I was up betimes the next morning, but Cale had been before me and
taken up the offending rag carpet from the passageway. When I went
into the kitchen, Angelique told me that the seignior--she persisted in
calling him that--and the Doctor had had their coffee and early
doughnuts and were off in the pung, the seignior driving; that they
said they would be at home for dinner. I found Cale and Pierre, acting
under orders in the early morning, taking the trunks up to the
bedrooms, placing the guns in the racks, removing the various sporting
implements to a room behind the kitchen, and the chests to a storeroom.
At breakfast we three were alone together as usual. The four dogs were
absent.
Mrs. Macleod and I spent the entire forenoon bringing order again into
the various rooms. In the meantime, Jamie was dreaming and reading in
the living-room. I had been there just a month and a day, and could
not help wondering who would pay me! I needed the money for some
heavier clothing.
The two friends appeared promptly for dinner and brought with them
appetites sharpened by the increasing cold. They had been in
Richelieu-en-Bas and arranged for a telephone for the manor, called on
some English friends visiting at the new manor house in the village,
and stopped at some of the seigniory farmhouses on the way home. I
found Mere Guillardeau had been remembered at this early date.
"Are you busy this afternoon, Miss Farrell?" said the Doctor, as we
rose from our first meal together and went into the living-room.
"Not unless Mrs. Macleod needs me?" I looked at her inquiringly.
"No, there is nothing more, Marcia; you did a good day's work in a few
hours this morning," she replied in answer to my look.
"Can I be helpful to you in any way?" I said, turning again to the
Doctor.
"Yes--I think you can." He smiled quizzically, looking down upon me
from his substantial height. "You may not know--of course you don't,
how could you know, never having heard much of an old fellow like me--"
"Oh, have n't I?"
"Have you? Then the Boy here has been giving me away. Has he ever
told you I am something of a whip?"
"No, not that."
"Well, then, I am going to prove it to you. I propose to show the two
French coach horses how to draw a pung,--Ewart does n't yet own a
sleigh, you know in Canada,--and I wish you would lend me your company
for an hour or so."
If the Doctor expected an enthusiastic response he must have been
disappointed. Not that I did n't want the ride in the pung, but it
occurred to me that here was my opportunity, offered without my seeking
it, to ask of him all that I had been planning to ask during many
weeks. As this door of opportunity was so suddenly opened to me, I
felt the chill of the unknown creeping towards me over its threshold.
I answered almost with hesitation:
"Certainly, I will go, unless Mrs. Macleod--"
"Mrs. Macleod says she does n't need you." He spoke quickly, his keen
eyes holding mine for a moment.
"I say, that's a jolly cool way you have at times, Marcia!" Jamie
exploded in his usual fashion when he is ruffled. "But you 'll get
used to it, Doctor--I have."
"A martyr, eh, Boy?" The Doctor looked amused.
"Well, rather--at times."
"Don't mind Jamie's martyrdoms, Doctor Rugvie; tell me when you want me
to be ready."
"In half an hour. I don't want to start too late; be sure to take
enough wraps."
I left them to go upstairs, wondering on the way what wraps I should
take--I, who possessed only sufficient clothing to help out a New York
winter, but no furs, no fur coat, no warm moccasins, no mittens, only
an unlined gray tweed ulster that with a grey sweater had done duty for
four years.
"I want my pay more than I want a pung ride," I growled, as I was
trying to make the one thick veil I owned do double duty for head and
ears protector. I folded a square of newspaper and laid it over my
chest under my sweater; I put on two pairs of stockings. Thus
fortified against the Canadian cold, I went downstairs promptly on time.
Mr. Ewart came out into the passageway; the Doctor was talking with
Mrs. Macleod in the living-room.
"Why, Miss Farrell," he exclaimed, "I see you don't realize our
climate; you can't go without more wraps--"
He hesitated, grew visibly embarrassed. I knew by his manner he had
unwittingly probed my poverty to the quick, and I crimsoned with shame;
yes, I was ashamed that my lack should thus be made known to
him--ashamed as when Delia Beaseley's keen eyes read my need of money.
"Oh, I don't need to bundle up--I have been accustomed to go without
such heavy clothing," I said, with ready lie to cover my confusion.
The Doctor came out and took his fur-lined coat from a wooden peg under
the staircase. Mr. Ewart turned abruptly and reached for something on
an adjoining peg; it was a fur coat of Canadian fox, soft and fine and
warm.
"You are to wear this, otherwise the Doctor won't let you go," he said
quickly, decidedly, shaking it down and holding it ready for me to slip
in my arms.
