A Cry in the Wilderness Part 47

XXV

We saw little, if anything, of Mr. Ewart for the next week. His time was wholly occupied with the land business. He took his breakfast early, at five or thereabout, and rarely came home for dinner or supper. His return at night was also uncertain. Sometimes a telephone message informed us he was starting for Montreal, or Quebec. I think I saw him but once in the week that followed that morning in the office.

Then it was late in the evening, on his return from Montreal. He seemed both tired and preoccupied. We were not at table with him during those seven days. I wondered, and Jamie guessed in vain, whether anything might be worrying him. It seemed natural that something should be the trouble during such a wholesale transference of land.

Mrs. Macleod and I were busy all day in getting ready the camp outfit for the four of us. Cale was not to go, as his work was at home. It surprised me that he had so little to say about Mr. Ewart to whom he was devoted. Whenever, in the intimacy of our half-relation bond, I felt at liberty to question him about his employer, he always put me off in a manner far from satisfying and wholly irritating.

I asked him once if he knew whether Mr. Ewart was a bachelor or a widower.

He stared at me for a moment.

"He ain't said one word ter me sence I come here as ter whether he is one or t'other," he answered, sharply for him.

"That's all right, Cale; I bear you no grudge. But, in justice, you 'll have to admit that when you live month after month in the same house with a man and his friends, you can't help wanting to know all there is to know about him and them."

"Wal, if you look at it thet way, I ain't nothing ter say. How 'bout yourself?" With that he deliberately turned his back on me, and left me wondering if by any incautious word, by my manner, by any small act, I might have betrayed the source of my new joy in life.

By the first of June the Seigniory of Lamoral was a wonderfully active place. The farmers were making greater and more intelligent efforts in cultivating their lands than ever before. Mr. Ewart had established the beginning of a small school of agriculture and forestry.

He used one of the vacant outbuildings for the cla.s.ses. It was open to all the farmers and their families; and twice a week there were lectures by experts, hired by Mr. Ewart, with practical demonstration on soil-testing, selection of seed, hybridizing, and irrigation methods. They were well attended. The women turned out in full force when it was known that there would be three lectures on bee-culture, and the industry threatened to become a rage with the farmers' wives; I found from personal observation that the flower gardens were increased in number and enlarged as to acreage. Mr. Ewart said afterward, when the blossoming time was come, that the land reminded him of the wonderful flower gardens around Erfurt in Germany where honey is a staple of the country. It was proposed to hold a seigniory exhibition of fruits, vegetables and cereals, the last of September.

The Canadian spring seems to lead directly in to summer's wide open door. In June, Jamie and I were often on horseback--I learning to ride a good Kentucky saddle horse that Mr. Ewart had added to the stables.

We were much in the woods, picking our way along the rough beginnings of roads that Cale, with the help of a gang of Canuck workmen, was making at right angles through the heavy timber. He had been at work in this portion throughout the winter in order to bring the logs out on sledges over the encrusted snow.

One afternoon in the middle of June, Mr. Ewart, whose continual flittings ceased with the first of the month, asked me to ride with him to the seigniory boundaries on the north--something I had expressed a wish to see before we left for camp, that I might note the progress on our return in September. He said it was a personally conducted tour of inspection of Cale's roads and trails.

My old panama skirt had to serve me for riding-habit. A habitant's straw hat covered my head. Mr. Ewart rode hatless. I was antic.i.p.ating this hour or two with him in the June green of the forest. I had not been alone in his presence since those hours in the office--and now there was added the intimacy of the woodsy solitude.

"I am beginning to be impatient to show you the trails through that real wilderness on the Upper Saguenay; but those, of course, we take without horses," he said, as he held his hand for my foot and lifted me easily to the saddle.

"I 've been marking off the days in the calendar for the last three weeks. It will be another new life for me in those wilds."

"I hope so."

"Have you decided which way to go?"

"I think it will be the better way to go by train to Lake St. John--to Roberval. We can cross the lake there and reach our camp about as easily as by way of Chicoutimi. We shall have a lot of camp paraphernalia for so long a camping-out, and, besides, that route will show you and Jamie something of a wonderful country. Of course, we shall come back by the Saguenay; I 'm saving the best for the last."

We forded our creek about a mile above the manor and entered the heavy timber.

"And to think it is I, Marcia Farrell, who is going to enjoy all this!"

I was joyful in the antic.i.p.ation of spending eight weeks, at least, in the presence of this man; eight untrammelled weeks in this special wilderness to which he asked me in order that it might seem something of a home to him!

"And why should n't it be you?"

"I don't know of any reason why it should n't, except that it might so easily have been some one else. But I must n't think of that."

"That is sensible; although I confess I don't like to think that you might so easily have been some one else. Hark! Hear that cuckoo--"

We drew rein for a few minutes, there beneath the great trees. The western light was strong, for the sun was still two hours high. Then we rode on slowly over the wide rough clearings which Cale had run at right angles, north and south, east and west through the woods.

