They had gone through what seemed to Marjorie's city-bred eyes a dense
forest, but which Francis had assured her was only a belt of
woodland--quite negligible. And they had come out, now, on what
Francis called a clearing. It was thick with underbrush, little trees,
and saplings; while bloodroot flowered everywhere, and the gleam of
thickly scattered red berries showed even as they rode quickly over the
grass. In the center of things were the two cabins Francis had spoken
of; one quite large--Francis seemed given to understatement--and the
other of the conventional cabin size.
"The larger one is where my men stay," he explained. "Two of them are
there now. That's why you see a red shirt through the window. Pierre
is probably leaving it there to dry. I'll take you through if you
like, but it's just a rough sort of place. The lean-to is the
cook-place. All that cabin has inside is bunks, and a table or two to
play cards on, as far as I remember. The other cabin----"
He stopped short, and turned away, pretending to fuss over his
motor-cycle, which he had already laid down tenderly in just the right
spot and the right position. Marjorie, eager and swift, sprang close
to him like a squirrel. She did not look unlike one for the moment,
wrapped in the thick brown coat with its furry collar.
"The other one! Oh, show me that, and tell me all about it!" she
demanded ardently.
"The other one----" he said. "Well--it's nothing. That's where I
wanted to bring you to stay--before I knew there wasn't anything to it
but--this. I--fixed it up for--us."
In spite of all the things she had against Francis, Marjorie felt for
the moment as if there was something hurting her throat. She was sorry
for him, not in a general, pitying way, but the close way that hurts;
as if he was her little boy, and something had hurt him, and she
couldn't do anything about it.
"I'm--I'm sorry," she faltered, not looking at him.
He had evidently expected her to be angry--could she have been angry so
much as all that?--for he looked up with a relieved air.
"I thought you might like to go in there and rest while I went over to
where the work is being done," he said matter-of-factly. "I can't get
back to you or to the Lodge till just in time for Peggy's dance. But
you'll find things in the little cabin to amuse you, perhaps."
"Oh, I don't need things in the cabin to amuse me!" said Marjorie
radiantly. "There's enough outside of it to keep me amused for a whole
afternoon! But I do want to see in."
He took a key out of his pocket, and together they crossed the clearing
to where the little cabin stood, its rustic porch thick with vines.
Francis stood very still for a moment before he bent and put the key
into the padlock, and Marjorie saw with another tug at her heart that
his face was white, and held tense. She felt awed. Had it meant so
much to him, then?
She followed him in, subdued and yet somehow excited. He moved from
her side with a sort of push, and flung open the little casement
windows. The scented gloom, heavy with the aromatic odors of
life-everlasting and sweet fern, gave place to the fresh keen wind with
new pine-scents in it, and to the dappled sunshine.
"Oh, how _lovely_!" said Marjorie. "Oh, Francis! Do you know what
this place is? It's the place I've always planned I'd make for myself,
way off in the woods somewhere, when I had enough money. Only I
thought I'd never really see it, you know. . . . And here it is!"
He only said "Is it?" in a sort of suppressed way; but she said no
more. She only stood and looked about her.
There was a broad window-seat under the casement windows he had just
thrown open. It was cushioned in leaf-brown. A book lay on it, which
Marjorie came close to and looked at curiously.
"Oh--my own pet 'Wind in the Willows!'" she said delightedly. "How
queer!"
"No, not queer," said Francis quietly, from where he was unlocking an
inner door.
So Marjorie said no more. She laid the book down a little shyly and
investigated further. The walls were of stained wood, but apparently
there were two thicknesses, with something between to keep the heat and
cold out, for she could see a depth of some inches at the door. There
was a perfectly useless and adorable and absurd balcony over the
entrance, and a sort of mezzanine and a stair by which you could get to
it; something like what a child would plan in its ideas of the kind of
house it wanted. There was a door at the farther end leading into
another room, and crossing the wooden floor, with its brown fiber rug,
Marjorie opened it and entered a little back part where were packed
away most surprisingly a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom.
"Why, it isn't a cabin--it's a bungalow!" she said, surprised. "And
what darling furniture!"
The furniture was all in keeping, perfectly simple and straight-built,
of brown-stained wood. There was a long chair at one side of the
window-seat, with a stool beside it, and a magazine thrown down on the
stool. Everything looked as if it had just been lived in, and by some
one very much like Marjorie.
