A Cry in the Wilderness. Mary Ella Waller
old father, old Mère Guillardeau's brother, old French voyageur and coureur de bois; it will take another evening to tell you of André.– Mother," he spoke abruptly, "it's time for porridge and Cale."
"Yes, I will speak to Marie." She rose and left the room by a door at the farther end.
"Remark those fourteen candles, will you?" said Jamie, between puffs.
"I have noticed them; I call that a downright extravagance."
"I pay for it," he said sententiously; then, with a slight flash of resentment; "you need n't think I sponge on Ewart to the extent of fourteen candles a night."
I laughed a little under my breath. I knew a little friction would do him no harm.
"And when those fourteen candles burn to within two inches of the socket, as at present, it is my invariable custom, being a Scotsman, to call for the porridge—and for Cale, because he is of our tongue, and needs to discourse with his own, at least once, before going to bed. I say a Scotsman without his nine o'clock porridge is a cad."
"Any more remarks are in order," I said to tease him.
"You really must know Cale—"
"I thought I made his acquaintance this afternoon."
He laughed again his hearty laugh. "I forgot; he drove you out. We did n't send Pete because we thought you might not understand his lingo. But you must n't fancy you know Cale because you 've seen him once—oh, no! You 'll have to see him daily and sometimes hourly; in fact, you will see so much of him that, sometimes, you will wish it a little less; for you are to understand that Cale is omnipresent, very nearly omnipotent here with us, and indispensable to me. You will accept him on my recommendation and afterwards make a friend of him for your own sake."
"Who is he?"
"Cale?—He 's just Cale too. His name is Caleb Marstin; 'hails', as he says, from northern New England. I have noticed he does n't care to name the locality, and I respect his reticence; it's none of my business. He says he has n't lived there for more than a quarter of a century and has no relations. He can tell you more about forests, lumber and forestry, in one hour than a whole Agricultural College. He has been for years lumbering in northern Minnesota and across the Canadian border. He 's here to help reforest and conserve the old forest to the estate; he 's—in a word, he 's my right hand man."
"Is Mr. Ewart lord of Cale too?"
At my question, Jamie's long body doubled up with mirth.
"Have n't seen each other yet and don't know each other. Gordon Ewart is n't apt to acknowledge any one as his master, especially in the matter of forestry, and Cale never does; result, fun for us when they do know each other."
"How did you happen to get him here?"
"Oh, a girl I know, who visits in Richelieu-en-Bas, said her father, who is a big lumber merchant on the States' border, knew of good men for the place. Ewart had told me that this was my first business, to get a man for the place; so I wrote to him, and he replied that Cale was coming east in the spring and he had given him my name. That's how."
Mrs. Macleod came in, followed by Marie with steaming porridge, bowls and spoons on a tray; Cale was behind her. Jamie looked up with a smile.
"Cale, this is Miss Farrell, the new member of our Canadian settlement. I take it you have spoken with her before."
There was no outstretched hand for me; nor did I extend mine to him. We were of one people, Cale and I: northern New Englanders, and rarely demonstrative to strangers. We are apt to wait for an advance in friendship and then retreat before it when it is made, for the simple reason that we fear to show how much we want it! But I smiled up at him as he took his stand by the mantel, leaning an elbow on it.
"Yes, Cale and I have made each other's acquaintance." I noticed that when I looked up at him and smiled, he gave an involuntary start. I wondered if Jamie saw it.
"Yes, we had some conversation, such as 'twas, on the way. 'T ain't every young gal would ride out inter what you might call the unbeknownst of a seigniory in Canady with an old feller like me."
A slow smile wrinkled his gaunt whiskered cheeks, and creased a little more deeply the crowsfeet around the small keen grey eyes that, I noticed, fixed themselves on me and were hardly withdrawn during the five minutes he stood by the mantel gulping his porridge.
After finishing it, he bade us an abrupt good night and left.
"What's struck Cale, mother?" Jamie asked as soon as he had left the room; "this is the first time I 've ever known his loquacity to be at a low ebb. It could n't be Marcia, could it?"
"I don't think Marcia's presence had anything to do with it; he is n't apt to be minding the presence of any one. I think he has something on his mind."
"Then he 'd better get it off; I don't like it," said Jamie brusquely; "here they come—"
In came Angélique and Marie, Pierre the Great, and Pierre the Small, to bid us good night; it was their custom; and after the many "bonne-nuits" and "dormez-biens", they trooped out. We took our lighted candlesticks from the library table where Marie had placed them; Jamie snuffed out the fourteen low-burning lights in the sconces, drew ashes over the embers, put a large screen before the fire, and we went to our rooms.
Mine greeted me with an extra degree of warmth. Marie had made more fire; the air was frosty. I drew apart the curtains and looked out. There was only the blackness of night beyond the panes. I drew them to again; unlocked my trunk to take out merely what was necessary for the night, undressed and went to bed.
I must have lain there hours with wide open eyes; there was no sleep in me. Hour after hour I listened for a sound from somewhere; there was absolute silence within the manor and without. I had opened my window for air, and, as I lay there wide awake, gradually, without reason, in that intense silence, the various nightly street sounds of the great city, five hundred miles to the southward, began to sound in my ears; at first far away, then nearer and nearer until I heard distinctly the roar of the elevated, the multiplied "honk-honk" of the automobiles, the rolling of cabs, the grating clamor of the surface cars, the clang of the ambulance, the terrific clatter of the horses' hoofs as they sped three abreast to the fire, the hoarse whistle of tug and ferry; and, above all, the voices of those crying in that wilderness.
Again I felt that awful burden, that blackness of oppression, which was with me for weeks in the hospital—the result of the intensified life of the huge metropolis and the giant machinery that sustains it—and, feeling it, I knew myself to be a stranger even in the white walled room in the old manor house of Lamoral.
It must have been long, long after midnight when I fell asleep.
IV
There was a soft white light on walls and ceiling when I awoke. I recognized it at once: the reflection from snow. I drew aside both curtains and looked out.
"Oh, how beautiful!" I exclaimed, drawing long deep breaths of the fine dry air.
It was the so-called "feather-snow" that had fallen during the night. It powdered the massive drooping hemlock boughs, the spraying underbrush, the stiff-branched spruce and cedars that crowded the tall pines, overstretching the steep gable above my windows.
Just below me, about twenty feet from the house, was the creek, a backwater of the St. Lawrence, lying clear, unruffled, dark, and mirroring the snow-frosted cedars, hemlocks, and spraying underbrush. Across its narrow width the woods came down to the water, glowing crimson, flaunting orange, shimmering yellow beneath the light snow fall. Straight through these woods, and directly opposite my windows, a broad lane had been cut, a long wide clearing that led my eyes northward, over some open country, to the soft blue line of the mountains. I took them to be the Laurentides.
From a distance, in the direction of the village, came the sudden muffled clash of bells; then peal followed peal. The sun was fully an hour high. As I listened, I heard the soft drip, drip, that sounded the vanishing of the "feather-snow".
I stood long at the window, for I knew this glory was transient and before another snowfall every crimson and yellow leaf would have fallen.
While