At the Crossroads Part 6

The trail was not an easy one--Mary-Clare had seen to that!--and as no one but Noreen and herself ever trod it, it was hardly discernible to the uninitiated. Up and up the path led until it ended at a rough, crude cabin almost hidden by a tangle of vines.

Looking back over the years of her married life, Mary-Clare often wondered how she could have endured them but for the vision and strength she received in her "Place," as she whimsically called it--getting her idea from a Bible verse.

Among the many things that old Doctor Rivers had given Mary-Clare was a knowledge and love of the Bible. He had offered the book to her as literature and early in life she had responded to the appeal. The verse that had inspired her to restore a deserted cabin to a thing of beauty and eventually a kind of sanctuary, was this:

And the woman fled into the wilderness where she hath a place prepared of G.o.d that they should feed her there.

The words, roughly carved, were traced on the east wall of the cabin and under a picture of Father Damien.

The furniture of the shack was made by Mary-Clare's own hands. A long table, some uneven shelves for books she most loved, a chair or two and a low couch over which was thrown a gay-patched quilt. Once the work of love was completed, Nature reached forth with offerings of lovely vines and mountain laurel and screened the place from any chance pa.s.ser-by.

A hundred feet below the cabin was a little stream. That marked the limit of even Noreen's territory unless, after due ceremony, she was permitted to advance as far as the cabin door. The pretty game was evolved to please the child and secure for the mother a privacy she might not have got in any other way.

As Mary-Clare reached the "Place" this autumn day, she was a bit breathless and stepped lightly as one does who approaches a shrine; she went inside and, kneeling by the cracked but dustless hearth, lighted a fire; then she took a seat by the rough table, clasped her hands upon it and lifted her eyes to the words upon the opposite wall.

Sitting so, a startling change came over the young face. It was like a letting down of strong defences. The smile fled, the head bowed, and a pitiful look of appeal settled from brow to trembling lips.

Mary-Clare had come to a sharp turn on her road and, as yet, she could not see her way! She had drifted--she could, with Larry away--but now he was coming home!

She had tried, G.o.d knew, for three long months to be sure. She _must_ be sure, she was like that; sure that she _felt_ her way to be the _right_ way; so sure that, should she find it later the wrong way, she could retrace her steps without remorse. It was the believing, at the start, that she was doing right, that mattered.

Sitting in the quiet room with the autumn sunlight coming through the cl.u.s.tering vines at window and door and falling upon her in dancing patterns, the woman waited for guidance. The room became a place of memory and vision.

Help would come, she still had the faith, but it must come at once for her husband might at any hour return from one of his mysterious business trips and there must be a decision reached before she met him. She could not hope to make him understand her nor sympathize with her; he and she, beyond the most ordinary themes, spoke different languages. She had learned that.

She must take her stand alone; hold it alone; but the stand must seem to her right and then she could go on. Like the flickering sunbeams playing over her, the past came touching her memory with light and shade, unconsciously preparing her for her decision. She was not thinking, but thought was being formed.

The waves of memory swept Mary-Clare from her moorings. She was no longer the hara.s.sed woman facing her problem in the clear light of conviction; but the child, whose mistaken ideals of love and loyalty had betrayed her so cruelly. Why had she who early had been taught by Doctor Rivers to "use her woman brain," gone so utterly astray?

Why had she married Larry when she never loved him; felt him to be a stranger, simply because he had interpreted the words of a dying man for her?

In the light of realization the errors of life become our most deadly accusers. We dare not make others pay for the folly that we should never have perpetrated. Mary-Clare, the woman, had paid and paid, until now she faced bankruptcy; she was prepared still to do her part as far as in her lay--but she must retrace her steps, be sure and then go on as best she could.

Always, in those old childish days, there had been the grim spectre of Larry's mother. Her name was never mentioned but to the imaginative, sensitive Mary-Clare, she became, for that very reason, a clearly defined and potent influence. She was responsible for the doctor's lonely life in King's Forest; for Larry's long absences from home; for the lines that grew between the old doctor's eyes when he laid down the few simple laws of conduct that formed the iron code of life:

_Never lie. Never break a promise. Never take advantage for selfish gain. Think things out with your woman brain, and never count the cost if you know it is right._

Larry's mother, so the child believed, had not kept the code--therefore, Mary-Clare must the more strictly adhere to it and become what the other had not! And how desperately she had struggled to reach her ideal. In the conflict, only her sunny joyous nature had saved her from wreck. Naturally direct and loyal, much of what might have occurred was prevented. Pa.s.sionate love and devout belief in the old doctor eliminated other dangers.

It was well and right to use your "woman brain," but when in the end you always came to the conclusion that the doctor's way was your way, life was simplified. If one could not fully understand, then all the more reason for relying upon a good guide, a tested friend; but above all other considerations, once the foundation was secure was this: she must make up to her adored doctor and Larry for what that unmentioned, mysterious woman had denied them.

It had all seemed so simple, when one did not know!

That was it. Breathing hard, Mary-Clare came back to the present. She could not know until she had lived, and being married did not stop life. And now, Mary-Clare could consider, as if apart from herself, from the girl who had married Larry because he had caught the dying request of the old doctor. She had wanted to do right at that last tragic moment. She had done it with the false understanding of reality and found out the truth--by living. It had seemed to her, in her ignorance, the only way to relieve the suffering of the dying: to help Larry who was deprived of everything.

