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Title: Growth of a Man
Author: de la Roche, Mazo (1879-1961)
Date of first publication: 1938
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Boston: Little, Brown, September 1938
   ["first edition"]
Date first posted: 4 July 2014
Date last updated: 4 July 2014
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1187

This ebook was produced by:
Marcia Brooks, Al Haines, Alex White
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net






                                BOOKS BY
                            MAZO DE LA ROCHE

                                   *

                        YOUNG RENNY (JALNA--1906)
                                 JALNA
                           WHITEOAKS OF JALNA
                            FINCH'S FORTUNE
                          THE MASTER OF JALNA
                            WHITEOAK HARVEST

                                   *

                        LOW LIFE AND OTHER PLAYS
                           PORTRAIT OF A DOG
                             LARK ASCENDING
                         BESIDE A NORMAN TOWER
                             THE VERY HOUSE
                            GROWTH OF A MAN





                            Growth of a Man
                                  _By_
                            MAZO DE LA ROCHE



                                 BOSTON
                       LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
                                  1938





                  COPYRIGHT 1938, BY MAZO DE LA ROCHE

                ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT
                   TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS
                          THEREOF IN ANY FORM

                             FIRST EDITION

                       _Published September 1938_



                    THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOOKS
                            ARE PUBLISHED BY
                       LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
                          IN ASSOCIATION WITH
                      THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY


                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                    _For Helen and Alfred McIntyre_




                            GROWTH OF A MAN




                               CHAPTER I


Little Shaw Manifold stood at his grandfather's side watching the train
steam out of the railway station. In the train was his mother, going
away from him as fast as whirling iron wheels and pounding steel pistons
could carry her. The locomotive whistled and flew a black banner in
triumph. As the train rounded the curve Shaw had a last glimpse of his
mother's face at a window. It was only a white disc, getting smaller and
smaller, and a handkerchief fluttered beside it. He knew that the
handkerchief was wet because he had seen her dabbing her eyes with it,
all the way to the station.

He did not wave back at her. His arms felt heavy and his mind dull.
Neither did his grandfather, Roger Gower, wave. The old man stood solid
and imperturbable, his wide-open, china-blue eyes staring above his
massive grizzled beard. His hands, leathery and thickened by hard work,
hung impassively at his sides. Shaw glanced up at him furtively, then
away again. In that instant the train sped into insignificance, the face
at the window vanished. He had not waved a good-bye to his mother! He
had not waved . . . and she was gone!

"Come along," said his grandfather. "We can't stand gaping here all
day." The voice came out of the beard, muffled and indistinct, like the
mutter of a lion in a jungle, Shaw thought.

He trudged after his grandfather, a small boy in a pair of heavy cloth
trousers cut down from a man's, a jacket too short for him, and a
wide-brimmed straw hat to keep off the heat of the early summer sun.
From under its brim his eyes looked out, with an expression guarded yet
wistful. They were a greyish hazel, the eyebrows almost without arch and
surprisingly thick. His nose was blunt, his mouth set and rather ugly
except when he smiled. There was a sweetness in his smile and his teeth
were white and even. His skin had a thick, creamy pallor that neither
burned nor freckled in the sun nor chapped in the biting cold of the
Ontario winter.

He trudged after his grandfather, their heavy boots clumping on the
station platform. The stationmaster came out of the weather-stained
frame station and said affably:--

"I see your daughter's gone away, Mr. Gower."

"Hm, yes," came the voice out of the beard; "she's gone."

"You'll miss her, after all these years."

"Hm, yes, I s'pose so. We've got plenty left at home."

"The boy's growing."

"Yes, he's coming on." Roger Gower moved past, resentment of the
questioning in every line of his short, thick figure.

The bay mare, Nellie, was tied to the station hitching post. She bit at
its already well-gnawed top in impatience and stamped the hot gravel. A
bevy of flies spun about the liquid depths of her eyes, fretting her, so
that she flung her head, making the rusty harness rattle.

Roger Gower climbed heavily into the buggy whose wheels were still caked
with last week's mud. It clung to the body of the buggy, hard as cement.
Shaw clambered up after him and the mare, with a toss of her head more
exasperated than grateful, stretched her long legs over the dusty road.
The year was 1895 and no motor vehicle had yet disturbed the
maple-shaded main street of Thorriton.

It was a pretty village in those days, its houses set well back from the
road, vines shielding the porches and flower borders peeping between the
white palings of the picket fences. It was a mysterious place to Shaw.
The buggy moved so fast that he was not able to see all he wanted to. He
turned his head to stare back at the colored glass bottles in the
drugstore window. A sense of power came to him from their translucent
green and blue depths. He would like to be a druggist and have such
things in his possession.

Not a word was exchanged between the two during the return to the farm.
But the silence was not one of understanding. To Shaw his grandfather
was a remote and powerful being, one toward whom he felt fear but no
admiration. He would not be like him when he grew up. No--nor like his
uncles!

For Roger Gower the child at his side scarcely existed. His mind moved
in its customary routine of crops, of ploughing, sowing, and reaping, of
felling trees and fattening cattle, without a thought of the
potentialities of this son of his daughter. He held the black whip in
his hand but there was no need to use it except to flick at the flies
that settled on the mare's moist hide.

Shaw folded his hands between his knees and considered the possibilities
of having the afternoon to himself. It was Saturday, so there was no
school, but there was always some job waiting for him, some work that he
hated. He hated all physical work. He wanted only to read, to think
about what he had read, to invent a secret life of thought for himself,
and, when he had the chance, to play with his friend, Ian Blair. He kept
his mind resolutely away from the thought of his mother.

Still, though he did not think of her, tears began to run down his
cheeks and he lowered his head so that the brim of his hat might hide
them.

The mare flung out her hoofs and picked them up again. Once in the
country she gave her whole muscular body to the business of regaining
her stall. In anticipation she tasted the oats and her big breast fairly
burst in her haste.

The fruitful fields were already showing their wheat and barley crops.
The tall wheat stood strong and verdant. In the orchards the apples had
set into sour green promise of the sweet fruit to come. The white gate
at the end of the farm lane stood open. The mare turned into the lane so
recklessly that Roger Gower exclaimed, "Whoa!" and jerked at the rein.

"Get out and shut the gate." His voice came, thick and commanding,
through his beard.

Shaw was conscious that he spoke, but his mind was far away.

He got a tap on the knee from the butt of the whip. "Wake up! Shut the
gate!"

He scrambled over the wheel. No sooner had his foot touched the hub than
his grandfather let the mare have her head and he found himself
sprawling on the grass. He gathered himself up and stared resentfully
after the buggy.

"Darn you, Grandpa!" he muttered. "Darn you! I'll get even with you some
day. You see if I don't!"

He jumped on the bottom bar of the farm gate and swung it shut, savoring
the instant's swift motion and the powerful clang of the closing. He
hung on the gate for a space, sulkily contemplating the long walk up the
lane. If the house had been near the road the action of his grandfather
would not have been so mean, but--a mile to trudge, with his dinner
waiting--

"I'll get even with you, see if I don't!" he repeated.

But by the time he had trudged halfway to the house his resentment had
softened to self-pity and he heard himself whimpering--"Nice cold dinner
I'll have! I bet the girls will have finished the pie by the time I get
there."

He did not see the white and mauvy pink of the wood lilies that trooped
on either side of the lane or the late yellow violets that hugged the
shelter of a tiny hollow or smell the fragrance of a clover field. He
resolutely nursed his grievance against his grandfather, keeping it as a
barrier between him and the loss of his mother.

He grew so hot that he pulled off his jacket and his big hat. He wore
braces over a cotton shirt that was wet with sweat. Now that his head
was bare his full white forehead was noticeable, and his fine light
brown hair. As he neared the house he began to run. He was breathless
when he slid into his place at the table.

His uncles and aunts had finished their meal and were already about
their work, but his grandfather was drinking a cup of tea and his
grandmother sat behind the teapot, ready to pour him another cup if he
wanted it. Neither of them looked at Shaw, whose eyes disconsolately
took in the empty plates, the single piece of bread on the board, but
his grandmother, without appearing to open her mouth, said, out of the
side of it:--

"Beatrice!"

Her youngest daughter appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"Yes, Ma?"

"Shaw's dinner."

In a moment Beatrice came in, carrying a plate mounded with dark-looking
boiled potatoes on which gravy had congealed and a piece of salt pork.
He awaited it with his knife and fork grasped in his hands.

"You don't deserve any," she said, "being so late."

He filled his mouth to its capacity, a pink flush overspreading his face
in the effort of swallowing. Beatrice carried the empty plates to the
kitchen, where the clatter of dishwashing began. Roger Gower pushed his
cup and saucer away from him and rose. Shaw lifted his eyes as far as
the heavy grizzled beard and saw the hairs glistening with a dribble of
tea. The old man walked solemnly to the door and looked at the weather
out of his speculative blue eyes.

"Cristabel get away all right?" ventured his wife.

"Yes. She got away."

"I hope they'll meet her at the other end."

"They'll meet her." He turned to Shaw. "Your grandmother's got something
for you to do. See that you're smart about it."

Shaw nodded, gulping a fresh mouthful. He watched his grandfather take
his hat from its peg and stump out. He breathed freer. He saw the blue
sky, the lilac tree, where had loomed the stocky figure.

He cut himself a piece of dried-apple pie and assisted its solidity down
his throat with drinks of tepid green tea. The question that had been
troubling him was at last given words.

"Grandma, am I going to sleep in the same room?"

Jane Gower turned from the cupboard where she was placing the sugar bowl
and spoonholder and faced him. Her snow-white hair and clear light eyes,
her delicate pink skin, gave her a look of benignity, denied by her
stern features and heavy upper lip which was seldom lifted in a smile.

"Beaty's going to have that room," she said. "You'll take hers."

"Beaty!" he stared. "Am I to sleep in the attic now?"

"That's what I said."

He was glad. He did not want to sleep alone in the room he had shared
with his mother since he was three years old. He was glad to have a
little room under the eave. . . . But his treasures--his books--Beaty
must not have them!

His grandmother went to the kitchen and he slid from his chair and went
up the narrow linoleum-covered stairs. He softly opened the door of the
bedroom and stood there transfixed.

Surely his mother was in the room! Surely she was there! She was hiding
somewhere! She had made herself invisible--but she would show herself in
a moment, her blue eyes, her brown hair, her fresh pink cheeks! She
could not have left him alone!

He stared at the dingy brown and drab of the wallpaper, at the
washstand, the heavy white basin and ewer with the nicked spout, at the
bed--why, there was only one bed! His little iron bedstead was gone!

The separation of the two beds made clear to him, as nothing else had
done, the cutting of the bond between him and his mother. On his
mother's bed some of Beaty's clothes were strewn. Beaty had taken the
bed! Beaty had taken the room! This was no longer his place.

A pine wardrobe stood in one corner of the room. He opened the door and
found what he wanted--a pile of books, neatly arranged at one end, in a
corner. He gathered as many as he could into his arms and crept up the
stairs into the attic room.

The ceiling was so low that even he could touch it, and sloped from the
gable to within a foot of the floor. It had never been papered and smelt
of damp plaster, but he had always liked the thought of the little
attic, its privacy and its isolation.

Beaty's bed had been taken away and his own installed in its place. His
few belongings had been carried there. There was one empty drawer in the
bottom of the chest of drawers and in it he laid the first armful of
books. He tiptoed eagerly down the stairs to fetch the rest.

Beatrice appeared on the stairs just as he secured the last armful.

"This is my room now," she said. "What are you doing in it?"

"Jus' getting some books," he muttered. "Some old school books."

"Well, keep out after this," she warned, but not unkindly. . . .

Now he had the books secure! His treasures! His delight! Not his
grandfather, his grandmother, or any of their thirteen children had, so
far as Shaw knew, ever opened one of them. They had belonged to Roger
Gower's father, who must have been a very different sort of man. Shaw
always drank in any stray words that were spoken of him. In the secrecy
of his mind he loved him and set him on a pedestal of learning and
distinction.

Shaw knew little of him but that he had been a soldier and a student. To
prove the first his epaulets and his sword hung above the dresser in the
living room. And here, safe in Shaw's keeping, were his books! Most of
Shakespeare, Milton's _Poems_, _Arabian Nights_, _Gulliver's Travels_,
Chapman's _Homer_, Livingstone's _Travels_, _Doctor Syntax_, _Tom
Jones_--these were the grandest, the most impressive, to the little boy.
He had pored over these books ever since he could read. He had cast his
small personality into them, as a raindrop into the sea. He had never
had a toy! What were toys? He scarcely knew. They did not enter into the
pioneering calculations of his grandparents or the narrow possibilities
of his mother's purse. That purse of his mother's! How well Shaw knew
it! How proud and important he had felt when, for a moment, she would
let him hold it in his hand! He knew every line of its worn brown
surface, its clasp once silvered over but now showing the yellowish
metal beneath, its extreme smoothness, as though it had been handled
much, in foreboding and anxiety, the compartments inside where the big
copper coins, the smaller silver coins, lived, the part fastened by an
extra clasp where were hidden the scarce dollar bills; most precious of
all, the pocket under the flap where there was a small photograph of the
young doctor, Shaw's father, who had died four years after his marriage,
and a lock of his fair hair.

The last time Shaw had seen the purse was when his mother was buying her
railway ticket. He had stood close by her at the wicket, his eyes raised
to her face bent anxiously over the coins that the station agent counted
out in change. Shaw's heart had sunk when he saw her hand three dollars
in at the wicket. His grandfather had stayed outside on the platform.
Shaw knew why! His grandfather knew that he should be paying for the
ticket and he felt mean! That was why he stayed outside.

Shaw walked round the attic room in a dazed way. His brain felt so
confused all of a sudden that he did not know what he was doing. Then he
saw the last of the books in his arms and dropped to his knees before
the bottom drawer to arrange them. His mind turned to his
great-grandfather and he tried to recall all that his mother had told
him. She herself had not known a great deal, but she questioned her
father when she had found him in an easy mood and so collected a store
of facts to draw on for Shaw's pleasure. This was a funny little boy of
hers, but she was sure he was clever and she did all she could for him.

This great-grandfather, Shaw Gower,--the boy was glad that he had been
named for him,--had come as a young man to this thinly settled district
from Warwickshire. He had got some land but he had read more than he had
worked. He had even written poetry, in a small irregular hand, with
violet ink that had faded so that only words here and there were
decipherable. Shaw had seen the poems laid away in the family Bible and
had made out words like "bower" and "flowery dell" and "whither."

This great-grandfather had had yellow side whiskers and had loved books.
Constantly Shaw compared him to his grandfather, who spoke through a big
beard and read nothing but the local paper, who scarcely knew what
poetry was. How could such a father have had such a son?

Shaw Gower had not been long in the country before he had met the
founder of a religious sect, the Children of Peace, and fallen under his
spell. He had joined the sect and brought his imagination and poetic
longings to their worship and the building of their Temple.

The founder, David Willson, was a man of strong frame and domineering
mind. He was steeped in the writings of the Old Testament. He felt
himself born to be a patriarch and a leader and was convinced that the
field for his work lay in this sequestered, richly wooded part of the
country. He had come from the United States, not poor, but possessed of
oxen and money, rumbling over the corduroy roads till he found the very
place he sought and believed he was led there by divine guidance. There
he had met the young Englishman, Shaw Gower--his Jonathan he called him.

David Willson gathered the pioneers about him and preached to them under
the open sky. The autumn weather was benign, the crops had been
bountiful. He stood there, dominant and strong, pouring out the noble
words of the Old Testament, words of promise, of might, of peace. He was
the prophet of peace and his object was to form a body, called the
Children of Peace, of which he was to be the head.

Young Gower stood by his side, and after the exhortation he sang the
Twenty-third Psalm in a tenor voice of quality more beautiful than any
of these pioneers had heard. The two combined could not be withstood.
The lonely, isolated pioneers surged forward to place themselves under
David Willson's banner.

Peace with each other; peace with the world; a life of purity, of
liberty, of spiritual beauty; not austere, for there were to be feasts
and processions. There was nothing of the Puritan about David Willson.
When their work was over they would sing, and rejoice in the love that
would bind them together.

All were of one mind in their desire to have a place of worship, a
centre for their spiritual world. Without delay the foundations of a
Temple were laid. The forest trees were felled. David Willson and young
Gower sat with the open Bible before them drawing plans. They planned to
build the Temple in three cubes, one standing above the other, and on
the topmost cube a golden ball was to be raised and sheltered beneath a
cupola. The Temple was to be painted white for purity. It was to have
light from windows on every side, typifying Reason and Truth. Inside
there were twelve pillars bearing the names of the Twelve Apostles. In
the very centre, beneath the golden sphere, was a Holy of Holies,
containing a model of the Ark which was only brought out on feast days.

What a day of rejoicing was the opening of the Temple! From all the
farms and near-by hamlets the Children of Peace came at dawn of a summer
day. The women and maidens carrying garlands, the men dressed in
snow-white linen suits, the children with wreaths of flowers on their
hair. The Temple stood shining in its purity against the dark trees.
Before the door David Willson waited to greet his flock. The summer air
echoed his sonorous words, tears of joy filled his eyes as he declared
that he and his followers were but a handful of pioneers of Peace, the
great army of which would, in time to come, drive all war from the
troubled world.

At the end of his address Shaw Gower, clad in pure white, his golden
hair and whiskers shining in the sunrise, was raised by ropes to the
very top of the Temple. He unveiled the great golden ball and, poised
beside it, sang, in a voice like an angel's, a hymn of dedication, of
which he had composed both words and music. The words were still
preserved in the family Bible and were more legible than his poems.

           SHAW GOWER'S HYMN FOR PEACE

           I am a seeker after Thy peace, O Lord,
               With the rising sun in my face;
           I stand holding my soul like a goblet
               To be filled with Thy grace.

           I see spreading about me the fertile fields
               We have claimed from the wild woodland;
           I see upturned faces of men who pray
               To be blessed by Thy hand.

           Give us peace! Let strife be unknown to our babes!
               Let the hearts of our wives be calm!
           Let death come to us, not in its terror,
               But in trust and in balm!

           I came as a pilgrim from an old sad land--
               I came as a hart from the chase--
           I found refuge and joy in this Temple
               And I found my Lord's grace!

The door of the Temple was flung wide by two youths and the congregation
marched in, singing the Doxology as they marched. The women laid their
garlands at the base of the pillars. The rising sun filled the Temple
with sacred fire. The men who had hoisted Shaw Gower to the top of the
building remained behind to lower him again to the ground.

As the congregation were taking their seats these five young men, with
the singer in their midst, came with free steps into the Temple and sat
on the front bench beneath the dais where the leader and patriarch
stood, his hands upraised. Dressed in white as they were, their cheeks
flushed by exertion, their hair waving bright over their proud heads,
they did indeed look like the sons of God.

The daughters of men had a mind to them, and before the year was out all
five were married or betrothed. Shaw Gower married the daughter of a
Yorkshire schoolmaster who had lately come to the Province. The
friendship between him and David Willson remained, but they had
doctrinal differences. Shaw Gower did not bow his head to the
patriarch's opinion. His wife's influence was strong and she never
became one of the Children of Peace. She adhered to the Church of
England, which, about this time, erected a church. But Shaw Gower always
took a prominent part in the feast days. His golden voice was raised in
praise at the Autumn Feast when the great Feast Cake, made of the purest
and richest butter and eggs, white and delicate, was eaten in the open,
and a bonfire sent up its smoke for incense.

These Children of Peace had music in them. In their peaceful pursuits
their thoughts turned toward singing and playing on instruments as the
joyous outward expression of their inner life. Many of the women had
clear sweet voices, and a choir was formed of these which sang on feast
days, even in the Temple itself. A small organ was installed and David
Willson played the accompaniments with all the fervor he threw into his
religion. Shaw Gower not only had the finest voice in the community, but
he had a good understanding of music. He got together a band whose fame
spread throughout the Province. The instruments were of silver, polished
till they reflected the glowing colors of the landscape.

On the day of the Love Feast it was an inspiring sight to see the
bandsmen in their suits of finely woven white linen, their silver
instruments to their lips, marching down the hillside when the pale wild
roses were in flower, or at harvest time when the wayside was burning
with goldenrod and the forest ablaze with the reddening leaves of the
maple, and the young apple and plum trees beginning to be fruitful.
David Willson had raised his eyes to the golden ball of the Temple in
pride, and Shaw Gower had put behind him forever the recollection of his
early life.

All this was long past. The Temple stood desolate, a weather-beaten
frame building, the golden ball tarnished, the windows broken, rank
weeds surrounding it like a dreary sea, but to little Shaw Manifold it
was a place of strange happenings and spiritual adventure.

He put away the books and went slowly down to the living room.

"What have I got to do, Grandma?" he asked, with disinclination for work
in every line of his small figure.

She looked down at him contemptuously.

"You don't look as though you'd much work in you. My goodness, I don't
know where your mother got you! She's not a lazy bone in her body."

Shaw hung his head. He was saying to himself:--

"You stop talking about my Mamma. I don't want to hear you talking about
my Mamma."

His grandmother said--"Luke and Mark have put a load of firewood outside
the woodshed. You go and pile it. And see that you do it neat. Don't
make one of those teetery-tottery piles, like you did last time."

"Have I got to pile wood all afternoon?"

"Yes." She turned away and began to count the stitches in her knitting.
She had talked more than she was accustomed to and drew back, as though
into her shell.

Shaw dragged his feet unwillingly through the pantry where Beatrice and
Letitia were doing the dishes. They were talking eagerly about a party
they were going to that night and did not even glance at him. In the
kitchen the eldest sister, Esther, was ironing a starched white
petticoat with many tucks. She saw the little boy and called out:--

"Shaw, you go and fetch an armload of wood for the fire! My irons are
getting cold."

He muttered, under his breath--"Fetch it yourself! I'm not goin' to! Who
was your servant last year?"

But, though he muttered, he dragged his feet in the direction of the
mound of freshly cut wood and selected pieces of the right length for
the stove. He carried these to Esther and threw them in the wood box.
She pushed back her irons, lifted the stove lid, and thrust several
sticks in on the glowing bed of coals. He watched a small green worm
that had clung on the wood frizzle a moment, then turn into a tiny black
char. He liked the smell of the hot clean petticoat and ran his hand
along its glossy tucks.

"Take your dirty hand off my ironing!" said Esther, and glowered down at
him out of her small grey eyes under their heavy brows. The heat had set
her hair into a mass of little curls. Her rather heavy lips were very
red. They all looked alike, these aunts and uncles of his, and he
scarcely separated them in his mind. Only his mother was different.

At first he piled the wood neatly, but as his back grew tired and his
arms ached he became more and more careless, so that the foundations of
the pile were insecure and it tottered threateningly. Time and again he
went to the pump and drank deeply from the tin mug of the refreshing
spring water, but he could not make himself pile the wood well.

His uncles came from field and barn for tea. Luke and Herbert passed him
without remark, but Mark, the youngest of the family, looked derisively
at the woodpile.

"Has Ma seen it?" he asked.

"No," muttered Shaw.

Mark kicked the base of the pile and the greater part of the wood was
strewn over the yard. Shaw looked after him sullenly. He picked up a
heavy stick and hurled it after Mark, but not till he was sure that Mark
would not see it. He himself was little, alone, there was no one to care
for him. He would not pile the wood any more! He would not pile the
wood!

A hen with a single chick bustled into the yard, scratching among the
chips. Shaw made a sudden swoop and captured the chick. He held it in
his cupped hands, deliciously fluffy and fragile. He held it to his
cheek, then kissed it rapturously. He laughed, feeling ashamed of
himself for kissing it.

Kissing was something he had almost no acquaintance with. At night,
after his mother had heard him say his "Now I lay me," she always laid
her hand tenderly on his forehead for a moment. That was her caress. But
before she had gone away she had clutched him to her and pressed
passionately loving kisses on his face. He had tasted the salt of her
tears. He had felt the heavy beating of her heart.

In his grandfather's house he had never seen a kiss exchanged. One might
have lived there many more years than Shaw had had life without seeing
lip meet lip. Roger Gower had, in forty-five years of married life,
kissed his wife twice. The first time had been on their marriage day.
The second, when she lay in bed with her first-born. He was to kiss her
twice more before he died. Once on their golden wedding day and again on
their diamond anniversary.

Shaw set down the chick and it scurried to its mother. Even a little
yellow chick could run under its mother's wing and stare back at the
world defiant! Shaw wondered why his throat ached so. His collar was too
tight! He put his fingers inside it and loosened it from his throat. His
shirt was wet with sweat.

His grandmother appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. Her snowy hair
was smooth above her pink face. She had a clean white apron over her
grey print dress. She looked benign, but the sight of her made Shaw
quail. She spoke in her low gruff voice.

"What's this about the woodpile? Mark says it's toppled over already.
You'd better pile it good and firm, Shaw, or I'll take a stick to you.
Don't come in to tea till it's done right."

She turned back into the house.

Shaw picked up a stick of wood and threw it after her, but aimed so that
it struck the side of the house. He heard the heavy thud with
satisfaction.

"That's what you get, Grandma!" he growled. "And I'll throw more sticks
after you! I'll throw them and throw them till there isn't one left in
the pile! _Then_ what'll you say, I wonder! You won't talk about taking
a stick to me, I bet!"

He walked in truculent half-circles around the wood yard, turning
abruptly to walk in the opposite direction. The hen, clucking anxiously
to her chick, coaxed it out of his way.

Desperately he set to work on the woodpile. His uncles went out to
finish their work, but they did not look at him. He ached in every joint
when he had finished. There was a splinter in his hand. His shirt was
wet through. His hunger was such that he was dull to everything but its
gnawing.

He went into the house and found his tea laid on a corner of the kitchen
table. Cold fried potatoes, bread and butter, and stewed dried apples.

His grandmother was lighting an oil lamp, for it was a room that
darkened early because of its low ceiling and small windows that faced
northeast. The unshielded flame of the lamp flared red and smoky, but
once the chimney was on it threw a clear mellow light. In it Shaw now
saw his grandfather spread out his newspaper, his beard illuminated, the
wen, crowning the baldness of his head, smooth and shiny.

Without a word his grandmother went out through the door and critically
examined the woodpile. It only partially satisfied her, but she gave a
grudging nod toward Shaw and he slid anxiously into his chair, his eyes
already devouring the food. As he ate he stared at his grandfather. He
stared at him in fear and contempt. He was all-powerful. He was
unassailable. But he knew nothing of Shaw's world of books. He had
forgotten the existence of the books his own father had left him. There
he sat gazing at the cartoon by Sam Hunter, trying to take in its point,
his blue eyes solemn and round, his beard spread like a great broom on
his breast!

When would he move his eyes! Shaw stared fascinated. Then the diversion
of the young women's descent from above took his attention. They came
rustling down the stairs in their stiffly starched white petticoats,
giggling as they came, bursting with health, their cheeks hot and red
from soap and water. Beatrice had a big bow of pink ribbon on her nape
and was afraid her father would notice it and perhaps object, but he
never took his eyes from the cartoon, deliberately ignoring his
daughters. Shaw inhaled a deep breath of the scent of musk as they
passed.

Outside Mark was sitting in the buggy, very spruce, with his curly hair
plastered flat and a stiff white collar so high that it pressed his
chin. The mare stamped her annoyance at being taken out again, switching
her long sandy tail across the dashboard against the girl's knees, in
her efforts to dislodge the flies from her flanks. The three sisters
piled themselves on to the seat. Mark gathered the reins closer. Jane
Gower stood in the doorway gazing at him in love and admiration, her
youngest, the biggest and strongest of them all, a good boy.

She watched the buggy disappear down the farm lane. Her face had
softened when she came back to the kitchen. Her husband had turned over
the page.

"There's something here," his voice penetrated his beard, "about buggies
being run in England without horses. Not steam or electricity. Some sort
of oil. They run without tracks, they say."

"It couldn't be done," she answered curtly.

"No," he agreed, "it couldn't be done. There are too many lies in the
papers."

"I wonder how Cristabel's feeling to-night," she said, as though the
thought had been in her mind for some time.

"Glad she's going to earn some money, I guess," he mumbled.

"The work'll be pretty hard. There's a lot of running in a doctor's
house. Funny she'd marry a doctor and then go to keep house for a doctor
when she's a widow."

"Hm. I don't see anything funny in it." He turned again to his paper.

"It's your bath night, Shaw," said his grandmother. "Take your clothes
off."

He was sitting stupefied, replete with food, his eyes heavy, his face
pale. Now his thick eyebrows were drawn together in a knot of dismay.

"Oh, Grandma, I don' want to have a bath! I'm too tir-erd!"

"You _take_ your bath or I'll _give_ it to you."

That was enough. He got to his feet and began to strip. His grandmother
carried an empty tub from the washroom and set it near the stove. She
poured the water from a steaming kettle into it, then cold water from a
bucket. Shaw stood shivering in distaste. She handed him a square of
flannel and a cake of yellow soap.

"Scrub well behind your ears," she ordered.

Gingerly he stepped into the bath and squatted there. But, once in, the
hot water was not unpleasant. He soaped himself well, taking pains with
his ears for he did not want his grandmother's bony fingers exploring
them. He half dried himself on a damp, fuzzy towel.

"Come here," said his grandmother; "let me look at your ears!" She
peered behind them in the light of the lamp. "Now your hands!" He spread
them out and she spied the splinter.

"Why, you've a big splinter in your finger!"

"I don't care! I don't want it taken out! _Please_, Grandma!" He tried
to pull away his hand. She gave him a stinging slap on the buttocks.

"You stand still and have that splinter out!" With her free hand she
sought a needle in her work basket.

Roger Gower laid down his newspaper and stared with interest at the
operation. Staring so, his eyes had the sky-blue guilelessness of a
young child's. He wrapped a thick sunburned hand in the density of his
beard.

The splinter was out! Jane Gower held it triumphantly on the point of
her needle. Shaw stood with his eyes tight shut, his face puckered, a
drop of blood oozing from the pricked flesh on his finger. His
grandfather cast his eyes over the white naked figure. The boy was well
grown. He was going to be lanky.

In his clean nightshirt Shaw asked:--

"Can I have a lamp?"

"My goodness, no! There's plenty of light. Get to your bed now." She
settled down to her darning.

His grandfather blew heavily through his beard, got up, and stumped to
the tall old clock with the red roses on its face. Now the heavy buzz of
its winding sounded, its weights began to rise.

At the foot of the stairs Shaw discovered an apron belonging to his
mother. She had forgotten it. He buried his face in its folds. It still
held the sweet smell of the bread she had kneaded.

"Good night, Mamma," he said into it, then ran barefoot up the dim
stairway.

He said no prayers, but got straight into bed.

Then suddenly he began to cry. He burrowed under the bedclothes and
cried as though he would burst his vitals from the wrenching and
tearing.

After a while the moon came out and threw the delicate tracery of the
dead bough of an elm against the wall, and he was still crying.




                               CHAPTER II


The next day was Sunday, blue and gold summer weather, and June having
parted with only one quarter of her fairness. At four o'clock all the
birds were singing. At five they were too busy feeding their young for
song. The cows, with heavy udders, were crowding to the gate of the
barnyard. New eggs were warm in the nests, the cock's comb and wattles
were a furious red as he strutted and scratched in the straw. At six
Roger and Jane Gower were downstairs, but their children and grandson
were still sprawling in their beds, relaxed for half an hour longer in
Sabbath sloth.

Roger combed his beard in front of the little looking glass in the
kitchen and stared into the reflection of his wide blue eyes. He mumbled
to himself, as though to unloose his vocal cords for the day. Jane's
skin was as pink as a girl's, her silvery hair twisted into a tight
knob.

"I wish you'd be done with combing your beard, Pa," she said.
"Breakfast's ready."

He continued his toilet without response and she urged him no more.
Their relations were amiable, she keeping her temper in control where he
was concerned, as she had done since the early days of their marriage.
Once, in those days, they had had a scene at the breakfast table and she
had snatched up the teapot and thrown it at Roger's head in a tantrum.
The result had been terrifying. The stolid young husband had been
transformed into a raging lion. He had risen to his feet and bellowed at
her through his yellow beard. If ever again she did such a thing he
would take a horsewhip to her! Yes, a horsewhip--and thrash her till his
arm ached! He struck blows on the table that made the flowered dishes,
which had been a wedding present, dance. And now let her clean up the
mess and make fresh tea!

Jane had learned her lesson. Since then she had borne him thirteen
children and grown old, but always she had steered the storm of her
temper away from him. Now, over their breakfast, she talked placidly of
the doings of her seven children who had left home, of Rose Ann's
expected baby, Wilfred's advance as a bank clerk (he would be the
manager of a bank some day), of Cristabel's position as housekeeper. She
had gratified a hidden craving for romance in the names she had chosen
for her daughters.

Soon the sons and daughters straggled in. The girls had done the milking
before they dared appear. They were heavy-eyed after their late hours
and Beaty could take nothing but tea, for she had eaten something at the
social that had upset her. Shaw still slept.

"Letitia," said her mother, "go up to Shaw. You'd better pull him out;
Cristabel always had to. He's a terrible sleeper, that boy."

"He's as lazy as a yellow dog," said Mark.

"He came naturally by that," mumbled Esther, who had either inherited or
imitated her father's way of talking and might almost have had a beard.
"His father had no ambition. He just laid down and died for lack of it."

"You say that because you're jealous," said Letitia. "You wanted John
Manifold for yourself."

This was true, but it was unpalatable to Esther. She began to weep with
a blubbering sound, not covering her face but leaving the heavy
quivering mouth exposed. An embarrassed silence fell on the rest. Then
their mother said in her low, gruff voice:--

"You hadn't ought to have made that remark, Letitia. Never mind, Esther,
don't take on! Letitia, you go upstairs and wake Shaw. Tell him he'll
get no breakfast if he isn't downstairs in ten minutes. That'll stir
him."

Letitia, with a self-conscious smile, rose and went slowly upstairs. The
Gowers never moved quickly but always with definite purpose. She opened
the door of Shaw's room and looked down on him, his head in a round knob
in the twisted sheet. His clothes lay in a heap on the floor.

"Get up, you big lazybones!" she said, pulling down the sheet. "Don't
you think of anything but sleep? Ma says you'll not get any breakfast if
you're not downstairs in five minutes."

He looked up at her resentfully. "I don't care! I don't want any
breakfus'. You let me alone!"

He heard her go down the stairs, the heels of her slippers flapping from
step to step. He scowled and dived determinedly under the bedclothes.
But his stomach began to clamor for food. It distended itself, then drew
itself small. It remembered that on Sunday mornings there were buckwheat
pancakes for breakfast.

He leaped out of bed. In two minutes he had pulled on his trousers and
shirt. Barefoot he ran down the stairs. He was in time for the last of
the pancakes. . . .

He hated going to church. He hated the long drive, sitting stiff in his
Sunday clothes on the low seat of the buggy at his grandparents' knees,
the reins flapping against his head. The others had gone on before.
Sometimes the mare's long tail switched over the dashboard against his
face.

On these drives he had always felt disgruntled because his mother had
remained at home to get the dinner and he had wanted to stay with her.
It seemed to Shaw that he had never been allowed to do what he wanted
to. But he would one day! Formless thoughts toward freedom and escape
began to stir in his mind. He raised his heavy eyes to the old faces
above him and wondered what would happen if these thoughts of his were
found out. His grandfather stared solemnly between the mare's ears. His
grandmother's lips moved as she calculated the profits from yesterday's
market.

The little Presbyterian Church was prosperous. A new strip of carpet had
lately been laid the length of the aisle. The pews had been newly
varnished. The smell of the varnish filled the hot air. Shaw took a
sulky pleasure in ripping himself free of the seat each time he stood
up.

From where he sat he could see the minister's two children, Ian and
Elspeth Blair, sitting sedately by their mother. Elspeth had a good
little round face and two plaits beneath the broad brim of her hat. She
wore a red and white plaid dress and Shaw's eyes rested on it a moment
in admiration. Then he saw that Ian was staring at him and they
exchanged a look of humorous understanding. Ian began to swell himself,
first his body, then his face, till his cheeks were distended like
balloons. Shaw watched him imperturbably, but when Ian, in addition,
began to wag his ears, Shaw was forced to look away.

He was glad of the intervention of a hymn. A thin, wailing voice came
from Jane Gower and, out of the depths of Roger Gower's beard, a voice
that had a note of his father's that had rung out from the Tower of the
Temple.

During the interminable prayer Shaw looked between his fingers at the
Blair children. Elspeth's hands were folded before her face, her eyes
were shut, but Ian was still staring at him. Now he turned his eyes
inward toward his nose and again waggled his ears. Shaw gave a snort of
helpless laughter.

The minister opened his eyes, fixed them on the pew where the Gowers
sat, then shook his forefinger solemnly three times at Shaw.

The drive home was a miserable one for Shaw, sitting in the little seat,
wondering what would happen when they returned to the farm. Nothing
could be guessed from the faces of his grandparents; neither of them
uttered a word during the long drive. At the gate of the farm Roger
Gower stopped the mare, but he still kept his large blue eyes fixed on a
point between her ears. He did not speak.

Shaw scrambled over the wheel and ran to the gate. As it swung heavily
shut he heard a chirrup issue from the beard and the mare moved in haste
toward her hay. Shaw ran after the buggy.

"Grandpa!" he called in dismay. "I'll be late! I'll not be in time for
Sunday dinner!"

His grandfather looked round the hood of the buggy. "You're not going to
have any Sunday dinner."

His grandmother looked round the other side of the hood, her bonnet far
back on her sleek silvery head. "Boys that snigger in church don't get
any dinner in my house," she muttered.

Shaw stared after the buggy in consternation. Sunday dinner, with roast
pork, with lemon pie, with everything of the best because Uncle Merton
and Aunt Becky were to be there! Once a year they came to dinner. All
possible show was made to offset their grandeur. And he would not be
there! That pig Beaty, that pig Mark, would gobble up the last crumb of
the lemon pie! He would have no dinner at all! He ground his teeth and
kicked the stones out of his path. Tears filled his eyes. He began to
talk to his mother as he went along the lane.

"I will have dinner, won't I, Mamma? You'll make them give me some
dinner! I bet you will! You'll make them give me the bigges' piece of
pie, won't you, Mamma?"

He comforted himself in this way, so that he stopped crying and at last
began to wonder what he could do to fill in the time. He remembered the
pool in the woods of the neighboring farm and that he had not seen it
that spring. He would go there and perhaps he would find some sort of
diversion. Perhaps he would find some adventure that would be just as
good as dinner.

He turned from the lane across the fields, climbing the rail fences
where convolvulus put out eager tendrils and swung the pale bells of its
bloom. He saw an oriole flash its way across the scented sea of a clover
field. He leaped to stamp on a small green snake, but it evaded him and
disappeared under the moist clover leaves.

Shaw saw no details of the beauty of the day. He only knew that it was
fine and that he wanted to do something different, something free and
forbidden. He took off his thick cloth cap and raised his face to the
freshness of the breeze.

It was a long way to the neighboring farm, which belonged to a farmer
who was not on good terms with his grandfather. He did not want to meet
the farmer and was satisfied that he and his family would be eating
their dinner at this hour.

There was a winding path into the wood and at its end the pool lay dark
and cool, with ferns drooping about its brim and an old willow tree
hanging above it. Shaw was running eagerly toward it when he saw that
someone was there before him. It was a hired man that had lately come to
the farm, and he was standing waist-high in the water, moving it gently
with his hands and staring up into the treetops.

Shaw had a deep feeling of disappointment and would have run away, but
the man called out:--

"Hey, kid! Don't go! Come and have a swim!" As he spoke he dived into
the water and struck out for the bank. He came out of the water dripping
and white, one of those superbly made creatures which Nature sometimes
wastefully tosses into a class where beauty is no asset. He turned a
pair of slanting hazel eyes on Shaw and asked:--

"What's your name, kid?"

"Shaw Manifold."

"Lord, what a name!"

"It's all right."

"You ought to do something big with a name like that."

"What's your name?"

"Jack Searle. That's not a grand mouthful like your name, but it serves
me."

Shaw didn't like the man. He was queer. He turned away, but Searle
caught him and said:--

"Come along! Have a dip! You look as hot as hell."

Shaw was shocked by the last word, which he knew was swearing, outside
of church, but now Searle began to fascinate him. He wanted to be with
him. He began to undress.

They plunged into the water and, in its restricted space, swam and
floated. Searle showed Shaw a new stroke. He talked in a jocular,
cynical way new to Shaw, but what he said seemed strangely forceful and
true.

When they were again in their clothes they lay on the sunny bank gazing
indolently into the pool. They could see minnows moving like pale
fingers in its depths, and the wavering shadows of water weeds. Searle
smoked one cigarette after another. Shaw knew that they were ten cents a
packet and he watched an entire packet disappear, with concern.

"You smoke an awful lot, don't you?" he said.

"Only on Sundays. The food here don't agree with me, so on Sundays I
give my stomach a rest. I go without dinner and fill my system with
smoke and philosophy--otherwise I couldn't face Monday."

"I like Monday," said Shaw. "I like school better than home."

"Does your old man knock you about?"

"My grandpa?"

"No, your father."

"He's dead."

"Where's your mother?"

"Gone away." Shaw spoke gruffly. He did not want to talk of his mother
to this man.

Searle looked shrewdly into his face. "Never mind. You'll soon be on
your own. Look at the brow you've got. Lots of room for brains there.
You work hard at your books and you'll be a professor some day."

Shaw began to tear up the tender grass with nervous fingers. "I don't
know what I want to be," he said. "But my mother says I'm to have all
the schooling I want. She'll pay for it--if I work hard. What would you
be if you was me?"

"What was your dad?"

"A doctor, but I don't want to be one. I want to work outdoors, but not
farming. I don't know what."

"Take your time! You're young! Look at me! I'm thirty and haven't
settled down yet. But then I hate work. I shall be away from this place
soon--it gives me a pain to live among folk that think of nothing but
farming. There's other things in the world, believe me! Ships and queer
cargoes in them and foreign countries! You ought to do things with that
brow of yours and that name and a mother to pay for your schooling. By
gum, I wish I'd had your chance!" But there was no regret in his face as
the smoke drifted down his chiseled nostrils and his white teeth showed
in a smile.

Shaw lay on his stomach watching him, drinking in all he said of foreign
countries. He had never met anyone like him before, a man who was free,
who was reckless, who stayed nowhere that he did not like. It was this
last attribute that moved Shaw most deeply. It had always been his
conception of life that you grew up, worked, married and died in your
own place, near where you were born. He had liked to hear of other lands
in his geography lessons. The thought of a life different from the life
led by those about him had stirred him like a troubling dream. His
great-grandfather's books had opened the door of his imagination and
beyond he saw rich-colored vistas, as he plodded home across the fields.

He was ravenous. By the way he felt he was sure it must be nearly tea
time, and yet the sun was still high. As he neared the house he began to
run. In the shelter of the shed he saw his great-uncle Merton's glossy
black democrat wagon. In the stable the two fast horses would be
munching hay.

His uncles were gathered in a group about dapper Leslie Gower, their
cousin. He was an only child, always dressed in an attempt at fashion,
and with a taste for good horseflesh. His parents drove out with him in
trepidation, for nothing less than reckless speed at a reckless clip
satisfied him. He called out good-naturedly:--

"Hullo, Shaw! Getting hungry? Go on in! There's a bag of candy waiting
for you!"

Shaw's uncles guffawed. Shaw was not taken in. He knew quite well that
to bring him a bag of candy was the last thing that would enter Uncle
Merton's and Aunt Becky's heads. With a sheepish smile he went round to
the other side of the house and looked in at the kitchen window to see
the time. It was half-past three.

There was still an hour and a half before tea! He remembered the dairy
and the pans of cream that stood there, and the cheese. The dairy was
Jane Gower's particular concern. She alone skimmed the thick cream,--no
drop of it ever appeared on the table,--she alone patted the
sweet-smelling butter into shape and imprinted on each roll the design
which distinguished her butter at the market--an acorn and two oak
leaves. It was she who made the slightly rubberish but pungent cheese.
All the profits from the dairy were in her keeping and she guarded it as
an eagle its nest.

Shaw had sometimes ventured there, close by his mother's side, and
stolen crumbs of cheese from the wooden platter. Now he peered through
the window, then slid through the door and closed it after him. Inside
there was a delightful coolness, and a pleasant, faintly sour smell.

The cheeses had been sold at the market yesterday, all but one which
would be cut for tea. He dared not put a knife into that. A large crock
of thick yellow cream was full to the brim, bubbling at its edge in a
rich foam. A wooden spoon lay on the shelf. Shaw dipped it into the
cream and began an orgy of something between eating and drinking.

He was in for it! If he were caught, it horrified him to think what
would happen. So with his mind a deliberate blank he guzzled the
ambrosia till his stomach would tolerate no more. Then he licked the
spoon clean, and with his palm wiped up the stray drops. He glided out
undiscovered.

He felt a little squeamish, but the gnawing at his vitals had ceased. He
slunk into the house, drawn by the fascination of visitors.

The two old brothers and their wives were sitting in the uncomfortable,
seldom used parlor, which smelled a little musty and had a red velvet
suite in it. On a centre table with fringed cover lay the Family Bible
and a great sea shell from Florida. The likeness between Roger and
Merton Gower was remarkable at the first glance, but on closer scrutiny
it was noticeable how the contrast of their characters was manifest in
their persons. In height, feature, coloring, beard, they were alike as
twins, though Roger was some years the elder. Each head showed the same
smooth dome of baldness. But Merton's beard was less coarse, his skin
was fairer, and his full blue eyes had the sweetness and innocence of a
child's.

