A Cry in the Wilderness

XVIII

"And what next?" I asked myself after my head was on the pillow and while staring hour after hour at the opposite wall. Surely I had read enough of love! I had imagined what it might be like, even if I had never experienced it, even if I had thought little enough about it in connection with myself. I did not know it on what might be called the positive side, but I seemed to have some knowledge of it negatively. I knew it could be cruel, cruel as death; my own mother was a dead witness to that. I knew it could be brutal when passion alone means love; I was eye witness to this on Columbia Heights not so very long ago. I knew, or thought I knew, that it could be killed, or rather worn to a thread by the slow grinding of adverse circumstance. I recalled my own lack of affection after the years of sacrifice for the imbecile grandfather, my shiftless aunt.

And now, in the face of such knowledge, to have this revelation! This sudden absorption in another of my humankind; all my thought at once, without warning, transferred to that other wherever he might be; all interest in life centering with the force of gravity in that other's life; "at home" only in that other's presence; at rest only by his side—

"Now, look here, Marcia Farrell, don't you be Jane Eyrey," I said to myself in a low but stern voice. I sat up in bed and drew the extra comforter about my shoulders. "No nonsense at your age! You accept the fact that you love this man,—and you will have to whether you want to or not,—a man who has never spoken a word of love to you, who has treated you with the consideration, it is no more, no less than that, which he shows to every member of his household. Now, make the most of this fact, but without showing it. Don't make the youthful mistake, since you are no longer a girl, of fancying he is reciprocating what you feel, feeling your every feeling, thinking your every thought. And, above all, don't betray your self at this crisis of your life, to him or any member of his household—not to Delia Beaseley, not to Doctor Rugvie. Rest in his presence when you can. Rejoice to be near him—but inwardly, only, remember that!—when you shall find opportunity, but don't make one; discipline yourself in this, there will be need enough for it. 'Stick to your sure trot'; give full compensation in work for your wages—and enjoy what this new life may offer you from day to day. This new joy is your own; keep it to yourself. Now lie down for good and all, and go to sleep."

Thereupon I snugged down among the welcome warmth of the bed-clothes, saying to myself:

"I don't care 'what next'. I am so happy—happy—happy—"

But, even as I spoke that word softly—oh, so softly!—laying the palm of my right hand, that still felt the strong throbbing of his, under my cheek, I remembered that Cale had never once called me by the name he had proposed, "Happy"; that Jamie noticed the omission and remarked on it.

And what did Cale know? What could he know? There used to be a family of Marstins in our town before I was born. My aunt told me once that her sister married into the family; that, too, was before I was born. I never knew any one of the name, and I never cared to look at the old family headstones. The churchyard, because it held my mother, was hateful to me.

And I? I was too cowardly to ask Cale why he omitted to call me by his chosen name; for by that name my mother was known among her own, so I was told—that mother whom I never knew, whose memory I never loved, of whom I was ashamed because people said she had belied her womanhood.

But ever since Delia Beaseley opened my eyes to a portion of the truth concerning her, I had felt great pity for her. Now, at the thought of her, dying for love, for this very thing that had come to me like lightning out of the blue, dying without friends in that dull basement in V– Court, my heartstrings contracted, literally, for I experienced a feeling of suffocation.

"Mother, oh, mother," I cried out under my breath, "was it for this, that I know to be love, you gave your all, even life itself? Oh, I have understood so little—so little; I have been so hard, mother. I did n't know—forgive me, mother—forgive, I never knew—"

It eased me to speak out these words, although I knew that in giving utterance to them my ears were the only ones the sound of my pleading could reach. Those ears, on which the word mother would have fallen so blessedly, would never hear, could never hear. Not so very far away, in northern New England, the snows lay white and deep, as white and deep as in Canada, on her neglected grave.

Something Delia Beaseley quoted from my mother in her hour of trial flashed again into consciousness: "The little life that is coming is worth all this." And my mother must have said it knowing all the joy, the bliss, the suffering, both of body and of soul, that this love must in due time bring to her daughter, because she was a woman-child.

What a Dolorous Way my mother must have trodden, must have been willing to tread for this!

There are minutes, rare in the longest lives, when life becomes so intensified that vision clears almost preternaturally, sees through telescopic lenses, so to speak. At such moments, the soul becomes so highly sensitized that it may photograph for future reference the birth or passing of Love's star.

XIX

"It's my innings now, while Ewart is away," said the Doctor; "Marcia, will you go skiing to-morrow with me and Cale?"

"Did n't I promise you I would wait till you came?"

"I know you did; but possession, you know, is nine tenths of the law, and Ewart has been having it all his own way here with you since I left. He did, however, give me a parting word to look out for you. I don't see that you need much looking after; a young lady perfectly able to look out for herself, eh, Mrs. Macleod?"

