As the spring progressed, Janet grew stronger, became well again,
and through the kindness of Dr. Ledyard, the principal, was presently
installed with a typewriter in a little room in an old building
belonging to the Academy in what was called Bramble Street, and not
far from the Common. Here, during the day, she industriously copied
manuscripts' or, from her notebook, letters dictated by various members
of the faculty. And she was pleased when they exclaimed delightedly at
the flawless copies and failed to suspect her of frequent pilgrimages to
the dictionary in the library in order to familiarize herself with the
meaning and manner of spelling various academic words. At first it
was almost bewildering to find herself in some degree thus sharing the
Silliston community life; and an unpremeditated attitude toward these
learned ones, high priests of the muses she had so long ignorantly
worshipped, accounted perhaps for a great deal in their attitude toward
her. Her fervour, repressed yet palpable, was like a flame burning
before their altars--a flattery to which the learned, being human, are
quick to respond. Besides, something of her history was known, and
she was of a type to incite a certain amount of interest amongst these
discerning ones. Often, after she had taken their dictation, or brought
their manuscripts home, they detained her in conversation. In short,
Silliston gave its approval to this particular experiment of Augusta
Maturin. As for Mrs. Maturin herself, her feeling was one of controlled
pride not unmixed with concern, always conscious as she was of the
hidden element of tragedy in the play she had so lovingly staged.
Not that she had any compunction in keeping Janet's secret, even from
Insall; but sometimes as she contemplated it the strings of her heart
grew tight. Silliston was so obviously where Janet belonged, she could
not bear the thought of the girl going out again from this sheltered
spot into a chaotic world of smoke and struggle.
Janet's own feelings were a medley. It was not, of course, contentment
she knew continually, nor even peace, although there were moments when
these stole over her. There were moments, despite her incredible good
fortune, of apprehension when she shrank from the future, when fear
assailed her; moments of intense sadness at the thought of leaving her
friends, of leaving this enchanted place now that miraculously she had
found it; moments of stimulation, of exaltation, when she forgot. Her
prevailing sense, as she found herself again, was of thankfulness and
gratitude, of determination to take advantage of, to drink in all of
this wonderful experience, lest any precious memory be lost.
Like a jewel gleaming with many facets, each sunny day was stored and
treasured. As she went from Mrs. Case's boarding-house forth to her
work, the sweet, sharp air of these spring mornings was filled with
delicious smells of new things, of new flowers and new grass and tender,
new leaves of myriad shades, bronze and crimson, fuzzy white, primrose,
and emerald green. And sometimes it seemed as though the pink and white
clouds of the little orchards were wafted into swooning scents. She
loved best the moment when the Common came in view, when through
the rows of elms the lineaments of those old houses rose before her,
lineaments seemingly long familiar, as of old and trusted friends, and
yet ever stirring new harmonies and new visions. Here, in their midst,
she belonged, and here, had the world been otherwise ordained, she might
have lived on in one continuous, shining spring. At the corner of the
Common, foursquare, ample, painted a straw colour trimmed with white,
with its high chimneys and fan-shaped stairway window, its balustraded
terrace porch open to the sky, was the eighteenth century mansion
occupied by Dr. Ledyard. What was the secret of its flavour? And how
account for the sense of harmony inspired by another dwelling, built
during the term of the second Adams, set in a frame of maples and
shining white in the morning sun? Its curved portico was capped by a
wrought-iron railing, its long windows were touched with purple, and
its low garret--set like a deckhouse on the wide roof--suggested hidden
secrets of the past. Here a Motley or a Longfellow might have dwelt, a
Bryant penned his “Thanatopsis.” Farther on, chequered by shade, stood
the quaint brick row of professors' houses, with sloping eaves and
recessed entrances of granite--a subject for an old English print....
Along the border of the Common were interspersed among the ancient
dormitories and halls the new and dignified buildings of plum-coloured
brick that still preserved the soul of Silliston. And to it the soul of
Janet responded.
In the late afternoon, when her tasks were finished, Janet would cross
the Common to Mrs. Maturin's--a dwelling typical of the New England of
the past, with the dimensions of a cottage and something of the dignity
of a mansion. Fluted white pilasters adorned the corners, the windows
were protected by tiny eaves, the roof was guarded by a rail; the
classically porched entrance was approached by a path between high
clipped hedges of hemlock; and through the library, on the right, you
reached the flagged terrace beside a garden, rioting in the carnival
colours of spring. By September it would have changed. For there is one
glory of the hyacinth, of the tulip and narcissus and the jonquil, and
another of the Michaelmas daisy and the aster.
