Nathaniel Glenn had said some terrible things in Priscilla's presence the
evening of the day when he drove her before him while Richard Travers
implored her to hold to her ideal. Fortunately, youth spared Priscilla
from a full understanding of her father's words, but she caught the drift
of his thought. She was convinced that he feared greatly for her here on
earth, and had grave doubts as to her soul's ultimate salvation. There
was that within her, so he explained, which, unless curbed and corrected,
would cast her into eternal damnation! Those were Nathaniel's words.
"She looked a very devil as she danced and smirked at that strange
fellow," so had Glenn described the scene; "a man she says she had never
laid eyes on before! A daughter of Satan she seemed, with all the
witchcraft of her sort." To Nathaniel, that which he could not
understand, was wrong.
Theodora spoke not a word. Certain facts from all the evidence stood
forth and alarmed her as deeply--though not as bitterly--as they did her
husband. There certainly was a daring and brazenness in a young girl
carrying on so before a total stranger. In all the conversation the name
of the stranger was not mentioned, and oddly enough Priscilla did not
even then connect her friend of the music and laughter with the boy of
the Hill Place. How could she, when Jerry-Jo's description still stood
unchallenged in her mind? Indeed, the stranger did not seem wholly of the
earth, earthy. She had accepted him as another phase evolved by the
mysterious rite--a new revelation of the strange god.
From all the torrent of misinterpretation Nathaniel gave vent to, one
startling impression remained in Priscilla's mind. Sitting in the bare,
unlovely kitchen of the farmhouse, with her troubled parents confronting
her, a great wave of realization overpowered the girl. She could never
make them understand! There was no need to try. She did not really belong
to them, or they to her, and she must--get away!
That was it, of course. The lure had caught her. They all felt as she
was now feeling--the Hornbys, all the boys and men who left Kenmore.
Something always drove them to see they must go, and that was what the
lure meant.
Priscilla laughed.
As usual, this angered Nathaniel beyond control.
"You--laugh--you! Why do you laugh?"
Priscilla leaned back in her hard wooden chair.
"The lure's got me!" she panted.
"The--lure?"
"Yes. It means getting away. You have to follow the lure and find your
true place. Some people are put in the wrong place--then the lure gets
them!"
At this Theodora gave a moan of understanding. They had driven the child
too far, been too hard upon her, and the impulse to fly from the love
that was seeking to hold her was the one thing to be avoided.
"I'm tired of things. Once I wanted to go to school, but you wouldn't let
me." The blazing eyes were fixed upon Nathaniel. "You're always trying
to--to hold me back from--from--my life! I want to go away somewhere!
I want"--a half-sob shook the fierce, young voice--"I want to be part
of--things, and you--you won't let me! I hate this--this place; I'm
choking to death!"
And with this Priscilla got up and flung her arms over her head, while
she ejaculated fiercely: "I want to be--doshed!"
The effect of this outburst upon the two listeners was tremendous.
Theodora recognized with blinding terror that her daughter was no longer
a child! The knowledge was like a stroke that left her paralyzed. What
could she hope to do with, and for, this new, strange creature in whose
young face rising passion and rebellion were suddenly born? Nathaniel was
awed, too, but he managed to utter the command: "Leave the room, hussy!"
When the parents were alone they took stock of the responsibility that
was laid upon them. Helplessly Theodora began to cry. She could no more
cope with this situation than a baby. She had never risen above or beyond
the dead level of Kenmore life, and surely no Kenmore woman had ever
borne so unnatural a child. She feared hopelessly and tremblingly.
With Nathaniel it was different. He was a hard man who had forced
himself, as he had others, along the one grim path, but he had the male's
inheritance of understanding of certain traits and emotions. Had any one
suggested to him that his girl had derived from him--not her colourless
mother--the desire for excitement through the senses, he would have flung
the thought madly from him. Men were men; women were women! Even if
temptation came to a girl, only a bad, an evil-natured girl would
recognize it and succumb. His daughter, Nathaniel firmly believed, was
marked for destruction, and he was frightened and aroused not only for
Priscilla herself but for his reputation and position. He had known
similar temptation; had overcome it. He understood, or thought he did!
