Mary-Clare stood in the doorway of the little yellow house. Her
mud-stained clothes gave evidence that the recent storm had not kept
her indoors--she was really in a very messy, caked state--but it was
always good to breathe the air after a big storm; it was so alive and
thrilling, and she had put off a change of dress while she debated a
second trip. There was a stretching-out look on Mary-Clare's face and
her eyes were turned to a little trail leading into the hilly woods
across the highway.
Noreen came to the door and stood close to her mother. Noreen was only
six, but at times she looked ageless. When the child abandoned herself
to pure enjoyment, she talked baby talk and--played. But usually she
was on guard, in a fierce kind of blind adoration for her mother. Just
what the child feared no one could tell, but there was a constant
appearance of alertness in her attitude even in her happiest moments.
"I guess you want the woods, Motherly?" The small up-turned face made
the young mother's heart beat quicker; the tie was strong between
them.
"I do, Noreen. It has been ten whole days since I had them."
"Well, Motherly, why don't you go?"
"And leave my baby alone?"
"I'll get Jan-an to come!"
"Oh! you blessed!" Mary-Clare bent and kissed the worshipping face. "I
tell you, Sweetheart. Mother will take a bite of lunch and go up the
trail, if you will go to Jan-an. If you cannot find her, then come up
the trail to Motherly--how will that do?"
"Yes," Noreen sweetly acquiesced. "I'll come to the--the----" she
waited for the word.
"Yawning Gap," suggested the mother, reverting to a dearly loved
romance.
"Yes. I'll come to the Yawning Gap and I'll give the call."
"And I'll call back: _Oh! wow!--Oh! wo!_" The musical voice rose like
a flute and Noreen danced about.
"And I'll answer: _wo wow!--oh!_" The piping tones were also
flute-like, an echo of the mother's.
"And then, down will fall the drawbridge with a mighty clatter."
Mary-Clare looked majestic even in her muddy trousers as she portrayed
the action. "And over the Gap will come the Princess Light-of-my-Heart
with her message."
"Ah! yes, Motherly. It will be such fun. But if Jan-an can come here
to stay, then what?" the voice faltered.
"Why, Light-of-my-Heart, I will return strong and hungry, and Jan-an
and my Princess and I will sit by the fire to-night and roast
chestnuts and apples and there will be such a story as never was
before."
"Both ways are beautiful ways, Motherly. I don't know which is
bestest."
It was always so with Mary-Clare and Noreen, all ways were alluring;
but the child had deep intuitions, and so she set her face at once
away from the little yellow house and the mother in the doorway, and
started on her quest of Jan-an.
When the child had passed from sight Mary-Clare packed a bit of
luncheon in a basket and ran lightly across the road. She looked back,
making sure that no one was watching her movements, then she plunged
into the woods, her head lowered, and her heart throbbing high.
The trail was not an easy one--Mary-Clare had seen to that!--and as no
one but Noreen and herself ever trod it, it was hardly discernible to
the uninitiated. Up and up the path led until it ended at a rough,
crude cabin almost hidden by a tangle of vines.
Looking back over the years of her married life, Mary-Clare often
wondered how she could have endured them but for the vision and
strength she received in her "Place," as she whimsically called
it--getting her idea from a Bible verse.
Among the many things that old Doctor Rivers had given Mary-Clare was
a knowledge and love of the Bible. He had offered the book to her as
literature and early in life she had responded to the appeal. The
verse that had inspired her to restore a deserted cabin to a thing of
beauty and eventually a kind of sanctuary, was this:
And the woman fled into the wilderness where she hath a place
prepared of God that they should feed her there.
The words, roughly carved, were traced on the east wall of the cabin
and under a picture of Father Damien.
The furniture of the shack was made by Mary-Clare's own hands. A long
table, some uneven shelves for books she most loved, a chair or two
and a low couch over which was thrown a gay-patched quilt. Once the
work of love was completed, Nature reached forth with offerings of
lovely vines and mountain laurel and screened the place from any
chance passer-by.
A hundred feet below the cabin was a little stream. That marked the
limit of even Noreen's territory unless, after due ceremony, she was
permitted to advance as far as the cabin door. The pretty game was
evolved to please the child and secure for the mother a privacy she
might not have got in any other way.
As Mary-Clare reached the "Place" this autumn day, she was a bit
breathless and stepped lightly as one does who approaches a shrine;
she went inside and, kneeling by the cracked but dustless hearth,
lighted a fire; then she took a seat by the rough table, clasped her
hands upon it and lifted her eyes to the words upon the opposite
wall.
Sitting so, a startling change came over the young face. It was like a
letting down of strong defences. The smile fled, the head bowed, and a
pitiful look of appeal settled from brow to trembling lips.
