He laughed again--and Madison joined him in the laugh, slapping him a cordial good-by on the shoulder.

Madison started on once more--but now his progress was slow, frequently interrupted, for he stopped a score of times to chat and exchange a few words with those whom he pa.s.sed on the road. There were cheery faces everywhere--even those of the sufferers who straggled out along the road coming back from the Patriarch's cottage. It was a cheery afternoon, warm and balmy and bright--everything was cheery. The farmers, their vocations for the moment changed, waved their whips at him and shouted friendly pleasantries as they drove by with those who were unable to make the trip from the Patriarch's unaided.

Madison began to experience a strange, exhilarating sense of uplift upon him, a sort of rather commendatory and gratified feeling with himself.

Marvin had hit it pretty nearly right with his "clean-wholesomeness"

idea--it kind of made one feel good to be a part of it. Madison, for the time being, relegated Helena and his immediate mission to a secondary place in his thoughts.

Young girls, young men, middle-aged men, elderly women, all ages of both s.e.xes he pa.s.sed as he went along; some alone, some in couples, some in little groups, some on crutches, some in wheel-chairs, some walking without extraneous aid--he had turned into the woods now, and he could see them strewn out all along the wagon track under the cool, interlacing branches overhead.

Now he stepped aside to let a wagon pa.s.s him, and answered the farmer's call and the smile of the occupants in kind; now some one stopped to tell him again the story of the afternoon--there had been cures that day and the Patriarch had come amongst them. Some laughed, some sang a little, softly, to themselves--all smiled--all spoke in glad, hopeful words, clean words--there seemed no base thought in any mind, only that cleanness, that wholesomeness that had so appealed to Marvin--that somehow Madison found he was taking a delight in responding to, and, because it afforded him whimsical pleasure, chose to pretend that he was quite a genuine exponent of it himself.

He reached the end of the wagon track, and paused involuntarily on the edge of the Patriarch's lawn as he came out from the trees. Like low, lulling music came the distant, mellowed noise of waters, the breaking surf. And the cottage was a bower of green now, clothed in ivy and vine--upon the trellises the early roses were budding--fragrance of growing things blended with the salt, invigorating breeze from the ocean. And upon the lawn, flanked with its st.u.r.dy maples, all in leaf, that toned the sunshine in soft-falling shadows, stood, or sat, or reclined on cots, the supplicants who still tarried though the Patriarch had gone. And now one came reverently out of the cottage door from that room that was never closed; now another went in--and still another.

Madison smiled suddenly, broadly, with immense satisfaction and contentment--and then his eyes fixed quite as suddenly on the single-seated buggy that was coming toward him on the driveway across the lawn. That was Mamie Rodgers driving--and that was Helena beside her.

Madison recalled instantly the object of his visit--and instantly he whistled a rather surprised little whistle under his breath. How alluringly Helena's brown hair coiled in wavy wealth upon her head; there wasn't any need of rouge for color in the oval face; the dark eyes were soft and deep and glorious; and she sat there in a little white muslin frock as dainty as a medallion from a master's brush.

"Say," said Madison to himself, "say, I never quite got it before. Say, she's--she's lovely--and that's my Helena. It's no wonder Thornton stared at her that day we touched him for the fifty, and"--suddenly--"d.a.m.n Thornton!"

But the buggy was beside him now, and he lifted his hat as Mamie Rodgers pulled up the horse.

"Good afternoon, Miss Rodgers," he said. "Good afternoon, Miss Vail--how is the Patriarch to-day?"

"He is very well, thank you," Helena answered--and being custodian of the whip brushed a fly off the horse's flank.

"I was just coming out to pay you a little visit," remarked Madison, trying to catch her eye.

"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry!" said Helena sweetly, still busy with the fly.

"Mamie is going to take me for a drive--and afterwards we are going to her house for tea."

"Oh!" said Madison, a little blankly.

Helena smiled at him, nodded, and touched the horse with the whip--and then she leaned suddenly out toward him, as the buggy started forward.

"Oh, Mr. Madison," she called, "I forgot to tell you! I had a letter from Mr. Thornton to-day--and he's coming back to-morrow."

--XVII--

IN WHICH HELENA TAKES A RIDE

The wind kissed Helena's face, bringing dainty color to her cheeks, tossing truant wisps of hair this way and that, as the car swept onward.

