After two or three weeks in the forest, where “the slow-growing trees do
patience teach,” and the strong, effortless waters go by and seem only
merry and idle, there comes to some men a sense of being at home. It
does not come at once. We are all of us, in our busier lives of varied
work or pleasure, actors in ever-changing rôles. It can hardly be
otherwise. Almost the simplest lives involve some use of the art of the
actor. In the woods, away from men and their struggles and ambitions,
with the absence of need to be this or that, as duty, work, or social
claims demand, we lose the resultant state of tension, of being on
guard. It is readily possible to notice this effect in the rapid erasure
from the faces of the constantly strained, intellectual workman of the
lines of care which mark the features of those on whom, in one or
another position, the world relies to carry its burdens.
At first, on passing from great mental occupation to the life of the
forest, there is a period of unrest, of vague disappointment. But soon
or late, with repose of mind, and the cessation of endless claims upon
the sentinel senses, arises a distinct and less explicable indifference
to what a fortnight back was important. Our whole world of relation is
gradually changed. The passion, strife, and more or less worthy motives
of the great camps of men shrink to valueless dimensions, so that we
look back and wonder how this or that should have caused us a thought,
or called forth that irritability which is apt to be the offspring of
the unceasing strain of modern life.
At last we lose count of the days, and acquire a strange impression of
the remoteness of the tumult of the active life from which we have fled.
So complete may be this feeling that at times the busy past seems to
fade into dreamy unreality, as with sense of relief we give ourselves
unresistingly to the wholesome influence of the woodland and the waters.
Much of this ease of mind must be due to the physical well-being which
this existence surely brings to those who know how to get out of it the
best it holds.
This calm of spirit, and this feeling of perfect fullness of bodily
health, were what Archibald Lyndsay unfailingly secured in his summer
holiday. He had become careful to humor the pleasant mood, and to be
annoyed when anything took place which forced him even for an hour to
return to the problems of the outer world.
Such a summons had come from Anne. She had not explained why she had
spoken, nor could she have given a reason beyond the fact that she and
he habitually discussed in common all family interests, and that it was
not always quite safe for Anne to talk of them to Margaret. That gentle
little woman was indisposed to have others, as she said, “come between
her and her children,” and was in fact jealous, with a steadiness of
jealousy which unwillingly accepted even love as an excuse, and heard,
with unreasoning lack of logic, explanations, advice, or comment, which
another might have welcomed, or at least calmly considered. Thus, when
Anne wished to influence Margaret, she was apt to talk to the husband,
who, in turn, was shrewd enough to profit by the counsel without
betraying the counselor.
Archibald Lyndsay’s uneasiness had been extreme from the time Anne had
spoken of Carington. Now he was in the canoe with his wife, and was
being poled up-stream by the two Indians, who could understand but
little of the rapid speech of the white man, and before whom, therefore,
he could talk at ease. Lyndsay sat with his back to the bowman, his wife
facing him and lying against a pile of cushions. After a little he said,
speaking low:
“Margaret, has it occurred to you that possibly all this unavoidable
intimacy between Rose and young Carington might—well, might result in
some serious attachment, and—”
“Of course,” she broke in, with the wife’s privilege of apprehending
more than the husband has said, “of course, any one—”
“My dear Margaret, I wish you would listen until I have finished—”
“Very well, dear, I will listen. I only meant to remind you that I have
already spoken of this, and that you said it was not of any moment; and
that I was too much given to anticipating trouble. The fact is, Archie,
when you are on your holiday, you hate to have anything serious brought
to your mind, and you are pretty apt just to put it aside.”
Lyndsay, well versed in the fine art of matrimonial diplomacy, made no
instant reply to this arraignment.
“Perhaps, my good wife, we may be as to this a little alike. When you
are very full of a subject, or have decided it in your own mind, you are
inclined not to hear me out.”
“That may be so. I beg pardon, Archie. What is it?”
“What was I saying? Where was I? It is like taking the marker out of a
book you are reading.”
“You were saying it might result in a serious attachment.”
“Yes, that was it; or something to that effect. Perhaps I should not
have been quite so definite. Yes, that was it. It has seemed to me that
Rose is a girl who would readily be captured by—well, by a man who had a
chance to show force of character, and this very thing has happened. You
know, dear, in the ordinary chances of life these opportunities are
rare, but—well, you understand.”
She did; and also she had a suspicion that this bit of social reflection
was somebody else’s wisdom.