"When did you do all this?" she asked curiously.
"I didn't know you'd had any time for ages and ages. Was it----"
"Was it for some other girl," was hovering on her lips. But she did
not ask the question. As a matter of fact, she didn't want to hear the
answer if it was affirmative. "You don't remember," he said quietly.
"I put in some time training recruits not far from here. No, of course
you don't remember, because I never told you. It was in between my
first seeing you, and the other time when I was going around with you
and Billy and Lucille. After I saw you that first time, when I had to
come back here, near as it was to my old haunts,--well, I didn't know,
of course, whether I was ever going to marry you or not. But--there
was the cabin, my property, and I had time off occasionally and nothing
to do with it. So--well, it was for the you I thought might possibly
be. It made you realer, don't you see?"
Marjorie sank down as he finished, on the broad, soft window-seat; and
began to cry uncontrollably.
"Oh--oh--it seems so pitiful!" he made out that she was saying finally.
"I--I'm so sorry!"
Francis laughed gallantly.
"Oh, you needn't be sorry!" he said, smiling at her, though with an
obvious effort. "I had a mighty good time doing it, my dear. Why, the
things you said, and the way you acted while I was doing it for
you--you've no idea how nice they were. You sat just----"
"Oh, that was why the book was on the window-seat, and the other
things----"
"That was why," nodded Francis.
"And the stool close up to the lounge-chair----"
He nodded.
"You lay there and I sat by you on the stool," he said. "And you
whispered the most wonderful things to me----"
"I didn't!" said Marjorie, flushing suddenly. "You know perfectly well
all the time that was going on I--the real Me--was being a filing-clerk
in New York, and running around with Lucille, and being bored with
fussy people in the office, and hunting up letters for employers and
hoping they wouldn't discover how much longer it took me to find them
than it did really intelligent people----"
"No," said Francis, suddenly dejected, "you didn't. But--it was a nice
dream. And I think, considering all that's come and gone, you needn't
begrudge it to me."
"I don't," said Marjorie embarrassedly. "I--I only wish you wouldn't
talk about it, because it partly makes me feel as if my feelings were
hurt, and partly makes me feel terribly self-conscious."
"Then perhaps it _was_ you, a little," said Francis quietly.
Marjorie moved away from him, and went into the kitchen again, with her
head held high to hide the fact that her cheeks were burning. He
hadn't any right to do that to her. Why, any amount of men might be
making desperate love to dream-Marjories--Mr. Logan, for
instance,--only his love-making would probably be exceedingly full of
quotations, and rather slow and involved.
She turned, dimpling over her shoulder at Francis, who had been
standing in rather a dream, where she had left him.
"Francis! Do you suppose any other men are doing that?" she asked
mischievously. "Supposing our good friend Mr. Logan, for instance, has
installed me in a carved renaissance chair in his apartment, and is
saying nice things to me----"
"Marjorie!"
"Well, you see!" said Marjorie. "It isn't a good precedent."
"Well, I'm your husband," muttered Francis quite illogically.
"Oh, this has gone far enough," said Marjorie with determination. And
she went back to the kitchen.
"I'll leave you here, if that's the case," said Francis in a friendly
enough way. "I have to go over to the other cabin and see how things
are and then out to where some work is going on. Can you find
amusement here for awhile?"
"Oh, yes," said Marjorie. She felt a little tired, after all; and a
little desirous of getting away from Francis.
"Well, if you're hungry, I think there are some things in the kitchen;
and the stove is filled, and there are matches," he said in a
matter-of-fact way. She wondered if he intended her to get herself a
large and portentous meal. She did not feel at all hungry.
"If you'll tell me when you think you'll be back for me I'll have a
little lunch ready for you before we go," she was inspired to say.
"That's fine," said Francis with the gratitude which any mention of
food always inspires in a man. "Don't overwork yourself, though. You
must be tired yet from your trip."
She smiled and shook her head. She went over to the door with him, and
watched him as he went away, as bonny and loving a wife to all
appearances as any man need ask for. Pierre, who had been dwelling in
the cabin along with his red shirt, for the purpose of doing a
much-needed housecleaning for himself and his mates, looked out at them
with an emotional French eye.
"By gar, it's tarn nice be married!" he sighed, for his last wife had
been dead long enough to have blotted out in his amiable mind the
recollection of her tongue, and he was thinking over the acquirement of
another one.