There was real affection between the brothers, but Roger was
contemptuous of Merton for his submissiveness under Becky's domination;
also because he had only got one child, and he a little whippersnapper.

There was no affection between the sisters-in-law, neither was there
open antagonism. Neither had any obligation to the other; their meetings
were infrequent. Jane would, in any case, have had no weapons against
Becky's vixen tongue, which had made the last years of Shaw Gower's life
miserable.

His farm and what money he had somehow had gone to Merton and Becky.
They lived a life of ease and affluence contrasted with the other pair.
Becky had had only one child to care for and, during all her married
life, had kept the same browbeaten maid of all work.

Now she sat, sprightly and pleased with the contrast between her and
Jane, her black silk dress shining with bead trimming, her little black
eyes and small black head alert. She was the first to notice Shaw. She
surveyed him disparagingly.

"Well," she exclaimed in her nasal voice, "so here is Cristabel's boy!
Can't you come and say how-de-do to your aunt and uncle? My goodness,
Jane, the child looks dull! Do you think he's bright in his mind?"

"He's bright enough," answered Jane, bridling for her daughter's son,
"but he thinks he can do as he pleases now his mother's not here. He'll
find out he's mistaken."

Becky's beady black eyes twinkled with pleasure at discovering that
already Jane was having trouble with the boy. "What's he been up to,
Jane? Whatever it is, I know you'll take it out of him."

Shaw, discomfited, began to back out of the room.

"Don't go!" ordered his grandmother. "You just tell your aunt and uncle
what you did."

His head drooped and he stuck out his lips.

"Hold up your head, Shaw, and tell or you'll be sorry."

Somehow he got out the words, "I giggled in church and Mr. Blair shook
his finger."

Becky gave a cackle of laughter. "You giggled, eh? I guess the minister
thought you were laughing at his sermon. I'd not blame you, if you did.
I'd laugh at 'em myself!"

Jane reddened with anger. "Mr. Blair preaches a good Presbyterian sermon
and he doesn't preach to empty pews, either."

This was a stab for Becky and Merton. When the power of the Children of
Peace had waned Merton had returned to the Church of England, of which
his mother always remained a member and of which his wife's family were
aggressive supporters. It was in his religion that Merton Gower was able
to feel himself superior to his brother and he never lost an opportunity
of flaunting, in his own gentle way, that superiority in Roger's face.
Now his voice came out of his beard, muffled like Roger's but without
the gruffness.

"You forget, Jane, that in the Church we have two services every Sunday
while you have only one."

This appropriation of the name "Church" made Roger's eyes bulge. He
grunted scornfully, then said:--

"Our one service is worth your two put together."

Jane gave him a look of encouragement.

"If it comes to the length of the sermon, I dare say it is," said
Merton. "I heard your minister preach once and I fell asleep before he
was done with it."

"You fell asleep," said his brother, "because you couldn't understand
it. You're used to the singsong stuff your minister gives you."

Jane made faces of approval at Roger. Becky's eyes snapped in fury.

Merton combed his beard with short, strong fingers. "It may sound
singsong to you," he said, "but our rector is an educated man. He's got
the history of the Church and its doctrines at his finger tips. He knows
that he doesn't have to talk his congregation off their hind legs to
persuade them that he's right. He knows he's right and we know he's
right."

"I wish you'd come and hear the Reverend Blair expound the Scriptures,"
said Roger. "Then you'd find out what real learning is. And he's humble
with it all."

"If you call it humble," interrupted Becky, "to shake his finger at a
child for making a little noise."

"Shaw giggled out loud," said Jane.

"I'd giggle too," said Merton, "if I had to listen to that man's
reasoning. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, you know."

Shaw gave a sheepish grin and slid on to the edge of a haircloth chair,
drinking in every word of the argument that followed.

Before long the two women went out of the room to view the store of
linen being prepared for Esther's marriage. The voices of the young men
and women could be heard from the yard. There was a swing on the branch
of a great elm and Beaty was being swung by Cousin Leslie. As Shaw
listened to the two old men he could see Beaty fly past the window,
first her feet in their clumsy buttoned boots, then her buxom body and
pink and white face with the mouth open. He even had a glimpse of dapper
little Leslie, smiling with satisfaction at her squeals and pretended
fright. Inside his clothes Shaw's body still felt damp and cool, his
inside a little strange after the cream.

He wondered if he would be allowed to come to the table, but his
grandmother nodded toward a seat beside her and he sat down with relief
though with little appetite. The long weeping of the night before, the
long spell without food, the dawdling in the cold water of the pool, the
surfeit of cream, all combined to make him drowsy. He could scarcely
keep his eyelids open.

No one noticed him. All were intent on making a hearty meal except Aunt
Becky, who nibbled the food gingerly, implying that it was coarser than
she was accustomed to or could more than tolerate. This implication made
Jane Gower nervous and she kept casting flurried glances at her swarthy
little sister-in-law.

The two old men were speechless after their long argument. They devoted
themselves to poking large pieces of hot tea biscuit into their mouths,
which opened unexpectedly in the midst of moustache and beard like
burrows under a heap of brushwood. Shaw compared the beards, fascinated.
Grandpa's collected the most crumbs, but Uncle Merton's showed a trickle
of moisture after each drink of tea.

Little was usually said at that table during mealtime. Like the cattle
in the stalls they munched slowly and quietly. But, with visitors there,
an effort at conversation was made and an attempt, on Jane's part, to
boast a little. She told, as though to the teapot, of the good price she
had got for her maple syrup that spring, of the price her cheese had
fetched in yesterday's market. Becky listened with a superior quirk at
the corner of her mouth. When the mild boasting was finished she told of
what her bees had brought her in the past season. Her honey was reckoned
the best in the township. It was a sum so large that it could scarcely
be believed in. Jane looked toward Merton for confirmation. He bent in
affirmative so profound that the top of his smooth bald head addressed
her instead of his visage.

She gulped. "Hm, well, well," she muttered, "that's a lot of money to
make out of bees."

"It was such a lot," said Becky, "that I just didn't know what to do
with it. It wasn't as though I needed any clothes for I'd just bought
this new black silk and my bonnet with the cherries. And I didn't want
to put it in the bank because Merton attends to all that, so I bought a
new parlor suite, in curly walnut,--you must come over soon and see
it,--and I bought a picture of the meeting of Wellington and Blcher
after Waterloo for Merton, and a velvet smoking cap with a gold tassel
for Leslie, now that he's taken to smoking cigars."

What pride there was in Roger Gower's family was deflated after this
speech. They wilted under the depression of inferiority. Their
embarrassed silence was broken by Leslie, who said to Beatrice:--

"You ought to see me in the cap, Beaty. I look a regular dude, I can
tell you."

Beaty began to shake with laughter. She could not control herself. Her
shoulders heaved and a rich color flooded her neck. Leslie kept a
sidelong tantalizing look fixed on her.

To draw attention from his daughter's silly behavior, Roger Gower said
to Becky:--

"I've never had a present from Jane, no matter what she's sold. I don't
know what a present looks like."

His family stared at him dumbfounded. He was always so reticent, kept
himself so to himself, that to hear him speak of getting a present or
not getting a present seemed almost indecent. Jane felt it most deeply
of all, for she had indeed once given him a present, and that out of her
cheese money!

"You did so get a present," she said gruffly. "I gave you a cup and
saucer."

He glared at her out of his sky-blue eyes.

"Me? A cup and saucer? I don't remember."

With her lips tight shut and holding herself together she rose and went
to the china cupboard. She took out a large cup and saucer with yellow
roses trailing over it and a china barrier for keeping the moustache
dry, and set it sharply on the table beside him.

"There!" she said. "Do you remember it now?"

He picked up the fragile thing in his thick hand. "Well," he grunted,
"I'm not sure. I sort of recognize it but--I'm not sure."

Merton sputtered through his beard in appreciation of his brother's
waggishness. "Do you mean to say, Roger, that you've never drunk out of
it?"

"Never," declared Roger. "As sure as I'm sitting here! I call that a
queer kind of present, don't you, Becky?"

"It's not the way I give presents," said Becky loftily. "When I give a
thing, I give it!"

Jane, who had sat down again, angrily took up the cup and put sugar,
milk, and tea into it, to overflowing. She pushed it toward Roger.
"There," she said, "drink your fill, for goodness' sake, and let's hear
no more of it."

With a roguish look over the brim he lifted the cup to his beard and
absorbed the tea. "How about my moustache?" he asked of his brother. "Is
it dry?"

"Dry as a bone," said Merton. "It's a lovely cup. I wish I'd one like
it."

Beatrice and Leslie were the only ones who had not watched this passage
with interest. He continued to stare at her and she continued to laugh
helplessly.

"Behave yourself, Beaty," her mother admonished. "You are a silly girl."
But she was proud of the girl's exuberance. She turned with
condescension to Becky, who had one paltry son against her own six
strong sons and seven daughters. "My family seemed to get livelier as
they went on," she said. "I can't keep the young ones down, they're that
lively."

Becky scented the condescension and at once quelched it. "It's a good
thing you stopped when you did," she said, "or they'd have been regular
jumping jacks. I read of one of those French-Canadian women that had
twenty-four and the last was so simple that she did nothing but suck her
thumb and giggle."

At this Beaty fled from the room suffocated by laughter; Leslie followed
her. This sudden devotion to his cousin disturbed Becky and spurred her
on to disparage the girl. She seated herself in a rocking-chair and
crossed her feet, exhibiting their extreme smallness and the neatness of
her ankle. She said:--

"Beaty's a fine girl. She's the buxom sort that will make a good
breeder. I'm glad to see Leslie so kind to her. I guess he's sorry for
her. He told me once that if anything made him sorry for a girl it was
thick ankles. But I do think it's silly for a young man to expect to
find all the things in a girl that he admires in his mother, don't you,
Jane?"

Jane was speechless with anger. She moved about the room bewildered,
striving dumbly for a retort, unable to find even a word. But nothing
that his mother could say quenched Leslie's new-found ardor. He
persuaded Beaty to go to the stable with him while he harnessed the
horses to the democrat, and there Shaw, who was skulking in the
hay-scented gloom, saw him kiss her.

Beaty's head lay on Leslie's shoulder, all her laughter gone, a deep
sigh drawn from her breast. Shaw remained hidden. He heard the
good-byes, Aunt Becky's cackling laughter, the pleasantries with which
she tried to leave a last good impression. He wondered why he had not
been sent to bed long ago. There was something sinister in this delay,
he thought. He listened to the eager thudding of the departing hoofbeats
with foreboding.

He heard his grandfather come into the stable for a last look around
before going to bed. He saw the thick figure, with the beard spread
fanlike on the chest, silhouetted against the rising moonshine. Then his
grandmother's voice came out of the darkness.

"You there, Shaw?"

"Yes, Grandma," he breathed, his heart beginning to pound heavily.

"Come here."

"Say, Grandma,"--the tightness in his throat almost strangled his
voice,--"you ain't going to whip me, are you?"

"Come here." She peered into the corner where he lurked. He saw that she
held a short length of broomstick in her hand. He drew himself together
into an anguished bundle. "No, no, no, please don't!" he blubbered,
shaken by his fear. "I'll never do it again! I'll not laugh in church,
Grandma! I won't--I won't! I'll not laugh anywheres, Grandma!"

"I'll teach you to behave yourself," she said, and drew him across a
table where pieces of broken harness lay and a tin of harness oil. The
smell of them filled his nostrils, made him feel sick.

Resentment against Becky's taunts stiffened her arm, made her
inflexible. She beat him on the buttocks till she felt relief. Then she
led him out of the stable, past the immovable figure of his grandfather
and into the house, to the foot of the stairs.

"Now," she said, panting a little, "you go to bed as quick as you can!
And remember this is what you'll get every time you need it."

He scuttled up the stairs like a young rabbit to its burrow. He shut the
door of his room and bolted it. For a little he stood in the middle of
the room dazed. Then he doubled up, whimpering and rubbing his buttocks.
Then rage seized him. He began to kick the legs of the bed. He hurled
the pillow to the floor and kicked it furiously.

"You would, would you?" he growled, in his rage. "Well--that's what
_you'll_ get!"

The ticking was tough--his kicks did nothing to the pillow except to
make it plumper. He threw himself face down on the bed, clutching the
sheet in his fingers, twisting it in his misery.

"I'm alone! I'm alone!" he kept sobbing, over and over. "I'm alone! I'm
alone!" He wore himself out and at last lay quiet. He looked pensively
at the clear moonlight that poured into the little room. It lay in a
brilliant square on the floor, with the crossbar of the window penciled
black. He could hear a mouse in the room and presently it ran into the
moonlight and sat there poised on its haunches, its eyes like jewels,
its plump back silken and silvered.

Shaw began to go over his life, recalling its events in deep reflection,
as though he were an old man. He remembered the house where he was born,
the smell of his father's surgery. He remembered how he used to run away
from his mother and steal into it, so that he might inhale this strange
exciting smell and pass his hands over the backs of the huge
leather-bound medical books on the lowest shelf. He could even remember
the pale thin young man who had been his father, how he would come
suddenly into the surgery, pick him up, set him on his shoulder, and
carry him back to his mother. With great distinctness he recalled his
resentment at being picked up, and how the resentment had changed to
pleasure at being on his father's shoulder, and how the pleasure had
grown to joy when he was placed in his mother's arms. For a moment he
had always clasped her close, rubbed his cheek against hers.

He remembered going with his mother on his father's rounds in winter,
sitting snug in her lap, with his woolen cap down to his eyes and his
woolen scarf up to his eyes, so that there was nothing to him but his
wide stare at the horse's moving flanks, at the glittering fall of the
snowflakes. Now he could clearly hear the jingle of the sleigh
bells--the little bells along the horse's sides and the big strong one
above its shoulders. He could hear the screeching of the runners on the
hard snow.

Then he remembered how his father had no longer gone out on his rounds
but had always been lying on a camp bed on the verandah with a glass of
milk on the table beside him and a basin under the bed. He had wanted to
climb on the camp bed beside his father and had felt angry and hurt when
he was pushed away by the thin white hands.

"No, no, Shaw, go away! Cristabel, come and take him! He mustn't be
here."

Then had come a confused blank in which his father had disappeared but
other people had come on the scene and said "Poor child" and given him
candy. His mother had often cried in that time, which had troubled him
because he had thought he was the only one who ought to cry and he did
not like to see a grown-up person doing it.

In this time, too, his grandparents had come into his life and he had
run and hid behind his mother from the intimidating beard. Then he and
she had come to live at the farm and he suddenly found that he was no
longer the centre of the house but a being of no importance--except to
her.

And now she was gone! He could not go to her and press his face, for a
comforting moment, against her clean print dress that smelled faintly of
yeast from the bread she had been putting to rise. He could not, after a
bad dream, sit up in his bed and look across at hers, where the outline
of her form spelled succor and protection. She was gone! He had only
himself--his own thoughts, his uncomforted fears.

The words of the hired man came into his mind. He had said that a boy
with a brow like his and a name like his and a mother to pay for his
schooling should get on in the world, make a name for himself.

Shaw laid his hand on his forehead. He could feel nothing singular about
it except that it was very hot. He said his name over and over till it
was meaningless. Boys at school had made fun of it. He did not see how
it could help him. Then he remembered how his mother had said--"You must
learn your lessons as well as ever you can and I'll work as hard as ever
I can to help you."

The first gratitude he had felt in his life surged up in him. His mother
was going to work for him, help him to be whatever he wanted! But
stronger than gratitude surged his hatred of the farm, his burning anger
against his grandmother, his fierce resentment of the chains that bound
him there. But he would be free! He would not stay here a day longer
than he was forced to! He would learn everything that the teacher could
tell him. He would learn the school books by heart. He would pass the
entrance into the high school in a year! He would learn all there was to
learn and be free!

"I will--I will--I will," he repeated over and over. "I'll begin
to-morrow--I'll learn as fast as the teacher can teach me! I'll get out
of here! I'll not stay! I'll do what that man says. Don't you think you
can go on licking me, Grandma, for you can't! I'm going away!" As by the
reiteration of a prayer he was soothed and fell asleep.




                              CHAPTER III


"Lazy Shaw Manifold," the teacher of the country school, Miss McKay, had
sometimes called him. "You are lazy," she had said, "because you have
plenty of brains but you don't use them. You'd sooner play than prepare
yourself for the future. You'll be sorry some day. You'll be coming to
me and saying, 'Oh, Miss McKay, why didn't you make me work?' "

"And what will you say?" he had asked, interested.

"I'll say that I couldn't make you study and that it serves you right to
be ignorant and poor."

"How old will you be then?" he had asked, to draw attention from
himself.

"That has nothing to do with it," she had answered sharply. "I am
talking about how idle you are."

As he trudged along the country road on this Monday morning his face was
set in a mask of seriousness almost ridiculous so imposed on its
childish curves. Even his walk was different, with his chest pressed
forward in resolution and his feet planted in a direct line toward the
school, not straying after everything that caught his eye.

Ahead of him on the road he saw Louie Adams, a girl two years older than
himself but half a head shorter. She was the pupil of whom the teacher
was most proud, for she was not only intelligent but worked very hard.
Already her ambition pointed, with the hard sharpness of a slate pencil,
toward becoming a schoolteacher herself. Louie was very poor; the dress
on her back had once been Elspeth Blair's, her shoes were patched, her
hair hung in drab uneven locks about her wizened little face.

She was an unpleasing sight to Shaw. He had always avoided looking at
her. Her relentless industry, combined with her drab looks, had repelled
him. But now he looked at her with acute interest. She was two classes
ahead of him and he was calculating how long it would take him to catch
her up, to pass her.

He began to run and was soon at her side. She started and gave him a
look of suspicion.

"Hullo!" he said.

"Hullo," she returned curtly.

"You're in good time for school, aren't you, Louie?" he said
companionably.

"Am I ever late?" she answered tartly.

"Oh no, you're never late, Louie. You're almost always first there. And
you're at the top of your class, too, aren't you?"

Again she gave him a suspicious look and moved to the other side of the
road. The two pairs of stubby boots plodded through the dust.

"What would you say if I was to pass the entrance as soon as you,
Louie?"

She gave a contemptuous snort. "Hoo! _You!_ Why, you're only nine! And
you're no good at your books. You'll not pass for years and years!"

He smiled at her enigmatically. "You wait and see. You just wait and see
if I'm not in your class by Easter. And then wait a little longer and
you'll see me pass the entrance exam ahead of you."

She was furious. She did not believe in his threat but it stirred her to
her depths. She began to run toward the school as fast as she could.
Shaw let her run a little way ahead, then he bounded after her. "I'm
after you, Louie!" he called. "I'm catching up!"

She ran frantically, her schoolbag bouncing on her thin shoulder blades,
her black-stockinged legs like the legs of a scurrying ant.

"I'm catching up!" he shouted. "I'm right on your heels, Louie! I'm
here!" In his triumph he threw both arms about her, clutching her close.
Her books fell to the ground. She burst into tears. How skinny she was!
He wanted to crumple her to bits!

He heard the thud of horse's hoofs, the rattle of wheels. The Reverend
Mr. Blair drew in his horse and turned his piercing glance on Shaw. Ian
and Elspeth were in the buggy beside him.

"Shaw Manifold," he commanded, "drop that girl and look at me! Aren't
you ashamed of yourself? You behave like a rowdy--yesterday you laughed
out loud in church. This morning you ill-treat an innocent little girl
on her way to school. But you shall be sorry for it! What did your
grandfather say to you about your behavior in church?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing, _sir_.' "

"Nothing, sir."

"Or your grandmother?"

"Nothing."

"_Sir!_"

"Sir."

"Well, if they have no authority over you, I must see what I can do. Get
into the buggy! Louie, get in, my child! Give me your hand."

Grasping Louie's bony little hand, he heaved her over the step and sat
her on his knee, where she hiccuped and sobbed to the jolting of the
buggy. Shaw clambered up and squeezed himself between Ian and Elspeth.
He wondered what was going to happen to him.

He felt Ian's fingers creeping up his side, Ian's fingers feeling for
the tenderest spots between his ribs. He grasped Ian's wrist and held
it. Elspeth's little face was full of anxiety for Shaw. She did not much
like Louie, and she resented the sight of Louie snuggled weeping on her
father's knee. She looked up into his face pleadingly. Would he tell the
teacher of Shaw? Would the teacher punish Shaw?

Mr. Blair saw her upturned face out of the corner of his eye. She was
his favorite child and his firm Calvinistic lips softened. He bent his
head to hers and whispered--"Supposing it had been you whom Shaw was
clutching so rudely on the way to school. What would you have said to
that?"

"I'd have liked it," said Elspeth.

Mr. Blair flicked his horse sharply with the whip. Elspeth's answer had
startled and shocked him. He frowned, wondering if he had been too lax
with her, wondering if she might grow up into one of these modern women
he had read of with such distaste. His profile was grim as they sped
along the country road, with the fields spread lavishly on either side
and the birds darting in quest of food for their young.

A stream of clumsily dressed children was trickling into the school when
the buggy stopped before it. Ian was out first. Mr. Blair lifted Louie
gently in his hands and turned her, with an encouraging smile, toward
the door. He then set his Elspeth on her feet, but more firmly, and laid
a heavy hand on Shaw's shoulder.

"Now, my boy," he said, "we'll find your teacher." He steered him
through the door, followed by the little girls. Ian detached himself
from the group and was absorbed by the other boys.

Miss McKay came forward, anxiety making her plain face still plainer.
She was afflicted by pimples, and she had a habit of covering the more
conspicuous of them with her hand. Her hands were singularly beautiful.
Mr. Blair's mind was suddenly jolted from its mission and he caught
himself thinking--"What a face! What hands! If only she could always
cover it with them! Truly the whims of Nature are astonishing!"

Resolutely he put his mind into the designed channel and said, in an
impressive, ministerial voice--"I have brought Shaw Manifold to you,
Miss McKay, for punishment. You must choose what form it is to take. I
found him on the road treating Louie Adams very roughly. Her schoolbag
was in the dust and she was crying. I am sorry to say that he misbehaved
in church yesterday. You know nothing of that, I suppose, since you were
not there."

Miss McKay had succumbed to the weakness of the flesh and spent
yesterday morning in bed, with a backache and _Robert Elsmere_. She was
flustered and could only say:--

"Oh, I'm very sorry, Mr. Blair! I'm very, very sorry."

"You may well be sorry," he returned. "I am sure that we are all sorry."
His fine grey eyes swept over the assembled children, including them all
in the general sorrowing.

His son, safe in the back row, murmured, "Amen, brother Blair, so be
it," sending the other boys into a state approaching suffocation.

"Why do you think Shaw behaved so to you, Louie?" asked Miss McKay,
concealing, in her anxiety, only the less important pimples.

"I dunno, teacher," answered Louie. "He just came along and told me he
was going to get to the top of the class and then he began to chase me."

"Why, he is not even in your class!" exclaimed Miss McKay. "He is even
below little Elspeth. What made you say and do such things, Shaw?" She
spoke kindly and his head drooped.

"Explain!" ordered the minister.

"Well," said Shaw, "I made up my mind last night to be head of the
highest class, and when I saw Louie on the road I remembered she was
head and I chased her."

"He is a truthful boy," said Miss McKay.

"That doesn't excuse his conduct. What are you going to do about that,
Miss McKay?"

"Whatever you suggest," she answered meekly.

"Then I suggest six on each hand with the strap. If you don't object, I
shall remain while the punishment is administered. It may have more
effect."

Miss McKay began to tremble. "You may take your seat, Louie." She opened
her desk and produced the strap.

"Remember, Shaw," said Mr. Blair, "that this is being done for your
good."

"A-men, brother," murmured his son. "So be it. Hit him hard, teacher!
He'll thank you for it!"

"Hold out your hand," said Miss McKay.

Shaw held his broad-palmed, well-shaped hand on a level with his
shoulder. Down came the strap, six times on each hand, stinging with
Miss McKay's flurry, her fear of being thought incompetent. Shaw turned
pale. He felt that Mr. Blair's eyes were boring into him, rejoicing in
his pain. He kept his own eyes fixed on Miss McKay's face, seeing how
the pimples were left uncovered, how, with each blow, a fresh wave of
color flooded her pale face. His own hands seemed somehow detached from
him; he watched their suffering, ashamed for their humiliation.

"Now," said Mr. Blair, "go to your seat and let this be the last time
you ever behave in this ruffianly way, especially to a little girl whom
we should all try to help." He looked at his large gold watch, exchanged
a few words with Miss McKay, and, after a long, compelling look at the
assembled children, creaked out. They heard the wheels of his buggy
rattle on the gravel.

For a while Shaw sat motionless, nursing his hands, seeing nothing, the
rise and fall of Miss McKay's voice going in and out of his head without
meaning. She spared him any questions.

Presently a boy behind him poked him in the back and passed a note under
his arm. It was from Ian and it read:--

    First spit on them--then blow on them--it takes the smart out.

                                              The Minister's Son,
                                                                 Ian

Shaw grinned. Surreptitiously he spat and blew. He made Ian's note into
a pellet and flicked it at Louie's face. She gave him a look of hate and
slowly the ebb of his self-respect turned. It began to flow in on him.
It filled his veins with warmth. He raised his heavy eyes and began to
listen to what the teacher was saying.

He went on listening. He never took those heavy eyes from her face. She
became uncomfortable. She could not forget him for a moment. At the
recess she kept him in.

"This is not a punishment, Shaw," she said. "I simply want to know why
you sat staring so. You made me feel queer. Aren't you well?"

"I'm all right," he answered gruffly.

"Very well, then--you may go out and play."

He moved toward the door, then turned back.

"I stared," he said slowly, "because I didn't want to miss a word you
said. What Louie told you is true. I'm going to be head of her class.
I'm going to pass the entrance exam next year."

"But, Shaw," she cried, "you can't! You can't possibly do it! You don't
know what you're saying! Whatever put such an idea in your head?" She
was worried. Something had happened to the boy. He looked ill. She
asked:--

"Where is your mother? I believe I heard that she has gone away."

"Yes. She's got a situation as a housekeeper. She's got to work hard
and--so have I. I'm going to pass the entrance first of the school.
You'll see!"

She was touched. She put her beautiful hand to her face. "I'll help you
all I can," she said, but she thought that the poor boy was attempting
the impossible.

Yet by the time the summer holidays came it did not seem quite so
impossible. Shaw showed a stubbornness, a resolve, that almost
disconcerted her. His homework was always prepared. He not only listened
to what she was teaching his class but she caught him drinking in what
was going on in the class above. She saw him form with his lips the
answers to unanswered questions. At the end of the term he was easily at
the top of his class.

Now that Shaw was in his tenth year his grandfather was determined that
he should be more useful on the farm. The holidays were here and
consequently he was free for the busiest season. He was set at hoeing.
Hour after hour, day after day, week in, week out, he stood in the
potato field or among the turnips and swedes, hoeing out the weeds.

It was a hot, humid summer. Even Roger Gower admitted that he had never
before seen such a growth of weeds. At first Shaw hoed manfully, even
hoping for a word of commendation, but the weeds were too much for him.
Uproot them as he would, their fellows, their successors, thrust up,
brandished their tough blooms, shook out their down with a million seeds
attached, jeered at him above the smothered swedes.

Invariably Luke or Mark came to help him out. Those were the days that
filled him with despair. The effort to keep up with the dogged
relentless hoeing of these two left him too tired for sleep. He would
toss on his little bed the hot night through. But at dawn, when his
sleep was suddenly deep and peaceful, Beaty would come pounding up the
stairs and wake him.

"Get up, lazybones! My, what a lazy lump you are!"

He would lie stupefied, staring through the small-paned window,
pretending that he would not get up. "I won't get up!" he would mutter.
"Don't you think you can make me, you mean old Beaty! I'll lie here
resting all day long and you'll carry my meals up to me. You'll carry
them up on a golden tray with fine white linen, you mean old pig,
Beaty!"

Then below, out of the jungle of his grandfather's beard, would come a
roar of--"Shaw!"

He would spring up frightened and hastily pull on his clothes, the
muscles of his back and arms cruelly sore, and stumble down the stairs.

The best thing on these mornings was the drink of ice-cold spring water
from the tin dipper. He would press his dry lips to the dipper and drink
as though he would never get his fill. Into this icy liquid the stiff
hot porridge fell in a solid lump that his stomach was incapable of
digesting. It lay heavy for a long time, then suddenly he was ravenously
hungry, yearning for the pork and potatoes and pie of dinner. He became
hollow-eyed, pasty-skinned with a thick yellowish tan. The palms of his
hands were ridged by calluses. His hair was harsh and dry. He walked to
his dinner bent like a little old man.

Even a day of pouring rain or electric storm did not save him from toil.
Stables were to be cleaned or wood to be piled. Only Sunday came as a
respite, as a rich refreshment in the barren week. From Wednesday on he
strained toward it. From its dawning he cherished every hour.

All the long afternoon he read, lying on his stomach in either orchard
or hayloft. He stole candles from the kitchen and, with three nails
driven into a square of wood, made himself a candlestick. In his room he
read far into the night. He devoured _Gulliver's Travels_, Livingstone's
_Travels_, Kingston's _Saved from the Sea_, Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient
Rome_, _Henry Esmond_, and _Great Expectations_. In turn he was the hero
of each, transported to a new world. No print was too small, no pages
too closely packed. He wallowed through Chapman's _Homer_. Clean out of
himself he was lifted by the wonder of _The Tempest_, and the strange
music of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. He mumbled aloud, in a way that
would have been unintelligible to a listener but to him was strong
declaiming:--

                                        "When they him spy,
            As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
            Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
            Rising and cawing at the gun's report,
            Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
            So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;
            And, at our stamp, here o'er and o'er one falls;
            He murder cries, and help from Athens calls."

There was no discrimination in his reading. He liked everything. What he
wanted from an author was that the author should take him by the hand
and lead him away from the life he was bound to, into worlds unknown.
Let that world be the slums of London, the steaming jungle of Africa,
the region of Lilliput or of ancient Greece, it scarcely mattered to
Shaw. He was away! He was free!

He had no interest in the success or failure of the crops. Where many a
boy would have found solace in the playful calves, the lambs, or even
the bouncing little pigs, Shaw found none. There was no friendship
between him and the collie dog who did his duty fiercely and cared for
no man. Shaw slaved in a kind of stupor during the week, straining
toward Sunday. He savored Sunday to its last moment, shut behind the
walls of his imaginative egotism.

Through this weekday haze he saw his grandfather, his broad beard like a
banner, lead the army of his sons from crop to crop. He saw his
grandmother and her daughters plucking poultry, straining honey, making
cheese, ironing huge white petticoats and stiff starched blouses. He
heard them whispering and chuckling about their partners at country
dances, the compliments they had had on their looks and their clothes.
Jane Gower, who showed no affection for Shaw, could deny her own
children nothing. After a hard day's work she would sit up half the
night stitching tucks or making rickrack lace for petticoats.

A married daughter, the one with the new baby, came home for a visit in
August. The squalling infant became the hub around which all the women
revolved. Shaw overheard whispered references to the "bad time" the
mother had had in childbed. He looked at her with curiosity and
distaste.

Almost every Sunday Leslie came to tea, and he and Beaty had the parlor
to themselves. They sat side by side at table, Leslie very joky and
sunburned till he was almost as swarthy as his mother; Beaty as shining
as soap and water could make her, laughing at everything he said,
showing off before her older sisters, quirking her little finger as she
ate.

After tea Leslie would take her for a drive behind his spanking grey
gelding. He would drive down the lane and turn through the gate at a
speed that left the family gasping, half proud, half alarmed for Beaty's
safety. Compared to Leslie, Letitia's slow-going, middle-aged betrothed,
editor of a small-town newspaper, seemed tame. He and she would set off
arm in arm for their evening walk, she a little disgruntled, he
deprecating, talking long-windedly of his newspaper to impress her.

They were all of them unreal figures to Shaw, their doings without
interest. But when they began to talk of the annual Presbyterian picnic
he became suddenly alive to what the day might mean to him. It might
mean hours of solitude, freedom to do as he pleased. He made up his mind
that he would not go to the picnic.

He appeared at breakfast with a lugubrious expression, but no one
noticed it. No one cared, he thought, how sad he looked, and tears of
self-pity suddenly filled his eyes. They rolled down his cheeks.

This his grandmother saw.

"Whatever is the matter?" she asked.

"It's my bad ear," he said. "It's aching so I can't go to the picnic."

She looked concerned. "Well, I declare," she said, "that's too bad! But
don't you worry! It will be all right. Just put it out of your mind."

"I can't," he whined. "It's been aching all night."

"I'll put some laudanum in it. Come along to my room after you've had
your breakfast."

"I don't want any breakfast." He cupped his ear in his hand and rocked
on his chair.

"Let him stay at home if he wants to," said Luke. "It's a good thing to
have someone on the place, in case of tramps."

"Yes," chimed in Esther, "let him stay, Ma! It will give us a little
more room and he won't have any fun if his ear is aching."

So he was allowed to stay. He watched the feverish preparations of the
girls, the packing of picnic baskets with ham and salmon sandwiches,
layer cakes and cookies, from the corner where he sat nursing his ear.
Not for a moment did he relax his expression of misery, for fear he
might be set some work to do during the day.

At last the sound of the wheels died away. He was quite alone. He ran to
the window to look after them. It seemed too good to be true. They were
gone--every one of them--he was alone!

At first he scarcely knew what to do with himself. He felt dazed. The
house which was always so overflowing with activity was empty, except
for his small body. The rooms seemed suddenly larger. The quiet was
almost startling. The collie came to the open door and looked in at him,
then stalked away. It was still early, only seven o'clock in the
morning. The picnickers were driving to a distant lake, then taking a
steamboat to a pleasure park.

Shaw walked about the house as though he had never seen it before. He
felt as though the family had been suddenly swept away by some
catastrophe and he left in complete possession. He went into his
grandparents' room, saw the hastily made bed, the bottle of pinkish
liquid his grandmother used as a hair restorer, his grandfather's
nightshirt thrown on a chair. He went through the girls' rooms, helped
himself to Beaty's scent, took a "conversation" lozenge from the bag
brought to Letitia by her lover. But he was afraid to venture into his
uncles' rooms. They would surely be aware of any trespass on his part.

He wondered what he would eat for breakfast. He decided on milk and
honey because he had heard Mr. Blair speak of it with great unction in
his sermons. He would have milk and honey and he would eat outdoors from
the best dishes. He would have a picnic of his own!

He laid a supply of cookies on the best cake plate. He went to the dairy
and, from the crock of fresh thick cream, filled one of the best glass
tumblers. He filled a blue china bowl with honey. As he arranged these
before him on the grass the morning sun streamed through the broad
branches of the maple trees and a light breeze from the south lifted the
thick hair on his forehead. He felt like an Eastern potentate.

He ate a little of the cream, to make room in the goblet for some honey.
Then he added honey to the very brim. The first mouthful of this was
beyond belief delicious. He sat absorbing it, gazing straight in front
of him, seeing a procession of camels laden with embroideries and spices
entering the shade of an oasis after a long journey across the desert.
He himself was the Arab chief, silent, inscrutable, with the power of
life and death over his followers. His enormous beard swept his chest
and through it his voice came muffled and commanding, like a deep-toned
drum.

So dreaming he finished the cream and honey. He ate a few of the
cookies. Then he lay on his back, hands beneath head, legs crossed,
staring into the sunny treetops. Two red squirrels were chasing each
other up and down the trunks, leaping from bough to bough, their red
tails flirting like insolent question marks. A chipmunk sat on the
corner of the porch watching them, rigid with curiosity and surprise.

Shaw dozed, then fell deeply asleep. When he woke he felt rested and
well. A deep silence pervaded the farm. The kitchen clock was striking
nine. He had the day before him. He would lie on the grass and read, and
when he was hungry he would eat more cream and honey.

He carried an armful of books from his room. He wanted to see them lying
about on the grass, to feel the companionship of them. He handled them
one after another, feeling his power over them, savoring the thought
that he could, when he chose, extract the treasure from each in turn.

Now he began to read _The Merchant of Venice_. He read hour after hour
without tiring. The sun rose high, the noonday was hot. Shaw pressed his
bare feet happily into the tender coolness of the young grass. He grew
hungry again and ate more cream and honey. After that he thought he
would like a dip in the pool. The neighbors would be at the picnic. He
would have the pool to himself.

But when he reached it he found the hired man, Jack Searle, already
splashing about, only his surprisingly beautiful face and classic head
visible. He called out to Shaw:--

"Oh, hullo, kid! So you stopped at home too, did you? Good egg! Come in
for a swim!"

"That's what I've come for."

"Why didn't you go to the picnic?"

"Didn't want to. Wanted to read."

"Ha ha, so you're taking my advice, Mr. Noble Brow!"

"I didn't want to go." He made Shaw uncomfortable and sulky.

"Neither did I! Just to stop work is picnic enough for me. They can have
their bloody picnic!"

Shaw recoiled from him. He had never heard such language before.

Searle laughed. "Well, you are a good little boy, ain't you? Come along
in and I'll talk proper, I promise you. What have you been reading?"

"_The Merchant of Venice._"

"But that ain't a book! It's a play."

"'Tisn't a play! It's a book."

"It's a play! I saw it once in Liverpool when I was on shore leave from
a coal schooner."

"You couldn't! It's all printed in a book. I have it upstairs. It's by
Shakespeare. It's about a Jew that wanted to cut a pound of flesh off a
Christian because the Christian owed him money and had spat on him."

"That's it! That's the play! Haven't you ever seen a play, you poor
young blighter?"

"No, but I've heard of them--_Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and _East Lynne_ and
_Colleen Bawn_. I'd not be allowed to go. My folks think plays are
wicked."

"But they let you read 'em!"

"They don't know."

"Well, I wish you could have seen this play. That old Shylock would
curdle your blood. By gum, he sharpened his knife and showed the whites
of his eyes and kept on saying he would have the flesh, till the
audience was sitting up like they would at a cockfight. He was right,
too."

"Right!" Shaw gasped. "Why--it would have killed Antonio!"

"What if it had! He deserved killing--him and his friends. Look at the
way they'd treated Shylock! You bet I'd have done the same as he did."
He plunged head-first into the pool and for a moment was hidden in a
smother of wavelets.

Shaw pulled off his clothes and waded in. The air was balmy, the
coolness of the water delicious. Searle splashed him, played with him
like another boy, yet he was older than Mark or Luke, who were so solid
and staid. Shaw had an idea.

"Say," he said, "would you like to come home with me and see the book?
There's nobody there but me."

"All right," agreed Searle, "I'll go." It seemed to Shaw that he did
whatever came into his head without a moment's consideration. Shaw
stared up at him, as they plodded across the rough field, in wonder and
a sort of wistful admiration.

Searle went into the house without ceremony and stared about him. He put
up his hand and touched the low ceiling. He cast his eyes disparagingly
over the room. "Not much of a house," he said.

"It's pretty old," said Shaw.

"I like everything new and glossy. They've a better house where I work."

"But the farmer is sort of mean, isn't he?"

Shaw had a feeling of resentment for this disparagement of his home.

Searle flashed him a look from his fine eyes. "_Mean!_" he repeated.
"_Mean!_ Mean don't express it! He's as mean as dirt! He'd skin a louse
for its hide and tallow. He makes me feel like old Shylock, he does!
He's insulted me in every shape and form."

"Has he spat on you?" Shaw asked.

Searle grinned. "No, he hasn't done that! I'd pity him if he did. But
he's said everything he can think of. We're parting. This is the last
you'll see of me."

"I wish you weren't going."

"Don't you wish me to stay here! I wouldn't wish that on a dog. I'm
going--and I'm going to take my pound of flesh! Only it'll be a hundred
pounds!"

"_What!_ Not off the farmer?" Shaw gave a small boy's delighted gasp at
an imagined horror. "There'd be nothing left!"

"I'm talking rot. You forget it," said Searle, suddenly calm. He
strolled about the room, inquisitively. "I don't s'pose your grandpa has
anything to drink about the place?"

"To drink?" repeated Shaw. "Tea, do you mean? Or buttermilk?"

"Lord, no! Whiskey, I mean, or a drop of gin."

Shaw was horrified. "There's never anything like that in our house," he
said gruffly. "I had cream for breakfast with honey in it. Would you
like some?"

"You bet I would! You sound like a millionaire! I'll wait here while you
get it." He sat down by the table and leant his head on his hand.

He was sitting there when Shaw returned with the cream. He looked
dreamy. He roused himself and took what Shaw offered.

"The best is good enough for you, isn't it?" He grinned into Shaw's
face. "Cream and honey! You'll be owning a carriage and pair one of
these days. You'll be traveling de luxe on the best steamships. Don't
forget me, will you? When a ragged chap comes out of a lane to hold your
horses or a steward comes to wrap up your legs as you lie stretched in
your deck chair--that'll be me!"

"What's a steward and a deck chair and de luxe?" asked Shaw.

"De luxe is the costliest--when you pay through the nose for everything
you want. A deck chair is the sort of sofa what rich folks loll in,
while the stewards tuck them up like babies."

"They couldn't! Not _men_."

"They do! You just wait and see!"

The strong "oi" sound in his voice, his cockney knowingness, his queer
beauty, made Shaw uncomfortable. At the same time he liked having him
with him, entertaining him, listening to his flattering talk.

The cream and honey, Searle said, made him feel sick. He lighted a
cigarette and Shaw marveled to see such a thing in that house. Outdoors
under the trees he offered Shaw one and taught him how to inhale. He
handled Shaw's books with more respect than he had shown to anything
before, but Shaw was shocked to find that he could not read. A feeling
of deep compassion for Searle surged through him. He said
hesitatingly:--

"I'll teach you how, if you like. We could meet on the sly."

"Thanks," answered Searle indifferently. "I'll think about it."

After he had gone Shaw again returned to his reading. The sun began to
send its light slanting between the tree trunks. Hens and their broods
came close to him, clucking and scratching. The cows came lowing to the
gate of the barnyard and he went, as in a dream, and let them through.
He saw, as in a dream, the milk trickling from a too full udder, a rump
scratched by barbed wire, and returned to his books.

A strange sort of hunger was teasing his stomach. Reason told him that
he should not again eat cream and honey. But, stronger than reason,
appetite drove him to it. He went to the dairy and once more prepared
the fabulous dish.

He cleaned up all traces of the feast and went and lay down on the grass
near the pump stand. The air suddenly felt sultry. A feeling of deep
melancholy swept over him. He buried his face in his arms and gave
himself up to fretting for his mother.

After a while he was sick. He took a long drink of the ice-cold spring
water and lay down again. The sun was sunk and clear moonlight made the
shadows strange, the small sounds startling. As the day had seemed to
belong to him, so he now seemed to belong to the night. He felt weak and
afraid. An owl came from the woods and began to walk up and down the
path, turning its wide stare at him as though in hatred. Then a
whippoorwill called and another answered. To and fro they tossed the
haunting words, louder and nearer and faster, till in their haste they
stuttered them.

Shaw could bear it no longer. He fled through the dark house, feeling
himself pursued. Hands reached out to catch him in ghostly embrace. Each
creak of the stairs shot through him like a scream. Without undressing
he threw himself on to the bed and pulled the covers over his head.

After a while he heard the horses stamping below. One in the stable
uttered a loud whinny of welcome--Roger Gower's voice was raised in
orders. For the first time it sounded comforting to Shaw. He sighed in
relief as he heard the girls giggling and whispering in their rooms.

He slept so hard the next morning that Beatrice had to drag him out of
bed and stand him on his feet before he would wake. He stood half
blubbering, scowling at her.

"Sakes alive," she exclaimed, "you've not undressed! You've slept in
your clothes! I'll tell Ma--see if I don't!"

But she did not tell. Esther came to the bottom of the stairs and
called:--

"Beaty, come down here! You'll never guess what's happened at the
Pages'."

Beaty almost fell downstairs in her eagerness to hear gossip. The Pages
were the unfriendly neighbors on whose farm Jack Searle worked. Shaw was
instantly wide awake. He hurried down the stairs after Beaty.

At first he could not make out what the excitement was about. Not
because there was a clamor of talk. The Gowers never talked loudly or
interrupted one another. It was their taciturnity that made it hard to
unearth the seed of the disturbance. Luke stood in the midst of the
womenfolk. It was he who had brought the news. Shaw could tell that by
Luke's superior smile.

"Well--I declare!" ejaculated Jane Gower.

"Who'd ha' thought it?" said Letitia.

"I would," said Luke.

"Have you seen anything?" asked Esther.

"You bet I have! More than I'd tell you."

"I want to know what you're talking about," from Beaty.

"Go on, Luke, do tell!" begged Esther.

"Oh, I've seen things! A feller can't tell his sister everything."

Beaty doubled up with laughter.

"You silly girl," said her mother indulgently. "What're you giggling at?
You don't even know what's happened."

"I say it serves old Page right," said Esther. "Look at the way he acted
over that boundary!"

"I wonder how her mother's taking it." A smile flickered across Jane
Gower's face.

"Terrible," said Luke. "They're all taking it terrible."

"Who told you?" asked Letitia.

"The youngest boy. He came over to ask if any of us had seen the feller.
Did you see him yesterday, Shaw?"

Shaw was suddenly cold. "Who?" he whispered. "See who?"

"Jack Searle. The Pages' hired man."

Shaw shook his head.

"What's he done?" asked Beaty, through her laughter.

"Run off with Laura Page," answered Luke.

At first Shaw could not take it in. This was the first time he had heard
of an elopement in real life. He had read of them in books, but had
looked on them as impossible to ordinary people.

"Are they going to get married?" he asked.

"We'll hope so," answered his grandmother grimly.

The thought of two people living together without marrying was too much
for Beaty. She turned crimson and was almost suffocated by her laughter.