“Has Anne mentioned the matter?”
“I did say something to her about it yesterday—no, this morning.”
“I would much rather, Archie, when you want to discuss the children,
that you come to me first.”
Clearly he had brought this on himself. She went on:
“Anne is ready enough to interfere without being given an excuse, and
now, I suppose— She has not talked to Rose, I trust?”
“No, my dear. She has not and never will. That would be very unlike
Anne.”
“I don’t know. One never knows what to expect.”
“But you do now. Have you noticed of late how thin Anne looks? I
sometimes think she will trouble none of us very long.”
“I think you are rather prone to exaggerate about Anne. She isn’t well,
but these chronic invalids outlast the healthy.” Margaret had the
occasional hardness of the very tender. “As to Rose, it is as well to
comprehend the matter, and then, as the man seems unexceptionable, to
let Rose alone.”
Mrs. Lyndsay’s good sense usually kept her at the end on the ways of
reasonable decisions. If she could always have acted without speaking,
she would have had more credit for wisdom. But acts are rare, and speech
is not; so that people were apt to say, “Margaret Lyndsay is a very good
woman, but not always very wise.” Those who knew her best did not so
think, and especially Lyndsay, who well understood that great goodness
cannot coexist with foolishness, because the more valuable goodness must
have intelligence for one parent. There are people who reflect very
little about what they are going to say, and a great deal about what
they are about to do: of this kind was Lyndsay’s wife; but then, under
some circumstances, words are acts, or have their force, and so she made
mischief occasionally for herself and for others.
“I quite agree with you, my dear,” he replied. “It were best left to
Rose’s good sense. In the end you and I are sure enough to agree.”
“Perhaps you might give Anne a hint, or—shall I?” She was a trifle
afraid of her sister-in-law.
“It won’t be required. She has quite our own ideas about it”; and then
Margaret knew that Anne had fully discussed this question with Lyndsay.
She did not like it, but this time held her tongue.
The sun was low when they drew to the shore, a little above the point
where Joe had left his dugout two days before. The oblong white box of a
church stood on the upland, a dismal architectural symbol. Its closed
doors and windows, the broken steps at the entrance, and the ragged,
storm-worn paint looked dreary enough to Lyndsay as he passed with his
wife through the open gateway.
“How hideous it is!” he said. “Would not you like it, my dear Margaret,
if in the fall I had our boy brought home to rest among our own dead?”
“Very much, Archie.”
“It shall be done,” he said.
“Thank you.” By this time they had picked their way around the church
amidst growth of thistles and wild raspberry vines. Lyndsay led, and
presently they were in the scantily-peopled half-acre back of the
chapel. He stood a moment, confused.
“I don’t see the stone,” he said.
“What? What is that?”
He turned, and said again, “I don’t see it!”
Margaret went by him swiftly.
“It was here! here!” and, utterly bewildered, she stood, looking up at
her husband, or down at the grave, and then around her. “Archie! It is
gone! This is—is horrible.”
Lyndsay paused a moment. He was both troubled and perplexed; but the
intellectual puzzle was uppermost, and, as usual with him, was merely
fed with motives for action and decisions by the shock of horror with
which the thing affected him. As for his wife, she looked down again at
the trampled ground and broken flower-stems, and then saying, “What is
it? Where is it?” began to go to and fro, irregularly, among the graves,
and along the tumbling stone wall of the inclosure.
At last she ran, like a scared thing, back to her husband, threw her
arms about him, and burst into violent sobbing.
“Oh, my boy! my boy!” she cried. Her face twitched, and she broke out
into unnatural laughter. Lyndsay caught her as she reeled to and fro.
“Take care, Margaret! Margaret! Be quiet. No more of this! I command you
to control yourself!”
As he spoke he lifted her slight figure, and carried her to the gate.
“Sit down,” he said. “Now, no more of this! I want your clearest
head—your help.”
“Yes, yes, Archie,” she said. “I will try. I—oh, I couldn’t help it!
Don’t scold me.”
His eyes filled. “No, dear love, not I. But keep still. I want to look.
This is a mere vulgar, brutal theft. Wait a moment, can you?”
“Yes, but don’t be long.”
He walked back again to the little grave, and carefully examined the
place. It was broken and battered by large footmarks, and these led away
toward the low stone wall, and were lost in the underbrush beyond the
broken fence-rail on the far side of the unused road. He saw that the
break in the rail was recent. At last he returned to his wife.