Mary-Clare had come to a sharp turn on her road and, as yet, she
could not see her way! She had drifted--she could, with Larry
away--but now he was coming home!
She had tried, God knew, for three long months to be sure. She _must_
be sure, she was like that; sure that she _felt_ her way to be the
_right_ way; so sure that, should she find it later the wrong way, she
could retrace her steps without remorse. It was the believing, at the
start, that she was doing right, that mattered.
Sitting in the quiet room with the autumn sunlight coming through the
clustering vines at window and door and falling upon her in dancing
patterns, the woman waited for guidance. The room became a place of
memory and vision.
Help would come, she still had the faith, but it must come at once for
her husband might at any hour return from one of his mysterious
business trips and there must be a decision reached before she met
him. She could not hope to make him understand her nor sympathize with
her; he and she, beyond the most ordinary themes, spoke different
languages. She had learned that.
She must take her stand alone; hold it alone; but the stand must seem
to her right and then she could go on. Like the flickering sunbeams
playing over her, the past came touching her memory with light and
shade, unconsciously preparing her for her decision. She was not
thinking, but thought was being formed.
The waves of memory swept Mary-Clare from her moorings. She was no
longer the harassed woman facing her problem in the clear light of
conviction; but the child, whose mistaken ideals of love and loyalty
had betrayed her so cruelly. Why had she who early had been taught by
Doctor Rivers to "use her woman brain," gone so utterly astray?
Why had she married Larry when she never loved him; felt him to be a
stranger, simply because he had interpreted the words of a dying man
for her?
In the light of realization the errors of life become our most deadly
accusers. We dare not make others pay for the folly that we should
never have perpetrated. Mary-Clare, the woman, had paid and paid,
until now she faced bankruptcy; she was prepared still to do her part
as far as in her lay--but she must retrace her steps, be sure and then
go on as best she could.
Always, in those old childish days, there had been the grim spectre of
Larry's mother. Her name was never mentioned but to the imaginative,
sensitive Mary-Clare, she became, for that very reason, a clearly
defined and potent influence. She was responsible for the doctor's
lonely life in King's Forest; for Larry's long absences from home; for
the lines that grew between the old doctor's eyes when he laid down
the few simple laws of conduct that formed the iron code of life:
_Never lie. Never break a promise. Never take advantage for selfish
gain. Think things out with your woman brain, and never count the cost
if you know it is right._
Larry's mother, so the child believed, had not kept the code--therefore,
Mary-Clare must the more strictly adhere to it and become what the
other had not! And how desperately she had struggled to reach her
ideal. In the conflict, only her sunny joyous nature had saved her from
wreck. Naturally direct and loyal, much of what might have occurred
was prevented. Passionate love and devout belief in the old doctor
eliminated other dangers.
It was well and right to use your "woman brain," but when in the end
you always came to the conclusion that the doctor's way was your way,
life was simplified. If one could not fully understand, then all the
more reason for relying upon a good guide, a tested friend; but above
all other considerations, once the foundation was secure was this: she
must make up to her adored doctor and Larry for what that unmentioned,
mysterious woman had denied them.
It had all seemed so simple, when one did not know!
That was it. Breathing hard, Mary-Clare came back to the present. She
could not know until she had lived, and being married did not stop
life. And now, Mary-Clare could consider, as if apart from herself,
from the girl who had married Larry because he had caught the dying
request of the old doctor. She had wanted to do right at that last
tragic moment. She had done it with the false understanding of
reality and found out the truth--by living. It had seemed to her, in
her ignorance, the only way to relieve the suffering of the dying: to
help Larry who was deprived of everything.
Mary-Clare must not desert, as the unmentioned woman had.
But life, living--how they had torn the blindness from her! How she
had paid and paid until that awful awakening after the birth and death
of her last child, three months before! She had tried then to make
Larry understand before he went away, but she could not! Larry always
ascribed her moods, as he called them, to her "just going to have a
child," or "getting over having one."
He had gone away tolerant, but with a warning: "A man isn't going to
stand too much!"
These words had been a challenge. There could be no more compromising.
Pay-day had come for her and Larry.
But the letters!
At this thought Mary-Clare sat up rigidly. A squirrel, that had paused
at her quiet feet, darted affrightedly across the cabin floor.
The letters! The letters in the box hid on the shelf of the closet in
the upper chamber. Always those letters had driven her back from the
light which experience shed upon her to the darkness of ignorance.
Larry had given the letters to her at the time when she questioned,
after the doctor's death, Larry's right to hold her to her marriage
vows. How frightened and full of despair she had been. She had felt
that perhaps Larry had not understood. Why had the doctor never told
her of his desire for her and Larry to marry? Then it was that Larry
had gone away to bring proof. He had never meant to show it to her,
but he must clear himself at the critical moment.
