With the opening of spring and the close of the sledding season, work
had stopped at Adams' camp. Rather, the entire plant had been shipped
twenty miles deeper into the forest--mill, bunk-house, cook-shed, and
such corrugated-iron shacks as were worth carting away.
All that was left on the site of the busy camp were huge heaps of
sawdust, piles of slabs, discarded timbers, and the half-burned bricks
into which had been built the portable boiler and engine.
And old Judy Mason. She was not considered worth moving to the new site
of the camp. She was bedridden with rheumatism. This was the report Tim,
the hackman, had brought in.
The old woman's husband had gone with the outfit to the new camp, for he
could not afford to give up his work. Judy had not been so bad when the
camp was broken up, but when Tim went over for a load of slabs for
summer firewood, he discovered her quite helpless in her bunk and almost
starving. The rheumatic attack had become serious.
Amanda Parlow had at once ridden over with Dr. Nugent. Then she had come
home for her bag and had insisted on the carpenter's driving her back to
the abandoned camp, proposing to stay with Judy till the old woman was
better.
Aunty Rose had one comment to make upon it, and Carolyn May another. Mr.
Stagg's housekeeper said:
"That is just like a parcel of men folks--leaving an old woman to look
out for herself. Disgraceful! And Amanda Parlow will not even be thanked
for what she does."
"How brave and helpful it is of Miss Amanda!" Carolyn May cried. "Dear
me, when I grow up, I hope I can be a gradjerate nurse like Miss Mandy."
"I reckon that's some spell ahead," chuckled Mr. Parlow, to whom she
said this when he picked her up for a drive after taking his daughter to
the camp.
"And you'll come nigh to wantin' to be a dozen other things 'fore you're
old enough to go to work in a hospital, I shouldn't wonder. Gid-ap,
Cherry!"
Cherry tossed his head and increased his stride. The carpenter had one
weakness--that was horseflesh. He was always the owner of a roadster of
note.
"That's a funny name for a horse, Mr. Parlow," observed Carolyn May.
"Cherry red. That's his colour."
"Oh!"
"And I got a cat home that's cherry colour, too."
"Why-e-e-e!" exclaimed the little girl, "I'm sure I never saw that one,
Mr. Parlow. Your cat is black--all black."
"Well," chuckled the old man over the ancient joke, "he's the colour of
a blackheart cherry."
"Oh, my! I never thought of that," giggled Carolyn May. She looked up
into his hard, dry face with an expression of perplexity in her own.
"Mr. Parlow," she went on seriously, "don't you think _now_ that Miss
Amanda ought to be happy?"
"Happy!" exclaimed the carpenter, startled. "What about, child?"
"Why, about everything. You know, once I asked you about her being
happy, and--and you didn't seem fav'rable. You said 'Bah!'"
Carolyn May's imitation of that explosive word as previously used by Mr.
Parlow was absolutely funny; but the carpenter only looked at her
sidewise, and his face remained grim.
"So I said 'Bah,' did I?" he grunted. "And what makes you think I might
not say it now?"
"Why," explained Carolyn May earnestly, "I hoped you'd come to see
things like--like I do. You are lots pleasanter than you used to be, Mr.
Parlow--indeed, you are. You are happier yourself."
The old man made no reply for a minute, and Carolyn May had the patience
to wait for her suggestion to "sink in." Finally, he said:
"I dunno but you're right, Car'lyn May. Not that it matters much, I
guess, whether a body's happy or not in this world," he added
grudgingly.
"Oh, yes, it does, Mr. Parlow! It matters a great deal, I am sure--to us
and to other people. If we're not happy _inside_ of us, how can we be
cheerful _outside_, and so make other people happy? And that is what I
mean about Miss Amanda."
"What about Mandy?"
"She isn't happy," sighed Carolyn May. "Not really. She's just as good
as good can be. She is always doing for folks, and helping. But she
can't be real happy."
"Why not?" growled Mr. Parlow, his face turned away.
"Why--'cause--Well, you _know_, Mr. Parlow, she can't be happy as long as
she and my Uncle Joe are mad at each other."
Mr. Parlow uttered another grunt, but the child went bravely on.
"You know very well that's so. And I don't know what to do about it. It
just seems too awful that they should hardly speak, and yet be so fond
of each other deep down."
"How d'you know they're so fond of each other--deep down?" Mr. Parlow
demanded.
"I know my Uncle Joe likes Miss Mandy, 'cause he always speaks so--so
respectful of her. And I can see she likes him, in her eyes," replied
the observant Carolyn May. "Oh, yes, Mr. Parlow, they ought to be happy
again, and we ought to make 'em so."
"Huh! Who ought to?"
"You and me. We ought to find some way of doing it. I'm sure we can, if
we just think hard about it."
"Huh!" grunted the carpenter again, turning Cherry into the dooryard.
"Huh!"
This was not a very encouraging response. Yet he did think of it. The
little girl had started a train of thought in Mr. Parlow's mind that he
could not sidetrack.
He knew very well that what she had said about his daughter and Joseph
Stagg was quite true. In his selfishness he had been glad all these
years that the hardware merchant was balked of happiness. As for his
daughter's feelings, Mr. Parlow had put them aside as "women's
foolishness." He had never much considered women in his life.