"Perhaps the circumstances warranted some sort of chaperonage, Doctor," said Mrs. Macleod, entering into his fun and frolic as into no one's else. "As Marcia sets it forth, she was alone, except for you, on the platform of the junction nine miles from home, with Cale braced in the pung on the highroad, ready for the horses to bolt."

"Yes," said the Doctor, musing, "the circumstances were slightly out of the ordinary.—A full bowl, if you please, Marcia."

We were sitting around the hearth in the livingroom on the following Sunday evening. Porridge had just been brought in and I was dispensing it. Mr. Ewart's insistence upon Cale's joining us at this hour every evening, and remaining with us when no guest was present—the Doctor we counted one of us—had for result that, many an evening, we listened delighted and interested to his stories of adventure in the new Northwest. He was, in truth, a man of the woods, a man also of their moods, and like them showing track and trail, leafy underbrush, primeval forest trees, and the darling flowers of the forest as well; but, also, like them, withholding from our eyes the secret springs of his life. We often wondered if ever he would disclose any one of them.

"A Yankee brother to old André," was Jamie's definition of him. He seldom spoke of matters personal to himself, so seldom that Jamie's great joke, perpetrated in his mother's presence and mine, was to the effect that "Ewart and Cale and Marcia are all enlisted in the reserves, mother; and only you, the Doctor, and I are able to fight in the open." The full significance of which good-natured raillery I understood, and answered him accordingly:

"All in good time, Jamie. There is so little to tell, it's worth while to keep you guessing."

I was serving Cale with his portion of porridge when he spoke, answering the question put by the Doctor to me. Cale had been gradually appropriating me since my coming, and I had no cause to resent his right of proprietorship.

"Guess 'twill take two ter hold her up the fust few times; but Marcia's nimble on her feet; she 'll outstrip us soon. She 's a mighty good one on snowshoes."

"Ewart taught you, did n't he?" said the Doctor, turning to me and holding out his bowl the second time. "Just a spoonful more, if you please. I take it this oatmeal came direct from Scotland, did n't it, Mrs. Macleod?" She nodded a pleased affirmative.

"Yes, and a fine teacher he is too," I responded heartily. I was determined the Doctor should not find me backward or awkward when his friend's name was mentioned. With the thought that to-morrow that friend would be with me—us—again, I found my spirits rising. It was hard to repress them. Perhaps the Doctor's keen eye noticed something in my manner, for he spoke with emphasis:

"Well, something has made you over; there 's no exercise like it in this northern climate."

"I guess 't ain't all snow-shoeing," said Cale sententiously.

"You 're right, Cale," I said.

"Account for it then, Cale; I 'd like to hear."

"We 'll give Doctor Rugvie the recipe for all the future farm-folks, won't we?" I nodded understandingly at Cale.

"So we will—so we will," he replied thoughtfully. "Out with it, Cale. What is it has changed Marcia so?"

"Wal, if you want to know I can give it ter you—a reg'lar tonic to be taken daily in big doses. It's old-fashioned, mebbe, but genuine," he said with so comical an emphasis and inflection that we laughed. "It can't be beat, you 'll see. Take equal parts of dry clean air, so bracin' thet sometimes a man feels as if he was walkin' on it, good food and plenty of it, good comp'ny. Shake 'em well together to get out the lumps, and mix well in—a good home. I take it thet's about it, Doctor?"

"Cale, you old Hippocrates," said the Doctor, delighted at Cale's gift of speech, for he had heard him discourse only on "hosses" when he was with us the first time, "you 'd be worth three thousand dollars a year to me as consulting hygienist. Do you want the job?"

"No." He spoke decidedly. "This job 's good enough fer me. I hope 't will be for life now."

"Ewart's colors again, eh, Jamie?" He turned to Jamie with a lift of his eyebrows.

"Winning all along the course, Doctor."

"How do you know all that, Cale?" The Doctor dropped his chaffing and looked over earnestly at Cale beside the chimney-piece.

"Know what?"

"The fact that those special ingredients must be mixed in a good home to prove so effectual as in Marcia's case?" He turned to examine me.

"How do I know it?" He spoke slowly, almost with hesitation, and beneath his bushy eyebrows I thought I saw a suspicious glitter in his small keen gray eyes, but it may have been imagination. "I have n't always been a lonely man, you know—"

"That's just what I don't know, Cale." The Doctor spoke with the encouragement of good fellowship, not as one willing or wanting to ask his confidence, but as one hoping in friendship to receive it. I am sure we all felt with the Doctor at this moment, for Cale's reticence had been a matter of concern to Jamie and Mrs. Macleod. But Jamie had respected his silence.