And so he brought the letters. Mary-Clare knew every word of them.
They were burned into her soul: they had been the guides on the hard
road she had travelled. The doctor had always wanted her and Larry to
marry; believed that they would. But she must be left free; no word
must be spoken until she was old enough to choose. To prove his faith
and love in his adopted child, Rivers had, so the letters to Larry
revealed, left his all to her. In case she could not marry Larry, he
confided in her justice to share with him.
The last dark hour had broken the old doctor's self-control--he had
voiced what heretofore he had kept secret. The letters stood as silent
proof of this. And then the old, rigid code asserted its influence. A
promise must be kept!
And so the payment began, but it was not, had never been, the real
Mary-Clare who had paid. Something had retreated during the bleak
years, that which remained fulfilled the daily tasks; kept its own
council, laughed at length, and knew a great joy in the baby Noreen,
seemed a proof that God was still with her while she held to what
appeared to be right.
And then the last child came, looked at her with its deep accusing
eyes and died!
In that hour, or so it seemed, the real Mary-Clare returned and
demanded recognition. There was to be no more compromise; no more
calling things by false names and striving to believe them real. There
was but one safe road: truth.
And Larry was coming home. He had not understood when he went away: he
would not understand now. Still, truth must be faced.
The letters!
Mary-Clare now leaned on the table, her eyes fixed upon the wall
opposite. The roughly carved words caught and held her attention.
Gradually it came to her, vaguely, flickeringly, like a will-o'-the-wisp
darting through a murky night, that if life meant anything it meant a
faith in what was true. She must not demand more than that; a sense
of truth.
As a little child may look across the familiar environment of its
nursery and contemplate its first unaided step, so Mary-Clare
considered her small world: her unthinking world of King's Forest, and
prepared to take her lonely course. The place in which she had been
born and bred: the love and friends that had held her close suddenly
became strange to her. What was to befall her, once she let go the
conventions that upheld her?
Well, that was not for her to ask. There was the letting go and then
the first unaided step. Nothing must hold her back--not even those
letters that had sustained her! In recognizing her big problem in her
small and crude world, Mary-Clare had no thought of casting aside her
obligation or duties--her distress was founded upon a fear that those
blessed, sacred duties would have none of her because she had not that
with which to buy favour.
There was Noreen--she was Larry's, too. Through the years Mary-Clare
had remembered that almost fiercely as she combated the child's
aversion to her father. Suddenly, as small things do occur at strained
moments, hurting like a cruel blow, a scene at the time when Noreen
was but four years old, rose vividly before her. Larry, sensing the
baby's hatred, had tried to force an outward show of obedience and
affection. He had commanded Noreen to come and kiss him.
Like a bird under the spell of a serpent, Noreen had stood affrighted
and silent. The command was repeated, laughingly, jeeringly, but under
it Mary-Clare had recognized that ring of brutality that occasionally
marked Larry's easy-going tones. Then Noreen had advanced step by
step, her eyes wide and alert.
"Kiss me!"
"No!"
The words had been explosive. Then Larry had caught the child roughly,
and Noreen had struck him!
Maddened and keen to the fact that he had been brought to bay, Larry
had struck back, and for days the mark of his hand had lain across the
delicate cheek. After that, when their wills clashed, Noreen, her eyes
full of fear and hate, would raise her hand to her cheek--weighing the
cost of rebellion. That gesture had become a driving force in
Mary-Clare's life. She must overcome that which lay like a hideous
menace between Larry and Noreen! She was accountable for it; out of
her loveless existence Noreen had birth--she was a living evidence of
the wrong done.
Looking back now, Mary-Clare realized that on the day when Larry
struck Noreen he had struck the scales from her eyes. From that hour
she had bunglingly, gropingly, felt her way along. The only fact that
upheld her now was that she knew she must take her first lonely step,
even if all her little unknowing, unthinking world dropped from her.
Again the squirrel darted across the floor and Mary-Clare looked after
it lingeringly. Even the little wild thing was company for her in her
hard hour. Then she looked up at the face of Father Damien. It was but
a face--the meaning of what had gone into its making Mary-Clare could
not understand--but it brought comfort and encouragement.
The reaction had set in. Worn-out nerves became non-resistant; they
ceased to ache. Then it was that Noreen's shrill voice broke the
calm:
"Motherly, Motherly, he's come: he's come home!"
Mary-Clare rose stiffly; her hands were spread wide as if to balance
her on that dangerous, adventurous trail that lay between her past and
the hidden future. There lay the trail: within her soul was a sense of
truth and she had strength and courage for the first step. That was
all.
"I'm coming, Noreen. I'm coming!" And Mary-Clare staggered on.