“The grave, dear, is not disturbed. Some fool has stolen the stone. Come
with me; I want to go through the drift yonder, and I do not want to
leave you alone.”
She stood up, and followed him around the church, and back to where he
had found the rail broken. “Ah, here again is a footmark,” he said. At
the river he walked along the margin, and at length came upon the place
where a dugout had been drawn up and where were other footprints in the
wet clay margin.
“It is very simple,” he said. “We shall soon know. But why any man
should do such a thing I cannot imagine.”
“He ought to be killed,” said our quiet Margaret.
“That will do for the present,” he said, and then called to his men to
drop down from the landing where he had left them. In a minute or two
they were at the shore.
“Now, dear,” he said, as they came near, “try to keep this thing a
secret for the few days left us here. It is an intolerable bit of
wickedness, possibly of malice, but this I do not believe. The more
quiet we can keep it, the better my chance of discovering who has done
it.”
“I will try; but Anne!”
“Oh, Anne, of course, and Rose perhaps. It is the men who must not know,
and the boys.”
“That is easier. What shall you do about it, Archie? Who could have been
so cruel?”
“Unusual crime,” he said, thoughtfully, “has commonly unusual causes. I
do not as yet know what I shall do. And now, dear, let us not discuss it
any more. And will you tell Anne, or shall I?”
“I would prefer to do it myself, Archie.”
As the sick animal knows by instinct what wild grasses it shall eat,
this woman apprehended her need for a woman’s strength and sure
community of feeling. She was as certain to fall back on Anne’s opinion
or help in the end, or where she herself was honestly puzzled, as she
was to resent her sister-in-law’s independent assertion of her right to
have a say where the question was one as to which Mrs. Lyndsay thought
that the title mother or wife was in itself a victorious defense of all
decisions needed in either capacity.
In this present trouble it was a woman’s help she wanted. She had been
for the first time in her life close to an hysterical attack. Without
the forceful tonic of her husband’s call upon her self-command, the
discipline of years would have been of no avail: she would have been
entirely routed. As it was, there had been sad disorder in the ranks of
the governing qualities of a being unused to yield to the lawlessness of
unrestrained emotion. This nearness of defeat was more or less due to
the preparative softening influences with which she came to say a silent
farewell to her dead, and to the suddenness of the shock of horror and
of insult.
None turned to Anne Lyndsay in vain. As Lyndsay and his wife approached
the cabin, where, as usual, Anne was lying in her hammock, she saw at
once that something had gone wrong. Her long walk was exacting the sad
price of all physical exertion which took her beyond the limits of the
most carefully measured exercise. She was in great pain, and, for a half
hour, had been resolutely struggling to ignore it by forcing herself to
give deliberate attention to a difficult passage in the second part of
“Faust.” She dropped her dictionary as they came up, put a marker in the
page she had been reading, and rose on one elbow.
“Go and talk to Anne,” said Lyndsay. “Is Rose still out, sister?”
“Yes; and the boys, except Ned. He is in the wood, somewhere. I am all
alone, Margaret. What is it, dear?”
“Something very unpleasant has happened, Anne; nothing serious—I mean,
no personal calamity. Margaret will explain.” And so saying, he went
into the cabin, while Mrs. Lyndsay sat down on a low stool, and, letting
her head fall on Anne’s bosom, began to cry. But this time she had
herself well in hand, and the burst of tears was wholesome, as Anne
instantly knew. She let her hand fall over Margaret’s neck.
“Have it out, dear,” she said. “A man always says, ‘Don’t cry’; a woman
says, ‘Cry; it will help you.’ Cry as much as you want to. God knew our
wants when he gave us tears. No; don’t try to explain,—not yet, not
yet.” And the reassuring hand put back a stray lock of hair, and rested
in tender caress on the wet cheek.
Both were still for a few minutes, save for an occasional sob.
“Now I am better, Anne. I can talk now. How well you know!—what is it,
dear?” she added, abruptly, for a brief exclamation, “Oh, my God!” broke
from Anne’s lips. She was in the extremity of physical pain. The tone
and words were unusual, as coming from these lips, and Margaret,
instantly turning aside from her own trouble, caught the look of
suffering on the other woman’s face. She wiped her eyes hastily.
“Are you ill, Anne?”