He gave the girl no benefit of doubt; his mind conceived things that
never had occurred. He believed she had often met the young fellow from
the Hill Place. God alone knew what had gone before!
"What shall we do?" sobbed Theodora. "We cannot make a prisoner of her;
we cannot watch her every move--and she's only a bit over fourteen!"
Had the girl died that night Nathaniel would not have mourned her, he
would have known only relief and gratitude.
"She was unwelcomed," he muttered to his weeping wife; "and she has
become a curse to us. It lies with us to turn the punishment into our
souls' good; but what can we do for her?"
Priscilla did not die that night. She slept peacefully and happily with
the red, pulsing planet over the hemlock shining faithfully upon her. The
next day she reappeared before her parents with a cloudless face and a
willingness to make such amends as could be brought about without too
much self-abnegation. In the broad light of day the mother could not hold
to the horrors of the evening before. She had been nervous and
overwrought; it wasn't so bad as they had thought!
"I want you to go erranding," she said to Priscilla soon after the midday
meal and by way of propitiation. "It's one by the clock now. Given an
hour to go, another to return, and a half hour for the buying, you should
be back by four at the latest."
Priscilla looked laughingly up at her mother, "Funny, little mother," she
said; "he's made you afraid of me. Hadn't you better tie a string to my
foot?" But all the time the girl was thinking. "An hour for both going
and coming will be enough, and that will leave an hour for the
schoolmaster."
Aloud she said: "I was fiercely angry last night, mother, for he read me
wrong and would not believe me, but it made me feel the _lure_; it really
did."
"You must never speak so again, child," Theodora replied, thinking she
was impressing the girl; "and, Priscilla, what did you mean by saying you
wanted to be--be doshed? That was the most unsanctified word I ever
heard. What does it mean? Where did you learn it?"
At this Priscilla doubled over with laughter but managed to say:
"Why, it means just--doshed! Haven't you ever wanted to be doshed,
mother, when you were young, and before father took the dosh out of
you?"
Theodora was again overcome by former fears, and to confirm her terror
Priscilla sprang toward her with outstretched, gripping fingers and wide,
eager eyes.
"It means," she breathed, advancing upon her mother's retreating form,
"it means skib, skib, skibble--de--de--dosh!"
At this she had her mother by the shoulders and was seeking to kiss the
affrighted and appalled face.
Theodora escaped her, and realized that a changeling had indeed entered
her home. An unknown element was here. It was as if, having been
discovered, Priscilla felt she no longer needed to hide her inner self,
but was giving it full sway.
If they could only have known that the spring of imagination and joy
had been touched in the girl and merely the madness of youth and the
legitimate yearning for expression moved her! But Theodora did not
understand and she tried to be stern.
"You are to be back in this house at four!" she cried; "at quarter after
at the latest."
So Priscilla started forth. The mother watched her from the doorway.
Suspicion was in her heart; she feared the girl would turn toward the
woods; she was prepared for that, but instead, the flying figure made for
the grassy road leading to Kenmore and was soon lost to sight.
Three miles of level road, much of it smooth, moss-covered rock, was
easy travelling for nimble feet and a glad heart. And Priscilla was
the gladdest creature afield that day. Impishly she was enjoying the
sensation she had created. It appealed to her dramatic sense and animal
enjoyment. In some subtle fashion she realized she had balked and
defeated her father--she was rather sorry about her mother--but that
could be remedied later on. There was no doubt that she had the whip hand
of Nathaniel at last, and the subconscious attitude of defiance she
always held toward her father was strengthened by the knowledge that
he was unjustly judging her.
