THE MYSTERY OF THE LITTLE WOOD REVEALED AT LAST
Was it an accident that when Philip presented himself at the White
House Miss Le Breton should be alone to receive him? If so, it was a
pretty lucky accident, thought the young man.
Eweretta was sitting idly by the bright wood fire, her slim hands
folded in her lap.
A strange tremor ran through Philip as she rose to meet him.
He knew that she must have felt his hand tremble when he took hers.
He began to babble strange words.
“Forgive me, Miss Le Breton!” he stammered. “I am not myself. Oh! you
will scarcely think me sane when I tell you that for the moment I
thought you were _Eweretta_.”
“We are alike,” she answered, becoming ashen pale.
“Yes, but so different--yet more than once I have seen Eweretta looking
out of your eyes.”
She turned her face away into shadow.
“But why should that move you, since you have forgotten her--or, at
least, ceased to grieve for her?” she asked.
“Miss Le Breton, I tried to forget her. Can you blame me? I could not
have lived if I had let myself so remember. I am a man few like and
fewer love. She loved me with all her soul. I lost her. But till I
saw you I can say my heart remained in her grave. Oh, I must speak.
I must say what is in my heart, even if it is to call upon me bitter
disappointment. I am unfaithful at last to her dear memory, for I love
you!”
He came close to her and took her hand. Her face was turned from him.
“I love you, Aimée, as I never loved Eweretta, though God knows I
loved her well! Until to-day I thought I should never tell you this.
Ah! I said I was unfaithful, but I think that was not true. You _are_
Eweretta and yourself in one to me. It is as if my old love had risen
from her grave, away in Qu’Appelle, and come to me, nobler, greater and
more beautiful! If you can love me, then you can make of me something
worthy. I have done many things just for your sake--tried to be better
and conquer my faults. I have done this, though I thought you would
never be anything to me. I have tried to act as you would approve, if
you knew. And till to-day, I thought you belonged to another. Aimée!
will you be my good angel? Will you be Eweretta to me?”
She turned shining eyes upon him, eyes brimming with tenderness as she
said: “Yes, I will be Eweretta to you.”
He caught her to him in a passionate embrace.
Neither of them heard Alvin enter. They thought only of themselves and
the heaven into which they had entered, till a heavy sob broke the
silence, and both turned to see Alvin with his face hidden by his hands.
“Uncle! dear uncle!” cried Eweretta, going to him swiftly.
“I am going to do it!” he exclaimed, “I am going to break my promise!
Philip Barrimore, this is not _Aimée Le Breton_. It is your own
_Eweretta_!”
Then he gasped for breath. Philip stared from one to the other in
staggering bewilderment.
“It was my sin--my own great sin,” went on Alvin.
Then, in a burst, he told the whole miserable story, finishing by
saying: “Marry, my children--soon. I must wait to see that. Then I go
back to the prairie.”
His face looked different from what they had ever seen it--from what
anyone had ever seen it. It was happy.
“I am no longer the ill-starred Thirteenth Man,” he asserted. “I am
been so fortunate as to see the lovers who were separated by my crime
reunited, and the money of which I robbed an angel given back.”
Eweretta flung her arms about her uncle’s neck. She was no longer
the calm Miss Le Breton. She was the old impulsive Eweretta, and was
weeping unrestrainedly.
“Uncle, dear uncle, you must not leave us and go back to the old hard,
lonely life. We want you, Philip and I, and no one must ever know this
story. Strangers would not ever understand how you were hunted and
driven always; how you never had a chance; how you thought yourself
cursed from your birth, and that nothing seemed to matter. Strangers
would not know that you had all the time a big, loving, starved heart,
starved for love, that no one gave you, even your mother. But _I_ love
you, Uncle Thomas, I love you!”
The rough Colonial’s face had upon it a light indescribable, as he
said: “_I_ unlucky! I, who have found love! No, I am rich. I am
fortunate! The prairie will be no more lonely. I shall live in this
hour. But I must go--yes, I must go! the prairie calls, and calls.”
A wistful look came into Alvin’s eyes, as if he were gazing on a far,
far horizon.
“Ah, I am homesick! homesick!” he said in deep, lingering tones.
“Homesick, for the old rough, wild life. How homesick you can neither
of you know, even Eweretta, for she never roughed it. I must leave you
now--leave you to realize your happiness. Before you go, Philip” (it
was the first time that he had called the young man by his Christian
name), “before you go, come to me in the little wood, and I will show
you something. The gate will be open.”
