"It is a good time to speak of some matters between ourselves; Jamie
will not be coming in for an hour at least." She turned and looked at
me steadily.
"I don't know how much or how little you know of this place, and
perhaps it will be best to begin at the beginning. Mrs. Beaseley wrote
me you were born in the city of New York."
"Yes; twenty-six years ago next December."
"So Mrs. Beaseley wrote, or rather her daughter did for her. She said
you were an orphan."
"Yes." I answered so. How could I answer otherwise knowing what I
did? But I felt the blood mount to my temples when I stated this half
truth.
"You say you do not know Doctor Rugvie?"
"No; only of him."
"I wish you did." (How could she know that my wish to see him and know
him must be far stronger than hers!)
"He will be coming out here later on in the winter--are you cold?" she
asked quickly, for I had shivered to cover an involuntary start.
"No, not at all; but I think it must be growing colder outside."
"It is. Cale said we might have heavy frost or snow before morning.
You will find the changes in temperature very sudden and trying here in
spring and autumn. About Doctor Rugvie; he is a good man, and a great
one in his profession. We made his acquaintance many years ago in
Scotland, in my own home, Crieff. He had lodgings with us for ten
weeks, and since then he has made us proud to be counted among his
friends."
She rose, stirred the fire and took a maple stick from a large
wood-basket.
"Let me," I said, taking it from her.
"You really don't look strong enough."
"Oh, but I am; you 'll see."
"By the way, don't let my son do anything like this. He is often
careless and over confident, and he must not strain himself--he is
under strict orders." She was silent for a moment then went on:
"My son is not strong, as you must see." She looked at me appealingly,
as if hoping I might dispute her statement; but I could say nothing.
"A year ago," she spoke slowly, as if with difficulty, "he was in the
Edinboro' Hospital for five months; he inherits his father's
constitution, and the hemorrhages were very severe. Doctor Rugvie came
over to see him, and advised his coming out here to Canada to live as
far as possible in the pine forests. He has been away all summer. He
is to go away again next year with one of the old guides.
"I want you to remain with me as companion and assistant here in the
house; the service is large and, as you will soon find," she added with
a smile, "extremely personal. They are interested in us and our
doings, and we are expected to reciprocate that interest. It will be a
comfort to Jamie to know you are with me, and that I am not alone in
this French environment." She interrupted herself to say:
"Did Mrs. Beaseley tell you anything about this place? You can speak
with perfect freedom to me. We have no mysteries here." She smiled as
if she read my thoughts.
"She told me she knew nothing of the place, except that Doctor Rugvie
had hired a farm in Canada with some good buildings on it, and that he
intended to use it for those who might need to be built up in health."
"She has stated it exactly. My son and I are the first
beneficiaries--only, this is not the farm."
"Not the farm!" I exclaimed. She looked amused at my surprise. "What
is it then? Do tell me."
"There is very little to tell. A friend of Doctor Rugvie's, an
Englishman who was with him for a week in Scotland while he was with
us, is owner of the Seigniory of Lamoral; it is his, I think, by
inheritance, although I am not positive; and this is the old manor
house. The estate is very large, but has been neglected; I have
understood it is to be cultivated; some of it is to be reforested and
the present forest conserved. He will be his own manager and will make
his home here a great part of the year. Mean while, he has installed
us here in his absence, through Doctor Rugvie, of course, and given
over the charge of house and servants to Jamie and me."
"And what is the owner's title?"
"He has none that I know of. The real 'Seignior' and 'Seignioress'
live in Richelieu-en-Bas in the new manor house--I say 'new', but that
must be seventy-five years old. This is only a part of the original
seigniory."
"I don't understand these seigniories, and I tried to read up about
them before I came here."
"It is very perplexing--these seigniorial rights and rents and
transferences. I don't make any pretence of understanding them."
"Are the farm buildings occupied now?"
"No; Doctor Rugvie wants to attend to those himself. It is his
recreation to make plans for this farm, and he will be here himself to
see that they are begun and carried out right. He tells me he has
always loved Canada."
"And what am I to do for you? I want to begin to feel of a little
use," I said half impatiently.
"You are doing for me now, my dear." (How easily Delia Beaseley's name
for me came from the "elderly Scotchwoman's" lips!) "Your presence
cheers Jamie; the young need the young, and belong to the young--"
"But," I protested, "I am not young; I am twenty-six."
"And Jamie is twenty-three. But when you laughed together to-night,
you both might have been sixteen. It did me good to hear you; this old
house needs just that--and I can't laugh easily now," she added. I
heard a note of hopelessness in her voice.
How lovely she was as she sat by the fire in the soft radiance of
candle light! "Elderly"!--She could not be a day over fifty-seven or
eight. The fine white cap rested on heavy, smoothly parted hair; the
figure was round to plumpness; the dress, not modernized, became her;
her voice was still young if a little weary, and her brown eyes bright,
the lids unwrinkled.