The carpenter had always been a self-centred individual, desirous of his
own comfort, and rather miserly. He had not approved, in the first
place, of the intimacy between Joseph Stagg and his daughter Amanda.
"No good'll come o' _that_," he had told himself.
That is, no good to Jedidiah Parlow. He foresaw at the start the loss of
the girl's help about the house, for his wife was then a helpless
invalid.
Then Mrs. Parlow died. This death made plainer still to the carpenter
that Mandy's marriage was bound to bring inconvenience to him.
Especially if she married a close-fisted young business man like Joe
Stagg would this be true. For, at the reading of his wife's will, Mr.
Parlow discovered that the property they occupied, even the shop in
which he worked, which had been given to Mrs. Parlow by her parents, was
to be the sole property of her daughter. Mandy was the heir. Mr. Parlow
did not possess even a life interest in the estate.
It was a blow to the carpenter. He made a good income and had money in
bank, but he loved money too well to wish to spend it after he had made
it. He did not want to give up the place. If Mandy remained unmarried
there would never be any question between them of rent or the like.
Therefore, if he was not actually the cause of the difference that arose
between the two young people, he seized and enlarged upon it and did all
in his power to make a mere misunderstanding grow into a quarrel that
neither of the proud, high-spirited lovers would bridge.
Jedidiah Parlow knew why Joe Stagg had taken that other girl to Faith
Camp Meeting. The young man had stopped at the Parlow place when Amanda
was absent and explained to the girl's father. But the latter had never
mentioned this fact to his daughter.
Instead, he had made Joe's supposed offense the greater by suggestion
and innuendo. And it was he, too, who had urged the hurt Mandy to
retaliate by going to the dance with another young man. Meeting Joe
Stagg later, the carpenter had said bitter things to him, purporting to
come from Mandy. It was all mean and vile; the old man knew it now--as he
had known it then.
All these years he had tried to add fuel to the fire of his daughter's
anger against Joe Stagg. And he believed he had benefited thereby. But,
somehow, during the past few months, he had begun to wonder if, after
all, "the game was worth the candle."
Suddenly he had gained a vision of what Amanda Parlow's empty life meant
to her. And it was empty, he knew--empty of that love which every woman
craves; empty of the greatest thing that can come into her life.
Mr. Parlow had realised what had been denied his daughter when he had
first seen Carolyn May in Mandy's arms. That was the thing lacking. The
love of children, the right to care for children of her own. He had been
practically the cause of this denial. Sometimes, when he thought of it,
the carpenter was rather shaken. Suppose he should be called to account
for his daughter's loss?
Carolyn May, interested only in seeing her friends made happy, had no
idea of the turmoil she had created in Mr. Parlow's mind. She went her
way as usual, scattering sunshine, and hiding as much as she could the
trouble that gnawed in her own heart.
The love of Uncle Joe and Aunty Rose and Miss Amanda and Mr. Driggs and
the host of her other friends at The Corners and in Sunrise Cove could
not take the place in faithful little Carolyn May's heart of that
parental affection which had been so lavished on her all the days of her
life, until the sailing of the _Dunraven_.
Had the little girl possessed brothers and sisters, it might have been
different. Mr. and Mrs. Cameron could not, in that case, have devoted
themselves so entirely to the little girl.
She had been her mother's close companion and her father's chum. True,
it had made her "old-fashioned"--old in speech and in her attitude
towards many things in life, but she was none the less charming because
of this difference between her and other children.
Her upbringing had indeed made her what she was. She thought more deeply
than other children of her age. Her nature was the logical outgrowth of
such training as she had received from associating with older people.
She was seriously desirous of seeing Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda made
happy in their love for each other. She was a born matchmaker--there was
no doubt of that.
During the time that the nurse was at the abandoned lumber camp caring
for Judy Mason, Carolyn May hoped that something might take Uncle Joe
there. She even tried to get him to drive her over to see Miss Amanda on
Sunday afternoon. But Uncle Joe did not keep a horse himself, and he
would not be coaxed into hiring one for any such excursion.
"Besides, what would your Aunty Rose say?" he asked his little niece.
"She would not approve of our doing such a thing on the Lord's Day, I am
sure."
Nevertheless, he was as eager as a boy to do it. It was because he
shrank from having the neighbours comment on his doing the very thing he
desired to do that he so sternly refused to consider Carolyn May's
suggestion. Those neighbours might think that he was deliberately going
to call on Miss Amanda!
The next Friday, after school was out, Miss Amanda appeared at the Stagg
home and suggested taking Carolyn May into the woods with her, "for the
week-end," as she laughingly said. Tim, the hackman, had brought the
nurse home for a few hours and would take her back to Judy's cabin.
"Poor old Judy is much better, but she is still suffering and cannot be
left alone for long," Miss Amanda said. "Carolyn May will cheer her up."
Delighted, Carolyn May ran to get ready. Spring was far advanced and the
woods were very beautiful. And to stay all night--two whole nights--in a
log cabin seemed wonderfully attractive to the little girl.
