Life settled into calm after the storm and subsequent happenings. Mary
McAdam, having done what she felt she must do, grimly set her house in
order and prepared for a new career. The bar, cleansed and altered,
became her private apartment. With the courage and endurance of a martyr
she determined to fight her battle out where there would be the least
encouragement or comfort.
"I'll drink to the dregs," she said to Mary Terhune, who gave up her
profession to share the solitude and fortunes of the White Fish; "but
while I'm drinking there's no crime in serving my kind. Come summer I'll
open my doors to tourists and keep the kind of house a woman--and a
God-bepraised widow one at that--should keep. Time was when the best
would not come to me, the bar being against their liking. Well, the best
may come now and find peace."
"'Tis a changed woman you are, Mrs. McAdam."
"No, just a stricken one, Mary. When I sit by those empty graves back of
the pasture lot I seem to know that I must do the work of my boys as well
as my own--and the time's short! I'm over sixty."
"And looking forty, Mrs. McAdam." The manners of her trade clung to Mrs.
Terhune.
"The shell doesn't count, Mary, if the heart of you is old and worn."
The people from the Far Hill Place returned early to town that year, and
Anton Farwell breathed easier and sunk back into his old life when he
knew they were gone.
In resurrecting the man Farwell once was, Ledyard had all but slain the
man he had, perforce, become.
Whether former characteristics were dead or not, who could tell?
But certainly with temptation removed, with the routine of a bleak,
uninteresting existence his only choice, Farwell was a harmless creature.
Gradually he had found solace in the commonplaces that surrounded
him. Like a person relieved of mortal agony he was grateful for
semi-invalidism. Previous to Ledyard's recognition of him he had sunk to
a monotonous indifference, waiting, he realized now, for the time when he
might safely shake off his disguise and slip away to what was once his
own. Now, with his exit from Kenmore barred, he found that he no longer
could return to his stupor; he was alert, keen, and restless. In the
past he had often forced himself to exercise in order that he might be
ready to journey on when the time of release came. His walks to the
distant town, his long hours on the water, had all been preparations
for the final leave-taking from his living tomb.
But now that he had no need of lashing himself into action, he found
himself always on the move. He worked early and late at trifling tasks
that occupied his hands while sharpening his wits. With shades drawn at
night, he drew, with pencil and paper, plans of escape. He must choose
a calm spell after a storm; he would take his launch, with a rowboat
behind, to the Fox Portage. He'd set his launch free and shoulder his
boat. Once he reached the Little Bay, he'd take his chances for an
outgoing steamer. He'd have plenty of money and a glib story of a bad
connection. It would go. He must defeat Ledyard.
Then he would tear the sheets of paper in bits, toss them on the coals,
and laugh bitterly as he realized that he was imprisoned forever.
Foolish as all this was, it had its effect upon the man. He played with
the thought as a child might play with a forbidden toy. Then he decided
to test the matter. He would have to buy clothes and provisions for the
winter--he always made a pilgrimage about this time. There would be a
letter from Boswell, too. There always was one in September. So on a
certain morning Farwell turned the key in his lock and quite naturally
set forth with a sense of exaltation and freedom he had imagined he would
never feel again.
Followed by his dogs, he went to his boat, which happened just then to be
tied at the ricketty dock of the White Fish.
"It's off for a tramp you are, maybe?" asked Mrs. McAdam from her
doorway. "God keep you, Mr. Farwell, and bring you back safe and sound."
At this Farwell paused.
"I think I'll leave the dogs behind," he said. "I may wish to hurry back,
and a brace of dogs, keen on scents and full of spirits, is a handicap on
a journey."
"Sure I'll feed and care for the two, and welcome, and if their staying
behind brings you quicker home, 'tis a good piece of work I'm doing for
Kenmore."
With this Mary McAdam came down to the boat and looked keenly at Farwell.