Insall was often there, and on Saturdays and Sundays he took Mrs.
Maturin and Janet on long walks into the country. There were afternoons
when the world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were
lucent in the sun; and afternoons stained with blue,--the landscape like
a tapestry woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo. The arbutus,
all aglow and fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala
were past, but they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the
rust-red bloom of the ginger. In the open spaces under the sky were
clouds of bluets, wild violets, and white strawberry flowers clustering
beside the star moss all a-shimmer with new green. The Canada Mayflower
spread a carpet under the pines; and in the hollows where the mists
settled, where the brooks flowed, where the air was heavy with the
damp, ineffable odour of growing things, they gathered drooping
adder's-tongues, white-starred bloodroots and foam-flowers. From
Insall's quick eye nothing seemed to escape. He would point out to them
the humming-bird that hovered, a bright blur, above the columbine, the
woodpecker glued to the trunk of a maple high above their heads, the red
gleam of a tanager flashing through sunlit foliage, the oriole and vireo
where they hid. And his was the ear that first caught the exquisite,
distant note of the hermit. Once he stopped them, startled, to listen to
the cock partridge drumming to its mate....
Sometimes, of an evening, when Janet was helping Mrs. Maturin in her
planting or weeding, Insall would join them, rolling up the sleeves of
his flannel shirt and kneeling beside them in the garden paths. Mrs.
Maturin was forever asking his advice, though she did not always follow
it.
“Now, Brooks,” she would say, “you've just got to suggest something to
put in that border to replace the hyacinths.”
“I had larkspur last year--you remember--and it looked like a chromo in
a railroad folder.”
“Let me see--did I advise larkspur?” he would ask.
“Oh, I'm sure you must have--I always do what you tell me. It seems to
me I've thought of every possible flower in the catalogue. You know,
too, only you're so afraid of committing yourself.”
Insall's comic spirit, betrayed by his expressions, by the quizzical
intonations of his voice, never failed to fill Janet with joy, while
it was somehow suggestive, too, of the vast fund of his resource. Mrs.
Maturin was right, he could have solved many of her questions offhand if
he had so wished, but he had his own method of dealing with appeals. His
head tilted on one side, apparently in deep thought over the problem, he
never answered outright, but by some process of suggestion unfathomable
to Janet, and by eliminating, not too deprecatingly, Mrs. Maturin's
impatient proposals, brought her to a point where she blurted out the
solution herself.
“Oriental poppies! How stupid of me not to think of them!”
“How stupid of me!” Insall echoed--and Janet, bending over her weeding,
made sure they had been in his mind all the while.
Augusta Maturin's chief extravagance was books; she could not bear to
await her turn at the library, and if she liked a book she wished to own
it. Subscribing to several reviews, three English and one American,
she scanned them eagerly every week and sent in orders to her Boston
bookseller. As a consequence the carved walnut racks on her library
table were constantly being strained. A good book, she declared, ought
to be read aloud, and discussed even during its perusal. And thus Janet,
after an elementary and decidedly unique introduction to worth-while
literature in the hospital, was suddenly plunged into the vortex of
modern thought. The dictum Insall quoted, that modern culture depended
largely upon what one had not read, was applied to her; a child of the
new environment fallen into skilful hands, she was spared the boredom
of wading through the so-called classics which, though useful as
milestones, as landmarks for future reference, are largely mere
reminders of an absolute universe now vanished. The arrival of a novel,
play, or treatise by one of that small but growing nucleus of twentieth
century seers was an event, and often a volume begun in the afternoon
was taken up again after supper. While Mrs. Maturin sat sewing on the
other side of the lamp, Janet had her turn at reading. From the first
she had been quick to note Mrs. Maturin's inflections, and the relics of
a high-school manner were rapidly eliminated. The essence of latter-day
realism and pragmatism, its courageous determination to tear away a veil
of which she had always been dimly aware, to look the facts of human
nature in the face, refreshed her: an increasing portion of it she
understood; and she was constantly under the spell of the excitement
that partially grasps, that hovers on the verge of inspiring
discoveries. This excitement, whenever Insall chanced to be present,
was intensified, as she sat a silent but often quivering listener to
his amusing and pungent comments on these new ideas. His method of
discussion never failed to illuminate and delight her, and often, when
she sat at her typewriter the next day, she would recall one of his
quaint remarks that suddenly threw a bright light on some matter
hitherto obscure.... Occasionally a novel or a play was the subject
of their talk, and then they took a delight in drawing her out,
in appealing to a spontaneous judgment unhampered by pedagogically
implanted preconceptions. Janet would grow hot from shyness.
