we must start, storm or no storm."
The old discomfort and unrest returned, and she fixed her eyes on Jerry-Jo.
"There's no great hurry," said he, munching away. "It's warm here and cozy. What's got you, Priscilla? You was mighty keen to come, and you ain't finished your errand yet. What's ailing you? No one could help the storm, and we'd be swamped in the bay if we was there now."
Priscilla got up and walked slowly toward the door, but without any apparent reason Jerry-Jo arose also, and, still chewing his bread and meat, backed away from the table, keeping himself between the girl and whatever her object was. Noticing this, a real terror seized upon Priscilla and she darted in the opposite direction, reached the hearth, and was bending toward a heavy poker which lay there, before she herself could have explained her motive. Jerry-Jo was alert. Tossing his food upon the table as he strode forward, he gripped her wrist.
"None of that!" he muttered. "What ails you, Priscilla?" They faced each other at close range.
"I—I am afraid of you!"
At this McAlpin threw back his head and roared with laughter, releasing her at the same time. With freedom Priscilla gained a bit of courage and a keen sense of the necessity of calmness. She did not move away from Jerry-Jo, but fixing him with her wide eyes she asked:
"Are—are the—family here—here in Kenmore?" Suspicion and anger shook the voice. The slow, tense words brought things down to fact.
"No! God knows where they are! I don't know or care."
Brought face to face with great danger, mental or physical, the majority of people rise to the call. Priscilla knew now that she was in grave peril—peril of a deeper kind than even her tormentor could realize. Every nerve and emotion came to her defence. She would hold this creature at bay as hunters hold the wild things of the woods when gun or club fail. Then, after that, she would have to deal with what must inevitably confront her at home. She seemed to be standing alone amid cruel and unfamiliar foes, but she was calm!
"You lied, then? What for?"
"What do you think?"
"You believe, by shutting me away from everything, every one, you can win what otherwise you could not get?" It all seemed cruelly plain, now. She felt she had always known it.
"Something like that, yes. You'll come to me fast enough, after to-night. Once you come I'll—I'll do the fair and square thing by you, Priscilla."
The half-pleading caught the girl's thought.
"You mean, by this device you will make me marry you? You'll blacken my name, bar my father's house to me, and then you will be generous and—marry me?"
Jerry-Jo dropped his bold, dark eyes.
"I never cared for you, Jerry-Jo. I hate you, now!"
At this McAlpin raised his head and a fierce red coloured his face.
"You'll get over that!" he muttered. "Any port in a storm, you know. You better not drive me now! I ain't—safe, and I've got you tight for—to-night!"
Suddenly the pure flame of spirituality flashed into the soul of Priscilla Glenn. Alone, undefended, facing a hideous possibility, beyond which lay a black certainty of desolation, she rose supreme to protect something that her rudely aroused womanhood must defend, even by death!
"You—beast!" she cried, and all her shrinking fear fell from her. "Go back! Sit down! I have something to say to you—before——" She did not finish, but the pause made Jerry-Jo understand that she recognized her position.
"I'll stand here, by God!" he almost shouted, and came close.
The proximity of the rough, coarse body was the one thing the girl felt she could not bear. She smelled the odour of his wet clothing, felt his breath, and she shrank back a step.
"This—this body, Jerry-Jo McAlpin," she whispered, "is all you can touch. That, I will kill to-morrow—the next day—it does not matter. But the soul of me shall haunt you while you live. Night and day it shall torment and clutch you until it brings your sinful spirit to—to God!"
"You—you devil!" cried McAlpin, all the superstitious fear of his mixed blood chilling him. "You——" And then as if daring the fate she had it in her power to evoke, he rushed toward her and clasped her close in his strong arms. His face was bent over hers, his lips parted from his cruel teeth, but he did not force them upon her.
So here she was—she, Priscilla Glenn, in the jaws of death, she who would have laughed, danced, and sang her way straight into happiness! Here she was, with what on ahead—if she lived?