"Are you well?" she asked with a gentleness new and touching. "'Tis pale
you look, and thin, I'm thinking. I'm getting to depend upon you, and the
thought of anything happening to you grieves the heart of me. In all
Kenmore there's no one as I lean on like you. There be nights when I look
out toward your house and see your light a-shining when all else is dark,
and say to myself, 'The master and me' over and over, and I'm less
lonely."
For a moment Farwell could not speak. Once an inward desire to laugh,
to scoff, would have driven him to supernatural gravity; now he merely
smiled with grave pleasure, and said:
"A tramp will do me good, Mrs. McAdam. Thank you. I'll take your words
with me for comfort and cheer."
The first night Farwell slept beside his fire, not ten miles from
Kenmore. He had revelled in his freedom all day, had played like a boy,
often retracing his steps, carefully using the same footprints, and
laughing as he imagined the confusion of any one trying to follow him;
the vague somebody being always Ledyard.
After a frugal meal, Farwell smoked his pipe, even attempted a snatch of
rollicking song, then, rolling himself in a blanket, fell into natural
and happy slumber.
At four he awoke with the creeping sensation of unexplainable fear. He
first thought some animal was prowling near, and, raising himself on his
elbow, looked keenly about. The appearance of the fire puzzled him. It
looked as if fresh wood had been laid upon it, but, as no one was in
sight he concluded that his own wood had been damp, and, therefore, had
burned slower.
He did not sleep again, however, and his excited thoughts trailed back to
his past and the one woman who had magically caught and held all the best
that was in him. To what point of vantage had she, poor, disabled little
soul, drifted? The world was a hard enough place for a woman, God knew,
and for her, with her sudden-born determination to rise above the squalor
of her early youth, it would be a serious problem. Boswell told him so
little. He could count on his fingers the few sharp facts his friend had
given him with the promise that if conditions changed he should know, but
if all remained well, he might be secure in his faith and hope for the
future. The future! Was there any future for him except Kenmore? And if
she heard now that he was alive, had only _seemed_ dead for her safety
and his own, would she come to him and share the dun-coloured life of the
In-Place?
She was alive; she was faithful. Boswell was making her comfortable with
Farwell's money. She was accepting less and less because she was winning
her way to independence in an honourable line. Since no man had entered
her life after Farwell's death was reported, Farwell could readily see
why.
Over and over, that first night in the woods, Farwell rehearsed these
facts for comfort's sake. Suppose he made an escape. Suppose he lost
himself in the city's labyrinth--what then?
And then, just at daybreak, a vivid and sharp memory of the woman's face
came to him as he had last seen it pressed against the bars of his cell.
Behind the squares of metal it shone like an angel's. Fair, pitiful,
wonder-filled eyes, and quivering mouth. All day the picture haunted him
and seemed to draw him toward it. He walked twenty miles that day and
came at sunset to a dense jungle where he made his camp and stretched
himself exhaustedly before the fire.
Sleep did not come easily to him; he was too excited and nerve worn. The
white face checked by iron bars would not fade, and in the red glow of
the flames it began to look wan and haggard, as if the day had tired it
and it could find no rest or comfort.
The feeling of suffocation Ledyard had managed to create, returned to
him. He grew nervous, ill at ease, and fearful.
Then he fell to moralizing. He was not often given to that, or
introspection. Longing and alternate hope and despair had been his
comrades and bedfellows, but he rarely indulged in calm consideration.
Smoking his pipe, stretched wearily on the moss, he wondered if men knew
how much they punished while fulfilling their ideals of justice?
"If only the sense of vindictiveness could be left out," he thought; "the
Lord knows they have it all in their power once the key is turned on us.
I deserved all they meant to inflict, but no human being deserves all
that was given unconsciously."
Then Farwell relived his life, while the wood crumbled to ashes and the
moon came up over the hills. A misguided, misspent boyhood; too much
money; too little common sense; then the fling in the open with every
emotion and desire uncurbed. Well, he had to learn his lesson and God
knew he had; but why, in the working of things, shouldn't one be given
a chance to prove the well-learned task; an opportunity, while among the
living, to settle the question?