“Say what you think, my dear,” Mrs. Maturin would urge her. “And
remember that your own opinion is worth more than Shakespeare's or
Napoleon's!”
Insall would escort her home to Mrs. Case's boarding house....
One afternoon early in June Janet sat in her little room working at her
letters when Brooks Insall came in. “I don't mean to intrude in business
hours, but I wanted to ask if you would do a little copying for me,”
he said, and he laid on her desk a parcel bound with characteristic
neatness.
“Something you've written?” she exclaimed, blushing with pleasure and
surprise. He was actually confiding to her one of his manuscripts!
“Well--yes,” he replied comically, eyeing her.
“I'll be very careful with it. I'll do it right away.”
“There's no particular hurry,” he assured her. “The editor's waited six
months for it--another month or so won't matter.”
“Another month or so!” she ejaculated,--but he was gone. Of course
she couldn't have expected him to remain and talk about it; but this
unexpected exhibition of shyness concerning his work--so admired by the
world's choicer spirits--thrilled yet amused her, and made her glow with
a new understanding. With eager fingers she undid the string and sat
staring at the regular script without taking in, at first, the meaning
of a single sentence. It was a comparatively short sketch entitled “The
Exile,” in which shining, winged truths and elusive beauties flitted
continually against a dark-background of Puritan oppression; the story
of one Basil Grelott, a dreamer of Milton's day, Oxford nurtured, who,
casting off the shackles of dogma and man-made decrees, sailed with
his books to the New England wilderness across the sea. There he lived,
among the savages, in peace and freedom until the arrival of Winthrop
and his devotees, to encounter persecution from those who themselves
had fled from it. The Lord's Brethren, he averred, were worse than the
Lord's Bishops--Blackstone's phrase. Janet, of course, had never heard
of Blackstone, some of whose experiences Insall had evidently used.
And the Puritans dealt with Grelott even as they would have served the
author of “Paradise Lost” himself, especially if he had voiced among
them the opinions set forth in his pamphlet on divorce. A portrait of a
stern divine with his infallible Book gave Janet a vivid conception
of the character of her ancestors; and early Boston, with yellow
candlelight gleaming from the lantern-like windows of the wooden,
Elizabethan houses, was unforgettably etched. There was an inquisition
in a freezing barn of a church, and Basil Grelott banished to perish
amid the forest in his renewed quest for freedom.... After reading the
manuscript, Janet sat typewriting into the night, taking it home with
her and placing it besides her bed, lest it be lost to posterity. By
five the next evening she had finished the copy.
A gentle rain had fallen during the day, but had ceased as she made
her way toward Insall's house. The place was familiar now: she had been
there to supper with Mrs. Maturin, a supper cooked and served by Martha
Vesey, an elderly, efficient and appallingly neat widow, whom Insall had
discovered somewhere in his travels and installed as his housekeeper.
Janet paused with her hand on the gate latch to gaze around her, at the
picket fence on which he had been working when she had walked hither
the year before. It was primly painted now, its posts crowned with the
carved pineapples; behind the fence old-fashioned flowers were in bloom,
lupins and false indigo; and the retaining wall of blue-grey slaty
stone, which he had laid that spring, was finished. A wind stirred the
maple, releasing a shower of heavy drops, and she opened the gate and
went up the path and knocked at the door. There was no response--even
Martha must be absent, in the village! Janet was disappointed, she had
looked forward to seeing him, to telling him how great had been her
pleasure in the story he had written, at the same time doubting her
courage to do so. She had never been able to speak to him about his work
and what did her opinion matter to him? As she turned away the stillness
was broken by a humming sound gradually rising to a crescendo, so she
ventured slowly around the house and into the orchard of gnarled apple
trees on the slope until she came insight of a little white building
beside the brook. The weathervane perched on the gable, and veering in
the wet breeze, seemed like a live fish swimming in its own element; and
through the open window she saw Insall bending over a lathe, from which
the chips were flying. She hesitated. Then he looked up, and seeing her,
reached above his head to pull the lever that shut off the power.
“Come in,” he called out, and met her at the doorway. He was dressed
in a white duck shirt, open at the neck, and a pair of faded corduroy
trousers. “I wasn't looking for this honour,” he told her, with a
gesture of self-deprecation, “or I'd have put on a dinner coat.”