Meanwhile Marjorie went back to the cabin that had been built around
the dream of her, picked up "The Wind in the Willows," and tried to
read. But it was difficult. Life, indeed, was difficult--but
interesting, in spite of everything. Francis was nice in places, after
all, if only he wouldn't have those terrifying times of being too much
in earnest, and over her. It was embarrassing, as she had said. She
rose up and walked through the place again. It was so dainty and so
friendly and so clean, so everything that she had always wanted--how
_had_ Francis known so much about what she liked?
She curled down on the window-seat, tired of thinking, and finally
slept again. It was the change to the crisp Canada air that made her
sleep so much of the time.
She sprang up in a little while conscious that there was something on
her mind to do. Then she remembered. She had promised to get
luncheon--or afternoon tea--or a snack--for Francis before he went.
She felt as if she could eat something herself.
"At this rate," she told herself, "I'll be as fat as a _pig_!"
She thought, as she moved about, to look down at the little wrist-watch
that had been one of Francis's ante-bellum gifts to her. And it was
half-past five o'clock. Then it came to her that by the time she had
something cooked and they had made the distance back to the lodge it
would be time for the dance, and therefore that this meal would have to
be supper at least. It was more fun than cooking in the kitchenette of
the apartment, because there was elbow-room. Marjorie's housewifely
soul had always secretly chafed under having to prepare food in a
kitchen that only half of you could be in at a time.
There was a trusty kerosene stove here, and a generous white-painted
cupboard full of stores and of dishes. She had another threatening of
emotion for a minute when she saw that the dishes were some yellow
Dutch ones that she remembered admiring. But she decided that it was
no time to feel pity--or indeed any emotion that would interfere with
meal-getting--and continued prospecting for stores. Condensed milk,
flour, baking-powder, and a hermetically-sealed pail of lard suggested
biscuits, if she hurried; cocoa and tins of bacon and preserved fruit
and potatoes offered at least enough food to keep life alive, if
Francis would only stay away the half-hour extra that he might.
Heaven was kind, and he did. The biscuits and potatoes were baked, the
fruit was opened and on the little brown table with the yellow dishes,
and the bacon was just frizzling curlily in the pan when Francis walked
into the kitchen.
If it seemed pleasantly domestic to him he was wise enough not to say
so. He only stated in an unemotional manner that there were eggs put
down in water-glass in the entry back; and as this conveyed nothing to
Marjorie he went and got some and fried them, and they had supper
together.
"You're a bully good cook," he told her, and she smiled happily.
Anybody could tell you that much, and it meant nothing. Sometimes
dealing with Francis reminded her of a Frank Stockton fairy-tale in her
childhood, where some monarch or other went out walking with a Sphinx,
and found himself obliged to reply "Give it up!" to every remark of the
lady's, in order not to be eaten.
"We won't have time to clear up much," was his next remark, looking
pensively at a table from which they had swept everything but one
biscuit and a lonely little baked potato which had what Marjorie termed
"flaws," and they had had to avoid. "But then, I suppose you might say
there wasn't much to clear. We'll stack these dishes and let Pierre or
somebody wash 'em. Us for the dance."
They piled the yellow dishes in a gleeful hurry, and Francis went out
and disposed of the scraps and did mysterious things to the kerosene
stove. They were whizzing back the way they had come before Marjorie
had more than caught her breath.
"We'll be a little late, if you have to do anything in the dressing
line. I have to shave," said Francis.
Marjorie, who really wasn't used to men, colored a little at this
marital remark, and then said that she supposed that it must have been
hard not to do it in the trenches.
"Oh, that was only the poilus," said Francis, and went on into a flood
of details about keeping the men neat for the sake of their morale. It
was interesting; but Marjorie thought afterward that perhaps it was
because anything would have been while she was whirring along through
the darkening woods in the keen, sharp-scented air. She loved it more
and more, the woods and the atmosphere, and the memory of the little
cabin. She promised herself that she would try some day to find the
place by herself. Maybe she could borrow a horse or a bicycle or some
means of locomotion and go seeking it in the forest.
"Now hurry!" admonished Francis as he landed her neatly by the veranda.
"Don't let them stop you for anything to eat, as Mother O'Mara will
want to."