There were many things of interest in Kenmore that only limited time
prevented Priscilla from investigating. She longed to go to the jail and
see if the people had prevailed upon old Jerry McAlpin to discharge
himself. She admired Jerry's spirit!
She wanted to call upon Mrs. Hornby and question her about Jamsie, her
last boy, who had succumbed to the lure of the States. She longed to know
the symptoms of one attacked by the lure. Then there was the White Fish
Lodge--she did so want to visit Mrs. McAdam. The annual menace of taking
Mrs. McAdams' license from her was man's talk just then, and Mrs. McAdam
was so splendid when her rights were threatened. On the village Green
she annually defended her position like a born orator. Priscilla had
heard her once and had never got over her admiration for the little, thin
woman who rallied the men to her support with frantic threats as to her
handling of their rights unless they helped her fight her battle against
a government bent upon taking the living from a "God-be-praised
widow-woman with two sons to support."
It had all been so exactly to Priscilla's dramatic taste that she with
difficulty restrained herself from calling at the White Fish.
There was a good hour to her credit when the erranding was finished and
the time needed for the home run set aside, so to the little cabin, built
beside the schoolhouse, she went with heavily loaded arms and an
astonishingly light heart.
Since the day when Anton Farwell had undertaken Priscilla's
enlightenment, asserting that he had been ordained to do so by her god,
he had had an almost supernatural influence upon her thought. For her,
he was endowed with mystery, and, with the subtle poetry of the lonely
young, she deafened her ears to any normal explanation of the man.
Reaching the cabin, she pushed gently against the door, knowing that if
it opened, Kenmore was free to enter. Farwell was in and, when Priscilla
stood near him, seemed to travel back from a far place before he saw her.
Farwell was an old-young man; he cultivated the appearance of age, but
only the very youthful were deceived. His long, dark hair fell about his
thin face lankly, and it was an easy matter, by dropping his head, to
hide his features completely.
He was tall and, from much stooping over books or the work of his garden,
was round-shouldered. When he looked you fully in the face, which he
rarely did, it was noticed that his eyes were at once childishly friendly
and deathly sad.
The older people of Kenmore had ceased to wonder about him. Having
accepted him, they let matters drop. To the children, to all helpless
animals, he was an enduring solace and power. When all else failed they
looked to him for solution. For this had Priscilla come.
"To be sure!" cried Farwell at length. "It's Priscilla Glenn. Bad child!
It's many a day since we had a lesson. There! there! no excuses. Sit down
and--own up!"
While he was speaking Farwell replenished the wood on the fire and
brushed the ashes from the hearth. Priscilla, in a chair, sat upright and
rather breathlessly wondered how she could manage all she wanted to say
and hear in the small space of time that was hers.
Anton's back was toward her when she uttered her first question and the
words brought him to an upright position, facing her at once.
"Mr. Farwell, where did you come from--I mean before the wreck?"
For a moment the master looked as if about to spring forward to lock the
door and bar the windows. Real alarm was in his eyes.
"Who told you to ask that?" he whispered.
"No one. No one has to tell me questions; I have more of my own than I
can ask. I never thought before about you, Mr. Farwell, we're so used to
you, but now it's because of _me_. I want to know. Somebody has got to
help me--I feel it coming again."
"Feel what coming?" Farwell sat limply down in the chair he had lately
occupied.
"Why, the lure. It comes to the boys, Mr. Farwell. They just get it and
go off to the States, and it's come to me! I've always known it would.
You see, I've got to go away; not just now, but some time. I'm going out
through the Secret Portage. I'm going away, away to find my real place.
I'm going to do something--out where the States are. I hoped you came
from there; could tell me--how to go about it. Do you know, I feel as if
I had been dropped in Kenmore just to rest before I went on!"
Farwell looked at the girl and something new and changed about her
startled him as it had her parents, but, being wiser, he felt no
antagonism. It was an amazing, an interesting thing. The girl had
suddenly developed: that was all. She was eager to try her wings at a
longer flight than any of her sex in Kenmore had ever before dreamed. It
was amusing even if it were serious.