And, despite her eagerness and excitement, she laughed.
“I didn't dare to leave this in the house,” she explained. “Mrs. Vesey
wasn't home. And I thought you might be here.”
“You haven't made the copy already!”
“Oh, I loved doing it!” she replied, and paused, flushing. She might
have known that it would be simply impossible to talk to him about it!
So she laid it down on the workbench, and, overcome by a sudden shyness,
retreated toward the door.
“You're not going!” he exclaimed.
“I must--and you're busy.”
“Not at all,” he declared, “not at all, I was just killing time until
supper. Sit down!” And he waved her to a magisterial-looking chair of
Jacobean design, with turned legs, sandpapered and immaculate, that
stood in the middle of the shop.
“Oh, not in that!” Janet protested. “And besides, I'd spoil it--I'm sure
my skirt is wet.”
But he insisted, thrusting it under her. “You've come along just in
time, I wanted a woman to test it--men are no judges of chairs. There's
a vacuum behind the small of your back, isn't there? Augusta will have
to put a cushion in it.”
“Did you make it for Mrs. Maturin? She will be Pleased!” exclaimed
Janet, as she sat down. “I don't think it's uncomfortable.”
“I copied it from an old one in the Boston Art Museum. Augusta saw it
there, and said she wouldn't be happy until she had one like it. But
don't tell her.”
“Not for anything!” Janet got to her feet again. “I really must be
going.”
“Going where?”
“I told Mrs. Maturin I'd read that new book to her. I couldn't go
yesterday--I didn't want to go,” she added, fearing he might think his
work had kept her.
“Well, I'll walk over with you. She asked me to make a little design for
a fountain, you know, and I'll have to get some measurements.”
As they emerged from the shop and climbed the slope Janet tried to fight
off the sadness that began to invade her. Soon she would have to be
leaving all this! Her glance lingered wistfully on the old farmhouse
with its great centre chimney from which the smoke was curling, with its
diamond-paned casements Insall had put into the tiny frames.
“What queer windows!” she said. “But they seem to go with the house,
beautifully.”
“You think so?” His tone surprised her; it had a touch more of
earnestness than she had ever before detected. “They belong to that
type of house the old settlers brought the leaded glass with them. Some
people think they're cold, but I've arranged to make them fairly tight.
You see, I've tried to restore it as it must have been when it was
built.”
“And these?” she asked, pointing to the millstones of different
diameters that made the steps leading down to the garden.
“Oh, that's an old custom, but they are nice,” he agreed. “I'll just put
this precious manuscript inside and get my foot rule,” he added, opening
the door, and she stood awaiting him on the threshold, confronted by the
steep little staircase that disappeared into the wall half way up.
At her left was the room where he worked, and which once had been
the farmhouse kitchen. She took a few steps into it, and while he was
searching in the table drawer she halted before the great chimney over
which, against the panel, an old bell-mouthed musket hung. Insall came
over beside her.
“Those were trees!” he said. “That panel's over four feet across, I
measured it once. I dare say the pine it was cut from grew right where
we are standing, before the land was cleared to build the house.”
“But the gun?” she questioned. “You didn't have it the night we came to
supper.”
“No, I ran across it at a sale in Boston. The old settler must have
owned one like that. I like to think of him, away off here in the
wilderness in those early days.”
She thought of how Insall had made those early days live for her, in his
story of Basil Grelott. But to save her soul, when with such an opening,
she could not speak of it.
“He had to work pretty hard, of course,” Insall continued, “but I dare
say he had a fairly happy life, no movies, no Sunday supplements, no
automobiles or gypsy moths. His only excitement was to trudge ten miles
to Dorset and listen to a three hour sermon on everlasting fire and
brimstone by a man who was supposed to know. No wonder he slept soundly
and lived to be over ninety!”
Insall was standing with his head thrown back, his eyes stilt seemingly
fixed on the musket that had suggested his remark--a pose eloquent, she
thought, of the mental and physical balance of the man. She wondered
what belief gave him the free mastery of soul and body he possessed.
Some firm conviction, she was sure, must energise him yet she respected
him the more for concealing it.
“It's hard to understand such a terrible religion!” she cried. “I don't
see how those old settlers could believe in it, when there are such
beautiful things in the world, if we only open our eyes and look for
them. Oh Mr. Insall, I wish I could tell you how I felt when I read your
story, and when Mrs. Maturin read me those other books of yours.”