For a second, a second only, I hesitated, searching for some excuse to
give up the drive and so avoid acceptance of this favor; then I slipped
into it, much to Jamie's delight who, appearing at the living-room
door, cried out:
"My, Marcia, but you 're smart in Ewart's togs! We 'll have some of
our own if this is the kind of weather they treat us to in Canada. I
've been hugging the fire all the morning."
He saved the situation for me and I was grateful to him; but Mr. Ewart
looked at him, almost anxiously, saying:
"I should have been getting the heater put up this forenoon, instead of
rushing off the first thing this morning. A poor host thus far, Jamie,
but I 'll make good hereafter."
The Doctor looked me over carefully.
"You 're safeguarded with that; the sleeves are so long and ample they
are as good as a modern muff--go back, Boy,"--he spoke brusquely, as he
opened the outer door,--"this is no place for you."
Cale vacated the pung, and the Doctor and I filled it. He took the
reins; the beautiful creatures rose as one in the exuberance of life;
shook their heads, and the bells with them, as they poised a moment on
their hind feet; then they planted their hoofs in the crisping snow,
and we were off.
"Your ears must have burned more than a little this forenoon, Miss
Farrell," he said, after driving in silence for ten minutes during
which time he proved conclusively to the French horses that he was a
"whip" of the first order, and to be respected henceforth as such. It
was a pleasure to see his management of the high-lifed animals.
"Mine? I was n't conscious of anything unusual about them."
"We were speaking of you and your evident executive ability, and we
took the time on our drive to try to settle a little business matter
that concerns you. ("Ah, wages," I thought with satisfaction.) We
tried to agree but we failed; and although we did not come to blows
over the question, it was not settled to my satisfaction, at least.
You don't mind my speaking very frankly?"
"No, indeed; I wish you would." I looked up at him over the turned-up
fur collar of Mr. Ewart's fox skins--"pelts" is our name for them in
New England--and smiled merrily. I was right glad to get down, at
last, to some business basis and know where I stood. Again I saw the
perplexed look in his eyes.
"Why?"
"Because, naturally, you know, I look for pay day to help out."
"Naturally," he repeated gravely; then laughed out, a hearty,
good-comrade laugh. "Just how long have you been here?"
"A month yesterday."
"And wages overdue!"
I nodded emphatically. I felt as if I could tell this man beside me,
with his wide experience of humankind, about the pitiful sum of
twenty-two dollars I had saved from my wreck of life in New York; about
my scrimpings; even of the two pair of stockings, and the square of
newspaper reposing at that very minute on my chest and crackling
audibly when I drew a deeper breath. There was no feeling of
soul-shame on account of my poverty with him, any more than I should
have felt physical shame at the nakedness of my body if subject to one
of his famous surgical operations. Had not this man helped to bring me
into the world? Should I have been here but for him? Had he not known
me as an entity before I knew anything of the fact of life? This idea
of him disarmed my pride.
"H'm," he said at last, thoughtfully, "I must live up to my reputation
of owing no man or woman over night. You shall have it so soon as we
get back to the house--and well earned too," he added; "I had no idea
an advertisement could bring about such a satisfactory result."
"Do you mean me or the refurbished house?"
"I mean you. And now that we 're alone, do you mind telling me
something of how it came about? I 'll own to asking you to come with
me that we might have a preliminary chat together."
"I thought so."
"Oh, you did! Well, commend me to one of my compatriots to ferret out
my intentions. I heard Cale say you were born in New York."
"Yes, twenty-six years ago, but I have lived most of my life in the
country, in northern New England."
"Wh--?" he caught himself up in his question, and I ignored it.
"That climate is really just as severe as the Canadian, so I feel quite
at home in this."
"May I ask if your parents are living?"
"No, they 're not living; my mother died when I was born. I told Delia
Beaseley so when I applied for this place."
("Now is my time; courage!" I exhorted myself in thought.)
"I 'm glad you know Delia Beaseley, she 's a fine woman."
"A noble one," I said, heartily.
"Yes, noble--and good."
"And good," I repeated.
"I think I 'll tell you a little how good."
"I think I know."
"You do?" He looked surprised.
"Yes, she told me something of her life." He turned squarely to me
then.
"How came she to?" He asked bluntly.
"Now, courage, Marcia Farrell, out with it," I said to myself, but
aloud:
"She said I resembled some one whom she knew years ago--some one who,
she said, had 'missed her footing'."
"She said that?"
I nodded. "Then she spoke of her own life and what came of it--how she
had tried to save others; and one thing led on to another until I felt
I had always known her."
He turned again to look at me, and it was given me to read his very
thought:--Have you ever come near missing your footing? Did Delia
Beaseley save you from any pitfall?