A Cry in the Wilderness Part 69

I have been his wife for nearly two years. I am sitting by the window in the living-room at Lamoral, while writing these last words. My baby, my little daughter, now four months old, lies in her ba.s.sinet beside me.

I believe Gordon's dearest wish was for a son, but I had set my heart on a daughter, and I really think he would have welcomed twins, or even triplets, of the feminine gender, if I had expressed a preference for them! A little daughter it is, however, and her father kneels beside her to wors.h.i.+p and adore. Sometimes I detect the traces of tears when his face emerges from her still uncertain embrace.

Our little daughter, born to such a heritage of love! I look at her often when she is asleep and wonder what her life will be. So far as her father and I can make it, it shall be a joy; and yet--and yet! To this little soul, as to every other new-born, life will interpret itself in its own terms, despite father-love, and mother-love and the love of friends--of whom she has already a host!

Cale has const.i.tuted himself prime minister of the nursery ever since her advent, and advises me on all occasions. She is sovereign in the house. Angelique and Marie fell out on the subject of which should launder the simple baby dresses, and, in consequence, we had an uncomfortable household for a week. Pete and his son, no longer "little" Pete, are her slaves. And as for the dogs, they guard the room when she takes her frequent naps, three lying outside the threshold, and one within, by the crib, to make known to us when she wakes. Of course, each dog has his day--otherwise there would be no living in the house with them.

Only this morning, Mere Guillardeau, now over a hundred, drove over to see her and brought with her a tiny pair of dainty moccasins that her nephew, Andre, sent down from the Upper Saguenay. Even the ba.s.sinet, in which she is at this moment lying, was woven by our Montagnais postman's squaw-wife and sent to me in antic.i.p.ation of her coming. We must try not to spoil her.

Our first summer was spent in Crieff with Jamie and Mrs. Macleod.

Jamie showed me the great Gloire de Dijon roses growing on the stone walls of his home, and the ivy covering the gate that gives pa.s.sage from the lower side of the garden to the meadows and the bright-glancing Earn. Before you step out through it, it frames the misty blue Grampians beyond the river. Jamie used to describe all this to me that winter in Lamoral; but the reality is more beautiful than any description.

The Doctor was with us for three weeks in August. We celebrated Jamie's birthday by repeating Gordon's celebration of it so long ago.

We went over the moors and through the bracken to the "Keltic". We made our fire beneath the same tree, under which Gordon camped to the little boy's delight, nineteen years before, and we swung our gypsy kettle and made refres.h.i.+ng tea. We had a perfect day together.

It was on that occasion Jamie confided in me. He told me his decision to return to England was not wholly influenced by his publishers, but because of his interest in Bess Stanley who, he had heard, was seen a good deal in the company of a distant cousin of my husband's--another Gordon Ewart, named from his father from whom my Gordon bought the manor and seigniory of Lamoral.

He discerned that the only wise thing for him was to be on the spot, "to head the other off" as he put it.

"If I can be only one half day with Bess now and then, I can make her forget every other man," he declared solemnly.

I laughed inwardly, but I knew he spoke the truth. Jamie Macleod is fascination itself when he exerts himself.

"I am going to win, you know, in the end," he said. "Another Ewart shan't cut me out again--" He spoke mischievously, audaciously.

"Oh, you big fraud! It's well I understand you."

"And I, you, Marcia--I 'll cable."

"Do, that's a dear. I shall be so anxious."

Yesterday I received the cablegram; Jamie has won.

I can't help wondering about those other "Gordon Ewarts", distant cousins of my husband. Can it be?--

No, no! I will not even speculate. That past is forever laid, thank G.o.d.

I write "forever"--but perhaps that is not possible, for I have lived through a strange experience that makes me doubt at times. When my nestling was on her way to us, when a perfect love enfolded me, a love that protected, guarded, surrounded me with everything that life can yield, then it was that, at times, I felt again a stranger in this world; nor love of husband, nor love of friends, nor my love for them, for my home, nor my very pa.s.sion of antic.i.p.ated motherhood, could banish that feeling.

I never told my husband. He will read it here for the first time. I accounted for it by reason of my condition in which every nerve centre was alive for two. It may be my mother felt this before me--I do not know. But when my baby came, when I could touch the little bundle beside me, when I gave her the first nourishment from the fountain of her life, the feeling left me. I have not experienced it since.

During this last winter I have occupied my enforced leisure in writing out these life-lines of mine. I have written them for my daughter. It may be that she, too, sheltered as she now is, may sometime find herself lost in the wilderness we call Life, may read these life-lines and, hearing her mother's cry, may find by means of it the trail--as her mother found it before her.

My husband, entering quietly without my hearing him, leaned over my shoulder, as I was writing those last words, and took my pen from my fingers.

"Not yet, Marcia; you have n't gained your strength."

I seized a pencil, and while I try to finish now, scribbling, he is holding the end of it, ready to lift it from the paper.

"Please, Gordon--just a few more words--only a few about the new farm project, and Delia, and the Doctor and Mrs. Macleod,"--I hear him laugh under his breath when I couple those two names; we are still hoping in that direction,--"and those dear d.u.c.h.enes--and you, of course--"

The pencil is being lifted--I struggle to write--

"Oh, Gordon, you tyrant!"

BOOKS BY

MARY E. WALLER

THE WOOD-CARVER OF 'LYMPUS A DAUGHTER OF THE RICH THE LITTLE CITIZEN SANNA OF THE ISLAND TOWN A YEAR OUT OF LIFE FLAMSTED QUARRIES A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS MY RAGPICKER THROUGH THE GATES OF THE NETHERLANDS OUR BENNY