She stopped breathlessly, aghast at her boldness--and then, suddenly, a
barrier between them seemed to break down, and for the first time since
she had known him she felt near to him. He could not doubt the sincerity
of her tribute.
“You like them as much as that, Janet?” he said, looking at her.
“I can't tell you how much, I can't express myself. And I want to tell
you something else, Mr. Insall, while I have the chance--how just being
with you and Mrs. Maturin has changed me. I can face life now, you have
shown me so much in it I never saw before.”
“While you have the chance?” he repeated.
“Yes.” She strove to go on cheerfully, “Now I've said it, I feel
better, I promise not to mention it again. I knew--you didn't think
me ungrateful. It's funny,” she added, “the more people have done for
you-when they've given you everything, life and hope,--the harder it
is to thank them.” She turned her face away, lest he might see that her
eyes were wet. “Mrs. Maturin will be expecting us.”
“Not yet,” she heard him say, and felt his hand on her arm. “You haven't
thought of what you're doing for me.”
“What I'm doing for you!” she echoed. “What hurts me most, when I think
about it, is that I'll never be able to do anything.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“If I only could believe that some day I might be able to help you--just
a little--I should be happier. All I have, all I am I owe to you and
Mrs. Maturin.”
“No, Janet,” he answered. “What you are is you, and it's more real
than anything we could have put into you. What you have to give
is--yourself.” His fingers trembled on her arm, but she saw him smile a
little before he spoke again. “Augusta Maturin was right when she said
that you were the woman I needed. I didn't realize it then perhaps she
didn't--but now I'm sure of it. Will you come to me?”
She stood staring at him, as in terror, suddenly penetrated by a dismay
that sapped her strength, and she leaned heavily against the fireplace,
clutching the mantel-shelf.
“Don't!” she pleaded. “Please don't--I can't.”
“You can't!... Perhaps, after a while, you may come to feel
differently--I didn't mean to startle you,” she heard him reply gently.
This humility, in him, was unbearable.
“Oh, it isn't that--it isn't that! If I could, I'd be willing to serve
you all my life--I wouldn't ask for anything more. I never thought that
this would happen. I oughtn't to have stayed in Silliston.”
“You didn't suspect that I loved you?”
“How could I? Oh, I might have loved you, if I'd been fortunate--if I'd
deserved it. But I never thought, I always looked up to you--you are
so far above me!” She lifted her face to him in agony. “I'm sorry--I'm
sorry for you--I'll never forgive myself!”
“It's--some one else?” he asked.
“I was--going to be married to--to Mr. Ditmar,” she said slowly,
despairingly.
“But even then--” Insall began.
“You don't understand!” she cried. “What will you think of me?--Mrs.
Maturin was to have told you, after I'd gone. It's--it's the same as if
I were married to him--only worse.”
“Worse!” Insall repeated uncomprehendingly.... And then she was aware
that he had left her side. He was standing by the window.
A thrush began to sing in the maple. She stole silently toward the door,
and paused to look back at him, once to meet his glance. He had turned.
“I can't--I can't let you go like this!” she heard him say, but she fled
from him, out of the gate and toward the Common....
When Janet appeared, Augusta Maturin was in her garden. With an instant
perception that something was wrong, she went to the girl and led her to
the sofa in the library. There the confession was made.
“I never guessed it,” Janet sobbed. “Oh, Mrs. Maturin, you'll believe
me--won't you?”
“Of course I believe you, Janet,” Augusta Maturity replied, trying
to hide her pity, her own profound concern and perplexity. “I didn't
suspect it either. If I had--”
“You wouldn't have brought me here, you wouldn't have asked me to stay
with you. But I was to blame, I oughtn't to have stayed, I knew all
along that something would happen--something terrible that I hadn't any
right to stay.”
“Who could have foreseen it!” her friend exclaimed helplessly. “Brooks
isn't like any other man I've ever known--one can never tell what he has
in mind. Not that I'm surprised as I look back upon it all!”
“I've hurt him!”
Augusta Maturity was silent awhile. “Remember, my dear,” she begged,
“you haven't only yourself to think about, from now on.”
But comfort was out of the question, the task of calming the girl
impossible. Finally the doctor was sent for, and she was put to bed....
