"I see what you mean," she said. "I wasn't sporting in the first
place--I wouldn't live up to my bargain. That's made you more apt to
believe that I've been acting the same way ever since. You don't think
I can see _any_thing through. Well--not particularly for your
sake--more for my own, I guess--I'm going to see this through, if I die
doing it. I'll stay--and take Pierre's place, Francis."
Francis's severe young face did not change at all.
"Very well," he said.
"But you understand," she went on, "that I'm not doing this to win
anything but my own self-respect. And at the end of the three months,
of course, I shall go back to New York. And you'll let me go, and see
that I get free."
"I wouldn't do anything else for the world," said Francis in the same
unmoved voice.
"Very well, then--we understand each other." She turned to Logan, who
had sprung to his feet and tried to interfere a couple of times while
she talked. "And please remember that this arrangement does not go
beyond us three," she said. "I would prefer that no one else knew how
matters stood."
Logan looked a little baffled. He was ten years older than either of
them, but so many actual clashing things happening had never come his
way before. His ten years' advantage had been spent writing stylistic
essays, and such do not fit one for stepping down into the middle of a
lot of primitive young emotions. He felt suddenly helpless before
these passionate, unjust, emotional young people. He felt a little
forlorn, too, as if the main currents of things had been sweeping them
by while he stood carefully on the bank, trying not to get his feet
wet. A very genuine emotion of pity for Marjorie had brought him up
here, pity more mixed with something else than he had been willing to
admit. It was the first thing he had done for a long, long time that
was romantic and unconsidered and actual. And it appeared that, after
all, he wasn't needed. Concentration on the nuances of minor
fifteenth-century poets had unfitted him for being swept on, as these
had been, by the world-currents. They had married each other, pushed
by the mating instinct in the air--the world's insistence on marriage
to balance the death that had swept it. Now they were struggling to
find their balance against each other, to be decent, to be fair, to
make themselves and each other what they thought they ought to be. He
could see what they were doing and why much more clearly than they
could themselves. But he couldn't be a part of it--he had stood aside
from life too long, with his nerves and his passion for artistic
details and pleasures of the intellect.
But he bowed quietly, and smiled a little. He felt suddenly very tired.
"Certainly it shall go no farther," he assured her. "And I owe you an
apology for the trouble which I fear I have ignorantly brought upon
you. If there is anything I can say----"
She shook her head proudly, and Francis, fronting them both, made a
motion of negation, too.
"You must be tired," he added to his gesture. "Or would you care to
watch the dancers awhile?"
"No, I thank you," said Mr. Logan courteously in his turn. "If you
will tell me of some near-by hotel----"
"There's only this," explained Francis. "But I think your room is
ready by now. Miss O'Mara--I'll call her--will show you to it."
Peggy, summoned by a signal whistle from the ballroom, convoyed Logan
upstairs with abundant good-will and much curiosity. She had never
seen any one like him before, and took in his looks and belongings with
the intense and frank absorption of an Indian. Indeed, as she
explained to Marjorie, whom she met at the foot of the stairs, it was
only by the help of the saints and her own good decency that she didn't
follow him into his room and stay there to watch him unpack.
"With the charming, purry voice he has, and all the little curlicues
when he finishes his words, and the little cane--does he never sleep
without it, would you say?--and the little Latin books he reads----"
But here Marjorie pulled her up.
"How on earth do you know he reads little Latin books?"
Peggy flushed generously.
"Well, if you must know, I gave one teeny weeny peek through the crack
in the door after I left him, and he was thrown down across his cot
like a long, graceful tomcat or leopard or something, and he pulled a
little green leather book out of his pocket and went to reading it on
the spot. 'Pervigilium Veneris,' its name was. All down the side."
Marjorie had heard of it; in fact, in pursuance of her education Mr.
Logan had made her read several translations of it. It had bored her a
little, but she had read it dutifully, because she had felt at that
time that it would be nice to be intellectually widened, and because
Logan had praised it so highly.