She waited, she struggled, then she relaxed in the iron hold, and for a moment, only a moment, lost the sense of reality. Presently words that McAlpin was saying came to her in the black stillness of her consciousness.
"I had—to have you! Now that I've shown you my power, I can wait until you come whining to me. I ain't going to hurt you! I want you as you are when you come a-begging of me. I only wanted to prove to you that—I've got you!"
Again Priscilla was aware of the red warmth of the fire, the sickening smell of drying wool, the loosening of the bands of McAlpin's arms.
"You—you who boast that when you hunt, out of season, you shoot one shot in the air in order to give a poor wild thing a chance of escape—you bring me here with a lie; close every hope to me, and—call that—victory! You—you—fiend! What do you mean?"
She was standing free at last! She was so weak that she staggered to a chair, fearing that McAlpin, seeing her need, might again lay hands upon her.
"I mean—that I've fired my shot!" Her words had caught his fancy. "You have your chance to—to get away! But where? Where?"
The dark face leered.
"See! I'm going to leave you. Go out into the night. You can try for your—your life, but in the end you'll come to me. I don't care what they of Kenmore will say, I'll know you are—what you are, and sympathy will be with me, gal, when I take you. And you'll know, once you come to me, proper and asking, I'll do—I'll do the best any man could do—for—I love you!"
This was flung out desperately, defiantly.
"Yes, I love you as—Jerry-Jo McAlpin knows how to love. It's his way. Remember that!"
Not a word rose to Priscilla's lips. She saw McAlpin turn and stride to the door; she heard him turn the key and—she was alone! But a strange thing happened just at that moment, a thing that did more to unnerve the girl than anything that had gone before. As the heavy oak door slammed after the retreating figure, the jar caused the tall clock, back among the shadows of the far side of the room, to strike! One, two, three! Then followed a whirring that faded into deathly silence. It was like the voice of one, believed to be dead, speaking!
Frightened, but thoroughly roused to her only hope, Priscilla staggered to the door, clutched the key in cold, trembling fingers, and turned it in the lock. Then, sinking upon her knees, she crept back to the fire, keeping close to the wall. If an eye were pressed to a knothole in the shutter it could not follow her.
Priscilla kept the fire alive. She laid the sticks and logs on cautiously; she turned wide eyes now and again on the tall clock whose white face gleamed pallidly among the shadows like a dead thing that had used its last breath to speak a message. If the clock struck again Priscilla felt that she might go mad.
It was after midnight when Nature laid a commanding and relentless touch upon the girl, and, crouching by the hearth, her head in her arms folded upon a chair, she slept.
Outside the storm sobbed itself into silence; the rain dripped complainingly from the roof of the porch and then ceased. At five o'clock the new day, rosy and full of cheer, made itself felt in the dim room where Priscilla, breathing evenly and softly, still slept. No gleam of brightness made its way through the heavy shutters or curtains, but a consciousness of day at last roused the sleeper. At first the experience through which she had passed made no demand upon her. She got painfully upon her feet and looked about. The fire was but embers, the air was hot and stifling, and then, with the thought of opening a door or window, the grim spectre of the black hours lay warning touch upon her. She shrank back and began again to—wait! Of course McAlpin would return—and what lay before her when he did? Her strength was spent, lack of food——And here her eyes fell on the broken fragments of stale bread and meat that Jerry-Jo had tossed aside.
She took the morsels and devoured them eagerly; the nerves of the stomach were calling for nutrition, and even the coarse crumbs gave relief.
The moments passed slowly, but presently, with the knowledge that day lay beyond her prison, she gained a new, a more desperate courage. If she must die, she would die in the open, where she at least might test her pitiful strength against Jerry-Jo's did he pursue her. The determination to act gave relief. The dark, damp room she could no longer bear; the lamp had hours before ceased to burn; the smell of stale oil smoke was sickening. No matter what happened she felt she must make a break for freedom. She knew full well that should Jerry-Jo enter now she could not combat him.
