"And you see, Master Farwell, I cannot go back to my father's house."
It was after nine of the evening of the day Priscilla Glenn had left
home. She had reached Farwell's shack without being seen. By keeping to
the woods and watching her opportunity, she had gained the rear of the
schoolhouse, entered while Farwell was absent, and breathed freely only
after securing the door.
The master had returned an hour later and, the gossip of the Green
ringing in his ears, confronted the white, silent girl with no questions,
but merely a glad smile of relief. He had insisted upon her taking food,
drink, and rest before explaining anything, and Priscilla had gratefully
obeyed.
"I'll gather all the news that is floating about," Farwell had comforted
her. "Sleep, Priscilla. You are quite safe." Then he went out again.
So she had eaten ravenously and slept far into the early evening while
Anton Farwell went about listening to all who talked. It was a great day
for Kenmore!
"She and him were together all the night," panted Long Jean, about noon,
in the kitchen of the White Fish.
"What's that?" called Mary McAdam from the closet. Jean repeated her
choice morsel, and Mary Terhune, preparing the midday meal, thrilled.
"I was at her borning," Jean remarked, "and I minded then and spoke it
open, that she was made of the odds and ends of them who went before her.
I've a notion that the good and evil that might have thinned out over all
the Glenn girls must work out thick in Priscilla."
"I'm thinking," Mary Terhune broke in, "that the mingling with such as
visits at the Lodge has upset the young miss. Her airs and graces! Lord
of heaven! how she has flouted the rest of the young uns! Aye, but they
are mouthing about her this day! 'Me and her,' said Jerry-Jo to me this
early morning, 'me and her got caught up in the woods, and, understanding
one another, we chose the dry to the wet, and brought things to a point.
Her and me will make tracks for the States. It's all evened up.' And I do
say," Mary went on, "that all considering, Jerry-Jo is doing the handsome
thing. I ain't picking flaws in her--maybe she's as clean as the
cleanest, but there's them who wouldn't believe it, as you both very well
know."
This last was to include Mrs. McAdam, who had issued from the closet with
an ugly look on her thin, dark face.
"You old harpies!" she cried, striding to the middle of the big room and
getting into position for an oratorical outburst. "You two blighted old
midwives as ought, heaven knows, to have mercy on women; you who see the
tortures of women! You would take a girl's name from her on the word of
that half-breed, who would sooner lie than steal--and both are easy to
the whelp. That girl is the straightest girl that ever walked, and no
evil has come to her from my house. A word more like that, Mary Terhune,
and you'll never share my home again, and as for you, Jean, you who
helped the lass into life, what kind of a snake-heart have you?"
Mary McAdam had both women trembling before her.
"I'll go up to Lonely Farm myself," screamed she, "and if Glenn and his
poor little slave-wife are doing the low trick by their girl, as God
hears me, I'll take her for my own, and turn you both back to the trade
you dishonour!"
Anton Farwell, passing near the window, heard this and went his way.
Later old Jerry McAlpin came to him on the wharf where the men were
gathered to meet the incoming steamer.
"Lordy! Master Farwell," quavered Jerry; "while I was out on the bay this
early morning, my lad, what all the town is humming about, goes to my
home and takes everything--everything of any vally and leaves this----"
McAlpin passed a dirty piece of paper to Farwell.
"I'm going to get out on the steamer. Going to the States, and had to
have the stuff to get away with. _I--ain't--alone!_ I'm going down the
Channel to board the steamer where it stops for gasoline. _Don't_
follow me for God's sake. I'll pay you back and more."
Farwell read the words twice, then said:
"Well?"
"Shall I--stop him, Master Farwell?"
"Can you spare what he has taken?"
"'Tain't that, sir."
"Then let him go! Let him have his fling."
"They do say--Long Jean, she do say--it's Glenn's girl. My lad's been
crazy for her. I'm afraid of Glenn."
"Let things alone, McAlpin. This is your time to lie low and hold your
tongue."
Farwell tore the paper in shreds and cast them to the wind.
The steamer came in at eight. At nine-thirty it left the wharf, and, a
mile down the Channel, stopped at the little safety station to take on
oil and gasoline. Tom Bluff, a half-breed, had the place in charge, and
later that evening he put the finishing touch to the day's gossip.
"'Twas Jerry-Jo, as you live, who jumped aboard, taking the last can I
was hauling up with him. So in a hurry was he that he nigh pushed some
one down who was in front of him.
"'Where going?' calls I. 'To the States,' he says back, and picks up the
young person he nigh knocked down."
Long Jean, to whom Tom was confiding this, drew near.