"Oh, yes, I know," she said.
"And is it a holy book?" Peggy inquired.
"Just a long Latin poem about people running around in the woods at
night and having a sort of celebration of Venus's birthday," said
Marjorie absently. It occurred to her Logan would have been worse
shocked if he could have heard her offhand summing-up of his pet poem
than he had been by her attitude about going back to New York with him.
But she had more important things on her mind than Latin poetry. When
Peggy met her she was on her way to go off and think them out.
"Good-night, Peggy," she said. "I'm going to bed. I have to get up
early and go to work."
Peggy laughed.
"Don't talk nonsense. The dance isn't half over, and everybody's crazy
to dance with you. You can sleep till the crack of doom to-morrow, and
with not a soul to stop you."
Marjorie shook her head, smiling a little.
"No. I'm going over to the clearing to do the cooking for the men. I
told Francis I would, tonight."
Peggy made the expected outcry.
"To begin with, I'll wager you can't cook--a little bit of a thing like
you, that I could blow away with a breath! And you'd be all alone
there. Mother won't do it because she's afraid of wraiths"--Peggy
pronounced it "wraths," and it was evidently a quotation from Mrs.
O'Mara--"and it would be twice as scary for you. Though, to be sure, I
suppose you'd have Francis. I suppose that's your reason, the both of
you--it sounds like the bossy sort of plan Francis makes."
This had not occurred to Marjorie. But she saw now that the only
plausible reason not the truth that they could give for her taking
Pierre's job was her desire to see more of her husband.
"Well, it's natural we should want to see more of each other," she
began lamely.
"Oh, I suppose so," said Peggy offhandedly, and with one ear pricked
toward the music. "But when my time comes I hope I won't be that bad
that I drag a poor girl off to do cooking, so I can see the more of
her."
"You're getting your sexes mixed," said Francis coolly, strolling up
behind the girls. "Peggy, your partner is looking for you. I'll take
you over after luncheon to-morrow, Marjorie."
"Very well," she said. "Good-night."
If his heart smote him, as Marjorie's little, indomitable figure
mounted the stairs, shoulders back and head high, he made no sign of
it. Instead, in spite of the preponderance of men, he went back to the
dance, and danced straight through till the end had come.
Marjorie went to bed, as she had said she would do. She did not go to
sleep. Marjorie, as has been said, was not brave--that is, she could
and did do brave things, but she always did them with her heart in her
slippers. She did not know what the cooking would be, but she was sure
it would be worse than she could imagine, and too much for her
strength. The only comfort was the recollection that the dear brown
cabin was hers to live in, every moment that she was not at work. She
would have that rest and comfort. There was the shelf of books chosen
for her by the far-off Francis who was not doubtful of her, and loved
her and dreamed about her, and built a house all around the vision of
her. And there might be times when she could hurry up a great deal,
and lie on the window-seat and look out at the woodlands and dream.
She finally went to sleep. She wakened with a start, early, vaguely
remembering that there was a great deal to do. Full remembrance came
as she sprang out of bed and ran down the hall to her bath. She had to
pack, and after luncheon Francis would carry her off to imprisonment
with hard labor. And--why on earth was she doing it, when she could
still go back with Logan? For a long half hour she struggled with
herself, one minute deciding; to go back, the next deciding to stay.
Finally she faced the thing. She would see it through, if it killed
her. She would make Francis respect her, if it took six months instead
of three at hard labor. She would take the wages for the work she had
done, and go back home a free, self-respecting woman.
She dressed herself quickly, and went down to breakfast, braced to play
her part before the O'Maras. Short as her time with them, she was fond
of them already.
"I think your devotion is a bit hard on yer wife," remarked Mrs.
O'Mara, whom Peggy had put in possession of the facts. "If I were her,
I'd value an affection more that had less o' dishwashin' in it!"
"She's helping me over a pretty hard place." Francis said this calmly.
