By a kind of self-hypnotism Northrup had gained his ends so far as
drifting with the slow current of King's Forest was concerned, and in
his relation toward his book. The unrest, as to his duty in a
world-wide sense, was lulled. Whatever of that sentiment moved him was
focussed on Maclin who, in a persistent, vague way became a haunting
possibility of danger almost too preposterous to be considered
seriously. Still the possibility was worth watching. Maclin's attitude
toward Northrup was interesting. He seemed unable to ignore him, while
earnestly desiring to do so. The fact was this: Maclin looked upon
Northrup as he might have upon a slow-burning fuse. That he could not
estimate the length of the fuse, nor to what it was attached, did not
mend matters. One cannot ignore a trail of fire, and a guilty
conscience is never a sleeping one.
The people on the Point had long since come to the conclusion that
Northrup was a trailer of Maclin, not their enemy. The opinion was
divided as to his relations with Mary-Clare, but that was a different
matter.
"I'll bet my last dollar," Twombley muttered, forgetting that his last
dollar was a thing of the past, "that this young feller will find out
about those inventions. Inventions be damned! That's what I say.
There's something going on at the mines that don't spell inventions."
This was said to Peneluna who was aging under the strain of
unaccustomed excitement.
"When he lands Maclin," she said savagely, "I'll grab Larry. Larry is
a fool, but from way back, Maclin is the sinner. Queer"--she gave a
deep sigh--"how a stick muddling up a biling brings the scum to the
surface! I declare! I wish we had something to grip hold of.
Suspicioning your neighbours ain't healthy."
Jan-an, untroubled by moral codes, was unconditionally on Northrup's
side. She patched her gleanings into a vivid conclusion and announced,
much to Peneluna's horror:
"Supposin' we are goin' ter hell 'long of not knowin' where we are
goin', ain't it a lot pleasanter than the way we was traipsin' before
things began to happen?"
Poor Jan-an was getting her first taste of romance and tragedy and she
was thriving on the excitement. When she was not watching the romance
in the woods with Mary-Clare and Noreen, she was actively engaged in
tragedy. She was searching for the lost letters and she did not mince
matters in her own thoughts.
"Larry stole 'em!" she had concluded from the first. "What's old
letters, anyway? But I'll get those letters if I die for it!"
She shamelessly ransacked Larry's possessions while she cleaned his
disorderly shack, but no letters did she find. She became irritable
and unmoral.
"Lordy!" she confided to Peneluna one day while they were preparing
Larry's food, "don't yer wish, Peneluna, that it wasn't evil to poison
some folks' grub?"
Peneluna paused and looked at the girl with startled eyes.
"If you talk like that," she replied, "I'll hustle you into the
almshouse." Then: "Who would you like to do that to?" she asked.
"Oh! folks as just clutter up life for decent folks. Maclin and
Larry."
"Now, see here, Jan-an, that kind of talk is downright creepy and
terrible wicked. Listen to me. Are you listening?"
Jan-an nodded sullenly.
"I'm your best friend, child. I mean to stand by yer, so you just
heed. There are folks as can use language like that and others will
laugh it off, but you can't do it. The best thing for you to do is to
slip along out of sight and sound as much as yer can. If you attract
attention--the Lord above knows what will happen; I don't."
Jan-an was impressed.
"I ain't making them notice me," she mumbled, "but yer just can't take
a joke."
Noreen and Jan-an, in those warm autumn days--and what an autumn it
was!--often came to the little chapel where Northrup wrote.
They knew this was forbidden; they knew that the mornings were to be
undisturbed, but what could a man who loved children say to the two
patient creatures crouching at the foot of the stone steps leading up
to the church?
Northrup could hear them whisper--it blended with the twittering
of the birds--he heard Noreen's chuckle and Jan-an's warning.
Occasionally a flaming maple branch would fall through the window
on to his table; once Ginger was propelled through the door with a
note, badly printed by Noreen, tied to his collar.
"We're here," the strangely scrawled words informed him; "me and
Jan-an. We've got something for you."
But Northrup held rigidly to his working hours and finally made an
offer to his most persistent foes.
"See here, you little beggars," he said, including the gaunt Jan-an in
this, "if you keep to the other side of the bridge, I'll tell you a
story, once a day."
This had been the beginning of romance to Jan-an.
The story-telling, thus agreed upon, opened a new opportunity for
meeting Mary-Clare. Quite naturally she shared with Noreen and Jan-an
the hours of the late afternoon walks in the woods or, occasionally,
by the fireside of her own home when the chilly gloaming fell early.