Augusta Maturity spent an agonized, sleepless night, a prey of many
emotions; of self-reproach, seeing now that she had been wrong in not
telling Brooks Insall of the girl's secret; of sorrow and sympathy
for him; of tenderness toward the girl, despite the suffering she had
brought; of unwonted rebellion against a world that cheated her of this
cherished human tie for which she had longed the first that had come
into her life since her husband and child had gone. And there was her
own responsibility for Insall's unhappiness--when she recalled with
a pang her innocent sayings that Janet was the kind of woman he, an
artist, should marry! And it was true--if he must marry. He himself had
seen it. Did Janet love him? or did she still remember Ditmar? Again and
again, during the summer that followed, this query was on her lips, but
remained unspoken....
The next day Insall disappeared. No one knew where he had gone, but his
friends in Silliston believed he had been seized by one of his sudden,
capricious fancies for wandering. For many months his name was not
mentioned between Augusta Maturity and Janet. By the middle of June they
had gone to Canada....
In order to reach the camp on Lac du Sablier from the tiny railroad
station at Saint Hubert, a trip of some eight miles up the decharge was
necessary. The day had been when Augusta Maturity had done her share of
paddling and poling, with an habitant guide in the bow. She had foreseen
all the needs of this occasion, warm clothes for Janet, who was wrapped
in blankets and placed on cushions in the middle of a canoe, while
she herself followed in a second, from time to time exclaiming, in a
reassuring voice, that one had nothing to fear in the hands of Delphin
and Herve, whom she had known intimately for more than twenty years.
It was indeed a wonderful, exciting, and at moments seemingly perilous
journey up the forested aisle of the river: at sight of the first
roaring reach of rapids Janet held her breath--so incredible did it
appear that any human power could impel and guide a boat up the white
stairway between the boulders! Was it not courting destruction? Yet she
felt a strange, wild delight in the sense of danger, of amazement at
the woodsman's eye that found and followed the crystal paths through the
waste of foam.... There were long, quiet stretches, hemmed in by alders,
where the canoes, dodging the fallen trees, glided through the still
water... No such silent, exhilarating motion Janet had ever known. Even
the dipping paddles made no noise, though sometimes there was a gurgle,
as though a fish had broken the water behind them; sometimes, in the
shining pools ahead, she saw the trout leap out. At every startling flop
Delphin would exclaim: “Un gros!” From an upper branch of a spruce a
kingfisher darted like an arrow into the water, making a splash like
a falling stone. Once, after they had passed through the breach of a
beaver dam, Herve nodded his head toward a mound of twigs by the bank
and muttered something. Augusta Maturin laughed.
“Cabane de castor, he says--a beaver cabin. And the beavers made the dam
we just passed. Did you notice, Janet, how beautifully clean those logs
had been cut by their sharp teeth?”
At moments she conversed rapidly with Delphin in the same patois Janet
had heard on the streets of Hampton. How long ago that seemed!
On two occasions, when the falls were sheer, they had to disembark
and walk along little portages through the green raspberry bushes. The
prints of great hooves in the black silt betrayed where wild animals had
paused to drink. They stopped for lunch on a warm rock beside a singing
waterfall, and at last they turned an elbow in the stream and with
suddenly widened vision beheld the lake's sapphire expanse and the
distant circle of hills. “Les montagnes,” Herve called them as he flung
out his pipe, and this Janet could translate for herself. Eastward they
lay lucent in the afternoon light; westward, behind the generous log
camp standing on a natural terrace above the landing, they were in
shadow. Here indeed seemed peace, if remoteness, if nature herself might
bestow it.
Janet little suspected that special preparations had been made for her
comfort. Early in April, while the wilderness was still in the grip of
winter, Delphin had been summoned from a far-away lumber camp to Saint
Hubert, where several packing-cases and two rolls of lead pipe from
Montreal lay in a shed beside the railroad siding. He had superintended
the transportation of these, on dog sledges, up the frozen decharge,
accompanied on his last trip by a plumber of sorts from Beaupre, thirty
miles down the line; and between them they had improvised a bathroom,
and attached a boiler to the range! Only a week before the arrival of
Madame the spring on the hillside above the camp had been tapped, and
the pipe laid securely underground. Besides this unheard-of luxury for
the Lac du Sablier there were iron beds and mattresses and little wood
stoves to go in the four bedrooms, which were more securely chinked
with moss. The traditions of that camp had been hospitable. In Professor
Wishart's day many guests had come and gone, or pitched their tents
nearby; and Augusta Maturin, until this summer, had rarely been here
alone, although she had no fears of the wilderness, and Delphin brought
his daughter Delphine to do the housework and cooking. The land for
miles round about was owned by a Toronto capitalist who had been a
friend of her father, and who could afford as a hobby the sparing of
the forest. By his permission a few sportsmen came to fish or shoot, and
occasionally their campfires could be seen across the water, starlike
glows in the darkness of the night, at morning and evening little blue
threads of smoke that rose against the forest; “bocane,” Delphin
called it, and Janet found a sweet, strange magic in these words of the
pioneer.