The thick-set figure of Roger Gower darkened the doorway. He was
twisting his beard in his fingers, a sign of irritation with him.

"Are you going to fool about here all the morning?" he said to Luke.

The young man sulkily went out through the kitchen. The girls, with
their father's large blue eyes on them, began their morning work, but
keeping near enough to each other for talk.

"How's your earache?" Roger fixed his eyes on Shaw.

"My earache? Why--I dunno--I forget."

Roger Gower stumped to the chest of drawers and opened the top one. He
fumbled about in it with his short fingers. Then he turned and faced his
wife.

"The seventy-five dollars," he said, "that I got for the Jersey and her
calf. It's gone . . . it was here . . . under the bankbook, and it's
gone. . . ."




                               CHAPTER IV


The loss of the money staggered the Gowers. It put the elopement of
Laura Page completely out of their heads till, hours later, Esther
suddenly connected the two events. Everyone had been saying that the
thief was a tramp who had been prowling about and discovered that there
was no one at home.

"What about Shaw?" Letitia had asked. "He was here."

"What use is he?" said Mark. "He'd sit gaping while a gang of thieves
robbed the house."

"Where were you all day, Shaw?"

"Were you deaf and blind?"

"Hadn't you the gumption to know when a tramp came round?"

The questions came slowly, in the thick, country enunciation. The faces
that were turned on him showed scarcely any expression.

"It was my ear," he said, while his heart beat heavily and a terrible
suspicion troubled his mind.

"Well, you'd two ears, hadn't you?" said Luke.

"I guess I slept some of the time."

"What if it was that hired man! That Jack Searle!" said Esther. She was
the shrewd one. Her opinions were treated with respect.

Luke clapped his thigh. "Esther's hit the nail on the head! It's our
money the pair have eloped on!"

There was dead silence while this idea was absorbed. Then Beaty began to
laugh immoderately. Between outbursts she got out the words--"And they
called her their ewe lamb!"

Everyone knew what she meant. The Pages had had six sons, then had come
Laura, the youngest, the most precious, a spoilt child, everyone said.

"Run off with a hired man! And she always so stuck-up!"

"And on money stolen from us!"

"Well, I guess those Pages will never hold up their heads again."

The Gowers were swayed between dismay at the loss of the money and
triumph at the complete downfall of their neighbors. Then Herbert, the
eldest son, a dour man who seldom spoke, said:--

"You must put the police on their trail, Pa."

Jane Gower was knitting fiercely in outlet for her emotion, but now her
needles were charmed into immobility. "The police," she muttered; "my
goodness, we might get our money back!"

"And whack the pair of them into jail!" said Esther.

All looked at Roger Gower. His spectacles were pushed back on his bald
forehead. His wide blue eyes were fixed on the ceiling. He ignored his
family for a space, then his voice came ponderously through his beard:--

"No, I'll not do that. They'll not go to jail because of me."

"But the money, Pa!"

"And how mean old Page was about the boundary!"

"Laura Page has had three dresses to our one."

"And now we're paying for her honeymoon!"

"Honeymoon with a hired man!" gasped Beaty. "She always acted as though
no one was good enough for her."

Luke's attentions to Laura had been nipped in the bud. He was
embarrassed. He said, reddening a little:--

"But surely you'll have Searle arrested."

Roger Gower was immovable. Something in him rejected the idea of setting
the law after his neighbor's daughter's lover, even though the neighbor
was an enemy.

It seemed to Shaw that the talk about the stolen money and the elopement
would never end. He had an oppressive sense of guilt. He remembered how
he had gone to the dairy and left Searle alone in the sitting room. It
was then that Searle had gone through the drawers of the chest and taken
his grandfather's money. Shaw remembered the handsome little Jersey and
her calf, the satisfaction at the price they had brought. If his
grandparents knew how he had been thick with Searle he was sure he would
get the worst punishment any boy had ever had.

Yet almost as strong as his sense of guilt was his curiosity about
Searle and the girl he had run away with. Why did they do it? Where were
they now?

According to Mr. Blair they were bound straight for hell. He came to tea
one day and, as the Pages were not members of his congregation, he was
free to say exactly what he thought of the elopers. The Gowers wondered
what he would have said if he had known of the stolen money. It was a
bitter thing to Jane and her daughters when Roger forbade them to speak
of the theft outside the family circle.

For many nights Shaw tossed on his bed, sleeping only in snatches
because of his guilty connection with Searle. If he had not made friends
with him on the sly, Searle would never have thought of coming to the
house. Had he come with the idea of stealing in his mind or had he been
tempted when he was left alone with the chest of drawers? Shaw brooded
on the hired man and Laura. Why had she run away with him--left her
mother, who had called her "the ewe lamb," to go off with a stranger?
What were they doing now? Shaw's share in the affair set him still more
apart from the family. He was glad when school opened.

He began the term with the fixed resolution to pass into the class above
him at Christmas, to pass to the next one at Easter, to achieve the
entrance to the high school that summer. Miss McKay saw the resolution
in his face and felt sorry for him because she was certain that he could
not do it. No child could.

Yet, as the weeks went on, she began to wonder if after all it might be
possible. It was amazing how Shaw stored away knowledge. He came to
school each morning with the last line of his homework done,
word-perfect in what was to be memorized. She could not decide whether
he was abnormally receptive or was really working far too hard. There
was no color in his face. There were blue shadows beneath his eyes. But
he was active physically and at the recess she saw him running and
scuffling with the other boys, apparently as strong as any of them. He
was growing fast.

It was disconcerting to Miss McKay to find his eyes fixed on her face
when she was teaching a senior class. She wondered if, with the crude
curiosity of childhood, he was staring at her latest disfigurement. She
would lay one of her lovely hands over the spot and return his stare
with severity. Then he would smile a little and drop his eyes to his
book. But soon she would catch him staring again.

One day she swooped down on him. He was hiding something on his desk,
holding his hands over it.

"Let me see what you have, Shaw!"

"I don't want to, Miss McKay."

"You must."

She raised his hands and saw the exercise for the senior class written
out carefully. He had been making corrections in it from the lesson in
progress. Her eyes filled with tears. She had been teaching for fifteen
years and such a thing had never happened to her before.

After that she opened the fount of her learning to him, let him pick up
all he could from the other classes. She even began to include him in
her teaching of them, for his serious stare fascinated her.

His tenth birthday came and a parcel addressed to him from his mother.
He had never before had a parcel of his own and an unaccustomed color
warmed his cheeks as he tugged with trembling fingers at the string.

"Here, let me do it!" said Jane Gower, her bony fingers eager above the
knot.

"No! I want to! Please!"

The four women stood watching while he undid the parcel.

It was a new suit of navy-blue serge and two pair of long black
stockings knitted by his mother. A letter from her was pinned with a
black pin to the stockings.

"Well, I call that a fine present," said his grandmother. "And a good
piece of serge. Cristabel must have paid a good deal for that."

"It's about time he had it," said Letitia. "He looks awful in his old
one."

"Look at his wrists! They're sticking out half a mile!" And Beaty began
to laugh.

"This suit must be kept for Sundays," declared Jane.

"Oh, Grandma, can't I wear it to school--just once--to show the boys?"

"And spill ink on it! You can not! Go and hang it up and lay the
stockings in a drawer. Let's see what your mother says in the letter."
She unpinned it from the stockings and opened it. "Cristabel hadn't much
sense, wasting an envelope on it."

He stood with his hands clenched while she read the letter slowly aloud.
He wanted to fling himself on her and tear it from her hands. It was his
own private letter, written by his mother to him--the first he had ever
had!

    "Dear Shaw,

    I am sending you this suit for a birthday present and the
    stockings too. Of course I knit them, but I bought the suit at
    Bunting's--"

"My goodness, to think of her buying it at Bunting's!" exclaimed Esther.
"Why didn't she go to some cheaper place?"

"Cristabel always had big ideas," said her mother. She read on:--

    "It is a good suit and I hope you will be careful of it. When
    you take it off lay it flat in the drawer and don't put things
    in the pockets. I got it a large size because Ma tells me you
    are growing so fast. I do hope you are being a good boy and
    trying to help all you can on the farm. It is very kind of your
    grandpa and grandma to have you there and I hope you are showing
    them that you are grateful."

Jane Gower took her eyes from the letter to look at Shaw. There was
accusation in her eyes. The three young women also looked at him.
Letitia said:--

"I haven't seen much gratitude in him."

"He thinks it doesn't cost anything to keep a big lump of a boy," added
Esther.

"He sleeps while a thief sneaks in and steals our money," said Beaty.

"Shaw knows he is welcome here," said their mother, "but it's just as
Cristabel says, he might show a little gratitude."

Shaw felt the blood rising to his head. He felt dizzy under the scrutiny
of the four pairs of pale searching eyes. He looked helpless, like a
young trapped animal. Jane Gower finished the letter:--

    "You are ten years old and you must begin to look forward to
    being a man. I do hope and pray that you are working hard at
    your books. It's my ambition to see you a respected man and in a
    good position. I hope to be home for the weddings and I'll see
    my dear little boy then.

                                         "Your affectionate Mother"

"Well, that's good news," said Jane. "I was afraid Cristabel mightn't be
able to get away."

"I wonder if she'll bring us wedding presents."

"I'll bet she won't! She'll have spent all she can afford on Shaw's
suit."

"Well, it'll be pretty mean if she doesn't."

"She'll bring you presents all right. Don't you worry," Jane comforted
Letitia and Beaty.

Leslie had been forward in his courtship and there was to be a double
wedding at the farm in October.

"Can I have the letter?" asked Shaw.

Jane Gower was folding and refolding it in her fingers, which were so
used to work that they must constantly be moving. Almost grudgingly she
handed him the letter. He had the string in his pocket and gathered the
new garments into his arms.

"Grandma," he said, "can I wear the suit to school to-morrow?"

"I've told you--no! Don't ask again."

"But I do want to!"

"Then want will be your master!" She turned away, dismissing him.

He carried the new possessions to his room and laid them on the bed. He
caressed the navy-blue serge with his hand. He ran to the top of the
stairs and shouted:--

"Grandma, can I try them on--just for a minute?"

"Yes." Her voice came from the pantry. "Come down here and let me see
you in them."

He tore off his clothes, attached his braces to the new trousers, and
put on the new suit. He could scarcely believe in himself. His eyes were
bright with wonder as he examined what portion of himself he could in
the little cracked looking glass.

Cristabel had indeed provided room for growth. The trousers were halfway
down the calf, the sleeves reached his knuckles. There was a new white
handkerchief, with a border of blue dots, folded in the breast pocket.

"How good you are, Mamma," he said, out loud. "How good you are to me!"

He marched proudly down the stairs to show himself.

Jane Gower saw nothing ridiculous in the fitting of the suit. She looked
him over with approval. Esther called from the kitchen:--

"Ma, I want Shaw to carry this cake to the Manse! It's got to go soon if
it's to be in time for the social."

"He's all dressed up!"

"It won't hurt the suit to go that far in it. Ma, my cake will be late
if I don't watch out!" There was a blubbering note in her voice. Jane
gave in at once.

"All right, Shaw, you can take the cake to Mrs. Blair, but don't stay
any longer than you need to."

Shaw could scarcely believe in his good fortune as he trudged down the
lane carefully carrying the cake. He could smell its sweet richness,
feel a delicate warmth from it. He wondered if possibly Ian and Elspeth
would see him, and what they would think of his fine new suit? He
thought he must look at least fifteen in it. The lane seemed very long.
He broke into a jogtrot, but still holding the cake carefully. His arms
ached when he reached the Manse, two miles away. Mrs. Blair opened the
door.

"It's a cake for the social," he said, putting it into her hands, "from
Esther. It's iced."

"Thank you, Shaw. Why, how you're growing! Does Esther want the plate
returned now?"

"Yes, please." It would keep him waiting a little if the plate were
returned.

"Come into the dining room. The children are there." She led him in and
herself went on to the kitchen.

The walls of the Manse were newly papered and the brass gaseliers were
dazzlingly brilliant to Shaw. The carpet of the dining room was a rich
red. Elspeth was sitting at the table drawing pictures and coloring them
from a box of water-color paints. She looked sweet and good. A newspaper
was spread before Ian and on it he was whittling a boat from a piece of
pine. The grain of the wood was rosy in the sunlight. Ian's freckles
stood out on his fair skin, giving him a roguish look.

"Hello! Hello!" they greeted Shaw. "Come and see what we're doing! What
do you think of this for a boat?"

He stood staring, dazzled by the contrast to his own life. Then Ian
began to laugh.

"Look at Shaw! Look at the suit! Look at the three-quarter pants,
Elspeth!"

Shaw grinned sheepishly. He did not feel hurt. This was Ian's way of
being friendly. They made room for him at the table. He was proud of the
long sleeves that reached to his knuckles.

In the kitchen Mrs. Blair discovered that the cake, in its soft
freshness, had been joggled to pieces. Some instinct told her that this
disaster must be kept a secret from the Gowers. Almost an hour passed
before she returned with the plate to the dining room. She found three
heads touching above the table. Shaw was in possession of the paints.

"Come, children," she said, "you must dress for the social. Shaw, won't
you wait and go with us? I see that you're quite ready."

Shaw sprang up aghast at the passage of time. "I must go home. I'm not
going to the social. I was to hurry home."

"I don't think your grandma'd mind if you came with us."

"I must go home," said Shaw sullenly.

He was at the gate when Elspeth came running after him. She pushed the
paintbox into his hand.

"I want to give it to you," she said, shyly but firmly. "It's a birthday
present."

"Give it to me! Why--you couldn't do that! Your mother wouldn't let
you!"

"She would! I can do what I like with my own things. I want you to have
the paints." Before he could say anything more she had run back into the
house.

The gate clicked behind him. He was alone in the road. He felt dizzy
with joy. Clutching cake plate and paintbox to his breast, he ran along
the quiet road. A flaming afterglow set the seal of the day's magic on
the sky. Everything was transformed. The cedar trees were pointed black
towers. The pines were waving black banners. The cattle in the fields
were deer grazing in a king's park. A locomotive, whistling in the
distance, sent a shiver of exaltation through his nerves. He would
travel! He would go to the ends of the earth! But now, here in his hand
was this paintbox, this treasure, this birthday gift! Never before,
never in his ten years of life, had he been given anything that was not
practically useful,--clothes, boots, school books,--and now, here was
this miracle, this box packed with glorious color! It seemed to him that
he had been wishing for a long while for a paintbox, that he had wanted
one more than anything else. Yet he had no talent for drawing, no
definite craving was satisfied by the acquisition of the paints. It was
the unexpected munificence of the gift, its complete lack of practical
use, that made it so spectacular.

There was the sharpness of coming frost in the air. There was the
poignancy of parting in the sweet scents offered by the dusky earth. A
power came upward from it that made walking easy, made a boy's body
light as air. The flaming color in the west did not dim till Shaw
reached the gate of the farm. Then the lane darkened as he ran along it.
He was glad to see the orange square of a lighted window.

Then, remembering how long he had been away, he was frightened. What
would his grandmother say? He stole to the window.

Roger Gower was sitting by the dining table, the newspaper spread open
before him. He sat, solid and tranquil, absorbing its columns. As his
invisible lips moved, the hairs of his beard quivered as though by some
electric volition of their own. It was much later than Shaw had thought.
Everyone but his grandfather had gone to the social.

He went into the room very quietly, his eyes fixed fearfully on the old
man. He found his schoolbag and laid his homework on the table. He
brought a chair and slid silently on to it.

Roger Gower's large blue eyes were not diverted from their attention to
the newspaper. The delicate vibration of his beard continued without
interruption.

Shaw's nerves relaxed in a sigh. He tried to fasten his attention on his
homework. But he could not forget the paintbox. It was on his knees and
he caressed it as he bent his eyes to his books. He felt that he must
see inside it. It was new. The colors were no more than faintly hollowed
by the brush. The delicate range of them awaited his exploring. He
remembered that he had to draw a map for to-morrow's geography lesson.
Like an inspiration the thought came that he would color it. He would
hide his work from his grandfather behind a heap of books.

The map was of Asia. He gave himself up to doing nothing else that
evening. He would make a map that should be the wonder of the school.
Carefully he drew the outlines of the different countries. He brought a
saucer of water from the kitchen and set at the joyful task of coloring.

Orange for India, purple for Persia, yellow for China, red for
Japan--masterfully he chose the colors. The ocean should be light blue,
with a deeper blue at the verge. The mountains should be a lovely green,
but cruel Siberia black as night. In one of Shaw Gower's books of travel
there was a map with ships and beasts on it.

He had always admired these and now he decided to introduce them into
his map. He tiptoed up the stairs and brought down the old calf-bound
book. From it he copied the drawing of a tall square-rigger and put it
off the coast of Java. He set dolphins at play in the Indian Ocean and a
whale in mid-Pacific. He was so absorbed that the passage of time was
nothing to him. He forgot his grandfather's existence.

Suddenly he was startled by the old man's voice.

"That's a funny-looking map you've made."

Guiltily Shaw tried to conceal it with his hands.

"Don't cover it up. I want to see it."

"I'm--just coloring it," stammered Shaw.

"Where did you get those paints?"

"They--were lent to me." Fear made him hedge.

"Hmph. I never heard of lending paint. What book is that?"

"It belonged to--I think it was your father, Grandpa. I'm not hurting
it."

Roger Gower stretched out a short strong hand and took the book. He felt
the smoothness of the cover and stared at the faded signature on the
flyleaf. "He was a queer sort of man," he said. "I'd forgotten there
were any of his books about."

He pushed the book across the table to Shaw. He took a handful of his
beard and twisted it in his fingers. Suddenly his mouth opened wide in a
yawn. A sleepy moisture came into his eyes. "It looks," he said, "as if
those folks are going to stay the night at the church."

In his stocking feet he stumped across the floor to the tall clock and
began to wind it. Never before had Shaw and he had intimate conversation
together. Shaw had a sudden feeling of security. He felt older and
stronger and as though he had a place of his own in the house. He
replied, in a gruff tone:--

"I'd rather stay at home and read or paint than go to a silly old
social, wouldn't you?"

"There was a time when I liked them," answered Roger Gower. "And
there'll come a time when you'll like them--when you get running after a
girl."

Shaw gave a superior smile. "I'll never do that," he answered.

"What about the time you chased Louie Adams on the road?"

Shaw was staggered. He almost dropped the books he had gathered up.
So--Mr. Blair had told of him! He stared open-mouthed at his
grandfather, who went on serenely winding the clock. Mr. Blair had told
and nothing had been done to him!

"I think I'll go to bed, Grandpa," he mumbled; "I'm pretty tired."

"I s'pose you are. I guess we'd both better go."

In his room Shaw gazed in rapture at his map of Asia. He found a pin and
pinned it on the wall where he could see it first thing in the morning.
He had quite forgotten that he still wore his new suit, but now he took
it off carefully and laid it flat in a drawer. He lay long awake
repeating in his mind the happiness of the day.

The next morning on the way to school he overtook Ian and Elspeth. He
smiled shyly at Elspeth, eager to tell her about his map, but she turned
her head away and began to walk very quickly. She almost ran. Ian took
him by the sleeve and drew him back.

"Say," he said, "you know that paintbox?"

"Yes."

"Elspeth had no right to give it away. She got scolded. Our Aunt Jean
gave the paintbox to her. Why did she give it to you?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask for it. I don't want it much. I'll give it
back."

Ian looked relieved. "All right. When will you bring it?"

"To-morrow."

"Bring it to school, will you?"

"Yes. I don't want it. I don't know why Elspeth gave it to me."

They walked on in troubled silence, kicking stones before them along the
dusty road. Then Ian threw off his embarrassment and gave Shaw a thump
between the shoulders. "I'll race you to the school!"

Sitting at his desk, Shaw looked cautiously at Elspeth. Her head was
resting on her hand, in the attitude of a dejected little woman. He
could see tears on her round cheek. Miss McKay went and sat beside her
and put her arm about her, but Elspeth would not say what was wrong. Ian
spoke for her:--

"She ate too much potato salad at the social."

A giggle ran across the room.

"Would you like to go out in the air for a little while by yourself,
Elspeth?"

Elspeth began to sob and Miss McKay led her outdoors.

Ian sang:--

                        "After the ball is over,
                        After the break of day--"

By the time Miss McKay returned there was pandemonium. When she had
established order she asked for the maps to be handed in. Shaw's lay in
his desk, the map that was to astonish them all, carefully rolled and
tied with a bit of grey yarn.

"I haven't done one," he said.

"_Not_ drawn a map! I suppose you had too much potato salad too."

"I wasn't at the social."

"Then what is your excuse?"

He had none. And he had done none of his homework. All day he was stupid
and careless. Miss McKay could not make him out. The next morning he
left early for school so that he should not meet the Blairs. He carried
the paintbox wrapped in newspaper. He kept saying to himself--"I don't
want it much. A paintbox is no good to me. I don't want it at all." He
went to Elspeth's desk and put the box inside.

Now he strained toward the day of the double wedding, hoping, hoping
that then he would see his mother. He determined to write her a letter.
He wrote it on a leaf of his exercise book. He asked his grandmother for
a stamp for it.

"Give it to me," she said, "and I'll put it in with mine. I'm going to
write this week."

"But I want it to go right away."

"Then want will be your master," she returned coldly.

The next day at school he said to Ian:--

"Ian, I bet you can't jump from the roof of the shed."

Ian stared. "The school woodshed?"

"Yes. I bet you a postage stamp you can't jump off it clear across the
mud puddle. I bet you're afraid to try."

"You wait and see! I'll jump across it and land three feet beyond the
puddle."

All the boys were impressed. No boy had ever jumped off the roof of the
shed. It was steep and high and the mud puddle beside it was edged by a
rough stony space. Ian capered like a Red Indian, rousing himself to
recklessness.

"I bet Shaw can't jump across the puddle! I bet he can't! He'll fall in
on his head! I bet you a postage stamp you can't do it, Shaw!"

"You go first."

School was over. The teacher and the girls were gone. The boys jumped
and shouted in their excitement.

Ian mounted the roof from the fence that stood behind. Up there it was
slippery and steep. For an instant his courage failed. Then he took a
flying leap, his fair hair on end, and landed in the middle of the
puddle.

He clambered out plastered with mud, and did a war dance. The other boys
were delighted. Only one thing was lacking, to see Shaw in the same
condition.

"Your turn, Shaw! Go it! Why are you turning down your stockings, Shaw?"

"I don't want to tear the knees when I land on the stones."

He clambered on to the roof. His face was surprisingly pale and set as
he looked down on his schoolfellows. He gathered himself together and,
collecting all his strength, jumped from the roof, clear across the
puddle, and landed on hands and knees on the dry stony ground. It was
well that he had turned down his stockings, for his knees were cut and
bleeding. So were his palms. He pressed his hands together and faced
Ian.

"I've won," he said. "Don't forget the stamp."

As Ian's landing in the puddle and his capers afterward had endeared him
to the other boys, Shaw's victory and his unsmiling reminder to Ian
estranged them. There was something about him they could not understand
and consequently disliked.

Ian answered teasingly--"I'm not allowed to bet. It's wicked. I'm a
minister's son."

"You bet me," said Shaw fiercely, "and you've got to pay!"

"Skinflint! Skinflint! Greedy-guts!" shouted the boys, beginning to be
hostile.

Ian laughed. "Dinna fash yersel', laddie," he said, in broad Scots.
"Sairtainly I'll pay."

The next morning he brought the stamp, stuck to an envelope for safety,
to school.

"I'm on the steep downward path," he said. "First I bet and then I
stole."

"Did you _steal_ the stamp?" asked Shaw.

"Well, I sort of took it."

That day Shaw posted the letter to his mother. It read:--

    Dear Mamma,

    Thank you for the new suit. I wore it to the Manse to take
    Esther's cake. I am working hard at my lessons. I am the head of
    my class especially in arithmetic and history. I hope you are
    getting on well too.

                                                  Your loving son,
                                                      Shaw Manifold

    P.S. I hope you will come to the girls' wedding. They hope you
    will bring them presents.

After the posting of the letter Shaw waited with impatience for some
news of his mother. No one seemed to know whether or not she was coming.
Every spare moment was given to preparations for the double event.
Curtains were washed, windows cleaned, carpets beaten. Masses of muslin,
organdie, and homemade lace hung on the backs of chairs and sprawled
over tables. It seemed to Shaw that, if he woke in the middle of the
night, he heard women's voices talking below. The prospective grooms
seemed suddenly of no account. Letitia and Beatrice were everything.

The household was caught up in a strange spell. Shaw might not have
existed for all the notice that was taken of him. He worked almost
ceaselessly at his school books.

Then, as though without warning, the wedding day was upon them. It was a
fair day in October, with ruddy sunshine and a sighing breeze. Along the
ditches and in the corners of the fields the dusky yellow of the
goldenrod blazed. Pyramids of red and yellow apples rose beneath the
orchard trees. Roger Gower said, at breakfast:--

"Someone's got to meet Cristabel. Her train arrives at nine o'clock."

Shaw's heart seemed to turn over in its sudden wild beating. "Can I go
to the station too?" he pleaded.

Luke put in--"I've got a lot to do."

"I don't see how I can meet her," said Mark.

"Shaw can drive the buggy to the station as well as not," said Herbert.
"Let him go by himself."

At that moment Shaw loved Herbert. Roger Gower considered the matter in
deep silence for a space. Then he said:--

"Harness the mare to the buggy, Shaw, and meet your mother. Be there in
plenty of time."

"And no monkey tricks on the way," said Herbert.

"For goodness' sake," cried Letitia, looking at the clock. "It's six
o'clock already!"

Shaw was at the railway station long before the train was due. He could
scarcely believe in himself, walking up and down the platform like a
man, now and again stopping before the door of the waiting room to
glance in at the clock.

The time of waiting did not seem long. As he paced up and down the
platform he saw the scattered few who waited like himself look long at
his trousers and sleeves, impressed by them. Over and over again he
wondered what his mother would say when she saw him. She would scarcely
know him, grown as he was and wearing the new suit. She would probably
take him for Mark or Luke.

He heard the whistle of the train at the next crossing. The people moved
closer to the platform, gripping their packages. Shaw's heart beat
quickly.

Now the wheels spun into view, a shining streak beneath the bulk of the
locomotive. The freight cars thundered in, laden with bales and fat
steers going to market. There were only two passenger cars and when the
train stopped Shaw ran alongside, getting in people's way, looking for
his mother.

He saw her coming toward him smiling. He felt himself suddenly weak at
the sight of her, as though he were a tiny child again. But when she put
her arm about his shoulder and kissed his cheek, strength surged into
him. He tore the suitcase from her hand and led the way to the buggy. He
tingled with self-consciousness, knowing how her eyes must be fixed on
the new suit.

But when they had reached the buggy and he looked up into her eyes he
saw that they were swimming in tears.

"Mamma," he asked wistfully, "don't you think the suit fits me?"

"I think it's beautiful on you," she said.

His heart sang as the mare eagerly trotted homeward.

"Weren't you surprised when I met you at the station?"

"I was awfully surprised."

"I guess you thought I was one of the big fellows."

"Well, I pretty near did."

"I guess you thought you'd a grown-up son when you saw these pants."

"I guess I did."

"I guess you were sort of puzzled about who the young man was."

"I had to think hard for a minute."

"Oh, Mamma, did you really?" He laughed joyously. He took the whip from
the socket and flicked the mare on the shoulder. Her big hoofs sent up a
cloud of dust.

"I suppose all the folks are working hard getting ready for the
wedding," she said.

"They're making a terrible fuss about it." He spoke patronizingly. "Just
as though two women never got married before. They've made hundreds and
hundreds of clothes, and dozens of sheets and towels, and millions of
pumpkin pies and lemon tarts and coconut cakes. Did you bring them
presents?"

"Yes. I brought them each six pillowcases with lace insertion. Of
course, I crocheted the lace myself."

"Did you sit up at night doing it?"

"Yes."

"I guess you got pretty tired."

"Yes. I got very tired."

"Is it hard work being a housekeeper?"

"Well, Shaw, I find it pretty hard. I don't think I'm quite so strong
since your father died."

"My work is very hard too," he said, making his voice deep. "And I'm at
the top of my class and I'm going to try to pass into the entrance class
at Christmas."

"You are a good boy, Shaw."

Bowling along the road, he felt as though they two floated in a golden
haze of happiness. They were enthroned on the seat of the buggy talking
freely, intimately, of their lives, unburdening their hearts without
fear.

When they reached the gate he flung down the reins, leaped out, bawled
"Whoa" in true farmer fashion to the mare as she hastened through;
slammed the gate, clambered back over the wheel, and let her have her
head.

Jane Gower met her daughter at the door and kissed her. Jane always
moistened her lips before kissing, so their imprint remained a moment as
though an affectionate wave had touched the shore. Shaw lugged the
suitcase after.

Already the house was swarming and every hour brought more of the old
couple's descendants. By midday all thirteen of their children were
there, with sons and daughters-in-law. Shaw was always losing his mother
in the crowd. When he found her he pressed close to her, rubbing his
cheek against her.

"You'd think you were a gatepost, Cristabel, and Shaw was a calf,"
remarked one of her brothers.

She gave Shaw a tenderly reproving look and gently pushed him away.

He could not stay away. He could not bear her out of his sight. His eyes
seemed to her to be always staring into her face. What were the thoughts
behind those gravely staring eyes? What was in the mind of her queer
little boy?

But she was proud of him. He was different from the other grandchildren,
clever, like his father. She took Shaw up to his room when it was time
to get ready for church. She carried a jug of hot water and from it
filled the basin. "Take off your coat," she said; "I must wash your
head. I do think that Ma or the girls might have seen to it. Indeed,
you're old enough yourself."

"Ain't I clean?" he asked, surprised.

"You just wait and see the water that comes off you."

He pulled off his jacket and gave himself up. He surrendered himself
utterly to the bliss of being handled by her loved hands. She lathered
his head and with soapy washcloth sought the intricacies of his ears. He
did not mind the suds. He did not mind feeling half drowned under the
rinsing. As she vigorously rubbed his hair he looked up at her lovingly
like a docile little dog.

"My goodness, Shaw, how you stare! You'd think you'd never seen me
before."

"I can't help it, Mamma," he said. "I sort of want to remember what
you're like."

"Now I call that a clean head!" she exclaimed, running her fingers
through his thick hair. "That's the way I'd like to see you kept."

He caught her hand and turned the wedding ring on her thin finger.

"I wish we could be always together, Mamma."

"I wish we could, dear. You must work as hard as you can. That's the
only way. Then some day the two of us will make a home. Unless you'll
want to get married as soon as you're grown up, like some boys."

"Not me! I've seen enough of weddings to last me the rest of my life."

The departure for the church was frantic. The brides mislaid first one
thing, then another. Their sisters and sisters-in-law, helping them to
dress, filled the small rooms to suffocation with starched petticoats
and healthy, perspiring womanhood. At the last moment Beaty's garter
broke. She sat down on the stairs, weeping loudly.

"It's a bad sign," she sobbed. "I know it's a bad sign."

"Nonsense, Beaty, it's a good sign," comforted her mother. "It's a
warning you'd forgotten to wear something borrowed. Here, one of you,
lend Beaty a garter."

A garter was pulled from a plump leg; a safety pin substituted. From
every room the wedding party poured out. The sunburnt faces of Mark and
Luke were like hardy flowers above the stiff white stems of their
starched collars. Their hair was plastered flat and parted in the
middle.

Jane Gower had a new black silk dress and a bonnet trimmed with jet for
the occasion. Against the rich blackness her pink face, her clear light
eyes, her snow-white hair, had an air of benign tranquillity. Roger's
beard had been washed and combed for the occasion. He led his two
daughters down the aisle of the church with solemnity, as though giving
them away were a cause of sadness to him. But, in truth, he was glad to
be spared the expense (as he thought) of them. It was Jane who would
have to make up for their hard work in house and dairy. She and Esther.

Jane in her black silk was not to compare with Becky in her wine-colored
velvet, with cherries nodding on her bonnet and the rosy bow beneath her
chin making her sallow little face more sallow. She and Merton, parents
of one of the grooms, occupied a front pew. It was many years since they
had been in any but a Church of England. Becky wore an expression of
lofty unacquaintance with the forms of the Presbyterian Church and
Merton's beard twitched his amused tolerance. Neither felt that their
son would be properly wed by the ceremony. Both thought he was making a
poor marriage.

Leslie himself was dapper and composed, in contrast to the flurried and
somewhat disheveled aspect of the other groom. The faces of the brides
beamed beneath their veils like harvest moons through mist. Mr. Blair's
address was so eloquent that Roger was moved to give looks of pride
across the aisle at Merton, who stared back with an unconvinced, even
truculent expression. Becky sniffed continuously, patting her eyes with
a laced-edged handkerchief. Jane's heavy upper lip quivered in bearable
grief at the loss of Letitia and Beaty.

Shaw drank in all that passed, his ears and eyes missing no word or
movement, his mind a strange jumble of impressions. And always at the
back of his mind was the aching consciousness that he must part with his
mother that evening.

All the way through the wedding breakfast he sat close to her, feeling
her nearness in his every fibre. He wanted little to eat and that
worried her. She bent over him, urging him and laying tempting bits on
his plate. When he found that in this way he could hold her attention he
ate next to nothing, nibbling languidly and staring into her face.

"Whatever is the matter with you!" she whispered, under cover of one of
Leslie's jokes.

"When will you come again, Mamma?"

"Oh, bless me, I don't know!" She could have cried to see the expression
in his eyes. "You must sleep on a piece of the wedding cake and wish to
see me soon."

"Will that help-truly?"

"It may."

"I'll wish on it every night till you come."

Inexorably the time for her leaving drew nearer, swallowing up all color
and movement in his surroundings, making him feel still and remote and
despairing, but not quite without a hope. He hoped to go with her to the
station, to see her go away in the train.

Perhaps the thought of Shaw at the railway station was more than
Cristabel could bear. Whatever the reason, there was no room for him in
the crowded democrat wagon. He kissed her quietly, grasping her suitcase
in his hands. He had taken no part in the rice throwing at the newly
married pairs. Now they were gone and a subdued silence had fallen on
those who were left.

"I hope Shaw will grow up to be a comfort to you, Cristabel," said Aunt
Becky. "But boys seldom do. You fasten all your hopes on them and wear
yourself to the bone for them and they disappoint you."

"You'll miss the train if we don't get a move on," said Luke.

"Good-bye! Roger, that was a terrible sermon your minister preached!"

"Good-bye, Jane, don't worry about the girls!"

"Good-bye, Pa!"

"Good-bye, Grandpa and Grandma!"

"Good-bye, Shaw! The child looks half asleep!"

He stared after the democrat, then broke into a run. He ran as fast as
he could down the farm lane, but he could not overtake it. It became a
swiftly moving blur in the frosty twilight that followed the
Indian-summer day. The hoofbeats of the two horses rang out loud and
clear.

He stopped stock-still. A thought pierced him. He had forgotten
something--something he had wanted terribly to do! He had forgotten to
show his mother the beautiful colored map he had drawn.




                               CHAPTER V


Now Shaw gave his whole mind to his school work except for the brief
hour of recreation at noon and on the way home from school. Then he
played wildly, almost feverishly, as though he would force his body as
he was forcing his mind. He and Ian became greater friends than ever; he
and Louie Adams even more antagonistic. He would feel her round avid
eyes boring into the back of his head in the classroom, and he would
turn and discover her look of hate. In return he would screw his blunt
features into as ferocious an expression as he could, forming with his
lips the words--"Mean old pig Louie!" He would intensify his efforts to
enter her class.

Elspeth was still a little embarrassed in his presence. She had not
forgotten the humiliation of having to take back the paintbox. But she
liked him. He was sure of that. She had a clear little voice, and on the
Friday afternoons when they had songs and recitations she would look
straight at him when she sang, as though, singing, she had a confidence
in herself she could not ordinarily attain. And Ian could recite as well
as his father could preach from the pulpit. Shaw had a self-depreciatory
admiration for them both.

November was here and darkness fell swiftly on the countryside. By the
time Shaw reached home from school the orchards and woods were dimly
mysterious, the orange squares of lighted windows gleamed in the dusk.
Perhaps a horse would come to the rail fence beside the lane and whinny
to him in lonely recognition, but he would hasten on without turning his
head. He was late. He would be scolded. And there were his chores to do.

When he had finished with the carrying in of wood and water he would
open the oven door and take out the large plate of food that had been
saved for him from dinner, carry it to a corner of the kitchen table,
and eat it ravenously. Then he would drink deeply from the tin dipper
and settle himself by the table where his grandfather read, to do his
school work.

At first he would sit with his head in his hands, stupefied by violent
play, the long walk home, the heavy meal. He would pull off his sodden
boots and rub his stocking feet together to warm them. Between his
fingers he would study his grandfather's face, the smooth dome of his
head, the strong flaring beard, the tranquil eyes fixed on his newspaper
or on the glowing stove. From the contemplation of that face the desire
to work was quickened, but whether from the transmission of purely
physical energy or from an antagonistic stimulus against all his
grandfather stood for cannot be said. Whatever the reason, Shaw would
take out his books and not raise his eyes from them till he was sent to
bed.

The house was not so quiet since the departure of Letitia and Beatrice
as had been expected. One of the married daughters had come home to
visit, bringing with her an ailing girl of four years. The child coughed
and coughed. It was sick after the paroxysms, Shaw was told that it had
whooping cough.

"Look out you don't catch it," said Esther, "or you'll have to stay home
from school."

Shaw was aghast. The thought was horrible to him.

"Isn't there anything I can do, so I'll not catch it?" he asked.

"Eat lots of red pepper on your porridge," said Leslie. He and Beatrice
had come to dinner.

There was a guffaw from Mark and Luke. Beaty rocked with laughter. Shaw
looked sullenly at his plate. He had no fun in him, they said.

He was, in truth, filled with apprehension. What if he took whooping
cough and had to stay away from school? It would mean that he could not
pass the entrance exam next summer. It would mean an extra year of the
life he was now leading. He had a feeling of hate toward the whooping
little cousin. She unfortunately took a fancy to him. She would follow
him about, coughing and then making a noise like a cock crowing. He
scowled at her and once got his ears boxed by her mother for giving her
a pinch.

His desire for learning amounted to greed. He learned whole chapters of
the history and geography textbooks by heart. He did the homework of two
classes. He came downstairs at five in the morning and worked by
lamplight in the kitchen while the milking was done. But he began to
ail.

First he grew feverish and had a feeling of nausea. Still he did not
suspect the cause. With his cheeks flushed and eyes glistening he
pressed on in his pursuit of the textbooks, of everything that Miss
McKay could teach him. Then one day she looked at him strangely and
said:--

"Shaw, I think you are making yourself sick. You are working beyond your
strength."

"No, I'm not," he denied. "I'm all right."

"I wish I could talk to your mother."

"But she wants me to work hard! She wants me to work as hard as ever I
can!"

"Very well. But I think you're overdoing it."

That night he began to cough and the next day he was not allowed to go
to school.

"How long will I be at home?" he asked miserably.

"Six weeks." Jane Gower looked at him with some compassion. "Perhaps if
you study at home you can keep up to the others."

"Grandma, I wonder if I could find out what the homework is, every
night."

"You couldn't every night, but perhaps we can get Miss McKay to let us
know on Sundays."

"She'd help me if she could, Grandma, I'm sure she would. Ask her,
please, Grandma! I do want to pass the exam!"

"Well, I never did see such a boy! Fussing about exams when you've the
whooping cough!"

But Jane had a certain pride in his bookishness. She saw Miss McKay and
the result was that every Sunday the teacher brought an outline of the
week's homework to church and handed it to one of the Gowers. Shaw was
feverish from excitement as he waited for the return from church. He
would stand by the window watching for the buggy long before the time
when it should come. He felt that he could not bear it if the paper were
forgotten. But it never was. Week by week he did the work of the two
classes.

Roger Gower had seemed oblivious of the coughing of his grandchildren,
but one evening, returning from a visit to the village, his beard
powdered by the first heavy snowfall, he brought two bottles of cough
mixture and set down one in front of each child.

"There," he said. "I've brought you a bottle of cough medicine apiece,
so don't quarrel over it."

Jane was annoyed by the needless extravagance of the second bottle. She
laid the supper table with her lip pushed forward and the back of her
neck stiff. Roger buried himself in Dr. Chase's next year's almanac,
which he had got at the drugstore, conning the dates of the births of
famous people, the great fires, the battles and expositions. Shaw could
scarcely endure the waiting till he might have possession of the
almanac. "I know more about those things than Grandpa does," he muttered
to himself. "I bet he doesn't know what he's reading about!" Roger Gower
looked up, met Shaw's eyes, and buried himself still more stubbornly in
the almanac. Jane drew a pan of tea biscuits from the oven and the
delicious smell of them was mingled with the smell of the scorched oven
cloth.

Shaw was glad when word came that Ian had whooping cough. If Ian had
taken it perhaps other children would take it! Perhaps so many would
take it that the school would be closed and he would not be far behind
the others after all!

All this happened. The school was opened barely in time for the
examinations shortly before Christmas.

Shaw was so happy that he scarcely knew what to do with himself on the
morning when he first went to school. The sun was dazzling on the snow.
The air was so deliciously, so cruelly sharp that it stung his nostrils,
tender from coughing and hot indoor air. The lane was an arch of glory,
with the snow-laden boughs meeting above and the untrodden whiteness
below. His were the first steps to ruffle the lane's purity and he ran
along it leaping and bounding in his joy, watching the snow dust drift
on the golden-blue air.

By the time he reached the gate he had a stitch in his side, his legs
trembled from running. He wondered what had made him so weak. The two
miles to the school along the snowy road seemed very far in prospect. He
wished he might get a lift. He looked back along the road and saw
approaching a team belonging to the neighboring farmer whose daughter
had run away with the hired man, Jack Searle.

The team, red-roan in color, looked wild, dashing through the snow with
their blond manes flying and steam curling from their nostrils. The
farmer sat, whip in mittened hand, his ruddy face looking out between
the lugs of his fur cap, a buffalo skin across his knees. The sleigh
bells rang out joyously.

Shaw advanced to the side of the road and looked ingratiatingly into the
farmer's face. The man seemed not to see him, but the hand holding the
whip was raised, the lash cracked lightly near the team's flanks, and
they broke into a gallop.

Shaw scowled. "He thinks he'll keep me from hooking on behind!" he
thought. "Guess he's mistaken--mean old farmer!"

Timing the moment, he sprang on to the back of the sleigh, at first
precariously, then edging his body on firmly, placing his schoolbag and
his packet of lunch in safety, uttering a grunt of satisfaction.

He saw then that he was not the only one who had "hooked on." Louie
Adams was clinging desperately to the sleigh, her thin legs, terminating
in overshoes much too large for her, dangling helplessly, a crocheted
red woolen hood accentuating her mauvish pallor. Her round eyes rolled
toward him appealingly.

"I'm falling off," she whined. "I can't get a good hold. My sakes, Shaw
Manifold, give me a boost!"

He put out his hand and grasped her between the skinny shoulder blades.
"Pull me on!" she whined. "Quick!"

He had a vibrant sense of power. He could pull her on or let her go,
just as he chose. He pictured what she would look like sprawling in the
snow with her schoolbag and the packet of bread and molasses which was
invariably her lunch lying beside her.

But he was too happy this morning to be unkind to anyone, even Louie. He
gave her a heave and she scrambled up beside him. They grinned into each
other's face.

"Did you have the whooping cough?" he asked.

"Did I? I nearly coughed my head off!"

"I nearly coughed myself into little bits. I had it first. I gave it to
the whole school."

"Where did you get it?"

"Off my little cousin. She nearly coughed herself to bits too. We had a
special very bad sort of whooping cough."

"If you were so sick I don't s'pose you did any homework."

"Homework, Louie! I did tons and oceans of homework! I'm going to pass
into your class. I'm going to pass the entrance ahead of you next
summer, see if I don't!"

The grin faded from her face and again her eyes were hard with hate. The
sleigh bells shattered the crisp air with their crisper jangling. One of
the horses blew out his breath with a great b-r-r-r and the spray from
his lips rose freezing. Coming from behind they saw the Blairs'
wine-colored sleigh and long-legged bay mare. A deep-toned bell rang
from her breast. Little bells jingled all round her.

"That horse's name is Lady Belle," said Shaw. "That's her name--Lady
Belle."

"She shall have music wherever she goes," said Louie, out of her tight
little mouth.

"You talk like a baby," said Shaw.

Instead of being still more annoyed Louie looked pleased. The Blair
children shouted and waved as their sleigh sped past. Ian made a grimace
of horror at Shaw's propinquity to Louie. Shaw smiled sheepishly and
wished he had let her fall off the sleigh.

As they neared the schoolhouse the farmer looked over his shoulder at
Louie and Shaw. Two icicles hanging from his big moustache looked like
the teeth of a walrus. There was a malicious twinkle in his eyes. He
flicked his long whip across the backs of the team and they sped swiftly
forward past the gate of the school.

"Oo!" cried Louie. "He's taking us way past! Oo--I daren't jump!"

"You've got to!" shouted Shaw. He snatched up his schoolbag and leaped
to the road.

Desperately Louie jumped after him. She rolled over and over in the
snow, clutching her packet of lunch and her bag of books. She gathered
herself up and came stumbling toward Shaw over the gleaming prints of
the sleigh runners. Together they turned and shouted after the farmer:--

"Did you ever get left? Did you ever get left?"

Then they trudged back to the school.

"That man's daughter," said Shaw, "ran away from him. She ran away with
the hired man."

"My father's a hired man," said Louie aggressively.

"Well, that's all right. But a girl wouldn't want to run away with one.
A farmer's daughter wouldn't."

