A Cry in the Wilderness

by Mary E. Waller

XII

When I joined them an hour after supper, they were talking about the heater that had been put up in the living-room while we were away. The warmth from it was delightful, but the blazing fire in the fireplace gave the true cheer to the room, added charm for the eye. The Doctor looked up as I came in.

"Have you ever seen a stove like this—Marcia?" There was a twinkle both in his voice and his eye, as he called me for the first time by my Christian name. He was tease enough to try it in the presence of the rest of the household.

"Oh, yes, my grandfather had two in his farmhouse. There is nothing like them for an even heat; it never burns the face. The top is a lovely place to fry griddlecakes."

"You seem to know this species root and branch, Miss Farrell," said Mr. Ewart. "After that remark may I challenge you to make a few for us some night for supper?"

"You won't have to challenge, for I like them myself; and if you 'll trust me we 'll have a griddlecake party here in this room some evening."

"My first innings, Marcia!" cried Jamie.

"I 'll have to let that go unchallenged, Macleod, seeing I 'm host; but you took unfair advantage of me. I 'll get even with you sometime."

"Where did you get your idea, Gordon?" The Doctor turned to his friend.

"I was born with it, you might say. I don't remember the time when we did n't have two or three in my father's house, and I 've never found anything equal to them for heating. They 're all out of date now; there is no manufactory for them. I had trouble in finding these, but I unearthed three last spring when I was in northern Vermont. I knew we should need them, and they keep all night, you know. I 'm going to have one put up in the bathroom—these oil stoves are an abomination."

"Amen," said the Doctor.

"So say we all of us.— Hark, hear that wind!" said Jamie.

The stove was of soapstone, square, with hinged top that, opening upward, gave room for the insertion of a "chunk"—a huge, unsplittable, knotty piece of maple, birch, or beech. Cale came in with one while we were listening to the roar of the gale; it was a section of a maple butt.

"There, thet 'll last all night an' inter the forenoon," he said, lowering it carefully into the glowing brands in the box. "I 'll shet up the drafts, an' you 'll have a small furnace with no dust nor dirt to bother with; an' the ashes is good fertilizer—can't be beat for clover."

"Let's take a household vote on the subject of modern improvements for the manor," said Mr. Ewart, helping himself to a cigar and then passing the box to Cale who had turned to leave the room.

Cale took one with an "I thank you" this being a habit of speech to emphasize the last word, and was about to go out.

"Stay a while with us, Cale," said Mr. Ewart, speaking as a matter of course; "I want the opinion of every member of my household—my Anglo-Saxon one, I mean."

The two men stood facing each other, and between them I saw a look pass that bespoke mutual confidence. I thought they must have made rapid progress in one short day.

"Wal, I don't mind if I do. It's flatterin' to a man, say what you 've a mind ter, ter have his advice asked on any subject—let alone what interests him."

"That's a fine back-handed compliment for you, Ewart," said Jamie, whose delight in Cale's acquiescence was very evident.

"I took it so," said Mr. Ewart quietly, drawing up a chair beside his and motioning to Cale who, after a slight hesitation, sat down.

How cosy it was around the fire! Since our return from the pung ride, the wind had risen, keen and hard in the northwest and, crossing the Laurentians, was swooping down upon the river lands, swaying the great spruces in the woods all about us till it seemed as if ocean surf were breaking continuously just without the walls of the manor and, now and then, spending its force upon them until the great beams quivered under the impact. Every blast seemed to intensify our comfort within.

"The telephone will be a great convenience," Mrs. Macleod remarked from the corner of the sofa, looking up from her knitting; "it will save so many trips to the village in weather like this."

"Is it a long distance one, Gordon?" said Jamie who was lolling on the other end.

"Yes; I thought we might as well connect with almost anywhere. Our household is rather cosmopolitan. Does this suit you?"

"Suits me to a dot. I can talk with my 'best girl', as they call her in the States, when she is on the wing—as she is now."

"Oh, ho, Boy! Has it come to this so soon?" The Doctor sighed audibly, causing us to laugh.

"Jamie's 'best girl' changes with the season and sometimes the temperature, Doctor," said Mrs. Macleod, smiling at some remembrance. "Do you recall a little girl who with her mother had lodgings at Duncairn House, just opposite ours in Crieff?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yes, and how Jamie Macleod enticed her away one summer afternoon to the meadows and banks of the Earn just below the garden gate, and the hue and cry that was raised when the two failed to make their appearance at supper time? Somebody—I won't say who—went to bed without porridge that night. What was her name, Boy?"

I saw, we all saw, just the least hesitation on Jamie's part to answer with his usual assurance. We saw, also, the touch of red on his high cheek bones deepen a little.

"Bess—Bess Stanley."

"There is a Miss Stanley who visited at the new manor last summer—any relation, do you know?" asked Mr. Ewart.

