A Cry in the Wilderness

XXIII

After the Doctor's departure on the Saturday of that week, I wrote to Delia Beaseley, telling her how far I had ventured upon the disclosure of the fact that I was the daughter of her whom she had helped to save, and that she was now free to tell him whatever he might ask in regard to me, as far as she could answer; but that on no consideration was she to speak of the papers in his possession; and if he spoke to her of them, she was to say that he must settle that with me; that on no account was she to learn anything of their contents. I wrote her this as a precautionary measure only, for I was convinced the Doctor would not mention those papers. They belonged to me, to me alone. It was a matter of business.

She wrote in answer that she would do as I requested.

The spring was both long and late in coming. Day after day, week after week the wind held steadily from the east or northeast. When, at last, it turned right about face, and the sun, climbing high in the north, warmed the breast of mother-earth, already swelling with its hidden abundance, the waters were loosened and the great river and all its tributaries were in ice-throes, travailling for deliverance.

Then it was that the plank sidewalks throughout the length and breadth of Richelieu-en-Bas were securely chained to each householder's fence or tree, to prevent them from sailing away on the rising flood. Then it was that rowboats were in evidence in many a front yard. The creek was impassable; the high-road bridge was threatened. Cale and Mr. Ewart seemed to live in rubber boots, both by day and by night. Pierre called frantically on all the protecting saints to withhold rain at the time of the "débâcle": the breaking up of the river. His son came in twice a day, on an average, with soaked stockings and knickerbockers wet through and through; was duly castigated—lightly, I say to his father's credit—and as regularly comforted by Angélique with flagons of spiced hot milk or very sweet ginger tea. It finally dawned upon us that the youngster deliberately waded through slush to obtain the creature comforts. After that, they were withheld.

Cale looked grim and Mr. Ewart anxious for one twenty-four hours. All night they were out on horseback with lanterns and ropes. Then the heavy rainclouds dispersed without the dreaded deluge; the sun shone clear and warm; the small ice jams gave way, and the great floes went charging down on the black waters towards the sea.

During this time of east wind, rain and snow, Jamie often chafed inwardly, for the weather kept him housed; but he busied himself with his work and soon became wholly absorbed, lost to what went on around him.

And what was going on around him? Just this: two lives, a man's and a woman's, long bound by the frost of circumstance, like the ice-bound river in full view from the manor, were in the process of being warmed through and through, thawed out; the ice obstructing each channel was beginning to move, that the courses of their lives, under the power of love's rays, might, at last, flow unhindered each into the other. So it seemed to me, at least, during those weeks of waiting for the spring.

Did I know he loved me? Yes, I knew it; was sure of it; but no word was spoken, for no word was needed then. We understood each other. We were man and woman, not boy and girl. We recognized what each of us was becoming to the other in the daily intimate household ways of life—an enduring test; in the community of our human interests, in the common wealth of our friends, of our books. His best friends were mine; mine were his—all except Delia Beaseley; sometime I intended he should know her.

I thought at first that would come about through the farm project; but Mrs. Macleod, Jamie and I had to acknowledge, soon after the Doctor returned, that the development of this plan was at a standstill. Naturally this pleased both mother and son. For them it meant the prospect of a return in the near future to their home in Scotland; finally to England, and London. Jamie confided to me he should cast anchor there for a time, his second book having been accepted by a good publisher in that city.

He found opportunity in my presence to ask Doctor Rugvie, just before he left us, about his further plans for the farm scheme, and was told rather brusquely that certain complications had arisen, which must be cleared up before he could proceed to develop them. Not once did he drive over to the farm on his last visit. As for Mr. Ewart, he never mentioned the subject. Jamie was wise enough to refrain from asking questions of him.

The Doctor's announcement kept Jamie guessing for weeks, his curiosity being unsatisfied; but as for me—I laughed in my sleeve, for I knew how that "third of December" birthday on my innocent part, had disarranged the good Doctor's philanthropic scheme, for the present at least. I was curious to know how he would proceed to "clear away" those complications.

The fear of leaving Lamoral for good was diminishing; I knew that what held me there, held Mr. Ewart also. I rested content in this knowledge.

XXIV

It was the second week in May when the seigniory farmers began to arrive and closet themselves with Mr. Ewart in the office. The "going" was atrocious, and the appearance at the side door of the clay-clogged cariole, buggy, calèche and farm-cart, bore witness to this fact.

