Kitabı oxu: «A Cry in the Wilderness», səhifə 22

XXXIII

I watched him and little Pete drive away down the highroad; watched them out of sight. Then I sat down on the bench outside the waiting-room to think, "What next?"

I had no intention of going to Spencerville. My trunk would be safe there with the address of a neighbor of my aunt. What I most wanted was to be alone and time to think, time to regain strength for the struggle before me.

I don't know that for ten minutes I thought at all. I suppose I must have, for I remembered that at this hour Jamie and Mrs. Macleod were to sail; that the Doctor was on his way to San Francisco. That Cale could do nothing by telegraphing them. And what would he telegraph?

The ticket-agent and baggage-master locked the office door and came over to me.

"I 'm going up the road a piece; the train is twenty minutes late. You won't mind sitting here alone?"

"Oh, no. It is a lovely evening."

"No frost to-night." He went off on the highroad in the opposite direction from Richelieu-en-Bas.

The evening promised to be fine; the sun set clear in the sky. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a night hawk's harsh cry.

The dusk fell; still I sat there, not thinking much of anything. I had my hand-bag with me and my warm coat. I opened my bag and took out an apple; I had eaten nothing since breakfast and felt faint. The apple was an Astrachan. I found myself calculating what it cost—this one apple. I must begin to count the cost again of every morsel, although I had all my wages with me. But ten weeks of sickness—and where would they be!

I put my teeth into the apple— A thought: the apple-boat—it was to leave soon—the week was up!

I rose from the bench, not stopping to take a second bite; took my hand-bag; threw my coat over my shoulder, and started down the road to Richelieu-en-Bas.

It was rapidly growing dark. One mile, two miles, three miles—the night was there to cover me. I was thankful. Five miles, six miles—I was entering the long street of the village. The lindens and elms made the road black. I strained my eyes to see the lights. That from the cabaret was the first—then a green one above the water, several feet it looked to be. It must be the apple-boat!

It was just the time in the evening when the men flock to the cabaret. As I drew near it, I heard the sound of the graphophone. I listened, not stopping in my walk.

 
"O Canada, pays de mon amour!"
 

I stopped then; and it seemed as if my heart stopped at the same time.

Oh, it had been "Canada, land of my love" in the deepest sense—and now!

I went on to the boat; crossed the trestle. At the sound of my footstep on the deck, the woman put her head up the companionway.

"Who 's there?"

"Some one who wishes to speak with you alone; I was here the other day."

"I know your voice, but I don't know your name. You can talk; my husband is, at present, yonder in the cabaret; he will be in by half-past ten. We sail to-night if the wind holds good."

"To-night?"

"Yes; and what is that to you?" she asked suspiciously.

"May I come into the cabin?"

"But, yes. Come."

I sat down on the stool she placed for me. I was tired with the long walk.

"I have been called away from here, where I have been at service—"

"You—at service?" she asked in surprise.

"Yes; and I am going away to find another place. Will you take me with you in the boat? May I go with you to your home, wherever it is?"

She looked at me suspiciously. "I don't know—my husband—"

"I will pay you well, whatever you ask—"

"It is n't that,"—she hesitated,—"but I don't know who you are."

"I am myself," I said wearily; "I am tired of my place, and they don't want me to leave. I want to go—I am too tired to stay—"

"Too hard, was it?"

"Everything was too hard. I come from Spencerville, just over the line; you know it?"

"Oh, yes. My cousin settled there when the new tannery was built last year."

"All my family lived there. I am now alone in the world. I have sent my trunk on—but I want a complete rest before I go out to service again. I thought I could get it with you. I don't want to let the family know I have gone. The family are all away at present."

"Where have you been at work?"

"At the old manor of Lamoral, three miles away."

"I have heard of it; they bought ten barrels of apples last year." She seemed to be thinking over some matter foreign to me, at that moment.

"Won't you take me? I am so tired."

"You say you can work?"

"Try me."

"We are going back for the second harvest. We live near Iberville. We have orchards there, and help is always scarce at this time. Will you help?"

"Oh, yes; anything. I can do the housework for you, if necessary."

"You don't look tough enough for that."

"Try me."

"I 'll speak to my husband when he comes in."

"All I ask of you is, that you will not let him tell anyone here that I am on the boat."

"He has a tight mouth—a good head; he will do as I say."

"That settles it," I thought.

"If you will stay here with my baby, I 'll just step over to the cabaret and call him out. We can talk better in the road."

"Yes."