Often Northrup, casting a hurried thought to his past, and then
forward to the time when all this pleasure must end, looked
thoughtful. How circumscribed those old days had been; how uneventful
at the best! How strange the old ways would seem by and by, touched by
the glamour of what he was passing through now!
And, as was often the case, Manly's words came out like guiding and
warning flashes. The future could only be made safe by the present;
the past--well! Northrup would not dwell upon that. He would keep the
compact with himself.
He went boldly to the yellow house when the mood seized him. His first
encounters with Mary-Clare, after that night at the inn when he had
watched her sleeping, had reassured him.
"She was not awake!" he concluded. The belief made it possible for him
to act with assurance.
Peter and Polly preserved a discreet silence concerning affairs in the
Forest. "You never can tell when a favouring wind will right things
again," Polly remarked. She cared more for Mary-Clare than anything
else.
"Or upset 'em," Peter added. He had his mind fixed upon Maclin.
"Well, brother, sailing safe, or struggling in the water, it won't
help matters to stir up the mud."
"No; and just having Brace hanging around like a threat is something.
I allas did hold to them referendum and recall notions. Once a feller
knows he ain't the only shirt in the laundry, he keeps decenter. So
long as Maclin scents Brace, he keeps to his holdings. Did yer hear
how he's cleaning up the Cosey Bar? He thinks maybe he's going to be
attacked from that quarter. Then, again, he's been offering work to
the men around here--and he's letting out that he never understood our
side of things rightly and that he's listening to Larry--get that,
Polly?--listening to Larry and letting _him_ make the folks on the
Point get on to the fact that he's their friend. Gosh! Maclin their
friend."
And Mary-Clare all this time mystified her friends and her foes. She
had foes. Men, and women, too, who looked askance at her. The less
they knew, the more they had to invent. The proprieties of the Forest
were being outraged. The women who envied Mary-Clare her daring fell
upon her first. From their own misery and disillusionment, they sought
to defend their position; create an atmosphere of virtue around their
barren lives, by attacking the woman who refused to be a martyr.
"You can't tell me," said a downtrodden wife of one of Maclin's men,
"that she turned her husband out of doors after wheedling him out of
all he should have had from his father, unless she meant to leave the
door open for another! A woman only acts as she has for some man."
The women, the happy ones, drove down upon Mary-Clare from another
quarter. The happy women are always first to lay down the laws for the
unhappy ones. Not knowing, they are irresponsible. The men of the
Forest did some laughing and side talking, but on the whole they
denounced Mary-Clare because she was a menace to the Established
Code.
"God!" said the speaker of the Cosey Bar, "what's coming to the world,
anyhow? There ain't any rest and peace nowheres, and when it comes to
women taking to naming terms, I say it's time for us to stand for our
rights fierce."
Maclin had delicately and indirectly set forth Mary-Clare's "terms"
and the Forest was staggered.
But Mary-Clare either did not hear, or the turmoil was so insistent
that she had become used to it. She suddenly displayed an energy that
made her former activities seem tame.
She brought from the attic an old loom and got Aunt Polly to teach her
to weave; she presently designed quaint patterns and delighted in her
work. She invited several children, neglected little souls, to come to
the yellow house and she taught them with Noreen. She resorted largely
to the method the old doctor had used with her. Adapting, as she saw
possible, her knowledge to her little group, she gave generously but
held her peace.
Northrup often had a hearty laugh after attending one of the "school"
sessions.
"It's like tossing all kinds of feed to a flock of birds," he told
Aunt Polly, "and letting the little devils pick as they can."
"I reckon they pick only as much as their little stomachs can hold,"
Aunt Polly replied, "and it makes _me_ smile to notice how folks as
ain't above saying lies about Mary-Clare can trust their children to
her teaching."
"Oh! well, lies are soon killed," Northrup returned, but his smile
vanished.
Mary-Clare was often troubled by Larry's persistence at the Point. She
could not account for it, but she did not alter her own way of life.
She went, occasionally, to the desolate Point; she rarely saw Larry,
but if she did, she greeted him pleasantly. It was amazing to find how
naturally she could do this. Indeed the whole situation was at the
snapping point.
"I do say," Twombley confided to Peneluna, "it don't seem nater for a
woman not to grieve and fuss at such goings on."
Peneluna tossed her head and sneezed.
"I ain't ever understood," she broke in, "why a woman should fuss and
break herself on account of a man doing what he oughtn't ter do. Let
_him_ do the fussing and breaking."