"What are you going to be? I mean when you grow up."

"Oh, I don't know yet. Perhaps a doctor. But anyhow something a long way
from here. I'm going to do something out in the world."

"So am I."

"You couldn't. You're only a girl."

She hung her head.

The Blairs were waiting for them. At noon Ian wrote on the wall of the
shed--"Shaw Manifold loves Louie Adams." The words were chanted up and
down the yard, producing a peculiar satisfaction in Louie and nothing
but hilarity in Shaw. He was so happy to be at school again that nothing
could trouble him.

He was beside himself with impatience for the examinations. He compared
notes with Ian and found that he had never opened a book during his
isolation. But Ian was already in the entrance class; it was a foregone
conclusion that he would pass into the high school at midsummer.

Miss McKay smiled proudly at Shaw when she announced that he had passed
both the examinations. He now felt himself the equal of any in the
school, the equal of the big boys of fifteen who were head and shoulders
taller. He was growing, too. Before the winter was over the trousers and
coat of the new suit were not so ridiculously long on him. But he was
pale. Many of the children were pale after the long bout of coughing.
Many of them had colds as they plodded long miles to school through
snowdrifts and piercing winds. The windows of the school were white with
frost. Outside the windows hung long icicles as thick as a boy's wrists.
The stove at the end of the room was almost red-hot and the woolen
scarves and hoods of the girls, the mittens and the knitted caps with
pompoms on the tops, of the boys, hung round it to dry, gave off a
strange oily odor.

Miss McKay announced that at Easter she would give a prize for the best
map drawn by any pupil in the school. It was the first time a prize had
been offered and it was felt by children and parents that a new element
of worldliness had entered into their lives. Shaw knew that he would
take the prize with the beautiful map of Asia he had colored from
Elspeth's paints. He had nothing to do but wait for the day of handing
in the maps. He heard the others talk of theirs, with tolerance. He
pictured their astonishment when his was hung on the wall. He hoped the
prize would be a book.

When the day came the school was aquiver with excitement. The rolls of
clean white paper were handed in to Miss McKay. After the children were
gone she pinned the maps to the walls of the room. She was proud of her
pupils' accomplishments.

When the children crowded into the room the next morning the first thing
that challenged their attention was Shaw's brightly colored map, with
its square-rigger, its dolphins and its whale, the crowding colors of
its countries, the lovely blue of its sea.

"I know when you colored that!" exclaimed Ian. Elspeth turned scarlet.

It was Louie Adams's map that took the prize. It was of Asia too. It was
plain black and white, but Louie had spent many hours in laboriously
inserting the names of a multitude of rivers, capes, and towns. The map
was covered by them. There was not room for another.

As she returned to her seat carrying the prize, a twenty-five-cent
edition of _A Basket of Flowers_, her eyes met Shaw's. On her side there
was triumph. On his a challenge. From then on he worked harder than
ever.

But his boy's body chafed at the long hours of sitting. On the way home
from school he gave himself up to play. It seemed that he could not play
violently enough. Races, leap-frog, hop-skip-and-jump; in that hour he
strove to rid himself of his pent-up energy, to capture some of the joy
in which Ian was so carelessly secure. Shaw laughed a great deal in his
play but his eyes were always grave. When the laugh had passed his lips
they resumed their line of set endurance.

After the Easter holidays Miss McKay told him that she had great hope of
his passing the entrance examination. He was himself positive he could
do it but it was pleasant to have this assurance from his teacher. He
relaxed a little his work at home and drew out the enjoyment of the
after-school play. He and Ian and two brothers named Scott found a
deserted "root house" on a neighboring farm. It was still solid, with a
good roof, a small-paned window, and a broad shelf. You went down two
stone steps into it. You could bolt the door. The little building was
almost hidden by weeds and creepers.

The boys discovered it on the first spring day when the warmth of the
sun put a kind of madness into them. They clambered up the mossy roof
and slid down shouting. "It's a pirates' cave!" declared Ian. "Let's
have it for a pirates' cave!" There was a small wood between it and the
cultivated land. If they were careful in their comings and goings there
was little chance of their being found out.

The cave became the focus of their thoughts, their secret joy, their
extravagant dissipation. The four boys were inseparable that spring. Ian
was twelve, Shaw ten, and the Scotts eleven and thirteen years old.

The Scotts' father was well off. He was the most prominent member of Mr.
Blair's congregation, representing the constituency in the Provincial
House. The brothers brought an old quilt and a pillow, a rush mat, and a
few dishes to the cave. Ian brought candles and a candlestick, a
three-legged stool, and an old tin bread box to hold the spoils of their
pirating. He brought clean paper for writing out their rules and
messages of warning, which he delighted in making as bloodthirsty as his
imagination could invent.

Shaw had nothing to bring to the cave but his colored map, which he
fixed to the wall, and a particularly delicious sort of russet apple
with which he stuffed his schoolbag each morning, taking care that no
one should see him. One munificent store he had to draw from was the
memory of all he had read from Shaw Gower's books. He stole the
dilapidated red table cover from the table in his bedroom, cut it into
four strips, and bound these about the smooth brows of himself and his
fellow pirates in traditional fashion.

Snug in the cave they lay and crouched, when their violent activities
were over, while Shaw repeated all he could remember of the adventures
of his heroes. His memory was abnormally good. Sometimes he recited
pages by heart. Sometimes he and the other boys were stirred by
utterances they only half understood. Imperceptibly he became the
leader, and this pleased him because at home he was as nothing.

When the Scotts talked of having pestered their father for something
they desired till he gave in and humored them, when they told of their
mother's bribing them to practise their music lessons, or when Ian told
of how his grandmother gave him what his parents refused, could deny him
and Elspeth nothing, Shaw's eyes were sombre. He wondered why such
pleasant ways were not bestowed on him.

Now that the spring was opened there was work on the farm that he could
do. Yet he was later and later coming home from school. Suddenly one
night Jane Gower was angry. She was waiting for him inside the door, and
the moment he appeared she took him by the arm and asked, in her low
voice:--

"Where have you been so late?"

"Just coming home from school." He looked anxiously into her face.
"Truly, Grandma, I was coming home all the time."

"You're lying to me. You've been getting later and later. It's got to
stop. Do you think you're going to get out of doing your chores? Do you
think you can live in my house and never do a hand's turn?"

"No, Grandma, I'll get up early and work."

"You'll come straight home from school or I'll know the reason why."

She led him into her bedroom. He saw that she had a piece of a broom
handle in readiness. He looked desperately about as though for a way of
escape, but he knew there was no escape. She pressed him face downward
on the bed and thrashed him with the stick.

He was silent under the blows, but when she let go of him he sprang up
and faced her with rage in his heart. His face was distorted by rage and
pain.

"Now," she said, "how do you like that?"

He did not answer.

"Do you want some more?"

"No," he gasped.

"Then come straight home after school. This is what you'll get every
time you're late." The delicate color of her skin was flushed a deeper
pink. A strand of silvery hair hung across her forehead. She set the
piece of broomstick in the corner behind the door. "We'll just keep that
handy," she said.

He tore upstairs to his room and in its shelter gave himself up to
crying. He knelt on the floor, rocking himself. He marveled at the
supply of tears he had. They ran right down on to the floor. He thought
what if he should kill himself and the blood should run through the
floor and drip on his grandmother's head at the supper table. The
thought pleased him and he stopped crying. He pressed his hands to the
sorest spots on his back and buttocks and knelt motionless for a space.
Esther's voice came up from below:--

"You did lay it on to him, Ma, and it served him right. It's the only
thing that will do him any good."

"He didn't cry," said Jane. "He's a stubborn boy--not like any of mine."

"I'll bet he's crying now." There was satisfaction in Esther's dry
voice. "He'll not come down again to-night."

By this time Shaw was at the top of the stairs listening. He retorted in
a growling whisper inaudible to those below:--

"He won't, eh? He won't come down? You just wait and see, my ladyship!
You just watch the stairs and see if he doesn't come down!"

He set his blurred features in an expression that he believed was
intimidating and marched resolutely down the stairs.

His grandmother did not look up from her knitting but Esther gave him a
taunting smile. He found his schoolbag and flung his books on to the
table and, planting his elbows on it also, rested his head on his hands
and bent his eyes on his homework. He worked till tea time.

His grandfather and uncles came in and the meal was begun. It was eaten
in silence except for cryptic remarks about a sick cow. Shaw was buried
in his own thoughts. He saw himself seated at a desk trying the entrance
examination. He saw himself scanning the papers, knowing the correct
answer to each question, writing out the answers in a clear, legible
hand. He ate little.

He was dismayed to find how early he began to be sleepy that night. A
gentle spring rain dripped from the eaves. He sat studying at the table
between his grandparents. Roger Gower was already nodding, a whistling
sound coming through his beard, which rose and fell tranquilly on his
breast. Jane paused now and again in her knitting to count the stitches
in a moist whisper. Shaw's feet dragged as he went to the kitchen to get
a drink of cold water.

Resolutely he set himself to master the intricacies of the Family
Compact, but Canadian history of that period was dull. He found himself
nodding. The room swam with him. He went to the outer door and softly
lifted the latch.

"Where are you going, Shaw?" asked his grandmother.

"I'm just going out for a minute, Grandma." He stepped out into the
darkness and closed the door behind him. A faint smell of the manure
that had been spread on a near-by field that day came to him. The rain
was running out of the eave, down a pipe into the rain-water barrel,
with a musical gurgling sound. He raised his face to the rain and felt
its cleansing sweetness on his hot cheeks, his sleepy eyes.

When he returned to the room Jane looked at him suspiciously over her
spectacles.

"What were you doing so long?" she asked.

"Just cooling my head, Grandma."

"Hmph. I should think it would be your other end you'd want to cool."
She smiled a little grimly but not ill pleased by her own humor, and
returned to her counting of stitches.

He was wide awake now and studied with a clear mind till his grandfather
wound the clock and he was told to go to bed. But his sleep was restless
and in the morning he found it hard to drag himself from his bed. After
the milking he had to take the cows to a distant field.

It was a close, wet morning and it was heavy walking on the muddy
country road. He was late for school and was told he must be kept in. He
sat disconsolately at his desk, his head resting on his hand, paying
little attention to the lesson in progress. But when his homework was
examined and commended he roused himself. "I've got to work," he told
himself, "or I'll be in this school another year. Everything would be
just the same for another year." He shut his hands till he felt the
sharpness of his nails and stared into Miss McKay's face.

At noon the four pirates gathered together for lunch in the shade of a
young maple tree whose boughs were still rosy-tipped and, for the first
time, bore the distinction of a bird's nest. The two Scotts opened their
packet of ham sandwiches and gingerbread, Ian his hard-boiled egg and
cookies, Shaw his two thick slices of bread, with a wedge of cheese and
a slab of dried-apple pie. The Scotts, whose mother had opinions on
diet, were never given pie for their lunch. They now traded their
gingerbread for Shaw's sodden pie. Douglas Scott said, with his mouth
full:--

"You can't guess what we've brought. We'll have fun in the cave
to-night."

"I'm afraid I can't come," said Shaw.

The other boys stared. "Can't come? Can't come to the cave? Why?"

He flushed. "I got a licking last night."

"You did! Who from?"

"My grandmother." He wished he might have said his grandfather. It would
have been more impressive. But he added:--

"It was an awful hard one."

"What for?"

"Being late."

Ian said judicially--"You wouldn't think an old lady like that could
give a very hard licking. Not the same as my father can give."

"What's your father lick you with?" asked Shaw.

"A slipper."

"Pooh!" came from Ronald Scott. "Ours uses a cane, but by the time he's
hit us about three times we've screeched so loud Mother runs in and
stops him. What did your grandmother lick you with, Shaw?"

"A broomstick."

They looked impressed.

"She's a terrible strong woman," went on Shaw. "I guess she's the most
powerful woman for her age in the whole country."

"Say, it must have been awful!" said Ian.

"She's stronger than a man," declared Shaw with solemnity.

"Gosh, I guess it hurt something awful," exclaimed Ronald.

Shaw looked at them sombrely. "I don't suppose that any of you have ever
been hurt half as bad."

"It's a darned shame," said Douglas, "that you can't come to the cave,
because we've got fireworks. We've spent a dollar each on fireworks for
the twenty-fourth of May and we've brought quite a lot of them to set
off to-night."

Three pairs of bright eyes were fixed invitingly on Shaw.

"I'll come," he said. "I'll get licked, but I don't care if I do."

His spirits rose. He felt happy and reckless and light. The little girls
were dancing about the schoolyard, their pinafores and pigtails
swinging. They sang:--

                    "The Twenty-fourth of May
                        Is the Queen's Birthday!
                    If you don't give us a holiday,
                        We'll all run away!"

Shaw darted into the midst of them. He caught Louie by her dress,
between her bony shoulder blades.

"Leggo," she screamed, "or I'll tell teacher!" She looked at him over
her shoulder like a little gargoyle.

"I'll pass ahead of you at the exams!" he shouted. "Tell teacher that!"

Then he spied Elspeth. He threw both arms about her and held her fast.
"I've got you, Elspeth!"

She laughed confidently into his face. The hand bell jangled its summons
to the schoolroom.

The four pirates had never had a better time. The Scotts had brought
oranges. While sucking these, plans were discussed for attacking a
merchant ship laden with rich goods from the East. All unsuspecting she
lay in the quiet bay of the clover field, her crew playing games on the
deck. It was at times like these that Shaw took the leadership. His eyes
glowed as he unfolded the design of action. The fireworks lay in
readiness.

Necessarily dusk must be waited for. Not till then could the beauty of
rockets unfold. But firecrackers were set off, as cannon, causing the
little songbirds to fly twittering through the trees and a heavy owl to
flap bewildered into the sun. Then in the twilight the sparklers, the
Catherine wheels, the rockets, starred the sky, and at last the pirates
rushed from their cave and captured the merchantman.

The passage of time had been lost to Shaw. His spirit was drawn clean
out of him in reck-nothing joy. He did not care when he went home. It
was Ian who suddenly looked serious.

"Gosh!" he said. "I must go. My mother'll be getting scared about me."

The Scotts looked at each other and nodded. "You bet, we've got to go
too. There's company to supper and we're having cream puffs."

"What are they?" asked Shaw.

"Don't you know? I'll bring you one to school to-morrow," said Douglas.

The three vanished and Shaw was left alone. He sat in the cave a while
thinking. He wished it was his own little house where he could live all
by himself. He would not be afraid. He arranged it in his mind, setting
his belongings in the most advantageous positions. He wondered if his
mother could give him a little money for food and let him live there.

He was still exhilarated as he trudged homeward. He did not worry over
what would happen to him. He looked at the dusky woods, the little
spring stars shining out, and sniffed the clover-scented air. Even when
the lighted windows of the farmhouse threatened him at the end of the
lane, he was not afraid but walked steadily on.

The collie barked loudly when it heard his step, then recognized him and
came toward him with dignity but no friendliness. Shaw suddenly thought
with bitterness, like an old man--"Nobody ever welcomes me here."

He went into the dining room. The evening meal had been cleared away.
His grandfather was sitting by the table writing a letter in answer to
one from a married son in the West who had asked for a loan of money.
His blue eyes stared solemnly through his spectacles, he gripped his pen
as though it were an agricultural implement, his moustache, puffed out
by his heavy breathing, took for once precedence over his beard.

Roger Gower did not glance up but Jane fixed her pale gaze on Shaw.

"Late again," she said. "A deal later."

"Yes," he agreed, returning her look.

"Well, you'll find that it won't pay to defy me, young man." She grasped
him by the arm and dragged him violently, though he made no resistance,
into her room. She threw him across the bed and got the broomstick from
behind the door.

It was a worse thrashing than on the night before. Shaw was determined
not to cry. He hurried through the room where his grandfather sat and
ran up the stairs. In his room he huddled himself in the corner behind
some clothes that hung there and pressed his clenched hands against his
mouth. He stayed there till he was calm.

After a while he found that he was very hungry. He stole downstairs and
went to the kitchen, where a plate of meat and vegetables was always
kept warm for him in the oven.

"You needn't go looking in the oven," called his grandmother's voice
from the dining room. "Folks who don't come to meals in time don't get
food in this house."

"I don't want any," he answered sullenly.

He brought his books to the table and sat down to work, shielding his
eyes with his hand. His body felt bruised and weary, but he was not
sorry he had remained at the cave to play. Between him and the page
swift rockets soared and broke into fountains of pure light. He lived
over again the rush from the cave and the capture of the anchored
merchantman.

Roger Gower held his letter over the flame of the lamp to dry it. He
blew through his moustache. "There," he said. "I've written the letter."

"What did you say?" asked Jane.

"I told Jared I couldn't lend him the money."

"Hmph." She put a world of disapproval into the monosyllable.

"He didn't pay back the last loan."

"The drought ruined his crops."

"I had no one to help me."

"You had good land and a hard-working wife. Jared hasn't either."

"I didn't tell him to marry her."

"Jared's always been a good boy."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"It's got a deal to do with it."

There was a long silence. Roger combed his beard with his stubby
fingers. He stared wide-eyed at his wife. She said, in her dry voice:--

"No man ever had thirteen such good sons and daughters. You ought to be
proud of them and not grudge them a little help."

"What about this boy?" said Roger. "I'm keeping him for Cristabel. What
about the wedding presents for Letitia and Beatrice? What about the way
some of them are always visiting here?"

"That doesn't help Jared," returned Jane. "If you won't lend him the
money, I'll give him all I make from my bees. And I won't ask to have it
back, neither."

Then Roger said something he had been wanting to say for twenty years.
He said:--

"All the thirteen are just like you. I don't think much of a wife who
doesn't have one child to resemble her husband. Not one out of
thirteen."

Jane took this in slowly, her eyes fixed on Roger, her knitting
suspended. Then she began to cry. She cried quietly, with a snuffling
sound, her heavy upper lip trembling.

Shaw peeped at her between his fingers. He was glad to see her cry. She
cried for next to nothing, while he had not cried for all her beating of
him. He said to himself:--

"Go on, Grandma! Cry! I don't care how much you cry--but you can't make
me cry. Go on! Go on!"

Presently Roger stretched out his hand for his letter. He tore it
across. "Very well, Jane," he said. "I'll lend Jared the money." He
padded in his stocking feet to the clock and began to wind it.

Jane wiped away her tears with her knitting. She encountered Shaw's eyes
glinting between his fingers. "What are you peeking at?" she said. "You
go straight to your bed."

The next day Shaw was a hero to his three friends.

"I've had the worst licking you can imagine," he said. "She nearly broke
the broomstick on me. But I don't care. I'm going to the cave to play.
Nothing can stop me. You wait and see."

They waited and saw.

They saw him come to school each morning pale and heavy-eyed, his hands
trembling as he turned the pages of his books. They saw him spend the
lunch hour, after bolting his bread and cheese, face downward in the
shelter of the school shed, sleeping. They saw him recovering his
strength during the afternoon and when school was over leading the way
to the cave with a shout. He was the youngest of the four. He was only
ten, but they admired him for his spirit that would not be broken.

One hot day they went to the pool to bathe. Then the other three saw the
bruises on him. The Scotts examined his discolored back and buttocks
with morbid pleasure, but Ian Blair said:--

"I don't think you ought to go on with it, Shaw."

"Don't you worry. I'll go on with it," answered Shaw.

"Does she lick you every night?"

"Yes. Don't I look like it?"

"But you'll get sick! My mother said after church that you look like a
sick boy."

Shaw was pleased that Mrs. Blair had noticed him. He smiled but
said--"You tell your mother I'm all right. I've got so I don't mind
being licked."

"She doesn't know that," said Ian. "If she did she'd stop me coming to
the cave."

But Shaw did feel himself getting weak. He had moments of strange
dizziness. He had nosebleed. He felt that if there was not a respite in
the struggle between him and his grandmother he would succumb. Suddenly
one evening he made up his mind that he would spend the night in the
cave. He would have one beautiful, peaceful night away from the
farmhouse. He would find out what it was like to be free. He would sleep
under a roof of his own!

He did not reveal his plan to Ian and the Scotts. He wanted them to be
able to say, if questioned, that they did not know where he was. He went
with them as far as the road and waved good-bye, shouting their pirates'
password after the retreating small figures soon lost in the dusk. They
had played later than usual. A young moon was just showing her pale
curve above the wood.

He returned to the cave. It was quite dark inside and had an unfamiliar
air but not unwelcoming. Toward it he had a new feeling of possession.
To-night it was his own. He lighted a candle and opened the biscuit box
where they kept their supply of food.

It had a musty smell and the cheese sandwich, the two doughnuts, and the
slab of raisin cake inside looked disheveled. But Shaw asked for nothing
better. He had not had an evening meal of late. Now he seated himself on
the three-legged stool and began to munch the food with composure and
enjoyment. He thought how, at this moment, his grandmother would be
getting angrier and angrier, and a smile illumined his blunt-featured
little face. He felt scornful and free and safe.

By the time he had finished his supper the moon was bright above the
blackness of the trees and seemed to have tilted from her curve a single
star. A whispering breeze stirred the long grass. Frogs began to croak
in the swampy brink of the pool. Shaw blew out his candle, took the one
cup, and went to a spring in the near-by field for a drink.

The field was wide and friendly. The moon touched many little faces of
buttercups and cast a dim shadow of the boy on the grass. He lay down by
the spring and drank the chill pure water. He held his hands in it and
then put his hands to his face. There was not a living soul near him.
Only the voices of the night took possession of the silence. He lay by
the spring till the dew began to wet him.

When he returned to the cave he did not dare light the candle but
wrapped himself in the quilt and lay down on the wide shelf they called
the bunk. Scenes from books he had read swam before him like
crystal-clear tableaux. Huskies racing across the ice drawing a sleigh
carrying mysterious fur-clad figures toward a dazzlingly bright North
Pole. A great ship with canvas spread rounding Cape Horn, her captain
grandly pacing the quarter-deck. Prospero on his island with Ariel and
Caliban flying to do his bidding. Jacques Cartier sailing up the St.
Lawrence with Indians gazing in awe from its bank. Always Shaw was the
central figure--the captain, the chief, the magician.

He slept soundly and heard none of the shoutings of his name or saw the
light of lanterns. At daybreak they were dragging the pool for him. The
other boys held their tongues in a sudden panic of fear.

Shaw had not gone halfway to school when he was overtaken by Mr. Blair
in his buggy. He drew rein and called out sharply:--

"Shaw Manifold--come here!"

Shaw turned and looked up into his face.

"Where were you last night?"

"I was hiding."

"Hiding! Do you know that your folks are almost distracted? We've
searched the countryside all night. Now they're dragging the pond. I was
on my way to the police station."

Shaw stared up at him inscrutably.

"Have you nothing to say for yourself?"

"No."

"Don't you care that you've frightened your folks nearly to death?"

"No."

"Get into this buggy with me and I'll take you home. We'll see what your
grandfather has to say to you." Mr. Blair stretched out a long arm,
gripped Shaw by the wrist, and heaved him into the buggy. He looked
keenly into the child's face.

"What's the matter, Shaw?" he asked. "Aren't you happy?"

The sudden kindness in his voice frightened Shaw. It made him afraid of
himself. He was going to cry. He clenched his hands and stared straight
in front of him.

"Yes," he answered steadily. "I'm all right."

"Shaw, my lad," pursued Mr. Blair, his Scottish accent deepening, "you
are not happy. You have something on your mind. Maybe some sin. Let me
help you. Let me pray with you, as I would with Ian."

Shaw writhed in embarrassment. He was dumb. No words could move him. But
when the minister leant and looked into his eyes and asked in a low
voice, "Are you afraid to go home, laddie?" he pulled himself together
and answered gruffly:--

"No. I'm not afraid of anything."

Shaw found his grandfather standing in the middle of the kitchen
drinking a glass of barley water. He turned his eyes on Shaw, seeming to
look through him rather than at him. He made spluttering, incoherent
noises in his beard. Then he again raised the glass of barley water to
it, as though it were something quite separate from himself which he
nourished.

Shaw watched him fascinated till the glass was emptied, then he asked:--

"Where's Grandma?"

Roger Gower pointed with his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of
the bedroom. "Waiting," he said.




                               CHAPTER VI


She was standing in front of the looking glass rubbing dandruff cure
into her scalp. She had been far too anxious to settle down to her work
and had found so unusual an occupation, at this hour, steadying. Shaw
was surprised to see her white hair, which was always so sleek on her
round, pink-skinned head, upstanding and ruffled. It startled him.

The expression of her face too was startling. He had felt dogged and
calm when he came into the room but now his heart began to beat
violently. She set down the bottle and asked, after licking her lips,
which had been too dry for speech:--

"Where have you been?"

"I won't tell you."

"Do you know that we've been up all night?"

"Yes."

"What do you think you're going to get?"

"A licking."

"Yes. And if I don't skin you alive it'll be a wonder. Bring me that
stick."

He brought her the stick. "You can't make me cry," he said.

But he had never felt anything like this! The blows rained down on him.
His eyes were fixed, fascinated, on his reflection in the glass. Then
the stick caught him on the point of the elbow and he cried out.

The bedroom door was thrown open and his mother stood on the threshold.

"Ma!" she screamed. "What are you doing?"

She rushed at Jane Gower and tore the stick from her hand. She thought
her mother, who had never laid a hand on her, had gone out of her mind.

"Why, Ma," she said, "you'd kill him if you went on like that!"

Her mother was speechless. She put her hand to her mouth and pulled
nervously at her heavy lip. Cristabel turned to Shaw.

"What is the matter? Why is Grandma treating you like this?"

"I didn't come home. I stayed away all night."

"He frightened me near to death," said Jane, in a harsh voice.

"But what's it all about?" cried Cristabel. "Why did you stay out all
night?"

"I don't like coming home."

Jane broke in--"Herbert and Luke, they're dragging the pond for him now.
Mark's scouring the countryside. Your pa's worn out. Shaw's a
heartscald, I tell you. I can't do anything with him. He's a bad,
obstinate boy, and I don't know where you got him."

"He's not bad! I won't have him treated like this! Oh, Ma, you ought to
be ashamed of yourself! You that were so kind to your own children! Shaw
is all I've got in the world."

She took him by the hand and led him out of the room. As they passed
through the kitchen she lifted a lid from the stove and thrust in the
stick on to the hot coals. She led him out then, through the orchard,
holding him tightly by the hand.

"Where are we going?" he asked, hoping she was taking him away forever.

"I don't know. We'll go to some quiet spot for a while. I'm all upset. I
just don't know what to do."

He thought a moment and then said eagerly:--

"I'll show you the cave! It'll be a real treat for you." He spoke in a
queer, thin voice not like his own.

She looked down into his face and the color blazed into her white
cheeks.

"You look awful, Shaw. You don't look like yourself. What's come over
you?"

"I don't know. What do I look like?"

"You look sick."

"Do I look as though I was going to die?"

"My goodness, no! But you look--ill-used. Have you ever been beaten
before?"

He was embarrassed. He could not answer. "I'll show you the cave, if you
like," he said. "I stayed there last night."

She took his face between her hands. "Tell me the truth. Has Grandma
taken a stick to you before?"

"Look, Mamma!" he exclaimed. "There's the path. You go right through the
orchard and cross two fields and then through the woods and you're
there! I'll take you." He pulled his head from between her palms.

Cristabel gave a deep sigh and allowed herself to be led to the cave.
Its mysteries exhibited, she sat down on the stool, watching her son as
he talked eagerly of his treasures, her heart heavy with pity for him,
longing bitterly to be able to make a home for him.

When he showed her where the food was kept, the water suddenly ran into
his mouth and he pressed his hand to his stomach. "Oh, Mamma," he said,
"have you anything to eat with you? I'm as hungry as a bear."

She opened her handbag and took out a paper poke of gumdrops. "I brought
those for you, Shaw. Sit on my lap and eat some."

He dropped into the primitive comfort of her lap, her knees apart, her
serge skirt strong beneath him. He put a gumdrop into his cheek and
clasped her neck tightly. The bliss of her nearness dissolved his
sorrows as the sun mist. He sucked, he clasped, his soul was at peace.

Bit by bit she questioned him and drew from him what she could of his
unhappy life.

"Mamma," he said shyly, "if you could spare me just a little money for
food, I'd live here in the cave and I'd like it fine. Do you think you
could spare about a dollar a week?"

"Don't talk like that, dear! It isn't sensible. You can't live alone in
a cave, but if they won't promise to treat you better I've got to find a
position where I can have you with me."

All the way back to the farmhouse he was hoping they would not promise.
There was nothing he wanted so much as to have her take him away. He
said:--

"I don't believe they'll promise, Mamma. I'm pretty sure they won't. I
think you'd better take me away without any talk. I can pack my things
in a jiffy. Will you do it, Mamma?"

"You must be patient, Shaw. It'll be far easier for us both in the long
run if I can leave you here. But they've got to promise."

She left him outside the house, sitting on an old chair in which his
grandmother sometimes sat after her work was done. He felt strange
sitting there at peace, unafraid yet oddly lightheaded, rather like an
invalid.

Cristabel stayed long in the house. Shaw could hear her voice and his
grandmother's and Esther's. He smelled something burning in the oven. He
wondered what was going on at school.

When his mother came out she was carrying a plate of bread and butter
and a jug of buttermilk and a mug. She looked as though she had been
crying but she was less agitated. She dropped to the grass beside Shaw
and put a slice of bread into his hand.

"Have they promised?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Aren't I going to be licked any more?"

"No. But you're to be home in time to do your chores."

"If I'm not will they lick me?"

"No. But you must be home before dark. You will still have time to play.
You must study hard, Shaw, so you can go to the high school. Then,
almost before you know it, you'll be earning money. You won't be
dependent on anyone."

Shaw filled his mouth with bread. "I'll study harder," he murmured
through it. "You bet I will. I'll eat the books."

She smiled at him tenderly. "I'm real pleased," she said, "that you've
passed into the entrance class. That shows you've worked."

"I'm the youngest in the class," he said proudly, "and Louie Adams is
the next youngest and Ian's the next. Some of them are fifteen. But I'll
beat them all. You'll see, Mamma. Now tell me what we'll do when I'm
grown-up."

They talked, making plans for the future. Cristabel drank from his mug
and they said it was the best buttermilk they had ever tasted, so fresh,
so flaked with bits of creamy butter. But her heart was sad at the
thought of leaving him. She had been given this unexpected visit by her
employer, who had come that way to a sale. She had looked for a day of
happiness with her child and been disappointed, but she was thankful she
had come. As they talked they saw Esther peeping between the curtains at
them.

When his mother was gone Shaw felt more lonely than he had before. He
now seemed more than ever an alien in the house, if that were possible.
He sat silent at supper. No one noticed him. Jane Gower preserved a hurt
silence. Esther and her brothers talked of the coming church picnic.
Roger Gower brooded on the loss of a cow.

Now and again he blew through his beard and muttered, "There was no
reason why she should have died," or, "I tell you, the beast was as
sound as a nut," or, "I said to the vet, 'Physic will be the end of
her,' and it was."

Shaw was too sleepy that night for study. He went to bed early and no
one looked in his direction. He lay very still in bed, thinking of his
mother, talking to her: "I'm lonesome for you, Mamma. I want to see you.
If you were here I'd give you the biggest hug you ever had. I'd make you
say--'My goodness, Shaw, don't hug me so hard!' I'd bring you up to my
room and shut the door and we'd not talk to the other folks. . . .
Mamma, I do want you. I think you're mean the way you go off and leave
me alone. . . . If I had a boy that worked hard and was the youngest in
his class, you bet I wouldn't go off and leave him alone. . . . I'd stay
right beside him and when he came home from school I'd be waiting for
him with a big piece of cake in one hand and a dish of strawberries and
cream in the other."

With the ceasing of the struggle between him and Jane Gower, Shaw's mind
was clearer for his school work. Now his play was less feverish and he
came home without fear of thrashing. He knew the lessons so well that
often it irked him to keep his mind on what Miss McKay was saying.

He passed, not only first in his school but first among the candidates
for the high school. From the examiners Miss McKay received a letter of
commendation on her teaching.

With the coming of the six weeks of summer holidays Shaw was given more
farm work to do. He was considered no longer as a child but as a tall
lump of a boy, going on for eleven. He must be up at dawn and work till
dark. He grew tough and strong, yet he was always tired, his eyes lost
their brightness, his skin was sallow, and he had dark shadows above his
prominent cheekbones. His mind was dull.

The school work ahead of him was a mystery. There was nothing for him to
study. The books that had once opened the gates of wonder to him now
left him listless. The weeks to him were arid deserts to be endured,
over them hanging, like a faint mirage, a rumor that his mother might be
coming.

When she did come she sent no word ahead. She came into the house one
blazing August afternoon without warning. She had walked the two miles
from the station carrying her suitcase because she wanted to appear
unexpectedly. Bitterly she had nursed suspicion against her family since
the last visit. She must know how her child was being treated.

Shaw was hoeing in a field with Luke. They put him to work with one of
themselves, otherwise he wasted his time. The two worked side by side
without speaking, their hoes rhythmically striking into the hard parched
earth, the sweat running down their faces, their necks burned
leather-brown, their palms calloused.

August had been a stormy month and was now drawing to its close. A few
days before had known one of the worst storms of the summer. Trees had
been uprooted. A thunderbolt had buried itself near the house. There had
been a deluge of rain that had blotted out the farmlands for hours, then
the sun had come out and burned all day long in sultry rage, hardening
the soil to cement, searing the rain-soaked foliage. A million locusts
shrilled their thin dry song; a million ants scurried in and out of the
cracks in the hot earth. The air was a palpable quivering essence,
vibrating with the song of the locusts.

A field of Indian corn had been flattened by the storm and was now
rearing its stocks upward again, its heavy ears ripe, its leaves dry as
parchment. It had been beautiful but had lost all its dignity. It looked
disheveled, wasted, like the wreck of a fine woman. Through this
Cristabel walked toward her son, her coming half concealed by the corn,
her eyes fixed searchingly on him long before he saw her. Ants and
locusts scurried from her path and the corn rustled against her skirt,
dry as parchment.

Shaw looked like a pigmy, she thought, working in that great field
beside the bulky figure of Luke. There was an abnormal growth of weeds
that summer. Their rankness rose about the child's knees as though they
would drag him down. He hacked at their tough roots in a feverish effort
to keep up with Luke. His shirt clung to him, black with sweat.
Cristabel stood among the corn staring, her mouth open, her hands heavy
at her sides. Luke raised his eyes and saw her.

"Hello, Cristabel!" he said, surprised.

"Hello, Luke!"

Then Shaw looked up.

"Hello, Mamma!" He leant on his hoe, staring at her.

She came toward them, her dark cloth skirt grey with the dust of the
long road from the station.

"How did you manage to get away?" asked Luke.

"The doctor has gone to visit his son in Michigan for a week. I knew I
could be a help at home, with the threshing coming on and all."

"Will the doctor pay you your salary for the week?"

"Why, Luke, he's not such a fool as that!"

Luke laughed. "Then I guess you wish you hadn't got the holiday."

"It's nice to get home," she said. Her eyes devoured Shaw. "Can't you
stop working for a minute and talk to me?" she asked.

"If you call it working," said Luke, "leaning on his hoe, the way he is,
then he's hard at it."

"Well, I'll see you at tea time." She turned away and retraced her steps
through the corn that rustled in on her and at last concealed her.

She sat down on the sandy soil and laid her face against her knees. A
cricket at the very edge of her skirt chirped loudly. Pictures moved
before her closed eyes. She saw herself all in white standing up to be
married, the tall pale young doctor by her side. She felt the cool
golden flow of her wedding ring as he slid it on her finger. She felt
his hands tremble. She saw their house, their home, their little nest
they had made. The parlor suite, the carpet almost too good to be
stepped on, the dining room with the silver cruet, the silver
spoonholder, and the silver "butter-cooler" gleaming on the golden-oak
sideboard, the drawer full of forks and knives whose lustre had never
yet been dimmed by food. She saw the kitchen with its glossy black
range, its bright utensils, its table whose top she meant always to keep
scrubbed so clean. She felt again the mystery of the surgery, the
unfathomable learning of those shelves full of books.

She let her mind dwell in this remembered happiness till its security
was shaken by the poignancy of remembered fears, fears which came even
before the birth of Shaw. But through the tremor of these fears she felt
Shaw's little head nuzzling at her breasts, felt his tiny hands pressing
their fullness. Then remembered grief blotted out all else, and the
cornfield sank beneath her and she hung in an abyss, with the metallic
cry of the cricket magnified to ringing blows on metal.

She gave herself up to grief, embracing it like a lover, seeking for
half-forgotten pains to draw them into that surrender. She wound her
fingers together till her wedding ring cut her flesh. Her dry eyes
opened and saw the cornfield and between its harsh stalks the dimly
glimpsed figures of Luke and Shaw.

When she returned to the house her mother had a cup of tea waiting for
her.

"Did you find Shaw?" she asked.

"Yes, Ma."

"I s'pose they'll soon be quitting work, then you can have a good talk
with him."

"Yes."

"You drink some tea now. It'll do you good. I'm afraid you work too
hard, Cristabel."

"There's a lot to be done in a doctor's house. He's got a good
practice." Cristabel poured herself a cup of strong tea and drew a deep
breath. She straightened her back as though taking a fresh firm hold of
an old burden. "Ma," she said, "I've knit two new pairs of stockings for
Shaw and made him two new shirts. To-morrow I'll buy him boots. Later on
I'll get him a winter coat and cap. He's got to look respectable at the
high school. He seems terribly young for the high school. Not eleven
yet."

"He's clever at books, like his father," said Jane graciously. "It's a
pity his father went off in such a hurry."

"Yes. It is a pity."

The two women were silent, while the pity of young Dr. Manifold's death
washed back into the room like a slow ebbing tide, reluctant to be gone.
His big, clear grey eyes, when they were almost all that was left of his
face, kept looking at Cristabel from a corner of the room.

When she had finished her tea Cristabel went up to Shaw's room and set
about putting his clothes in order. She laid the small shabby garments
in a heap on the bed, after examining them with a mother's appraising
eye. She turned back the quilt and tried to plump up the lumpy mattress.
Evidently Esther wasted little time on Shaw's bed.

She was darning one of his stockings when he came into the room. He
stood looking at her from the doorway. He scarcely seemed able to see,
coming in from the dazzle of the sun. He stood silent a moment, then a
slow smile brightened his face.

"It looks funny to see you here, Mamma," he said.

"Are you pleased?"

"You bet. I'm glad you've come." He came to her and leant against her
shoulder.

"Kiss me, Shaw."

He pressed his lips to her cheek.

"My goodness, your lips feel hot and dry! Are you well?"

"Yes. I'm well. Feel my muscle."

He thrust his thin arm in front of her and she pressed her fingers on
the hard round muscle. "You have got a muscle! You really do help all
you're able to, don't you, Shaw?"

"I calculate," he drawled, like a little old man, "that they'd have to
hire an extra man on this farm in the busy season if it wasn't for me."

She was always letting things hurt her, she thought. Now, instead of
being pleased with her son, she wanted to cry. Well, after all, he was
too small for that kind of talk. He wasn't having a proper childhood.

"They don't whip you now, do they?" she asked.

"No. Just an odd box on the ear, or a push. That don't hurt a fellow."
He leant against her and played with the close curl on her temple.

All that evening he scarcely took his eyes off her. He was so sleepy
that he could barely keep his eyes open, but what sight they had was his
homage to her. When finally he must go to bed or fall from the chair he
walked backwards from the room, his lingering gaze still holding her.

There was a storm that night and Cristabel lay awake listening to the
ponderous roll of the thunder and the beat of the rain on the roof. The
thunder rolled on and on, its volume fading in the distance, as though
in great dignity it departed. But always it returned. And with each
return the lightning burned more fiercely, a sharper thunder marked the
violent reunion of the clouds. Without tiring through the August night,
lightning, cloud, and thunder played this elephantine game, till toward
dawn a clap came that sent a thousand responsive pricks through the more
sensitive of the bodies under the farmhouse roof. The rain ceased and
there was a hollow silence.

He will be afraid, thought Cristabel. He was always afraid of those
wicked claps. I believe I ought to go up to him. If I go softly no one
will hear me. She did not realize that it was not so much Shaw's fears
as her own longing that drew her from her bed. Her bare feet made no
sound on the stairs. Her father's snoring was already beginning again,
the snores pompous, as though to restablish themselves after the
interruption.

"Are you awake?" she whispered, bending over her boy.

"Yes, Mamma. What did you come for?"

"I thought maybe you were afraid."

"Storms don't frighten me now."

"You don't want anything then?"

"No."

"You should have shut your window, though. It's so close to your bed.
Why, the quilt's damp!" Her hands moved dexterously over him, stroking
the covers.

He put out his hand and caught hold of her nightdress. He held her fast.
His breath began to come hard and quick.

"What's the matter, my dear?"

"Don't leave me! I'm afraid."

"But you said--"

"I'm afraid."

She slid into the bed beside him and put one arm underneath him. His
head rested against her breast. She felt his body shaking with sobs.

"Don't leave me alone!" His voice came blurred from her breast.

She made cooing noises to him, as she had when he was a baby. Her arms
tightened on him, as the wings of a bird on its nestling. He is so thin,
she thought, I can feel every rib. What can be the matter with him? She
felt his hair, harsh and dry on her neck. He began to stroke her bare
arm with his calloused palm, as though he were comforting her.

"Are you feeling better?" she asked.

"Hm-hm. Tell me about when I was a baby." He had never asked such a
question before.

"My goodness, you were a funny little baby! You had eyebrows from the
time you were born. But you were pretty, too."

"Me pretty!" He laughed and pressed closer to her. Rain was falling
gently on the roof.

"Yes. You were plump and white and your teeth were pretty when they
came."

"And when I could run about what was I like?"

"Well, you went to visit your other grandma and she was Scotch, and you
came home talking like her and wearing a little plaid dress and you said
you were a bonny wee bairnie."

"Oh, sakes alive, Mamma, you'll make me laugh so I'll wake everybody!
What a silly little chump I was!"

"No. You were a dear little boy."

"What am I now?"

"You're a dear big boy but I wish you had some flesh on your bones."

"I eat like a horse. Herb says so."

"And your body twitches. I don't like that. I knew a very thin boy and
he got St. Vitus's dance."

"Gee, I wish I would! Then I'd not have to work."

"Don't say such things. . . . Listen, Shaw, I've made up my mind. I'm
going to take you to see Dr. Clemency to-morrow. I don't care what the
folks say, I'm going to take you to the doctor."

"Right after breakfast?"

"Yes. I'm worried about you. You're all I have, you know."

"We can tell the doctor my ear aches."

"Does it ache?"

"Yes. Terribly. And if I get a box on it, it nearly jumps off my head.
Honest it does, Mamma."

"We'll tell him about it, dear."

She stayed with him till he slept, then crept back to her own bed, but
it was not worth while going to sleep. She lay thinking till she heard
her mother about, then she dressed and went downstairs. No one opposed
her taking Shaw to the doctor. If she was fool enough to waste her money
on doctors, that was her affair. If she chose to take Shaw away from his
work at the busiest season, well, they had their opinion of that but
kept it to themselves. They were sorry for Cristabel.

Dr. Clemency was the oddity and the pride of the village. There was no
one like him. He had a singular and distinguished appearance. In his
youth he had had an experience that had changed him, moulded him into a
pattern very different from his stay-at-home neighbors. He had not got
on well with his father, a well-off, irascible man who wanted to
domineer over his five sons as well as his wife and daughters. This son,
Morgan, had run away from home during the American Civil War, joined the
Southern forces and fought throughout the struggle. The war over, he had
taught school for a time, become deeply implicated in American politics,
taken to wearing black clothes, a black tie, and had grown a black
imperial on his haughty-looking chin. Finally he had tired of the life
and returned to his home and made friends with his father. The old man
was proud of him. Morgan became his favorite, before his more dutiful
brothers.

The youth had been associated with an American doctor during the war and
acquired a taste for medicine. It was easy to persuade his father to
send him to the medical college. He had a manner which inspired
confidence, and when he set out to practise in the village near his
birthplace the whole countryside was ready to flock to him for medical
advice. Before many years his rivals were driven from the field. He
became even more arrogant than before.

He married well, his wife bringing him an agreeable amount of money. But
she gave him no children. She became his child and his thwarted
fatherhood found outlet in shielding her, pampering her in every way
possible. The life pleased her and in response to the pampering she
became so delicate that it was necessary to her. It was the scandal and
pride of the village that Mrs. Clemency never raised her hand to do
anything for herself. Her servant and her husband waited on her hand and
foot. They were now elderly people.

Cristabel and Shaw sat waiting in the surgery. It was the first time he
had been in a doctor's office since his father's death. The smell of
drugs, of leather-bound books, a faint odor of ansthetic, almost
overpowered him. His mind flew back to infancy and he saw with a young
child's blank eyes. The things in the room towered before him, pressed
close to him, but had no meaning. The only thing that had meaning was
the smell. It made him dizzy with its strange hidden meaning. To him it
was the smell of death because he associated it with his dead father. He
took short quick breaths of it, scarcely letting it enter his lungs till
he pushed it out again.

"Don't sit humped so," said his mother.

"Am I humped?"

"Yes. Dr. Clemency will notice it. He's so straight."

"Why is he so straight, I wonder."

"He's that sort of man. Shaw, I asked you to sit up."

"Oh yes." He straightened his back.

They sat silent, Cristabel's hands folded in her lap, Shaw drooping a
little more each moment till at last he was curved as before.

"He is coming. You must answer his questions as well as you can."

Dr. Clemency came into the room.

"Good morning, Mrs. Manifold," he said in his formal, rather hard voice,
but with the shadow of the Southern accent he had acquired in his youth.