The lake was a large one, shaped like an hourglass, as its name implied,
and Augusta Maturin sometimes paddled Janet through the wide, shallow
channel to the northern end, even as she had once paddled Gifford. Her
genius was for the helpless. One day, when the waters were high, and
the portages could be dispensed with, they made an excursion through the
Riviere des Peres to the lake of that name, the next in the chain above.
For luncheon they ate the trout Augusta caught; and in the afternoon,
when they returned to the mouth of the outlet, Herve, softly checking
the canoe with his paddle, whispered the word “Arignal!” Thigh deep in
the lush grasses of the swamp was an animal with a huge grey head, like
a donkey's, staring foolishly in their direction--a cow moose. With a
tremendous commotion that awoke echoes in the forest she tore herself
from the mud and disappeared, followed by her panic-stricken offspring,
a caricature of herself....
By September the purple fireweed that springs up beside old camps, and
in the bois brute, had bloomed and scattered its myriad, impalpable
thistledowns over crystal floors. Autumn came to the Laurentians. In
the morning the lake lay like a quicksilver pool under the rising mists,
through which the sun struck blinding flashes of light. A little later,
when the veil had lifted, it became a mirror for the hills and crags,
the blue reaches of the sky. The stinging air was spiced with
balsam. Revealed was the incredible brilliance of another day,--the
arsenic-green of the spruce, the red and gold of the maples, the yellow
of the alders bathing in the shallows, of the birches, whose white
limbs could be seen gleaming in the twilight of the thickets. Early, too
early, the sun fell down behind the serrated forest-edge of the western
hill, a ball of orange fire.... One evening Delphin and Herve, followed
by two other canoes, paddled up to the landing. New visitors had
arrived, Dr. McLeod, who had long been an intimate of the Wishart
family, and with him a buxom, fresh-complexioned Canadian woman, a
trained nurse whom he had brought from Toronto.
There, in nature's wilderness, Janet knew the supreme experience of
women, the agony, the renewal and joy symbolic of nature herself. When
the child was bathed and dressed in the clothes Augusta Maturin herself
had made for it, she brought it into the room to the mother.
“It's a daughter,” she announced.
Janet regarded the child wistfully. “I hoped it would be a boy,” she
said. “He would have had--a better chance.” But she raised her arms, and
the child was laid in the bed beside her.
“We'll see that she has a chance, my dear,” Augusta Maturin replied, as
she kissed her.
Ten days went by, Dr. McLeod lingered at Lac du Sablier, and Janet was
still in bed. Even in this life-giving air she did not seem to grow
stronger. Sometimes, when the child was sleeping in its basket on the
sunny porch, Mrs. Maturin read to her; but often when she was supposed
to rest, she lay gazing out of the open window into silver space
listening to the mocking laughter of the loons, watching the ducks
flying across the sky; or, as evening drew on, marking in the waters a
steely angle that grew and grew--the wake of a beaver swimming homeward
in the twilight. In the cold nights the timbers cracked to the frost,
she heard the owls calling to one another from the fastnesses of the
forest, and thought of life's inscrutable mystery. Then the child would
be brought to her. It was a strange, unimagined happiness she knew when
she felt it clutching at her breasts, at her heart, a happiness not
unmixed with yearning, with sadness as she pressed it to her. Why could
it not remain there always, to comfort her, to be nearer her than any
living thing? Reluctantly she gave it back to the nurse, wistfully her
eyes followed it....
Twice a week, now, Delphin and Herve made the journey to Saint Hubert,
and one evening, after Janet had watched them paddling across the
little bay that separated the camp from the outlet's mouth, Mrs. Maturin
appeared, with an envelope in her hand.
“I've got a letter from Brooks Insall, Janet,” she said, with a
well-disguised effort to speak naturally. “It's not the first one he's
sent me, but I haven't mentioned the others. He's in Silliston--and I
wrote him about the daughter.”
“Yes,” said Janet.
“Well--he wants to come up here, to see you, before we go away. He asks
me to telegraph your permission.”
“Oh no, he mustn't, Mrs. Maturin!”
“You don't care to see him?”
“It isn't that. I'd like to see him if things had been different. But
now that I've disappointed him--hurt him, I couldn't stand it. I know
it's only his kindness.”