"Same," Jamie answered concisely, meanwhile puffing vigorously at his pipe.

"The plot thickens, Mrs. Macleod," said the Doctor dubiously.

"Is she tall and slender and fair, Jamie?" I put what I considered an opportune question; I knew it would both surprise and irritate him as well as rouse his curiosity of which he has an abundance. I really spoke at a venture because the name recalled to me the two girls in the sleeping-car and their destination: Richelieu-en-Bas.

He turned to me with irony in his look. "She is all you say. May I make so bold as to enquire of you whether you speak from knowledge, or if you simply made a good guess?"

"From knowledge—first hand, of course," I said with assurance.

He sat up then, eyeing me defiantly, much to the others' amusement.

"Perhaps you can give me further information about the young lady—all will be gratefully received."

"No, nothing—except that I believe it was she through whom you obtained Cale, was n't it?" I heard Cale chuckle.

"Look here, Marcia," he began severely enough, then burst into one of his hearty laughs that dissolves his irritation at once; "you 'll be telling me what she wrote me in my last letter if you 're such a mind reader. I say," he said, settling himself into a chair beside me, "let up on a man once in a while in the presence of such a cloud of witnesses, won't you? Take me when I 'm alone. The truth is, Ewart, Marcia gives herself airs because she is three years my senior. She takes the meanest kind of advantage; and I can't hit back because she 's a woman. But about that telephone, Ewart; are they going to run it on the trees."

"It's the only way at this season."

"Could n't it remain so the year round?" I asked.

"Why?" said Mr. Ewart.

"Because the poles will just spoil everything; as it is, it is—"

"Is what, Marcia? Out with it," said Jamie encouragingly.

"Perfect as it is," I said boldly, willing they should know what I thought of this wilderness of neglect that surrounded us in the heart of French Canada.

"Guess we can keep it perfect, as you say, Marcia, 'thout havin' to rub the burrs off'n our coats every time we go round the house," said Cale. "We 're going to do some pretty tall cuttin' inter some of this underbrush and dead timber next week if the snow ain't too deep."

"Oh, Cale, it will spoil it!"

"Wal, thet 's as you look at it; but 't ain't good policy to keep a fire-trap quite so near to a livin'-place; makes insurance rates higher."

"How would you feel then about having a modern hot water heater put into the old manor, Miss Farrell?" Mr. Ewart put the question to me.

"Put it to a vote," I replied.

"All in favor, aye," he continued.

There was silence in the room except for one of the dogs that, asleep under the table, stirred uneasily and whined as if rousing from a dream of an unattainable bone.

"It's a vote against. How about piping in gas?"

"No!" we protested as one.

"Settled," he said smiling. We saw that our decision pleased him.

"Confess, now, Gordon, you did n't want any such innovations yourself," said the Doctor.

"I did n't, for I like my—home, as it is," he said simply.

"I like to hear you use that word 'home', Gordon," said the Doctor, looking intently into the fire; "as long as I 've known you, I think I 've never heard you use it."

"No." The man on the opposite side of the hearth spoke decidedly, but in a tone that did not invite further confidence. "I 've never intended to use it until I could feel the sense of it."

"Another who has felt what it is to be a stranger in this world," I thought to myself. And the fact that there were others, made me, for the moment, feel less a stranger. I was glad to hear him speak so frankly.

The Doctor looked up, nodding understandingly.

"Now I want some advice from all this household," he said earnestly, and I thought to change the subject; "it's about the farm I 've hired and the experiment with it. Give it fully, each of you, and, like every other man, I suppose I shall take what agrees with my own way of looking at it. My plans were so indefinite when I wrote to you to hire it, Gordon, that I went into no detail; and I 'm not at all sure that they are so clear to me now. Here 's where I want help."

"That's not like you, John; what's up?" said his friend.

"I want to start the thing right, and I 'm going to tell you just how I 'm placed; a deuce of a fix it is too."

Cale put on a log and left the room, saying good-night as he passed out. I gathered up my sewing—I was hemming some napkins—and made a motion to follow him.

The Doctor rose. "Marcia,"—he put out a hand as if to detain me; he spoke peremptorily,—"come back. There are no secrets among us, and I want you to advise with."

There seemed nothing to do but to obey, and I was perfectly willing to, because I wanted to hear all and everything about the farm project that threatened to break up my pleasant life in the manor.

I took up my work again.

"Put down your work, Marcia; fold your hands and listen to me. I want your whole attention."

I obeyed promptly. Jamie gleefully rubbed his hands.

"It takes you, Doctor, to make Marcia mind."

"I 'm a man of years, Boy," the Doctor retorted, thereby reducing Jamie to silence.