"Do you know Delia Beaseley well? Doctor Rugvie says she is a fine
woman."
"She is noble," I said emphatically; "I feel that I know her well,
although I have seen her only a few times."
"Is she a widow?"
The door opened before I could gather my wits to answer. I felt
intuitively that I could not say to this Scotchwoman, that Delia
Beaseley was neither widow nor wife. I welcomed the sudden inrush of
all four dogs and Jamie behind them, with the smell of a fresh pipe
about him.
"I positively must have my second short pipe here with you. I kept
away in deference to the new member of the family." He flourished his
pipe towards me. "I always smoke here, don't I, mother?"
"In that case, I will stay in my room after supper unless you continue
to smoke your first, second, and third--"
"Only two; Doctor Rugvie won't allow me a third--"
"Doctor Rugvie is a tyrant, and I 've said the same thing before," I
declared firmly.
"Now, look here, Marcia," he said solemnly, "we will call a halt right
now and here." He settled his long length in the deep easy chair on
the other side of the hearth, refilled and relighted his pipe. "Doctor
Rugvie is my friend, my very special friend; whoever enters this house,
enters it on the footing of friendship with all those who are my
friends--"
"Hear, hear! Another tyrant," I said, turning to his mother who was
enjoying our chaff.
"--Whose name is legion," he went on, ignoring my interruption. "I'll
begin to enumerate them for your benefit. There are the four dogs,
Gordon setters of the best breed--and Gordon's setters in fact." He
made some pun at which his mother smiled, but it was lost on me. "They
're not mine, they 're my friend's, and that amounts to the same thing
when he 's away."
"And who is this friend of dogs and of man?"
"He? Guy Mannering, hear her! Why there's only one 'he' for this
place and that's--"
"Doctor Rugvie?"
"Doctor Rugvie!" he repeated, looking at me in unfeigned amazement;
then to his mother:
"Have n't you told her yet, mother?"
"I doubt if I mentioned his name--I had so many other things to say and
think of." She spoke half apologetically.
"The man who owns this house, Miss Farrell,"--he was speaking so
earnestly and emphatically that he forgot our agreement,--"the man who
owns these dogs, the lord of this manor, such as it is, and everything
belonging to it, lord of a forest it will do your eyes and lungs and
soul good to journey through, the man who is master in the best sense
of Pete and little Pete, of Angelique and Marie, of old Mere
Guillardeau, of a dozen farmers here on the old Seigniory of Lamoral,
my friend, Doctor Rugvie's friend and friend of all Richelieu-en-Bas,
is Mr. Ewart, Gordon Ewart--and you missed my pun! the first I've made
to-day!--and I hope he will be yours!"
"Well, I 'll compromise. If he will just tolerate me here for your
sakes, I 'll be his friend whether he is mine or not--for I want to
stay."
I meant what I said; and I think both mother and son realized, that
under the jesting words there was a deep current of feeling. Mrs.
Macleod leaned over and laid her hand on mine.
"You shall stay, Marcia; it will not depend on Mr. Ewart, your
remaining with us. When the farm is ready, Doctor Rugvie will place us
there, and then I shall need your help all the time."
Again, as at the station with Delia Beaseley's blessing ringing in my
ears, I felt the unaccustomed tears springing in my eyes. Jamie leaned
forward and knocked the ashes from his pipe; he continued to stare into
the fire.
"And who are the others?" I asked unsteadily; my lips trembled in spite
of myself.
"The others? Oh--," he seemed to come back to us from afar, "there is
Andre--"
"And who is Andre?"
"Just Andre--none such in the wide world; my guide's old father, old
Mere Guillardeau's brother, old French voyageur and coureur de bois; it
will take another evening to tell you of Andre.-- Mother," he spoke
abruptly, "it's time for porridge and Cale."
"Yes, I will speak to Marie." She rose and left the room by a door at
the farther end.
"Remark those fourteen candles, will you?" said Jamie, between puffs.
"I have noticed them; I call that a downright extravagance."
"I pay for it," he said sententiously; then, with a slight flash of
resentment; "you need n't think I sponge on Ewart to the extent of
fourteen candles a night."
I laughed a little under my breath. I knew a little friction would do
him no harm.
"And when those fourteen candles burn to within two inches of the
socket, as at present, it is my invariable custom, being a Scotsman, to
call for the porridge--and for Cale, because he is of our tongue, and
needs to discourse with his own, at least once, before going to bed. I
say a Scotsman without his nine o'clock porridge is a cad."
"Any more remarks are in order," I said to tease him.
"You really must know Cale--"
"I thought I made his acquaintance this afternoon."