However, such fancies were idle, and Farwell shook the ashes from his
pipe and gave a humorous shrug.
It would be a fine piece of work to slip from the clutches of the past
and make good! This idea caused him to tremble. Surely no one would look
for him in the camp of the upright. Walking the paths of the clean and
sane he would be more surely secure from detection than anywhere else on
earth. That was what his past had done for him. The truth of this sank
into the lonely man's soul with sickening finality. And as he realized
it, and compared it with the fact of his youth, he groaned. What an
infernal fool he had been! What fools all such fellows were who, like
him, wasted everything in their determination to make the unreal, real.
He did not now desire to be a drivelling repentant; he wanted, God knew
he really wanted, a chance to be decent and live; but in order to live he
must go on acting a part and cringing and hiding.
These thoughts led nowhere and unfitted him for his journey, so he made
the fire safe, lay down beside it, and slept as many a better man would
have given much to sleep.
At four he awoke as on the previous night. So quietly, however, did he
open his eyes that he took by surprise a man crouching by the fire as if
stealing a bit of warmth. Farwell turned over, and the two eyed each
other with wide, penetrating gaze.
Tough Pine, the guide, finding himself discovered, grinned sheepishly; he
was loathing himself for being taken off guard, and muttered:
"Me share fire? me helped keep it."
Farwell raised himself on his elbow, all the light and courage gone from
his face. It was the old story, the dream of freedom and--the prison
bars!
"Where are you going?" he asked, though he knew full well.
"Where--you go? There, Pine go! Pine--good friend and good guide."
They questioned each other no more. Farwell finished his errand in dull
fashion, bought his goods, found a letter, long waiting him, read all the
papers he could lay hands on, and then set his face toward Kenmore. And
that winter he devoted himself as he never had before to the simple
people who were the means of keeping him sane.
Upon this newly restricted and devastated horizon Priscilla Glenn loomed
large and vital. With Nathaniel's loosened rein and Theodora's restored
faith, the girl developed wonderfully. Farwell made no more objection to
her dancing or her flights of fancy. He fiddled for her and fed the flame
of her imagination. She was the sunniest creature he had ever known;
the bleak life of Lonely Farm had spurred her to greater lengths of
self-defence; nothing could daunt her. She had an absorbing curiosity
about life, out and beyond the Kenmore confines; and more to keep his own
memory clear than to satisfy Priscilla, Farwell set himself to the task
of educating the girl in ways that would have appalled Nathaniel and
reduced Theodora again to tears and apprehension.
The bare room of the master's house was the stage upon which were set, in
turn, the scenes of distant city life. Vicariously Priscilla learned the
manners of a "real lady" under the most trying circumstances. Farwell
told her of plays, operas, and, over his deal table, they chatted in
brilliant restaurants. They walked gay streets and stood bewildered
before flashing shop windows. It was all dangerous, but fascinating, and
in the playing of the game Farwell grew old and drawn, while Priscilla
gradually came into her Heart's Desire of delight.
"My Road!" she proudly thought. "My Road!"
The old poem was recalled and was often repeated like a litany, while
life became more and more vital and thrilling with dull Kenmore as a
background and setting.
Just about this time Jerry-Jo took to wearing his Sunday suit on week
days, thus proclaiming his aspirations and awaking the ribald jests of
his particular set.
Mary Terhune, now partner of Mrs. McAdam, took note of Jerry-Jo's
appearance, and, on a certain afternoon in midwinter, when she, Long
Jean, and Mary McAdam sat by the range in the White Fish kitchen, fanned
a lively bit of gossip into flame.
"Trade's a bit poor these days, eh, Jean?"
Jean grunted over her cup of green tea.
"Not so many children born as once was, eh? What you make of it,
Jean--the woman getting heady or--which?"
