"Take off your mitten," he said abruptly; I pulled it off with a jerk.

He held out his ungloved hand, and I laid mine within it. The two palms, warm, throbbing with coursing life, met--

"Goodby till Monday--and thank you for coming. There he is!"

He had just time to see the Doctor appear on the platform at the other end of the car. Mr. Ewart called to him as he swung himself on to the already moving train:

"John, look out for Miss Farrell--"

The dazed Doctor failed to grasp the situation. Mr. Ewart waved his hand as he pa.s.sed him; "Till Monday--Miss Farrell will explain."

"Miss Farrell, eh?" The Doctor turned to me who was at his side by means of an awkward skip and a jump, c.u.mbered as I was with the long coat. "Br-r-rre! Is this the weather you give me as a greeting?"

"Why don't you say rather: 'Is this the weather you brave to meet me in?' Would n't that sound more to the point? Come on to the pung; the soapstones are fine."

"Ah--that sounds more like Canadian hospitality. Come on yourself, Marcia Farrell; where's the pung?"

"Behind the station, that is, if the horses have n't bolted with Cale and the four dogs. Here he is."

Four canine noses were visible above the robes; eight delicate nostrils were flaring after the departing train. At the sound of the Doctor's voice a concerted howl arose from among the robes on the front seat--a howl expressive of disappointment, of betrayal by their master: "He is gone, we are left behind."

"Shut up," said Cale shortly, with a significant movement of his foot beneath the robes.

"Oh, Cale!" I made protest, for at that moment I sympathized. I should have felt the same had I been a dog; as it was--

I looked after the swiftly receding train, a bright beaded trailing line of black in the white night. The Doctor was opening the robes.

"In with you, and then we can talk; there 's no wind to prevent."

As soon as he was seated beside me and the horses' heads turned homewards, he began to chat in his cheery way, he asking, I answering the many questions; he telling of Delia Beaseley and his delight to be in Canada again, I inquiring, until we found ourselves pa.s.sing through Richelieu-en-Bas. And during all the time I was listening to his merry chat and chaffing, to his kindly expressed interest in all that pertained to my small doings at the manor, I was hearing the on-coming thunder of the engine and those last words: "Take off your mitten--Good-by till Monday--thank you for coming."

During that hour and a half of our homeward drive, I gave no heed to the perfect Canadian night, its silver radiance, its snow gleam and sparkle enhancing the violet shadows. I was seeing only that long-stretching waste of white beyond the junction, that bright beaded trailing line of black, narrowing and foreshortened as it receded swiftly into the night.

And where was the sense of physical rest? Why had this unrest I was experiencing taken its place? I was sitting beside as good a man, as fine a man, one more than that other's equal in achievement, as the world counts achievement. I was groping for a solution when the Doctor exclaimed: "There's the manor!"

The white walls and snow-covered roof stood out boldly against the black ma.s.sed background of spruce, hemlock and pine. The yellow chintz curtains were drawn apart, showing us both the gleam of lamplight and the leaping firelight. At the windows in the living-room were Jamie and his mother; at those of the dining-room both Angelique and Marie were visible for a moment. The Pierres, father and son, were at the steps to lend a helping hand.

"We are at home again, Marcia," the Doctor spoke significantly. I responded, simulating joyousness:

"Yes, and does n't it give us a warm cheery welcome?"

But even as I replied, I was conscious that the old manor of Lamoral without its master would never be home for me.

I went up the steps answering gayly to Jamie's "Is he here?" But by the emptiness of heart, by the emptiness of the pa.s.sageway, by the empty sound of the various greetings, joyous and hearty as they in truth were, I knew I needed no fourth sign to interpret myself to myself.

My woman's hour had struck--and with no uncertain sound.

XVIII

"And what next?" I asked myself after my head was on the pillow and while staring hour after hour at the opposite wall. Surely I had read enough of love! I had imagined what it might be like, even if I had never experienced it, even if I had thought little enough about it in connection with myself. I did not know it on what might be called the positive side, but I seemed to have some knowledge of it negatively. I knew it could be cruel, cruel as death; my own mother was a dead witness to that. I knew it could be brutal when pa.s.sion alone means love; I was eye witness to this on Columbia Heights not so very long ago. I knew, or thought I knew, that it could be killed, or rather worn to a thread by the slow grinding of adverse circ.u.mstance. I recalled my own lack of affection after the years of sacrifice for the imbecile grandfather, my shiftless aunt.