Then, for the first time, she wondered why no one had come to seek her through the long, black hours of the night. The men of Kenmore never permitted a wanderer to remain unsought; there was danger. Why, even her father could not be so—so hard as to sleep undisturbed while she was unhoused! And her mother? Oh! surely her mother would have roused the people! And Anton Farwell? Why, he would have started at once, as he had for the McAdam boys. And with that conclusion came a new hope:
"If they are searching it will be on the water!"
Of course. Cheered by this thought, Priscilla made her way silently toward the door. With trembling fingers she turned the key and pushed gently outward. Through the crack the sun poured, and oh, the fresh sweetness of the morning air! Again she pushed, once again, and then with a rush she dashed through and was a hundred feet down the path when a loud laugh stayed her like a shot from a gun.
She turned and braced herself against a tree for support. Jerry-Jo, pressed close to the house and not a foot from the door through which she had come, again shrieked with laughter. Presently he conquered himself, and, without moving, said:
"You're free! The canoe's ready for you, too. Go home—if you want—go home and get what's coming to you! I've been busy. There's a boat stopping at the wharf to-night. I'm leaving for the States. I've told them, as will pass it on, that you and me are going together. I'll stand by it, too, God hears me!"
"My—my father will kill you when he knows of this night!"
Priscilla flung the words back savagely. She knew now that she was free—free for what? Again Jerry-Jo's laugh taunted her, and as she turned to the path her father faded from her hope. Only Anton Farwell seemed to loom high. Just and resourceful, he would help her!
The soggy, mossy path made heavy travelling for weary, nervous feet, but at the foot of the hill Priscilla saw the little canoe bobbing at the side of the dock. Once out upon the sunlit water the soul-horror disappeared and the task before her appeared easy. Now that the real danger was past, her physical demands seemed simple and well within her control. If her father turned her away—and as she drew near to Lonely Farm she felt that he probably would—she would go to Farwell, and from him, with his assistance, go to the States. The time had come—that was all—the time had come! She was as ready as she ever would be. She had herself well in hand before she stepped from the canoe at the foot of her father's garden.
The only signs of anxiety in evidence about the house were Nathaniel's presence in the kitchen at eleven in the morning, and Theodora's red and swollen eyes as she bent over the dishwashing of a belated breakfast.
"Mother! Father!"
They turned and gazed at the pale, dishevelled girl in the doorway. Neither spoke and Priscilla asked:
"May I come in?"
Had she wept, or flung herself upon their mercy, Nathaniel could have understood, but her very calmness and indifference angered him, coming as it did upon his real anxiety. He had not heard the village gossip that Long Jean had already started. He had been out alone most of the night on the water, and the relief of seeing his girl alive and unharmed turned his earlier emotions to bitterness.
"Yes, come in," he said sternly. "Where have you been?"
Had Priscilla been given more time, had she been less physically spent, she would have protected herself from her father's thought; as it was she could only summon enough strength to parry his questions with truthful answers, and until it was too late she did not realize how they damned her.
"Up at—at—Far Hill Place."
"All night?"
"Yes."
"With——"
"With—with Jerry-Jo McAlpin."
"Oh!" This came like a snake's warning.
"The—the storm was—oh! Father——"
"The storm!" roared Nathaniel; "the storm! Are you sugar or salt? Have you so little morality that you choose to stay overnight with a man in a lonely house instead of coming wet but clean-charactered to your safe home?"
And then Priscilla understood! She had come into the room and was sitting near the door she had closed behind her. She, on the sudden, seemed to grow old and strong; the ancient distrust and dislike of her father overcame her; she looked at her mother, bent and sobbing over the sink, and only forhersake did she continue the useless conversation.
"You—you judge me unheard!" she went on, addressing Nathaniel with an anger, glowing in her eyes, that equalled his own.
"Have you not just incriminated yourself—you!"