Mary McAdam broke in.
"What with poverty and the terrors of losing them, there's enough born to
my thinking. Time was when the young 'uns happened; they're thought more
on, these days. Women _should_ have a say. If there's one thing a man
should keep his tongue off it's this matter of families!"
To this outrageous sentiment the listeners replied merely by two audible
gulps of tea, and then Mary Terhune found grace to remark:
"You certainly do talk most wonderful things, Mary McAdam. You be an
ornament to your sex, but only such women as you can grip them audacious
ideas. Let them be sowed broadcast and----"
"Where would me, and such as me, be?" Long Jean muttered, defending her
profession.
Mrs. Terhune tactfully turned the conversation:
"Have you noticed the change in Jerry-Jo McAlpin?" she asked with a
mysterious shake of her head.
"Any change for the better would be welcome," Mrs. McAdam retorted. "Have
another cup, Jean? Strong or weak?"
"Strong. I says often, says I, that unless tea curls your tongue you
might just as well take water. When I'm on duty I keep a pot on the back
of the stove week in and week out; it do brace me powerful."
Mrs. McAdam poured the tea into the outstretched cup and proceeded to
discuss Jerry-Jo.
"Why doesn't the scamp go to the States and find himself instead of
worrying old Jerry's very life out of him--the vampire!"
"He may have it in his mind," soothed Mary Terhune, "but the lad's deep
and far seeing like his Injun mother--beg pardon, Jean, the term's a
compliment, God save me!"
"You've saved your face, Mrs. Terhune. Go on!"
Jean had begun to resent, but the explanation mollified her.
"More tea," she said quietly, "and you might stir the dregs a mite, Mrs.
McAdam; it's plain sinful to let the strength go to waste."
"If I was Theodora Glenn," Mary Terhune went on, monotonously stirring
the cold liquid in her cup, "I'd have my eye on that girl of hers."
And now the ingredients were prepared for the mixing!
"What's Priscilla Glenn got to do with Jerry-Jo McAlpin?" Mrs. McAdam
asked sharply, fixing her little ferret eyes on the speaker.
Long Jean bridled again and interjected:
"And for why not? Young folks is young folks, and there ain't too many
boys for the gels. What with the States and the toll to death, the gels
can't be too particular, not casting my flings at Jerry-Jo, either. He's
a handsome lad and will get a footing some day. Glenn's girl ain't none
too good for him; he'd bring her to her senses. All that dancing and
fiddle-scraping at Master Farwell's is not to my liking. The goings-on
are evil-looking to my mind. The girl always was a parcel of
whim-whams--made up of odds and ends, as it was, of her fore-runners.
What _all_ the children of the Glenns might have been--Priscilla is!"
"So Jerry-Jo's fixed his bold eyes on the girl?" asked Mary McAdam. "It
bodes no good for her. She's a sunny creature and mighty taking in her
ways. I wish her no ill, and I hate to think of Jerry-Jo shadowing her
life till she forgets to dance and sing. For my part, I wish the master
were twenty-five years younger and could play for the lass to dance to
the end of their days."
"And a poor outlook for me!" grumbled Jean humorously. "Another cup of
the tea, Mary Terhune, and make it stronger. I begin to feel the bitter
in my toes."
And while this talk and more like it was permeating Kenmore, Jerry-Jo,
adorned and uncomfortable, did his own thinking and planned his own plans
after the manner of his mixed inheritance. He could not settle to any
task or give heed to any temptation from the States until he had made
Priscilla secure. The girl's age in no wise daunted McAlpin. His eighteen
years were all that were to be considered; he knew what he wanted, what
he meant to have. He could wait, he could bide the fulfillment of his
hopes, but one big, compelling subject at a time was all he could master.
