"Where are you going, Marcia?"
"Down stairs to begin with the books."
"Hold on till I come; you can't handle them alone. Cale, put the
screens before the fires. Come on down, mother."
The passageway was stacked high with books along the walls. Cale had
brought them in, and these were not the half. I was looking at them
when the others came down.
"You took them out, Cale, how many do you think there are?"
"I cal'lated 'bout three hundred in a box. We 've opened five, and
there 's two we ain't opened."
Jamie started to gather up an armful, but Cale took them from him. His
tenderness and care of him were wonderful to see.
"No yer don't! If there 's to be any fetchin' and carryin', I 'm the
one ter do it."
"And I 'm the one to place and classify. I want to prove that I did
n't work five years in the New York Library for nothing." I stayed
with Cale while he was gathering up the books.
"I cal'late you was paid a good price fer handlin' other folks'
brains." Cale spoke tentatively, and I humored him; I like to give
news of myself piece-meal.
"Of course, I did, Cale; I had nine dollars a week."
"Hm--pretty small wages fer a treadmill like thet!" He spoke almost
scornfully.
"Oh, that was better than I had in the beginning. What would you say
to four dollars a week, Cale?"
"With room and keep?"
"Not a bit of it; board and room and clothes had to come out of that."
"Hm--". He looked at me keenly, but made no reply. "You tend ter
putting 'em on the shelves, an' I 'll take 'em all in. 'T ain't fit
work fer women, all such liftin'; books has heft, if what's in 'em is
pretty light weight sometimes."
"What would you say about the owner of all these books, Cale? Let's
guess what he 's like," I said, laughing, as I lingered to hear what he
would say. But he was non-committal.
"I could n't guess fer I ain't seen the insides. I 'm glad he 's
coming, though; I want ter get down to some real work 'fore long. Wal,
we 'll see what he 's like in two days now. Pete an' I have got to
drive over ter Richelieu-en-Haut--durn me, if I can see why they don't
call it Upper Richelieu!--an' meet the Quebec express."
"They won't get here till long after dark, then."
"No.--Here, jest put a couple more on each arm, will you?"
I accommodated him, and we went into the living-room. Jamie looked
rather glum. Sometimes, I know, he feels as if he had no place in all
this preparation.
"Now, Jamie, let me plan--" I began, but he interrupted me:
"Maitresse femme," he muttered; then he smiled on me, but I paid no
heed.
"You sit at the library table; Cale will bring in the books and pile
them round it; you will sort them according to subject, and I will put
them on the shelves."
"Go ahead, I 'm ready."
To help us, we pressed Angelique and Marie into service. In a little
while we had five hundred books piled about the table. These were as
many as Mrs. Macleod and I could handle for the evening, so we
dismissed the others.
It was pleasant work, filling the empty shelves; moreover, I was in my
element. It was good to see books about again; I owed so much to them.
"This is what the room needed," I said, placing the last of the
historical works on a lower shelf.
"Yes; what a difference it makes, doesn't it? Oh, I say, mother, here
's one of your late favorites!"
"What is it?"
"Memoirs of Doctor Barnardo."
"I must read them again."
"Who was Doctor Barnardo?" I asked; I was curious.
"If you don't know of him and his London work, then you have a treat
before you in this book." Mrs. Macleod spoke with unusual enthusiasm.
"And he was Ewart's friend too. I might have known I should find this
among his books. It always seems to me as if it were 'books and the
man'. Show me what books are a man's familiars, and I 'll tell you his
characteristics."
"No, really, can you do that?" I asked, surprised at this dictum from
such youthful lips.
"Yes, in a general way I can. Look at this for instance." He held out
a volume. "The man who has this book for an inner possession, and also
on his shelves, is a thinker, broad-minded, scholarly, human to an
intense degree--"
"What is it?" I said, impatient to see.
"Something you don't know, I 'll wager; it is n't a woman's book."
"Now, Jamie Macleod, read your characteristics of men, if you can, by
the books they read and love, but, please, please, keep within your
masculine 'sphere of influence', and don't presume to say what is or
what is n't a woman's book. I know a good deal more about those than
you do--what is the book anyway?" I confess his overbearing ways about
women provoke me at times. But he paid no heed to my little temper.
"It's dear old Murray's 'Rise of the Greek Epic'--it comes next to the
Bible. It's an English book; you would n't be apt to read it."
"Oh, would n't I?" I exclaimed, and determined another forty-eight
hours should not pass without my having made myself familiar with the
rise of the Greek epic, and the fall of it, for that matter. I
swallowed my indignation, for the truth was I had not heard of it.
"And here 's another--American, this time, and right up to date. I 'll
wager you never heard of this either. Would n't I know just by the
title it would be Ewart's!"
"How would you know?"
"Oh, because any man of his calibre would have it."
And I was no wiser than before. I was beginning to realize that there
was a whole world of experience of which I knew nothing; that, in my
struggle to exist in the conditions of the city so far away, I had
grown self-centered and, in consequence, narrow, not open to the world
of others. Jamie Macleod, with his twenty-three years, was opening my
inward eye. I can't say that what I saw of myself was pleasing.
"What is the book?" I asked, after a moment's silence in which Mrs.
Macleod was busy with the "Memoirs", and Jamie was looking over titles.
"'The Anthracite Coal Industry'."
"Well, give it to me; I 'll classify it with 'Economics and Sociology'.