"Good morning, doctor. This is my little boy I've brought to see you.
He's not well."

Dr. Clemency shook hands with them both and his piercing dark eyes
looked into Shaw's.

"He ought to be well," he said. "He's famous, isn't he? He's the boy who
passed first into the high school. He ought to be bursting out of his
skin with health. But isn't, of course. These clever boys. . . . Put out
your tongue!"

Shaw put it out.

"Clean. Let me feel your pulse." He took Shaw's wrist in his long thin
fingers and still looked into his eyes.

He's a queer-looking man, thought Shaw, and stared in wonder at the
ivory-colored aquiline face, the inky brows, the pointed imperial that
was now white. The scent of cigars, strange to Shaw, came from his
clothes. Shaw thought, he is like people in books, not like real folks.

Cristabel looked proudly at Shaw, now standing up straight with his
wrist in the doctor's hand. She had sponged and pressed his suit. His
shirt was clean and his hair tidy. It was known everywhere that he had
passed first into the high school.

"What are his symptoms," asked Dr. Clemency, "besides a superfluity of
grey matter in his brain?"

"He seems so tired, doctor. He twitches in his sleep. His eyes look
heavy and he says his ear aches. You can see every rib."

"Well, that's about enough. Strip off your shirt, my boy, and let's see
those ribs."

Shaw stood, divested of his shirt, wondering if Dr. Clemency would like
to feel his muscle. He clenched his hand, hoping the doctor would notice
it. But he only brought out his stethoscope.

A feeling of nausea passed through Cristabel. That instrument. The
verandah where her husband lay ill. The eternal listening to the
creeping-on death. His quiet cough, like the ticking of a clock, marking
the passing of his life. For a space Shaw was blotted out. Then the
doctor's voice:--

"All right, in that quarter." He looked reassuringly into her eyes. He
had attended her husband.

"Is his appetite good?"

"Oh yes."

"Does he drink lots of milk?"

"Just buttermilk."

"It's good, but he should have whole fresh milk as well. Is he active?
Enjoys his play?"

His play! Before her eyes rose the picture of the little old man hoeing
in the turnip field.

"He helps on the farm."

"Good man!" Dr. Clemency smiled his approval but his eyes were sombre.
"He helps a good deal, eh?"

"All day," put in Shaw. "Feel my muscle."

The long sallow fingers pressed his arm. "Hard as iron. What a man! All
sorts of work, eh? From eight, let's say, to four?"

"Pooh!" said Shaw. "From five to dark!"

"Well, you are a worker!"

"Do you think maybe," asked Cristabel timidly, "that he works too hard?"

"I think that's what's wrong with him."

"Do you mean he's working far beyond his strength?"

"I do."

She drew a deep breath. "I don't know what I'm to do, doctor. You see,
I'm in this position--my folks are keeping Shaw for me while he gets his
education. They expect him to help. Can't you give him some medicine to
make him stronger?"

"Mrs. Manifold, you know how little power there is in medicine."

It was like a stab to her. How well indeed she knew that medicine could
not cure! She raised her sad eyes to his. "Could you talk to my father?"

"I will. I'll do that."

"Thank you. I've been terribly worried. You know what my life has been."

"Yes, yes, I know." For a moment the two of them looked back into her
past life as through a door into a shadowed room. Then the doctor began
to talk on his favorite subject--diet. He was far in advance of his time
and was called a crank, in this respect.

"Now your boy's diet! I can imagine it. Stiff porridge and skim milk,
fried potatoes, for breakfast. Salt pork or beef stew, more potatoes,
pie, for dinner. Fried potatoes,--yes, my dear woman, fried
potatoes,--hot biscuits, preserves, and cake for tea. Perhaps a little
cheese. It's enough to discourage God. It's enough to make Him sorry He
gave us this fine fertile country. It's enough to make Him send a blight
on us. He has sent a blight or the beginning of one. Wind on the
stomach, costiveness, rheumatism. Who is there among us who hasn't got
one of these?"

His eyes pierced her. She returned his look dumbly.

"What are we to do, you ask. You do ask that, don't you?"

"Yes, doctor."

"My answer is--eat spinach! Eat it twice a day. It is served in my house
twice a day. Hot for dinner. Cold for tea. Spinach. Lettuce, greens in
any form, but particularly spinach. When did you last eat it?"

"About a year ago, doctor."

He threw himself back in his chair and closed his eyes. With his ivory
skin, his inky brows accentuating the closed lids, his imperial pointed
upward, he looked a dead man. Cristabel and Shaw gazed at him.

"I'll try to get spinach for him," she said.

"Where will you get it? Nowhere but from my garden. Ma'am, you couldn't
pick a blade of spinach within five miles of it. But I'll give you a
mess of it and if your boy will come here twice a week I'll keep him
supplied. You should eat it too. You look anmic. It will give you
iron."

"Yes, doctor. What about my boy's ear?"

"Put a few drops of laudanum into it. If it doesn't get better, bring
him to me and I'll cut it off." He smiled with humorous threat at Shaw.

They crossed a small close-shaved lawn and passed through a white wicket
gate into a flower garden. Shaw had never seen a spot like this. It was
thronged with roses, asters, dahlias, mignonette; flowers, flowers
everywhere. A useless place. Did Dr. Clemency sell them? But who would
buy flowers? He must be crazy to give all this good land, and the time
to grow them, to flowers. But they looked pretty. They crowded close,
pouring out their scent, tossing down their petals, pointing their buds
sunward.

"What a lovely garden!" said Cristabel. "Oh, doctor, you're lucky to
have such a garden!"

"I do it all myself," he said proudly. "It keeps me well. Gardening and
spinach. And my wife enjoys it. She must have flowers. She'd die without
'em."

Die without flowers! Shaw could scarcely restrain his derisive laughter.
Certainly they were crazy. He knew that now. He saw the little figure of
Mrs. Clemency coming toward them, in a fresh black and white
dotted-muslin dress, though it was morning. She wore gloves and carried
scissors. In her hand was a bunch of sweet peas. She was sandy-haired,
pale-eyed, her features insignificant, but she was as self-contained as
her husband.

"I'm getting spinach for Mrs. Manifold," he said eagerly. "This boy of
hers is ailing. I'm going to feed him on spinach till he's a Goliath."

"I'd rather be David," said Shaw.

"You shall! You shall be David and slaughter the Goliath, Ill-Health,
with spears of spinach."

His wife added in a colorless voice--"It is very good. I'm sure it will
improve your little boy's health." She looked vaguely at Shaw.

"I'm sure it will," agreed Cristabel, as though humoring harmless
imbeciles. "What lovely sweet peas!"

Mrs. Clemency at once gave them to her.

Cristabel flushed. "I wasn't hinting for them."

"But I have so many! I get tired cutting them. But I couldn't live
without flowers."

On the walk back to the farm Shaw said:--

"What funny folks!"

"They are very kind."

"But they're funny, aren't they, Mamma?"

"Well, they're sort of funny. But I'd not mind having a garden like
that."

"I'll get you one. When I'm grown-up. You see if I don't."

She laid her hand on his arm. It was the first time they had walked so.
On his one arm the bag of spinach, on his other his mother leaning. He
felt strong with pride, yet almost melting into tears. He asked, in a
husky voice:--

"How old must I be before I'll be called grown-up?"

"Well, a boy is supposed to be grown-up when he's twenty-one."

"Gee, Mamma, that's a long time! Ten years from now. Don't you think I
might manage to be grown-up at seventeen?"

"You might--if you worked hard."

"I will. You'll see. I'll work so hard that I'll skip a lot of being a
boy."

"Shaw, don't say that!"

"Why?"

"Because I don't like to hear it. It makes me sad."

"Sakes alive, Mamma, you're funny! I don't think you know what you
want."

"I want you to be strong and well."

The walk had been two miles each way. The storm, instead of clearing the
air, had made it sultry. Cristabel felt the drag of her long cloth
skirt. She felt the weight of life pulling her downward, the remembrance
of death darkening her mind. She raised the flowers to her face and felt
their cool freshness against her cheek. Shaw clutched the spinach.

Jane Gower brought her best blue china vase with the fluted edge to hold
the sweet peas and Cristabel set it on the dinner table. The three women
stood admiring the effect, Jane's forearms white with flour, for she was
making bread, Esther's cheeks fiery from the heat of the oven. She had
made twelve pies for the threshing. They were cooling on the table in
front of the window and their syrupy smell made it necessary to put
one's nose close to the sweet peas to get their scent.

Cristabel said--"Mrs. Clemency says she couldn't live without flowers.
Fancy that!"

"Hmph," said Jane. "She'd live without them right enough if she had to,
and do a good day's work like other women, if she was forced."

"Shaw did think it was funny, a woman not being able to live without
flowers."

"No wonder, considering how he sees his grandmother work."

"What can I do to help? Would you like some thick ginger cookies?"

"Yes. The threshers always like them."

Roger Gower was halfway through his meal before he noticed the flowers
on the table. He leant back, blew through his beard, his china-blue eyes
protruding.

"Wh-h-h--" he exclaimed, "sweet peas on the table! Where'd they come
from?"

"Mrs. Clemency gave them to Cristabel. She told Cristabel she couldn't
live without flowers."

Roger's beard and moustache assumed the peculiar quirk that was his
smile.

"She'd better come over to our house," said Jane, "and I'll show her how
to live without them."

"Becky grows flowers," returned Roger.

Jane got red. "Becky has a servant. She's had only one child."

Sometimes Roger was tired of having his thirteen children thrown at his
head. He said:--

"She was a sensible woman."

Jane was tongue-tied, stupefied by anger. She pushed out her upper lip.
She crimped the edge of the tablecloth in trembling fingers.

Luke uttered a shout of laughter.

Cristabel said--"Pa doesn't mean that. He's only teasing you, Ma."

Roger, to change the subject, asked--"What's that green stuff?"

"Spinach. Shaw's to eat it--Dr. Clemency says."

"The man's crazy," said Roger, and added as a sop to Jane's vanity, "and
his wife too."

Beatrice and Leslie came to help with the threshing. Also two of the
married sons. Sixteen men sat down to dinner, their shirts wet with
sweat, chaff clinging to their hair, their nostrils, their eyelashes.
Shaw sat among them listening to their talk, being waited on by the
women, but he experienced no small boy's pride in this situation. There
was no love of the land or of farming in him. Even as he heard their
talk he withdrew into the retreat of his own mind, thinking his own
thoughts of books he had read, of strange countries he would visit. He
saw ships sailing under a stormy sky, islands peopled by majestic beings
endowed with fabulous powers, and himself their leader.

His work in the threshing was inside the barn just behind the machine.
When night came and he stumbled up to bed he was a little grey gnome,
the fine dust ground into his clothes, his hair, his very pores. He
threw himself on his bed, drinking in the cool night air, taking deep
breaths of it, trying to push the dust from his throat, his lungs. His
thoughts were like the chaff, light, dizzy, without form. His body
pressed into the mattress in its weariness.

He heard the stair creak. His mother came into the room and shut the
door after her. She carried a basin in her hands and a clean white
cloth. She looked very tired, for the washing-up was just finished. She
came to the bed and looked down on him anxiously.

He looked up at her out of his bloodshot eyes.

"What are you going to do, Mamma?"

"Bathe your poor eyes."

She knelt by the bed and, wetting the cloth, laid it across his face.

"How nice it feels! But it smarts a little, inside my eyes."

"It has salt in it. It's healing."

Again and again she wrung out the cloth and laid it fresh and cool
against his lids. He lay relaxed, absorbing in all his nerves the
comfort of her ministering. When she left him she said, "I'm coming
back," and he remained relaxed, resting.

She returned with fresh warm water, soap, and a towel. He surrendered
his body to her hands, as when he was an infant, while she bathed him,
stroked him dry, and put a clean shirt on him.

"Do you say your prayers regularly?" she asked.

He considered a moment, then told the truth.

"No, Mamma. I'm too tired."

"Never mind," she answered. "I'll say them for both of us."

As she drew the sheet over him he caught her hand.

"How kind you are, Mamma!" he said. "I wish you could stay by me
always."

"If only I could!"

But how soon her week was up and she was gone! She came and she went,
disappearing into her mysterious other life as though a door were shut
behind her. This door, this barrier between them, opened to let her
through to him, bringing light and comfort with her, then after a little
while shut, leaving him belonging once more to no one but himself.

Dr. Clemency had had a talk with Roger Gower and now Shaw was allowed to
stop work at tea time. Twice a week he went to the doctor's house for
his supply of spinach. In the farmhouse it was the subject of joking.
"Stuff down all the spinach you can, Shaw," Luke would say, "and perhaps
you'll be able to dig a few more turnips." Leslie would say, "My
goodness, Shaw looks energetic since I saw him last! If he keeps on
he'll be a real boy yet." Leslie would look at Beaty for appreciation,
which she never failed to give in loud laughter.

Mrs. Clemency liked the gravity of the small boy. She liked the solemn
way he inquired after her health each time they met. She took him one
day into her parlor and showed him the great shells her husband had
brought from the South, the gilt-framed picture of Queen Victoria and
the Prince Consort with their lovely children about them, and let him
hear the little French clock strike. Shaw thought it was the most
beautiful room he had ever seen.

Strangest of all was the sight of Mrs. Clemency's poodle, sitting on a
little gilt chair before the pier glass, staring at his own reflection.
It was so unreal that Shaw could not believe in it. He tried to picture
himself living in that house and could not. Yet he told himself--"When I
am a man I'll have a parlor just like that, and a flower garden for
Mamma and a phaeton for her to drive in."

In the farmhouse he had nothing to say of the Clemencys. He could not
bear the thought of hearing them talked about there. Esther would ask:--

"Well, did you see Mrs. Clemency to-day and did she say she couldn't
live without flowers?"

He would shake his head glumly and turn away.

Esther threw the spinach into the pot, as though the cooking of it were
the last straw on the heavy load of her day's work. She never washed it,
so Shaw's teeth gritted on sand when he ate it. But he ate it doggedly
and, either because of it or because of the shorter working hours, he
seemed stronger when the high school opened and he was entered as the
youngest pupil.




                              CHAPTER VII


He had never before been on a train. He could scarcely believe in
himself as he pushed his way among other boys up the iron steps and
found a place on one of the dusty crimson-velvet seats. His season
ticket was in the breast pocket of his coat, on his back his schoolbag
filled with new textbooks, clean exercise books, a new pencil, new nibs
for his pen. The heavy soles of his new boots were not yet soiled. His
eyes were full of wonder as the train drew out and he saw the familiar
cluster of sheds, yards, and then fields wheel past.

He sat between Douglas Scott and Ian, with the students from surrounding
rural schools filling the near-by seats. Across from him sat Louie
Adams, her wizened little face tense with excitement, clutching her
satchel of books, a dress several sizes too large for her accenting her
leanness. She leant forward, oblivious of those about her, as though she
would urge on the locomotive with her own will to advance. At every
station more children clambered on to the train, some of them
experienced, with several terms of such travel behind them, talking
loudly and greeting acquaintances with an ease that made the younger
ones envious.

The half hour in the train seemed a journey to Shaw. He was moving
forward into a different life. The farm was receding; new shapes and new
voices were resolving themselves into the world that was to be his.
Though he had never seen the place where his mother worked, she somehow
seemed nearer to him. He felt that he was moving in her direction. He
would work hard. It was easy for him to learn. By the time he was
seventeen he would be a man, able to keep his mother. He set his small
face into a stubborn line and drew his already heavily marked brows
together.

"Hooray!" shouted Ian, as they clambered off the train. "We're here
because we're here because we're here! Everyone follow the minister's
son, who will lead you, yea, in the paths of righteousness."

The children streamed across the platform and through the narrow streets
of the town, bringing their own separate life with them, flowing through
it like a clear impersonal stream, climbing without fatigue the steep
hill that led to the high school.

Roll call was held in a large room, with a platform at one end on which
stood a piano. There in an armchair sat the principal of the school, Mr.
Greerson, an untidy rugged-featured man with a rough loud voice. He
called the names like a drill sergeant. He spoke with a broad Scots
accent.

In a half circle behind him the other members of the staff were seated.
Mr. Bentley, a quiet grey man whose features relaxed only when he had
worked out a difficult problem in algebra or physics for his class. Then
a smile of infantile pleasure transformed his face. He lived in his work
and in the hope that he might one day go to Europe and the Holy Land and
there follow the steps of Saint Paul in all his journeyings.

Mr. Jewell, who sat next him, was a contrast. He was much younger, had a
fair fresh complexion, and his eyes wandered constantly, particularly in
the direction of the young women of the sixth form. He taught arithmetic
and Euclid to the lower forms.

Next to him sat the lady member of the staff, Miss Willing, teacher of
modern languages and English. On her Shaw's eyes dwelt longest. He had
never seen a woman like her. She was such a contrast to colorless,
pimply Miss McKay that he could scarcely think of her as a teacher. She
was more like figures he had glimpsed in the rare fashion books his
aunts had been able to borrow. To begin with, her dress was yellow, a
strange color for a dress. It was embroidered and at the back of the
neck was a large ribbon bow. She wore a bangle bracelet from which
dangled a heart, an elephant, a cat, and an owl, in silver. She, wore
high heels. Her figure was flowing, her thick black hair and large black
eyes seductive. Shaw was afraid of her.

On her left was Duncan Dow, the classics master. He was always spoken of
as Duncan Dow by the boys, Shaw discovered. His young brother, the
oldest, strongest, most popular boy in the school, was Jack Dow. The
brothers were extraordinarily alike, with thick-set figures, harsh yet
oddly attractive features, and curly brown hair.

As the headmaster called the names of the new pupils each rose in his
turn and displayed himself for an instant to the school. It was a moment
of confusion, of awkwardness. Ian alone stood up with a jaunty smile and
made himself a favorite at once. When it was Shaw's turn Mr. Greerson
said:--

"Here's a name for ye! Shaw Manifold! Now, let's see what like ye look,
my mannie."

Shaw only half rose. There was laughter.

"Stand up! Stand up! Don't be ashamed."

Mr. Greerson surveyed him critically.

"How old are ye?"

"Eleven--next month, sir."

The headmaster gave a hoot of mirth.

"Well, I'd like to know what this school is turning to. A kindergarten!
I should think ye'd be ashamed to show yourself here. Why did ye not
restrain yourself till ye were as big as yon lump of a girl?" He jerked
his head toward another newcomer, a girl of fifteen nearly six feet
tall, with spectacles and tow hair about her shoulders. She blushed
unhappily.

Mr. Greerson now turned his attention to the new girls. He arranged
them, as he had already the boys, in order of height. He fixed his eyes
on Louie Adams, the smallest.

"And you," he said, "I suppose you're about five?"

"I'm twelve, please," she answered, not much above a whisper.

His face softened as he looked her over. "Well, well, you're no sae
small. You've a big forehead and I'll wager there are plenty of brains
behind it."

Louie's ordeal was not over. A bouncing girl of fourteen whose well-off
parents were given to acts of charity came forward as the roll call was
over. She put five dollars into Louie's hand.

"This is for you to buy books or clothes with--anything you need. I was
to give it to you."

What she said was audible to those near by. Even those at a distance saw
the money, the smug pride of the giver, as she bounced back to her seat.

Now Mr. Greerson bent his grizzled head and growled an unintelligible
prayer. The whole school repeated the Lord's Prayer. A sedate older girl
mounted the platform and struck the first ringing notes of "Soldiers of
the Queen," and the lowest forms, led by Louie and Shaw, after
thunderous orders from the principal, began the march toward the various
form rooms. In the passage they were joined by the Roman Catholics, who
held aloof from the prayers.

Descending the stairs, Shaw had a sudden feeling of compassion for
Louie. He saw the five dollars clutched in her skinny little hand. He
wished she would put it out of sight. It made him ashamed for her. He
saw that her eyes were full of tears.

Ian said, into his ear:--

"That girl didn't hide her light under a bushel. Poor old Louie! Never
mind. The meek shall inherit the earth. Do you like this school, Shaw? I
do."

"Yes. Is Elspeth coming here later on?"

"Not she. She's going to the Presbyterian Ladies' College when she's old
enough. The ewes shall be separated from the goats. Isn't the lady
teacher a peach? But I'm not sure she's a good influence for me."

They jostled their way into the classroom.

The new life spread like a river before them. Buoyant and helpless on
its surface, they were carried through the days, the weeks, the months.
Shaw had his friends, Ian Blair and Douglas Scott. He made no others. He
felt himself too young. These two were enough for him. But he was not
enough for them. They craved the companionship of boys more knowing than
themselves. They were full of gossip about the older pupils and the
teachers. They told Shaw how the head boy, Jack Dow, was in love with
Miss Willing and saw her home after school, how he even went to her
lodging house and had help from her with his French. Ian had told his
mother this and she had disapproved. Ian grew so excited when he talked
of the affairs of the school that the words tumbled over each other, his
color came and went. He was enthusiastic about everything except study.
He was taken into the Glee Club, where his high soprano outsoared the
voices of the girls. It was discovered that he could recite, and on the
Friday afternoons of the Literary Society he would mount the platform
with confidence and deliver himself of recitations heroic, melodramatic,
and comic. Shaw, proud of being his friend, applauded with all his
might.

Douglas Scott was not such a favorite. Already his handsome mouth had a
sarcastic curve, his eyes were cold and appraising. But he was going to
be athletic and played football when he had the chance. He was fourteen
and half a head taller than Shaw. He brought no lunch to school now, but
money to buy it. The things he bought made Shaw's mouth water. Chelsea
buns, curled sweeter and softer to the central sticky core. Plump red
bananas. Meat paste from a pot spread on biscuits. Once he bought more
cream puffs than he could eat and hurled the remainder at boys in the
basement of the school, plastering the walls with cream.

There was a lawlessness in this school, though Mr. Greerson sometimes
came down heavily on offenders. But there was more noise and bluster to
him than discipline. His favorite form of punishment was more ridiculous
than painful.

"Follow me for a week!" he would shout, and whoever it was must spend
the lunch hour, the recesses, and half an hour after school in pursuing
him from post to pillar, even to his own private cubbyhole to witness
the furious devouring of his lunch. This spying on him did not
inconvenience the principal at all. He seemed to enjoy it and, with his
cheek distended and a bottle of cold tea grasped in his hand, would give
a grin of triumph at his embarrassed follower.

The pupils gave small attention in the classes he took. He mumbled
through the lesson incoherently but pleased with himself, his feet
supported on a chair, one dirty hand--he gardened each morning before
school and was always too late to wash--pulling his ragged moustache.
The school had a sort of contemptuous pride in him.

These boys and girls had a strong individualistic life outside the
school. They were moulded to no pattern. No two of them were alike.

At first the teachers scarcely noticed Shaw, except that Mr. Greerson
would exclaim--"Hello, baby! Ah, to think that I'd sink to be a
kindergarten teacher!"

But before long Mr. Bentley discovered him. Here was a new boy who
hungered for work, whose pale face and sombre eyes seemed lighted by a
fire within. When a problem was elucidated Mr. Bentley began to turn to
Shaw for sympathetic appreciation. Their eyes met and an sthetic fire
was struck. Soon Shaw surprised even Mr. Bentley by his grasp of
mathematics.

Then Duncan Dow began to notice him. Shaw's translation was always done.
He was always asking questions. His attention never wandered. For so
young a boy he seemed unnatural. Duncan Dow hated prodigies and he was
gruff with Shaw. But the boy's memory fascinated him and he enjoyed
putting it to the test. To him and his brother Jack, Shaw gave no hero
worship as the other boys did. He watched the fierce combination of
their play on the football field without admiration. He had seen so much
hard work done on his grandfather's farm, he had done so much hard work
himself, that it seemed to him futile and wasteful so to exert after a
ball.

Pink-cheeked Mr. Jewell was a mystery to Shaw. It was his first
experience of a bad teacher. He soon discovered that Mr. Jewell was
always consulting a little key book for answers to problems, that he was
anxious that the boys should do well in the form examinations but that
he could not make them work. He was afraid of them and his classes were
often an uproar. Shaw was amused to see how Louie Adams cornered the
master and drove him relentlessly to explanations that bewildered
everyone. But when Mr. Jewell was giving Indian-club drill to the young
women of the sixth form he was a different man. He was self-possessed,
authoritative, and when he directed the movements of an attractive girl
he touched her shoulders and her back with hands that were more than
confident.

For all her looks Shaw contrasted Miss Willing unfavorably with Miss
McKay. There was none of Miss McKay's anxious eagerness about her. Her
face did not light, as Miss McKay's did, when she read poetry or noble
prose. Instead she looked sentimental and put on a plushy voice that
embarrassed Shaw. Also he considered the elbow sleeves of her blouse
immodest and disliked the way it always looked moist under the arms.

Miss Willing took a great fancy to Douglas Scott. She would lean over
his desk and scold him playfully for his inattention, her full bosom
just touching his glossy hair while his bold eyes were fixed on her
face.

The days shortened, melting into a dreamy haze that flared to strange
bright sunsets. The late apples reached their maturity--the spicy,
sweet-juiced Northern Spies, the Greenings that turned to a delicate
fluffiness when baked, the hard dark Baldwins that had their own nutty
flavor, the greasy-skinned Pippins that made applesauce as smooth as
vaseline. The rosy Snow apples with their pure pink-veined flesh and
flowerlike fragrance were best of all, because they were good only for
eating. The other boys might be richer, Shaw thought, but none of them
had better apples than he.

As winter came he was up in the dark, with no promise of day, to do his
chores. The lantern he carried cast his shadow on the first snow. The
cattle turned in their stalls as they heard his step and their breath
hung heavy on the icy air. Their dung steamed as he shoveled it out into
the passage. He broke the ice in the stable well for their drink.

Beneath the snow the mud of the lane was frozen into ruts that made him
walk unevenly. He wore old patched boots and changed into his good ones
for school. At breakfast the lamplight shone on the faces about the
table. They munched in silence while the winter drew closer about them.
The kitchen range threw out its benign heat, solemn beneath the bubbling
kettle with its flourish of steam. Was his mother eating breakfast now,
Shaw wondered. He wished that he could see the house where she lived, so
he might picture her there.

She had now got a new position where she earned a little more money.
This was necessary because of the increasing cost of Shaw's education
and his clothes. She did not want her boy to go to the high school
shabbily dressed. But her work was harder, too. She was keeping house
for a widower with four children. In a letter she had told Shaw the
names of the children and their ages. The eldest, a boy, was ten, about
Shaw's age, and a nice boy, but the two girls were rude and
unmanageable. There was a baby boy who was ailing and cutting his teeth.
He cried most of the time. She lost her sleep because of him. The house
was inconvenient, with steep stairs, but the widower was a kind man.

"Cristabel might as well marry him and settle down," Esther had said.

Shaw had bitterly resented this remark. In his heart he hated the four
children, the boy because he was nice and about his own age, the girls
because they were rude to his mother, but the baby most of all. The
thought of his mother walking the floor at night with the crying baby
held in her arms filled him with a deep, jealous hurt.

At Christmas his mother sent him a packet. In it were a new cap, scarf,
and mittens she had knitted. There were a bag of molasses bull's-eyes
and a walking stick, in stripes of red-and-white candy, tasting strong
of peppermint. He was happy with these things. He lay on the bed in his
own room, wrapped in the quilt, sucking the peppermint stick and reading
_Tristram Shandy_. Outside the snow danced beneath a low grey sky, to
the keen music of a north wind. The dance was whirling upward rather
than downward. The dancing flakes never seemed to reach the ground. Yet
they did reach the ground, for deeper and deeper the snow lay, leaving
only blurred ridges where fences had been, making a humped white figure
of the pump, mounding itself high against the doors. After a while
Mark's voice came from the foot of the stairs, calling him to help
shovel the paths.

After that there was always shoveling of paths through the rest of the
winter. Sometimes the snow was dry and fluffy, so that Shaw shoveled for
a long time before weariness overtook him. Sometimes it was wet and
heavy and his back and arms ached cruelly before ever he set out on the
long walk to the railway station. By night the paths were again hidden
and the struggle against the smothering whiteness was resumed.

In February the coldest spell of the winter came and for ten days no
snow fell. Then the air sparkled like a diamond. It had the cruel purity
of a steel blade. As Shaw plodded along the road to the railway station
his steps made sharp crunchings on the glittering snow. The shadow of
each twig lay blue on its purity. He wound the warm scarf round and
round his head, so that only his eyes could be touched by the cold. Shaw
hoped they would not freeze. He had once heard of this happening to a
man's eye and it had swelled till it was like a glass ball and he had
lost the sight of it.

It was a rare morning at the school when there were not frozen ears,
noses, or chins. Twenty below zero and the air pointed and still as an
icicle.

"James Boles!" Mr. Greerson would call the roll.

James's seat was empty. The boy in the next chair would bob up.

"Boles is in the basement, please, thawing his nose."

A few more names. Then:--

"William McLane!"

Another empty place.

"He's in the basement, sir, thawing out his ear."

Mr. Greerson was amused by these rigors. He would show his discolored
teeth in a grin of hilarity at each report of frozen members.

The never-strong discipline became laxer still. Boys jostled each other
in the halls. Windows were broken by snowballs. When a teacher left a
classroom, hubbub reigned. An exhilarating irritant of gossip and
antagonism was stirring the fresh emotions of the boys and girls: Jack
Dow was in love with Miss Willing. . . . Mr. Jewell had been cut out by
him and could not conceal his chagrin. . . . As though Miss Willing
could bear the thought of Jewell with Jack about! Jack Dow's heavy face
was darkened by a sneer when he encountered Jewell. . . . Jewell, it was
said, had made himself disagreeable to Miss Willing. One of the girls
had overheard him speaking bitterly to her after prayers. All the rest
of the day she wore an expression of hurt, and the boys rallied more
keenly to her side. . . . As the teachers sat on the platform at roll
call the pupils scrutinized them with primitive ruthlessness, trying to
probe their very souls.

Old Greerson, what did he know of what was going on? Was there a
malicious quirk beneath his ragged moustache? Did he cast a look of
encouragement on Jack Dow? What did old Bentley think sitting grey and
inscrutable and prim, with knitted wristlets half covering his
chalk-dried hands? Certainly Duncan Dow knew all, for his brother must
have told him. The girls stared, round-eyed and wistful, into his ugly
face that fascinated them. . . . And there at the top of the sixth-form
row sat Jack Dow, his brother, his replica, who could go down a football
field like a bullet, use a lacrosse like a battle-axe, leap over the
high bars in athletic grace, who could make love.

Of all the teachers Mr. Jewell, the unpopular, and Miss Willing, the
admired, were the only two who seemed to feel anything unusual in the
air. As they sat on the platform, exposed to wonder and speculation, his
color changed from pink and white to rosy pink and back again, her
languorous eyes were raised toward the ceiling as though she could not
face the troubling world about her.

Only Shaw did not admire her. When she stood before the form declaiming

                    "Flower in the crannied wall,
                    I pluck you out of the crannies,
                    I hold you here, root and all,
                    In my hand--"

he felt somehow ashamed for her and remembered pimply Miss McKay as a
superior being. He saw Louie Adams's eyes, moist with adoration, fixed
on Miss Willing.

One day, at the hour of lunch, Douglas Scott, Ian, and Shaw went down a
lane that led to a pond which was frozen solid and swept smooth as glass
by the north wind. The pond was set round by evergreen trees powdered
with snow and at this hour was a solitary place. Douglas had heard that
Miss Willing and Jack Dow came here to skate. He led the others, like
conspirators, to a group of cedars.

"They can't see us here. Look, there they are! I was right, wasn't I?
They skate every day. Isn't he a fine skater? He can do all sorts of
figures."

He was indeed transformed from a hulking young man to a creature of
grace, his rough-hewn face handsome beneath his black lamb cap. Miss
Willing wore a long scarf of vivid red that floated over her shoulder.
She surrendered herself to Jack Dow's guidance as they skimmed over the
ice. On the sharp air the clear ring of their skates could be heard. Ian
said:--

"I wish I could skate like that."

"They must have skipped a period, to be here and skating already," said
Douglas. "I remember now. It's sixth-form Latin. Duncan Dow would never
notice Jack not being there. And Miss Willing--well, she must have
skipped something and run all the way."

"I wish he'd do some figures," said Shaw.

"I wish he'd kiss her," said Douglas.

Ian chuckled. "If he did, I'd throw a snowball at them."

"I'd pity you if Jack caught you," said Douglas. "Look, he's going to do
figures!"

Miss Willing now stood, hands in muff, her red scarf blowing across her
cheeks, while Dow skimmed, whirled, dipped, in the grapevine, the figure
eight. He swept far down the pond as though deserting her, glided back,
then wheeled round her and again took her hand in his. But no more to
skate. He led her to the bank, knelt, and began to undo the straps about
her ankle. It was almost time for afternoon school.

Going up the hill, the boys saw Mr. Jewell ahead of them, both hands
held to his ears beneath his hard felt hat.

"Look at him!" said Douglas. "Isn't he a namby-pamby? I'd like to fire a
snowball at him."

The words had scarcely left his lips when Ian, who had been packing a
hard ball of snow between his palms, let it fly at Mr. Jewell's head. It
struck him on the back of the neck, his hat flew off, he stood dazed an
instant, then wheeled and looked after the boys, already running down a
side street. He raised his hand threateningly.

They huddled into the doorway of a tobacconist, doubled up with
laughter.

"Gosh!" gasped Douglas. "That was a neat one!"

Ian danced in triumph. "What a wonder I am!" he exclaimed.

"Do you think we'll get into trouble?" asked Shaw.

"Why, you are a young coward!" Douglas stared scornfully at Shaw. "What
are you afraid of?"

"Nothing."

"You are!"

"I'm not."

"Shaw's no coward," said Ian. "Look at the lickings he took for playing
in the cave."

"Then what's he talking about?"

"We might be suspended," said Shaw.

"Good little boy!" retorted Douglas. "Jewell's pet!"

"I'm not."

"You are."

"I just don't want to be suspended."

"I'd be mighty glad to be suspended for a month."

Shaw was silent and they turned again into the street.

"It must be awful always to be thinking of not losing time."

"It is--sort of."

"And to be a coward too."

"Oh, shut up!" said Ian.

"If you're not a coward fire another snowball at Jewell to prove it."

Shaw's face was sullen. He packed a snowball and darting after the
teacher threw it and hit him on the back. Jewell turned sharply. The
three boys halted, the elder ones grinning, Shaw sullen. Jack Dow and
Miss Willing appeared walking swiftly along the snowy road. They had
seen what happened. Jack Dow gave a sneering laugh and Mr. Jewell's
discomfiture was complete. He hastened on.

As he passed the small boys Dow put his hand on Shaw's shoulder. "Good
for you, kid," he said.

"Oh, Jack, how can you?" exclaimed Miss Willing.

"I repeat it," said Dow. "He's a good kid."

She scolded him laughingly as they went on. Douglas looked enviously at
Shaw. To have been commended by the great Dow! Shaw's stature was
increased in the eyes of both boys, but he had no pleasure in the
distinction. The life of isolation, of self-reliance, of bitterly hard
work, had hardened him into a different mould. He could give no hero
worship to Jack Dow. He had little sense of the importance of school
life. He was intent on growing up, on cutting short the period of
boyhood. His smile had already a shadow of gravity. He seldom laughed,
and when he gave himself up to play he did so with a kind of hungry
violence.

He wondered what Mr. Jewell would do to him for throwing the snowball.
But Mr. Jewell did nothing. He stood pink-cheeked at the blackboard, as
mildly as though nothing had happened. He asked a question of Shaw with
no hint of anger in his eyes.

The extreme cold moderated. A wind rose and with it came the blizzards
of February. Layer upon layer of snow was heaped in the ditches, on the
roadways, added to what had already fallen. But this, by the violence of
the gales, was blown into great drifts making the roads impassable.
There were no motorcars to defile it. The snow in its purity muffled the
countryside, the villages, and the towns. The milkman's bell sounded
clear and mournful as his grey mare struggled from door to door through
the drifts. The milk was lifted solid from the can.

Those pupils who came by train were late each day. Those who walked had
to make an early start and arrived with fur or woolen caps and scarves
packed with snow. It might have been thought that the extreme purity of
the air, the submerging beneath the chastity of the snow, would have put
an end to gossip. But it flourished as though in tropic heat. Even Shaw,
the youngest pupil in the school, was conscious of the strain between
Jack Dow and Mr. Jewell. The teacher had been seen talking to Miss
Willing, as though pleading with her. She had gone with him to a church
social and for two days Jack Dow's face had been dark with jealousy.

One morning the train could not move because of the drifts. It stood
just beyond the station till the snowplough could open the way. Inside
the train the boys and girls could see nothing through the furry white
frost on the panes. They chaffed each other, laughed at countrified
jokes, sang "Two Little Girls in Blue" and "A Bicycle Built for Two."
The close air was thick with the smell of wet wool and healthy, not too
well washed, youth.

An hour passed before the rails were cleared. Then they saw, through
small spaces scratched on the frosted pane, the snowplough fly past on
the parallel track, like a ship in a wild sea. From its bow the fine
snow sprang like foam and lay in blue-white ridges on the banks. The
locomotive whistled. The children were jerked almost from their seats.
They were off.

They were in irresponsible good humor as they trudged through the town.
They were late but they were not to blame. Their faces were scarlet from
the bite of hard particles of snow. Shaw inhaled the not unpleasant
woolly odor from his breath-warmed scarf. He planted his feet, one after
the other, in the footprints made by the boys who preceded him.

When they went into the school they were surprised to find that the hall
was full of boys standing about talking excitedly. Some girls were
standing on the stairs looking down at them. There was a belligerent
threatening air about the boys. The girls looked exhilarated yet
frightened. Shaw and his friends pushed their way into the coat room and
took off their coats and caps. A boy of fifteen was there, holding a
handful of snow on his nose.

"What are they doing now?" he asked.

"They're in the hall," answered Douglas. "What is the matter?"

"It's Jewell. They're after him."

"Why?"

"Haven't you heard? He's been saying things about Miss Willing and Jack
Dow." He uncovered his nose, which was dead waxen white. "Is it thawed?"
he asked anxiously.

"Pretty near," answered Ian. "Give it another dose of snow. What did
Jewell say?"

The boy again thrust his nose into the snow, muttering--"Darn this nose!
I want to be out there with them."

"But what did Jewell say?"

"He said it to the woman he boards with and she told it to the other
boarders. Jack found out last night. Gosh, I pity old Jewell!"

"But what did he _say_?"

"He said that he was walking by the pond Sunday evening and he saw Miss
Willing and Jack among the trees. They were lying there hidden--" He
took the snow from his face and his mouth had a sudden lewd look. "You
know what--" He added a few crude words. "Jack has it in for him."

Shaw's heart began to beat uneasily. He was suddenly conscious of being
younger than the others, of wanting to be away from all this. A
sustained murmur came from the hall, like the murmur of a gathering
tide. A boy ran in and began to collect the overshoes that stood in rows
on the snow-spattered floor. He filled his arms and then ran out. Over
his shoulder he said:--

"You fellows bring the rest."

The boy with the frozen nose decided to leave it to its fate. He threw
down the snow and snatched up an armful of overshoes. Douglas and Ian,
quick to discover that these were ammunition, did the same. Shaw picked
up a pair of enormous overshoes that surely belonged to Jack Dow and
looked questioningly at the older boys. They led the way to the hall. It
was now densely packed. Boys were coming out of the cloakroom opposite
carrying the girls' overshoes.

In a moment Shaw was helpless, squeezed in between two tall youths, one
of whom showed an incipient moustache. He took the footgear from Shaw's
hands. He opened his mouth under the budding moustache and uttered a
deep roar.

"Bring him out! Bring out the sham Jewell!"

The murmur increased. The bodies of the boys moved in a troubled surging
up and down the hall. The stairway was near Shaw and he saw the girls
move aside and press to the wall to make room for two figures to pass.
They were Jack Dow and Mr. Jewell. The youth had the teacher gripped by
the collar and the seat of the trousers. They seemed a struggling mass
of arms and legs as they plunged down the stairs. Dow's face was dark
red and he wore a gargoyle grin on his heavy lips. Mr. Jewell was
ghastly. He gazed down into the vortex of boys like a man drowning.

Jack Dow's massive legs carried the two of them into the waiting crowd.
The big fellow at Shaw's side hurled an overshoe at Mr. Jewell's head.
It hit Dow instead and he turned with a savage glare.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he roared.

Furious and ashamed, the youth flung the second overshoe, this time with
true aim. Now the air was full of the missiles. Dow hustled Mr. Jewell
toward the front door. It stood wide open and the arch of the wintry sky
shone bright. The boys began to yell in savagery. Shaw could see
nothing. His arms were glued to his sides. He felt the pressure of his
ribs on his lungs.

Then a lull came and boys poured through the open door.

"What have they done to him?" Shaw asked timidly of the big fellow
beside him.

He made no answer but shouted--"Good for you, Jack!"

The boys surged forward and Shaw was borne to the door. He saw a great
snowdrift, seven feet high, that rose beside the steps, and up from the
middle of it Mr. Jewell's feet and legs weakly kicking. Jack Dow stood
on the steps, his gargoyle grin widened to hilarity. The other boys
crowded about him gazing with speculative cruelty at Mr. Jewell's
struggles. Shaw stared fascinated, feeling rather sick.

At last Mr. Jewell extricated himself. On hands and knees, snow ground
into his hair, ears, and eyes, he knelt humbled and unmanned at Jack
Dow's feet.

"Do you apologize?" asked Dow.

"Yes."

"Are you a liar and a scandalmonger?"

"Yes."

"Do you wish you'd never been born?"

"Yes."

The boys made a path for Mr. Jewell to pass through. Shaw had only a
glimpse of him as he mounted the stairs. He walked as though his legs
were weighted. On the landing Mr. Greerson came out of his study, like a
wary old lion from his den.

"I'd like a little conversation with you, Mr. Jewell," he said.

The two disappeared into the study.

Out of the teachers' room Duncan Dow and Mr. Bentley came side by side.
Mr. Bentley wore the childlike smile he had when a stiff problem was
solved. Duncan Dow looked straight before him. He carried an armful of
books and, stalking to the desk of the sixth form, threw them down and,
turning to the class, said in a dry tone to his brother:--

"Dow, you will begin with the Latin translation."

Miss Willing sailed into the first form with a look of innocence
vindicated. Shaw had a feeling of distaste for her. He did not like her
at all. He compared her with Miss McKay and with his mother, to Miss
Willing's disfavor. But all about him he saw admiring looks turned on
her. He saw Louie Adams's pale eyes bright with admiration, her thin
lips trembling with eagerness to answer Miss Willing's questions.

At recess the halls were a hubbub of excited boys. Jack Dow was a hero.
Unmindful of the cold, boys ran out on the snowdrift where Mr. Jewell
had been chastised and jumped into it, as though on to his body. Shaw
was sent by one of the teachers with a note to the principal's study.
Coming out into the quiet upper passage, he discovered Mr. Jewell
talking in a corner to three young girls. He was saying:--

"Miss Roberts, you will speak in my favor if you are questioned by the
trustees, won't you?"

The girl nodded dumbly, shaken by his unashamed weeping.

"You will tell them how interested I was in my work and that I always
had a kind word for everyone?"

"Yes, Mr. Jewell."

"And, Miss Henderson, you will tell how anxious I was over your exams,
won't you?" He saw Shaw and turned to him with shaking lips. "Manifold,
you will tell the trustees how hard I worked for your Christmas exams,
won't you?"

"Mr. Jewell," said Shaw, asking a question that he had pondered on, "why
did you set us the very same questions for the examination that we had
worked out that week? We knew the answers already."

Mr. Jewell looked at him bitterly. "You are a mean little fellow,
Manifold. You want me to lose my position. The big boys have poisoned
your mind."

Shaw hurried away. He was confused. He had had no answer to his
question. He was ashamed for Mr. Jewell, ashamed that he had hurt him.

Mr. Jewell never appeared before the classes again. Duncan Dow and Mr.
Bentley divided his work between them to the benefit of everyone. Spring
came. Summer came. Shaw worked in the fields. His hands and feet grew
larger. His face took on new contours. One fleeting visit from his
mother was all he saw of her. And winter with its blizzards, its
snow-bound days, was on them again.

In their monotony and their power the seasons wheeled over Shaw,
carrying him along with them in the appointed work that was their
burden. Plodding through deep snow, shoveling the ever-obliterated
paths, cleaning the acrid-smelling stables, studying by lamplight.
Plodding through icy slush, the ditches miniature torrents; the spring
cleaning of cellars and outhouses; the sharpening and cleaning of
implements. The sowing; the increasing heat of the sun. The calves, the
lambs, the litters of pigs to be cared for.

"Darn you!" he would shout to a struggling calf. "Why don't you drink
the milk and not bunt me all over the place?" And he would strive to
hold the bucket steady while the calf thrust its wide wet nostrils and
open mouth everywhere but into the pail. Shaw would push his milky
fingers into its mouth and feel the big teeth of the lower jaw and the
hard toothless gums of the upper nozzle in vain search for a teat.

But as the humid heat increased and the weeds like a frenzied mob strove
to take possession of the land, Shaw's mind became dulled to everything
but the struggle with them. From morning to night he fought them side by
side with Mark or Luke. But where the men hoed doggedly, with easy,
monotonous movements that took not half their strength, Shaw hacked
furiously at the weeds in hatred and exhaustion. Scarcely a word was
exchanged. Only the uprooting hack-hack of the hoes and the thin
metallic trill of the locusts broke the silence.

