There had been five days in which to face a rather ugly and bald fact
before Northrup again saw Mary-Clare. He had employed the time, he
tried to make himself believe, wisely, sanely.
He had spent a good portion of it at the Point. He had irritated Larry
beyond endurance by friendly overtures. In an effort to be just, he
tried to include Rivers in his reconstruction. The truth, he sternly
believed, would never be known, but if it were, certainly Rivers might
have something to say for himself, and with humiliation Northrup
regarded himself "as other men." He had never, thank heaven! looked
upon himself as better than other men, but he had thought his
struggle, early in life, his unhappy parenthood, and later devotion to
his work, had set him apart from the general temptations of many young
men and had given him a distaste for follies that could hold no
suggestion of mystery for him.
Well, Fate had merely bided its time.
With every reason for escaping a pitfall, he had floundered in. "Like
other men?" Northrup sneered at himself. No other man could be such a
consummate fool, knowing what he knew.
Viewed from this position, Larry was not as contemptible as he had
once appeared.
But Rivers resented Northrup's advances, putting the lowest
interpretation upon them. In this he was upheld by Maclin, who was
growing restive under the tension that did not break, but stretched
endlessly on.
Northrup resolved to see Mary-Clare once more and then go home. He
would make sure that the fire he himself was scorched by had not
touched her. After that he would turn his back upon the golden selah
in his life and return to his niche in the wall.
This brought his mother and Kathryn into the line of vision. How
utterly he had betrayed their confidence! His whole life, from now on,
should be devoted to their service. Doubtless to other men, like
himself, there were women who were never forgotten, but that must not
blot out reality.
And then Northrup considered the task of unearthing Maclin's secrets,
and ridding the Forest of that subtle fear and distrust that the man
created. That was, however, too big an undertaking now. He must get
Twombley to watch and report. Northrup had a great respect for
Twombley's powers of observation.
And so the time on the Point had been put to some purpose, and it had
occupied Northrup. Noreen and Jan-an had helped, too. It was rather
tragic the way Northrup had grown to feel about Noreen. The child had
developed his latent love for children--they had never figured in his
life before. So much had been left out, now that he came to think of
it!
And Jan-an. Poor groping creature! To have gained her affection and
trust meant a great deal.
Then the Heathcotes! Polly and Peter! During those five distraught
days they developed halos in Northrup's imagination.
They had taken him in, a stranger. They had fathered and mothered him;
staunchly and silently stood by him. What if they knew?
They must never know! He would make sure of that.
In this frame of mind, chastened and determined, Northrup on the fifth
day took his place behind the laurel clump back of Mary-Clare's cabin,
and to his relief saw her coming out of the door. His manuscript was
not in her hands, but her face had an uplifted and luminous look that
set his heart to a quicker pulsing.
After a decent length of time, Northrup, whistling carelessly,
scruffing the dead leaves noiselessly, followed on and overtook
Mary-Clare near the log upon which they had sat at their last
meeting.
The quaint poise and dignity of the girl was the first impression
Northrup always got. He had never quite grown accustomed to it; it was
like a challenge--his impulse was to test it. It threatened his
exalted state now.
"It's quite mysterious, isn't it?"
Mary-Clare sat down on her end of the log and looked up, her eyes
twinkling.
"What is mysterious?" Northrup took his place. The log was not a long
one.
"The way we manage to meet."
She was setting him at a safe distance in that old way of hers that
somehow made her seem so young.
It irritated Northrup now as it never had before.
He had prepared himself for an ordeal, was keyed to a high note, and
the quiet, smiling girl near him made it all seem a farce.
This was dangerous. Northrup relaxed.
"It's been nearly a week since I saw you," he said, and let his eyes
rest upon Mary-Clare's face.
"Yes, nearly a week," she said softly, "but it took me all that time
to make up my mind."
"About what?"
"Your book."
Northrup had forgotten, for the moment, his book, and he resented its
introduction.
"Damn the book!" he thought. Aloud he said: "Of course! You were going
to tell me where I have fallen down."
"I hope you are not making a joke of it"--Mary-Clare's face
flushed--"but even if you are, I am going to tell you what I think. I
must, you know."
"That's awfully good of you"--Northrup became earnest--"but it doesn't
matter now, I am going away. Let us talk of something else."
Mary-Clare took this in silence. The only evidence of her surprise
showed in the higher touch of colour that rose, then died out, leaving
her almost pale.
"Then, there is all the more reason why I must tell you what I think,"
she said at last.
The words came like sharp detached particles; they hurt.
"We must talk about the book!"
And Northrup suddenly caught the truth. The book was their common
language. Only through that could they reach each other, understandingly.
"All right!" he murmured, and turned his face away.