"Stop! Do you think that is all? Do you think I would have stayed there—if—if——" Here the memory of what she had endured choked her.
"A woman who puts herself in a man's power as you have can expect no mercy." Nathaniel stormed.
"Why?"
"Because it is God's law. All decent women know it. That is what I've feared for you always, but I'll still stand by you if you show reason. I'll do it for your mother's sake and my good name. He shall marry you, by God! Say the word and I'll bring him here."
Priscilla's upper lip twitched. This was a trick her nerves had of warning her, but she heeded not.
"You—you wouldforceme to marry Jerry-Jo even against his will? You would make that little hell for me without even knowing what has happened? You'd fling me in it to—to save your name?"
"You've made your own hell! No matter what has happened, there is only one way out for you. If you refuse that——" And here Nathaniel flung his big arms wide, as if pushing his child out—out!
With white face but blazing eyes Priscilla got up and went over to her mother. She drew the bowed and quivering form toward her and looked straight into the tear-flooded eyes.
"Mother, tell me, do you believe me—dishonoured?"
The contact of the dear, strong young body gave Theodora power to say:
"Oh! my dear, my dear, I cannot, I will not believe evil of you. But you must do what your father thinks best; it is the only way. You have been so heedless, my child, my poor child."
"You—side with her?" thundered Nathaniel, feeling himself defied. "Then heed me! If she refuses, out you go with her! No longer will I live with my family divided against me. The world with her, or the home with me!"
Then suddenly and quite clearly Priscilla saw the only way open to her, the only way that led to even the poor peace she yearned to leave to the sad, little, clinging, broken creature looking piteously up at her.
"My child, my child, your father knows best."
"There! there mother. Now listen!"
Still holding Theodora, she looked over the gray head at her father's cruel face.
"I have only to tell you," she said slowly and with deadly hardness, "you will not have to force Jerry-Jo McAlpin to marry me; he's eager enough to do it. He leaves to-night for the States; he has arranged for me to go with him." She paused, then went on, speaking now to her mother:
"As God hears me, I am not dishonoured, little mother. I will never bring dishonour upon you. I could have explained to you—you would have understood, but father—never! I am going to the States. Good-bye."
"My child! oh! my girl!"
"Good-bye, dear mother."
"Oh, Priscilla! Do not leave us so!"
"This is the only way."
"But, you—you are not yet wedded."
Priscilla smiled.
"You must leave that to Jerry-Jo and me. And now a kiss—and the dear cheek against mine. So!"
"But you will come back——" Theodora sank gently to the floor. She had fainted quite away!
Priscilla bent with her, she lifted the white head to her knee, and again addressed her father.
"You are satisfied?" she asked. The shield was down between them. Man and woman, they stared, understandingly, in each other's eyes.
"Leave her to me!" commanded Nathaniel, and strode toward the prostrate form.
"You've lied first and last. Neither McAlpin nor any other honest man will have you! Go!"
"I will go and—my hate I leave with you!"
And when Theodora opened her eyes she was lying on the rough couch in the sunny kitchen, and Nathaniel was bathing her face with cool water.
"The child?" faltered the mother, looking pleadingly around. And then Nathaniel showed mercy, the only mercy in his power.
"She's gone to McAlpin. They leave for the States to-night. It's you and I alone now to the end of the way."
"Husband, husband! We've been hard on her; we've driven her to——"
"Hush, you! foolish one. Would you defy God? Each one of us walks the path our feet are set upon. 'Twas fore-ordained and her being ours makes no difference. Every light woman was—some one's, God knows—and with Him there be no respecter of persons."
"Oh! but if you had only been kinder. It seems as if we haven't gone beside her on her path. Couldn't we have drawn her from it—if we had expected different of her? Oh! I shall miss her sore. The loneliness, the loneliness with her out of the days and the long nights."
Theodora was weeping again desolately.
"Be grateful, woman, that worse has not come to us."
Now that the deathlike faint was over, Nathaniel's softening was passing.