"She might try and save him." Twombley, like all the male Forest, was
stirred at what he could not understand.
"Women have got their hands full of other things"--Peneluna sneezed
again as if the dust of ages was stifling her--"and I do say that
after a woman does save a man, she's often too worn out to enjoy her
savings."
And Larry, carefully dressed, living alone and to all appearances
brave and steady, simply, according to Maclin's ordering, "let out
more sheet rope" in order that Mary-Clare might sail on to the rocks
and smash herself to atoms before the eyes of her fellow creatures.
Surely the Forest had much to cogitate upon.
"There is just one ledge of rocks for her kind," said Maclin. "You
keep yourself clear and safe, Rivers, and watch the wreck."
Maclin could be most impressive at times and his conversation had a
nautical twist that was quite effective.
Northrup at this time would have been shocked beyond measure had any
one suggested that his own attitude of mind resembled in the
slightest degree that of Maclin, Twombley, and Rivers. He was too sane
and decent a man to consider for a moment that Mary-Clare's actions
were based in the slightest degree upon his presence in the Forest. He
knew that he had had nothing to do with the matter, but that was no
reason for thinking that he might not have. Suggestion was enmeshing
him in the disturbance.
He felt that Larry was a brute. That he had the outer covering of
respectability counted against him. Larry always kept his best manners
for public exhibition; his inheritance of refinement could be tapped
at any convenient hour. Northrup knew his type. He had not recalled
his father in years as he did now! A man legally sustained by his
interpretation of marriage could make a hell or a heaven of any
woman's life. This truism took on new significance in the primitive
Forest.
But in that Mary-Clare had had courage to escape from hell--and
Northrup had pictured it all from memories of his boyhood--roused him
to admiration.
She was of the mettle of his mother. She might be bent but never
broken. She was treading a path that none of her little world had ever
trod before. Alone in the Forest she had taken a stand that she could
not hope would be understood, and how superbly she was holding it!
Knowing what he did, Northrup compared Mary-Clare with the women of
his acquaintance; what one of them could defy their conventions as she
was doing, instinctively, courageously?
"But she ought not to be permitted to think all men are like Rivers!"
This thought grew upon Northrup, and it was the first step, generously
taken, to establish higher ideals for his sex. With the knowledge he
had, he was in a position of safety. Not to be seen with Mary-Clare
while the silly gossip muttered or whispered would be to acknowledge a
reason for not meeting her--so he flung caution to the winds.
There were nutting parties for the children--innocent enough, heaven
knew! There were thrilling camping suppers on the flat ridge of the
hills in order to watch the miracle of sunset and moonrise.
No wonder Jan-an cast her lot in with those headed, so the whisper
ran, for perdition. She had never been so nearly happy in her life;
neither had Mary-Clare nor Noreen nor--though he did not own
it--Northrup, himself.
No wonder Maclin, and the outraged Larry, saw distinctly the ridge on
which the wreck was to occur.
But no one was taking into account that idealism in Mary-Clare that
the old doctor had devoutly hoped would save her, not destroy her.
Northrup began to comprehend it during the more intimate conversations
that took place when the children, playing apart, left him and
Mary-Clare alone. The wonder grew upon him and humbled him. It was
something he had never encountered before. A philosophy and code built
entirely upon knowledge gained from books and interpreted by a
singular strength and purity of mind. It piqued Northrup; he began to
test it, never estimating danger for himself.
"Books are like people," Mary-Clare said one day--she was watching
Northrup build a campfire and the last bit of sunlight fell full upon
her--"the words are the costumes." She had marked the surprised look
in Northrup's eyes as she quoted rather a bald sentiment from an old
book.
"Yes, of course, and that's sound reasoning." For a moment Northrup
felt as though a clear north wind were blowing away the dust in an
overlooked corner of his mind. "But it's rather staggering to find
that you read French," he added, for the quotation had been literally
translated. "You do, don't you?"
"I do, a little. I'm taking it up again for Noreen."
Noreen's name was continually being brought into focus. It had the
effect of pushing Northrup, metaphorically, into a safe zone. He
resented this.
"She is afraid!" he thought. "Rivers has left his mark upon her mind,
damn him!"
This sentiment should have given warning, but it did not.
"I study nights"--Mary-Clare was speaking quite as if fear had no part
in her thought--"French, mathematics--all the hard things that went in
and--stuck."
"Hard things do stick, don't they?" Northrup hated the pushed-aside
feeling.