So she scurried up to her room, not even waiting to hear the voice of
temptation, and began hunting her belongings through for something. It
was foolish, but she was more excited over the thought of this rough,
impromptu backwoods dance than she ever had been in the city by real
dances, or out with Cousin Anna at the carefully planned subscription
dances where you knew just who was coming and just what they were going
to wear.
Finally she gave up her efforts at decision, and went out to find
Peggy. Her room, she knew, was on the third floor.
"Come in!" said Peggy's joyous voice. Marjorie entered, and found
Peggy in the throes of indecision herself.
"You're just what I wanted to see!" said she. "Would you wear this
green silk that's grand and low, but a bit short for the last styles,
or this muslin that I graduated in, and it's as long as the moral law,
and I slashed out the neck--but a bit plain?"
"Why, that's just what I came to ask you," said Marjorie. "What kind
of clothes do you wear for dances like these?"
"Well, the grander the better, to-night, as I was telling everybody
over the telephone. Mrs. Schneider, now, the priest's housekeeper, she
has a red satin that she'll be sure to wear,--and the saints keep her
from wearing her pink satin slippers with it, but I don't think they
can. It would be a strong saint at the least," said Peggy
thoughtfully. "I'd better be in my green."
"Then I can wear----" said Marjorie, and stopped to consider. She had
one frock that was very gorgeous, and she decided to wear it. It would
certainly seem meek contrasted with Mrs. Schneider's red satin.
"Come on, and I'll bring this, and we can hook each other up," Peggy
proposed ardently, and followed her down in a kimono.
So they hooked each other up, except where there were snappers, and
admired each other exceedingly. Marjorie's frock was a yellow one that
Lucille had hounded her into buying, and she looked as vivid in it as a
firefly.
Francis had been given orders to wear his uniform, which he was doing.
He looked very natural that way to Marjorie; there were others of the
men in uniform as well. There were perhaps twenty people already
arrived when the girls came downstairs, seven or eight girls and twelve
or fourteen men. And Marjorie discovered that young persons in the
backwoods believed in dressing up to their opportunities. Some of the
frocks were obviously home-made, but all were gorgeous, even in the
case of one black-eyed _habitant_ damsel who had constructed a
confection, copied accurately and cleverly from some advanced
fashion-paper, out of cheesecloth and paper muslin!
One of the men was sacrificed to the phonograph, and for hours it never
stopped going. Records had been brought by others of the men and
girls, and Marjorie had never seen such gay and unwearied dancing. She
was tossed and caught from one big backwoodsman to another, the dances
being "cut-in" shamelessly, because the women were fewer than the men.
They nearly all danced well, French or Yankee or Englishmen. There
were a couple of young Englishmen whom she particularly liked, who had
ridden twenty miles, she heard, to come and dance. And finally she
found herself touched on the shoulder by her own husband, and dancing
smoothly away with him.
"This isn't much like the last time and place where we danced," he
said, smiling down at her and then glancing at the big, bare room with
its kerosene lamps and bough-trimmed walls. "Do you remember?"
She laughed and nodded. "Maxim's, wasn't it? But I like this best.
There's something in the air here that keeps you feeling so alive all
the time, and so much like having fun. In spite of all our tragedies,
and your very bad temper"--she laughed up at him impertinently--"I'm
enjoying myself as much as Peggy is, though I probably don't look it."
"There isn't so much of you to look it," explained Francis. Their eyes
both followed young Peggy, where, magnificent in her green gown and
gold slippers, she was frankly flirting with a French-Canadian who was
no match for her, but quite as frankly overcome by her charms. "But
what there is," he added politely, "is very nice indeed."
They laughed at this like a couple of children, and moved on toward a
less frequented part of the floor, for there was a big man in khaki,
one of Francis's men, who was coming dangerously near, and had in his
eye a determination to cut in. Francis and Marjorie moved downwards
till they were almost opposite the door. And as they were dancing
across the space before the door there was a polite knock on it. They
stood still, still interlaced, as an unpartnered man lounging near it
threw it open. And on the threshold, like a ghost from the past, stood
Mr. Logan. In spite of his mysterious nervous ailment he had nerved
himself to make the journey after Marjorie, and walked in, softly and
slowly, indeed, and somewhat travel-soiled, but very much himself, and
apparently determined on a rescue. Marjorie stared at him in horror.