"And she went from our door hungry, the poor dear! We wouldn't have treated a beggar so."
"Had she come as a suppliant, all would have been different."
Then Theodora sat up, and a kind of frenzy drove her to speak.
"She had something to tell! You did not let her say her say.Whatkept her away all night? Jerry-Jo McAlpin has the devil blood in him when he's up to—to pranks. Suppose——" A sort of horror shook the thin, livid face. Nathaniel, in spite of himself, had a bad moment; then his hard common sense steadied him.
"Would she go to him, if what you fear was true?"
"Has she gone to him?"
"Where else then—and all Kenmore not know? Wait till to-morrow before you leap to the doing of that which you may regret. Calm yourself and wait until to-morrow."
And Theodora waited—many, many morrows.
"And you see, Master Farwell, I cannot go back to my father's house."
It was after nine of the evening of the day Priscilla Glenn had left home. She had reached Farwell's shack without being seen. By keeping to the woods and watching her opportunity, she had gained the rear of the schoolhouse, entered while Farwell was absent, and breathed freely only after securing the door.
The master had returned an hour later and, the gossip of the Green ringing in his ears, confronted the white, silent girl with no questions, but merely a glad smile of relief. He had insisted upon her taking food, drink, and rest before explaining anything, and Priscilla had gratefully obeyed.
"I'll gather all the news that is floating about," Farwell had comforted her. "Sleep, Priscilla. You are quite safe." Then he went out again.
So she had eaten ravenously and slept far into the early evening while Anton Farwell went about listening to all who talked. It was a great day for Kenmore!
"She and him were together all the night," panted Long Jean, about noon, in the kitchen of the White Fish.
"What's that?" called Mary McAdam from the closet. Jean repeated her choice morsel, and Mary Terhune, preparing the midday meal, thrilled.
"I was at her borning," Jean remarked, "and I minded then and spoke it open, that she was made of the odds and ends of them who went before her. I've a notion that the good and evil that might have thinned out over all the Glenn girls must work out thick in Priscilla."
"I'm thinking," Mary Terhune broke in, "that the mingling with such as visits at the Lodge has upset the young miss. Her airs and graces! Lord of heaven! how she has flouted the rest of the young uns! Aye, but they are mouthing about her this day! 'Me and her,' said Jerry-Jo to me this early morning, 'me and her got caught up in the woods, and, understanding one another, we chose the dry to the wet, and brought things to a point. Her and me will make tracks for the States. It's all evened up.' And I do say," Mary went on, "that all considering, Jerry-Jo is doing the handsome thing. I ain't picking flaws in her—maybe she's as clean as the cleanest, but there's them who wouldn't believe it, as you both very well know."
This last was to include Mrs. McAdam, who had issued from the closet with an ugly look on her thin, dark face.
"You old harpies!" she cried, striding to the middle of the big room and getting into position for an oratorical outburst. "You two blighted old midwives as ought, heaven knows, to have mercy on women; you who see the tortures of women! You would take a girl's name from her on the word of that half-breed, who would sooner lie than steal—and both are easy to the whelp. That girl is the straightest girl that ever walked, and no evil has come to her from my house. A word more like that, Mary Terhune, and you'll never share my home again, and as for you, Jean, you who helped the lass into life, what kind of a snake-heart have you?"
Mary McAdam had both women trembling before her.
"I'll go up to Lonely Farm myself," screamed she, "and if Glenn and his poor little slave-wife are doing the low trick by their girl, as God hears me, I'll take her for my own, and turn you both back to the trade you dishonour!"
Anton Farwell, passing near the window, heard this and went his way.
Later old Jerry McAlpin came to him on the wharf where the men were gathered to meet the incoming steamer.
"Lordy! Master Farwell," quavered Jerry; "while I was out on the bay this early morning, my lad, what all the town is humming about, goes to my home and takes everything—everything of any vally and leaves this——"
McAlpin passed a dirty piece of paper to Farwell.