A Cry in the Wilderness Part 53

"It is tainted, tainted, and my mother's blood is on it--I will not touch it. I will not have it. I have taken wages in Lamoral because Jamie a.s.sured me the money was your own--not one penny of it from that fund."

"Yes, it is my own, and I never made a better investment with so few dollars. But, Marcia--"

He hesitated; his face looked tense; his voice sounded as if strained to breaking. The knife was hurting him almost as much as it hurt me.

I looked at him.

"Don't look at me so; I can't do my duty if you do."

"I don't want you to do your duty so far as I am concerned. I want you to show your friends.h.i.+p for me, by not telling me anything that you may know."

"But, Marcia, it is time--"

"But not now--oh, not now! You don't know what I have borne--I can bear no more--" I spoke brokenly.

"My dear girl, what can you tell me that I do not know, I who was with your mother in her last hour--"

I broke down then, sobbing, trying to explain but only half coherently:

"She was here--twenty-seven years ago--with Andre--he showed me the tree--"

"Marcia, calm yourself. Tell me, if you can, just what you mean."

I struggled to regain my self-control, and when I could speak without sobbing, I explained in a few words my reason for thinking my mother was here long years before me with the man who was my father.

The Doctor listened intently.

"This makes the past clearer to me, Marcia, but at the same time it complicates the present, the future--"

"Oh, don't let's talk about past or future!" I cried, nervously irritated by this constant reappearance of new combinations of my past in my present, and possible future. "Let me enjoy what is given me to enjoy now--it is so much!"

"I must see my way, Marcia. A duty remains a duty, even if the doing of it be postponed. I am your friend. I cannot let you wreck your life---"

"Wreck my life? What do you mean?" I demanded sharply. "How can I wreck it when for the first time I am in a safe harbor?"

He could not, or would not, answer me directly.

"Marcia, many a time when I have an operation to perform, the issue of which seems to me to be a clear one of death, I grow faint-hearted and say to myself: 'I will let the trouble take its natural course--it is death in the end, and, at least, not under my knife.' Then I get a grip on myself; look my duty squarely in the face--and do the best that lies in my trained hand, in my keen sight, in my knowledge of this frail body in which we dwell for a time. And sometimes it happens, that, instead of the issue death, of which I felt certain, there is life as the desired outcome--and I rejoice. I asked an old soldier once, a veteran of the Civil War, a three years man,--he is still living and now a minister of G.o.d's word,--how he felt in battle? Could he describe his feelings to me?

"'Yes,' he said, 'I can. I don't know how it is with other men, but I used to have but one fear, that of being a coward. I prayed not to be.' That is the way I feel now towards you in relation to this matter. But for the present we will drop the subject; we will not discuss it further."

He changed the subject at once, and I was grateful to him. He began to speak of Jamie.

"He is getting very restless. He told me you knew something of his plans. What do you think of them?"

"You mean his returning to England and settling for the winter in London? He told me that before we left Lamoral. I suppose he ought to go. At any rate, he is much stronger, better, is n't he?"

"He is n't the same man. The truth is he was plucked away from the white scourge as a brand from the burning. I really believe he will not go back in the matter of health, although I wish he might remain another year here to clinch the matter for his own sake, and mine--"

"And mine. I shall miss him so!"

The Doctor looked at me rather curiously, but did not comment on what I said. I was wondering if he were at work reasoning to my conclusion about Mrs. Macleod's leaving Lamoral.

"Well, my dear girl, it's a break-up all round. That's the worst of this camping-out business. Jamie is going so soon--

"Soon? Do you mean he is going to leave Lamoral soon?"

"Yes. He had letters last night from his publishers. The book requires his presence in London by September twenty-third. He will have to sail by the sixteenth. Mrs. Macleod is joyful at the prospect.

Jamie told me to tell you. I think he hated to himself. He is very fond of you, Marcia."

I smiled at my thoughts.

"No fonder of me than I am of him. He has changed so much in these last nine months."

"You, too, see that?"

"Oh, yes, and his mother sees it. He has matured in every way."

The Doctor smiled. "You talk as if you were his grandmother. I 'm proud of him, I confess. Had my boy lived--" His voice broke.

"Dear Doctor Rugvie, it is all a wilderness, as Jamie said, is n't it?

And we 're fortunate to find a trail, like this, that leads to camp--and friends," I said, pointing to the newly made path through the forest.

"Yes, my dear,--and that reminds me I have n't shown you what I brought you here to see. Come."

He penetrated farther into the woods and off the trail to the left.

There we found a blasted tree in which was a great hollow.

"It is filled with honey, Marcia, wild honey. I wonder that no track of bear is to be seen about here."

"Who would ever think of finding such a store of sweet in this poor old lightning-blasted tree!" I exclaimed, looking more closely at it.

"What a feast Bruin will have some day."

"You see there is honey even in the wilderness, Marcia. I wanted to convince you that there is such--may you, also, find it so." He turned towards the camp, I following his lead.

"By the way," he said, as he walked on rapidly, "do you know anything that could have given old Andre any physical or nervous shock recently?"

"No--I don't recall anything, at least anything that he might feel physically. It's just possible a fright I gave him unintentionally that day of the storm may have affected him for a time. Why, does he show any effect of shock?"

"Yes, decidedly. What was it?"

I told him of my carelessness with the paddle while crossing the lake; of the careening of the canoe; of Andre's terrified shriek and his muttered fear of the depth of the lake.

"That must have been it. I felt sure there was some nervous shock."

"Oh, how could I do it! Dear old Andre--and I of all others!"

"It's his age, Marcia; it was liable to come at any time; this is why Ewart felt so anxious about you that day and required the promise. Old as he is, he is tough as a pine knot, wiry as witch gra.s.s, with great powers of endurance, good eyesight, good teeth; he has seemed less than seventy till this year. Now he is breaking up. It would not surprise me if this were his debacle."

"I can't bear to think of it. Why must all these changes come at once!