"Terribly. But my doctor was adamant about hard things. He used to say
that I'd learn to love chipping off the rough corners." Here
Mary-Clare laughed, and the sound set Northrup's nerves a-tingle as
the clear notes of music did.
"I can see myself now, Mr. Northrup, sitting behind my doctor on his
horse, my book flattened out against his back. I'd ask questions; he'd
fling the answers to me. Once I drew the map of Italy on his blessed
old shoulders with crayon and often French verbs ran crookedly up the
seam of his coat, for the horse changed his gait now and then."
Northrup laughed aloud. He edged away from his isolation and said:
"Your doctor was a remarkable man. His memory lives in the Forest;
it's about the most vital thing here. It and all that preserves it."
His eyes rested upon Mary-Clare.
"Yes. He was wonderful. Lately he seems more alive than ever. He had
such simple rules of life--but they work. He told me so often that
when a trouble or anything like that came, there were but two ways to
meet it. If it was going to kill you, die at your best. If it wasn't,
get over it at once; never waste time--live as soon as possible." Was
there a note of warning in the words?
"And you're doing it?"
An understanding look passed between them.
"Yes, Mr. Northrup, for Noreen."
Back went Northrup to his place with a dull thud! Then Mary-Clare
hurried to a safer subject.
"I wish you would tell me about your book, Mr. Northrup. I have the
strangest feeling about it. It seems like a new kind of flower growing
in the Forest. I love flowers."
Northrup looked down at his companion. Her bared head, her musing,
radiant face excited and moved him. He had forgotten his book.
"You're rather like a strange growth yourself," he said daringly.
Mary-Clare smiled gaily.
"You'll have to blame my old doctor for that," she said.
"Or bless him," Northrup broke in.
"Yes, that's better, if it is true."
"It's tremendously true."
"A book"--again that elusive push--"must be a great responsibility.
Once you put your thoughts and words down and send them out--there you
are!"
"Yes. Good Lord! There you are."
"I knew that you would feel that way about it and that is why I would
like to hear you talk of it. It's a story, isn't it?"
"Yes, a story."
"You can reach further with a story."
"I suppose so. You do not have to knuckle down to rules. You can let
your vision have a say, and your feelings." Northrup, seeing that his
book must play a part, accepted that fact.
"I suppose"--Mary-Clare was looking wistfully up at Northrup--"all the
people in your books work out what you believe is truth. I can always
_feel_ truth in a book--or the lack of it."
In the near distance Noreen and Jan-an were gathering wood. They were
singing and shouting lustily.
"May I sit on your log?" Northrup spoke hurriedly.
"Of course," and Mary-Clare moved a little. "The sun's gone," she went
on. "It's quite dark in the valley."
"It's still light here--and there's the fire." Northrup was watching
the face beside him.
"Yes, the fire, and presently the moon rising, just over there."
Restraint lay between the two on the mossy log. They both resented
it.
"You know, you must know, that I'd rather have you share my book than
any one else." Northrup spoke almost roughly.
He had meant to say something quite different, but anything would do
so long as he controlled the situation.
"I wonder why?" Mary-Clare kept her face turned away.
"Well, you are so phenomenally keen. You know such a lot."
"I used to snap up everything like a hungry puppy, Uncle Peter often
said. I suppose I do now, Mr. Northrup, but I only know life as a
blind person does: I feel."
"That's just it. You _feel_ life. It isn't coloured for you by others.
You get its form, its hardness or softness, its fragrance or the
reverse, but you fix your own colour. That's why you'd be such a
ripping critic. Will you let me read some of my book to you?"
"Oh! of course. I'd be so glad and proud."
"Come, now, you're not joking?"
The large golden eyes turned slowly and rested upon Northrup.
"I do not think I ever joke"--Mary-Clare's words fell softly--"about
such things. Why, it would seem like seeing a soul get into a body.
You do not joke about that."
"You make me horribly afraid about my book. People do not usually take
the writing of a book in just that way."
"I wish they did. You see, my doctor often said that books would live
if they only held truth. He loved these words, 'And above all
else--Truth taketh away the victory!' I can see him now waving his
arms and singing that defiantly, as if he were challenging the whole
world. He said that truth was the soul of things."
"But who knows Truth?"
"There is something in us that knows it. Don't you think so?"
"But we see it so differently."
"That does not matter, if we know it! Truth is fixed and sure. Isn't
that so?"
"I do not know. Sometimes I think so: then--good Lord! that is what
I'm trying to find out."
Northrup's face grew tense.
"And so am I."