She climbed the steps, and I heard her heavy tread on the deck—her steps on the trestle-boards. After that, nothing for a quarter of an hour, except the soft lap of the river running past the boat.

They came back together, the man with a lantern which he hung at the stern.

"He says, my Jean, that you can come with us, if you will hire out for a month."

"Tell him I will hire out to you for that time. And how much shall I pay you for the passage?"

"Jean says that's all right,—you can't leave us unless you can swim,—and we 're more than glad to get the help."

"I can sleep on the deck; I have a warm coat."

"Oh, no; my husband often sleeps on deck when we are at anchor; but to-night he will not sleep at all. We go to Sorel; we must be there by three in the morning. You can sleep in his bunk."

She parted some curtains and showed me a two-and-a-half feet wide bunk beneath the sloping deck. I thanked her.

"If the wind should come up heavy, I shall do the steering," she said. "I will be down after we get under way. I help Jean."

She went up the tiny companionway, and I heard her talking in a low voice to "Jean". Soon there was a noise of trailing ropes, of a sail being hoisted; a sound of pushing and hauling—a soft swaying motion to the boat, then the ripple of the water under her bow.

I lay down in the bunk; the sound of the ever-flowing river soothed me. I was worn out.

BOOK THREE
FINDING THE TRAIL

I

A dream would seem more real to me than the experience of that night.

I listened, half sleeping, half waking, to hear only the ripple of water under the bow. Towards morning the wind freshened. I heard great commotion overhead. Evidently Jean and Madame Jean were taking in sail. I knew we must be near Sorel. I went up on deck to ask if I could be of any help.

"Not now," said Madame Jean who was busy with the gaskets; "but when we come in to Sorel there will be some merchants on the wharf to get the rest of our apples. If you will mind the baby then, I shall not have him on my hands if he wakes up."

"To be sure I will. May I stay here on deck for a little air?"

"But, yes; you cannot sleep in this noise."

The morning stars paled. The light crept out of the east along the pathway of the great river. The sun rose, turning its waters to gold.

We were late in getting into Sorel. While there I remained in the cabin with the baby who was still asleep. By seven o'clock we were off again—the merchants had been willing to lend a hand in unloading. We had a fair brisk wind for our sail up the Richelieu, or Sorel River.

Madame Jean made us coffee, gave us doughnuts, cheese, and thickly buttered bread. The fresh milk for the baby was taken on at Sorel, and the little fellow, who could creep but not walk, gave me plenty to do. Madame Jean laughed at my attempts to confine him in one place; he seemed to be all over the deck at once. She called out merrily from the tiller:

"Eh, mademoiselle, you have never had one, I can see! You have much to learn. Here, take the tiller for a moment, I will show you."

She took a small-sized rope that had a hook at one end and a snap-catch at the other. She caught up the baby and, turning him over flat on her lap, showed me a stout steel ring sewed into the band of his blue denim creeper. Into this she fastened the snap and, hooking the other end into the belt of my skirt, set him down on the deck.

"Voilà!" she said triumphantly. I found the arrangement worked perfectly and relieved me from all anxiety. He was tethered; but he could roam at large, so he thought.

All day we voyaged up the Richelieu between the rich Canadian farm-lands, the mountains, faintly blue on the horizon, rising more and more boldly in the south, as we approached the Champlain country. Just before sunset we glided up to an old wharf at Iberville.

There followed a series of shouts and whistles from the head of it. There was a frantic waving of aprons. A rough farm wagon, drawn by an old pepper-and-salt horse and loaded with children, bore down upon us, rattling over the loose planks like a gun carriage. The old horse was spurred on by flaps and jerks of the reins which were handled by a fine-looking bareheaded girl on the board that served for a seat.

There were answering shouts from Jean and Madame Jean; answering wavings of towels and shirts which had been drying on the rail—all equally frantic. Then the whole cartful tumbled out on the wharf, almost before the horse came to a halt, and, literally, stormed the sloop.

Jean and his wife were lost to my sight in the children's embrace; fourteen arms were trying to smother both at the same time. I was holding the baby when the horde descended on him, and only the fact that I was a stranger prevented me from sharing the fate of their mother.

"They are good children, eh?" said Madame Jean proudly, with a blissful smile. She smoothed her tumbled hair and twisted her apron again to the front of her plump person.