Aunty Rose let her go because she knew that Uncle Joe would approve of
it. Indeed, they had talked the matter over already. Carolyn May missed
Miss Amanda so that the hardware dealer had already agreed to some such
arrangement as this. Mr. Parlow would drive over on Sunday afternoon and
bring the little girl home. Of course, Prince had to go along.
That Friday evening at supper matters in the big kitchen of the Stagg
house were really at a serious pass. Joseph Stagg sat down to the table
visibly without appetite. Aunty Rose drank one cup of tea after another
without putting a crumb between her lips.
"What's the matter with you to-night, Joseph Stagg?" his housekeeper
finally demanded. "Aren't the victuals good enough for you?"
"No," said Mr. Stagg drily, "I think they're poisoned. You don't expect
me to eat if you don't set an example, do you?"
"What I do has nothing to do with you, Joseph Stagg," said Mrs. Kennedy,
bridling. "I'm pecking and tasting at victuals all day long. I get so I
despise 'em."
"Yes," returned Mr. Stagg. "And if Hannah's Car'lyn don't come back, I
shall get to despise 'em, too."
"Ha!" ejaculated the old lady. "You do miss the little thing."
"Miss her? Bless me! I wouldn't believe it made so much difference
having her about. It's knowing she really is away, and is going to be
gone for a couple of days, that's the matter, I s'pose. Say, Aunty
Rose!"
"What is it, Joseph Stagg?"
"What under the sun did we do before Hannah's Car'lyn came here, anyway?
Seems to me we didn't really live, did we?"
Aunty Rose had no answer to make to these questions.
Uncle Joe missed kissing the little girl good-night. He even missed the
rattle of Prince's chain at the dog-house when he came back from the
store late in the evening.
The air had grown heavy and close, and he stood on the porch for a
minute and snuffed knowingly at the odour a good deal as the dog might.
"There's a fire over the mountain, I guess," he said to Aunty Rose when
he entered the house. "We're having a dry spring."
They went to bed. In the morning there was a smoky fog over everything--a
fog that the sun did not dissipate, and behind which it looked like an
enormous saffron ball.
Mr. Stagg went down to the store as usual. On the way he passed the
Parlow place, and he saw the carpenter in his shop door. Parlow was
gazing with seeming anxiety into the fog cloud, his face turned towards
the forest. Joseph Stagg did not know that, in all the years of their
estrangement, the carpenter had never been so near speaking to the
hardware dealer.
The smoky tang in the air was as strong in Sunrise Cove as out in the
country. The shopkeepers were talking about the fire. News had come over
the long-distance wires that thousands of acres of woodland were
burning, that the forest reserves were out, and that the farmers of an
entire township on the far side of the mountain were engaged in trying
to make a barrier over which the flames would not leap. It was the
consensus of opinion, however, that the fire would not cross the range.
It never had on former occasions, and the wind was against such an
advance. The top of the ridge was covered with boulders and the
vegetation was scant.
"Scarcely any chance of its swooping down on us," decided Mr. Stagg.
"Reckon I won't have to go home to plough fire furrows."
At the usual hour he started for The Corners for dinner. Having remained
in the store all the morning, he had not realised how much stronger the
smell of smoke was than it had been at breakfast time. Quite
involuntarily he quickened his pace.
The fog and smoke overcast the sky thickly and made it of a brassy
colour, just as though a huge copper pot had been overturned over the
earth. Women stood at their doors, talking back and forth together in
low tones. There was a spirit of expectancy in the air. Every person he
saw was affected by it.
There seemed scarcely any danger of a forest fire sweeping in upon
Sunrise Cove, or even upon The Corners. There was too much cleared land
surrounding the town. But what was happening on the other side of the
mountain? The peril that other people were in moved his neighbours.
Joseph Stagg was affected himself. And for another reason.
Down in the thick woods, ten miles away, were two women and a child in a
cabin. Suppose the fire _should_ cross the range?
The hardware merchant was striding along at a quick pace when he came to
the Parlow place; but he was not going so fast that he did not hear the
carpenter hailing him in his cracked voice.
"Hey, you, Joe Stagg! Hey, you!"
Amazed, Mr. Stagg turned to look. Parlow was hobbling from the rear
premises, groaning at every step, scarcely able to walk.
"That sciatica's got me ag'in," he snarled. "I'm a'most doubled up.
Couldn't climb into a carriage to save my soul."
"What d'you want to climb into a carriage for?" demanded Mr. Stagg.
"'Cause somebody's got to go for that gal of mine--and little Car'lyn
May. Ain't you heard--or is your mind so sot on makin' money down there
to your store that you don't know nothin' else?"
"Haven't I heard what?" returned the other with fine restraint, for he
saw the old man was in pain.
"The fire's come over to this side. I saw the flames myself. And Aaron
Crummit drove through and says that you can't git by on the main road.
The fire's followed the West Brook right down and is betwixt us and
Adams' old camp."
"Bless me!" gasped the hardware dealer, paling under his tan.
"Wal?" snarled Parlow. "Goin' to stand there chatterin' all day, or be
you goin' to do something?"