But he flushed in a way that, as Marjorie knew, meant he was disturbed.
"You know every man counts just now, and labor is cruelly scarce. I'm
doing mine and a day-laborer's work besides, now. And the contract has
to be finished."
"Well, of course, there's a gown or so for her in it," said Mrs. O'Mara
comfortably. "And 'tis no more than a woman should do, to help out her
man if he needs it. Have ye any aprons or work-dresses, me dear, for
if not Peggy and me will make ye some. We've a bolt of stuff."
"No, and I'd be very glad if you would," said Marjorie, feeling the
thing more irrevocable every moment.
"And rest this morning, and I'll pack for you," said Peggy
affectionately. She led Marjorie out to the swing herself, and went
upstairs to pack before she went to help her mother with the breakfast
dishes.
Marjorie was too restless to lie still. She went out and walked about
the place, and came back and lay down, and so put in the interminable
hours till luncheon. After luncheon Francis appeared like the
messenger of doom he was, put her and a small bag in the side-car and
carried her off to her place of servitude.
The ride, in spite of all, was pleasant. For a while neither of them
spoke. Then Francis did.
"I feel as if this was unfair to you--for apparently the O'Maras think,
and I suppose everybody will, that you really are doing this to show
your fondness for me. I shall have to ask you to let them think so."
"I have," she answered curtly.
"You don't understand. I--I am going to have to stay in the cabin with
you. . . . There is the little upstairs balcony, I can bunk in that.
You know--the one over the door, with the little winding stair leading
up to it. I--I'm sorry."
This was one more thing Marjorie hadn't counted on. But after all what
did it matter? She expected to be so deadly tired from the work she
had promised to do that she would never know whether Francis was in the
house at all. And if there really were bears once in awhile it would
really be better not to be all alone with them.
"Very well," she said. She looked hungrily at the thick trees they
were speeding through. She supposed she would never have time to lie
out under a tree, or go hunting for flowers and new little wood-paths
again. She had read stories of lone, draggled women in logging-camps,
toiling so hard they hadn't even time to comb their hair, but always
wore it pulled back tight from their forehead. This wasn't a
logging-camp, but she supposed there was very little difference.
She was very quiet for awhile. Francis, turning finally, a little
uneasy, found that she was quietly crying. It happened that he had
never seen her cry before.
"Please, Marjorie!" he begged in a terrified voice. "Please stop! Is
there anything I can do?"
"You have done everything," she said in a little quiet voice that tried
not to break, but did, most movingly, on the last word.
She said nothing more after that. After awhile she got hold of
herself, dried her eyes, and began to watch the woods desperately
again, as if she would never see them any more. If she had but known
it, she was making Francis suffer as much as she was suffering herself.
"I'll bring the rest of your things over now," he said, when he had
carried her little bag in and put it on her bed. He went out and left
her alone, in the little wood-walled bedroom with its high, latticed
windows, and Indian blankets and birch-bark trimmings. She lay on the
bed apathetically awhile, then she began to notice things a little.
There was a kodak on her bureau. There were snowshoes, too small for a
man surely--if you could tell of a thing the size of snowshoes--hanging
on the wall. There was a fishing-rod case, with something hanging near
it that she imagined was a flybook. There was a little trowel, and a
graceful birch-bark basket, as if some one might want to go out and
bring home plants. She got up finally, her curiosity stronger than her
unhappiness, and investigated.
There was dust on everything. That is, except in one particular. On
top of each article she had noticed was a square, clean place about the
size of an envelope. There had been a note lying or pinned to each one
of the things.
It occurred to Marjorie that a man who had not noticed the dust might
have overlooked one of the notes; and she commenced a detailed and
careful search. The kodak told no tales, nor the snowshoes. The
fishing-rod was only explanatory to the extent of being too light and
small for a man, and the basket's only contents were two pieces of
oilcloth, apparently designed to keep wet plants from dripping too much.