But she sat strangely silent now beside Thornton at the steering wheel.

It seemed to her that she was living, not her own life, not life as she had known and looked upon it in the years before, but living, as it were, in a strange, suspended state that was neither real nor unreal, as in a dream that led her, now through cool, deep forests, beside clear, sparkling streams where all was a great peace and the soul was at rest, serene, untroubled, now into desolate places where misery had its birth and shame was, where there was fear, and the mind stood staggered and appalled and lost and knew not how to guide her that she might flee from it all.

At moments most unexpected, as now when motoring with Thornton in the car that he had brought back with him on, his return to Needley, when laughing at the Flopper's determined pursuit of Mamie Rodgers, when engaged in the homely, practical details of housekeeping about the cottage, there came flashing suddenly upon her the picture of Mrs.

Thornton lying on the bra.s.s bed in the car compartment that night, every line of the pale, gentle face as vivid, as actual as though it were once more before her in reality, and in her ears rang again, stabbing her with their unmeant condemnation, those words of sweetness, love and purity that held her up to gaze upon herself in ghastly, terrifying mockery.

It stupified her, bewildered her, frightened her. She seemed, for days and weeks now, to be drifting with a current that, eddying, swirling, swept her this way and that. How wonderful it was, this life she was now leading compared with the old life--so full of the better things, the better emotions, the better thoughts that she had never known before!

How monstrous in its irony that she was leading it to _steal_, that she might play her part in a criminal scheme for a criminal end! And yet, somehow, it did not all seem sham, this part she played--and that very thought, too, frightened her. Why was it now that Madison's oft-attempted, and as oft-repulsed, kiss upon her lips was something from which she shrank and battled back, no longer from a sense of pique or to bring him to his knees, but because something new within her, intangible, that she did not understand, rose up against it! Why did she do this--she, who had known the depths, who had known no other guide or mentor than the turbulent, pa.s.sionate love she had yielded him and in her abandonment had once found contentment! Was her love for him gone?

Or, if it was not that--what was it?

What was it? A week, another, two more, a month had slipped away since Thornton had returned, and there had been so much of genuineness crowded into this sham part of hers that it seemed at times the part itself was genuine. She had come to love that little room of hers, love it for its dear simplicity, the white muslin curtains, the rag mat, the patch-quilt on the bed; those daily duties of a woman, that she had never done before, that she had at first looked at askance, brought now a sense of keen, housewifely pride; the gentle patience of the Patriarch, his love for her, his simple trust in her had found a quick and instant response in her own heart, and daily her affection for him had grown; and there was Thornton--this man beside her, whose companionship somehow she seemed to crave for, who, in his grave, quiet manliness, seemed a sort of inspiration to her, who seemed in a curious way to appease a new hunger that had come to her for a.s.sociation, for contact with better thoughts and better ideals.

What was it? Environment? Yes; there must be something in that. It was having its effect even on Pale Face Harry and the Flopper. What was it that Harry, a surprisingly l.u.s.ty farmhand now, had said to her a week or so ago: "Say, Helena, do you ever feel that while you was trying to kid the crowd about this living on the square, you was kind of getting kidded yourself? I dunno! I ain't coughed for a month--honest. But it ain't only that. Say--I dunno! Do you ever feel that way?"

Yes; there must be something in environment. The old life had never brought her thoughts such as these, thoughts that had been with her now almost since the first day she had come to Needley--this disquiet, this self-questioning, these sudden floods of condemnatory confusion; and, mingling with them, a startled thrill, a strange, half-glad, half-premonitory awakening, a vague p.r.o.nouncement that innately it might be true that she was not what she _really_ was--but what all those around her held her to be--what Mrs. Thornton had said she was--and--

Her fingers closed with a quick, fierce pressure on the arm-rest of her seat--and she shifted her position with a sudden, involuntary movement.

Thornton, a road-map tacked on a piece of board and propped up at his feet, raised his head, and, self-occupied himself, had apparently not noticed her silence, for he spoke irrelevantly.

"I hope you won't mind if the road is a bit rougher than usual for a few miles," he said; "but you know we decided we didn't like the looks of the weather at tea-time, and according to the map, which labels it 'rough but pa.s.sable,' this is a short cut that will lop off about ten miles and take us back to Needley through Barton's Mills."

"Of course, I don't mind," Helena answered. "How far are we from Needley?"