There will be more of this kind, I 'm sure. Let's go on with the work
or we shan't be through before midnight. Look up the 'Lives' and
'Letters', and 'Autobiographies' next. I want to put them on the upper
shelf--"
"I know;" he nodded approvingly; "so they will be at your elbow when,
of a winter's evening, you want to reach out your hand, without much
trouble, and find a companion. Well, give me a little time to look
them over."
I watched him for a few minutes, as he took up book after book,
examined the title, sometimes turned the leaves rapidly, and again
opened to some particular page and lost himself for a moment. Jamie
was showing me another side than that to which I had grown accustomed
in our daily intercourse. I sat down while I was waiting, for I was
tired. Mrs. Macleod was reading.
"Are you ready now?" I asked, after waiting a quarter of an hour, and
still no sound from behind the pile of books across the table.
"M-hm, in a minute."
His mother looked up, and we both saw that he was absorbed in
something. Mrs. Macleod smiled indulgently.
"That's always his way with a book--lost to everything around him. He
would n't hear a word we said if we were to talk here for an hour."
"I 'll make him hear." I spoke positively, and again Mrs. Macleod
smiled.
"Jamie--I would like a few books, the 'Lives' and 'Letters'."
For answer he burst into a roar that roused the dogs under the table.
He slapped his hand on his knee, threw his leg over the arm of the easy
chair, and settled into an attitude that indicated, there would be no
more work gotten out of him for the rest of the evening. Suddenly he
shouted again.
"Here 's a man for you!" he said joyfully.
"Who?" I demanded, but might have spared myself the question. There
was another interval of silence, followed by an uproarious outburst:
"Oh, I do love Stevenson's 'damns'! They 're great! Hear this--"
He read a portion of a letter which included a choicely selected
expletive.
"Jamie!" It was a decided protest on his mother's part; but I laughed
aloud, for I, too, knew what he meant. I, too, loved the varied and
picturesque "damns" of those letters that had been so much to me in the
past few years. As I looked at Jamie, another Scotsman, with the thin
bright eager face, I knew at once that, without realizing it, I had
connected his appearance with that of Robert Louis Stevenson, his
countryman. And how like the two spirits were!
"I wonder," I said to myself, "I wonder if this same Jamie Macleod also
has the inner impulse to write!" And, having said that in thought, I
looked at Jamie Macleod through different glasses.
We let him mercifully alone; but I went on with my work, reading
titles, classifying, placing, finding genuine pleasure in speculating
on the "calibre" of the owner.
At nine, Marie entered with the porridge; Cale followed her.
"Here endeth the first chapter," I said to Cale. "We 'll try to get
all the books on the shelves to-morrow; then we can have one day of
rest before they come."
"You kinder speak as if two extra men in the fam'ly would make some
difference," said Cale, smiling down at me from his place by the mantel.
"It will make a difference I shall not like, Cale. There 'll be no
more cosy evening-ends with porridge, after the lord of the manor
comes."
"What's that you say?" Jamie was roused at last. I thought I could do
it.
"Nothing in particular; only Cale and I were saying how different it
would be when Mr. Ewart comes."
"You bet it will!" said Jamie emphatically. "You won't know this
house,"--he took up his porridge,--"and Ewart won't know it either
since you 've had your hand on it, Marcia." This I perceived to be a
sop.
"Thet's so," said Cale, with emphasis. "I never see what a difference
all thet calico an' fixin's has made; an' my room looks as warm with
them red blankets and foot-rugs! It beats me how a woman can take an
old house like this, an' make it look as if it had been lived in
always. I thank _you_," he said, looking hard at me, "fer all the
comfort you 've worked inter my room."
"You have n't thanked me the way I want to be thanked, Cale," I said,
smiling up at him.
"I done the best I could," he replied with such a crestfallen air that
we laughed.
"The only way you can thank me is to call me 'Marcia'. I 've wanted to
ask you to, ever since our first drive together up from the steamboat
landing."
"Sho!--Have you?"
He looked at me intently for a minute; then he spoke slowly and we all
knew with deep feeling: "You 're name 's all right; but you've made
such a lot of happiness in this house since you come, I 'd like ter
have my own name fer you--"
"What's that?" I said.
"I 'd like ter call you 'Happy', if you don't mind."
I know I turned white, but I controlled myself. Was it possible he
knew! It could not be. I dared not assume that he knew and refuse
him. I made an effort to answer in my usual voice:
"Of course I don't, Cale--only, I hardly deserve it; all I 've done is
just in 'the day's work', you know."
"Not all," he said, putting down his emptied bowl and turning to the
door; "no wages thet I ever heard of will buy good-will an' the
happiness you 've put inter all this work."
"Oh, Cale, I don't deserve this--" But he was gone without the usual
good night to any of us.
"You do too," said Jamie shortly, and, reaching for his pipe, went off
into the dining-room.
Mrs. Macleod laid her hand on my shoulder. "They mean it, Marcia; good
night, my dear."
For the first time she leaned over and kissed me. I ran up to my room
without any good night on my part. I needed to be alone after what
Cale had said. Did he know? _Could_ he know? Or was it merely chance
that he chose that name? Over and over again I asked myself these
questions--and could find no answer.
Late at night I made ready for bed. I drew the curtains and looked
out. The window ledge was piled two inches high with snow; against the
panes I saw the soft white swirl and heard the hushed, intermittent
brushing of the drifting storm.