He secretly and furiously objected to the dancing and visits in Farwell's
cottage. He was ashamed to voice this feeling, for Farwell was his friend
and had taught him all he knew, but Farwell's age did not in the least
blind Jerry-Jo to the fact that he was a man, and he did not enjoy seeing
Priscilla so free and easy with any other of the male sex, be he ancient
enough to topple into the grave.
"She'll dance for me--for me!" the young fellow ground his teeth. "I'll
make her forget to prance and grin unless she does it for me. The
master's just training her away from me and putting notions in her head.
I'll take her to the States--maybe her dancing will help us both there.
I don't mean to drudge as Jamsie Hornby does! Better things for me!"
Sex attraction swayed Jerry-Jo madly in those days and he thought it
love, as many a better man had done before him. The blood of his mother
controlled him largely and he wished that he might carry the girl off to
his wigwam, and, at his leisure, with beads and blankets, or other less
tangible methods, win her and conquer her. But present conditions held
the boy in check and compelled him to adopt more modern tactics. He
stole, when he couldn't beg, from his poor father all the money Jerry
wrenched from an occasional day's work. With this he bought books for
Priscilla, vaguely realizing that these would most interest her, but his
selection often made her laugh. Piqued by her indifference, Jerry-Jo
plotted a thing that led, later, to tragic results. Remembering the
favour Priscilla had long ago shown for the book from Far Hill Place, he
decided to utilize the taste of the absent owner, and the owner himself,
for his own ends, not realizing that Priscilla had never connected the
cripple Jerry-Jo had described, with the musician of the magic summer
afternoon that had set her life in new currents.
It was an easy matter to enter the Far Hill Place, and, where one was
not troubled with conscience, a simple thing to select at random, but
with economy, books from the well-filled shelves. These gifts presently
found their way to Priscilla, cunningly disguised as mail packages.
Inadvertently the very book Priscilla had once cried over came to her and
touched her strangely.
"Why should he send me these--send me this?" she asked Jerry-Jo, who had
brought the package to her.
"He always wanted you to have it. I told you that; he remembers, I
suppose, and wants you to have it. He said it was more yours than his."
To test her Jerry-Jo was hiding behind Travers.
"I'd walk a hundred miles over the rock on bare feet to thank him," the
girl replied, her big eyes shining. And with the words there entered into
Jerry-Jo's distorted imagination a concrete and lasting jealousy of poor
Dick Travers, who was innocent of any actual memory of Priscilla Glenn.
Travers at that time was studying as few college men do, always with the
spur of lost years and a big ambition lashing him on.
During that winter the stolen books from the Far Hill Place caused
Priscilla much wonderment and some little embarrassment. She had to keep
them secret owing to her father's sentiment, and, for some reason, she
did not confide in Farwell. This new and unexpected interest in her life
was so foreign to anything with which the master had to do that she felt
no inclination to share it.
"But I cannot understand," she often said to Jerry-Jo. "I'd like to write
to him. Do you think you could find out for me where he is? That he
should even remember me! I would not have him think me so ungrateful as
I must seem."
She and Jerry-Jo were in the path leading to Lonely Farm from Kenmore as
she spoke, and suddenly something the young fellow said brought her to a
sharp standstill.
"Oh! I suppose, after your cutting up in the woods that day he wants to
make you remember him."
This was an outburst that Jerry-Jo permitted himself without forethought.
He was using Travers as an old tribeman might have used torture, to test
his own bravery and endurance, but the effect upon Priscilla was so
startling and unexpected that he fell back bewildered.
"In--the--the--woods?" she gasped.
"Sure. That time your father drove you home."
For a full moment Priscilla stared helplessly, then she began to see
light.
"Do you mean," she gasped, "that he who made me dance--was the boy of the
Hill Place?"
"As if you did not know it!" Jerry-Jo grunted.
"But Jerry-Jo you said he--that boy was a poor, twisted thing, ugly past
all belief, while he who played and laughed that day was like an angel of
light just showing me the way to heaven!"
And now Jerry-Jo's dark face was not pleasant to look upon.