At night Shaw dreamed of weeds. Wherever he went they seethed about him,
thrusting up through the cracks in floors, pushing in through crannies
of walls, sometimes growing to such height that they darkened the sun.
He would escape them and, light as air, board some great ship sailing
for foreign lands, but scarcely were they out of the sight of land when
weeds would spring up from the ocean, weeds with great wet leaves and
rubbery stalks, clogging the progress of the ship. There was always a
hoe at hand. He would snatch it up and hack frantically at the weeds.
But he knew from the first that it was hopeless. Thicker and thicker
they grew, ever stronger, ever more agile to escape his hoe, with a
sneering triumphant life all their own. He knew that they would drag him
down, smother him, and he gave up struggling. They had sucked the sea
dry as a bone; it was swarming with locusts. He woke.

He had no language of violence at his command. The Gowers were a quiet,
temperate-spoken family. But if he had had such a language he would have
cursed the slowness of his growth, this long-continued thrall of being a
boy.

In his twelfth and thirteenth years he saw little of his mother. She
remained in the same position, which gave her little leisure and no
holiday. Twice she came to the farm and each time brought the widower's
baby with her. To Shaw she seemed scarcely his own mother, with the
ailing creature clambering over her, pulling her hat askew, pressing wet
kisses on her face. He could see that she loved it and his heart was
torn with self-pity. For the first time he was not sorry when she left,
though he mourned her when he was alone in his bed.

But when he was nearly fourteen she wrote to him that she was going to
take him to the great Exhibition in the nearest city. She had a week's
holiday. They would spend two days in the city, go to Niagara Falls, and
be back at the farm in time to help with the threshing. She was bringing
him a new suit, new boots, and a new hat like a man's. He was in a daze
of happy expectation.

He got on to the train at the country station and she had a seat waiting
for him. He was embarrassed that she should kiss him in front of people,
but that was over in a moment and they sat smiling, facing each other.
He thought how clean she looked in her starched cotton dress, white with
a black spot and a black ribbon round her neck, with the brooch like a
little basket of flowers which his father had given her and a brown
straw hat with white flowers on it. She gazed at him in wonder, he had
grown so. Even the measurements her mother had sent for the new suit had
not made her conscious of the reality. He was changed, yet he was the
same. Her boy, all she had of her very own. She leant forward and
whispered:--

"I hope the new boots will fit. Your feet look pretty big."

He glanced at her suitcase. "Are they in there?"

"Yes. And the suit too."

"What color is it?"

"Navy blue. I think that's best for a boy. The hat is brown."

"My sakes, I'll look a swell! Mamma, I don't see how you'd any room left
for your own clothes."

"I don't need much."

He wanted to tell her she looked nice but he was too shy. He asked:--

"Are we going straight to the Exhibition from the station?"

"Yes. Elspeth and her parents are going too. I saw them get on the
train."

Shaw had not seen Elspeth that summer except in church. Ian, who was now
sixteen, was off on a canoeing and camping trip with the Scotts. At
every station Shaw put his head out of the window hoping that Elspeth
would do the same, but he had no glimpse of her.

All day, from one great building to another, Cristabel and her son
pressed their way among the crowds of sweating sightseers. It was
Agricultural Day at the Exhibition and the grounds were thronged with
farmers and their families. Through picture gallery, horticultural show,
the carriage building, where they gazed in wonder at the first motorcar
they had seen, through exhibits from Australia and India, through
exhibits of embroidery and needlework, through the machinery exhibit and
the exhibit of pianos and organs mother and son pressed their way, he
collecting the cards, the paper souvenirs, that were given away, he
never wearying of the novelty, the strangeness of it all, her pleasure
hampered by the aching of her feet.

They had no regular meal but stopped at little stalls and bought currant
buns and lemonade and popcorn and ate them standing. In late afternoon,
dropping from weariness, Cristabel sank to the grass on the great lawn
near the bandstand where the band of the Coldstream Guards sent its
silver music on to the sunny air. Blazing beds of cannas glowed against
the grey-green grass, the Exhibition buildings rose in ephemeral
grandeur, the lake lay sparkling and unconcerned, a few white sails
bending before the breeze. Shaw took the last piece of popcorn from the
paper bag.

"Mamma," he said, "I wish we could go on like this forever and never go
back to work."

"You'd soon get tired of it," said Cristabel. "It wouldn't do to play
all the time."

All too soon for her he asked--"Are you rested, Mamma? Can we go on?"

"Where do you want to go now?"

"To the Midway."

She drew on her shoes, which she had slipped off under cover of her long
skirt.

From side show to side show they moved through the magical,
straw-smelling strangeness of the Midway, to the music of phonographs,
of showmen shouting outside their tents. They heard of Fire-eaters,
Conjurers, Strong Men, Fat Women, Ghost Trains, Scenic Railways, but
never went inside. As darkness came on there was the flare of torches,
electric lights. They bought waffles, fresh from the pot of boiling fat,
rolled in sugar, and ate them standing in the straw. And still the day
was not over. There was the grandstand performance.

Shaw had not believed there were so many people in the world as he
beheld in the grandstand. Tier upon tier the seats rose, and the
thousands of white discs that were faces. Yet there were people left
over for the performance in the three rings that lay spread before the
stand. Cristabel and he, sitting close together, tried to take it all
in. The aerial acrobatics, the clowning, the trained elephants, the
dancing, the Musical Ride of the Dragoons from the barracks, the horses
daintily stepping, the uniforms of the riders splendid. The vast
audience sat entranced, the unaccustomed white collars of the men
wilting about their sunburnt necks, their womenfolk absorbing glamorous
confusion of events to last them for a year, children startled wide
awake by the flaming rockets, the roaring cannon of the Siege of
Sebastopol.

Suddenly Cristabel saw before her a fine profile that was familiar. She
pressed Shaw's arm.

"Look, there is Mr. Blair! And Mrs. Blair and Elspeth!"

Shaw wondered how he could have sat so near them and not discovered
them. He bent forward and touched Elspeth's shoulder. She looked round,
startled, and then smiled.

"Hello, Shaw!"

"Hello, Elspeth! Do you like the Exhibition?"

"Yes. Do you?"

"I think it's great."

The minister and his wife were talking to Cristabel. Mr. Blair passed a
small basket of peaches over his shoulder. "Do help yourselves. They're
good ones. I can vouch for that. I've eaten four."

Cristabel and Shaw each took a peach. They were large and juicy. "Eat it
carefully," she whispered. "Keep your handkerchief handy."

The fruit refreshed them. They felt happy to be near the Blairs. What
must it be like, thought Cristabel, to have a strong man always by your
side making things nice for you, buying things to please you? Her eyes
turned to Shaw. He was growing. He had a good kind look on his face and
he was clever. She was proud of him.

After the Siege set pieces of fireworks were shown, a glittering head of
Edward the Seventh shone against the night sky. The concourse rose to
sing "God Save the King" to the accompaniment of massed bands. After the
last notes Cristabel leant forward and said--"It seems strange to sing
'God Save the King,' after always having a Queen."

"It does indeed," agreed Mr. Blair. "I am afraid we shall never see the
good Queen Victoria's like again."

"Did you go on the merry-go-round?" Elspeth asked Shaw, as they moved
toward the gates.

He shook his head. "I'm too old."

"What side shows did you see?"

"My mother doesn't like side shows. They give her a headache. I don't
much like them either."

The Manifolds reclaimed their suitcase, which they had checked at the
entrance. Shaw grasped the handle and its weight swung heavily against
his legs. The Blairs were swept in a different direction.

"Mamma, shall we take a streetcar?" asked Shaw.

"I think we can walk. There's no object in throwing money away. I'll
take a turn with the suitcase."

"It's not heavy."

They trudged on together through streets that, at first, were peopled by
the returning fair-goers, then almost deserted. Beautiful streets, Shaw
thought, as they passed under the spreading boughs of maple trees and
saw green lawns with neat borders of geraniums in the light of the
electric street lamps. Here and there a garden hose had been left out,
with the sprinkler slowly turning and a silver spray of water falling on
the flowers and grass.

Shaw would not relinquish the suitcase and it seemed very heavy when
they reached the house where they were to spend the night. It belonged
to Cristabel's brother-in-law, a real-estate agent. His wife, Jane
Gower's eldest daughter, opened the door. She was a quiet, prim woman
who already looked old though she was only middle-aged. She kissed her
sister affectionately and smiled dryly at Shaw.

"You look tuckered out, Cristabel," she said. "Come right in. I've a
good cup of tea waiting for you."

Shaw had never seen a house so orderly, so quiet, as this. The
furniture, the carpets, the gilt-framed pictures, filled him with awed
respect. When they sat about a table eating cake and fruit and drinking
tea, the sisters talked together in subdued voices. The husband, with a
hollow-cheeked face above a very high white collar, rarely spoke. When
he did it was to try Shaw with a ticklish date in history or question
regarding the products of some remote country. While the women cleared
away the supper things, he continued his questioning of Shaw and then
said:--

"When you've passed your matriculation I might take you into my office."

"Would I live here, in this house?"

"No. You'd board somewhere near my office. You'd just earn enough to pay
your board for the first year. Your mother would have to dress you."

"I'll talk it over with my mother," said Shaw judicially.

He had a camp bed in her room. He was curled up in it almost asleep when
she came to bed, but he opened his eyes.

"Mamma, Uncle Henry says he might take me into his office when I've got
my matric."

"So that was what all the talk was about!"

"Do you want me to do it?"

"Do you want to?"

"I don't know. Would there be money enough in it?"

"I don't think it's what your father would have wanted for you, Shaw. He
and I set our hearts on a university education for you. I'd like you to
have a profession. And your Uncle Henry's pretty near, though dear knows
I shouldn't say that under his roof."

She had taken off her dress and now she threw forward her head and let
her abundant brown hair fall over her face. She began to brush it with a
graceful movement. It had always fascinated Shaw to see her do this.
Gazing at her, with the tranquil feeling in his heart which her presence
inspired, he fell asleep.

The next day they went to Niagara Falls, Shaw wearing the new suit and
hat Cristabel had brought. He scarcely believed in himself as he sat on
the deck of the little steamer eating doughnuts and drinking hot coffee.
The lake stretched, grey and smooth like polished pewter, to the wooded
horizon. For a long way gulls followed the boat, swooping and crying. An
Italian took a harp from a green baize bag and played music that filled
Cristabel with pensive happiness. She gave Shaw a copper for the
musician. It was the first time he had given charity.

The stupendous jade-green Falls with the thunder of their descent
impressed him less than the crossing on the steamer, which on the return
trip was rough and wild. Uncle Henry and Aunt Matilda were sick and
somehow seemed to blame Cristabel and Shaw for it. But for them they
might have been safe at home.

Sitting in the fresh cold wind, on the lunging bow, Cristabel wrapped
her coat close about herself and her boy. A strand of her hair was blown
across his cheek. The flaming sunset gave a glow to their faces and
turned the foam-edged waves to rosy pink.

"Just think," she said, "we must catch the train at nine o'clock and
to-morrow is the threshing."




                              CHAPTER VIII


Roger and Jane Gower were celebrating their golden wedding anniversary
and from distant places, even as far west as Manitoba, children and
grandchildren came for a great reunion. A dozen sons and daughters, of
whom only three were unmarried, and of the married only one widowed,
brought nearly thirty children, some of whom were grown-up, for the
celebration. Pantry and cellar could scarcely contain the roast meats,
the pastries and cakes, that Jane and Esther had prepared. The
anniversary came at a propitious season, for the summer work was over
yet the weather remained fine and warm. A gentle bluish haze softened
the brightness of the sky, and pumpkins and squashes strung on the
sun-baked vines, ripe apples and plums dropping from laden trees, were
eloquent of harvest and the fulfillment of hopes.

Roger Gower began the day by kissing his wife of fifty years. This was
their third kiss.

Jane was not expecting it. She was taking the two best tablecloths from
a drawer in preparation for the feast to be spread later in the day. Her
daughters stood about her and her daughters-in-law, their eyes approving
her store of clean fresh linen. At the other end of the room the menfolk
talked together.

Suddenly the stocky figure of Roger detached itself from the rest. He
advanced resolutely, his wide blue eyes fixed on Jane, his body strong
in his stiff Sunday clothes. His sons and sons-in-law ceased talking and
watched him with twinkling curiosity. They felt the purpose in his
progress toward their mother, were conscious that a rite was to be
performed.

Roger laid a square hand on each of her shoulders. She was taller than
he. Suddenly his beard advanced, her lips were lost in the jungle of it.
Each was mirrored in the other's eyes. They stood transfixed,
inarticulate, a little dazed by the sudden intimacy of a sort not
enacted in forty-nine years, since their first child lay on Jane's arm.

Now a charming pink flooded her cheeks. She looked at her daughters,
shamefaced yet proud.

"I guess you think your pa's pretty silly this morning, don't you?" she
said.

"I want to show you young ones I haven't forgotten how to kiss," said
Roger.

"I'll bet you could give us lessons in making love," said Leslie, and
Beaty rocked with laughter.

Even the least affluent of the descendants brought some offering, a
basket of peaches or jar of thick cream. Cristabel had crocheted a shawl
of fine white wool for her mother and a scarf with fringe for her
father, though his thick beard made it scarcely necessary. Those who
came from the greatest distance were lodged in the farmhouse, the others
in the houses of near-by relatives. Letitia and Beatrice, the brides of
five years ago, had three children each. Two of Beaty's were twins, with
a depressing resemblance to Leslie. She was seldom without one of them
at the breast, though they were more than a year old. The women talked
almost exclusively of babies.

Shaw and two cousins of his own age attended to the placing of horses in
stalls, their watering and feeding. Shaw scarcely knew these cousins and
they found little to say to each other. They thought themselves superior
to him because they came from the open prairies and had lived the life
of the West. He found that they knew little of books and had no
ambitions beyond successfully running a farm. Farming and everything
connected with it were distasteful to him. He felt himself an alien
among his kin. He thought that they looked on him with suspicion and
dislike and he was not far wrong. There was something about this tall,
heavy-browed, sulky son of Cristabel's that roused antagonism in the
family. He gave himself superior airs, they thought.

The exception was Aunt Becky. From the moment of arrival she singled him
out for attention and praise. Her oily black hair still showed no grey.
She was corseted tightly into a maroon velvet dress and wore long gold
earrings in the shape of fans.

"Do let this lad sit beside me at table!" she exclaimed, as they were
disposing themselves for the two o'clock dinner.

"The young ones are waiting till we've finished," objected Jane Gower.

"He's not a young one," said Becky. "Look at the brow on him. Look at
the way he's matriculated at fifteen! He's no child. If there's anything
I admire it's brains, and Shaw's got 'em."

Jane pushed out her upper lip and stood irresolute, a flush of annoyance
at her sister-in-law's interference dyeing her cheeks.

Roger Gower settled the matter. He made sounds through his beard that
were translated as agreement with Becky, and, not for the first time in
their fifty years of marriage, Jane faced him at table with a feeling of
annoyance.

"Now, Shaw, sit right here," said Becky, drawing him to a place at her
side. "When the conversation begins to be dull we can talk to each
other."

"I suppose you'll converse in Latin, eh, Ma?" said Leslie.

She turned her beady black eyes on him. "Well, one thing is certain,
we'll not converse in guffaws and grunts, the way you and Beaty do."

The couple were discomfited. A chuckle ran round the table. Jane looked
rather more put-out and Shaw slid into the chair beside his great-aunt.
He was glad to be there, because opposite him was his mother and he had
seen little of her in the past two years. Now his grave eyes scarcely
left her face till she shook her head at him, smiling a little sadly,
and he looked away.

Roger Gower began to cut slices from the roast of veal stuffed with sage
dressing. Jane added potatoes and parsnips. Brown gravy was handed
about. From outdoors came the shouts of the waiting children and in a
near-by bedroom Letitia's baby kept up a steady whimper, though it had a
sugar cookie to comfort it.

Merton's large blue eyes were fixed on his brother. When his mouth
became sufficiently empty for speech, he said oracularly:--

"Fifty years is a long time, Roger, but I well remember your wedding day
and the feast we had afterwards. Goodness me, what a yellow beard you
had then and a shock of hair too!"

"Well, I haven't done so badly," mumbled Roger. "Look at this tableful
and listen to the riot outside and the squalling in yonder! No man can
say my quiver isn't full."

"I guess I've helped a little," put in Jane.

"Thirteen times in childbed!" exclaimed Becky.

"And you only once, Beck," said Roger.

"Look how I've kept my figure!" She gave him a sprightly glance.

"There is nothing the matter with mine," said Jane, and she looked
upright and spare in her new black silk with lace at the neck.

Roger said to Merton--"You'll never show such a tableful as this on your
golden wedding day."

"We'll have to make it up in grandchildren," returned Merton.

This set Beaty laughing, and until her gasping subsided no further
conversation was possible. Then Becky asked of Cristabel--"What are you
going to make of this clever boy, Crissie?"

Jane interrupted--"You shouldn't call Shaw clever in front of him. He's
conceited enough."

"I don't think he is a bit conceited and, if he is, he's got something
to be conceited about."

"I want to put him through the university," said Cristabel, "but it will
be hard to manage."

"What do you want to be, Shaw?" asked Merton.

"I don't know," answered Shaw. "Except I don't want to be a farmer."

"I'd pity the land you'd farm," put in Mark.

"He can scarcely tell a cow from a steer," added Luke.

"Make a doctor of him, like his father," suggested Becky.

"He doesn't take to medicine."

"Well, we'll need a doctor after this feast," said Merton, his eyes
fixed approvingly on the wedges of pumpkin pie that the girls were
handing about.

But the meal was not lingered over, for there were the waiting children
to be fed. When the table was reset they swarmed into the room, scarcely
able to wait for the food to be placed on their plates. They snatched
pieces of the crumbly homemade bread and began on it.

A rare mood of joviality descended on the two old brothers. They began
to chaff each other about escapades of their early life. They made
veiled references that could only mystify their wives and families.
Suddenly Merton threw both arms about Roger and, hugging him close,
danced him round the room, both of them surprisingly light on their
feet, their luxuriant beards flying in defiance of their years, their
blue eyes wide in surprise.

As Merton felt his brother's body close against him, a remembrance of
early manhood came to him with strange vividness. All about him faded
and he was left with Roger in his arms, Roger smooth-faced and
fair-haired, crying bitterly for love of a girl he could not have,
sobbing over and over that he could not live without her, threatening to
kill himself if she refused him again. And then--he had ended by
marrying Jane!

They came to a standstill, out of breath.

"Man alive!" said Roger. "You've got me winded!"

"It's good for the folks to see what we can still do," declared Merton.

The young ones about the table were staring astonished. The two old
wives grinned in exhilaration at the display of vitality.

Later friends and neighbors called. The Blairs with Ian and Elspeth, she
at fifteen tall and slim and pink-cheeked. Shaw found that he could talk
to her without shyness. Her flowered organdie dress was beautiful, he
thought, and the new dignity she had acquired at the Presbyterian
Ladies' College.

Dr. and Mrs. Clemency also called, she looking smaller, paler, and more
pampered than ever; his skin of a deeper ivory tone, his back still
straight and his air of haughtiness not softened by age. He had assisted
most of the young Gowers into the world.

"I want to talk to you, Mrs. Manifold," he said, taking her arm. "Shaw,
you walk along with my wife. Lead her to our phaeton and mind the rough
spots. Her shoes are very thin and she's as delicate as a bit of
gossamer.

"Now," he continued to Cristabel, "tell me about your boy's health. Is
it good? Does he still eat the spinach I ordered?"

"I'm afraid not, doctor, but his health is good. At least, he doesn't
complain."

"Do you see much of him?"

"Very little. It's not easy to get away."

"What about this matriculation? Are you going to send him to the
university?"

"The authorities won't take boys of fifteen. I wish you'd advise me what
to do with him in the meantime."

"Why don't you let him study forestry? Reafforestation and the
conservation of our forests is going to be an important thing in this
young country. Let your boy take a course in forestry at the
Agricultural College and then go in for a postgraduate course in the
United States. He'll be able to help himself through by outside work."
On a subject that interested him, Dr. Clemency was eloquent. He talked
on and on.

Shaw waited with Mrs. Clemency beside the phaeton. Her poodle sat on the
seat beside her and, as soon as the wheels began to turn, broke into
hysterical barking. Mrs. Clemency produced a small whip and began to
beat him on his woolly sides. He paid not the least attention, seemed
only to scream the louder. The doctor ceremoniously took off his
broad-brimmed black hat and bowed to Cristabel.

"Think over what I've suggested," he said, "and don't let the boy work
too hard."

Dr. Clemency and Cristabel had other talks. He procured a prospectus
from the Agricultural College for her. The outcome was that Shaw began
the next term as a student there, in years much the youngest, in
ambition a senior.

Now for the first time he was free of the farm. He was in a way his own
master, for his future, so his mother and Dr. Clemency told him, lay in
his own hands. He looked at his hands, seeing, as it were, a globe held
in them, and a sea with ships sailing on it, and dense forests climbing
up the sides of great mountains.

On the first night in the house where he was to board he could not
settle down to work. He was too conscious of the new life about him and
the strangeness of freedom. There was an electric light in his room and
he could sit up as late as he liked. In the morning there were no chores
to do.

There were other boarders in the house, but they were on the floor
below. He had a small back room at the top next to the one occupied by
the daughters of the house. Olive waited at table. Her mother did the
cooking and the elder sister, who was weak-minded, the work of
housemaid. Shaw had a glimpse of the father sitting on the back porch
peeling vegetables, a vague loose-jointed man, subservient to his
stocky, hard-working wife. Shaw could hear the young girl Olive moving
about in her room and wondered if it was as nice as his, with a white
counterpane, a dressing table with two brackets, on which were two china
vases that would not hold water. A picture of a female figure clinging
to a cross hung on the red flowered wallpaper.

Shaw was now separated from his former friends; Ian and Douglas Scott
were at the university, Ian taking an engineering course, Douglas
expecting later to enter on the study of law. Ronald Scott was at the
Royal Military College in Kingston. But they were sworn friends, had
promised themselves reunions in the holidays.

The Agricultural College was fifty miles from the farm, on the outskirts
of a market town. Like the town, it was built of grey stone, and the
country about was hilly and traversed by a river that ran through wooded
gorges. Shaw liked the hills and valleys. He liked to wander through the
town staring into the shop windows. He chose things he would like to
have bought for his mother and Elspeth. He would stand staring at a
workbasket, lined with blue satin and fitted with sharp bright scissors,
odds and ends of ivory, a silver thimble, and he would feel himself
giving it to his mother, feel the touch of her astonished hands as she
took it from him. He would hear himself say casually--"Look, Mamma,
here's something I thought you'd like." But he must stop calling her
Mamma. She must be Mother from now on. "I sort of thought you'd like
this little workbasket--Mother."

For Elspeth it was generally something to wear, perhaps a white silk
parasol with a ruffle round its edge, a smooth polished handle with a
crook. The presenting of this was more formal. "I hope your parents will
allow you to accept"--he grew hot at the mere thought of it. Better
leave the parasol in the shop than to go through that ordeal.

In truth he had nothing in his pockets beyond what was necessary for
mere existence. Every week Cristabel wrote to him and sent the money for
his board and a little over for stamps and having his boots mended and
to buy notebooks. She was resolutely saving up for his postgraduate
course in forestry. Now they were both satisfied that this was to be his
work.

From the college library he got all the books he could discover on this
subject and devoured them. When the work connected with lectures was
done he read these till midnight, keeping the dark blind of his window
drawn and laying a towel across the crack below the door, so that it
might not be seen that he was using so much electricity.

But the young daughter, Olive, could hear his movements through the thin
partition. She said one morning as she placed his porridge before him:--

"You work pretty late, don't you?"

"Well, not so very late," he answered, anxiety shadowing his eyes. "What
made you think I did?"

"I heard the papers rustling."

He stared. "But you couldn't! Not through the wall."

"It's an awful thin partition. Can't you hear me?"

"Hear you doing what?"

"Oh, just heaving a sigh or two. I'm tired when I go to bed. Well, not
so tired as just lonesome."

"I don't hear anything when I'm studying. I don't stay up as late as you
think."

Olive smiled. "If you think I'm worrying about electricity you are
mistaken. I don't care how much you burn. I'll never mention that you
study late."

Relieved, he turned to his porridge, but Olive lingered. "Have some more
sugar," she said.

He added a large spoonful of brown sugar to the dish before him.

"I could help you with your lessons," she said.

"Sakes alive!" he exclaimed irritably. "I don't have lessons, Olive. I
have lectures."

"Well, lectures then. I could help you learn things by heart."

"I don't learn things by heart."

"Whatever you do learn then. Can I come into your room and sit quiet and
watch you study?"

He was flattered. He looked into her odd, dusky face. She was not pretty
but there was something in her face that he could not put out of his
head. That night he heard her, as she had said she did, heaving a deep
sigh on the other side of the partition. He rapped on the wall.

"Hello!" she answered.

"What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing. Just lonesome."

"You can come in if you like."

"All right."

In a moment she opened the door.

Her black hair was hanging about her face, she was in her stocking feet.
She came in and sat on the foot of the bed.

"That's what I read," he said, and showed her a ponderous volume on
diseases of trees.

She laughed. "My goodness, aren't you clever!"

"If you like, I'll tell you what I know of the different species of
trees of British Columbia."

"I'd love to hear."

She sat cross-legged on the bed while Shaw, with boyish pedantry, poured
out his accumulation of facts about the redwood, the spruce, the pine,
and the fir.

"I don't see how you can possibly have learned so much." Olive's eyes
were bright with admiration. "I guess you'll be a teacher, won't you?"

"No. I'm going to try for a Government job."

"I'm glad you let me come in. It's better than being in bed with Nellie.
She's so restless."

"Well, you'll have to sit quiet while I study," he returned not very
graciously. "This may be fun for you, but I can't waste my time."

But even though she sat still, Olive's eyes followed Shaw's every
movement. He grew to like her presence, and on the nights when she spent
the evening out he missed her.

Olive showed a deep interest in trees and in all the experiments
connected with them which Shaw laboriously explained to her. Her eyes
widened when he told of the white-pine weevil and the methods tried for
its control. Her lips parted in wonder, showing her pretty teeth, when
Shaw described the damage done by forest fires and the enormous cost of
fighting them. She seemed never to tire of listening to Shaw and when he
talked to her he felt himself stronger, older, more important than ever
before.

He made no friends in the college. He was so much younger than the other
students that there was little in common between them. He was outside
the circle of their social life. The snatches he overheard of their
gossip, their flirtations, raised a still stronger barrier. When the
day's lectures were over he was still a young boy running home from
school. He never had had a mother to run home to. Now he had Olive. He
began to think of her as soon as he neared the boarding house. He began
to control in his mind the facts he would deal out to her that night.

Olive's gratitude found free expression in giving him the best that the
kitchen afforded, in feeding him to the limit of his capacity.

There he was, the youngest boarder of all, occupying the cheapest attic
room, yet for him was the best cut from the joint, the plumpest sausage,
the largest piece of pie, cream on his porridge! It did not stop even
there. Olive began to carry titbits to his room at night--sultana
biscuits, wedges of chocolate cake, sandwiches with a filling of maple
sugar. She brought a share for herself too and, spreading a table napkin
on the little table, arranged their feast.

Perched on the foot of the bed, she listened to all Shaw had to say, her
dark eyes glowing into his, the even edge of her white teeth showing
between her red lips. Olive had never heard of such a thing as make-up,
but her face might well have been the product of a sophisticated beauty
parlor. When Shaw said anything that gave her an excuse to laugh she
snatched at it with primitive eagerness. Once she began it was difficult
for her to stop, yet she must never laugh above a low note for fear of
being heard in the room next door.

One night her sister did hear her and suddenly appeared in the doorway
wrapped in a plaid shawl, her imbecile face contorted into a pleased
smile.

"Huh!" she said, smiling at them.

"Oh, Nellie," said Olive, "you mustn't come in here! Go back to bed!"

"Huh!" said Nellie, coming into the room.

Shaw stared at the strange girl, half afraid, but Olive snatched up the
cakes she had brought and pushed them into her sister's hands. She took
her by the arm and led her back to her room. Shaw could hear her
scolding Nellie, and Nellie's whimpering.

When Olive returned Shaw asked:--

"Will she tell?"

"Never. She's eating her cake now as happy as can be."

"Will she come again, do you think?"

"I've told her I'll slap her if she does. It's a shame I had to take
away your cake, Shaw."

"I don't mind. . . . Now, Olive, about the process of the manufacture of
pulp and paper, I was just going to tell you . . ."

"Oh yes, Shaw, do tell me!"

They settled down to serious exposition on his part, tireless
receptivity on hers.

One night toward the end of the term Olive said:--

"Guess what I'm doing."

"I'm no good at guessing."

"Go on, try to guess!"

"I can't. Tell me."

"It's something nice."

"What?"

"I'm making a Christmas present for you."

"A Christmas present! What like?"

"Oh, awfully nice--and useful too. I'm putting a lot of work on it."

"Well, that's kind of you, Olive."

"I'll tell you what--I'll give you my Christmas present up here, the
night before you go home, and you give me yours at the same time."

"Me give you mine?"

"Yes. Your Christmas present to me. You are going to give me one, aren't
you?"

"Oh yes. Of course."

But the thought of it filled him with dismay. He lay tossing in his bed.
How could he possibly get the money for a present? It was impossible. He
must tell Olive that it was impossible. Then she would not give him the
present she was making. But he wanted the present and he must find a way
of giving her one! The thought of asking his mother for extra money
crossed his mind, but he put it away.

In the morning his eyes were caught by a book he had brought from the
farm. It was one of Shaw Gower's books, bound in calf and with tinted
illustrations. He had always liked this copy of _Doctor Syntax_, but now
he made up his mind, in his desperation, to sell it. But--was it his to
sell? Surely it belonged to his grandfather! Then he remembered how one
day his grandfather had said to him--"It's a good thing you've got those
books, for no one else has ever wanted them."

They were his, there was no doubt about that. He took the book to the
college that day and sold it to a bookish senior for a dollar. A load
was lifted from his mind. Now he began to wander from shop to shop,
wondering what he should buy for Olive.

At last he decided on a handkerchief box of light wood, with violets
hand-painted on the lid. He carried it to his room in mingled jubilation
and foreboding. He had saved his face, but surely some retribution would
follow such extravagance! He counted the days to the last day of term.

That night Olive brought a bottle of homemade wine to his room, in
addition to slices of currant cake and some lemon biscuits. Her hair was
tied at the back of her neck with a red satin bow. She looked mysterious
and teasing.

"Where's that present you were talking about?" he asked gruffly.

"Present?" She stared.

"Yes. Present. You said you were making me one."

"My goodness, Shaw, I've forgotten all about it!"

"Do you mean to say you haven't got any present for me?"

"Sure I do."

He stared at her in hate. He had sold one of his most valued possessions
that he might buy a present for her and now she'd forgotten the one for
him! Well, he wouldn't give it to her. He'd keep it for a wedding
present for someone, perhaps for Elspeth when she married.

"Oh, what a puddinghead you are!" cried Olive. "Look behind you, on the
bed!"

He looked and saw a paper package lying on the pillow.

"Open it, you silly!"

He undid the string and discovered a small cushion, stuffed rather hard
and covered by the yellow silk ribbons from cigars, sewn together with a
herringbone stitch in black.

He turned it over in his hands. "It's lovely," he said. The color
mounted to his pale face.

"I made it myself," said Olive, "out of cigar ribbons the men boarders
saved for me. Smell it! You'll feel like a real man with that smell in
your room, won't you?"

"You bet."

"Do you really like it?"

"It's grand. . . . I've something for you, too."

"For me? I never expected anything."

"You told me you did."

"I was just fooling."

His book, his precious book, gone--and she expected nothing! He said
warily:--

"Well, I was just fooling too. I haven't got anything for you."

"What! Nothing for me? Oh, Shaw, I didn't think you'd be so mean!"
Olive's voice was sharp with disappointment, even anger.

"Who's a silly now?" He opened a drawer and took out the handkerchief
box.

Olive accepted it rapturously. "It's perfectly lovely. I've always
wanted one. My--what good taste you have!"

But somehow the edge was off their pleasure. They munched the cake and
sipped the rhubarb wine with gravity. When they said good-night she
leant toward him, her head tilted so that her rose-flushed cheek
approached his.

"I'll miss you awfully," she said. "I wish you weren't going home for
the holidays."

"So do I. I'd rather be anywhere but on the farm."

All through the holidays, which he spent in felling and sawing up trees
with his grandfather and uncles, the thought of Olive dwelt with Shaw.
Her face flashed before him, vivid and teasing. He wondered what she
would expect of him next term. Whatever it was, he hoped it would not
cost money.

But when the term opened he found work for his spare time in the office
of a manufacturer, checking up accounts, sending them out, addressing
circulars. He worked from four to half-past six and earned two dollars a
week. This he deposited in the savings bank to help with his
postgraduate course. He was proud that his mother entrusted this to him.
When he stood before the wicket waiting for the entry to be made in the
book the dingy room expanded, he had a sense of space and power about
him. On Saturdays he worked till eight and added another fifty cents to
his earnings. He did not tell his mother of this. It was to be a
surprise.

It was a brilliant winter, not so cold as of late years. But Shaw felt
the cold because he now had little exercise. He was tall, his skin very
white, his eyes seldom losing their look of searching gravity. His
clothes were a little shabby but not poor. His hands were now big enough
to wear gloves that had once been his father's. He turned up the collar
of his coat against the wind.

Returning to the boarding house on a Saturday night, he always stopped
outside the skating rink to watch the skaters through a crack in the
fence. He would stand there for a long while in the snow, wondering what
it felt like to skim across the hard ice to the music of the band, under
the starry sky. Sometimes a cutter drawn by a spanking horse would dash
along the road, the music of its bells penetrating for one glad moment
the brazen rhythm of the band.

One Friday evening Olive said to him--"I think you might offer to take
me to the rink, Shaw. After all, I've been pretty good to you. It's hard
on a girl not to have fun like the others."

"But I have no skates," he objected.

"That doesn't matter. We have a pair a boarder went away and left.
They'll fit you, I know. Do let's go! I'm dying to." Her soul was in her
sparkling eyes. She drew a deep breath of longing.

"I don't skate well enough," he answered, feeling sullen because he knew
that he was already lost.

"My goodness, you can learn in an hour!" she cried. "It would be lots of
fun to go together. I never have any real fun and neither do you. Come
on, say you will!"

"Show me the skates."

She brought them to his room. "I have a new pair I got for Christmas,"
she said. "The boarders clubbed together and got them for me. They said
they guessed you'd like to take me to the rink."

It was a good thing, he thought, that he had not told his mother of the
extra fifty cents he earned on Saturdays. The next night he went from
the office straight to the rink. Olive was waiting for him there, the
two pairs of skates dangling by straps from her arm.

"Hello!" She greeted him with assurance. "The ice is lovely and there's
not a crowd yet. Hurry up and I'll give you a lesson."

It was not Shaw's first effort at skating. He had made an essay at it on
the frozen pool on the farm with an old pair of skates that had belonged
to one of his uncles. In a short while he was able, with Olive's
support, to go from one end of the rink to the other in time to the
music of the band.

Now he was inside the fence. He knew what it was like. His blood ran
through him fiercely, eagerly. He felt as though he had broken chains
that had bound him. He felt like a prisoner set free.

The next day he was stiff, the muscles along his shins as though
bruised, but his mind was clear. He studied all the day without
weariness. Olive could talk of nothing else but skating and the fun they
would have on the next Saturday. She sought even more than before to
lavish the best from the kitchen on him.

All the next week he looked forward to the skating on Saturday night.
When the day came he could scarcely keep his mind on his work. In
anticipation he felt the joy of the rhythmic movement, Olive close at
his side swaying to the band, the icy fire struck by the skates from the
glistening frozen sheet beneath them.

And so throughout the winter Shaw spent the extra money earned, in
skating. One night a week was not enough to satisfy Olive so they went
twice. They became accomplished skaters, for she had a natural grace, a
fearless poise; Shaw was well-built and possessed long straight legs.
Other skaters turned to look at them, the girl's hair curling beneath a
woolen tam-o'-shanter, the solemn boy skating as though for his life.

But no enjoyment could dull the reproaches that gnawed at his heart. He
was using money for pleasure that should have been saved for his
education, hoarded for his mother's sake. Certainly she would not have
squandered her earnings so. At the end of the skating season he added up
what he had spent at the rink and was horrified. He sat on the side of
his bed staring blankly before him. As he worried over the sum
dissipated it mounted up and up till there seemed no end to its
possibilities. If he could have the winter to live over again, he
thought, he would be firm and resist Olive's persuasions.

In early summer Cristabel came to see him. As usual she sent no word.
The day she had discovered her mother beating Shaw had made such an
impression on her that she always felt she must appear unexpectedly in
order to find out if he were being well treated.

Olive let Cristabel in at the door. The girl wore a white shirtwaist and
a blue tie and skirt. She smiled with assurance at Cristabel, who
thought--"What a nice-looking girl! But she thinks too much of herself.
I wonder if she's good to Shaw." She said:--

"I've come to see my son. I know he's not in, but I'll wait for him if
you don't mind. I guess I'll find some mending to do."

"Will you go straight up?" said Olive. "Shaw will be glad to see you."

There was a possessive tone in her voice that Cristabel did not quite
like. As though she--the boy's own mother--needed to be told that he
would be glad to see her!

"Thank you," she answered with dignity, and mounted the stairs.

Nellie was sweeping the top landing. She gave a nervous start when she
saw the stranger and flattened herself against the wall, broom in hand.

"I am Mrs. Manifold," said Cristabel, "and I've come to see my son."

Nellie smiled in pleasure. She said "Huh!"--and sprang to open the
bedroom door wide.

Alone in the room, Cristabel took off her hat and laid it on the bed.
She had seen the room only once before, when she had engaged it for
Shaw. Now she looked about her in earnest.

It did not look very well cared for, she thought. There was a large
cobweb in a corner of the ceiling and the window was grimy. She examined
the bed. Hard and lumpy, the pillow showing the imprint of his head, the
sheet wrinkled and out at the foot. She pulled off the bedding and shook
the thin mattress violently. Then she put on the sheets, smoothing them
and tucking the counterpane firmly in place. She plumped up the pillow.
Then she crumpled a newspaper and polished the window with it. She drew
the paper across the cobweb and wiped the corner clean. She looked into
the ewer and saw that it was only half full, the interior covered by a
greenish film. And she was paying her hard-earned money to have this
room kept in order for her boy! She took up the ewer and carried it to
the landing. There she stopped and considered. It would look fussy to
carry down the ewer on her very first visit. Perhaps it might make the
landlady less agreeable to Shaw afterward. She might speak of it to that
girl just before leaving. She took the ewer back to the room and set it
in the basin. She stood looking at it. She could not endure it. The
thought of Shaw's washing his face, brushing his teeth, in such water
angered her. She lifted the ewer from the basin and carried it to the
kitchen.

The kitchen looked clean and Olive was alone in it beating eggs for a
custard. Cristabel held the ewer out to her.

"I must ask you," she said, "to keep the ewer in my son's room cleaner.
The water in it is not fresh."

Olive smiled at her unconcernedly. "Shaw doesn't wash there. He washes
in the bathroom on the floor below. But I'll clean the jug if you like."

Cristabel stood feeling abashed while Olive tolerantly washed the ewer
at the sink and filled it with fresh water. "I'll carry it up for you,"
she said.

"Thank you, I'll carry it," answered Cristabel.

But Olive would not let her. She carried it lightly and easily up the
stairs and set it decisively in the basin. On her way out of the room
she swept her hand across the table and brushed off some crumbs. Left
alone, Cristabel discovered that they were crumbs of cake. She smiled.
However did Shaw get cake to eat in his room!

She set about overhauling his clothes. The drawers that held them were
in a state of disorder. Sleeves and legs of garments were tangled
together. Notebooks were tumbled in with collars and ties. She frowned
as she straightened them, but her heart melted in pleasure at the touch
of his belongings. She was surprised when she discovered the skates,
hanging on the back of the door. He had never mentioned skating to her.

She heard a door shut below, then silence; then his step on the stair.
She had a sudden childish impulse to hide that she might surprise him.
She could not resist it. He opened the door, then it closed behind him.
From where she was hiding behind the cretonne curtain that hung across a
corner of the room and made a clothes cupboard for him she could see him
clearly. He stood motionless inside the door, his head raised like a
young animal aware of some new presence near by. He looked straight
ahead of him, his hand on the doorknob. He scarcely seemed to breathe.

"Shaw," she whispered.

He took two strides and flung back the curtain.

"Did I frighten you?" she asked.

"No, Mamma. Why did you hide?"

"I don't know." She came from behind the curtain and kissed him. "Are
you glad to see me?"

"Yes. I'm glad." He pressed his face on her shoulder. She passed her
hands over his growing frame. She said:--

"You're growing so, you'll soon need a man's clothes. Did Papa's gloves
fit you?"

"Yes. They're fine."

They sat down side by side on the bed and she asked him questions about
his studies at the college and his life in the boarding house.

"I don't think much of the way they do your room. Do you see any
difference in it?"

He stared about. "No. I don't see anything different."

"A lot of use there is in tidying up for you! Don't you miss any
cobwebs? Don't you notice that you can see through the window? And the
drawers! My goodness, Shaw, they were a sight."

"Oh yes, I see now."

"They ought to keep your room decent. I pay them for it."

"They work awfully hard. They're kind to me. Olive's as kind as can be."

"Is that the dark girl?"

"Yes. She brings me cake or apples or ginger cookies every night."

"Where?"

"Here."

"Into your room?"

"Yes. Here. Her room is next door."

The color rose in Cristabel's cheeks. "She has no right to come into
your room at night! I saw the cake crumbs she is too lazy to clean up.
How long has this been going on?"

"All the time."

"Every night?"

"Almost."

"How long does she stay?"

"Till she is sleepy. I tell her what I'm studying. We have something to
eat. Then when she's gone I go on with my work till late."

Cristabel sighed. He was moving to a new circle outside her life. But
she must put out her hand, hold him, help him while she could.

"Shaw, you must promise me not to have that girl in your room any more."

He was dismayed. "But why, Mamma?"

"Surely you can understand. It isn't proper. Some night--" She
hesitated. "You've never been a little free with her, have you?"

"Free with her? How?"

"You've never kissed her?"

He made a grimace, but he reddened.

"No!"

"Well--you mustn't let her in any more. Tell her the cake disagrees with
you. Tell her that she interrupts your work. Promise, Shaw."

"All right, Mother."

"That's my good boy!"

"But you needn't think we're sweet on each other. I've no use for
girls--except to talk to."

"I'm glad of that. I don't like flirtations between young boys and
girls."

He was pleased that she could think of him in such a light. He felt that
he was a child no longer. He watched her moving about the room putting
his things in order. A close prenatal twilight hedged them in. They
spoke in undertones. When her dress touched him as she passed a tremor
of blind joy went through him. He listened as she told of her life in
the widower's house, of the news of her many sisters and brothers and
their families which interested her so deeply and him scarcely at all,
except that it came from her mouth.

He was proud to take her downstairs to the evening meal, a sort of
tea-supper with scrambled eggs and fried potatoes, preserves and tea
biscuit. Cristabel was proud of him too. He was so grown she had, for
the first time, a sense of leaning on him. He was clever, advanced far
beyond boys of his age. When he was spoken to he listened gravely,
considering his reply before he answered. She could see that the other
boarders respected him. Olive waited on them demurely.

Upstairs again, Shaw lay on the bed watching Cristabel darn the holes in
his stockings, patch his underwear. When she had finished she laid her
hand on his head and they were silent, knowing that the moment of
parting was near.

He took her hand and laid it under his cheek, feeling the roughness of
her needle-pricked fingers on his face. Presently she was conscious of
tears running from his eyes on to her hand. She was troubled. It was
years since she had seen Shaw cry.

"What is it, dear?" she asked, laying her other hand on his hair.

"I've done such a mean thing, Mamma," he answered in a muffled voice.

"You couldn't do a mean thing, Shaw."

"But I have."

"Tell me, then. Perhaps I won't think it's mean."

"I've been earning fifty cents extra every Saturday night and I've spent
it--taking Olive to the rink."

"But how often did you take her?"

"Twice a week. All the winter."

"How much did it cost you?"

"Over six dollars."

"Over six dollars! It was a good deal."

"I didn't seem able to help myself."

"I hope you're going to have a mind of your own. It's a bad thing for a
man to be weak."

"Oh, Mamma, I'm sorry!"

"Never mind, dear. It wasn't a very terrible thing to do. I only wish
you could have fun like other boys, with a good conscience."

He answered vehemently--"I do have fun! I've always had fun! I didn't
need to squander my money on taking a girl out! It was a mean trick and
there is no use in you saying it wasn't, Mamma!"

He had abased himself. He had told all. His heart was free. A deep
tranquillity came to him, as though through her flesh. They sat silent,
the light from a street lamp making a silver plane on the ceiling, the
corners of the room receding into the twilight. It seemed to Cristabel
that in those dim corners their future waited for them, vague, full of a
shadowy portent toward which she could only grope. From below in the
house the sound of an organ played by one of the boarders came up to
them. The time for parting was drawing near.




                               CHAPTER IX


Shaw spent his seventeenth summer in bicycling through the countryside
soliciting subscriptions for a newly published woman's magazine, at the
same time writing reports on agricultural conditions for a provincial
newspaper. He was determined to waste no more holidays in working to the
limit of his endurance on his grandfather's farm for no more than his
keep.

This life was congenial. From house to house, through prosperous towns
and villages, from farm to farm, he displayed the bright-colored
magazine to the women of the household, and not without success. There
was something in his young, reflective forehead, his mouth with its look
of resolve and endurance, that inspired confidence. The women believed
him when he told them they needed the _Ladies' Home Companion_. Indeed
Shaw was himself convinced that they needed it. The women of his family
had had no such cheery companion for their leisure and he felt they
would have been the better for it.

