At the Crossroads Part 3

The mine owner had been more or less familiar to the Forest for several years: his coming and going were watched and speculated upon.

Recently he had imported foreign labour, much to the sneering contempt of the natives whose philosophy did not include the necessity of perpetual work and certainly repudiated the idea of outsiders originating a new system. But Northrup was not a foreigner. He must be regarded from a different angle.

Aunt Polly made it her business, after the first few days, to start propaganda of a safe and inspiring character about her guest. While not committing herself to any definite statement, she made it known that if Northrup had any connection with Maclin, he was against him, not for him.

Maclin just then was the hub from which the spokes of curiosity led.

"He couldn't be for Maclin," Polly had said to Peter. "You know that as well as I do, Peter Heathcote. And getting facts signed and witnessed is an awful waste of time. The Lord gave women a sixth sense and it's a powerful sight surer than affidavits."

Peter grunted. So long as Polly hinted and made no statements he was content. He believed she was partly right. He thought Northrup might be on Maclin's trail, and from appearances Peter had confidence in his guest's ability to run his quarry to earth where, heretofore, others of the Forest had failed.

He liked Northrup, believed in him, and while he sat and nursed his leg, he let Polly do her hinting.

It was the evening of Northrup's third day at the inn when the three, with Ginger blinking contentedly, sat by the fire. Polly knitted and smiled happily. She had drifted that day into calling Northrup "Brace"

and that betokened surrender. Peter puffed and regarded his bandaged leg--he had taken a few steps during the afternoon, leaning on Northrup's arm, and his mood was one of supreme satisfaction.

Breaking the silence, now and again, an irritating sound of a bell intruded. It was a disconcerting note for it had a wild quality as if it were being run away with and was sending forth an appeal. Loud; soft; near; distant.

"Is there a church around here?" Northrup asked at last.

"There is," Heathcote replied, taking the pipe from his lips. "It's the half-built church I mentioned to you. A bit down the line you come to a bridge across an arm of the lake. On a little island is the chapel. It ain't ever used now. Remember, Polly," Heathcote turned to his sister, "the last time the Bishop came here? Mary-Clare was about as high as nothing, and just getting over the mumps. She got panicky when she heard of the Bishop, asked ole Doc if she could catch it. I guess the Bishop wasn't catching! Yes, sir, the church is there, but it's deserted."

"What is the bell ringing for?" Northrup roused, more because the name of Mary-Clare had been introduced than because the bell interested him.

He knew, now, that the girl in the yellow house was Mary-Clare. Her name slipped into sound frequently, but that was all.

"Who is ringing the bell?"

Aunt Polly rolled her knitting carefully and set her gla.s.ses aslant on the top of her head. Northrup soon learned that the angle and position of Aunt Polly's spectacles were significant.

"No human hands are ringing the bell," she remarked quietly. "I hold one notion, Peter another. _I_ say the _bell_ is ha'nted; calling, calling folks, making them remember!"

"Now, Polly!" Peter knocked the ashes from his pipe on to Ginger's back. "Don't get to criss-crossing and apple-sa.s.sing about that bell."

He turned to Northrup and winked.

"Women is curious," he admitted. "When things are flat and lacking flavour they put in a pinch of this or that to spice them up. Fact is--there's a change of wind and it ain't sot yet. While it's s.h.i.+fting around it hits, once so often, a c.h.i.n.k in the belfry that's got to be mended some day. That's the sum and tee-total of Polly's ha'nted tower."

Then, as if the question escaped without his sanction and quite to his consternation, Northrup spoke again:

"Who lives in the yellow house by the crossroads?"

This was not honest. Northrup knew _who_. What he wanted to say, but had not dared, was: "Tell me about her."

"I reckon you mean Mary-Clare." Aunt Polly shook a finger at Ginger.

"That dog," she added, "jest naturally hates the bell ringing. Animals sense more than men!"

This slur escaped Peter, he was intent upon Northrup's question.

"Seen that girl in the yellow house?" he asked. "Great girl, Mary-Clare. Great girl."

"I stopped there on my way here to ask directions. Rather unusual looking girl."

"She is that!" Peter nodded. Mary-Clare was about the only bit of romance Peter permitted himself. "Remember the night Mary-Clare was born, Polly?"

Of course Polly remembered. Northrup felt fully convinced that Polly knew everything in King's Forest and never forgot it. She nodded, drew her spectacles over her eyes, and continued her knitting while Peter hit the high spots of Mary-Clare's past. Somehow the shallows Northrup was filling while he listened.

Peter was in his element and drawled on:

"The wildest storm you ever saw round these parts--snow and gale; they don't usually hang together long, but they did that night. It was a regular night if there ever was one. n.o.body stirring abroad 'less he had to. Ole Doc was out--someone over the mine-way had got mussed up with the machinery. Ole Doc was a minister as well as a doctor. He'd tried both jobs and used to say it came in handy, but he leaned most to medicine as being, what you might say, more practical."

"You needn't be sacrilegious, brother," Polly interjected. "The story won't lose anything by holding to reverence."