"Can't a twisted thing become straight?" he muttered; "can't a devil trap
himself out like an--an angel?"
"Oh! Jerry-Jo, he who played for me in the woods could never have been
evil. Why, all his life he had been making himself into something big
and fine. He put into words the things I had always thought and dreamed
about--an ideal was what he called it! And to think I never knew! And he
remembered and wanted to be kind! I shall worship him now while I live.
And when he comes back to the Hill Place I will go and thank him, even
if my father should kill me. I shall never be happy until I can explain.
What a stupid he must think me!"
After that the secret became the sacredest thing in Priscilla's life and
the most tormenting in Jerry-Jo's. They were both at ages when such an
occurrence would appeal to a girl's sentimentality and a young man's
hatred.
The family did not return to the Hill Place for many summers, and only
once during the following years did Priscilla's name pass Travers's
lips.
Apropos of something they were talking about he said to Helen Travers: "I
wonder what has become of that little dancing dervish up in Canada? She
wasn't plain, ordinary stuff, but I suppose she'll be knocked into shape.
Maybe that half-breed, Jerry-Jo, will get her when she's been reduced to
his level. There are not girls enough to go around up there, I fancy.
That little thing, though, was too spiritual to be crushed and
remodelled. As she danced that day, her scarlet cape flying out in the
breeze, she looked like a living flame darting up from the red rock.
And those awful words she uttered--poor little pagan! Jerry-Jo told
me afterward what the lure of the States meant: it's a provincial
expression. Mother, if the lure should ever control that girl of Lonely
Farm I wish we might greet her, for safety's sake."
But it was not likely that either of the Traverses for a moment conceived
of the reality of Priscilla leaving the In-Place, and in time even the
memory of her became blurred to Dick by the eternal verities of his
strenuous young life.
Gradually his lameness disappeared until a slight hesitation at times was
all that remained. Five years of college, two abroad--one with Helen, one
with Doctor Ledyard--and then Richard Thornton Travers (Helen had, when
he went to college, insisted for the first time upon the middle name)
hung out his modest sign--it looked brazenly glaring to him--under that
of Thomas R. Ledyard, and nervously awaited the first call upon him. He
was twenty-five when he started life, and Priscilla Glenn, back in
forgotten Kenmore, was nearing nineteen, with Jerry-Jo in hot pursuit
behind her. As to Anton Farwell, there was no doubt about his age now.
Not even the very old called him young, and there was a pathos about him
that attracted the attention of those with whom he had lived so long.
"He looks haunted," Mary Terhune ventured; "he starts at times when one
speaks sudden, real pitiful like. The look of his eyes, too, has the
queer flash of them as sees forward as well as back. Do you mind, Mrs.
McAdam, how 'tis said that them as comes nigh to drowning have a glimpse
on before as well as the picture of all that has past?"
"I've heard the same," nodded Mary McAdam.
"Belike the master remembers and often looks to the end of his journey.
Well, he's been a good harmless sort, as men go. He's kept the children
out of trouble far more than one could expect, and he's been a merciful
creature to humans and beasts. I wonder what he had in his life before he
washed up from the _La Belle_?"
All this seemed to end the discussion.
Mary McAdam was an important personage about that time. The White Fish
Lodge had become famous. Without bar or special privilege of any sort,
the house was patronized by the best class of tourist. Mary was a born
proprietress, and, while she extracted the last penny due her, always
gave full value in return. She and Mary Terhune did the cooking; a bevy
of clean, young Indian girls from Wyland Island served as waitresses and
maids, their quaint, keen reserve was charming, and no better public
house could have been found on the Little or Big Bay.
Priscilla drifted to the Lodge as naturally as a flower turns to the sun.
The easy-going people, the laughter and merriment appealed strongly to
her, and again did she cause Jerry-Jo serious displeasure and arouse her
father's lurking suspicions.
"Watch her! watch her!" was his warning, and Theodora returned to her
fears and tears.