And now, in the face of such knowledge, to have this revelation! This sudden absorption in another of my humankind; all my thought at once, without warning, transferred to that other wherever he might be; all interest in life centering with the force of gravity in that other's life; "at home" only in that other's presence; at rest only by his side--

"Now, look here, Marcia Farrell, don't you be Jane Eyrey," I said to myself in a low but stern voice. I sat up in bed and drew the extra comforter about my shoulders. "No nonsense at your age! You accept the fact that you love this man,--and you will have to whether you want to or not,--a man who has never spoken a word of love to you, who has treated you with the consideration, it is no more, no less than that, which he shows to every member of his household. Now, make the most of this fact, but without showing it. Don't make the youthful mistake, since you are no longer a girl, of fancying he is reciprocating what you feel, feeling your every feeling, thinking your every thought.

And, above all, don't betray your self at this crisis of your life, to him or any member of his household--not to Delia Beaseley, not to Doctor Rugvie. Rest in his presence when you can. Rejoice to be near him--but inwardly, only, remember that!--when you shall find opportunity, but don't make one; discipline yourself in this, there will be need enough for it. 'Stick to your sure trot'; give full compensation in work for your wages--and enjoy what this new life may offer you from day to day. This new joy is your own; keep it to yourself. Now lie down for good and all, and go to sleep."

Thereupon I snugged down among the welcome warmth of the bed-clothes, saying to myself:

"I don't care 'what next'. I am so happy--happy--happy--"

But, even as I spoke that word softly--oh, so softly!--laying the palm of my right hand, that still felt the strong throbbing of his, under my cheek, I remembered that Cale had never once called me by the name he had proposed, "Happy"; that Jamie noticed the omission and remarked on it.

And what did Cale know? What could he know? There used to be a family of Marstins in our town before I was born. My aunt told me once that her sister married into the family; that, too, was before I was born.

I never knew any one of the name, and I never cared to look at the old family headstones. The churchyard, because it held my mother, was hateful to me.

And I? I was too cowardly to ask Cale why he omitted to call me by his chosen name; for by that name my mother was known among her own, so I was told--that mother whom I never knew, whose memory I never loved, of whom I was ashamed because people said she had belied her womanhood.

But ever since Delia Beaseley opened my eyes to a portion of the truth concerning her, I had felt great pity for her. Now, at the thought of her, dying for love, for this very thing that had come to me like lightning out of the blue, dying without friends in that dull bas.e.m.e.nt in V---- Court, my heartstrings contracted, literally, for I experienced a feeling of suffocation.

"Mother, oh, mother," I cried out under my breath, "was it for this, that I know to be love, you gave your all, even life itself? Oh, I have understood so little--so little; I have been so hard, mother. I did n't know--forgive me, mother--forgive, I never knew--"

It eased me to speak out these words, although I knew that in giving utterance to them my ears were the only ones the sound of my pleading could reach. Those ears, on which the word mother would have fallen so blessedly, would never hear, could never hear. Not so very far away, in northern New England, the snows lay white and deep, as white and deep as in Canada, on her neglected grave.

Something Delia Beaseley quoted from my mother in her hour of trial flashed again into consciousness: "The little life that is coming is worth all this." And my mother must have said it knowing all the joy, the bliss, the suffering, both of body and of soul, that this love must in due time bring to her daughter, because she was a woman-child.

What a Dolorous Way my mother must have trodden, must have been willing to tread for _this_!

There are minutes, rare in the longest lives, when life becomes so intensified that vision clears almost preternaturally, sees through telescopic lenses, so to speak. At such moments, the soul becomes so highly sensitized that it may photograph for future reference the birth or pa.s.sing of Love's star.

XIX

"It's my innings now, while Ewart is away," said the Doctor; "Marcia, will you go skiing to-morrow with me and Cale?"

"Did n't I promise you I would wait till you came?"

"I know you did; but possession, you know, is nine tenths of the law, and Ewart has been having it all his own way here with you since I left. He did, however, give me a parting word to look out for you. I don't see that you need much looking after; a young lady perfectly able to look out for herself, eh, Mrs. Macleod?"

"Perhaps the circ.u.mstances warranted some sort of chaperonage, Doctor,"

said Mrs. Macleod, entering into his fun and frolic as into no one's else. "As Marcia sets it forth, she was alone, except for you, on the platform of the junction nine miles from home, with Cale braced in the pung on the highroad, ready for the horses to bolt."

"Yes," said the Doctor, musing, "the circ.u.mstances were slightly out of the ordinary.--A full bowl, if you please, Marcia."

We were sitting around the hearth in the livingroom on the following Sunday evening. Porridge had just been brought in and I was dispensing it. Mr. Ewart's insistence upon Cale's joining us at this hour every evening, and remaining with us when no guest was present--the Doctor we counted one of us--had for result that, many an evening, we listened delighted and interested to his stories of adventure in the new Northwest. He was, in truth, a man of the woods, a man also of their moods, and like them showing track and trail, leafy underbrush, primeval forest trees, and the darling flowers of the forest as well; but, also, like them, withholding from our eyes the secret springs of his life. We often wondered if ever he would disclose any one of them.