"These are all to be gra.s.sed down next fall; in another year, if the gra.s.s catches well, they will make fine going for horses or for carriages, as well as good fire-lanes for which I have had them cut.

In the second season I can turn some of the prize Swiss cattle in here to graze for extra feeding. They know so well how to do all this in Europe, and we can learn so much from those older countries! I am sure, too, if you knew France, you would say that these river counties in French Canada are so like the north of France--like Normandy! When I drive over the country hereabout, I can fancy myself there. I find the same expanse and quiet flow of the river, the highroads bordered by tall poplars, the villages sheltered from the north by a wood break--forest wood. Even the backwater of the river, like our creek, recalls those ancestral lands of my French brothers' forefathers:--the clear dark of the still surface, the lindens, their leaves as big as a palm-leaf fan, coming down to the water's edge, and a wood-scow poling along beneath them. I love every feature of this country!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm, "and I want you to." He turned in his saddle to look directly at me.

"I do love it, what I know of it--and I wish I might sometime see those other countries you have spoken of, especially those flower gardens of Erfurt." I smiled at my thought.

His words conjured in my imagination enticing pictures of travel--such as I had planned when in New York, when my ten years' savings should permit me to indulge myself in a little roaming. My dream that was! I was tempted to tell him of it then and there.

"You know, Mr. Ewart, I spoke very freely to you and Jamie that morning in the office."

"Yes; I am thankful you felt you could--at last. I have been waiting for some opportune hour when I could ask you a few personal questions, if you permit."

"Well, that was one of my day dreams--at twenty-six," I said, wondering what his was, still unexpressed, at "forty-six". "The truth is, I wanted to break with every a.s.sociation in New York and with my past life--

"Why, Miss Farrell? You are so young to say that; at your age you should have no past."

I hesitated to answer. Thoughts followed one another with rapidity: "Shall I tell him? Lay before him what threatened to embitter my whole life? Shall I make known to him the weight of the burden that rested for so many years on my young shoulders--even before I went down into that great city to earn my livelihood? Shall I tell him that? How can he understand, not having had such experience? What, after all, is that to him, now?

"Young?" I repeated, looking away from him westwards into the illumined perspective of forest greens. "When you were young, very young in years, was there never a time when you felt old, as if youth had never pa.s.sed your way?"

I heard a sudden, sharp-drawn breath. I turned to him on the instant, and in the quivering nostril, the frowning brows, the hard lines about the well-controlled lips, I read the confirmation of my intuition, expressed to Jamie so many months ago, that he had suffered. My question had probed, unintentionally, to the quick.

With a woman's sympathetic insight, I saw that this man had never recovered from his past, never broken with it as, so recently, I had broken with mine. I felt that until he should make the effort, should gain that point of view, he could never feel free to love me as I loved him. The barrier of that past was between us. What it was I hardly cared to know. I was intent only upon helping him to free himself from the serfdom of memories.

"Don't answer me--I don't want any," I said hastily, leaning over to lay my hand on the pommel of his saddle. It was the only demonstration I dared to make to express my understanding, my sympathy.

In an instant his right hand closed hard upon mine; held it, hard pressed, on the pommel.

"I think I want to answer you," he said, speaking slowly, deliberately, without the slightest trace of excitement in his pa.s.sionless voice.

He was looking into the woods--not at me--as he spoke, and I knew that at that moment his soul was wandering afar from mine; it was with some one in the past. Suddenly, a hot, unreasonable wave of jealousy overwhelmed me; I yielded to the impulse to pull my hand from under his.

"It is not my hand he is clasping, and pressing with the strength of a press-block on the pommel; it's that other woman's!" I said to myself, making a second determined effort to release my hand.

He whirled about in his saddle, looking me directly in the eyes. He read my thought of him.

"Let your hand lie there, quietly, under mine," he said sternly; "it's _your_ hand, remember, not another's."

The tense muscles of my hand relaxed. It lay pa.s.sive under the pressure of his. I waited, quiescent. I realized that the Past had been roused from its lair. I must wait until it should seek covert again of its own accord, before speaking one word.

"I want to answer you--and answer as you alone should be answered: Yes, I have felt old--centuries old--"

He caught the bridle rein under the thumb of his right hand as it lay over mine. The left he thrust into his pocket; drew out a match-safe, a wax-taper. I, meanwhile, was wondering what it all meant; dreading developments, yet longing to know.

He reached for an overhanging branch of birch and broke off a small twig of tender young green. To do so, he removed his hand from mine which I kept on the pommel. I saw that the Past was still prowling, and it behooved me not to irritate, not to enrage by any show of distrust; nor did I feel any.

He struck the taper. "This is against forest rules," he said, "but for this once I shall break them."

He held the fresh green of the tiny birch twig in the flame. The young life dried within leaf and leaf-bud. The living green hung limp, blackened.