Years before, Farwell had discovered the girl's keen mind and her
quaint originality. As much for his own pleasure as her advantage he
had taught her as he had some of the other village children, erratically,
inconsequently, and here she was now demanding that he fit her out with
a chart for deep-sea sailing.
How could he permit her to harbour, even for an idle moment, the idea of
leaving her shelter and going away? At this the thin, dark face grew
rigid and stern. But too well the man knew the folly of setting up active
opposition to any young thing straining against the door of a cage.
Better open the door even if a string on the leg or a clipped wing had
to be resorted to!
"Did you ever see the States?" The tense voice was imploring.
"Oh, yes. Why do you wish to go there?"
"Why do the boys?"
This was baffling.
"Well, there was Mrs. Hornby's oldest boy, he went to the States, got the
worst of it, and came home to die. He did not find them happy places."
"Yes, but all the other Hornbys went just the same, even Jamsie. It's the
chance, you know, the chance to try what's in you, even if you _do_ come
home and die! You never have a chance in Kenmore; and I don't mean to be
like my mother--like the other women. You see, Mr. Farwell, I'm willing
to suffer, but I _am_ going to know all I want to, and I am going to find
a place where I fit in, if I can."
So small and ignorant did the girl look, yet so determined and keen, that
Farwell grew anxious. Evidently Nathaniel had borne too hard upon her,
borne to the snapping point, and she had, in her wild fashion, caught the
infection of the last going away--Jamsie Hornby's. It was laughable, but
pathetic.
"What could you do?" Farwell leaned forward and gazed into the strange
blue eyes fixed upon him.
"Dance. Have you ever seen me dance? Do you want to?" She was prepared to
prove herself.
"Good Lord! no, no!"
"Oh! I can dance. If some one would play for me--play on--on a fiddle, I
could dance all day and night. Wouldn't people pay for that?"
This was serious business. By some subtle suggestion Priscilla Glenn had
introduced into the bare, cleanly room an atmosphere of danger, a curious
sense of unreality and excitement.
"Yes--they do pay," Farwell said slowly; "but where in heaven's name did
you get such ideas?"
The girl looked impishly saucy. She was making a sensation again and,
while Anton Farwell was not affected as her parents had been, he was
undoubtedly impressed.
"It's this way: You have to sell what you've got until you get something
better. There isn't an earthly thing I can do but dance now; of course I
can learn. Don't you remember the nice story about the old woman who went
to market her eggs for to sell? Master Farwell, I'm like her, and my
dancing is my--egg!"
She was laughing now, this unreasoning, unreasonable girl, and she was
laughing more at Farwell's perplexity than at her own glibness. She must
soon go, her time was growing short, but she was enjoying herself
immensely.
Looking at her, Farwell was suddenly convinced of one overpowering fact:
Priscilla Glenn was destined for--living! Hers was one of those natures
that flash now and then upon a commonplace existence, a strange soul from
an unknown port, never resting until it finds its way back.
"Poor little girl!" whispered Farwell, and then he talked to her.
Would she let him go to her father and mother?
"What's the use?" questioned Priscilla, and she told him of the
experience in the woods. "Father saw only evil when it was the most
beautiful thing that ever happened."
Farwell saw a wider stretch and more danger.
"But I will try, and anyway, Priscilla, if I promise to help you get
ready, will you promise me to do nothing without consulting me?"
This the girl was ready enough to do. She was restless and defiant under
her new emotion, but intuitively she had sought Farwell because he had
before aided her and sympathized with her. Yes, she would confide in him.