"Oh, well," Heathcote chuckled, "have it any way you want to. Ole Doc had us coming and going, that's what I'm getting over. If he found he couldn't help folks to live, he plumped about and helped 'em to die. Great man, ole Doc! Came as you did, son, and settled. We never knew anything about his life before he took root here. Well, that night I'm telling you about, he was on his way back from the mines when he spied a fire on the up-side of the lake. He said it looked mighty curious s.h.i.+ning and flaming in the blinding whiteness. It was Dan Hamlin's shack. Later we heard what had happened. Dan had come home drunk--when he wasn't drunk you couldn't find a decenter man than Hamlin, but liquor made him quarrelsome. His wife was going to have a baby--Mary-Clare, to be exact--and when he came in with Jack Seaver, the mail-carrier, there was a row on concerning something Seaver hadn't brought that Hamlin had ordered for his wife. There never was any reasoning with Hamlin when he was drunk, so Seaver tried to settle the question by a fight. Seaver was like that--never had any patience. Lamp turned over, set the shack on fire!" Peter breathed hard.

"Mrs. Hamlin ran for her life and the two men ran from justice. Seaver came back later and told the story. Hamlin shot himself the following day when he heard what had happened. Blamed fool! Mary-Clare was left, but she didn't seem to amount to much in the beginning. It was this way: Mrs. Hamlin ran till she fell in a snowdrift. Ole Doc found her there." Heathcote paused. The logs fell apart and the room grew hot.

Northrup started as if roused from a dream.

"Yes, sir!" Heathcote went on. "Ole Doc found her there and, well, sir, he was doctor and minister for sure that night. There wasn't no choice as you might say. Mary-Clare was born in that snowdrift, and the mother died there! Ole Doc took 'em both home later."

"Good G.o.d!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Northrup. "That's the grimmest tale I ever listened to. What came next?"

"The funeral--a double one, for they brought Hamlin's body back. Then the saving of Mary-Clare. Polly and I wanted her--but ole Doc said he'd have to keep an eye on her for a while--she seemed sorter petering out for some time, and then when she took a turn and caught on, you couldn't pry her away from ole Doc. He gave her his name and everything else. His wife was dead; his boy away to school, his housekeeper was a master hand with babies, and somehow ole Doc got to figuring out that Mary-Clare was a recompense for what he'd lost in women folks, and so he raised her and taught her. Good Lord, the education he pumped into that girl! He wouldn't let her go to school, but whenever he happened to think of anything he taught it to her, and he was powerful educated. Said he wanted to see what he could do by answering her questions and letting her think things out for herself.

Remember, Polly, how Mary-Clare used to ride behind ole Doc with a book braced up against his back?"

Aunt Polly lifted the sock she was knitting and wiped her eyes.

"Mary-Clare just naturally makes you laugh and cry at once," the old voice replied, "remembering her is real diverting. She came from plain, decent stock, but something was grafted onto her while she was young and it made a new kind of girl of Mary-Clare. So loving and loyal." Again Aunt Polly wiped her eyes.

"And brave and grateful," Heathcote took up his story, "and terrible far-seeing. I don't hold with Polly that Mary-Clare became something new by grafting. Seems more like she was two girls, both keeping pace and watching out and one standing guard if the other took a time off.

I never did feel sure ole Doc was quite fair with Mary-Clare. Without meaning to, he got a stranglehold on that girl. She'd have trotted off to h.e.l.l for him, or with him. She'd have held her head high and laughed it off, too. I don't suppose any one on G.o.d's earth actually knows what the real Mary-Clare thinks about things on her own hook, but you bet she has ideas!"

Northrup was more interested than he had been in many a day. The story thrilled him. The girl of the yellow house loomed large upon his vision and he began to understand. He was not one to scoff at things beyond the pale of exact science; his craft was one that took much for granted that could not be reduced to fact. Standing at the door of the little yellow house he had become a victim of suggestion. That accounted for it. The mists were pa.s.sing. He had not been such an a.s.s, after all.

"So! that is your old doctor's place down by the crossroads?" he said with a genuine sense of relief.

"It was. Ole Doc died seven years back."

"What became of his son--you said he had a boy?" Northrup was gathering the threads in his hands. Nothing must escape him; it was all grist.

"Oh! Larry came off and on the scene. There are them as think ole Doc didn't treat Larry fair and square. I don't know, but anyway, just before ole Doc was struck with that stroke that finished him, Larry came home and seemed to be forgiving enough, if there had been any wrong done. He had considerable education; ole Doc had given him that chance, but Larry drifted--allas was, and still is, a drifter. We all stand pat for the feller on account of his father and Mary-Clare. It was a blamed risky thing, though, Larry's marrying Mary-Clare! I allas will hold to that!"

Once, when Northrup was a young boy, he had been shocked by electricity. The memory of his experience often recurred to him in moments of stress. He had been standing within a few yards of the tree that had been shattered, and he had fallen unconscious. When he came to, he was vividly aware of the slightest details of sight and sound surrounding him. His senses seemed to have been quickened during the lapse of time. He winced at the light; the flickering of leaves above him hurt; the song of birds beat against his brain with sweet clamour, and he vaguely wondered what had happened to him; where he had been?

In like manner Northrup, now, was aware of a painful keenness of his senses. Heathcote looked large and his voice vibrated in the quiet room; Aunt Polly seemed dwindling, physically, while something about her--the light playing on her knitting needles and spectacles, probably--radiated. The crackling logs were like claps of thunder.

Northrup pulled himself to an upright position as one does who resists hypnotism.

"I'm afraid you're tiring Brace, brother."

Aunt Polly's voice, low, even, and calm, got into the confusion as a soft breeze had, that day so long ago, and brought full consciousness in its wake.