After a moment Augusta Maturin handed Janet a sealed envelope she held
in her hand.
“He asked me to give you this,” she said, and left the room. Janet read
it, and let it fall on the bedspread, where it was still lying when her
friend returned and began tidying the room. From the direction of the
guide's cabin, on the point, came the sounds of talk and laughter,
broken by snatches of habitant songs. Augusta Maturin smiled. She
pretended not to notice the tears in Janet's eyes, and strove to keep
back her own.
“Delphin and Herve saw a moose in the decharge,” she explained. “Of
course it was a big one, it always is! They're telling the doctor about
it.”
“Mrs. Maturin,” said Janet, “I'd like to talk to you. I think I ought to
tell you what Mr. Insall says.”
“Yes, my dear,” her friend replied, a little faintly, sitting down on
the bed.
“He asks me to believe what--I've done makes no difference to him. Of
course he doesn't put it in so many words, but he says he doesn't care
anything about conventions,” Janet continued slowly. “What I told him
when he asked me to marry him in Silliston was a shock to him, it was
so--so unexpected. He went away, to Maine, but as soon as he began to
think it all over he wanted to come and tell me that he loved me in
spite of it, but he felt he couldn't, under the circumstances, that he
had to wait until--now. Although I didn't give him any explanation, he
wants me to know that he trusts me, he understands--it's because, he
says, I am what I am. He still wishes to marry me, to take care of me
and the child. We could live in California, at first--he's always been
anxious to go there, he says.”
“Well, my dear?” Augusta Maturin forced herself to say at last.
“It's so generous--so like him!” Janet exclaimed. “But of course I
couldn't accept such a sacrifice, even if--” She paused. “Oh, it's made
me so sad all summer to think that he's unhappy because of me!”
“I know, Janet, but you should realize, as I told you in Silliston,
that it isn't by any deliberate act of your own, it's just one of those
things that occur in this world and that can't be foreseen or avoided.”
Augusta Maturin spoke with an effort. In spite of Janet's apparent calm,
she had never been more acutely aware of the girl's inner suffering.
“I know,” said Janet. “But it's terrible to think that those things
we unintentionally do, perhaps because of faults we have previously
committed, should have the same effect as acts that are intentional.”
“The world is very stupid. All suffering, I think, is brought about by
stupidity. If we only could learn to look at ourselves as we are! It's a
stupid, unenlightened society that metes out most of our punishments
and usually demands a senseless expiation.” Augusta Maturin waited, and
presently Janet spoke again.
“I've been thinking all summer, Mrs. Maturin. There was so much I wanted
to talk about with you, but I wanted to be sure of myself first. And
now, since the baby came, and I know I'm not going to get well, I seem
to see things much more clearly.”
“Why do you say you're not going to get well, Janet? In this air, and
with the child to live for!”
“I know it. Dr. McLeod knows it, or he wouldn't be staying here,
and you've both been too kind to tell me. You've been so kind, Mrs.
Maturin--I can't talk about it. But I'm sure I'm going to die, I've
really known it ever since we left Silliston. Something's gone out of
me, the thing that drove me, that made me want to live--I can't
express what I mean any other way. Perhaps it's this child, the new
life--perhaps I've just been broken, I don't know. You did your best to
mend me, and that's one thing that makes me sad. And the thought of
Mr. Insall's another. In some ways it would have been worse to live--I
couldn't have ruined his life. And even if things had been different,
I hadn't come to love him, in that way--it's queer, because he's such
a wonderful person. I'd like to live for the child, if only I had the
strength, the will left in me--but that's gone. And maybe I could save
her from--what I've been through.”
Augusta Maturin took Janet's hand in hers.
“Janet,” she said, “I've been a lonely woman, as you know, with nothing
to look forward to. I've always wanted a child since my little Edith
went. I wanted you, my dear, I want your child, your daughter--as I want
nothing else in the world. I will take her, I will try to bring her up
in the light, and Brooks Insall will help me....”
PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Anger and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid
But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public menace
Exorbitant price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained
Foreigners. I never could see why the government lets 'em all come
Hitherto he had held rigidly to that relativity
Janet resented that pity
Love is nothing but attraction between the sexes
Mercifully, however, she had little leisure to reflect
Perhaps she feared to break the charm of that memory
She resented being prayed for
Struggled against her woman's desire to give
Tested the limits of Janet's ingenuity and powers of resistance
The seventh commandment was only relative
There had been something sorrowful in that kiss
Too much reason in the world, too little impulse and feeling