That night Farwell called at Lonely Farm. Followed by his two lean, ugly
sledge dogs he made his way to the barn where Nathaniel was doing the
evening's work. While the men talked, the dogs, behind the building,
fought silently and ferociously. Farwell had fed one before he left home
and a bitter jealousy lay between the animals. It was almost more than
one might hope that the master could influence Glenn or change his mind,
but Farwell did bring to bear an argument that, because nothing else
presented itself, swayed the father.
"You cannot get the same results from all children," Farwell said,
looking afar and smiling grimly; "there's no use trying to make an
abnormal child into a normal one. Priscilla is like a wild thing of the
woods. You may tame her, if you go about it right; you'll never be able
to force her. She's kind and affectionate, but she cannot be fettered or
caged, without mischief being done. Better let her think she is having
her own way, or--she may take it!"
"I'll break her will!" muttered Glenn.
"And if you do--what then?"
"She'll fall into line--women do! Their life takes it out of them. Once I
get her on the right track, she'll go straight enough. There's no other
way for her sex, thank God!"
"She'd be a poor, despicable thing if she was cowed." Contempt rang in
Farwell's voice.
"She'd serve her purpose." Glenn was so angry that he became brutal.
"Spirit ain't needed for her job."
"Purpose? Job?" Farwell repeated.
"Yes. Child-bearing; husband-serving. If they take to it naturally
they're all the better off; if they have to be brought to terms--well,
then----"
Gradually the truth dawned upon Farwell, and his thin face flushed, while
in his heart he pitied Theodora Glenn and Priscilla.
"I wish I'd kept to my first ideas!" Glenn was saying surlily, "and never
let the limb learn of you or another. I gave her her head and here we
are!"
"Had she been taught regularly by some one better fitted than I she would
have done great credit to you. She has a bright mind and a vivid
imagination."
To this Glenn made no response, but the energy with which he applied the
brush to his horse caused the animal to rear dangerously.
"Come, come," Farwell continued; "better loosen the rein and let her run
herself out--she may settle happily after a bit. If you don't, she may
run farther than you know."
"Run? Run where?" Nathaniel, safe from the horse's heels, glared at
Farwell.
"To the States. There is no sex line on the border."
"But there's good, plain law. I'd have her back and well cowed, if she
attempted that!"
And then Farwell played his card.
"See here, Mr. Glenn, you do not want to drive this girl of yours to--to
hell! Of course there is law and of course you have the whip hand while
Priscilla is in your clutch, but with a wit like hers, if she slipped
across the border she could lose herself so completely that neither your
hate nor legal power could ever find her. Do you want to drive her to
such lengths?"
Some of the truth of what Farwell was saying dashed Glenn's temper with
fear. Hard and cruel as he was, he was not devoid of affection of a
clammy sort, and for an instant Priscilla as a helpless girl wandering
among strangers replaced Priscilla, the rebellious daughter, and pity
moved him.
"Well, what do you suggest?" he asked grudgingly.
"Simply this: You can trust me. Good Lord you surely can trust me with
her! Let me teach her and bring a little diversion into her life. What
she wants is what all young things want--freedom and fun--pure, simple
fun. Don't let her think you are expecting evil of her; let her alone!"
The extent of Glenn's confusion may be estimated by the fact that he
permitted Priscilla thereafter to go, when she chose, to Kenmore and
learn of Farwell what Farwell chose to give her, and, for the first time
in the girl's life, she felt a glow of appreciation toward her father.
With this new freedom she became happier, less restless, and her
admiration for Farwell knew no bounds.
The schoolmaster managed to procure a violin and laboriously practised
upon it until an almost forgotten gift was somewhat restored. He did not
play as Travers did--he had only his ear to depend upon; he had never
been well taught--but his music sufficed to accompany Priscilla's nimble
feet, and it gave Farwell himself an added interest in his dull life.
"She'll marry Jerry-Jo McAlpin some day," the schoolmaster thought at
times; "and have a brood of half-breeds--no quarter-breeds--and all this
joy and gladness will become a blurred, or blotted-out, background. Good
God!"