XIII
Doctor Rugvie had opened an easy way of approach for me to ask him what I would, but that question put by Mr. Ewart in regard to the child, whether it was a boy or a girl, seemed to block the way, for a time at least, impassably. If I were to make inquiry now of the Doctor concerning my identity and ask the name of my father, naturally he would infer, after Mr. Ewart's remark, that the question of the property was my impelling motive. My reason told me the time was ripe to settle this personal question, but something—was it intuition? I believe in that, if only we would follow its lead and leave reason to lag in chains far behind it—seemed to paralyze my power of will in making any move to ascertain my paternal parentage. And yet I had dared to respond to that demand in Jamie's advertisement "of good parentage"!
"Well, I am myself," I thought, half defiantly, "and after all, it's not what those who are dead and gone stood for that counts. It's what I stand for; and what I am rests with my will to make. They 'll have to accept me for what I am."
I was in the kitchen, concocting an old-fashioned Indian pudding and showing Angélique about the oven, as these thoughts passed through my mind. At that moment Jamie opened the door and looked in.
"I say, Marcia—awfully busy?"
"No, not now; what do you want?"
"You—I 'm lonesome. Come on into the living-room—I 've built up a roaring fire there—and let's talk; nobody 's around."
"Where 's Doctor Rugvie?"
"Gone off with Cale to the farm. He 'll get pneumonia if he does n't look out; the place is like an ice-house at this season."
I slipped the pudding into the oven. "Now look out for it and keep enough milk in it till it wheys, Angélique." I turned to Jamie. "Where's Mr. Ewart?"
"Oh, Ewart's off nosing about in Quebec for some old furniture for his den. Pierre drove him to the train just after breakfast. He told mother he would be back in time for supper."
"That's queer," I said, following him through the bare offices, one of which was to be the den, into the living-room where stale cigar smoke still lingered. "Whew! Let's have in some fresh air."
I opened the hinged panes in the double windows; opened the front door and let in the keen crisp air.
"There, now," I closed them; "we can 'talk' as you say in comfort. I did n't air out early this morning, for when I came in I found Mr. Ewart writing. He looked for all the world as if he were making his last will and testament. I beat a double-quick retreat."
"I 'll bet you did. I 'd make tracks if Ewart looked like that." He drew up two chairs before the fire. "Here, sit here by me; let's be comfy when we can. I say, Marcia—"
He paused, leaning to the fire in his favorite position: arms along his knees, and clasped hands hanging between them. He turned and looked at me ruefully.
"We all got beyond our depth, did n't we, last night?"
"I thought so."
"The Doctor 's a dear, is n't he?"
"He 's the dearest kind of a dear, and I could n't bear to see him snubbed by your lord of the manor."
Jamie nodded. "That was rather rough. I don't understand that side of Ewart—never have seen it but once before, and I would n't mind, you know, Marcia," he lowered his voice, "if I never saw it again. It made no end of an atmosphere, did n't it?"
"Thick and—muggy," I replied, searching for the word that should express the mental and spiritual atmospheric condition, the result of Mr. Ewart's attitude in last evening's talk. "And it has n't wholly cleared up yet."
He nodded. "I believe that's why he took himself out of the way this morning. Look here—I 've a great overpowering longing to confide in you, Marcia." He laughed.
"Confide then; I 'm a regular safe deposit and trust company. Tell me, do; I'm dying to talk."
"Oh, you are!" He turned to me with his own bright face illumined. "Is n't it good that we 're young, Marcia? I feel that forcibly when I am with so many older men."
"I 'm just beginning to feel young, Jamie; to see my way through that wilderness you spoke of."
I knew his sympathy, his understanding, not of my life but of the condition of mind to which that life had brought me. It is this quick understanding of another's "sphere", I may call it, that makes the young Scotsman so wonderfully attractive to all who meet him.
"You know what the Doctor said about the world of which he told us last night and of André's world?"
I nodded.
"Well, one night in camp—last summer, you know, it was just before Ewart left me there—old André told us what happened years ago up there in the wilds of the Saguenay. He said one day two Indian guides, Montagnais, came to his camp. The oldest, Root-of-the-Pine, a friend of André's, brought him word from old Mère Guillardeau, André's sister—you know her—who is living here in Lamoral. She told him to receive two of the English, a man and a woman, as guests for a month. The Indian told André they were waiting across the portage.