I was properly introduced by my own name which I gave to madame and her husband. The whole family fairly pounced upon the few belongings in the boat and carried them to the great wagon. Madame Jean, holding the baby, sat in the middle enthroned on the pile of bunk cushions; the children crowded in around her. I was asked, as a compliment, to sit beside Monsieur Jean on the board seat which he covered with an old moth-eaten buffalo robe. He took the reins, and amid great rejoicings we jolted up the wharf into the main street of Iberville, the whole family exchanging greetings with every passer by, it seemed to me, just as fervently as if they had but recently returned from an ocean voyage. Our wagon—a chariot of triumph—rattled on through the town and out into the open country. They chatted all together and all at once. I failed to understand what it was about, for several of the children were very young and their French still far from perfect. Their voices were pitched on A sharp, and the effect was astonishing as well as ear-splitting.

They paid no attention to me. I was grateful. I felt myself again a stranger in the midst of this alien family life.

Two miles out from the town, we came to the roof-tree of the Duchênes,—this was their name,—and within half an hour we sat, eleven of us, around the kitchen table at supper. From beneath it, an old hound protruded his long nose, and caught with a snap the tidbits that were thrown to him. A huge Maltese cat settled herself across my feet. A canary shrilled over all the noise. In the midst of the merry meal—blackberries and milk, hot fried raised bread with maple syrup—the whole family was apparently thrown into convulsions by the appearance in the room of a pet goat and, behind him, the old pepper-and-salt horse that Monsieur Duchêne had turned out in the yard to graze!

There was a general uprising; charge and counter charge, shrieks, laughter. The baby and I were the only ones left at the table. Then, humiliating exodus of the beasts and triumphant entry of the family. The supper proceeded.

And afterwards—never shall I forget that little scene!—after the dishes were washed, the goat fed, the horse bedded and the baby asleep, the seven children placed themselves in a row, the oldest girl of fifteen at the head, and waited for a signal from their father: a long drawn chord on a mouth harmonicum. Together parents and children sang the Angelus, sang till the room was filled with melody and, it seemed to me, the soft September night without the open door.

This was my introduction to the family Duchêne. I slept in an unfinished chamber. A sheet was tacked to the rafters over the bed. The window beside it looked into a mass of trees.

Oh, those orchard slopes of Iberville! I made intimate acquaintance with them for the next four weeks. I worked hard. I was up at five to help Madame Jean with the breakfast and the housework, what there was of it; then we were all off to the orchards to pick the wholesome, beautiful fruit—Northern Spies, Greenings, Baldwins and Russets. To use Jamie's expression, their "fragrance is in my nostrils" as I write of them.

At noon we had lunch—bread and butter, with jerked beef, cheese, apples, washed down with the sweetest of sweet cider from the mill. There was no stint of the simple fare. Then at work again—all the children joining, except the baby who roamed at will among the orchard grass with two small pigs that scampered wildly to and fro.

It was work, work—picking, sorting, packing, till the shadows were long on the grass and the apple-cart was piled high with windfalls. The barrels were filled with picked fruit of the choicest. And after supper, regularly every evening, we sang the Angelus.

This life was beneficial to me. I made no plans. I was glad to work hard in order to drown thought, to keep my body, as it were, numb. I really dared not think of what was, for then I could not sleep; could not be ready for the next day's work. To forget myself; this was my sole desire. Madame Duchêne watched my work with ever increasing admiration. Monsieur Duchêne wanted to engage me for another season.

"But you must not leave us this winter, mademoiselle. We need you," he said one day, after nearly four weeks had passed. He was preparing to set out on his return voyage down the Sorel to Richelieu-en-Bas.

"Others may need me, Monsieur Duchêne. I have been so content in your home; it has done me good."

"Mademoiselle has some sorrow? Can we help, my wife and I?"

"You have helped me by trusting me, by letting me make one of your family all these weeks."

"But you will keep the house till we return?"

"I should like to do this for you, but I cannot stay so late here in the country. I must find employment for the winter."

"We cannot afford to pay you, mademoiselle, but you shall have your keep, if you will, for your help and your company, while you stay." Madame Duchêne spoke earnestly.

"I cannot, dear Madame Duchêne; it is time for me to go."

"May I ask where, Mademoiselle Farrell?" she asked, with such gentle pity audible in her voice, such kindly thoughts visible in her bright blue eyes, that, for a moment, I wavered. This was, at least, a shelter, a "retreat" for both my soul and my body.

"I do not know as yet."

"What can we do for you?" she urged.

"But one thing: say nothing to any one in Richelieu-en-Bas that you have seen me, that I have been with you—that you know me, even."