Cale set his emptied bowl on the tray and sat down again, making himself comfortable by crossing his legs. He heaved a sigh of satisfaction. Mrs. Macleod, Jamie and I read that sign; Cale was ready to expand a little more in the cheerful atmosphere of friends and fireside. We three knew that what he had to retail would be well worth hearing. Jamie settled himself in the sofa corner as usual. The Doctor insisted on carrying the tray to the kitchen.

"Ah, this is good," he said, seating himself by me and spreading his hands to the blaze. "We shan't be interrupted, and the rest of the evening is ours. It's a bitter night, too, which, by contrast, makes this comfort delectable."

We waited, expectant, for Cale.

"You 've been wonderin' now fer 'bout six months, Mis' Macleod, you an' Jamie, whether I was a married man or not, now, hain't you?" He smiled as he spoke, the creases about his eyes deepening slowly.

Mrs. Macleod, with an embarrassment we all enjoyed seeing, moved to a seat beside him; saying gently, if deprecatingly:

"Yes, I could n't help it, Cale."

"How could you, bein' a woman?" he replied as gently. "An' you too, Marcia?"

"Of course; don't I belong to the weaker sex? But here is Jamie, although a man—"

"Oh, I say, Marcia, that's not playing fair," Jamie growled at me as if indifferent; but I knew his curiosity was at the flood, and Cale knew it too. I feared he might tease without satisfying.

"Yes, I 'm married, Mis' Macleod, an' it seems as if I 'd always been married."

Jamie's recent remark about Cale's being a widower, grass-widower, divorcé, Mormon, etc., came back to me, and I could hardly keep from laughing aloud at Mrs. Macleod's look of dismay and amazement.

"I say I'm married, fer you see that once married is always married with me," he repeated emphatically.

The Doctor nodded approvingly. "No uncertain note about that, Cale."

"No sir—ee," Cale nodded understandingly at him in turn, much to Jamie's delight. "A marriage when it is a marriage—'fore God an' men, an' 'fore the altar of two lovin' hearts, is fer good—fer this world anyway, an' fer the next if there is one. 'T ain't often you can come acrosst 'em now-a-days. I guess some men, put it to 'em on a sudden, could n't say under oath whether they was married or single, seein' this divorce business mixes things up worse 'n a progressive euchre party. I 'm only speakin' fer myself, mind you, an' I don't set up fer judgin' others."

"Good for you, Cale! Those are my sentiments," said the Doctor laughing heartily at Cale's idea of the "progressive euchre party".

"It's what keeps me young," Cale continued earnestly; "fer jest the thought of the one woman I loved, an' love now with all the love thet 's in me, warms me jest as this blaze would thaw freezin' sap; it keeps me, as you might say, kinder thawed out with folks, an' a durned cussed tough world."

He paused a moment and, leaning forward, clasped his hands around his crossed knees. I had seen him do this only when he was bracing himself to say something of deep significance. He faced me squarely, with the same keen look that I detected on the first night of my arrival.

"I 've been wonderin', Marcia, if you did n't hail from somewheres near my place, Spencerville, in northern New England, jest over the line—though come ter think of it, you said you was born in New York, did n't you?"

Brought to bay by this question, put to me suddenly without warning, I brought all my self control to bear on my voice and answered:

"Yes, I was born there, but my home for two thirds of my life was in the vicinity of Spencerville."

"I thought so," said Cale almost indifferently. "You had a way with you like the folks round there—not that I know any of your generation," he added hastily. "I left there over a quarter of a century ago. Only, now and then, your ways take me back into another generation where my wife belonged," he said, as if explaining why he had taken the liberty to approach me with the direct question. I forced myself to put on a bold front and ask:

"Who was your wife, Cale? I may know of the family."

"I have my doubts about thet," he said with considerable emphasis. "Girls of your age ain't apt to know of folks thet lived, an' loved, an'—I was goin' to say 'lost', but she ain't never thet to me, 'fore they was born. My wife's name, Marcia, was Morey, Jemimy Morey—one of three—"

"Triplets? Yes marm," he said, in reply to Mrs. Macleod's look of surprise. "Job Morey, her father, was a poor man, poor, as we used ter say, as Job's turkey. He 'd had a hard time, no mistake. He 'd had five boys ter raise on a farm thet was half rocks. Then come the war an' the two oldest had ter go. The third an' fourth was drafted an' Job hired the money to pay bounty; but the cuss turned bounty jumper an' they had ter go. Thet was the year when there was a bleedin' heart an' a rag of crape in most every house in the village. Two on 'em come home ter die, an' the t' other two was never heard from; it most killed Aunt Sally. They 'd had poor luck with four boys, an', by George, after the youngest of them five was fifteen if Aunt Sally did n't have triplets—gals all on em!