"André said he went over to meet them, and they stayed with him not only one month, but four. He told us the girl had a voice as sweet as the nightingale's; that her eyes were like wood violets, her laugh like the forest brook. He said they loved each other madly, so madly that even his old blood was stirred at times. He was alone with them there in that wilderness for all those months, caring for them, fishing, hunting, picking the mountain berries, till the first snow flew. Then they took their flight.
"Mère Guillardeau had sent in her message: 'Ask no questions. You can confess and be shriven when you come to Richelieu-en-Bas.' He obeyed to the letter.
"He knew, he said, that they were not married, but he caught enough of their English to know they were looking forward to being married when it should be made possible for them. Whence they came, he never knew; whither they went, he never asked. They came, as birds come that mate in the spring; they went, as the late birds go after the mating season is over, with the first snow-fall; but, Marcia—"
"Yes, Jamie."
"You won't mind my speaking out after what was said last evening?"
"I mind nothing from you."
"André told us that before they left he knew a nestling was on its way; the slender form, like a willow shoot, as he expressed it, was rounder, and the face of the girl was the face of a tender doe. You should have heard him tell it—there in the setting of forest, lake and mountain!
"'All this happened long, long ago,' he said, 'but still I hear her voice in the forest; still I see her eyes in the first wood violets; see her smile that made sunshine in the darkest woods. Still I hear her light steps about the camp and follow her still in thought across the last portage when we carried her in our arms; still see her waving her hand to me from the canoe that floated like a brown leaf on the blue lake waters. Wherever she may be, may the Holy Virgin, Our Lady of the Snows, guard her—and her child! I have waited all these years for her to come again.'
"Marcia—André called their love 'forest love'. Sometimes I think he spoke truly; untaught, he knew the difference."
I listened, caught by the pathos of the tale, the charm of old André's words; but in love I was untaught. I wondered how Jamie could know the "difference".
"But now to my point. Of course I listened all eyes and ears to André. When he finished, the camp fire was low. The full moon had risen above the waters of the lake and lighted the tree-fringed shore. I turned to Ewart, and caught the same look on his face that I saw last night when the Doctor was telling his story: the look of a man who is seeing ghosts—more than one. For three days I scarce got a decent word when he was with me, which was seldom; he was off by himself in the forest. So you see this, last night's occurrence, does not wholly surprise me."
We sat for a while without talking. Jamie took his pipe, filled and lighted it with a glowing coal.
"Jamie," I said at last. He nodded encouragingly.
"You know you told me about that queer rumor that crops out at such odd times and places—about Mr. Ewart's having been married and divorced, and the boy he is educating, 'Boy or girl?' you know he said—"
"Yes, I know."
"Might n't it be—I know you did n't believe it, but would n't it be possible that there is some truth in that, distorted, perhaps, but enough to make him suffer when there is any reference to love that has brought with it misery and suffering?"
"It may be you 're right; I had n't thought of it in that light. Of course, I never heard of the rumor till I came back from camp in September; then it seemed to be in the air. I wonder if the Doctor has ever heard anything."
"Probably his coming home so soon and making his home here started the gossip. Jamie—"
"Yes."
"You said he never spoke much to you about his personal affairs—that you don't know so very much of his intimate personal life. Does n't that prove that he has had some trouble, some painful experience?"
"Woman's logic, but I suppose he has. Most men have been through the wilderness, or been lost in it, by the time they are forty. I should think if—mind you, I say 'if'—he was ever married, ever divorced, ever had a child somewhere, he might find his special trail difficult at times; but he has n't lost it! Ewart does not lose a trail so easily! Look at his experience—Oxford, London, Australian sheep-ranchman, forester here in Lamoral! And he 's so tender with everything and everybody. That's what makes him so beloved here in this French settlement."
"Except towards the Doctor last night."
"That's so; but he is tender just the same. I 've seen that trait in him so many times."
"I should think he might be—and like adamant at others," I said, and began to put the room to rights.