We saw little, if anything, of Mr. Ewart for the next week. His time
was wholly occupied with the land business. He took his breakfast
early, at five or thereabout, and rarely came home for dinner or
supper. His return at night was also uncertain. Sometimes a telephone
message informed us he was starting for Montreal, or Quebec. I think I
saw him but once in the week that followed that morning in the office.
Then it was late in the evening, on his return from Montreal. He
seemed both tired and preoccupied. We were not at table with him
during those seven days. I wondered, and Jamie guessed in vain,
whether anything might be worrying him. It seemed natural that
something should be the trouble during such a wholesale transference of
land.
Mrs. Macleod and I were busy all day in getting ready the camp outfit
for the four of us. Cale was not to go, as his work was at home. It
surprised me that he had so little to say about Mr. Ewart to whom he
was devoted. Whenever, in the intimacy of our half-relation bond, I
felt at liberty to question him about his employer, he always put me
off in a manner far from satisfying and wholly irritating.
I asked him once if he knew whether Mr. Ewart was a bachelor or a
widower.
He stared at me for a moment.
"He ain't said one word ter me sence I come here as ter whether he is
one or t'other," he answered, sharply for him.
"That's all right, Cale; I bear you no grudge. But, in justice, you
'll have to admit that when you live month after month in the same
house with a man and his friends, you can't help wanting to know all
there is to know about him and them."
"Wal, if you look at it thet way, I ain't nothing ter say. How 'bout
yourself?" With that he deliberately turned his back on me, and left
me wondering if by any incautious word, by my manner, by any small act,
I might have betrayed the source of my new joy in life.
By the first of June the Seigniory of Lamoral was a wonderfully active
place. The farmers were making greater and more intelligent efforts in
cultivating their lands than ever before. Mr. Ewart had established
the beginning of a small school of agriculture and forestry.
He used one of the vacant outbuildings for the classes. It was open to
all the farmers and their families; and twice a week there were
lectures by experts, hired by Mr. Ewart, with practical demonstration
on soil-testing, selection of seed, hybridizing, and irrigation
methods. They were well attended. The women turned out in full force
when it was known that there would be three lectures on bee-culture,
and the industry threatened to become a rage with the farmers' wives; I
found from personal observation that the flower gardens were increased
in number and enlarged as to acreage. Mr. Ewart said afterward, when
the blossoming time was come, that the land reminded him of the
wonderful flower gardens around Erfurt in Germany where honey is a
staple of the country. It was proposed to hold a seigniory exhibition
of fruits, vegetables and cereals, the last of September.
The Canadian spring seems to lead directly in to summer's wide open
door. In June, Jamie and I were often on horseback--I learning to ride
a good Kentucky saddle horse that Mr. Ewart had added to the stables.
We were much in the woods, picking our way along the rough beginnings
of roads that Cale, with the help of a gang of Canuck workmen, was
making at right angles through the heavy timber. He had been at work
in this portion throughout the winter in order to bring the logs out on
sledges over the encrusted snow.
One afternoon in the middle of June, Mr. Ewart, whose continual
flittings ceased with the first of the month, asked me to ride with him
to the seigniory boundaries on the north--something I had expressed a
wish to see before we left for camp, that I might note the progress on
our return in September. He said it was a personally conducted tour of
inspection of Cale's roads and trails.
My old panama skirt had to serve me for riding-habit. A habitant's
straw hat covered my head. Mr. Ewart rode hatless. I was anticipating
this hour or two with him in the June green of the forest. I had not
been alone in his presence since those hours in the office--and now
there was added the intimacy of the woodsy solitude.
"I am beginning to be impatient to show you the trails through that
real wilderness on the Upper Saguenay; but those, of course, we take
without horses," he said, as he held his hand for my foot and lifted me
easily to the saddle.
"I 've been marking off the days in the calendar for the last three
weeks. It will be another new life for me in those wilds."
"I hope so."
"Have you decided which way to go?"
"I think it will be the better way to go by train to Lake St. John--to
Roberval. We can cross the lake there and reach our camp about as
easily as by way of Chicoutimi. We shall have a lot of camp
paraphernalia for so long a camping-out, and, besides, that route will
show you and Jamie something of a wonderful country. Of course, we
shall come back by the Saguenay; I 'm saving the best for the last."
We forded our creek about a mile above the manor and entered the heavy
timber.
"And to think it is I, Marcia Farrell, who is going to enjoy all this!"
I was joyful in the anticipation of spending eight weeks, at least, in
the presence of this man; eight untrammelled weeks in this special
wilderness to which he asked me in order that it might seem something
of a home to him!
"And why should n't it be you?"
"I don't know of any reason why it should n't, except that it might so
easily have been some one else. But I must n't think of that."
"That is sensible; although I confess I don't like to think that you
might so easily have been some one else. Hark! Hear that cuckoo--"
We drew rein for a few minutes, there beneath the great trees. The
western light was strong, for the sun was still two hours high. Then
we rode on slowly over the wide rough clearings which Cale had run at
right angles, north and south, east and west through the woods.
"These are all to be grassed down next fall; in another year, if the
grass catches well, they will make fine going for horses or for
carriages, as well as good fire-lanes for which I have had them cut.