She rose and tiptoed out into the living-room. There might be more
notes there. Her spirits had gone up, and she was laughing to herself
a little--it felt like exploring Bluebeard's castle. She investigated
the book case, shaking out every book. She ran up to the toy balcony
and even pushed out the couch there, noticing for the first time that
the balcony had curtains which could be drawn. But there was nothing
behind couch or curtains. She put her hands on the little railing and
looked down at the room below her, to see if she had missed anything.
And her eyes fell on a cupboard which was level with the wall at one
side, and had so escaped her eye heretofore. Also there was a
scrapbasket which might tell tales.
She dashed down the little stair, and made for the scrapbasket, but
Francis was more thorough than she had thought, and it was empty. She
opened the cupboard and looked in--there was a little flashlight lying
near it, and she illuminated the dark with it. There in the cupboard
lay a banjo.
"Gracious!" breathed Marjorie. "What a memory!" For she _could_ play
the banjo, and it appeared that she must have said so to Francis in
those first days. "He must have dashed home and made out lists every
night!" she concluded as she dragged it out. It was unstrung, but new
strings lay near it, coiled in their papers. And under the papers, so
like them that he had forgotten to destroy it, lay a veritable note.
"It isn't really from him to me," she thought, her heart beating
unaccountably as she sat back on her heels and tore the envelope open.
"It's from the Francis he thought he was, to the Marjorie he thought I
was."
But she read it just the same.
"For my dear little girl, if she comes true," was the superscription.
"I don't know whether you'll find this first or last, honey. But it's
for you to play on, sometimes, in the evenings, sitting on the
window-seat with me, or out on the veranda if you'd rather. But
wherever you sit to play it, I may stay quite close to you, mayn't I?"
She was tired and overstrained. That was probably why she put both
arms around the banjo as if it was somebody that loved her, and cried
on it very much as if it were a baby. And when she went back to her
room to replace things as she had found them she carried it with her.
She was calmer after that, for some reason. She had the illogical
feeling that some one had been kind to her. She put her things away in
the drawers, and even had the courage to lay out for herself the
all-enveloping gingham apron, much shortened, which Mrs. O'Mara had
loaned her till she and Peggy could run up some more. She supposed
Francis would want her to start in with the cooking that night. So she
put on her plainest dress and easiest shoes, and then, there being
nothing else to do, took the banjo out into the sitting-room and began
to string it. And as she strung she thought.
She was going to have to be pretty close to Francis till her term of
service was up; she might as well not fight him. It would make things
easier all round if she didn't, as long as she had to keep on friendly
terms before people.
The truth was, that she couldn't but feel softened to the man who had
written that boyish, loving note. "Even if it wasn't to the her he
knew now, it was to the Marjorie of last year, and she was a near
relation," thought the Marjorie of this year whimsically.
So when Francis came back with the rest of her baggage he found her on
the window-seat with the banjo in her lap, fingering it softly, and
smiling at him. She could see that he was a little startled, but he
had himself in hand directly, and came forward, saying, "So you found
the banjo. I got it for you in the first place. Is it any good?"
"Oh, did you?" inquired his wife innocently. "Yes, it's a very good
banjo. Maybe I'll find time to play it some day when the housework for
the men is out of the way. What do I do when I begin? And hadn't we
better go over now?"
"I didn't expect you to start till to-morrow," he explained. "I've
taken one of the men off his regular work to attend to it till then."
"Oh, that's kind of you," she answered, still friendly and smiling to a
degree that seemed to perplex him. "But perhaps you could take me over
to-night and show me. I'll get supper for us two here, if you like,
and afterward we can go over, and you can introduce me to your men as
the new cook. I hope they'll like me as well as Pierre."
He looked at her still as if she were behaving in a very unexpected
way. A tamed Marjorie was something new in his experience; and
tameness at this juncture was particularly surprising. Francis was
beginning to feel like a brute, which may have been what his wife
intended.
"That's very kind of you," he managed to say. "You're sure you are not
too tired for any of that?"
