The snow fell lightly but steadily all night and the next day. Just
after sunset the leaden skies cleared, and the starred firmamental blue
of a Canadian winter night replaced them. Before six, Cale and Peter
were off on their nine mile drive to Richelieu-en-Haut to meet the
Quebec express. They drove in a low comfortable double "pung", lined
with fur rugs and piled with robes; a skeleton truck trailed behind for
luggage. The yoke of bells jangled cheerfully in the dry crisping air,
for the Percherons were lively--the French coach horses were not ready
for the northern snows--and freely tossed their heads as they played a
little before plunging into the light drifts.
After supper I went to my room, making the excuse that I had a bit of
work to finish. All my thoughts centered on Doctor Rugvie whose coming
was so momentous to me. While I sewed, I made a dozen plans for
approaching him on the subject of the papers, and rejected each in turn
as not serving my purpose. Finally, my work being finished, I sat
quiet, with a tensity of quietness that showed itself in my listening
attitude and tightly clasped hands. It was nearly time for the sound
of the returning bells. At last,--it was nearly nine,--I heard them
close to the house and, hearing them, I knew intuitively that my life,
hitherto so detached from others, was about to be linked through
strange circumstance--the Doctor's coming--to some unknown personality
in the past. I knew this; how I knew, I cannot say.
I heard Jamie calling to me from the lower passageway. I opened my
door but did not cross the threshold. I stood listening.
Suddenly the dogs went mad with joy. I heard Jamie's voice in joyous
greeting. I heard men's voices, Cale's loudest in giving some order to
Peter; then Mrs. Macleod's. The confusion grew apace when Angelique
and Marie joined their French welcome to the English one. Listening
so, I felt shut out from it all; felt myself a stranger again in the
environment to which I had so soon wonted myself. Then I heard Jamie's
voice calling:
"Marcia, Marcia Farrell, where are you?"
He was at the foot of the stairs looking up at me as I came down, and
scarcely waited for me to reach the last step before saying:
"Ewart, this is Miss Farrell; Marcia--my friend, the 'lord of the
manor'." He spoke with such teasing emphasis that I could have boxed
his ears.
I think the "lord of the manor" intended to shake hands with me; at
least, his hand was promptly extended; but before I could take it, it
dropped at his side, for Jamie was claiming me for the second
introduction:
"Allow me to present to you the result of the advertisement, Doctor!"
"What?" The pleasant voice held a note of surprised interrogation. My
hand was taken in a firm professional clasp, and I looked up into the
face of the great surgeon who had troubled himself with me so far as to
give me the chance to exist. For the life of me, I could not find the
right word of welcome in these circumstances, and the only result of
the instantaneous mental effort to find it was, that those words of
Delia Beaseley's, which I heard as I was regaining consciousness in
V---- Court: "She's the living image", flashed into my consciousness
with the illuminating suddenness of a re-appearing electric signboard.
And, seeing them, rather than hearing them, I looked up into the fine
homely face and smiled my welcome. It was the only one I had at my
command just then.
Something indefinable, intangible, perhaps best expressed as the
visible diffused wave-current of consciousness' wireless telegraphy,
showed in his face. Puzzled, concentrated thought was evident from the
sudden contraction of the forehead. Nor did the look "clear up"; it
remained as he greeted me--and I knew he had not the key to interpret
the message, sent thus to him across an interval of twenty-six years.
"Well, Mrs. Macleod, it's surely a success," he said, releasing my hand.
"Success? Oh, no end!" Jamie interrupted him in his joyous
excitement. "You 'll see!"
"Come, Boy, give your mother a chance," said the Doctor, laughing.
"We have practical witness that Marcia is all that Jamie claims she
is." Mrs. Macleod spoke enthusiastically for her, and to cover my
embarrassment I suggested that the Doctor should go at once to his room.
"Oh, she 's canny! She wants you to see the improvements," Jamie
cried, as he rushed upstairs two steps at a time after Mr. Ewart who,
attended by the dogs, was investigating the region of the bedrooms. I
think he doubted their comfort. The Doctor followed, and soon I heard
his voice praising everything, with Jamie's lending a running
accompaniment of jesting comment. It occurred to me then, that I had
not heard the "lord of the manor" utter a word. Cale and Peter came in
with the trunks, chests, gun-cases, with bags of ice-hockey sticks,
kits, snow-shoes and skis--indeed, all the sporting paraphernalia for a
Canadian winter.