Jamie and I were on the watch for each arrival. We knew nearly all of these habitant-farmers. They hitched their "team", and spent hours with Mr. Ewart. Sometimes, when we were in the living-room, we could hear voices from the office in lively and earnest discussion. We remarked the air of pride and satisfaction with which each one unhitched his horse, climbed into his special conveyance, slapped the reins on his animal's back and was off with a merry "Bonnes nouvelles!" to his habitant-wife who, while waiting for her husband, had been in the kitchen exchanging courtesies with Angélique, and feasting on freshly fried doughnuts and hot coffee. The notary from Richelieu-en-Bas, as well as the county surveyor, were also closeted with Mr. Ewart; they arrived after breakfast and left before supper. At dinner they were our guests, but no business topics were mentioned.

By Saturday, the routine of visitation was concluded. The notary departed with his green baize bag apparently bursting with documents. It was Angélique who informed us after his departure that the seignior had been receiving the seignioral rents with his own hand.

The next morning at the breakfast table, Mr. Ewart asked me if I would help him to audit some accounts, the farmers having just paid their half-yearly rents.

"At what hour?" I asked.

"I shall need your help for the entire forenoon and probably for an hour or two after dinner. Shall we say at nine?"

"Can't I help?" said Jamie, rather half-heartedly I must confess.

Mr. Ewart took in the situation by the tone, and smiled as he answered:

"No; you 're too busy with your work; the prose of figures would n't appeal to you just now."

"Would n't they though! Try me on a check from my publisher."

"It's the point of view, after all, that changes proportions, is n't it? Are you going to work in here?"

"Yes; I need about four by eight feet of surface to keep my ideas from jostling one another, and this dining-room table is about the right fit when I 'm comparing pages of manuscript with first galley proofs."

"Good luck, then; we 'll not disturb you till dinner."

An hour later when I went into the office, I found Mr. Ewart at his desk. Beside him was a large tin box, twice as large as a bread-box. On top lay two pairs of his thick driving-gloves. I must have looked my surprise, for he laughed as he rose to place two chairs, one on each side of the only table in the room—a fine old square one of ancient curly birch, generally bare, but now covered with a square of oil cloth.

"What next? I can't wait for developments to explain all this paraphernalia," I said; my curiosity was thoroughly roused.

"These." He held out a pair of the driving-gloves. "You are to put them on, please, and not to take them off till I give you permission."

Mystified, I obeyed. He set down the tin box on the table between us; opened wide both windows to let in the tonic air, that began to hint of real spring, and, drawing on the other pair of gloves, took his seat opposite me at the table. I could not help laughing.

"How does this performance strike you?" he asked, amused at my amusement.

"Like the prelude to some absolutely ridiculous rite, unknown to me."

"That is just what it is." He spoke so emphatically, so earnestly, that I was still further mystified. "You have hit the bull's-eye. It is a ridiculous rite, and, thank God, it's for the last time that I am chief mummer in it. Here in this box, Miss Farrell," he went on unlocking it and displaying a conglomerate mass of silver and soiled paper money, "are rents, seigniorial rents, paid by men who farm it on the seigniory, whose fathers and fathers' fathers have worked this ground before them, men who should own this land, to a man who should not own it in the existing conditions—conditions that have no place in the body politic, here or anywhere else. It's a left-over from medievalism—and I am about to do away with this order of things, to prove myself a man."

"You believe, then, in the ownership of the land by the many?" I asked eagerly. I was glad to get his point of view. The discussions between him, Doctor Rugvie and Jamie, were always of great interest to me. Although I knew something of his plans from the other two, he had never mentioned them to me. I saw he was speaking with great feeling.

"Believe in it! It's the first article in my political and sociological creed. I 've come back here to Canada, where I was born, to incorporate it in action.– And you 're wondering where you come in, in this experiment, I 'll wager," he said gayly.

I answered him in the same vein: "I confess, I fail to see the connection between your driving-gloves on my hands, your strong box between us—and the first article of your creed."

"Of course you don't!" He laughed aloud at my mental plight and his own manner of announcing his special tenet. "I 'll begin at the beginning and present the matter by the handle. I want you to grasp it right in the first place."

