At the Crossroads Part 11

"Miss Heathcote"--from his tones Northrup judged that Maclin was coming into the open--"Miss Heathcote, the t.i.tle of the Point isn't a clear one. I've made it my business to find out. Now I'm going to prove my friendliness--I'm not going to push what I know, I'll take all the risks myself. I'll give Mrs. Rivers a fair price for that land and everything will be peaceful and happy if you will use your influence with her and the squatters. Will you?"

Aunt Polly slipped from the sofa. Northrup heard her, and imagined the look on her face.

"No, Mr. Maclin, I won't! When the occasion rises up, I'll advise Mary-Clare against pigs in pokes and I'll advise the squatters to squat on!"

Northrup again had difficulty in smothering his laugh, but Maclin's next move surprised and sobered him.

"Isn't that place under the stairs, Miss Heathcote, where the bar of the old inn used to be?"

"Yes, sir, yes!" It was an ominous sign when Aunt Polly addressed any one as "sir." "But that was before our time. Peter and I cleaned the place out as best we could, but there are times now, even, while I sit here alone in the dark, when I seem to see shadows of poor wives and mothers and children stealing in that door a-looking for their men.

Don't that thought ever haunt you, Mr. Maclin, over at the Cosey Bar?"

They were sparring, these two.

"No, it never does. I take things as they are, Miss Heathcote, and let them go at that. Now, if _I_ were to run this place, do you know, I'd do it right and proper and have a what's what and make money."

"But you're not running this inn, sir."

"Certainly I'm not _now_, that's plain enough, or I'd make King's Forest sit up and take notice. Well, well, Miss Heathcote, just talk over with your brother what I've said to you. A man looks at some things different from a woman. Good-bye, ma'am, good-bye. Looks as if it were clearing."

As Maclin came upon the piazza he stopped short at the sight of Northrup by the open window. He wasn't often betrayed into showing surprise, but he was now. He had come hoping to get a glimpse of the stranger; had come to get in an early warning of his power, but he wanted to control conditions.

"Good afternoon," he muttered. "Looks more like clearing, doesn't it?

Stranger in these parts? I've heard of you; haven't had the pleasure of meeting you."

Northrup regarded Maclin coolly as one man does another when there is no apparent reason why he should not.

"The clouds _do_ seem lifting. No, I'm not what you might call a stranger in King's Forest. Some lake, isn't it, and good woodland?"

"One of the family, eh? Happy to meet you." Maclin offered a broad, heavy hand. Northrup took it and smiled cordially without speaking.

"Staying on some time?"

"I haven't decided exactly."

"Come over to the mines and look around. Nothing there as yet but a dump heap, so to speak, but I'm working out a big proposition and while I have to go slow and keep somewhat under cover for a time--I don't mind showing what _can_ be shown."

"Thanks," Northrup nodded, "I'll get over if I find time. I'm here on business myself and am rather busy in a slow, lazy fas.h.i.+on, but I'll not forget."

Maclin put on his hat and turned away. Northrup got an unpleasant impression of the man's head in the back. It was flat and his neck met it in flabby folds that wrinkled under certain emotions as other men's foreheads did. The expressive neck was wrinkling now.

Giving Aunt Polly time to recover her poise, Northrup went inside. He found the small woman hovering about the room, patting the furniture, dusting it here and there with her ap.r.o.n. Her gla.s.ses were quite misty.

"I hope you kept your ears open," she exclaimed when she turned to Northrup.

"I did, Aunt Polly! Come, sit down and let's talk it over."

Polly obeyed at once and let restraint drop.

"That man has a real terrible effect on me, son. He's like acid sorter creeping in. I don't suppose he could do what he hints--but his hints just naturally make me anxious."

"He cannot get a hold on you, Aunt Polly. Surely your brother is more than a match for any one like Maclin."

"When it comes to that, son, Peter can fight his own in the open, but he ain't any hand to sense danger in the dark till it's too late.

Peter never can believe a fellow man is doing him a bad turn till he's bowled over. But then," she ran on plaintively, "it ain't just us--Peter, Mary-Clare, and me--it's them folks down on the Point," the old face quivered touchingly. "The old doctor used to say it was G.o.d's acre for the living; the old doctor would have his joke. The Point always was a mean piece of land for any regular use, but it reaches out a bit into the lake and the fis.h.i.+ng's good round it, and you can fasten boats to it and it's a real safe place for old folks and children. There's always drifting creatures wherever you may be, son, and King's Forest has 'em, but the old doctor held as they ought to have some place to move in, if we let 'em be born. So he set aside the Point and never took anything from them, though he gave them a lot, what with doctoring and funerals. Dear, dear! there are real comical happenings at the Point. I often sit and shake over them. Real human nature down there! Mary-Clare goes down and reads the Bible to the Pointers--they just about adore her, and she wouldn't sell them out, not for bread and b.u.t.ter for her very own! It's the t.i.tle as worries Peter and me, son. We've always known it was tricky, but, lands! we never thought it would come to arguing about and I put it to you: What does this Maclin man want of that Point?"