Within ten minutes, my clean passageway, laid with the brand-new rag
carpet, was piled high with these masculine belongings, and the snow
from eight masculine boots was melting and wetting the pretty strip
into dismal sogginess! I began to understand why the passageways in
the manor were laid with flagging, and I determined I would have the
lower carpet taken up in the morning, that Jamie might not laugh at me.
As Cale set down the last chest, he must have taken note of my despair,
for he spoke encouragingly:
"Makes a lot of difference in a house havin' so many men folks round."
"I should think so, Cale, look at that carpet!"
"Sho! It don't look more 'n fit for mop-rags, an' they in the house
scurce ten minutes. Guess 't 'll have ter come up ter-morrer, an' I
'll see that 't is up."
"And it will stay up; but it did look so neat and cosy--and now see
that!" I included in a glance the entire mass of luggage and sporting
outfit.
"Good deal of truck for one man, but I guess he can handle it all;
seems a likely enough sort of feller. I had to introduce myself, you
might say, for he an' Pete was talkin' so fast in French that I could
n't get in a word edgewise at furst. You 'd have thought the old manor
barns was afire, and they was trying to get the hosses out. I managed
to have my say, though, 'fore we struck the river road."
"I have n't had a good look at him--Jamie did n't give me the chance."
"Wal, I can't say as I have neither. He 's pretty quiet, but I noticed
he hit the nail on the head every time he did speak. The one they call
Doctor Rugvie is some different; he was like a schoolboy let loose when
he got into the pung. Guess Mr. Ewart won't wait long 'fore he 'll
have a sleigh, as is a sleigh, to match the French coach hosses, from
what I heard. The Doctor had his little joke about a pung for a manor
house. I 've got to go over again ter-morrer to get the rest of the
truck."
"Oh, Cale, more!"
He nodded, and, with a significant upward motion of his thumb, made his
exit at the kitchen end. I slipped into the dining-room to see that
all was in readiness for the extra supper. I actually did not know
what to do with myself, what was my place, or where I belonged in the
household, now that the owner of Lamoral and his friend were here. I
looked about: the flames from the pine cones were leaping in the
fireplace, the curtains were drawn close, the room was filled with a
resinous forest fragrance, for I had placed large branches of white
pine in some antiquated milk jugs of glazed red clay, which I found in
one of the unused dairy rooms, and set them on each end of the mantel.
When I heard Jamie and the Doctor on the stairs, I left by way of the
kitchen and, passing through that and the bare offices between it and
the living-room, slipped into the latter to inspect it. Here also the
fire was blazing, the wax candles in the sconces were lighted. The
yellow sofa was drawn in front of the fireplace, but good eight feet
from it. At either end were the easy chairs, and at the right of the
chimney, nearest the door into the kitchen offices, was a low ample tea
table covered with a white linen cloth, set with plain white china, a
nickel-plated tea-kettle and lamp. Behind the sofa, along the length
of its straight long back, stood the library table furnished with
writing pad and inkstand, a wooden bookrack filled with Jamie's
favorites and mine, and a bowl of red geranium blossoms. I was
satisfied with my work.
Around the room, even between the windows, the more than two thousand
books in their cases formed a rich dado of finely blended colors--the
deep royal blue and dark reds in morocco, the yellow-white imitation of
parchment,--parchment itself in several instances,--the light faun and
reddish brown of half calf; even shagreen was there, and the limp
bronze-gilt leather of Chinese bindings. Jamie told me that many of
the editions were rare.
It seemed to me in my ignorance, that there could be no more beautiful
room than this simple, book-lined, wood-panelled parlor in the old
manor of Lamoral. I felt an ownership in it, for I had helped in part
to create the intimate atmosphere that I knew must be like
home,--something I had dreamed of, but never expected to make real.
The owner, whose voice I heard for the first time talking to the dogs
as he came down stairs, presented himself to me at that moment as an
outsider, an intruder. I waited until I heard him close the
dining-room door; then I went up stairs again to my own room.