"Who was the young person?" whispered she, with the fear of Mary McAdam
still upon her.
"Her face? I did not see her face."
"'Twas Glenn's girl," panted Long Jean; "Priscilla!"
"Ugh!" grunted Tom as his ancestors had often grunted in the past. "Ugh!"
That was all for the day, and behind closed doors and windows Kenmore
slept. The storm of the previous night had been followed by a cold wave,
and upon Farwell's hearth a fire crackled cheerily.
* * * * *
"And so, you see, I cannot go back to my father's house."
Farwell bent his head over his folded arms.
"But Mrs. McAdam will take you in, Priscilla. After things calm down and
the truth is accepted, your people will forgive and forget. You poor
child!"
Priscilla closed her lips sharply. Her eyes were very luminous, very
tender, as they rested upon Farwell, but her heart knew no pity for her
father.
"How old one grows, Master Farwell, in--a night," she said with a quiver
in her voice. "I went happily away with Jerry-Jo, quite, quite a girl,
only yesterday. I had the feeling of a child trying to make believe I was
a woman. I wanted to show my father he could no longer control me as he
always had before. I--I wanted to have my way, and then my way brought me
to--those black hours of horror when something in me died forever and
something new was born. And how strange, Master Farwell, that when I
could think at all clear--you stood out as my only friend. I seemed to
know how it would be with my father and my poor mother. My father has
always expected evil of me, and something in me seemed ever to work
against the good of me, to give him cause for believing me wrong. But
you saw the good, my friend, and to you I come--a woman, now. I do not
know the language of what I feel here"--she pressed her hands to her
heart--"but I feel sure you will understand. I cannot stay in Kenmore!
I do not want to. Always I have wanted to have a bigger place, a larger
opportunity, and even if Kenmore would take me, I will not have Kenmore!
Somehow I feel as if I had never belonged here, really. You do not belong
here. Oh, Master Farwell, can you not come, too?"
As she spoke, the old, weary look passed for an instant from her eyes;
she was a child, daring, yet fearful! Ready to go forward into the dark,
but pleading for a trusted hand to hold. And Farwell, who, could she have
known, was clinging more to her than she to him, almost groaned the one
word:
"No!"
"Why, oh, why, Mr. Farwell? Like father and daughter we could make our
way. I think I have never known what a father might be, but you would
show me now in my great need."
"Hush!" Farwell's eyes held hers commandingly, entreatingly. "You must
hear what I have to say. Why do you think I have stayed in Kenmore? Why
I _must_ stay? Have you thought?"
"No." And for the first time in her life Priscilla wondered. Before, the
man had been but part of her life; now she wondered about him, with the
woman-mind that had come so suddenly and tragically to her.
"No, Master Farwell, why?"
"Because--well, because Kenmore is my grave--must always be my grave. I'm
dead. Good people, just people said I was dead. I am dead. Alive, I would
be a menace, a curse. Dead, I am safe. I've paid my debt, and you, you,
the people of my grave, since you do not know, have given me a chance,
and I've been a friend among friends! Why, I've even come to a
consciousness that--perhaps it is best for me to be dead, for back there,
back among the living, the thing I once was might assert itself again."
The bitterness, the pitiful truthfulness, of Farwell's voice and words
sank deep into Priscilla's heart. Out of them she instantly accepted one
great, vital fact: he was in Kenmore as a refugee; he had been--had
done--wrong! With the acceptance of this, a strange thing happened.
Curiosity, even interest, departed. For no reason that she could have
classified, Priscilla Glenn fiercely desired to--keep Farwell! If she
knew what he seemed bent upon telling, he might take away her faith--her
only support. She would keep and hold to what she believed him, what he
had been since he came to the In-Place. It was childish, blind perhaps,
but her words were those of a determined woman.
"Master Farwell, I will not listen to you. If you are dead, and are
safe, dead, I will not look into the grave. All my life you have been
good to me, been my only friend; you shall not take yourself from me! And
I--please let me do this one little thing for you--let me prove that I
can love and honour you without--explanation!"
Farwell's face twitched. He struggled to speak, and finally said
unsteadily:
"I have been--good, as you say, because I had to be. At any moment
I might have been what I once was. Why, girl, without knowing it,
Kenmore--all of you--had it in your power to fling me to the dogs had
you known, so you see----"
But Priscilla shook her head.
"You did not have to risk your life as you did for the McAdam boys.
Perhaps you do not know how you have--grown in your grave, Master
Farwell. Trust and liking come hard to us in Kenmore, yet not one of us
doubts you. No, no, lie quiet. I do not want to see you as you remember
yourself; you are better as you are. I will not hear; I will not have it
in my thought when I am far away."