"As you will."

I remained with the children who declared they should be desolate if I went on the same day that father and mother left them. Together the children and I watched the apple-boat, loaded to the gunwale, sail away from Iberville wharf.

Two days after that, the children drove me to the station. I took the day express to New York.

I decided to go to Delia Beaseley.

II

Not in its aspect of Juggernaut did the great city receive me that hot September night at half-past eight, but as a veritable refuge where I could lose myself among its millions.

I welcomed the roar of its thoroughfares, the noises of its traffic; they deafened my soul. Jamie's voice saying: "We shall see you in Crieff next summer—you and Ewart," grew faint and far away. Cale's voice pleading, Cale's voice warning me: "You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you," became less distinct.

The flashing electric signs were welcome and the white glaring lights of Broadway. They dazzled me; they helped to blind my inner sight to that vision of Mr. Ewart, standing on the shore of the little cove, far away in that northern wilderness, and looking into my eyes with a look that promised life in full.

I rode down the Bowery oblivious of myself; I was lost in wonder at the multitudes. I knew those multitudes were composed of individuals; that those individuals were distinct the one from the other. Each had his experience, as I was having mine. Life was interpreting itself to each in different terms: to some through drink; to others through prostitution; to a few—thank God, only a few!—through threatened starvation; to a host through the blessing of daily work; to hundreds of unemployed through the misery of suspense. And love, hate, faithfulness, treachery—all were there, hidden in the hearts of those multitudes.

Some lines of William Watson's kept saying themselves over and over to me in thought, as I watched those throngs; as I listened to the glare of street bands, the grinding of hurdy-gurdies, and heard the flow of street life, which is the life, of the foreign East Side;

 
"Momentous to himself, as I to me,
Hath each man been that ever woman bore;
Once, in a lightning-flash of sympathy,
I felt this truth, an instant, and no more."
 

"Momentous to himself." Oh yes—not a soul among those thousands who was not "momentous to himself", no matter how low soever fallen! "Momentous to himself"—I watched the throngs, and understood.

I made my way into V– Court, unafraid and unmolested. Delia Beaseley opened the door. At sight of her all the pent-up emotion of weeks threatened to find vent.

"Delia, it is I, Marcia Farrell—"

"Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried, as she drew me into the hall under the dim light. "It is good to see you again! But what is it?" she asked anxiously, lifting my hat from my face. "Are you sick?"

I could not answer her. She led me into the back room I remembered so well. There, as once before, she pushed me gently into the rocking-chair. She removed my hat and brought a fan.

"What is it, my dear? Can't you tell me?"

Oh, how many times, during her life of helpfulness, she must have asked that question of homeless girls and despairing women!

"Delia," I began; then I hesitated. Should I tell her, or carry in silence my trouble about with me? Before I could speak again, she had her arms—those motherly arms I had felt before—around me; my head was on her shoulder; my arms about her neck. I sobbed out my story, and she comforted me as only a woman, who has suffered, can comfort.

"Let me stay a little while with you, Delia, till I get work again."

"Stay with me! Bless your heart, I couldn't let you go if you wanted to. Here 's my Jane—she 's out now—ready to drop with the work and the heat; we 've had a long spell of it, and I not knowing where to turn for help just now, for I want her to go away on a vacation; she needs it. Just you stay right here with me, and I 'll pack Jane off to-morrow."

"Have you—is any body with you?" I asked.

"Yes." She nodded significantly. "There 's two of 'em on my hands now. One's got through, and the other is expecting soon. Both of 'em can't see the use of living, and Jane 's about worn out."

"You will let me help? I can do something, if it's only the housework."

"I can tend to that." She spoke decidedly. "What I want is to have you round 'em, comforting 'em, cheerin' 'em—"

"I comforting, I cheering, Delia?"

She nodded emphatically. "Yes, my dear, just that. Your work is cut out for you right here, for a few weeks anyway. You come upstairs with me now and set with one of 'em, and give her a bowl of gruel—I was just going to come up with one from the kitchen when you rung,—while I get Jane's things together; she 'll be in by ten. She 's over to one of the Settlement Houses helping out to-night."

Somehow, on hearing this account of Jane's activity—tired Jane who could help and rescue at home, and then go out to the Settlement House to give of her best till ten at night—my own life dwindled into insignificance. The true spirit of the great city entered into me. I felt the power of it for good. I felt its altruism; I realized its deepest significance; and I saw wherein lay my own salvation from selfish brooding, from forbidden craving, from morbid thinking.