Northrup looked interested.

"I'm going to find out," he said presently, feeling strangely as if he had become part and parcel of the matter. "I'm going to find out and you mustn't worry any more, Aunt Polly. We'll try Maclin at his own game and go him one better. He cannot account for me, I'm making him uneasy. Now you help the thing along by just squatting--that's a good phrase of yours; one can accomplish much by just squatting on his holdings."

And now that tricky imagination of Northrup's pictured Mary-Clare in the thick of it and carrying out the old doctor's whims; taking to the desolate bit of ground the sweetness and brightness of her loveliness. It was disconcerting, but at the same time gratifying, that pervasive quality of Mary-Clare. She was already as deep in the plot of Northrup's work as she was in the Forest. Whenever Northrup saw her, and he did often, on the road he was amused at the feeling he had of _knowing_ her. So might it be had he come across an old acquaintance who did not recognize him. It was a feeling wrought with excitement and danger; he might some day startle her by taking advantage of it.

The weather, after the storm, took an unexpected turn. Instead of bringing frost it brought days almost as warm as late summer. The colour glistened; the leaves clung to the branches, but the nights were cool. The lake lay like an opal, flas.h.i.+ng gorgeously in the sun, or like a moonstone, when the sun sank behind the hills.

One afternoon Northrup went to the deserted chapel on the island. He walked around the building which was covered with a crimson vine; he looked up at the belfry, in which hung the bell so responsive to unseen hands.

The place was like a haunted spot, but beautiful beyond words.

Northrup tried the door--it swung in; it shared the peculiarities of all the other doors of the Forest.

Inside, the light came ruddily through the scarlet creeper that covered the windows--no stained gla.s.s could have been more exquisite; the benches were dusty and uncus.h.i.+oned, the pulpit dark and reproving in its aloofness. By the most westerly window there was a s.p.a.ce where, apparently, an organ had once stood. There was a table near by and a chair.

An idea gripped Northrup--he would come to the chapel and write. There was a stove by the door. He could utilize that should necessity arise.

He sat down and considered. Presently he was lost in the working out of his growing plot; already he was well on his way. Over night, as it were, his theme had become clear and connected. He meant to become part of his book, rather than its creator; he would be governed by events; not seek to govern them. In short, as far as in him lay, he would live, the next few weeks, as a man does who has lost his ident.i.ty and moves among his fellows, intent on the present, but with the background a blank.

Northrup felt that if, at the end of his self-ordained exile, he had regained his health, outlined a book, and ascertained what was the cause of the suspicious unrest of the Forest, he would have accomplished more than he had set out to do and would be in a position where he could decide definitely upon his course regarding the war, about which few, apparently, felt as he did.

It was his spiritual and physical struggle, as he contemplated the matter now, that was his undoing. He was trying to drive the horror from his consciousness, as a thing apart from him and his. He was overwhelmed by the possessiveness of the awful thing. It caught and held him, threatened everything he held sacred. Well, this should be the test! He would abide by the outcome of his stay in the Forest.

At that moment Maclin, oddly enough, came into Northrup's thoughts and the fat, ingratiating man became part, not of the plot of the book, but the grim struggle across the sea.

"Good G.o.d!" Northrup spoke aloud; "could it be possible?" All along he had been able to ignore the suggestions of disloyalty and treachery that many of his friends held, but a glaring possibility of Maclin playing a hideous role alarmed him; made every fibre of his being stiffen. The man was undoubtedly German, though his name was not. What was he up to?

There are moments in life when human beings are aware of being but puppets in a big game; they may tug at the strings that control them; may perform within certain limits, but must resign themselves to the fact that the strings are unbreakable. Such a feeling possessed Northrup now. He laughed. He was not inclined to struggle--he bowed to the inevitable with a keen desire for cooperation.

At this point something caused Northrup to look around.

Upon a bench near by, hunched like a gargoyle, with her vague face nested in the palms of her thin hands, sat the girl he had noted in the yellow house the day of his arrival. One glance at her and she seemed to bring the scene back. The sunny room, the children, the dogs, and the girl on the table, who had soon become so familiar to him.

"Good Lord!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "And who are you?"

"Jan-an."

Another name become a person! Northrup smiled. They were all materializing; the names, the stories.

"I see. Well?"

There was a pause. The girl was studying him slowly, almost painfully, but she did not speak.