We sat expectant; but evidently the Doctor was in no hurry to open up his subject. After a few minutes of deep thought, he spoke slowly, almost as if to himself:

"I'm wondering where to begin, what to take hold of first. The ordering of life is beyond all science—we 've found that out, we so-called 'men of science'. The truth is, I believe I have a 'conscience fund' in the bank and on my mind. I know I am speaking blindly, and perhaps reasoning blindly, and it's because I want you to see things for me more clearly than I do, and through a different medium, that I am going to tell you, as concisely as I can—and without mentioning names—of an experience I had more than a quarter of a century ago. I 've had several of the kind since, they are common in our profession—but the result of this special experience is unique." He paused, continuing to look steadfastly into the fire.

In the silence we heard the sweep of the wind through the woods, now and then the scraping swish of a pine branch brushing the roof beneath it.

"I recall that it was in December. I was twenty-nine, and had just got a foothold on the first round of the professional ladder. Near midnight I was called to go down into one of the slum districts—I don't intend to mention names—of New York. There in a basement, I found a woman who had just been rescued from suicide."

He paused, still keeping his gaze fixed intently on the fire. And I?

At the first words a faint sickness came upon me. Was I to hear this again?—here, remote from the environment from which I had so recently fled? Could it be possible that I was to hear again that account of my mother's death? I struggled for control. They must not know, they should not see that struggle. Intent on keeping every feature passive, hoping that in the firelight whatever my face might have shown would pass unnoticed, I waited for the Doctor's next word.

"It seems unprofessional, perhaps, to enter into any detail, but we are far away from that environment now—and in time, too, for it was over a quarter of a century ago. She was very young, nineteen perhaps, and about to become a mother. I remained with her till morning. I knew she would never come through her trial alive. I went again in the evening and stayed with her till her child was born and—to the end which came an hour afterwards. During all those twenty-four hours she spoke but twice. She gave me no name, although I asked her; no name of friends even—God knows if she had any, or why was she there?

"Now, here is my dilemma: in the morning, I signed the death certificate and then went out of the city on a case that kept me forty-eight hours. On my return, the woman, who had rescued this poor girl,—a woman who took in washing and ironing in that basement—told me a man had appeared at the house to claim the body he said was his wife's. She gave me the man's name, but the name of this man was not the name of the husband according to a marriage certificate which I found in an envelope the young woman entrusted to me for her child. At any rate, he had claimed the body and taken it away.

"Now, ordinarily the living waves of existence close very soon over such an episode—all too common; and, so far as I am concerned, in such and other similar cases I forget; it is well that I can. But I 've never been permitted to forget this!"

He made this announcement emphatically, looking up suddenly from the fire, and glancing at each of us in turn.

"And, moreover, I don't believe I am ever going to be permitted to forget. Some one intends I shall remember!

"With me it was merely a charity case—one, it is true, that called forth my deepest sympathy. The circumstances were peculiar. The woman was young, rarely attractive in face, refined, well dressed. Her absolute silence concerning herself during all that weary time; her heroic endurance and, I may say, angelic acceptance of her martyrdom—and all this in such an environment! How could it help making a deep impression? Still, I am convinced I should have forgotten it, had it not been for a constant reminder.

"In the first week of the next February, I received a notification from a national bank in the city that five hundred dollars had been deposited to my credit. The woman who lived in that basement received during the first week of the New Year a draft on that bank—and mailed by the bank—for the same amount. She consulted me about accepting it. When I attempted to investigate at the bank, I found that no information would be given and no questions answered—only the statement made that the money was mine to do with what I might choose. Next December, and a year to a day from the death of that young woman, I received a similar notification, and the woman a draft for one hundred. Since that time, now over twenty-five years ago, no December has ever passed that the regular notification has not been mailed to me and to the woman. I wrote to the man who had claimed the body, and whose name and address the woman, who lived in the basement, remembered. The letter was never answered. I waited a year, and wrote the second time. The letter came back to me from the dead letter office. I invested the increasing amount after two years and let it accumulate at compound interest. As you will see, these donations have amounted now to a tidy sum. I believe it to be 'conscience money'—either from the man who claimed the body as that of his wife, or from the woman's husband according to the marriage certificate. Or are both men one and the same?

"I hired the farm of you, Gordon, merely telling you it was one of my many philanthropic plans that, thus far, I have been unable to carry out. As yet I have not used that money for any benefactions. Would you hold it longer, or would you apply it to my farm project which is to provide a home for the homeless, and for those whose home does not provide sufficient change for them? I have thought sometimes I would limit the philanthropy to those who need up-building in health.— What do you say, Gordon?"

He looked across the hearth to his friend who was leaning back in his chair, his arm resting on the arm, his hand shading his eyes from the firelight.

"I should like to think it over, John; it is a peculiar case. Have you ever thought of the child? Do you know anything about it? Was it a boy or a girl?"