"It's your woman," Mary-Clare began with a sharp catching of her
breath as if she had been running. "Your woman is not real."
Northrup flushed. He was foolishly and suddenly angry. If the book
must be brought in, he would defend it. It was all that was left to
him of this detached interlude of his life. He meant to keep it. It
was one thing to live along in his story and daringly see how close he
could come to revealment with the keen-witted girl who had inspired
him, but quite another, now that he was going, beaten from the field,
to have the book, _as_ a book, assailed. As to books, he knew his
business!
"You put _your_ words in your woman's mouth," Mary-Clare was saying.
"And whose words, pray, should I put there?" Northrup asked huskily.
"You must let her speak for herself."
"Good Lord!"
Mary-Clare did not notice the interruption. She was doing battle for
more than Northrup guessed. She hoped he would never know the truth,
but the battle must be fought if all the beautiful weeks of joy were
to be saved for the future. The idealism that the old doctor had
desperately hoped might save, not destroy, Mary-Clare was to prove
itself now.
"There are so many endings in life, that it is hard, in a book, to
choose just one. Why should there be an end to a book?" she asked.
The question came falteringly and Northrup almost laughed.
"Go on, please," he said quietly. "You think I've ended my woman by
letting her do what any woman in real life would do?"
"All women would not do what your woman does. Such women end men!"
This was audacious, but it caught Northrup's imagination.
"Go on," he muttered lamely.
"Do you think love is everything to a woman?" Mary-Clare demanded
ferociously.
"It is the biggest thing!" Northrup was up in arms to defend his code
and his work.
"You think it could wipe out honour, all the things that meant honour
to her?"
"Love conquers everything for a woman."
"Does it for a man?"
Northrup tried to fling out the affirmative, but he hedged.
"Largely, yes."
"I do not think that. There are some things bigger to him. Maybe not
bigger, but things that he would choose instead of love, if he had to.
It is what you _do_ to love that matters. If you come and take it when
you haven't a right to it; when you'd be stealing it; letting other
sacred things go for it--then you would be killing love. But if you
honour it, even if it is lonely and often sad, it lives and lives
and----"
The universe, at that momentous instant, seemed to rock and tremble.
Everything was swept aside as by a Force that but bided its hour and
had taken absolute control.
Northrup was never able to connect the two edges of conscious thought
that were riven apart by the blinding stroke that left him and
Mary-Clare in that space where their souls met. But, thank God, the
Force was not evil; it was but revealing.
Northrup drew Mary-Clare to her feet and held her little work-worn
hands close.
"You are crying--suffering," he whispered.
"Yes."
"And----"
"Oh! please wait"--the deep sobs shook the girl--"you must wait. I'll
try to--to make you see. I was awake that night at the inn--that is
why I--trust you now! Why I want you to--to understand."
She seemed pleading with him--it made him wince; she was calling forth
his best to help her weakest.
"Your book"--Mary-Clare gripped that again--"your book is a beautiful,
live thing--we must keep it so! Your man has grown and grown through
every page until he quite naturally believed he was able to--to do
more than any man can ever do! Why, this is your chance to be
different, stronger." The quick, panting words ran into each other and
then Mary-Clare controlled them while, unheeded, the tears rolled down
her cheeks. "You must let your woman _act_ for herself! She, too, must
learn and know. She made a horrible mistake from _not_ knowing and
seeing the first man; no love can help her by taking the solution from
her. She must be free--free and begin again. If it is right----"
"Yes, Mary-Clare. If it is right, what then?"
Everything seemed to wait upon the answer. The scurrying wood
creatures and the dropping of dead leaves alone broke the silence.
Slowly, like one coming into consciousness, Mary-Clare drew one hand
from Northrup's, wiped her eyes, and then--let it fall again into
his!
"I can see clearer now," she faltered. "Please, please try to
understand. It is because love means so much to some women, that when
they think it out with their women-minds they will be very careful of
it. They will feel about it as men do about their honour. There must
be times when love must stand aside if they want to keep it! I know
how queer and crooked all this must sound, but men do not stop loving
if their honour makes them turn from it. We are all, men and women,
too, _parts_--we cannot act as if--oh! you do understand, I know you
do, and some day you will go on with your beautiful book."
"And the end of my book, Mary-Clare? There must be an end."
"I do not know. I do not think a great big book ever ends any more
than life ends."
Northrup was swept from his hard-wrought position at this. The next
wave of emotion might carry him higher, but for the moment he was
drifting, drifting.
"You do not know life, nor men, nor women," he said huskily and
clutched her hands in his. "If life cheats and injures you, you have a
right to snatch what joy you can. It's not only what you do to love,
but what you do to yourself, that counts. For real love can stand
anything."