At night he slept in lodging houses or in farm bedrooms. He talked to
the farmer of stock and crops and, when he found the people interested,
told them of his own work and advised them about the setting out of
plantations of trees. On hot nights he slept in barns, lying on the hay
with his books before him, catching the last light for his studying,
alone but never lonely, seeing in each morning an advance toward manhood
and achievement. He would wake in the sweet-smelling hay to see the
cracks in the hayloft shine redly in the sunrise, the festoons of
cobwebs turn from ghostly to gay, the walls of the barn opening in
promise of forests in the West. He saw the forests stretch on and on to
the mountains and the sea. He saw the plantation of saplings sending
their roots deep into the virgin land, stretching their branches
skyward, their trunks thickening to the bulk of great timber. When he
was alone he could think of nothing but trees. His hope and his future
were in them, root and branch. His florid imagination pictured them
marching in vast armies across the plains, at his command. He had been a
being of no consequence in the Gower household yet always dreaming of
himself as in command, in the fantastic events of his world of books.
Now, lying in the hay or cycling along the hot dusty road, he saw
himself establishing forests, controlling conflagrations, a man of
trees. Sometimes he was so deep in thought he would pass a house,
forgetting the sale of the magazine. Then he would turn back and force
his mind into the work of the hour.

The heads of the college became interested in Shaw. In all his spare
hours he worked as laboratory assistant. He was not like the other
students. He had no interests outside his work. He needed none. He was
complete in the globe of his spiritual egotism which surrendered
nothing. Physical discomfort affected him almost as little as it had
affected medieval saints. Yet he was no Spartan and dreamed of luxury
for himself and Cristabel. He dreamed of the time when he might buy all
the books he wanted, when he would go through a catalogue of books,
marking the ones that interested him, sending for all of them by return
post. His mother should have a sealskin coat and a beautiful handbag
full of money to take the place of the worn leather purse.

Shaw found no necessity of a formal break with Olive. When he had
returned to the boarding house after the holidays she had become a
different girl. She had an admirer among the boarders, a young
bookkeeper in a large store who took her out or sat with her in the
parlor every evening. On him she now lavished the best from the kitchen
and scarcely seemed aware of Shaw's presence. His relief was deep and he
settled down in serene solitude to his winter's work.

Trees, trees, trees. He read of them, talked of them, dreamed of them.
The walls of his little room were covered by pinned-up pictures of them.
He saw them when he closed his eyes. The fir with its blunt cones
shining with resin. The Douglas fir, with its sharp cone that showed no
resin, the hemlock, the cedar, the blue spruce, the poplar, rising out
of sweet fern and bracken. He saw the pine, the birch, the mountain ash,
the sugar maple. He saw them, not with the eye of the artist, but with
the eye of the forester. His spirit was lifted, not by their beauty but
by their symmetry, their vigor, the grandeur of their possibilities.

One summer he worked on a grain boat on Lake Superior. He worked hard,
keeping to himself, reading whenever he had the chance. His eager eyes
swept the boundless forests that lined the shores. He saw a great fire
that turned the sky red and sent deer and wolves to the open settlement
in panic. He grew brown and tough as a young pine and learned to like
the life and the men who lived it, to feel no fear of the violent
storms. But his constant worry was money--to save enough to put him
through the two years' postgraduate course in the States. He spent
nothing, yet all his something was so little. Because of the expense of
travel he and Cristabel did not see each other for two years. He wrote
long letters to her, pouring out the details of his work, his plans,
mystifying her with technicalities. She strove to understand all, to
write letters as long as his, but her letters were full of news of her
family which she knew did not interest Shaw at all, but which she could
not prevent herself from repeating.

In his last year at the college he was offered work, through the
influence of its principal, in the Department of the Interior in Ottawa.
At the same time he had a letter from Ian Blair to say that he and
Elspeth were to visit the Scotts in Ottawa that summer. The Member of
Parliament and his family now spent a part of each year there. It was to
be a happy reunion.

Shaw could scarcely believe that he and his friends of childhood were to
be together again. He had made no friends to replace them. The hours
spent in the pirates' cave shone bright in his memory as his happiest,
dimming to nothingness his hardships, the lack of love or kindness in
his home. He was to be with the other three pirates once again, exchange
the password with them. He was to see Elspeth. Would she remember the
paintbox she had given him? Would she have become proud or distant or
"citified" after the years in the Ladies' College? In the long train
journey to Ottawa his mind strained forward to these meetings, eager yet
shy, fearful that he would be too unlike the others for happy mingling,
yet somehow conscious that he was older in experience than they. Their
youth was prolonged, while he had strained toward manhood from a child.

Lodgings had been found for him, by a member of the Department, in a
hilly street with a view of the river. The room was better than any he
had yet possessed and, as he settled himself in it, his eyes wandered
through the window to the tree-shaded streets, the winding river, the
glimpse of the Parliament Buildings. He was impressed by the thought
that in Rideau Hall the Governor General lived with his family in
viceregal state. What would that be like, he wondered. Ceremonious, with
flunkeys, soldiers in dress uniform, receptions and balls! Here was he,
Shaw Manifold, living in the heart of things! He returned to his
unpacking, hung his few ties on the gas bracket, set his books on the
mantelshelf. He looked in the glass and realized that the time had come
when he must buy a razor.

The office where he spent his days seemed palatial to Shaw, with its
polished oak floors and portraits of famous parliamentarians. His
superiors were considerate. The Department, not long since organized by
a Western Member, was keen to prove the need of its existence. He was
there a week before he could make up his mind to call on the Scotts. He
suddenly saw them as remote, people of another world. He had a glimpse
of Ronald in Sparks Street, in the uniform of a cadet of the Royal
Military College. Ronald looked altogether too grand. Then Shaw
remembered him as a little boy, plodding to school through deep snow and
generally with a cold from enlarged tonsils.

But one warm moonlit evening Shaw decided that the time for the call had
come, if ever it was to be made. He dressed carefully, brushing his
clothes with the brush that had once been his father's, tying and tying
again his necktie so that the worn place would be underneath. He had
bought a razor and had shaved with but one cut. He covered this
carefully with sticking plaster, trying one shade after another till he
achieved a patch that satisfied him. He thought he did not look too
countrified.

The exterior of the Scotts' house was not imposing. It was very much
like others in the substantial residential street, set in shrubbery
where syringa gleamed white in the moonlight and filled the air with its
scent. But he was not prepared for the elegance of the interior, the
gilt-framed mirrors, the satin-covered settees, the velvet cushions with
tassels at the corners. His eyes under their heavy brows took it all in,
as he waited. The doors opened and Elspeth entered.

They had not met for three years. Now they stood staring, trying to
recognize boy and girl in youth and young woman.

"You are just the same, Shaw," she said, smiling and self-possessed.

"You're different, Elspeth. You're so grown-up."

"Of course you are grown-up too, but your eyes are the same. Ian and I
are so glad you're here."

"Do you remember the paintbox?" he asked, then wished he hadn't, she
blushed so deeply.

"I can never forget it," she answered. "It was cruel. I mean they should
have let you keep it."

"It didn't matter. I have nothing of the artist in me."

They were silent a moment, not knowing what to say next, then Douglas
appeared in the doorway, a billiard cue in his hand. He wore white
flannels.

"Hello, Shaw! I hope I'm not interrupting some sweet scene."

It was Shaw's turn to color. The implication that there was anything
between him and Elspeth left him speechless. She said:--

"Don't be silly, Douglas. We were just going to the billiard room."

These words on the lips of a minister's daughter were so incongruous to
Shaw as to be almost painful. He associated billiards with poolrooms
behind public bars. The sight of the cue in Douglas's hand made him feel
awkward. Young Scott led the way to the billiard room, where they found
Ronald making a shot and Ian lighting a cigarette.

Ian turned to Shaw, his face bright. "Hello! Isn't this grand? Blood on
your brow!" This had been the pirates' password. Douglas and Ronald now
repeated it with solemnity.

"Blood on your brow!"

"Blood on yours, brother," answered Shaw, touching their foreheads in
turn.

"Whatever does it mean?" cried Elspeth.

"You are not supposed to hear," said her brother.

Ian was the same as ever. The freckles on his nose, his gay, reckless
laugh, did more to bridge the years than any words could do. The room
was vibrant with excited young voices. The game was forgotten. Ian was
going in for civil engineering. Douglas Scott for law and, later,
politics. Ronald's ambition was a commission in a distant part of the
Empire, India preferred.

Elspeth sat listening, her hands in her lap. She wore a flowered
organdie dress with elbow sleeves. Shaw had never seen short sleeves on
a girl before. He liked the fashion and thought her slim white arms
beautiful. He did not like the wrist watches worn by the Scotts. They
were affected and effeminate, he thought.

Mr. Scott came in later and sat on the leather sofa in the glare of the
lamps. He was a stout, sagging man who perpetually had a cigar between
his lips. The casual brotherly relations between him and his sons filled
Shaw with wonder. Curiously he found, now the excitement of the reunion
was over, that he could talk more easily and freely to this middle-aged
man than to the other youths. . . . What is wrong with me, he thought,
that I can't chatter and laugh the way they do? My face feels stiff when
I try. Nonsense and chaff won't come naturally to me and I feel stupid
when the others talk it.

Mr. Scott was speaking and Shaw realized that his attention had
wandered. He turned his searching grey eyes on the older man's face.

"I was saying that young men nowadays don't know what it is to deny
themselves luxuries. I lived simply and worked hard, I can tell you,
when I went to college."

"We are not all so lucky as Douglas and Ronald," said Shaw. "It's going
to be a pull for me to get through my postgraduate course--even if I
work like a nigger and live like a Spartan."

"It's a pity your father died."

"Yes, it is a pity."

"Your mother is a fine woman."

"Yes," agreed Shaw, with a sudden feeling of resentment, as though he
had been told that he did not appreciate her, "she is."

"It will be a great day for her when you get through."

"Yes, sir, it will."

"Good shot!" cried Ian. "What are you going to do about it, Ronnie?"

Ronald bent his graceful body over the table.

"I am glad," went on Mr. Scott, after a glance at his sons, "that you
have your present job. It will be a help to you in every way. You'll
make friends with people in the same work."

"Yes," said Shaw. He felt that something was coming.

"I have been wondering," said Mr. Scott, "if you would like me to lend
you a few hundred dollars."

The room reeled with Shaw. He gripped the arm of the sofa where they sat
to steady himself.

"Do you mean it, Mr. Scott?" he asked. He stared at the mature, kindly
man, with a strained, unbelieving smile, as though he had suddenly shown
the attributes of a god. "You don't really mean it, do you?"

"I certainly do. When I see a young fellow as keen as you are, I like to
put out a helping hand to him."

"But what about security? There ought to be security, oughtn't there?"

"I knew your parents. I know you. Your word is enough, Shaw."

"Well, sir," said Shaw grimly, "it will mean just this to me--that I can
eat as well as study."

Mr. Scott was embarrassed. Pointing a forefinger at Ronald, he
exclaimed:--

"That boy pretends to be fond of his mother and me, but will he apply
himself? Will he take our advice? Never!"

Ronald grinned and began knocking the balls about. The game was
finished.

Ian said, in a ministerial voice--"Why callest thou me, Lord, Lord, and
doest not the things that I say?"

The Scotts had a summer cottage on the shore of Blue Sea Lake and Shaw
was invited to spend the week-ends with them there whenever he could.
But after the first he did not go again. For one thing Ian and Elspeth
were no longer there. Another reason was his inability to join in the
life of the summer colony. His solid cloth suits, his uncompromising
black boots and old-fashioned ties, set him aside, he felt, less than
his inability to take what was said to him other than seriously, to
chaff when there was nothing to chaff about, to laugh when he was not
amused.

Ian was to finish his course as civil engineer the next spring. He was
to be a member of a forest-survey party on Riding Mountain of which Shaw
was to be put in charge following his examination in July. He had made
an impression in his work in the holidays. He was the star student of
the college. Cristabel was to have a new dress to attend the graduation
ceremonies. Her heart was joyful that her boy was fulfilling his
promise. She saw the day approaching when they would have a house, for
the first time in their lives, if only he did not marry young, as some
boys did, and have nothing left over for his mother! She pictured
herself seated in the college hall for the graduation ceremonies,
professors in gowns, visiting celebrities on the platform; Shaw, the
most brilliant student of all, the one who had graduated with the
highest honors; there would be few who would know who she was, but later
at the reception she would be at his side and everyone would say--"That
is Shaw Manifold, with his mother!" Everyone would know that he was
leaving the next day on a responsible mission. Cristabel had not been so
happy since before the death of her husband.

Several days before the ceremony, a few hours after the last
examination, Shaw appeared at the house where she was employed as
housekeeper. One of the daughters answered the door and ran to her with
the news. The young girl was excited by his arrival and would have
returned with Cristabel to the sitting room where she had taken him, but
Cristabel would go alone. She was anxious, even frightened, by this
sudden coming. She went into the room and closed the door behind her,
looking at him questioningly, her blue eyes wide.

"Hello, Mother," he said, and bent and kissed her. How tall he was! How
he brought her old life into the room with him, all unconsciously,
cloaking her with past sorrows, stirring her heart with forgotten joy,
blotting out the room they stood in.

"Is anything wrong?" she breathed, his kiss still warm on her cheek.

"No, nothing is wrong. But I've decided to catch the late train to-night
for the West. I've just been thinking how foolish it would be to waste
several days waiting for a ceremony that means nothing to me. By the
time the reception is over I can be at work."

"Is there so much hurry?"

He stared at her surprised. "Has it ever been right for me to waste
time?"

"But--Shaw--"

"What is it, Mother?"

"Nothing."

They stood looking at each other. She repeated to herself--"Has it ever
been right for me to waste time?" But . . . then, surely this was
different! Never again would there be an occasion like this for her.

"Are the college authorities urging you to go?" she asked.

"Urging me!" He laughed. "On the contrary, they are very much annoyed
with me. No one is urging me--but myself." He took an impatient turn
across the room. "Mother, I must be off! You understand, don't you?"

"Yes. I understand. But you will be able to stay awhile with me, won't
you, Shaw? You will be able to stay to tea, surely?"

"Yes. I can do that."

"Where is your baggage?"

"At the station."

"And to think that I have never been over your clothes! What sort of
state are they in?"

"Clothes won't matter where I am going, Mother."

"Have you any loose buttons or holes I could darn while you are here?"

"I broke my braces this morning and tied them together. You might put a
stitch in them."

"What a good thing you thought of that! We'll go to my room."

She led the way up the stairs. Inside the room she said:--

"This is where I've slept all these years and you have never seen it
before!"

"Is it a good bed?" he asked.

"The mattress is good but the springs sag. But it's a fairly good bed."

"You just wait a little, Mother, and I'll get you one of those shiny
brass bedsteads, with a hair mattress and a big pink satin eiderdown
quilt."

"That will be grand."

He looked about the room. "Who are these?" he asked, picking up a
photograph of children from the dressing table.

"Those are the children of the family when they were younger. That is
the one who answered the door."

He looked at the group disparagingly. "I don't think much of them. Is
this the kid you brought to Grandma's once?"

"Yes. That is Jimmie. He's a pretty boy now."

"He was always whining then."

"He was very delicate."

Shaw was jealous of them. Cristabel felt that and was amused and
pleased. He was not really grown-up after all. He took off his coat and
sat down while she mended his braces.

The sound of a piano came from below.

"Who is playing?" he asked.

"That's Alfred. He's going to be a musician. He's very talented."

"He is the one you always liked, isn't he?"

"Yes. He is a nice boy."

Shaw sat in his shirt sleeves in the rocking chair swaying quietly while
she stitched. The two in a room alone together. She imagined what a home
would be. Her eyes rested on his broad chest.

"You have a good chest, Shaw. You are going to be a strong man. I used
to be afraid for you--because of your father and because you worked so
hard when you were little. It was a shame."

"I'm as strong as a horse."

As she touched his body putting the braces in place, a deep tenderness
for him welled up in her. "I hope the work you're going to won't be
dangerous," she said.

"Don't you worry, Mother." He took out the watch that had been his
father's and looked at it.

"It's easy to say don't worry, Shaw."

"Well, I haven't given you much cause for worry, have I?"

"It isn't you I worry about. Not your behavior. It is the dangers you
may be going into. You don't know what a mother's thoughts are."

He looked at her speculatively. "No, I suppose not."

"For one thing I always have such a hurried feeling when I'm with you. I
try to remember the things I've wanted to say, but I forget most of them
till we've parted again."

"You can write them to me."

"I'm no good at writing."

"I like your letters, Mother."

There was a tap on the door. It was the daughter of the house to say
that she would make the tea ready, so that Cristabel need not leave
Shaw. He thought his mother was too casual in her thanks.

"What a nice girl," he said.

"She is showing off, because of you," answered Cristabel. "She's the
hardest to get on with of all the family." Then her face softened.
"They've been very kind to me. They don't need me any longer. I think I
must find a new position."

Shaw drew down his brows. "I wish you could stop work. It seems to me
I've been half a lifetime growing up."

"To me it seems you're growing up very fast."

"I hope there won't be any children where you go next."

She was surprised. "Why do you wish such a thing?"

He hesitated and then said--"I don't like children."

She thought--"He is jealous, because he loves me so." She looked at him
tenderly.

"Mother," he said suddenly, "I guess you're disappointed about not
wearing your new dress at the Closing."

Cristabel could feel the color rising to her face. She thought, "I'm
like a silly girl about that dress!" She was ashamed. "It doesn't matter
much. I needed a new dress terribly anyhow. But if it hadn't been for
the Closing I'd have made it myself. I had a good dressmaker do it." She
tapped her teeth nervously with the tips of her nails, thinking of the
outlay.

Shaw read her thought. He said, in the hearty voice of a comforting
man:--

"Put it on, Mother. Let's see you in it!"

"Very well."

She went to her closet and took the dress from its peg. It was a brown
taffeta with puffed sleeves and lace jabot. She slipped off the print
dress she wore, looking for that instant girlish in her short petticoat
and corset cover, and put on the taffeta. She fastened the collar with a
gold brooch.

What a difference clothes made!

"Mother, you look grand!" he exclaimed. "Turn round! Keep turning round!
What a lovely dress!"

She was proud of it, pleased by the scrap of herself she could see
reflected in the tiny glass.

"Perhaps it was a good thing I had the dressmaker do it. It will be my
best for years."

"You just wait and see," he said.

She wore the dress down to tea, sitting at the end of the table, facing
the widower. He was a chinless man with a large Adam's apple. "To
think," thought Shaw, "my aunts suggested that Mother should marry him!"

Mr. Worden was very pleasant, however. He asked Shaw questions about his
work that showed how he had followed it all those years with interest,
though Shaw was unknown to him personally.

"We feel we know all about you," he said.

The young people looked at Shaw with curiosity. They had heard so much
of him and here he was in the flesh. To Cristabel it was strange to see
him sitting at that table. She felt, as never before, that her own son
was a stranger to her compared with these people of no kin. In closest
intimacy she had watched the development of these children's characters,
witnessed their griefs, their tempers, their small triumphs. If she were
to count her hours with Shaw how pitifully few they would be! Yet--her
eyes turned in love to his face--what revealings in those few hours!
Their two souls . . . the mother and son souls . . . that lapped
together, as two waves, after separation. This was more than years spent
together. Yet--how she regretted those years of separation! Here at her
side was a youth of nearly nineteen, in height and breadth a man,
self-possessed, his face inscrutable, going forth to his work in the
world, and what had she had of him?

"I suppose," Mr. Worden was saying, "you will be traveling on a tourist
ticket?"

"No; I have a pass from Ottawa," answered Shaw.

A railway pass! To travel thousands of miles for nothing! The faces
about the table turned to him in wonder.

"Your expenses paid, right to Dauphin?" exclaimed Mr. Worden.

"Yes." Shaw looked at his watch. "I shall have to go soon."

The girls urged him to more of the jelly roll. The young musician stared
vaguely in front of him, uninterested in a life of action, his Adam's
apple, like his father's, moving up and down as he swallowed his tea.

"Your mother looks quite the lady in that dress, doesn't she?" said Mr.
Worden.

"She is a lady," returned Shaw gruffly, and Cristabel blushed for his
rudeness.

She changed into a coat and skirt and walked with him to the station.
The sun was low but sent shafts of dazzling light between the houses on
to the road. There had been a shower and the air was washed and renewed.
Children were being called in for the night. Their young voices echoed
in the last moments of freedom. Cristabel laid her hand on Shaw's arm.
They passed from light to shadow, from shadow to light.

If only it were farther to the station, she thought. She walked more
slowly, pressing the firm muscles of his arm under her fingers.

"Are you tired?" he asked.

"Oh no. But do we need to walk fast?"

"No. There's plenty of time."

"Shaw, you shouldn't have answered Mr. Worden like that."

"Like what?"

"You know what I mean."

"I don't like him."

"Not like him! And he's been so kind to me!"

"He ought to be. There aren't many women who would have worked like you
have for him."

"But that shouldn't make you dislike him."

"I dislike everyone you work for. I want you to be independent."

"The time will soon come. It's wonderful to think you're earning money
already."

He drew a deep breath and looked down at her.

"Mother . . ." he said.

Her eyes filled with tears. "There is the station, Shaw. Have you your
ticket? I wish you would show me that railway pass. I've never seen
one."

                 *        *        *        *        *

He sat staring out of the window as the train sped through the night. At
first he saw the lights of villages, then, as it grew later, few lights
except those at the railway stations. The great train tore through
villages and stations without stopping, bound for the West, the land of
young hopes, of promise, of defeat. He strained toward it, his big young
body hunched at the window, his short past behind him, his future secret
in the night.

He thought of the thunderous speed of the flying train; thought of the
slow painful progress of the French pioneers hacking their way through
the forests, crossing the lakes, facing the treachery of the rapids, the
darker treachery of the Indians. For here the night was heavy with
romantic mystery. The negro porter bent over him.

"Kin Ah make your berth, sah?"

"Yes. I think I'll go to bed."

He savored the experience of going to bed early. How many years was it
since he had been in his bed before midnight? And generally two
o'clock--up in the morning at seven to study before breakfast. When had
he had enough sleep? Yet his brain seemed always cool, his eyes ready
for more reading. What part of him was tired, he wondered, for he was
conscious of weariness. Not his body, not his brain, not his nerves,
certainly not his spirit. He found no name for this weary something
which was in truth the flower of his youth, drooping and undefended.

The porter placed the steps for him to climb into the upper berth.

"Is it your first trip to the West, sah?"

"Yes."

"Goin' to make your home there, sah?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"Just to make your fortune, eh, sah? It's a great country for young men,
they say. Will it be ranching you're going to do, sah?"

"No. Forestry." He could not say the word without experiencing a vibrant
tightening of the nerves. He looked intently into the negro's eyes. "My
work is to be among trees."

White teeth gleamed in the dark face.

"Ah likes trees. Ah likes to sit in the shade of a nice tree, with a
nice gal, and have a little pleasant conversation. It's a great change
after life on the trains. Ah hates trains, sah."

He drew the curtains about the berth. The whistle shrieked at a
crossing. The roadbed became less smooth. There was a grinding, a
jerking, a swaying. Then by degrees the level swift movement returned,
speed increased. The man in the berth below began to snore. Shaw
switched on the light and looked at his watch. Eleven o'clock and he in
bed! Prepared to lose precious hours in sleep. For some reason the
curtained privacy of the berth reminded him of the pirates' cave. For
three nights this was his own. For three days the new country would
unroll itself before him. And then . . . the new life. He lay with
closed eyes but not unseeing. Forests flowed like rivers before him, his
eyes marking, even as they sped, the various species of the trees and
which ones thrived together. Then out from a wood of pines his mother's
face peered at him, sorrowful but steadfast. He looked long at it and
his lips formed her name. He turned his head on the pillow and pressed
his fingers on his eyeballs. The rhythmic throbbing of the train
stirred, rather than soothed, him. He lay, feeling the drawing of his
breath an intolerable burden in the close heat. The boundless unfolding
of the forests before his shut lids became unbearable. In his mother's
eyes there was reproach.

Again he switched on the light. He took a leather bag from the foot of
the berth and out of it one of a packet of books given him by the
Minister of the Department at Ottawa. He rested his head, with the fine
brown hair standing disheveled, on his hand and read far into the night.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The surveying party moved on and on. With their pack horses, their
tents, their supplies, their Indian guides and half-breed workers, they
penetrated the lonely forests, the winding reaches of rivers that not
long since had been roaring torrents in flood. Spruces and firs loomed
black behind birches and maples, aspens and alders. The heat of the sun
brought sweet scents from earth and bracken. In grassy spaces flowers
blazed bright as butterflies, butterflies drowsed like flowers.
Sometimes they came on a bear drinking from the rim of a little hidden
lake. Sometimes the great antlers of a moose thrust through the foliage,
his eyes staring in wonder and gathering alarm.

Ian joined the party at Dauphin. At the earliest possible moment he had
transformed himself into a woodsman, as far as clothes could do it. He
made friends with the men, where Shaw was reserved. Some religious
magnetism which he had inherited from a line of Presbyterian pastors
induced casual acquaintances to tell him of their spiritual experiences.
In his vicinity there was always talk. In Shaw's, unless Ian were there,
long periods of monosyllabic concentration. At night the two talked
together in their tent.

Sometimes the flap of the tent was left open and they lay looking at the
moon as it mounted the dark blue sky and hung high above the aspiring
peaks of the spruces. The call of the coyote came to them out of the
forest. The cooling earth sent out its sweet night smells.

Once Ian asked--"Shaw, do you believe in God?"

"No, I don't think I do. Not in a personal God."

Ian raised himself on his elbow, his eyes bright in the moonlight. "Not
believe in God! On a night like this!"

"I don't see what difference the moon makes. It's a pagan-looking thing,
anyway."

"That's just what I mean. On such a night I have to keep remembering
that the real God is a Scotch Presbyterian or I'd turn pagan myself. At
the same time I find the thought of God's personal interest in me very
comforting. I think it matters terribly to God whether Ian Blair is good
or bad, happy or unhappy. Don't you think it matters to God what becomes
of you, Shaw?"

"No, I don't think it matters."

"If everything went wrong with your affairs and you felt yourself in an
awful fix, would you pray to God to help you out?"

"I might. I can't tell."

"Well, I'd pray for you. I'd say, 'Look here, God, it's up to You to
help Shaw Manifold. Don't You go turning the light of Your countenance
from him. He's worth a dozen like me. He's worthy of all exaltation. Oh,
Lord, keep Your holy eye on Shaw Manifold!' "

"You sound like a revivalist, Ian."

"I feel like one--or a Catholic priest. I'd like to be a Catholic
priest."

"If your father heard you say that . . ."

"My father doesn't understand me in the least. Do you remember the
Jesuit father we saw yesterday? The one with the beard? When I looked
into his face I thought--'You could understand me far better than my own
father could.' "

Sometimes, when it rained, they lay listening to the raindrops on the
canvas, reading by the flare of a torch or writing home. Once Ian
said:--

"I'm writing to Elspeth. Have you a nice message for her?"

"Give her my kind regards."

"Is that the best you can do?"

"Well, affectionate regards, then. Tell her I try to keep her brother in
order."

Ian chuckled. "I'll soften the blow as much as I can. Elspeth admires
you."

The torchlight on his face gave it a strange charm. Shaw contemplated it
with pleasure, then returned to his book.

After a little Ian remarked, as though to himself:--

"The young man doesn't believe in religion and he doesn't believe in
love."

"I've had no experience in either."

"Aren't you pining for experience in love?"

"No. Are you?"

"Yes. Ever since we've been on this trip."

"It's a funny time to choose."

"Why?"

"There are no facilities."

Ian rolled over in his blanket. "You make me weak, Shaw. My heart also,
in the midst of my body, is even like melting wax."

One evening, after three days of hard work in great heat, men tortured
by mosquitoes, horses by flies, they came on a trapper's cabin by the
side of a winding river. A strong breeze had risen and blown the
mosquitoes away. The red sunlight turned the ants that swarmed the trail
into metal particles moving in a strange pattern. Spiders came out of
their retreats to devour the flies captured.

Outside the cabin a girl of nine was minding a half-naked baby that
crept towards the advancing men and horses with a stare of wonder. A man
came out of the cabin and the figures of two women could be seen inside
the door. Shaw, in advance of the others, discovered something so
strangely familiar in the man that he had no words for greeting. Where
had he seen him before? That superb body, now naked to the waist, he had
seen it exposed before, but when? That classic head, with the close
waves of fair hair, that insolent face that had repelled and attracted
him, but where? Obviously the man did not know him. He came forward and
said:--

"Good evening, and what can I do for you?"

As soon as he spoke, Shaw recognized him. He was the hired man, Jack
Searle, who had run off with the neighboring farmer's daughter, the girl
her family had called their "ewe lamb."

"I hope you'll know me again," said Searle.

"I do know you," returned Shaw. "You're Jack Searle."

The man looked wary, then blank. "You're mistaken, mister. I've never
heard the name before." He turned to the door of the cabin. "What's my
name, missus?"

"Jack Potts," answered one of the women.

"There," said the man triumphantly.

"I thought," said Shaw, "that you and I once bathed together in a pool
in an Ontario wood."

"How old were you then?"

"About nine."

"Good Lord!" Searle's face cleared. He advanced and offered Shaw his
hand. "I wonder I didn't recognize your face. But how you've grown! I do
call myself Potts sometimes. Just a whim." Their hands clasped. "In this
country all men are equal, eh? What's your job?"

"I have brought a party on a forestry expedition."

The others came up, dismounted, and Shaw introduced Ian. They decided to
camp by the cabin for the night. The river flowed cool and dark. The
tethered horses began to crop the short grass.

"Come into the cabin and have a drink," said Searle. "Whiskey is one
thing I have got."

He led the way indoors. The baby crept across his path and he picked it
up and set it on his shoulder. The young men followed him, then the
little girl, in ragged frock and bare legs and arms, her skin tanned a
dark brown, contrasting strangely with her silvery fair hair. She stared
boldly into the faces of the strangers.

Inside the cabin there was a sickly smell of drying skins.

From the ceiling a haunch of venison wrapped in dingy muslin was hung up
to dry. The one small window was dimmed by flies, so that the poverty of
the furnishings was only half revealed. Searle placed two chairs and a
box by the table. He produced a half bottle of whiskey and, with it in
his hand, nodded toward the older of the two women.

"My wife, gentleman. I think you've met her before."

Ian was mystified, but Shaw's eyes met hers with embarrassment and
compassion. There was no need for either. From under her untidy hair she
regarded him coolly. She was obviously in a family way, her face and
figure heavy.

"I guess you've forgotten me, but I remember you all right. You were a
solemn-looking little fellow. I used to see you in church with the
Gowers. How are all the folks?"

"Pretty well, thanks," answered Shaw. He took the rather dirty hand she
extended. Was this the pet daughter, the darling of a family, the "ewe
lamb"? What had Potts or Searle, or whoever he was, done to her?

She brought three tin mugs and set them on the table. Ian and Shaw took
the chairs that were offered them. Searle seated himself on the box. He
poured some of the spirits into each of the mugs.

"Here's to us," he said, "and to hell with the Government!"

"My friend and I can't very well drink to that," said Shaw. "We're
employed by the Government."

"Very well," said Searle easily. "Out of compliment to you, we'll drink
a health to the Government. Let's hope the people will give it rope
enough to hang itself with."

They drank, the rank liquor distasteful to the youths. Ian looked
inquiringly at Mrs. Searle.

"I'm afraid we don't remember each other," he said, with his boyish
smile.

"I remember you. You are the minister's son. I was Laura Page."

"Don't you call to mind how she eloped with me?" put in Searle, with the
smile that made his handsome face so disagreeable.

Ian flushed. "Yes, I remember now. Is this your little girl?"

"Yes. Her name's Gloria. She's going to be a beauty, eh? When she grows
up and gets a real good bath."

Ian laughed, his face already flushed by the spirits. Shaw had in him
the quality of a hard drinker. He felt no effect from what he had taken.
The child clambered on to Ian's lap and pushed her hands in his pockets.
She found a bar of chocolate and began to devour it.

Searle had put the baby into the younger woman's arms. Shaw saw now that
she was a half-breed girl. The baby had skin and features like hers, but
it had blue eyes and fair curling hair. It began to cry and she carried
it outside to show it the horses. It was Shaw's first experience of such
a situation. It was as though a dark gulf had opened before him. He had
a mind to stride out of the cabin. He felt a little sick and his eyes
moved shamefacedly to the woman's. She returned his look coolly. There
was a cynical half-smile on her lips. Was it possible that this was
Laura Page? Was this the "ewe lamb"? What had Searle done to her?

He was saying--"Why shouldn't I hate the Government? They put us on land
that never raised a crop. If it wasn't drought it was sandstorms or
locusts. Then we were sold out. We've been knocked about from pillar to
post. The Government don't help us. It just leaves us to starve. I'm a
trapper now, but whether we can survive on that . . . I say, can you
give me a job?"

"I'm afraid I can't."

"Never mind. You will one day. I said you would grow up to be somebody,
didn't I? What I prophesy always comes true. And I prophesy that you'll
give me a good job yet. Have another drink?"

They refused, but he would not let them go. The company of man, so long
denied him, was like rain to the parched land. He talked on--the youths
listened to his railing against the Government, his reminiscences of
foreign countries, his ribald stories, till fatigue overcame them.

They had a cool plunge in the river, then their evening meal cooked over
the campfire. The shapes of the tethered horses were melting into the
shadows of the trees. Then men, Indian, half-breed, and white, lay in
relaxed postures on the bank of the river, the flare of a match
occasionally lighting up a swarthy face or the curve of a tiny spark
marking the tossing of a cigarette end into the water. Cool night smells
drifted from under the trees, overcoming the scents from the sun-baked
earth in the open. There was a light in the cabin. Shaw had a wary eye
on the open window, for he had a suspicion that Searle might attempt to
sell whiskey to the half-breeds or Indians.

He and Ian sat apart, recalling all they could of the elopement of Laura
Page with the hired man.

"I remember," said Ian, "that the Pages were very decent people. My
father always said what a pity it was that your family and they were on
bad terms."

"It was over the boundary line between the farms. And I think my folks
sneered at the Pages for spoiling their daughter. Calling her their ewe
lamb and that sort of thing."

"Isn't it awful?" asked Ian, jerking his head in the direction of the
cabin. "If her family could see her now . . . But they cast her off and
I think that was a shame. She must be terribly unhappy."

"I don't think she is," said Shaw.

"Not unhappy! Think of the way she's living! The place is filthy."

"I don't believe she cares."

"Then it's because her spirit is broken."

"I don't think it is."

"What about the half-breed girl and her baby? Anyone can see that it is
Searle's."

"I think she loves him so much that nothing else matters."

"Shaw, you are a funny fellow! You said the other night that you weren't
interested in love."

"Neither I am--not for myself--yet. But there is something in that
woman's face--"

"I suppose you're practised in discovering expressions of love--you saw
so many aunts in that state. Beaty, for instance."

Shaw pushed out his lips. "I don't call that love. But this . . . I do."

Ian laughed. "My father would have a name for it. He'd have a name for
it, smelling of fire and brimstone. . . . That's a strange child they've
got. Gloria. . . . She simply wouldn't let me alone."

They sat in silence for a space. The swift darkness of the West was
falling but it soon would be light again. A full moon was rising beyond
the river. Its light, touching a cloud, threw its golden white
reflection on the water. A waterfowl was calling plaintively. The little
girl ran out of the cabin across the grass and threw herself on Ian.

"Come," she begged. "Come--I want to show you my kittens. They're in the
shed."

"But they'll be asleep and so should you."

She pressed her cheek to his. "No, they'll not. And I never go to bed
till I feel like it. Come along!"

"Why don't you ask my friend to go? He'll be jealous."

"I only like you. Come! Come!" She tugged at his hand.

Ian was flattered. He rose stiffly and allowed himself to be dragged
where she chose. Shaw was glad she had let him alone. He stretched
himself on the grass, savoring his solitude, listening to the quiet
lapping of the moonlit river. Inside the cabin he could see Searle's
naked torso gleaming in the lamplight. He had got three white men in
there and they were playing poker.

Shaw did not hear the approaching step. He was startled when the voice
of Mrs. Searle came from behind him. He rose, facing her. Her bare arms
were folded on her breast, a lock of dark hair hung across her calm
forehead. She was saying:--

"I suppose you write home regularly."

"Yes." His eyes were troubled. What was she going to say to him?

"I've a message I want you to give your folks. I guess no one ever
speaks of me now."

"I haven't heard your name for a long while."

She drew a deep breath and stared at the ground. "Well, I guess they
haven't forgotten. Will you give the message?"

"Yes--I'll be writing in a day or two."

"Tell your mother that, if ever my name is mentioned, she may say that I
have never been sorry for anything I've done. Tell her I'm happy and I
don't regret anything, will you?"

"Yes, I'll tell her."

She gave him a piercing look. "Do you believe I'm telling the truth?"

"Yes, Mrs. Searle."

"Do you believe I wouldn't change places with anyone? Well, whether you
believe it or not, it's true. There's other things in life beside
respectability. I s'pose I shouldn't say that to a young man, but I
don't believe what other people say matters much to you. You'll go your
own way--like I did mine." She turned and left him. He heard her calling
the child.

He sat looking across the darkling shadows of the river. The camp was
becoming quiet. Now and again came the muffled movements of a horse or
its deep indrawing of breath. Shaw gazed into the darkness of the trees.
They stood motionless, attentive, as though waiting for him. He thought
of the forests, how they stretched on and on, serene, majestic, but so
vulnerable. He thought of his life that was to be spent guarding them,
fostering them, seeking to understand them, creating them from the
tender saplings. Then he thought of Mrs. Searle.

"She loves that man," he thought, "like I love the trees."




                               CHAPTER X


In March of the next year Ian Blair was waiting for Shaw in the lounge
of a Vancouver hotel. He was so impatient that he could not keep still
but fretted up and down the room, now looking out of the window into the
street, now rustling the pages of a newspaper, to the annoyance of an
elderly British colonel who was reading the _Spectator_ and sipping a
liqueur.

At last, when Ian was not looking for him, Shaw appeared in the doorway.
He looked so tall, so gaunt in his loose-fitting clothes, so mature yet
so oddly appealing, that for an instant Ian let his eyes rest on him in
appreciation, without speaking. Then he took three strides to his side.

"Blood on your brow," he said, in his clear voice.

"Blood on your brow, brother," answered Shaw, and touched Ian's forehead
with the tips of his fingers.

The elderly colonel glared at them astonished.

"Bloody deeds are to be done," proceeded Ian.

"Our deeds will be bloody indeed, brother."

The colonel riveted his blue gaze on them, he compressed his lips under
his white moustache.

"Shall we go to my room and gloat over them?"

"You have spoken, my brother."

The colonel rose with surprising agility and followed them to the door.
He made a note of the number of the room to which they retired.

Inside the room Ian threw an arm about Shaw.

"Isn't it grand that we're to work together again?"

"Yes. And isn't it lucky I was able to cut out the spring term?"

"How did you manage that?"

"Well, I did pretty well in the University--"

"Pretty well! I know your 'pretty well'! I suppose you swept the
professors right off their feet. Why be so modest, Shaw? I'm at the
other end of the scale. I get through exams by the skin of my teeth. I
think there's something fine in both ways, don't you?"

"I think you're a clever fellow, Ian, but bone lazy."

"Well, that's neither here nor there. Tell me what you were going to."

"It was only that I did pretty well and so they have given me leave of
absence for this term. It will be taken up with work I know already and
will not be much use to me. The money will."

"To say nothing of the fun we'll have!"

"Yes, to say nothing of the fun," answered Shaw with his grave smile.

They sat down opposite each other by the window.

"You haven't changed a bit, Shaw. Your smile is just the same as when we
played at pirates and you had a licking to face afterwards."

"I didn't face that," answered Shaw, his smile now a little grim. "It
came from behind. Lord, I used to be so sore the next day I could hardly
sit at my desk!"

"It was a darned shame."

"Did you see any of my folks before you left?"

"I saw your mother, Shaw."

What was there in Ian's voice? A note of anxiety? Or was it only
compassion? Was his mother ill? He asked, his eyes on his clasped
hands:--

"How does she look?"

"Quite well, but rather tired."

"She works pretty hard. She's matron in a boys' school, one of those
private schools where the little devils are pampered."

"Just like our school! Do you remember Miss McKay and her pimples? I
wonder where she is."

"I wonder. . . . You're sure my mother wasn't ill?"

"Oh yes. She was full of your trip out here. But I think it was a great
disappointment to her that you didn't go home last Christmas."

Shaw's mind turned back to the logging camp where he had worked in the
holidays. He saw the Maine woods, deep in snow, heard the crackling
crash of falling trees, the fluent oaths of the French Canadian foreman,
smelled the resinous sweetness of the newly severed wood, the hot
flapjacks at suppertime.

"I couldn't go home," he said. "I worked in a pulpwood camp. Don't you
remember?"

"Yes, I remember." He looked into Shaw's strongly marked features. How
the fellow had worked! He noted the set look about his mouth, the
sharpness of the cheekbones.

"Did you like it?" he asked.

"Yes. It was a pretty good life. And there was lots of food. Coarse--but
plenty of it."

There was a satisfaction in his voice as he said the last words that
hurt Ian. Was it possible that Shaw sometimes went hungry?

"Speaking of food," said Ian, "I'm ravenous. Let's have some grub."

"In this place!" exclaimed Shaw. "Not me! Whatever brought you here?"

Ian was crestfallen. "Do you think it's too grand? I suppose going about
with the Scotts has given me a taste for luxury. Did I tell you that
Douglas is paying attention to Elspeth?"

"No! Is he really?" It was an effort to Shaw to keep his voice calm, his
expression approving. Douglas Scott and Elspeth! Why, she was _his_
friend! Douglas had no right to butt in.

"It would be a good match for Elspeth," said Ian.

"Yes, I suppose it would be a good match."

Between him and Ian rose Douglas Scott's full-blooded, good-looking
face, his bold eyes; Elspeth's smooth little head, the frilled organdie
dress she had worn when he last saw her. But what could he do about it?
It was not for him to choose her admirers. For an uncontrollable moment
his face revealed his resentment, his disappointment.

"I had sooner it was you, old man," said Ian. "But you don't care for
girls, do you?"

"Not very much," answered Shaw. "But I like Elspeth. I hope she'll have
a happy life." He put back his shoulders in a characteristic movement.
"I'm going to find a boarding place and then see about the supplies and
the boat."

Ian sprang up. "If this is too grand for you," he said, "it's too grand
for me!"

As they walked down the street, their steps timed in an easy swing,
their spirits were buoyant. They had only to push back the boughs of
circumstance and gather the fruit of achievement. To find themselves
close together again made them, for the first time, conscious of love
between them. They had accepted each other casually. Now they realized
what it meant to them to swing along the streets of a strange city
together, now and again their arms touching, scarcely speaking. Each
completed the other. To be with Shaw brought Ian ambition, the largeness
of life, a compass for his yearning for volatile adventure. When he was
with the Scotts he felt himself a thwarted boy, eager to do all they did
but hampered by lack of money and parental disapproval. When he was with
Shaw he felt older, freer, capable of fine things.

Ian's gayety, his zest in adventure, his boyish laugh, made Shaw less
serious. Though he was his junior by two years, Shaw had a protective,
almost paternal feeling towards Ian. In his heart he associated Ian with
Cristabel and Elspeth.

They moved from the area of fine shops to the shops whose windows were
crowded with sledge hammers, big saws with teeth to bite into the
toughest wood, axes, augers and logging boots, oilskins, blankets, and
dungaree trousers. They stood staring into the windows at these,
savoring their familiarity with such things, feeling hardy and knowing,
till there lounged up beside them a seasoned woodsman, impassive, mildly
critical, his hands deep in the pockets of his dungarees, a squirt of
tobacco juice issuing from his lips. They felt suddenly young and
inexperienced.

The streets were busy, for there was a boom on. Activity and
exhilaration were in the air. Shaw and Ian were to work for an Eastern
syndicate which was taking up timber limits. With another man they were
to travel up the coast in a steam launch. To find a boarding house, to
make the acquaintance of the man, to get the launch ready for the trip,
these were the first things to do. As though their lives depended on it,
they threw themselves into accomplishing them.

Ian was dubious of the boarding house chosen by Shaw. He had never spent
a night in such a doubtful-looking place. Were the beds clean? What was
the strange smell? Nothing but Shaw's imperturbable front, the feeling
that to Shaw these things were insignificant, reconciled Ian to spending
several days there.

The steam launch was a delight to them. The look of it, the smell of it,
the knowledge that it was to be their headquarters for months, made them
eager to begin the new chapter. They set about storing the _Gertie May_
with provisions of tinned foods, smoked meats, biscuits, and all the
paraphernalia of their work, with the zest with which they had stored
the pirates' cave. In and out of her they clambered, under the eyes of
loafers and loggers who hung about the wharf: the sun coming out
suddenly hot, burning their cheeks, turning the harbor to a shield of
blue that wrinkled into dazzling wavelets.

When the man who was to run the launch, to be their guide, to work with
them, an old-timer described as tough and reliable, appeared on the
wharf after many inquiries, they were for a moment filled with dismay.
Was this the man? This sodden, blear-eyed, dirty fellow, in greasy
dungarees and crumpled shirt? He grinned at them, showing his broken
black teeth in his unshaven face. He was apologetic and about sixty. His
name was Varney.