Philip had not spoken one word. A war had been going on within him,
a war of conflicting emotions. The affection which had of late been
growing within him for Thomas Alvin was battling with anger and
indignation at the crime of the man who had so nearly wrecked the
happiness of himself and Eweretta.
“Philip,” said Eweretta, reading his thought, “we must be merciful if
we are to expect mercy.”
“Dear heart!” he said, drawing her once more into his arms, “you
are right. You are always right! But _why_, tell me why you did not
disclose the secret to your old lover?”
Her eyes smiled.
“At first I thought you had ceased to love your Eweretta. I wanted to
see if you would love her again in the person of Aimée Le Breton.”
“But how could I have been so blind as not to have known you under any
disguise?” he cried.
“Yet it is so simple,” she told him. “You were assured of my death.
You even went to Canada to see my grave. You knew I had a sister so
marvellously like me as to be easily mistaken for me. You were told I
was Aimée Le Breton. Then again, sorrow robbed me of my old gaiety,
changed my disposition. Oh, the delusion was easy enough to carry out!”
“It was carried out, in any case,” he told her. “Yet there were moments
when I saw the soul of my lost love looking out of your dear eyes.
Oh, my darling! a miracle has happened! And can you love a vain,
cantankerous brute like me?”
“I see deeper,” she said simply. “The Philip I thought dead is alive
again. We were _both_ dead, dearest, and now we are alive.”
It was then that Philip brought the little ring from his waistcoat
pocket, and once more it was placed on Eweretta’s finger.
It was late when the lovers passed out of the house through the mist
and the dripping bushes to the gate which led into the little wood.
A strange sense of mystery seemed to enwrap them. They were to know at
last what lay within the carefully-guarded enclosure.
A lantern stood upon a slab of stone at the open door which was fixed
in the high brick wall.
They entered, and saw. Within the walled enclosure was a roughly-built
“shack,” or log cabin, in which a light was burning.
Alvin heard them and opened the door of the shack, inviting them to
enter.
A lamp burned upon a roughly-constructed table in the one room, showing
the meagre contents--a table, a chair and a bed. The bed was of rough
boards nailed to the log-wall and, for a pillow, an old saddle did
duty, aided by an old coat rolled up. A colored blanket and a rug made
of tawny wolf-skins, home-sewn, completed the bed-furniture.
Alvin offered the one chair to Eweretta, requesting Philip to sit upon
the bed. He himself sat on a block of wood somewhat like a “butcher’s
block.”
In the full light of the lamp the young people saw the Colonial--really
saw him as he was. He was wearing a shirt of dark flannel, open at the
neck. He was also wearing “jumpers.”
“You see now, don’t you,” said Alvin, “that I am homesick? I made
myself a hidden refuge. I built a shack and, shut in there, tried to
think myself back in the North-West. There upon a nail hangs the gun
that has been my companion for so many years.”
He took it down and laid it across his knees, caressing it with his
hands.
He talked on, and neither Eweretta nor Philip interrupted him.
“This gun has travelled many a mile slung behind the wagon, and I’ve
brought down many a prairie chicken with it. You should see the prairie
chickens feasting on the stooks! Ah, they are very good eating! I guess
I’ll be too late for the ‘fall’ ploughing. But I shall get a job,
never fear. You won’t keep me long waiting, will you? now you have
seen--_this_? I can’t go till I see you married, and you can see now
how homesick I am!”
Philip was holding Eweretta’s hand. She was silently weeping.
“I can’t bear to think of your going back to that hard, lonely life,
uncle,” she exclaimed. “At least, take enough money for some land and
stock. For love of me, take that! I see well enough that you can’t be
happy here, but do--oh, _do_ let me help you to make life easy out
there!”
“You may lend me the fare out, Eweretta,” he answered. “I will repay
it. Oh, I shall be able to repay it! I know that the ‘Thirteenth
Man’ will have luck from now. The spell is broken. I shall miss the
threshing. Ah, the threshing gets quickly done! Over a thousand bushels
of wheat or upwards of two thousand bushels of oats in a day! Man! They
go to sleep in this country!”
Alvin bared his brawny arm and looked at it. “This can work,” he said.
“Why, once I pulled a cow out alone that had got buried under two
settings of straw. It had burrowed where the separator had stood, and
the straw had slid off the top with the weight of the snow and buried
the poor beast.”
Thomas Alvin was, they saw, drunk with Canada this night. They saw
that it would be cruelty to try to prevent his going back. They knew,
moreover, that it would be useless to do so.
Eweretta came close to him and put her arms round his neck, her wet
cheek against his.
“But you will come back and see us, uncle. You promise that?”
And he promised.