"Let me have Jane's work," I said.

We talked no more that night of matters that were personal. I gave my whole time and strength to help "bring her through", as Delia defined the state of things in regard to a girl, five years younger than I, "who had missed her footing".

It was an anxious week. There was delirium, despair, suicidal intent; but we "brought her through".

While watching by that girl's bedside, I relived that experience of my mother, the result of which was that I, Marcia Farrell, was there to help. In those night watches I had time for many thoughts. Cale's voice grew insistent, for the roar of the city was subdued at one and two in the morning:

"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."

Over and over again I heard those words. The undertone of metropolitan life, when at its lowest vitality, went on and on.—Two o'clock, three. The girl on the bed grew quiet; delirium ceased. Four—I heard the rattle of the milk-carts and the truck gardeners' wagons coming up from the ferries.

"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Over and over again I heard it.

Cale's voice was louder now, more and more insistent. All that day I heard it above the push-cart vendors' cries and the hurdy-gurdy's dance music, above the roar of the Second Avenue Elevated and the polyglot street clamor.

Yes, I had to acknowledge it: my mother had wronged him. I visualized that act in her life. I saw her promising to marry him, although she was unwilling. I saw her giving herself in marriage to him in the presence of the minister and her sick father. I saw her young husband creeping out in the night to watch for her shadow on the curtain. I saw him lying down to sleep a little after his vigil—but I could not see my mother when she left the house. Not until she made sunshine in the old manor, where I was conceived, not until she made sunshine in the forest for old André, could I see her again in her youth and beauty, in the enjoyment of her stolen bliss.

But I could see him whom she deserted. I saw him in the pasture among the colts. I saw him raving at being made her dupe; I saw him even raising his hand against Cale. I saw him in his fruitless search, east, west, north, south. I saw him leaving the very house in which I was watching. I saw him broken, changed, "cutting loose" from his old life, determined to relive in other conditions, in other lands. I saw him returning from that far Australian country to that house where my mother's steps had resounded on the old flagging in the passageway at Lamoral,—unknowing of her former presence there, unknowing that her daughter was there awaiting him,—to that place which I, also unknowing, had made home for him. I saw him living again in his love for me who was her daughter!—and he knew this! Knew I was her daughter.

How had he dared? And he her husband—my mother's husband! The thought was staggering.

I looked at the girl on the bed. She was asleep, but her respiration was rapid; she was breathing for two. "What if—"

I dared scarcely formulate my thought. Was he her husband? Did merely the spoken word make Gordon Ewart and my mother, man and wife? What was it Cale said: she had pleaded so with his mother not to be with her husband that first night of her marriage. And there was no second.

I began to see differently, as Cale predicted. Horror, shame, humiliation, despair, jealousy of my own mother—all this that obstructed vision, deflected, distorted it, was being cleared away.

Had Mr. Ewart come to look at this matter in the same light, that he had never been my mother's husband? That words, alone, could never make him that?

"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Perhaps Cale was right.

"Why was he silent?" I asked myself, and found the answer: he could not have gained my love, had I known. And he wanted my love—wanted me, and me alone of all the world for his mate. But how could he, knowing?

I lost myself in conjecture, but I began to see clearly, differently. My own act, my desertion of him, after what he had mutely promised, was becoming a base thing in my eyes.

I asked Delia Beaseley once, if she had heard any word from Mr. Ewart.

"No, not a word," she said decidedly, "and remembering how he looked when he braced up and walked into this very basement twenty-seven years ago, I don't expect to hear from him. I ain't judgin' you, my dear, but you 've done an awful thing."

"And what of his act?"

"Well, there are two ways of looking at that," was all she would say. She used Cale's very words, when he told his story.

I asked once again, if she had heard from the Doctor?

"No. He was going out to California. He come to see me before he went, and he said he 'd about given up the farm plans; that he could n't see his way clear to carry them out for the present. And I don't mind telling you, that he said he would put half the interest money on that 'conscience fund', as he calls it, that he thinks your father provides to ease his soul, to helping me here in my work."

I remembered what I had advised on that memorable evening in Lamoral—and I wondered at the ways of life.

We "brought the girl through" with help of nurse and doctor. She and her child were saved, saved for good as I have every reason to believe, for I have kept in touch with her ever since. I am her friend, why quite such a friend, I do not feel called upon to explain.

I answered the door bell one day when the baby upstairs was ten days old—and found myself face to face with Cale.