"Thank you," I said meekly; "not being a feminine John Stuart Mill, I need all the enlightenment I can have on the presence of this worldly dross that lies between us. Facts contradict theories."

With a sudden, almost passionate movement, he shoved the box to one side on the table; it was no longer between us. I knew there was significance in his impulsive action, but I failed to understand what it indicated.

"It's taking rather a mean advantage of a woman, I own, to ask her on the spur of the moment to share a man's political and sociological views—but I want you to share mine, and enlightenment is your due."

"And in the meantime am I to keep on the gloves?"

He laughed again. "Yes; keep them on and help me out of this scrape—I have never felt so humiliated in my life as I have taking this money. Now I 'll be rational. You see, smallpox roams at times through Canada. This money has been stored in stockings, instead of banks, after having been hoarded, handled, greased, soiled by a generation or more. You 'll find dates of issue on these notes that are a good deal older than you, and silver minted in the early sixties. Now I want your help in counting over—auditing, we 'll call it—this mass of corruption. And I don't intend you shall run any risk in handling even a small part of it—hence the gloves and the fresh air. After we 're through with it, we will pack the filthy lucre in the box and express it to a Montreal bank. It is n't mine—at least I do not consider it so."

"Why not?"

"Because I am going to apply these half-yearly rents in reducing the interest on the money I am loaning these farmers, in order to enable them to buy the best implements and cultivate their land more intelligently. This I may say to you, but to no one else."

"You are going to sell them the land?"

"The greater part of it. The forest I keep, because I love that work and hope in time to make a sufficient income from it, in case of actual need. In fact, I 've been working all the week with the notary to get the deeds in order."

"So that was their 'bonnes nouvelles'?"

"You heard them?"

"Yes. They looked so happy—"

"Oh, I am glad; glad too, that you could see something of their pleasure in this special work of mine. Do you know,"—he leaned towards me over the table,—"that I have asked you to help me with this as a matter of pure sentiment?"

His eyes sought mine, but I am sure they found only an enquiring turn of mind in them, for I could not imagine where the sentiment was in evidence.

"I see I 'll have to explain," he said smiling. "I want you, an American with all the free inheritance of the American, to share with me in this last rite of mediævalism, in order that in the future we may look back to it—and mark our own progress."

Oh, that word "our"! Used so freely, it rejoiced me. He intended this affair to mark some epoch in his life and mine. I waited for him to say something further. But, instead, he turned to the business in hand and we set to work. To be sure the "auditing" on my part was a mere farce; for not only did Mr. Ewart do most of the counting, and making into bundles of a hundred, but he insisted on my not bending close over the currency to watch him. As I told him, "After asking me to help you, you keep me at arm's distance."

Whereupon he smiled in an amused way, and said engagingly, but firmly:

"There is no question of my keeping you at a distance. Don't mind my crotchets, Miss Farrell, I have a fancy to have you here with me at the obsequies of all this sixteenth-in-the-twentieth century nonsense. At forty-six, I still have my dreams. You 'll be good enough to indulge me, won't you?"

"If that's all, I think I can indulge you. But is there nothing I can do to be of some real help?"

"Nothing but to lend me your companionship during this trying ordeal. You might fill out some labels—you 'll find them in that handy-box on the desk—with the words 'hundred' and 'fifty', and I 'll gum them on to these slips for the money rolls."

For a few minutes I busied myself with the labels. After that, I watched his swift counting of bills and silver, and his ordering them into neat packages and rolls. Before long, however, I took matters into my own gloved hand and, without so much as "by your leave", began the recount, labelling as I went on. Within an hour the work was finished and a smaller tin box packed.

"How much did you make it?" he asked, before locking the box.

"Three thousand four hundred and twenty-two, just."

"The rate of interest I charge them is two per cent, and this amount will reduce that greatly."

"Do you mean that you are letting them have the land, supplying money to help them cultivate it, and charging only two per cent interest?"

"Why should I charge more? They are the ones who are doing the land good. You see, the use of this rent-accumulation to reduce their interest rate for the first year or two, is a part of my general scheme. They are to apply their half-yearly rents as purchase money for their land; this is in the deeds. Within a comparatively short period, this assures to each of them a freehold. The valuation I have put on their land is regulated by the amount of work they have put out on it, and the time they have lived on it.