Part 38 (1/2)

”Fay, I swear to you that we never wanted anything but her good,” Thor cried, with a pa.s.sion that made Lois turn her troubled eyes on him searchingly. ”If my brother hasn't told you what he meant, I'll do it now. He wanted to marry Rosie. He _was_ to have married her. If there's trouble between them, it's all a mistake. Just let me see her--”

But Fay dismissed this as idle talk. ”No, Dr Thor. Stories of that kind don't do any good. Your brother never wanted to marry her, or meant to, either--not any more than you. What you did want and what you did mean G.o.d only knows. It's mystery to me. But what isn't mystery to me is that we're all done for. Now that she's gone, we're all gone--the lot of us.

I've kept up till now--”

”If money will do any good, Fay--” Thor began, with a catch in his voice.

”No, Dr. Thor; not now. Money might have helped us once, but I ain't going to take a price for my little girl's unhappiness.”

”But what _would_ do good, Mr. Fay?” Lois asked. ”If you'd only tell us--”

”Then, ma'am, I will. It's to let us be. Don't come near me nor mine any more--none o' you.”

She turned to Thor. ”Thor, is it true that Claude wanted to marry Rosie?

I've never heard of it.”

”Oh yes, ma'am, you have,” Fay broke in, with irony. ”We've all heard of that kind o' marriage. It's as old as men and women on the earth. But it don't go down with me; and if I find that my little girl has been taken in by it, then I sha'n't be to blame if--if some one gets what he deserves.”

The words were uttered in tones so mild that, as he shuffled away, leaving them staring at each other, they scarcely knew that there had been a threat in them.

CHAPTER XXIII

It was an incoherent tale that Thor stammered out to Lois as he and she walked homeward. By trying to tell Claude's story without including his own he was, for the first time since the days of school-boy escapades, making a deliberate attempt at prevarication. He suppressed certain facts, and over-emphasized others. He did it with a sense of humiliation which became acute when he began to suspect that he was not deceiving her. She walked on, saying nothing at all. Now and then, when he ventured to glance at her in profile, she turned to give him a sick, sad smile that seemed to draw its sweetness from the futility of his efforts. ”My G.o.d, she knows!” were the words actually in his mind while he went floundering on with the explanation of why he couldn't allow Claude to be a cad.

And yet, except for those smiles of an elusiveness beyond him, she betrayed no hint of being stricken in the way he was afraid of. On the contrary, she seemed, when she spoke, to be giving her mind entirely to the course of Claude's romance. ”He won't marry her. He'll marry Elsie Darling.”

An hour ago the a.s.sertion would have angered him. Now he was relieved that she had the spirit to make it at all. He endeavored to imitate her tone. ”What makes you think so?”

”I know Claude. She's the sort of girl for him to marry. There's good in him, and she'll bring it out.”

”Unfortunately, it's too late to think of Claude's good when he's pledged to some one else.”

”Would you make him marry her?”

”I'd make him do his duty.”

She gave him another of those faint smiles of which the real meaning baffled him. ”I wouldn't lay too much stress on that, if I were you. To marry for the sake of doing one's duty is”--she faltered an instant, but recovered herself--”is as likely as not to defeat its own ends.”

He was afraid to pursue the topic lest she should speak more plainly. On arriving home he was glad to see her go to her room and shut the door.

It grieved him to think that she might be brooding in silence, but even that was better than speech. As Uncle Sim and Cousin Amy Dawes were coming to Sunday-night supper, the evening would be safe; and to avoid being face to face with her in the meanwhile he went out again.

Having pa.s.sed an hour in his office, he strolled up into the wood above the village, his refuge from boyhood onward in any hour of trouble.

There was s.p.a.ce here, and air, and solitude. It was a diversion that was almost a form of consolation to be in touch with the wood's teeming life. Moreover, the trees, with their stately aloofness from mortal cares, their strifelessness and strength, shed on him a kind of benediction. From long a.s.sociation, from days of bird's-nesting in spring, and camping in summer, and nutting in autumn, and snow-shoeing in winter, he knew them almost as individual personalities--the great white oaks, the paper birches, the white pines with knots that were ma.s.ses of dry resin, the Canada balsams with odorous boughs, the sugar-maples, the silver maples, the beeches, the junipers, the hemlocks, the hackmatacks, with the low-growing hickories, witch-hazels, and slippery-elms. Their green was the green of early May--yellow-green, red-green, bronze-green, brown-green, but nowhere as yet the full, rich hue of summer. Here and there a choke-cherry in full bloom swayed and s.h.i.+vered like a wraith. In shady places the ferns were unfolding in company with Solomon's-seal, wake-robin, the lady's-slipper, and the painted trillium. There was an abundance of yellow--cinquefoil, crowfoot, ragwort, bellwort, and shy patches of gold-colored violets.

In the sloping outskirts of the wood he stood still and breathed deeply, a portion of his cares and difficulties slipping from his shoulders.

Somewhere within him was the sense of kins.h.i.+p with the wilderness that has become atavistic in Americans of six or eight generations on the soil. It was like skipping two centuries and getting back where life was primitive from necessity. There were few if any complications here, nor were there subtleties to consider. As far back as he knew anything of his Thorley ancestors, they had hewed and hacked and delved and tilled on and about this hillside, getting their changes from its seasons, their food from its products, their science from its bird-life and beast-life, their arts and their simples, their dyes and their drinks from its roots and juices. To the extent that men and the primeval could be one, they had been one with the forest of which nothing but this upland sweep remained, treating it as both friend and enemy. As enemy they had felled it; as friend they had lived its life and loved it, transmitting their love to this son, who was now bringing his heartaches, as he was accustomed also to bring his joys, where they had brought their own.