"About thirty-five miles or so," Thornton replied. "Say, an hour and a half with any kind of going at all. We ought to be back by nine."

Helena nodded brightly and leaned back in her seat. Rather than objecting to the short cut that Thornton had begun to negotiate, the road, now that she gave her attention to it, she found to be quite the prettiest bit she had seen in the whole afternoon's run, where, in the rough, spa.r.s.ely settled north country, all was both pretty and a delight--miles and miles without the sign of even a farmhouse, just the great Maine forests, so majestic and grand in their solitude, bordering the road that undulated with the country, now to a rise with its magnificent sweep of scenery, now to the cool, fresh valleys full of the sweet pine-scent of the woods. They had explored much of it together in the little 'run-about,' nearly every day a short spin somewhere; to-day a little more ambitious run--the whole afternoon, and tea, a picnic tea, an hour or more back, in a charming glade beside a little brook.

"Oh, this is perfectly lovely!" she exclaimed; and then, with a breathless laugh, as a b.u.mp lifted her out of her seat: "It _is_ rough--isn't it?"

Thornton laughed and slowed down.

"I don't fancy it's used much, except in the winter for logging. But if the map says we can get through, I guess we're all right--there's about an eight mile stretch of it."

It was growing dusk, and the shadows, fanciful and picturesque; were deepening around them. Now it showed a solid ma.s.s of green ahead, and, like a sylvan path, the road, converging in the distance, lost itself in a wall of foliage; now it swerved rapidly, this way and that, in short curves, as though, like one lost, it sought its way.

A half hour pa.s.sed. Thornton stopped the car, got down and lighted his lamps, then started on again. The going had seemed to be growing steadily worse--the road, as Thornton had said, was little more indeed than a logging trail through the heart of the woods; and now, deeper in, with increasing frequency, the tires slipped and skidded on damp, moist earth that at times approached very nearly to being oozy mud.

Silence for a long while had held between them. It was taking Thornton all his time now to guide the car, that, negotiating fallen branches strewn across the way, bad holes and ruts, was crawling at a snail's pace.

"'Rough but pa.s.sable'!" he laughed once, clambering back to his seat after clearing away a dead tree-trunk from in front of them. "But there's no use trying to go back, as we must be halfway through, and it can't be any worse ahead than it's been behind. I'd like to tell the fellow that made this map something!"

And then upon Helena, just why she could not tell, began to steal an uneasiness that frightened her a little. It had grown suddenly, intensely dark--quicker than the slow, creeping change of dusk blending softly into night. Sort of eerie, it seemed--and a wind springing up and rustling through the branches made strange noises all about. They seemed to be shut in by a wall of blackness on every hand, except ahead where, like great streaming eyes of fire, the powerful lamps shot out their rays making weird color effects in the forest--huge tree-trunks loomed a dead drab, like mute sentinels, grim and ominous, that barred their way; now, in the full glare, the foliage took on the softest fairy shade of green; now, tapering off, heavier in color, it merged into impenetrable black; and, with the jouncing of the car, the light rays jiggling up and down gave an unnatural semblance as of moving, animate things before them, a myriad of them, ever retreating, but ever marshalling their forces again as though threatening attack, as though to oppose the car's advance.

What was there to be afraid of? She tried to laugh at herself--it was perfectly ridiculous. A little bit of rough road--the forest that she loved around her--even if it was very dark. They would come out eventually somewhere on the trunk-road to Barton's Mills--that was all there was to it. Meanwhile, it was quite an experience, and she had every confidence in Thornton. She glanced at him now. It was too dark to get more than an indistinct outline of the clean-cut profile, but there was something inspiriting in the alert, self-possessed, competent poise of his body as he crouched well forward over the wheel, his eyes never lifting from the road ahead.

They appeared to be going a little faster now, too--undoubtedly the road was getting better. What was there to be afraid of? It didn't make it any more pleasant for Thornton, who was probably reproaching himself rather bitterly for having been tempted by the "short cut," to have her sit and mope beside him!

She began to hum an air softly to herself--and then laughingly sang a bar or two aloud.

Thornton shot a quick, appreciative glance at her and nodded, joining in the laugh.

"By Jove!" he said approvingly. "That sounds good to me. I was afraid this beastly stretch, b.u.mping and crawling along in the dark, was making you miserable."