"No, it cannot!" Mary-Clare tried to draw away, but she felt the hold
tighten on her hands; "it cannot stand dishonour. That's what kills
it."
"Dishonour! What _is_ dishonour?" Northrup asked bitterly. "I'm going
to prove as far as I can, in my book, that the right kind of man and
woman with a big enough love can throttle life; cheat the cheater."
This came defiantly.
But the book no longer served its purpose; it seemed to fall at the
feet of the man and woman, standing with clasped hands and hungry,
desperate eyes.
The words that might have changed their lives were never spoken, for,
down the trail gaily, joyously, came the sound of Noreen's voice,
shrilly singing one of the songs Northrup had taught her.
"That's what I mean by honour," Mary-Clare whispered. "Noreen and all
that she is! You, you _do_ understand about some women, don't you? You
will help, not hurt, such women, won't you?"
"For God's sake, Mary-Clare, don't!"
Northrup bent and touched his lips to the small work-stained hands.
The song down the trail rose joyously.
"I have thought of you"--Mary-Clare was catching her breath
sharply--"as Noreen has--a man brought by the haunted wind. It has all
been like a wonderful play. I have not thought of the place where you
belong, but I know there are those in that place who are like
Noreen."
"Yes!" Northrup shivered and flinched as a cold, wet leaf fell upon
his hands and Mary-Clare's.
"The wind is changing," said the woman. "The lovely autumn has been
kind and has stayed long."
"My dear, my dear--don't!" Northrup pleaded.
"Oh! but I must. You see I want you to think back, as I shall--at all
this as great happiness. Come, let us go down the trail. I want you to
tell me about your city, the place where you belong! I must picture
you there now."
Northrup kept the small right hand in his as they turned. It was a
cold hand and it trembled in his grasp, but there was a steel-like
quality in it, too.
It was tragic, this strength of the girl who had drawn her understanding
of life from hidden sources. Northrup knew that she was seeking to
smooth his way on ahead; to take the bitterness from a memory that,
without her sacrifice, might hold him back from what had been, was,
and must always be, inevitable. She was ignoring the weak, tempted
moment and linking the past with all that the future must hold for
them both.
There was only the crude, simple course for him to follow--to accept
the commonplace, turn and face life as one turns from a grave that
hides a beautiful thing.
"You have never been to the city?"
There was nothing to do but resort to words. Superficial, foolish
words.
"Yes, once. On my wedding trip."
This was unfortunate, but words without thought are wild things.
Mary-Clare hurried along while visions of Larry's city rose like smiting
rebukes to her heedlessness. Cheap theatres, noisy restaurants, gaudy
lights.
"My dear doctor and I always planned going together," she said
brokenly. "I believe there are many cities in the city. One has to
find his city for himself."
"Yes, that's exactly what one does." Northrup closed his hand closer
over the dead-cold one in his grasp.
"Your city, it must be wonderful."
"It will be a haunted city, Mary-Clare."
"Tell me about it. And tell me a little, if you don't mind, about your
people."
The bravery was almost heart-breaking, it caused Northrup's lips to
set grimly.
"There is my mother," he replied.
"I'm glad. You love her very much?"
"Very much. She's wonderful. My father died long ago."
Mary-Clare did not ask whether he loved his father or not, and she
hurried on:
"And now, when I try to think of you in your city, at your work, just
how shall I think of you? Make it like a picture."
Northrup struggled with himself. The girl beside him, in pushing him
from her life, was so unutterably sweet and brave.
"My dear, my dear!" he whispered, and remorse, pity, yearning rang in
the words.
"Make it like a picture!" Relentlessly the words were repeated. They
demanded that he give his best.
"Think of a high little room in a tall tower overlooking all cities,"
he began slowly, "the cheap, the beautiful, the glad, and the sad. The
steam and smoke roll up and seem to make a gauzy path upon which all
that really matters comes and goes as one sits and watches."
Mary-Clare's eyes were wide and vision-filled.
"Oh! thank you," she whispered. "I shall always see it and you so. And
sometimes, maybe when the sun is going down, as it is now, you will
see me on that trail that is just yours, in your city coming to--to
wish you well!"
"Good God!" Northrup shook himself. "What's got us two? We've worked
ourselves into a pretty state. Talking as, as if--Mary-Clare, I'm not
going away. There will be other days. It's that book of mine. Hang it!
We've got snarled in the book."
The weak efforts to ignore everything failed pitifully.
"No, it is life." Mary-Clare grew grim as Northrup relaxed. "But I
want you always to remember my old doctor's rule. If a thing is going
to kill you, die bravely; if it isn't, get over it at once and live
the best you can."
"God bless and keep you, Mary-Clare." Absolute surrender marked the
tone.
"He will!"
"But this is not good-bye!"
"No, it is not good-bye."