Rescue was all right theoretically; but not in the middle of as good a
party as this. And what could Francis do to her now?
What he did was to release her with decision, and come forward with the
courtesy he was quite capable of at any crisis, and welcome Logan to
their home.
"You've caught us in the middle of a party," he concluded cordially,
"but I don't suppose you feel much like dancing. Perhaps after a
little something to eat and drink you'd like to rest a bit. Come speak
to Mr. Logan, my dear," he finished, with what Marjorie stigmatized as
extreme impudence; and Marjorie, in her firefly draperies, came forward
with as creditable a calm as her husband, and greeted Mr. Logan, after
which Francis called Mrs. O'Mara to show him to a room where he could
rest.
"I came to talk to you----" began Mr. Logan as he was led hospitably
away.
"I'll be at your service as soon as you've had a little rest and food,"
said Francis in his most charming manner.
He actually put his arm about Marjorie again and was going on with the
dance, when the telephone rang. The woman nearest it answered it, and
called Francis over excitedly. Marjorie, too proud to ask any
questions, was nevertheless eaten up with curiosity, and finally edged
near enough to hear above the phonograph.
"You'll be all right till to-morrow? Very well--I'll be out then and
see what to do."
"What's the matter?" demanded Peggy, who had no pride to preserve.
Francis smiled, but looked a little worried, too.
"Nothing very serious, but inconvenient. Pierre, the cook for the
outfit, suddenly decided to leave to-day, and did. He said he thought
it was time he got married again, and has gone in quest of a bride, I
suppose. The deuce of it is, we're so short-handed. Well, never
mind----"
"If mother wasn't so silly about the ghosts," began Peggy.
"Well, she is, if ye call it silly," said Mrs. O'Mara from where she
stood with her partner in all the glory of a maroon satin that fitted
her as if she were an upholstered sofa. "I'd no more go live in that
clearin' with the Wendigees, or whatever 'tis the Canucks talk about,
than in Purgatory itself. Wendigees is Injun goblins," she explained
to her partner, "and there's worse nor them, too."
She crossed herself expertly, and in almost the same movement swept her
partner, not of the tallest, away in a fox-trot. She fox-trotted very
well.
Marjorie went on dancing, and hoping that Mr. Logan would go to bed and
to sleep, or have a fit of nerves that would incapacitate him from
further interfering with her. But the hope was in vain, for Francis
appeared from nowhere in about fifteen minutes, and beckoned her to
follow him to where she knew Logan was waiting.
The two men sat down gravely in the little wooden room where Logan had
been shown. It was Francis who spoke first.
"Mr. Logan insists, Marjorie, that you appealed to him for rescue. He
puts it to me, I must say, very reasonably, that no sensible man would
travel all this way to bring back a girl unless she had asked him to.
He says that you wrote him that you were being treated severely."
"I didn't! I never did!" exclaimed outraged Marjorie, springing up and
standing before them. "Show me my letter!"
"Unfortunately," said Mr. Logan wistfully, "I destroyed it, because I
have always found that the wisest thing to do with letters. But I am
prepared to take my oath that you wrote me, asking me to help you. I
am extremely sorry to find that you are in such a position as
to--forgive me, Mr. Ellison, but it seems rather like it--to be so
dominated by this gentleman as not to even admit----"
"You see what it looks like," broke in Francis, turning to his wife
furiously. "Never ask me to believe you again. I don't trust you--I
never will trust you. Nobody will, if you keep on as you've begun. Go
back with him, then--you're not my slave, much as you may pretend it."
"I won't!" said Marjorie spiritedly. "I've had enough of this. I'll
stay here, if it takes ten years, till you admit that you've treated me
horribly, and misjudged me. I've played fair. I've no way of proving
it, against you two men, but I have! I'll prove it by any test you
like."
"There's only one way you can convince me that one word you've said
since you came up here was the truth," he told her, suddenly quiet and
cold. "If you stay, of your own free will, out there in the clearing;
if you take over the work that Pierre fell down on this evening, and
stay there looking after me and my men--I'll believe you. There's no
fun to doing that, just work; it stands to reason that you wouldn't do
that for any reason unless to clear yourself. If you don't want to do
that, you may go home with this gentleman; indeed, I won't let you do
anything else. Take your choice."
Marjorie looked at him for a moment as if she wanted to do something
violent to him. Then she spoke.