"All right, then, let's go on the quest together!" Northrup stood up
and offered his hand to Mary-Clare as if actually they were to start
on the pilgrimage. "Where and when may I begin to read to you?"
The children were coming nearer.
"While this weather lasts, I'd love the open. Wouldn't you? Logs, like
this, are such perfect places."
"I thought perhaps"--Northrup looked what he dared not voice--"I
thought perhaps in that cabin of yours we might be more comfortable,
more undisturbed."
Mary-Clare smiled and shook her head.
"No, I think it would be impossible. That cabin is too full--well, I'm
sure I could not listen as I should, to you, in that cabin."
And so it was that the book became the medium of expression to
Northrup and Mary-Clare. It justified that which might otherwise have
been impossible. It drugged them both to any sense of actual danger.
It was like a shield behind which they might advance and retreat
unseen and unharmed. And if the shield ever fell for an unguarded
moment, Northrup believed that he alone was vouchsafed clear vision.
He grew to marvel at the simplicity and purity of Mary-Clare's point
of view. He knew that she must have gone through some gross
experiences with a man like Rivers, but they had left her singularly
untouched.
But, while Northrup, believing himself shielded from the woman near
him, permitted his imagination full play, Mary-Clare drew her own
conclusions. She accepted Northrup without question as far as he
personally was concerned. He was making her life rich and full, but he
would soon pass; become a memory to brighten the cold, dark years
ahead, just as the memory of the old doctor had done: would always
do.
Desperately Mary-Clare clung to this thought, and reinforced by it
referred constantly to her own position as if to convince Northrup of
perfect understanding of their relations.
But the book! That was another matter. In that she felt she dared
contemplate the real nature of Northrup. She believed he was
unconsciously revealing himself, and with that keenness of perception
that Northrup had detected, she threshed the false notes from the true
and, while hesitating to express herself--for she was timid and
naturally distrustful of herself--she was being prepared for an hour
when her best would be demanded of her.
Silently Mary-Clare would sit and listen while Northrup read. Without
explanation, the children had been eliminated and, if the day was too
cool to sit by the trail side, they would walk side by side, the
crushed leaves making a soft carpet for their feet; the falling leaves
touching them gently as they were brushed from their slight holdings.
Mary-Clare had suddenly abandoned her rough boyish garb. She was sweet
and womanly in her plain little gown--and a long coat whose high
collar rose around her grave face. She wore no hat and the light and
shade did marvellous things to her hair. There were times when
Northrup could not take his eyes from that shining head.
"Why are you stopping?" Mary-Clare would ask at such lapses.
"My writing is diabolical!" Northrup lied.
"Oh! I'm sorry. The stops give me a jog. Go on."
And Northrup would go on!
Without fully being aware of it, until the thing was done, Mary-Clare
got vividly into the story.
And Northrup was doing some good, some daring work. His man, born from
his own doubts, aspirations, and cravings, was a live and often a
blundering creature who could not be disregarded. He was safe enough,
but it was the woman who now gave trouble.
Northrup saw, with fear and trembling, that he had drawn her, so he
devoutly believed, so close to reality that he felt that Mary-Clare
would discover her at once and resent the impertinence. But he need
not have held any such thought. Mary-Clare was far too impersonal; far
too absorbed a nature to be largely concerned with herself, and
Northrup had failed absolutely in his deductions, as he was soon to
learn.
What Mary-Clare did see in Northrup's heroine was a maddening
possibility that he was letting slip through his fingers. At first
this puzzled her; pained her. She was still timid about expressing her
feeling. But so strong was Northrup's touch in most of his work that
at last he drove his quiet, silent critic from her moorings. She asked
that she might have a copy of a certain part of the book.
"I want to think it out with my woman-brain," she laughingly
explained. "When you read right at this spot--well, you see, it
doesn't seem clear. When I have thought it out alone, then I will tell
you and be--oh! very bold."
And Northrup had complied.
He had blazed for himself, some time before, a roundabout trail
through the briery underbrush from the inn to within a few hundred
feet of the cabin. Often he watched from this hidden limit. He saw the
smoke rise from the chimney; once or twice he caught a glimpse of
Mary-Clare sitting at the rough table, and, after she had taken those
chapters away, he knew they were being read there.
Alone, waiting, expecting he knew not what, Northrup became alarmingly
aware that Mary-Clare had got a tremendous hold upon him. The
knowledge was almost staggering. He had felt so sure; had risked so
much.
He could not deceive himself any longer. Like other men, he had played
with fire and had been burnt. "But," he devoutly thought, "thank God,
I have started no conflagration."