"A girl. No, I never thought of the child—poor little bit of life's flotsam. We don't get much time to think of all those we help to float in on the tide. Now this is what I am getting, by looking at the matter through others' eyes—you mean she should be looked up, and the money go to her?"

"That was my first thought, but, as I said, I must think it over. The two men, at least, the two names of possibly the same man, complicate matters."

"That's what puzzles me," said Jamie. The Doctor turned to him.

"How do you look at it, Boy, you, with your twenty-three years? The world where such things happen is n't much like that world of André's Odyssey, is it?"

Jamie answered brightly, but his voice was slightly unsteady:

"Yes, it's the same old world; it's a wilderness, you know, for all of us, only there are so many paths through it, across it, and up and down it—paths and trails and roads that cross and recross; so many that end in swamp and bog; so many that lead nowhither; so many that are lost on the mountain. And so few guideposts—I wish there were more for us all! You may bet your life that man—whether the girl's husband or lover—has had to tread thorns until his feet bled before he could clear his way through. Those five hundred dollars, in yearly deposits, he intends shall be guideposts, and he trusts you to put them up in the wilderness where they will do the most good.—I 'd hate to be that man! Would you mind telling me, Doctor, how she attempted to make way with herself?"

"Tried to drown herself from one of the North River piers."

"And her child too," said Jamie musingly; "there came near being two graves in his wilderness." He thought a moment in silence. "Make the home on the farm with the money, Doctor Rugvie; use the interest in helping others who have lost their way in the wilderness."

"Good advice, Boy, I 'll remember to act on it." The Doctor spoke gratefully, heartily. His glance rested affectionately upon the long figure on the sofa. Was he wondering, as I was, how Jamie at twenty-three could reach certain depths which his particular plummet could never have sounded? I intended to ask him what he thought of Jamie's outlook on life, sometime when we should be alone together.

"Mrs. Macleod," he said, "do you think with your son?"

She hesitated. It is her peculiarity that a direct question, the answer to which involves a decision, flusters her painfully.

"I shall have to think it over, like Mr. Ewart," she replied.

"And you, Marcia," he turned to me. Out of my knowledge I answered unhesitatingly:

"It's not of the child I 'm thinking; she could n't accept the money knowing for what it is paid. Nor am I thinking about those women who need 'guide-posts', Jamie. I 'm thinking of that other woman who lived in the basement and took in washing and ironing, the one who rescued that other from her misery and cared for her with your help, Doctor Rugvie—should n't she be remembered? She, who is living? If I had that money at my disposal, I would found the farm home and put that woman at the head of it. You may be sure she would know how to put up the guideposts—and in the right places too."

I spoke eagerly, almost impulsively.

The Doctor looked at me comprehendingly—he knew that I knew that it was of Delia Beaseley he had been speaking—and smiled.

"Another idea, Marcia, also worth remembering and acting upon with Jamie's."

I turned suddenly to Mr. Ewart, not knowing why I felt impelled to; perhaps his silence, his noticeable unresponsiveness to his friend's proposition, impressed as well as surprised me; at any rate I looked up very quickly and caught the look he gave me. It half terrified me. What had I said to offend him? The steel gray eyes were almost black, and the look—had it possessed physical force, I felt it would have crushed me. It was severe, indignant, uncompromising. I was mystified. The look was more flashed at me than directed at me for the space of half a second—then he spoke to Jamie.

"You are right, Jamie, about the wilderness; we 'll talk this matter over sometime together before John goes,"—I perceived clearly that Mrs. Macleod and I were shut out of future conferences,—"and I know we can make some plan satisfactory to him and to us all. Count on me, John, to help you in carrying out the best plan whatever it may be. In any case, it will mean that we are to have more of your company, and that's what I want." He spoke lightly.

Doctor Rugvie smiled, then his features grew earnest again.

"Gordon, I want to put a question to you, and after you to Jamie."

"Yes; go ahead."

"I have given you the mere outlines of a bare and ugly episode of New York city. That man, or those two men, or that dual entity, has never ceased to perplex me. How does it look to you, knowing merely the outlines?"

"As if the woman had been dealing with two different men," he replied almost indifferently.

The Doctor looked at him earnestly, and I saw he was puzzled by his friend's attitude. "That may be—one never can tell in such cases," he answered quietly; but I could feel his disappointment.

"That's queer, Ewart," said Jamie, gravely; "to me it looks as if two men had done a girl an irreparable wrong." Perhaps we all felt that the conversation had been carried a little too far in this direction. The Doctor turned it into other channels, but it lagged. I felt uncomfortable, and wished I had insisted upon going up to my room when the subject of the farm was broached. After all, we had come to no decision, and I doubted if the Doctor was much the wiser for all our opinions.

Marie's entrance with the porridge relieved the tension somewhat, and I was glad to say good night as soon as I had finished mine.