In the second season I can turn some of the prize Swiss cattle in here
to graze for extra feeding. They know so well how to do all this in
Europe, and we can learn so much from those older countries! I am
sure, too, if you knew France, you would say that these river counties
in French Canada are so like the north of France--like Normandy! When
I drive over the country hereabout, I can fancy myself there. I find
the same expanse and quiet flow of the river, the highroads bordered by
tall poplars, the villages sheltered from the north by a wood
break--forest wood. Even the backwater of the river, like our creek,
recalls those ancestral lands of my French brothers' forefathers:--the
clear dark of the still surface, the lindens, their leaves as big as a
palm-leaf fan, coming down to the water's edge, and a wood-scow poling
along beneath them. I love every feature of this country!" he
exclaimed with enthusiasm, "and I want you to." He turned in his
saddle to look directly at me.
"I do love it, what I know of it--and I wish I might sometime see those
other countries you have spoken of, especially those flower gardens of
Erfurt." I smiled at my thought.
His words conjured in my imagination enticing pictures of travel--such
as I had planned when in New York, when my ten years' savings should
permit me to indulge myself in a little roaming. My dream that was! I
was tempted to tell him of it then and there.
"You know, Mr. Ewart, I spoke very freely to you and Jamie that morning
in the office."
"Yes; I am thankful you felt you could--at last. I have been waiting
for some opportune hour when I could ask you a few personal questions,
if you permit."
"Well, that was one of my day dreams--at twenty-six," I said, wondering
what his was, still unexpressed, at "forty-six". "The truth is, I
wanted to break with every association in New York and with my past
life--
"Why, Miss Farrell? You are so young to say that; at your age you
should have no past."
I hesitated to answer. Thoughts followed one another with rapidity:
"Shall I tell him? Lay before him what threatened to embitter my whole
life? Shall I make known to him the weight of the burden that rested
for so many years on my young shoulders--even before I went down into
that great city to earn my livelihood? Shall I tell him that? How can
he understand, not having had such experience? What, after all, is
that to him, now?
"Young?" I repeated, looking away from him westwards into the illumined
perspective of forest greens. "When you were young, very young in
years, was there never a time when you felt old, as if youth had never
passed your way?"
I heard a sudden, sharp-drawn breath. I turned to him on the instant,
and in the quivering nostril, the frowning brows, the hard lines about
the well-controlled lips, I read the confirmation of my intuition,
expressed to Jamie so many months ago, that he had suffered. My
question had probed, unintentionally, to the quick.
With a woman's sympathetic insight, I saw that this man had never
recovered from his past, never broken with it as, so recently, I had
broken with mine. I felt that until he should make the effort, should
gain that point of view, he could never feel free to love me as I loved
him. The barrier of that past was between us. What it was I hardly
cared to know. I was intent only upon helping him to free himself from
the serfdom of memories.
"Don't answer me--I don't want any," I said hastily, leaning over to
lay my hand on the pommel of his saddle. It was the only demonstration
I dared to make to express my understanding, my sympathy.
In an instant his right hand closed hard upon mine; held it, hard
pressed, on the pommel.
"I think I want to answer you," he said, speaking slowly, deliberately,
without the slightest trace of excitement in his passionless voice.
He was looking into the woods--not at me--as he spoke, and I knew that
at that moment his soul was wandering afar from mine; it was with some
one in the past. Suddenly, a hot, unreasonable wave of jealousy
overwhelmed me; I yielded to the impulse to pull my hand from under his.
"It is not my hand he is clasping, and pressing with the strength of a
press-block on the pommel; it's that other woman's!" I said to myself,
making a second determined effort to release my hand.
He whirled about in his saddle, looking me directly in the eyes. He
read my thought of him.
"Let your hand lie there, quietly, under mine," he said sternly; "it's
_your_ hand, remember, not another's."
The tense muscles of my hand relaxed. It lay passive under the
pressure of his. I waited, quiescent. I realized that the Past had
been roused from its lair. I must wait until it should seek covert
again of its own accord, before speaking one word.
"I want to answer you--and answer as you alone should be answered: Yes,
I have felt old--centuries old--"
He caught the bridle rein under the thumb of his right hand as it lay
over mine. The left he thrust into his pocket; drew out a match-safe,
a wax-taper. I, meanwhile, was wondering what it all meant; dreading
developments, yet longing to know.
He reached for an overhanging branch of birch and broke off a small
twig of tender young green. To do so, he removed his hand from mine
which I kept on the pommel. I saw that the Past was still prowling,
and it behooved me not to irritate, not to enrage by any show of
distrust; nor did I feel any.
He struck the taper. "This is against forest rules," he said, "but for
this once I shall break them."
He held the fresh green of the tiny birch twig in the flame. The young
life dried within leaf and leaf-bud. The living green hung limp,
blackened.
"Such was my life when I was young," he said, calmly enough; but,
suddenly, a dull red flush showed beneath the clear brown of his
cheeks. It mounted to temples, forehead, even to the roots of his hair
where a fine sweat broke out.
And, seeing that, I dared--I could bear the sight no longer:--I took my
hand from the pommel and laid it over the poor blackened twig, crushing
it in my palm; hiding it from his sight, from mine.
I believe he understood the entire significance of my action; for he
turned his hand instantly, palm upwards, and caught mine in it. The
limp bit of foliage lay between the two palms. He looked at me
steadily; not a flickering of the eye, not a twitch of the eyelid.
"I lost the woman I loved--how I lost her I need not say. That's all.
But I have answered you."
"Yes--but--"
"What? Speak out--you must," he said hastily, with the first outward
sign of nervous irritation.
"Is--is she dead?"