"Mother said half the women in the village was there ter help. She said she was out in the woodshed cuttin' up some kindlin'—Job never was known ter be forehanded in anythin'—an' Job come out the kitchen end without seein' her. She heard him give a groan an' say, all to himself he s'posed, as plain as could be: 'O Lord, three more mouths ter fill, an' so little ter fill 'em with!' Then, turnin' an' seeing mother, he smiled as well as he could in the circumstances, an' tried ter put a good face on it by sayin':

"'Well, Aunt Marthy, I ain't got all the material goods thet Old Testament Job had, but I 've got one of his latter day blessings, three daughters, an' I guess, if Sally don't mind, I 'll name 'em after 'em.'

"Thet 'show they come by their names: Keziah, Jemimy, and Keren-happuch, which was the most outlandish name fer about the prettiest baby, mother said, thet ever she 'd set eyes on. They shortened it to 'Happy' mighty quick.

"Aunt Sally who 'd never been strong sence the girls was born, broke right down under her trouble, when she lost her last boy, and never rallied. She died when the girls was n't more 'n ten year old, an' after thet, those six little hands worked early an' late to keep the house for their father. An' they kept it well too.

"Many 's the time after chores was done, I 'd sly over to Job's to fetch wood an' carry water for the sake of gettin' a smile from my pet, thet was Jemimy—a fair-skinned, blue-eyed little thing thet looked as if a breath of wind would blow her over. I watched her grow up like one of them pink-and-white wind-flowers thet come so early in spring, an' I used ter pull whole basketfuls for her, jest ter see her flush up so pleased like, an' get a kiss for my pains.

"I was ten years older than her—old enough ter know what would happen when Jemimy was ten years older too. She growed right inter my life, an' I growed right inter hers, so 't was nat'ral enough when she was seventeen for us ter say we belonged to one another.

"Job never could get ahead, and the farm was mortgaged clear up to the handle. I had n't much neither, for I had mother ter support and worked out by the month, an' Jemimy said 't was no time ter think of gettin' married; we 'd better wait till we could get a little ahead. She said she 'd heard of a place in the mills down Mass'chusetts way, an' although I stood out against it, she had set her heart on goin' an' earnin' a little extra, an' I let her have her way. Keziah married jest 'bout thet time a poor shote of a feller, an' went out West with him on ter some gov'ment lands. Happy was ter keep the house.

"Jemimy promised faithfully ter write, an' so she did, though 't was hard work after mill hours, she said, for she was so tired; but she loved me too well to have me fret an' worry, so she wrote pretty reg'lar every two weeks.

"She 'd been away 'bout seven months an' Job was lookin' like a man with some backbone in him, for half of Jemimy's pay kept comin' reg'lar an' Happy made everything she come nigh like sunshine, when one evenin' Job come over an' asked me how long it had been sence I heard from Jemimy. 'Goin' on four weeks,' says I. 'She told me not to expect much this month she 's so busy.'

"'We ain't heard for six weeks,' says Job, 'an' t'other night I had a dream; 't war n't much of a dream neither—only I can't get rid of it, work it off nor sleep it off, neither. S'posin' you write.'

"You may be pretty sure I did, an', not gettin' an answer, I drove down ter the nearest station an' sent a telegram, an' thet not gettin' an answer neither, I jest put myself aboard the next train for Lowell. Fust time I 'd been on the cars too, but they could n't go fast enough for me.

"I went straight ter the mill she 'd been workin' in, an' asked fer the boss. Then I put the question thet had been hangin' round me like a nightmare for twenty-four hours back.

"'Can you tell me where ter find Jemimy Morey?'

"There was a cur'ous sort er smile went curlin' round the man's lips as he opened a great ledger, an' read an entry thet made me set down on a chair handy, feelin' weak as water:

"'Entered February 2.—Left July 19.'

"Thet was all, but 't was enough.

"'Where 's she gone ter?' says I.

"'We don't keep run of the hands after they 've left unless they go ter another mill, an' she ain't,' says he, clappin' to the ledger with a bang thet said plain as could be, 'Time 's up.'

"'I guess you 'll have ter let me see the women, fer it's a life an' death matter ter me', says I, fer his drivin' ways madded me, an' I was pretty green an' did n't know as much as I might have.

"The strength seemed ter come floodin' right in ter me when I 'd said thet, and I guess there must have been a kinder 'knock-yer-down' look in my eyes, fer the feller sort o' winced—there war n't but us two in the office—an' said:

"'It's against the rules an' 't won't do no good, but if you 'll feel any better you can this time.'

"You see I thought if I could see the women, I 'd ask 'em, an' p'raps they 'd know 'bout her. But, Lord! when I see thet great room stretchin' away ter nothin', an' them hundreds of girls and women a-workin', tendin' them looms as if their life depended on them wooden bolts shovin' back'ards an' for'ards like lightnin', I jest set down on the first bench I come ter sicker 'n death.