“Yes. Oh, not ill! I had a stitch in my poor old side.” Then she laughed
low. “I am sure it is years older than the rest of me. Get me your
smelling-salts.”
Margaret got up at once and went into the cabin. As for Anne,
smelling-salts, hot-water bags, sedatives, and, in fact, the whole
armament of the invalid, were to her altogether unpleasant. But now she
was in some want of a minute to herself. She got it, and more, for
Margaret was some time before she came out with the smelling-salts and a
flask.
“No, dear,” said Anne; “no brandy.” She used the smelling-salts, and
returned them to her sister-in-law. “I hate all scented things. I am
better now. Tell me all about it, and don’t hurry. What is it?”
“We went up to my boy’s grave, and, Anne, Anne, some one had trampled it
all over—trod on my—my dead!”
“Well, dear. Take care! Don’t give way, or you will go to pieces. There!
What else?”
“And some cruel brute has taken away the tombstone. It was not there. Do
you understand?” she cried, with fierce energy. “They stole it! It is
gone!”
Anne understood well enough; but the fact, as told her, was so strange,
so unlooked for, that she was amazed for a brief time beyond power of
comment. The next moment all her heart went out to the mother at her
side.
“It is horrible!” she cried. “Oh, for me, even, for me! And for you,
what must it be?” She saw, as few would have done, the broken
flower-fence, the rudely profaned and trampled grave, the gap in the
earth where the stone had been. “For me, horrible—but, my dear God! what
must it have been for you!”
“Yes; I am his mother!” She was moved because Anne did not pretend to
share the maternal intensity of her feelings. “Only a mother could know.
Archie says I must not think about it; but that is beyond my power—I
must think about it. Who could have done it? I can’t see any reason in
the theft. Do you think it could have been to annoy us, or to get a
reward? I—”
“No,” said Anne. “Neither.”
“Then what could it have been? There must have been a motive.”
“Yes, there must have been.”
“And what? We are liked, I think, on the river. “We do try to help these
people.”
“Yes.”
“Who could have done it?”
“Joe Colkett!”
“Archibald! Archibald!” cried Margaret, instantly rising. He came out at
once.
“What is it?”
“Anne says Colkett took it!”
“What does this mean, Anne?” he said.
“Only this: Rose told us yesterday, you remember, that Colkett had been
to see Dorothy about an inscription for a board to set over his wife’s
children. You heard her speak of it.”
“Yes; but what then?”
“That man is the thief!”
“You are a most astonishing woman, Anne. What reason have you? You must
have a reason.”
“I shall have; but now, as yet, I have none.”
“I am sorry, then. You have quite upset Margaret.”
“No. I saw the man take it.”
“Saw him? Nonsense—I beg pardon, dear, I don’t quite mean that.” He was
nice always in his home ways with the women he loved. “I mean that you
have spoken unadvisedly.”
“Yes, I had no advice from within or without, for that matter; but I
know that man is the thief.”
“It is a serious charge.”
“It is. When you come to think it over, you will agree with me.”
Lyndsay was silent a moment. Then he called, “Tom! Tom! I am going up to
the Island Camp; put the canoe in the water.”
“What are you going to do, Archie!” asked Margaret.
“I want to talk to Carington. He knows all these people; has known them
for years.”
“Shall you tell him what my own belief is?” said Anne.
“Certainly! Why not?”
“But,” exclaimed Margaret, “do you not think—”
“No. No, dear, I don’t think at all as yet. I have no material for
thinking—very little, at least.” He spoke with unhabitual impatience.
“Evidence is what we want.”
He was annoyed by this mysterious crime in the midst of his idle hours;
troubled by his wife’s distress; and finally, if but to a slight extent,
irritated at Anne’s unreasoning dash at a decisive conclusion. Perhaps
he was the more disturbed because, on hearing her, he had at once begun
to put together facts, always within his own knowledge, which he felt
should have caused him to have gone, under guidance of reason, toward
the goal which she had reached at a bound.
“I shall be back in three or four hours. Do not keep the dinner waiting.
Good-by.”
“But, Archibald, do listen to me. It is not about—about this—” And she
followed him as she spoke, and, at the edge of the cliff, said a few
words hastily, but with earnestness.
“No,” he said, so that Anne heard. “I see—I see, of course; but there is
no help for it; and, after all, Carington is not a man—” And the rest
was lost to Anne’s ear.
“Perhaps not,” said Margaret. “I suppose you know best.” And she went
back to Anne.