Mary-Clare must not desert, as the unmentioned woman had.

But life, living--how they had torn the blindness from her! How she had paid and paid until that awful awakening after the birth and death of her last child, three months before! She had tried then to make Larry understand before he went away, but she could not! Larry always ascribed her moods, as he called them, to her "just going to have a child," or "getting over having one."

He had gone away tolerant, but with a warning: "A man isn't going to stand too much!"

These words had been a challenge. There could be no more compromising.

Pay-day had come for her and Larry.

But the letters!

At this thought Mary-Clare sat up rigidly. A squirrel, that had paused at her quiet feet, darted affrightedly across the cabin floor.

The letters! The letters in the box hid on the shelf of the closet in the upper chamber. Always those letters had driven her back from the light which experience shed upon her to the darkness of ignorance.

Larry had given the letters to her at the time when she questioned, after the doctor's death, Larry's right to hold her to her marriage vows. How frightened and full of despair she had been. She had felt that perhaps Larry had not understood. Why had the doctor never told her of his desire for her and Larry to marry? Then it was that Larry had gone away to bring proof. He had never meant to show it to her, but he must clear himself at the critical moment.

And so he brought the letters. Mary-Clare knew every word of them.

They were burned into her soul: they had been the guides on the hard road she had travelled. The doctor had always wanted her and Larry to marry; believed that they would. But she must be left free; no word must be spoken until she was old enough to choose. To prove his faith and love in his adopted child, Rivers had, so the letters to Larry revealed, left his all to her. In case she could not marry Larry, he confided in her justice to share with him.

The last dark hour had broken the old doctor's self-control--he had voiced what heretofore he had kept secret. The letters stood as silent proof of this. And then the old, rigid code a.s.serted its influence. A promise must be kept!

And so the payment began, but it was not, had never been, the real Mary-Clare who had paid. Something had retreated during the bleak years, that which remained fulfilled the daily tasks; kept its own council, laughed at length, and knew a great joy in the baby Noreen, seemed a proof that G.o.d was still with her while she held to what appeared to be right.

And then the last child came, looked at her with its deep accusing eyes and died!

In that hour, or so it seemed, the real Mary-Clare returned and demanded recognition. There was to be no more compromise; no more calling things by false names and striving to believe them real. There was but one safe road: truth.

And Larry was coming home. He had not understood when he went away: he would not understand now. Still, truth must be faced.

The letters!

Mary-Clare now leaned on the table, her eyes fixed upon the wall opposite. The roughly carved words caught and held her attention.

Gradually it came to her, vaguely, flickeringly, like a will-o'-the-wisp darting through a murky night, that if life meant anything it meant a faith in what was true. She must not demand more than that; a sense of truth.

As a little child may look across the familiar environment of its nursery and contemplate its first unaided step, so Mary-Clare considered her small world: her unthinking world of King's Forest, and prepared to take her lonely course. The place in which she had been born and bred: the love and friends that had held her close suddenly became strange to her. What was to befall her, once she let go the conventions that upheld her?

Well, that was not for her to ask. There was the letting go and then the first unaided step. Nothing must hold her back--not even those letters that had sustained her! In recognizing her big problem in her small and crude world, Mary-Clare had no thought of casting aside her obligation or duties--her distress was founded upon a fear that those blessed, sacred duties would have none of her because she had not that with which to buy favour.

There was Noreen--she was Larry's, too. Through the years Mary-Clare had remembered that almost fiercely as she combated the child's aversion to her father. Suddenly, as small things do occur at strained moments, hurting like a cruel blow, a scene at the time when Noreen was but four years old, rose vividly before her. Larry, sensing the baby's hatred, had tried to force an outward show of obedience and affection. He had commanded Noreen to come and kiss him.

Like a bird under the spell of a serpent, Noreen had stood affrighted and silent. The command was repeated, laughingly, jeeringly, but under it Mary-Clare had recognized that ring of brutality that occasionally marked Larry's easy-going tones. Then Noreen had advanced step by step, her eyes wide and alert.

"Kiss me!"

"No!"

The words had been explosive. Then Larry had caught the child roughly, and Noreen had struck him!

Maddened and keen to the fact that he had been brought to bay, Larry had struck back, and for days the mark of his hand had lain across the delicate cheek. After that, when their wills clashed, Noreen, her eyes full of fear and hate, would raise her hand to her cheek--weighing the cost of rebellion. That gesture had become a driving force in Mary-Clare's life. She must overcome that which lay like a hideous menace between Larry and Noreen! She was accountable for it; out of her loveless existence Noreen had birth--she was a living evidence of the wrong done.

Looking back now, Mary-Clare realized that on the day when Larry struck Noreen he had struck the scales from her eyes. From that hour she had bunglingly, gropingly, felt her way along. The only fact that upheld her now was that she knew she must take her first lonely step, even if all her little unknowing, unthinking world dropped from her.

Again the squirrel darted across the floor and Mary-Clare looked after it lingeringly. Even the little wild thing was company for her in her hard hour. Then she looked up at the face of Father Damien. It was but a face--the meaning of what had gone into its making Mary-Clare could not understand--but it brought comfort and encouragement.