"Being tired isn't going to count, is it?" she asked, smiling. "No, I
don't mind doing it. It will be like playing with a doll-house. You
know, I love this little place."
In her wicked heart she was thinking, "He shall miss me--oh, if I can
keep my temper and be perfectly lovely for three months he shall miss
me so when I go and get my divorce that he will want to _die_!" And
she looked up at him, one hand on the banjo, as if they were the best
friends in the world.
"It isn't time to get supper yet, is it?" she pursued. "You used to
like to hear me sing. Don't you want to sit down here by me while I
see how the banjo works, just for a little while?"
"No!" said Francis abruptly. "I have to--I have to go and see after a
lot more work."
He flung out the door, and it crashed after him. And Marjorie laughed
softly and naughtily to herself over the banjo, and pushed the note
that had dwelt within farther down inside her dress. "I wish I had the
rest!" said she. "Let me see. The kodak was for both of us to go out
and take pictures together, of course. The snowshoes--that would have
had to wait till winter. The basket and trowel were so we could plant
lots of lovely woodsy things we found around the cabin, to see if they
would take root. And he must have been going to teach me to fish. I
wonder why he wasn't going to teach me to shoot. There must be a rifle
somewhere--maybe it hasn't lost its note, if it was hidden hard enough.
And he remembered how I liked 'surprises.' He certainly would have
made a good lover if I hadn't----"
She did not finish. She got up and hunted for the rifle, which was not
to be found. Then she went into the kitchen and hunted for stores, and
wondered how on earth a balanced menu could be evolved from cans and
dried things exclusively. But the discovery of a cache of canned
vegetables helped her out, and as she really was a good cook, and loved
cooking, what Francis returned to was not supper, but a very excellent
little dinner. And his wife had found time, as well, to dress herself
in the most fluffy and useless-looking of rosy summer frocks, with
white slippers. She looked more fragile and decorative and childish
than he had ever seen her, leaning across the little table talking
brightly to him about her adventures in the discovery of the things
that made up the meal.
An old quotation about "breaking a butterfly upon a wheel" came to him
as she chattered on, telling him delightedly how she had made up her
mind to surprise him with tomato bisque if it was her last act, and how
she had discovered a box that was labeled "condensed milk," and opened
it with infinite pains and a hatchet; and how after she had nearly
killed herself struggling with it, she had finally opened it, and found
that what it really contained was deviled ham in small, vivid tins; and
how she triumphed over Fate by using the ham with other things for
_hors d'oeuvres_; and how she finally found powdered milk in other
tins, and achieved her goal after all.
She was exactly as she would have been if all had gone well; and it is
not to be supposed that Francis could help feeling it. At first he was
quiet, almost gloomy; but presently, as she talked gaily on about all
the trifles she could think of--domestic trifles all of them, or things
to do with the cabin and its surroundings--he gave himself up to the
enjoyment of the hour. It was as if he said to himself, "I'll forget
for this little space of time that it isn't real." He looked
absorbedly into the little vivid face at the other side of the table,
and once, before he thought, put out his hand to take her hand where it
lay, little and slim and fragile-looking, on the table. He drew it
back quickly, but not before Marjorie had seen the instinctive motion.
She smiled at him brilliantly, and touched him lightly on the shoulder
as she passed.
"Come, help me, Francis," she said. "This is our house, you know, and
I mustn't do everything alone. And then I must hurry over to the other
cabin, and look over my new kingdom, and it would be a shame to do it
after your faithful slaves had gone to bed. They would have to get up
and dress and stand at attention, wouldn't they, when they heard your
august footstep?"
She laughed openly at him as she went into the kitchen, and he followed
her and helped her clear away obediently and smiling.
"And now, we'll go over," she said, when everything was in place again.
"Get me my long blue cape, Francis, please. It's hanging against the
door in my room."
He came and wrapped her in it, and crossed with her the space between
the two cabins.
"They're up yet," he said, and knocked on the door.