He laughed again his hearty laugh. "I forgot; he drove you out. We
did n't send Pete because we thought you might not understand his
lingo. But you must n't fancy you know Cale because you 've seen him
once--oh, no! You 'll have to see him daily and sometimes hourly; in
fact, you will see so much of him that, sometimes, you will wish it a
little less; for you are to understand that Cale is omnipresent, very
nearly omnipotent here with us, and indispensable to _me_. You will
accept him on my recommendation and afterwards make a friend of him for
your own sake."
"Who is he?"
"Cale?--He 's just Cale too. His name is Caleb Marstin; 'hails', as he
says, from northern New England. I have noticed he does n't care to
name the locality, and I respect his reticence; it's none of my
business. He says he has n't lived there for more than a quarter of a
century and has no relations. He can tell you more about forests,
lumber and forestry, in one hour than a whole Agricultural College. He
has been for years lumbering in northern Minnesota and across the
Canadian border. He 's here to help reforest and conserve the old
forest to the estate; he 's--in a word, he 's my right hand man."
"Is Mr. Ewart lord of Cale too?"
At my question, Jamie's long body doubled up with mirth.
"Have n't seen each other yet and don't know each other. Gordon Ewart
is n't apt to acknowledge any one as his master, especially in the
matter of forestry, and Cale never does; result, fun for us when they
do know each other."
"How did you happen to get him here?"
"Oh, a girl I know, who visits in Richelieu-en-Bas, said her father,
who is a big lumber merchant on the States' border, knew of good men
for the place. Ewart had told me that this was my first business, to
get a man for the place; so I wrote to him, and he replied that Cale
was coming east in the spring and he had given him my name. That's
how."
Mrs. Macleod came in, followed by Marie with steaming porridge, bowls
and spoons on a tray; Cale was behind her. Jamie looked up with a
smile.
"Cale, this is Miss Farrell, the new member of our Canadian settlement.
I take it you have spoken with her before."
There was no outstretched hand for me; nor did I extend mine to him.
We were of one people, Cale and I: northern New Englanders, and rarely
demonstrative to strangers. We are apt to wait for an advance in
friendship and then retreat before it when it is made, for the simple
reason that we fear to show how much we want it! But I smiled up at
him as he took his stand by the mantel, leaning an elbow on it.
"Yes, Cale and I have made each other's acquaintance." I noticed that
when I looked up at him and smiled, he gave an involuntary start. I
wondered if Jamie saw it.
"Yes, we had some conversation, such as 'twas, on the way. 'T ain't
every young gal would ride out inter what you might call the
unbeknownst of a seigniory in Canady with an old feller like me."
A slow smile wrinkled his gaunt whiskered cheeks, and creased a little
more deeply the crowsfeet around the small keen grey eyes that, I
noticed, fixed themselves on me and were hardly withdrawn during the
five minutes he stood by the mantel gulping his porridge.
After finishing it, he bade us an abrupt good night and left.
"What's struck Cale, mother?" Jamie asked as soon as he had left the
room; "this is the first time I 've ever known his loquacity to be at a
low ebb. It could n't be Marcia, could it?"
"I don't think Marcia's presence had anything to do with it; he is n't
apt to be minding the presence of any one. I think he has something on
his mind."
"Then he 'd better get it off; I don't like it," said Jamie brusquely;
"here they come--"
In came Angelique and Marie, Pierre the Great, and Pierre the Small, to
bid us good night; it was their custom; and after the many
"bonne-nuits" and "dormez-biens", they trooped out. We took our
lighted candlesticks from the library table where Marie had placed
them; Jamie snuffed out the fourteen low-burning lights in the sconces,
drew ashes over the embers, put a large screen before the fire, and we
went to our rooms.
Mine greeted me with an extra degree of warmth. Marie had made more
fire; the air was frosty. I drew apart the curtains and looked out.
There was only the blackness of night beyond the panes. I drew them to
again; unlocked my trunk to take out merely what was necessary for the
night, undressed and went to bed.
I must have lain there hours with wide open eyes; there was no sleep in
me. Hour after hour I listened for a sound from somewhere; there was
absolute silence within the manor and without. I had opened my window
for air, and, as I lay there wide awake, gradually, without reason, in
that intense silence, the various nightly street sounds of the great
city, five hundred miles to the southward, began to sound in my ears;
at first far away, then nearer and nearer until I heard distinctly the
roar of the elevated, the multiplied "honk-honk" of the automobiles,
the rolling of cabs, the grating clamor of the surface cars, the clang
of the ambulance, the terrific clatter of the horses' hoofs as they
sped three abreast to the fire, the hoarse whistle of tug and ferry;
and, above all, the voices of those crying in that wilderness.
Again I felt that awful burden, that blackness of oppression, which was
with me for weeks in the hospital--the result of the intensified life
of the huge metropolis and the giant machinery that sustains it--and,
feeling it, I knew myself to be a stranger even in the white walled
room in the old manor house of Lamoral.
It must have been long, long after midnight when I fell asleep.