The hardness passed from Farwell's face. Something like relief replaced
it, and he said slowly:
"My God! what a woman you will make if they do not harry you to death."
"They will not!" The white, tired face seemed illumined from within.
"Last night made me so sure--of myself. It showed me how weak I was,
and how strong. Do you know"--and here a flush, not of ignorance,
but of strange understanding, struck across Priscilla's face like a
flame--"women like my mother, all the women here in Kenmore, do not
understand? They just let people take from them what no one has a right
to take, what only they should give! It's when this something is taken
that they become like my poor mother--afraid and crushed. If I live and
die alone and lonely, I shall keep what is my own until I--I give it
gladly and because I trust. I am not afraid! But if I had married
Jerry-Jo because of--of--what he and my father thought, then I would have
been lost, like my mother, don't you see? I--I can--live alone, but I
will not be lost."
"But, great heavens! you are a woman!"
"Is it so sad a thing to be a--woman? Why?"
To this Farwell made no reply. Shading his gloomy eyes with his thin
hand, he turned from the courageous, uplifted face and sighed. Finally he
spoke as if the fight had all gone from him.
"Stay here. The thing you want isn't worth the struggle. There is no use
arguing, but I urge you to stay. The In-Place is safer for you. What is
it that you must have?"
Priscilla laughed--a wild, dreary little sound it was, but it dashed hope
from Farwell's mind.
"I want my chance, a woman's chance, and I cannot have it here. I'm not
going to hide under Mrs. McAdam's wing, or even yours, Master Farwell.
I've left all the comfort with my poor mother that I can. Never let her
know the truth, now I am going--going to start on My Road! I do not care
where it leads, it is mine, and I am not afraid."
In her ignorance and defiance she was splendid and stirred the dead
embers of Farwell's imagination to something like life. If she were
bent upon her course, if his hand could not rest upon the tiller of her
untested craft when she put out to sea, what could he do for her? To whom
turn?
"Is there not one, Master Farwell, just one, out beyond the In-Place,
who, for your sake, would help me at first until I learned the way?"
The question chimed in with Farwell's thought.
He leaned across the table separating him from Priscilla Glenn and asked
suddenly:
"Can you keep a secret?"
Promptly, emphatically, the answer came. "Yes, I can."
"Then listen! You must stay here, hide yourself, keep yourself as best
you may, while I go to--make arrangements. I will be no longer than I can
help, but it will take time. The house is well stocked; make yourself
comfortable. There are days when no one knows whether I am here or
elsewhere. Protect yourself until I return. And when"--Farwell paused and
moistened his lips--"when you are over the border, in the whirlpool, the
past, this life, must be forgotten. Raise up a high wall, Priscilla, that
no one can scale. Begin your new life from the hour you reach the States.
The one who will befriend you need know no more than I tell him; others
must take you on faith. At any moment your father, or some one like
Jerry-Jo, might hound you unless you live behind a shield. You
understand?"
He did not plead for his own safety, and he was, at that moment, humanly
thinking of hers alone.
"If you get the worst of it, come back; but leave the gate open only
for--yourself."
"Yes, yes." And now Priscilla's eyes were shining like stars. "I will do
all that you say; I feel so brave and strong and sure. I want the test,
and I will leave the door to Kenmore ajar until the day when I can push
it wide and enter as I will, taking or bringing my dear friends with me.
I see"--she paused and her eyes grew misty--"I see My Road, stretching on
and on, and it ends--oh, Master Farwell, it ends in my Heart's Desire!"
She was childishly elated and excited.
Farwell was fascinated.
"Your Heart's Desire?" he muttered; "and what is that?"
"Who knows until--she sees it? Hurry! hurry! Master Farwell, I long to
set forth."
Forgotten was her recent experience of horror; fading already was Kenmore
from her sight. Danger by the way did not daunt her; the man bowed before
her was but a blurred speck upon her vanishing horizon; then suddenly a
sound caught her ear.
"You--you--are"--she arose and stood beside Farwell, her hand upon his
bent shoulder--"you are crying; and for why?"
"Loneliness, remorse, and fear for _you_, poor child."
And then Priscilla came back to the grim room and the cowering form.
"I will bring happiness to you," she whispered; "this I swear. In some
way you shall be happy."
But Farwell shook his head.
"To bed," he said suddenly; "to bed, girl, and to sleep. I'll take a nap
out here on the couch. Before you awake I'll be on my way. Keep the
shades drawn; it's my way of saying I do not wish to be disturbed. Good
night, and God bless you, Priscilla."