He explained in a husky voice that he had spent the time while he waited
for them in bad company. He had gambled and drunk up all he had made in
his winter's work. Now it was over. He was sober and would remain so.
When they had been with him an hour they trusted him entirely. They felt
like babes beside him.

The night before they left for the North, Varney was missing. They were
very anxious and made the rounds of the saloons and bars.

They found no trace of Varney but in one of the lowest of the saloons
they discovered Searle, whom they had last seen on the side of Riding
Mountain with his wife, the half-breed girl, and his children. Shaw had
often thought of him, both relishing and shrinking from the idea of
meeting him again.

The room was full of men and fogged with smoke. They stood by the door,
Shaw looking over heads, Ian between. A French Canadian logger was
sitting on the edge of a table, a fiddle tucked under his chin, his
black hair falling across his face. He played with extravagant zest, his
heel tapping out the beats, his thin body swaying. In a cleared space
Searle was dancing. The dance was wild, uncouth, with stampings and
snapping of the fingers, but the beauty of his body and his face,
despite ragged clothes and unshaven cheeks, was such that all his
movements were arresting.

"Searle!" exclaimed Ian, pressing Shaw's arm.

"Yes. He looks pretty drunk."

"Go it! Go it! Good for you! Dance, you son----!" Encouragement and
insults were hurled at him. He heard neither. His face was as wild as
his dancing. The chucker-out stood behind the bar staring at him, his
hands ready, his wary eye fixed, a grin flickering on his pockmarked
face.

A big Swede was about to raise a glass of whiskey to his lips when
Searle, with a swift movement, kicked it out of his hand. The glass was
shattered; the spirits splashed into the Swede's face. He sprung towards
Searle, who, without missing a beat, continued his dance. The Swede
struck him!

"Let him alone!" shouted the chucker-out. "I'll fire him!"

"Vat about my viskey?" stormed the Swede.

"You'll get some more!"

There was confusion. Searle was hustled towards the door. With an ugly
grin he began to resist; then he saw Ian and Shaw.

"My friends--" he stammered, "my dear friends!" and began to cry.

"Are you his friends?" demanded the chucker-out.

"Yes," answered Shaw.

"Well, get him out of here, then, before he gets his head stove in."

The young men led him through the dirty hall into the cool moonlit
night. Blood was trickling down his cheek.

"Godblessyou," he stammered. "Was never s'glad to see anyone in m'life.
Comeanhaveadrink." He put his hand to his face and stared blankly at its
reddening. "Why--I been hit! Tha' bloody scoundrel hit me!"

"Where do you live?" asked Shaw.

"Tha's right! Come and see us! The missus will be delighted . . .
welcome you."

"Where do you live?" repeated Shaw.

"Live?" He looked about him blankly.

"Do you know where your wife is?" Ian asked, a ministerial note coming
into his voice.

An odd light flickered in Searle's eyes. "Yes, I know where she is. You
come along and I'll show you. She'll be glad to see you . . . old
friends, girlhood days . . . and all that. . . ." The night air was
having its effect on him. He gave his unpleasant smile and led the way
steadily down a side street.

The houses were dingy and dilapidated, though none of them had been
built longer than twenty years. It was getting late and there were
lights in only a few. They met a group of Japanese sailors who turned to
stare at them, then passed on, their strange tongue clacking on the
quiet air. The three turned from this street into a still dingier one,
and from it into a lane. There were five dilapidated houses here. Searle
opened the door of the last and led the way into a dark passage. A thin
blade of light shone beneath a door. At the sound of their steps the
door opened and Laura Searle faced them. Her hair was plaited and she
had a shawl over her nightdress. She carried a shirt which she had been
mending.

At the sight of two men behind Searle an expression of anxiety made her
face look wan. She peered into the darkness to see who they were. They
came into the light and she exclaimed in relief:--

"Oh, it's you, Shaw Manifold! And Ian Blair! I wasn't expecting
visitors, but come in."

Then she saw the blood on Searle's face and gave a cry.

"It's nothing, missus," he said jauntily. "I just ran against a blasted
Swede. It don't hurt. Get me a basin of water and a rag." He reeled to a
chair and dropped into it.

White but calm, with her lips sucked in, Mrs. Searle placed two chairs
for the youths. Ian sat with downcast eyes, ashamed to look about the
sordid room, wondering if he dared offer money to the Searles, his heart
mild with compassion. Suddenly he saw, as though in a dream, his father
kneeling in prayer. For a moment everything else was blotted out. Then
he thought, "If he were really here he'd do something about it," and
admiration for his father entered him in a warm tide.

Shaw was staring at the cut. As Mrs. Searle bathed it he went to her
side and examined it. Searle grinned up at them, his classic head
resting on his wife's arm. "It's nothing," he repeated.

"No, it's not serious," agreed Shaw.

His eyes met Mrs. Searle's and hers said--"I'm not sorry for anything
I've done. I love him."

Searle asked--"Where are you fellows staying?"

They told him, and he exclaimed in chagrin:--

"You ought to be here! We take in lodgers. You'd better move here
to-morrow. We'll look after you well, shan't we, Laura?"

"They'd better not come here," she answered curtly.

"Well, if it isn't better than the shambles they're staying in . . ."

She interrupted--"It isn't half as good and you know it, Jack."

"We are leaving to-morrow on a trip up the coast," said Shaw.

"What for?" demanded Searle eagerly.

"We're working for a syndicate. They're taking up timber limits."

"Get me a job," said Searle. "You can, if you try! I've always said
you'd get me a job. Why, when you were a little boy, I said you'd do
things. I talked to you about your future, didn't I? And my missus--she
was your neighbor. For God's sake get me a job! Do you know what I'm
doing? Beachcombing, by God! Gathering in stray logs--anything that's
cast up. Listen to that! That's what my wife's got to put up with."

The front door had been flung open, stumbling feet were mounting the
stairs and husky voices were singing:--

                     "Has anybody here seen Kelly?
                     K--E--double L--Y."

"They're all right," said Mrs. Searle calmly.

"I'm afraid I can't give you a job," answered Shaw. "There are three of
us already, all we are supposed to need."

"You were saying this morning," said Ian, "that we could do with a
fourth."

"There now!" exclaimed Searle. "I knew you could find me a job."

"I can't promise. I'll have to see a member of the syndicate to-morrow
morning." He was half annoyed with Ian for encouraging Searle. What
would it be like to have him as a companion for months? He believed
Searle was a good worker. He remembered having heard that of him on the
farm.

Stumbling feet and more singing sounded from the room above:--

               "For his hair is red and his eyes are blue
               And he is Irish through and through--
               Has anybody here seen Kelly? . . ."

Shaw asked--"What about Mrs. Searle staying alone here?"

"Don't worry about her! We're being turned out of here--can't pay our
rent."

"What would she do? And the children?" Shaw suddenly remembered the
coming baby, the half-breed girl and her child. "There were other
children, weren't there?" He reddened a little.

Searle answered with dignity--"Jinny got married to a French half-breed.
Our second child didn't live. There's just the missus and Gloria. We
know a parson who will give them shelter while I'm away. I'll save every
penny and we'll make a fresh start. What d'you say?"

Looking up suddenly, Shaw saw Mrs. Searle's face, alight with a pale
hope that seemed like the last flare of all hope, a tremulous shining
before despair. His eyes moved from her face to the basin of water on
the table, reddened by Searle's blood. "I'll try," he muttered.

The next morning when they went to the launch they found Varney waiting
for them, clean and spruce.

"I hear," he said truculently, "that you wuz combin' the town fer me.
Did you think I wuz off on another spree?"

Shaw looked him in the eye.

"I might," he said.

Varney glared. "Might what?"

"Might have thought so."

"Well, I tell you, boss, I'm not that sort. What do you take me for? I
spent yesterday with my old mother. I s'pose you think a man of my age
hasn't a mother, but I have and she's eighty-five!"

Shaw did not believe him but he spoke soothingly to him. Varney began
vehemently to put the supplies in place.

Shaw approached "Authority" in its luxurious hotel. It was arranged that
Searle was to be of the party. Authority was anxious that the work
should be done as expeditiously as possible. The cost of the extra man
was insignificant. But Shaw was troubled. Had he done right to take on
Searle? Then he remembered that expression on Mrs. Searle's face. The
petted daughter--the "ewe lamb."

On the morning they left she came to the launch with Searle. Their
little girl held to their hands. She recognized Ian at once and called
out to him:--

"Hello, mister! I wish you'd take me with you!"

Ian, standing in the launch, held out his arms and she leapt into them.
She had on a clean dress and her hair was smooth, but her stockings were
twisted on her legs and there were knots in her shoelaces. Mrs. Searle
had contrived a sort of half-tidiness on her own person. The hairpins
looked ready to fall out of her hair. Searle was washed and shaved. He
had a large piece of sticking plaster on his head. He was proud of his
wife and child and kept glancing from them to Ian and Shaw to draw
attention to them. He seemed full of energy and anxious to begin helping
at once. But Shaw noticed that Varney gave him a disapproving look.

It was hard to get rid of the child. She clung first to Ian, then to her
father, when the launch was about to be pushed off. Shaw had difficulty
in hiding his annoyance. It was easy to see that the parents could do
little to control Gloria.

Mrs. Searle said in a low voice to Shaw:--

"It was kind of you to get work for Jack. I'll never forget it." She
smiled into his eyes.

"How pretty she is!" he thought. No, not just pretty, there's something
beautiful in her face. Yet she had always seemed to him an
ordinary-looking person. The fresh morning wind from the sea blew her
hair back from her face. She put her hand to it. Searle laid his arm
about her shoulders and whispered something to her. Then he jumped on
board. His child clambered on after him.

"What!" Ian exclaimed jocularly. "You here again?"

"Gloria!" called her mother.

"I'm going with you!" The child wrapped herself round Ian.

Searle picked her up, kissed her, and carried her to her mother. Varney
started the engine. The launch moved out on the water, spreading a small
wake behind it. Varney sounded the shrill whistle and looked
triumphantly at Shaw. They were off.

Searle stood waving his arm.

Feminine voices came from the wharf.

"Good-bye! Good-bye, Daddy!"

Ian's eyes rested tenderly on the figure of the child. "Lovely little
thing," he said.

"She's a badly behaved kid," said Shaw. "She needs a good spanking."

Now the launch moved out quickly. Gulls followed it, crying out, as
though in derision of the enterprise.

"Ah, ya, ya, ya!" they cried, swooping, dipping, swinging on the wind.
One hovered low, staring into the faces of the men. "Ya! Ya! Ya!" it
cried, its bright eyes full of scorn.

"Ya! Ya, yourself!" retorted Varney, his black teeth showing under his
drooping moustache.

The gull, abashed at hearing its own language, dropped to the water and
rested there with breast pouted till a cry from its mate recalled it and
it rose, the pair of them swimming against the blue sky like tossed-up
flowers.

Now the figures of woman and child looked like two dolls. They were
turning away from the wharf. Searle sat down beside Varney and grinned
ingratiatingly. He had a feeling that Varney had taken a dislike to him.

"What's the matter with your face?" asked Varney.

The grin faded on Searle's lips. "What have you got against my face?"

"I mean it looks as though you'd been in a fight."

"I ran against a door."

"Oh, is that all!"

"That's all."

The breeze blew fresh across the harbor. On it came the salt tang of the
sea. Landward Vancouver curved about the shore, low except for its few
tall American-style buildings. Shaw and Ian lounged together in the
stern, their faces serene, five months of companionship and work that
they liked ahead of them.

Soon the town was out of sight. How quickly the strength of the forest
obliterated the print of man's hand! The forests pressed to the very
shore, clustered pinnacles of cedar, tall slender pines, sombre spruce.
Shaw's eyes swept the forest, its strength spread out before him to be
gauged, to be surrendered. He felt his purpose strong in him and his
courage high. One year more at college and he would be free! The
long-drawn-out burden of his education could be cast off forever. In the
strength of manhood he would set his face forward, the chains of youth
would be broken.

Ian spoke. "It's grand to be young!"

Shaw turned to look in his face.

"Well, don't you think so, Shaw?"

"Yes," he agreed, "but not too young. Sometimes I've hated being a boy.
From the time I was eight I've wanted to be grown-up. I've more reason
for it than most fellows; I was just thinking that I've only one year
more to put in."

"And I was thinking I'd like to go on being twenty-one forever." Ian
offered Shaw a cigarette.

"No, thanks."

"But you like them?"

"Yes. But it's an expensive habit."

"This isn't costing you anything."

"I won't smoke yours."

"Do you ever forget?" exclaimed Ian, exasperated.

"No." Shaw set his lips almost sullenly. His mind returned to the
thought of college and the year that was past. He had never deviated
from the iron rule to spend no penny on himself that was not necessary.
He recalled his washing of his shirts and socks and the awkward mending.
The laying of heavy paper inside his shoes when the soles began to go.
The sponging of spots on his suits. The small, fine writing to save
paper. Above all, the saving on food. Moisture came from his jaws at the
thought of it. He had had a roommate, named Lunt, as saving as himself.
Lunt was a raw-boned boy from Vermont. Together they had spent some time
in studying dietetics to find out how little the human body could be
nourished on. They had had a gas ring in their room and had cooked most
of their meals on it. Lunt's father had sent him a barrel of apples and
they had eaten them all--raw, stewed, sliced, and fried. Apples,
potatoes, turnips, oatmeal, bread without butter. Sometimes a feed of
pork and beans at a restaurant. The worst was, in spite of all this
bulk, they were always hungry. Hunger and study--study and hunger. Shaw
got tired of seeing Lunt's cheekbones push sharper and sharper against
the skin. He got tired of his own reflection in the glass--the hungry
eyes, the set mouth, the broad pale forehead. Sometimes, after they went
to bed, they would amuse themselves by choosing what foods they would
like to have set before them.

"A big thick juicy steak," Lunt would say, "with fried onions."

"A slice of roast pork," Shaw would choose, "with a crisp rind and a
rich stuffing and applesauce--no, _not_ applesauce! I wish I mightn't
eat apples in any form for a year. Just the pork, with stuffing and
parsnips. And after that, lemon pie."

Lunt would interrupt--"After my steak--plum pudding, pumpkin pie, a
gallon of ice cream, and a pot of coffee!"

They would lie in the darkness gloating over the feast, their mouths
watering.

Shaw forgot where he was. The launch, the sea, vanished. He was in bed
with Lunt, with the noise of traffic in the street below and Lunt's bony
knees manoeuvring to get an undue share of the blankets.

He was roused by Varney's voice.

"Time for eatin'! Gosh, I'm that hungry I could eat my boots." On an
upturned box he had laid out some food. Searle was steering. Ian was
sketching on the back of an envelope.

With an effort Shaw drew his mind back to the launch. He looked
half-dazed at the three men, at the blue spread of sea and the great
March clouds so splendidly formed as to look solid as marble.

"I'm hungry too," exclaimed Ian. "What have you got?"

He had ham and hard-boiled eggs, a bottle of Crosse and Blackwell's
pickles, and coffee. He said:--

"Don't get it into your heads that we're goin' to live as high as this
all the time."

"What about shooting?" said Ian. "There should be game about."

"I'll cook you a moose steak one of these days," said Varney. He carried
some food on a plate to Searle, with an air less than friendly.

Like a nervous dog Searle ignored it at first, then he stretched out his
hand and, without looking at the plate, took a sandwich. In two bites it
was gone.

"What's the matter with that guy?" asked Varney.

"He's all right," said Shaw.

"Then why the hell does he look at the grub I gave him as though it was
poison?"

"He's a little shy."

"I s'pose that's why he got that punch on the mug--being so shy like."

"He's all right," repeated Shaw. He helped himself to another slice of
ham, then turned to Ian. "What were you drawing?"

Ian showed him the envelope, on which there was a sketch of trees.
Shaw's face lighted with pleasure. "It's good! Why didn't you tell me
you could sketch? I thought it was Elspeth who had the talent."

"Elspeth never draws now. I'm not much good at it. I wish I were."

Once again Shaw felt the bliss of possessing the box of paints. He was
sitting by the dining table, his grandfather staring over his beard, the
brush poised above the map; then the sensation of power as he turned the
sea to a lovely blue deepening to purple at its rim. He heard the solemn
ticking of the clock, his grandfather's blowing breath. . . . He turned
his mind away from the remembrance of the next day. . . . "I'd like to
keep this," he said, the sketch in one hand, a slab of bread in the
other, "if you don't want it."

"I'll do you a better one," said Ian. "I brought a drawing block in my
kit."

In the months that followed Ian made many sketches. At odd moments,
while eating his meals, or when they were in the launch, he drew trees,
mountains, the heads of his companions, his companions lounging or
sprawled in sleep. He desired only the pleasure of drawing. Shaw
collected the sketches.

Searle's head fascinated Ian. He drew it over and over, and, with almost
equal fascination, Varney's ugly features. He called them Beauty and the
Beast. Varney overheard him and was resentful, not toward Ian but toward
Searle.

They got on very badly. Not a day passed but hard words were exchanged,
and, in some queer fashion, they seemed to enjoy their bickering. The
way of speaking of each was irritating to the other. The cockney "oi"
sound, the clear "ings," of Searle's speech made everything he said
sound insulting to Varney. Varney had spent many years in the States and
had acquired a twang that sharpened every sneer. He had all the
advantage of the old-timer; Searle of the man who had traveled over most
of the globe. Varney suffered from toothache. The sight of Searle's
mouthful of white teeth was hateful to him.

Of what nationality was Searle? Shaw never would have asked him, but one
day Ian did.

"My mother," he answered, "was the daughter of a Greek restaurant
keeper. My father was a big Swede. . . . I was adopted by a cockney
bargee. But his wife, who was an Irishwoman, told me once that I was her
own son by an English lord and that all I'd been told before was lies.
But she was drunk at the time."

On and on up the coast the launch nosed her way. The sea was as
changeful as the Mediterranean. The forest rose denser and denser
against the towering peaks of the mountains. Sometimes a mist would draw
itself out of the sea, coiling round the launch with the finality of
doom. They lay drifting, imprisoned in the muffled air, the waves moving
listlessly against the side, the forest, the mountains, obliterated, as
an image by breath blown on a mirror. The men would speak in undertones,
their faces dimmed. Varney would gnaw a fresh chew of tobacco from the
plug. Searle would snap his white teeth on a broken thumbnail.

Then, like the curtain of a theatre raised to display the stage
garnished anew, the mist would rise, rolled up fold on fold to the
heavens; the dim sun, at first with the glimmer of old pewter, would
show through. Then its brightness intensified from pewter to silver
fresh from the mint, the new sovereign's head glorious on it. From
silver to fiery gold, the sun would give back color to the sea, to the
sky, to the pine and birch and spruce. The mountains would rear their
crested heads proudly. Varney would uncrouch himself and press an oily
finger on the lever that started the engine. The launch and the waves
would begin to talk together.

"_What_ a country!" Ian would exclaim. He never grew accustomed to the
space and grandeur of it. He would stand with face upturned to the
treetops that seemed designed for a support to the sky, his ears filled
with the rush of a mountain torrent whose banks were strewn with fragile
pink flowers. Down, down the river foamed beneath its flowery banks, its
waters chilled by distant pinnacles of snow, its onrushing guarded by
craggy steeps till, joyous and liberated, it surrendered itself to the
sea.

"It's too grand," Ian said once. "I could cry for its grandeur. I could
carve myself a pulpit here and preach to the beasts."

Shaw returned sombrely--"I could cry for what some of these loggers are
doing to the country."

It cut him to the heart to see how, without conscience, they butchered
the trees that were accessible to the coast, the trees that would fairly
fall into the sea, caring nothing for those who would come after,
spoiling the leases of forest land for the future! "If I had my way
. . ." he would say grimly.

"All you need is your grandfather's beard," Ian would laugh.

"And all you need is your father's character," Shaw would retort.

The strengthening and deepening of their friendship was a delight to
them. They had accepted each other casually, without emotion, in the old
days. Now, thrown together in the lonely forest, their emotions were
intensified. They felt that they wished they might never be separated
again.

With Varney and Searle it was the opposite. Each opened his eyes in the
mornings to resent the presence of the other. The young men were
sometimes afraid that they would come to blows.

"I'd back Searle," said Ian. "Look at the arms and back on him! He'd mop
the floor with Varney."

"I doubt it." Shaw would look the two over judicially. "I miss my guess
if your Beauty's face wouldn't be spoiled in the scrap. Varney's like
iron."

"Damned rusty old iron!" declared Ian.

"You're wrong and you know it. Look how he works!"

"Look how Searle works!"

"They're jealous of each other. In that way it's been a good
combination."

"The whole thing has been grand. I wish it could go on forever. I don't
believe I ever want to go back to civilization."

All four were nearly as brown as Indians. They had little flesh, but
that was firm and elastic. Their muscles were like steel. On and on they
moved through the great tracts leased by the timber company, estimating,
measuring, Shaw filling notebooks with his observations. Sometimes they
slept on the launch, sometimes in the tent on branches of sweet-smelling
spruce. Fish and a variety of game were theirs for the stretching out of
an arm, for the raising of a gun to the shoulder.

Varney could do anything. He could cook a moose steak, he could fry the
great pink salmon to a turn. He could mend clothes, he could play the
barber. It was a sight to fill Ian and Shaw with hilarity to see Varney
shave Searle; Searle, with his muscular legs sprawling, his shirt open
at the throat disclosing his fine bronzed chest, his golden head thrown
back and his face upturned to the razor. Varney bent over him with a
leer, half smothering him in lather, cursing the toughness of his beard,
always contriving to draw a little blood from him.

"You've cut me, you blighter!" Searle would snarl.

"You're lucky I haven't cut your throat," Varney would answer, mopping
up the blood.

Up and up the mountainous coast the four worked their way, passing
through valleys where pools as black as night held the still blacker
shadows of the hemlock and the spruce; the climbing craggy heights that
seemed thrown up in their grandeur to prove the helplessness of man;
making notes concerning gorges in whose depths the ice-cold waters of a
glacial stream were locked in the iron embrace of boulders.

Once in late August there was a forest fire inland and they had to go
far from the shore to escape the smoke and cinders that fell in black
flakes on the sea. They never knew where the fire was, but the sombre
curse of its smoke darkened their sky, smarted their eyeballs. The sun
was no longer a sun, but a sick red moon languishing from its rise. The
men lay hunched in the launch, their arms bent above their faces,
scarcely speaking. "Farther, let's get farther out," Shaw would urge,
the breath in his lungs cutting him. Out they would go, but the great
sullen waves kept washing them back toward the shore. Then, on the third
day, a west wind swept in from the mid-Pacific. The smoke was rolled
back, wild white clouds filled the stormy sky, the sullen waves lashed
themselves to foam, and Varney rushed the launch into a sandy cove.

Often they argued about the future of the country.

"It's the most glorious country in the world," Ian would say. "It has
everything. Lovely climate. Gorgeous scenery. Timber--fish--fruit--fur.
There are no limits to its possibilities."

"If only they don't butcher the forests!" were Shaw's often repeated
words.

"They will," Varney would say gloomily. "And Americans will develop it,
the way they've done with our mines. We'll do the work and they'll take
the profit. See if they don't!"

"Don't you worry! We'll look after it," Searle said.

"Who's we?" Varney asked truculently.

"England, of course."

"Hmph! I'll bet she won't invest her money here. You live long enough
and you'll see this country go broke!"

"Perhaps the Saskatchewan and Alberta," said Ian. "Never B.C."

"Wait and see!"

Grumbling, Varney went down to the shore. He was stiff and sore after a
hard day's work. He was becoming rheumatic from weeks of sleeping on
spruce boughs.

"Look here!" he shouted, after a little.

They went after him. He was standing astride of something stretched on
the stones.

"This poor loon," he said, "came up here full of schemes. He was as
chock-full of hope as Mr. Blair." There was disparagement in the
"Mister." "And look at him now!"

They saw the skeleton of a man that had lain there for more than a year,
the big teeth grinning up at them.

"It's a bad omen," said Searle, "finding this, just at the last. I hope
my wife and child are safe." He was full of superstitions. From then on
he strained toward the time of returning. He would tell anecdotes of the
child, his face softening. He produced a snapshot of Gloria and showed
it proudly.

Wife and child were not only safe but waiting on the wharf for him. They
looked as though they had never left it, except that there was a new
attempt at decency in their clothes. Searle was the first out of the
launch. The child flung herself on him.

Before following him and Varney, Ian and Shaw stood close together for a
space, their weather-beaten faces grave. It seemed unbelievable that the
hour of parting had come. Ian's voice was a little husky when he spoke.

"I've a sort of feeling, Shaw, that we've had the best time of our lives
this summer."

"It's only the beginning," said Shaw.




                               CHAPTER XI


Shaw and his roommate, Calvin Lunt, sat close to the window of their
room, so that they might get the last of the early spring twilight. Lunt
sat sideways to the window, his excessively long legs stretched out on a
chair, the book held close to his eyes. His profile thus silhouetted
showed a long drooping nose, a compressed upper lip and a jutting chin.
His black hair, through which he continually ran his bony fingers, fell
almost into his eyes. In his cheek he had a piece of gum which he
occasionally chewed savagely, then shifted to the other side of his
mouth and for a time forgot.

Shaw sat facing the window, his knees crossed, his chin cupped in his
hand, the open book on his knee, his face impassive as a mask of Study.
He had more flesh on him than Lunt; but his pallor and the blue shadows
beneath his eyes revealed the months of sedentary work and the lack of
nourishing food. To an observer who might have seen him spring out of
the launch at the end of the preceding summer, a comparison with what he
now was would have been striking.

The room had long ago reached the very apex of disorder and there had
since remained. Shaw might have made an effort at occasional tidying but
Lunt was incorrigible. Whatever garments he took off lay where they fell
till he needed them again. He never shut a drawer, so that those
belonging to him were always on the point of spewing out their contents.
By preference he kept his books on the floor, his pens and pencils on
the window sill. When in haste to make a note he would scribble it on
the wall, and many a time later Shaw would discover him shortsightedly
peering over its surface, as though in study of ancient Egyptian
calligraphy. His fingers were always stained with ink; he was troubled
by dandruff, which dusted the shoulders of his worn black coat; he
seldom took a bath for he said that bathing absorbed the strength he
needed for his studying; but his mouth was gentle, his sea-blue eyes
magnanimous, his gaunt body not without grace. Like Ian Blair he came of
a religious family, but he never talked of religion. Each night he knelt
long by the side of the bed, his face buried in his hands. Sometimes he
fell asleep in this posture and Shaw would wake him by tapping him on
the head. Lunt would ignore the tapping, but after a little would rise
with dignity and get into bed.

It had been a day of rain that had brightened to silvery radiance at its
end. There was no sunset but now an orange afterglow spread over the
west. The street was quiet except for a vendor of peanuts pushing his
barrow along the wet pavement, the thin squeal of the little whistle
merging with the steam from the roasting oven. The Italian vendor raised
his face to the windows, hesitating as he spied the figures of the two
young men.

"Peanuts!" exclaimed Lunt. "Let's have some." He began frantically to
search through his pockets.

"Nickel or dime?" asked Shaw.

"Dime! Gosh, I could eat a bushel!"

Shaw produced the coin.

Lunt whistled at the window, then dashed down the stairs. The Italian
stopped. Shaw watched the transaction over the top of his book. He saw
Lunt spit out his gum as he returned with the bag of nuts.

"Have some!" said Lunt. "I've bought these, you know." He had found his
money and dropped a dime on to Shaw's book.

Shaw took a handful of the nuts. They were hot and crisp. They crunched,
their eyes glued to their books, the light lessening. Shaw laid his
shells on the window sill but Lunt dropped his to the floor. Far down
the street the thin whistle sounded faintly. A wagon drawn by two horses
stopped by the house at the corner. The wagon was loaded with blocks of
ice, covered by sawdust. The horses hung their heads, tired after the
long day, but the driver jumped energetically down from his seat, tongs
in hand, seized a block of ice and staggered swiftly with it to the back
entrance of the house. When he returned he began to hack one of the
larger blocks in half with his hatchet. A group of children appeared
from nowhere. They picked up the splinters of ice from the pavement and
bit into them eagerly, hopping from one foot to the other at the chill
contact. Without glancing at them the driver jumped into his wagon,
touched the horses with his whip, and rattled down the street.

"It looks like summer to see the iceman," observed Lunt.

"Hm-hm," agreed Shaw.

There was silence.

Suddenly Lunt sprang up, rushed to the dressing table, and began to
search wildly through the drawers. Shaw looked out of the window. He
turned to Lunt.

"They're not there," he said. "They're on the floor under that heap of
books."

Lunt scrabbled through the books and discovered a shabby pair of field
glasses. He hastened to the window and held them to his eyes. A slim
girl was coming down the street.

"Evelina," he murmured. "Oh, lovely Evelina! How I adore you!"

Beneath the glasses his long nose drooped between his hollow cheeks, his
mouth wore an expression of extreme tenderness.

Unconscious of his homage the girl passed along the opposite side of the
street, holding her long flounced skirt from the pavement with a gloved
hand, her hat tilted above her curled brown pompadour. She disappeared
into the house where the ice had been delivered. Lunt laid down the
glasses.

"It's an awful thought," he said, "that my last term is almost up and
that after I leave here I'll never see her again. I'll never know her
real name! She'll marry some fellow who won't love her half as much as I
do."

"If I felt like you do," said Shaw, "I'd stop her and tell her about
it."

Lunt's jaw dropped. "My sakes! I couldn't do that! What would you say?"

"I'd say I loved her and that if she liked the looks of me I'd prove to
her that I meant business."

"But she wouldn't like the looks of me! What girl would?"

"You're all right, Calvin. I like your looks."

"You're not a girl! Now if I was a big-chested fellow like you . . ."

"Rot! Have a try!"

"Will you speak to her for me?"

"Certainly. If you like."

Plainly Lunt was disconcerted by Shaw's consent. He covered his face
with his long bony hand and was silent. After a space he said:--

"It is better as it is, Shaw. . . . It is better for me to nurse a
hopeless passion than to bear a cold rebuff."

Shaw gave a shout of laughter. "I thought so. You don't really want the
girl. You just want to worship the idea of her."

"She inspires me," said Lunt. He cracked a nut in his teeth and spat out
the shell.

There was a knock. Without waiting for an answer the visitor threw open
the door and entered. It was another student, Henry J. Klein of Chicago,
the son of a wealthy merchant. He had a bed-sitting room on the ground
floor with a piano in it. He was the only student in the School of
Forestry who owned his own motorcar. He moved in an aura of that
distinction. Shaw and Lunt often wondered why he had taken up the study
of forestry, for he showed little interest in it. He was a plump youth
with a good-humored greedy smile and a taste for loud ties. He now wore
a magenta one with yellow stripes. Lunt looked at it and at him with
annoyance, for they jarred equally on his mood. Klein trod on the peanut
shells that littered the floor. They crackled, as Lunt felt his temper
doing.

"Hello!" exclaimed Klein. "You fellows digging into it as usual?"

"Yes," returned Lunt. "Digging into it. Or trying to."

"Does that mean I'm not welcome?"

"Oh, you're welcome enough, if you're quiet. You'd better take that tie
off, though."

Good-naturedly Klein covered it with a plump hand. "My, how sarcastic
you are, Calvin! I hope he doesn't talk like that to you, Shaw."

"We don't talk," said Lunt. "We work."

Klein looked crestfallen. Shaw was sorry for him. To cheer him he
asked:--

"How's the automobile?"

Klein beamed. "Oh, she's grand! I took her right up a hill in top gear
yesterday. I'm going to drive her to Alabama. Another fellow is going
with me and we're going to make a regular picnic of it."

"You're lucky," said Shaw. "Lunt and I are going to walk."

Klein laughed at what he considered a joke.

"You don't say! Perhaps I can give you a lift on the last lap. You'll be
getting kind of footsore by then."

"Don't you worry about us," said Lunt.

Klein returned meekly--"What I really came up for was to ask you fellows
if you'd come to my room for a little singsong. Some others are coming
in and I do like to have your voice, Calvin. Shaw don't sing but he's
perfectly welcome. And we do need your voice, Calvin."

"It's a pity," said Lunt, "that I can't disembody it and send it down.
I'd be delighted."

"There he goes again!" exclaimed Klein. "What have I done to deserve it?
He's getting to be a regular pessimist. It's a good thing I'm an
optimist." He had just got hold of the words and relished them.

Lunt threw up the window and put his head out into the dusk.

"He's got a headache," Shaw said apologetically.

"Say, that's too bad! Perhaps a little singsong would help it."

"I'm afraid not," said Shaw. "Lunt's funny that way. He hates singing
when he has headache."

Klein was disappointed. Lunt's good tenor was the making of a singsong.
He turned to go. In the doorway he hesitated.

"You fellows aren't in earnest about walking to Alabama, are you?"

"In dead earnest," said Shaw.

The final term at the Forestry School was spent in field work in the
pitch-pine area of the South. How to get there was the problem for Shaw
and Lunt.

Klein's jaw dropped. "Why--you couldn't--it's over nine hundred miles!
I've just been looking it up on the map."

Shaw exclaimed. "Look at those legs!" He pointed to what remained of
Lunt in the room. "And my own aren't too bad."

"But you couldn't get there in time! It would take you weeks, I tell
you; you can't do it. You'd be worn out before your term's work began."

"What will you bet?" asked Shaw. "What we propose to do is this. Walk to
New York. Go by steamer from there to Charleston. Work our
way--walk--steal rides on freight trains and arrive in Alabama in time
for the term and in as good condition as you are. What will you bet?"

"Whatever you like."

Shaw considered. He would have about twenty-five dollars in his
possession after paying his expenses for the coming term. They would be
light because he would live in the woods and work for the lumber
company, who made no charge for board. But--dare he risk his all? He
dare! He said casually:--

"I'll bet you twenty-five dollars."

A tremor went through Lunt's long legs. He turned on the sill so that he
looked over his hunched shoulder into the room.

"You're crazy, Shaw!" he said. "What if we had an accident?"

"We'll not have an accident! Now we'll make a note of this bet." He took
a small book from his pocket. Klein did the same. Klein said:--

"Well, I sort of hope you'll win the bet. I'm sorry I can't offer you a
lift in my automobile."

"Thanks, I'd rather walk," said Lunt, and again put his head out of the
window.

"Well, you're an optimist after all! I'm glad of that, Calvin." Klein's
voice was soothing. He looked rather pathetically at Shaw. "I always
seem to irritate him and I do so want to be friends."

"Don't mind," said Shaw. "He's the same with me." He turned on the
light. In its unshaded glare even Klein looked wan. He looked at the
bare room, the peanut shells on the floor, and his face softened in
sympathy.

"Say, you fellows," he said, "even if you can't come to my singsong I
wish you'd come down for some light refreshments afterwards. I've got
wieners and rye bread and beer. Perhaps even a nip of something
stronger." He gave a sly wink.

"I'm afraid we've got to work," said Shaw.

"Work, work, work," exclaimed Klein peevishly. "I get so tired of
hearing you talk about work. I don't work, yet somehow I pass my exams.
I'm afraid I'm a confirmed optimist."

Lunt unwound himself from his cramped position. He advanced on Klein and
pushed him out of the room and down the stairs. When he returned his
face was tranquil.

"I hope he didn't think you were in earnest," said Shaw. "He's a sissy,
but he's kind."

"Of course he didn't think I was in earnest. He couldn't believe that
anyone would want to insult him. Perhaps some day . . ." He took a
peanut from the bag and cracked it savagely between his teeth. In the
green artificial light he looked like a corpse, except for the alive
blue eyes.

Shaw sat with his head in his hand, meditating on his bet. It would be
good to have fifty dollars instead of twenty-five after his expenses
were paid. It would make things easier in every way. And this was his
last term. The examinations--the trip to Alabama--the lumber camp--these
over and the long pull, the everlasting work and waiting of his boyhood,
would be behind him. He would have his man's work ahead of him. He would
stand on the shore of that spreading sea of achievement. For the first
time in his life he would be free. For a moment his mind was blank. The
crackling of a peanut shell might have been the crackling of a dry twig
in a forest. Then, out of the blankness, his mother's face emerged. She
was looking at him long and steadily. He sat motionless as a stone, his
being concentrated on the image of her face. A warm tide moved in his
veins, centring at last in his throat. Tears rose from his throat to the
back of his eyes but came no further. He was a little boy again,
remembering something of sadness but he could not tell what.

Lunt was speaking. "They say that the Highlanders of Scotland can live
on raw oatmeal and water--I'd like to experiment with that. They're a
very hardy lot. You can't beat them."

"All right," said Shaw. "I'm willing."

"Let's try it--before we set out on our trip."

"All right. . . . We might have had a feed to-night."

"I'd rather starve than be beholden to that fellow."

"You'd have sung for your supper."

"Bah! If you want to go--go!"

"I don't."

They buried themselves in their books. It was the first time they had
sat by the open window since winter. The breeze that came in was almost
too cool, but they could not bear to shut it out. It had a new quality
in it. After long months it had veered from the north and northeast to
the southwest. It blew from a warm land where spring was already
forward. It had the wildness, vagueness, and sweetness of youth's
imaginings. It came in troubled gusts, stirring the hair of the two
students, entangling the words on the pages, blowing down the calendar
they had pinned to the wall as though it no longer mattered.

Lunt was reading--"_Trametes pini_. Common names for this rot are red
rot, white pocket rot, red heart, cork rot, white honeycomb rot, picky
wood rot, ring shake, and ring-scale rot." He raised his head and stared
at the ceiling. "Rot . . . rot . . . rot," he said, "nothing but rot! I
suppose in time we'll all rot! Why try to delay it?"

"If Klein were here what a pessimist he'd call you!"

"Don't mention his name to me! He's a fungus. A fungus in the first
stage of decay, of a pink coloration which will later turn to purple."

"Shut up!" said Shaw curtly.

"I'm so hungry."

"Shut up!"

"Shaw, I keep thinking of the lovely wieners and rye bread and beer
downstairs."

"Then go and get some."

"I'd starve first!"

"You're too proud."

"Proud and hungry! It sounds noble."

Mechanically Shaw murmured--"Shut up!"

He was reading. "Hybridization, even between closely related species, is
an uncommon occurrence in nature . . . if a hybrid of two genera like
spruce and hemlock did occur, it would probably be sterile and unable to
reproduce itself." There was nothing new in this! He'd read it a
thousand times. . . . But now he could smell the spruce and the hemlock.
The room was full of the scent of them, the strange resinous scent that
clung so to one's fingers. It must be coming in on the breeze. He got up
and went to the window without knowing he was doing it. He was surprised
to find himself there. The figures of two youths were coming into the
house. He heard Klein's voice welcoming them. They would sing. There
would be an infernal noise. Klein was a public nuisance. But soon this
would be over. All this part of his life over and the real part
begun. . . . Already this was taking on a tinge of unreality. All but
Lunt. He would always be real. A part of Lunt would go with him into his
new life. Some day he would introduce Lunt to Ian. It would be amusing
to see them together.

From the room two floors below came a burst of song in male voices:--

                 "Oh! I went down South to see my Sal--
                 Sing song Kitty, won't you Ki--me--oh?"

He pulled down the window with a bang.

"They're at it," he said.

Lunt sprang up. "Where's the cotton wool?" He began savagely to seek it.

"Here it is," said Shaw.

They tore off bits and stuck them in their ears. Two hours passed.

Lunt looked up suddenly.

"How long is it," he asked, "since you have seen your mother?"

"Funny you'd speak of her. I've been thinking of her this evening."

"I know."

"You know?"

"I know more of you than you think."

"Not from my expression. I've a wooden face."

"Rot! . . ."

"Could you tell by my expression, then?"

"No. . . . Something comes from you when you're thinking of her. I can't
tell what it is."

They were embarrassed and, for a space, continued their reading in
silence. Then Shaw said:--

"I haven't seen her for two years. You see, I spent my Christmas
vacation working in Ottawa."

"I remember. Two years is a long time."

"She hasn't been very well. Sometimes I worry about her."

"But you'll see her after this work in Alabama?"

"Yes. Before I go to my job."

"That darned singsong is over at last. I heard the door slam." Lunt took
the cotton wool from his ears and listened.

"Yes. They're going." Shaw dropped his two bits of cotton in the
waste-paper basket.

The air, entering their ears, vibrated mysteriously. Shaw stared at
Lunt's shadow thrown on the wall. Soon Lunt and he would be separated.
He felt that he would remember this black clear-cut shadow when Lunt's
features were blurred in his mind. He had a sudden feeling of happiness,
of exhilaration. His head felt a little light.

"Are you immune to hunger?" asked Lunt.

"No. Let's have something."

"Let's try the oatmeal."

Shaw looked dubious. "To-night? I thought of having fried bread."

"I think we ought to try it."

"All right. Bring forth the feast."

Lunt opened the cupboard. He took out a paper bag of oatmeal and a tin
of cocoa.

"Is there milk for the cocoa?"

Lunt found a tin and peered into it. He filled it with water from a jug
and shook it. He put the contents into a saucepan and lit the gas under
it.

Shaw, rather disgruntled at the thought of a supper of uncooked oatmeal,
thrust his hand into the bag and, throwing back his head, dribbled some
of the meal into his mouth. He began to chew, then hesitated. He was
going to choke. He stared owlishly at Lunt.

"You'd make a dog laugh!" said Lunt. His delicate-lipped mouth stretched
in a grin.

Shaw glared at him.

"Yrmakinmechoke!" he mumbled.

He took a drink of water from the jug and somehow got the meal down.

"Lord, you looked funny!" said Lunt. "You shouldn't take so much at a
time. It's got to be chewed a lot." He showed how.

It was a silent meal till they came to the cocoa, then--"What do you
think?" asked Lunt. "Do you feel full?"

Shaw made a grimace. "Sort of--I don't know. Shall we go for a walk?"

They were out in the street. There was no moon, no stars, just a velvety
black void arching above the town and a wind that shook the shutters and
the signs and the bare branches of trees. They strode along, their steps
in time, feeling full of energy after the cramped hours of study. They
talked of their plans for the journey South and of Shaw's bet with
Klein.

"I feel scared stiff when I think of you losing it," said Lunt. "Suppose
it was my fault, if I'd an accident or something."

"You'll not have an accident," answered Shaw, "and I'll not lose my bet.
When I get that twenty-five dollars we'll celebrate with a big dinner."

"How do you feel inside after the oatmeal?"

"Solid. How do you?"

"As if I'd had nothing," answered Lunt dolefully. "Let's go in somewhere
and have pork and beans."

"Not on your life! We're hardy Highlanders. Hoots, mon! Do ye no' ken
when you're fu'?"

He grasped Lunt by the arm and they marched in step through the quiet
streets. The lights in the houses were being put out one by one. They
could see people moving about in lighted rooms. Sometimes a voice
sounded in a doorway. They had lived in this place for almost two years,
yet they had no part in it. To the townsfolk only two of the many
students who came and went, who bought fruit and ice cream, cigarettes
and magazines, had their shoes mended and their hair cut and disappeared
leaving no record, outside the college walls. Their future was
uncertain, fluid, almost fantastic in their imaginings.

Lunt was elated. He whistled as they marched, grasping Shaw by the arm.
He said suddenly:--

"I wish you were an American."

"Why?"

"Then you'd stay in my country and work. You'll go off to your own
country and that will be the end of our friendship."

"Come with me! There's plenty of room."

"No. I'm a grim, puritanical New Englander. I can't live under a king."

"We have more freedom than you have."

"You must remember that we're a great melting pot. Our laws must be made
accordingly."

"Will you really melt?"

"Why not?"

"What will your country be in twenty-five years, I wonder?"

"Glorious! Don't you forget that."

They were outside the house where the girl lived. Lunt forgot everything
else. He clasped his hands on his heart.

"Oh! Evelina!" he said. "I must leave you soon. And I'll never even know
your real name or the sound of your voice. For two long years I have
adored you. Evelina, farewell! Let me kiss the knob where your dear hand
has rested!" He ran lightly up the steps and pressed his lips to the
doorknob. There was still a light in the front room. He came down the
steps.

"Let me dream now," he said. "Lead me home, Shaw. I am not quite well."

He suffered Shaw to lead him to their room. Shaw could not decide how
much in earnest he was. Lunt tied a wet towel round his head and they
read for two hours more.

In bed Lunt lay face-down, his two fists doubled under his stomach.
"It's no go, Shaw," he mourned. "The hardy Highland diet does not agree
with me. Or do you think it is love-sickness?"

But Shaw was already asleep, flat on his back, his arms thrown over his
head like a man drowning.

The mildness of early March was only a hasty promise, made to be broken.
By the time Shaw and Lunt arrived in New York it was almost as cold as
winter. But the air was invigorating. They had made the journey without
undue fatigue. Lunt carried their clothes in a pack on his back, and
Shaw, as the stronger, two heavy blankets and a small camping outfit
consisting of stove, frying pan, and kettle.

It seemed to them that they would never reach the heart of the city, so
endless appeared the long streets and so alike. The keen wind rushed
through them, carrying hard particles of snow mingled with dust. It was
the noon hour and the streets were full of people walking quickly, with
set faces and eyes interested only in their own affairs. The streets
were dirty, with pieces of newspaper harried by the wind and, in the
gutter, banana skins and scraps of garbage.

But when they neared Fifth Avenue it was different. The sun flickered
out, illuminating the tall buildings, shining on the fine goods
displayed in windows, the expensive motorcars and expensive women! Lunt
and Shaw had seen nothing like it. Their eyes were awed, as the eyes of
children, in a multitude of new impressions. Hiking was not yet
fashionable. People turned to stare at the tall youths, their packs on
their backs, their staffs in their hands. There was something in their
faces, too. Because they spent their days reading about trees, talking
about trees, or living and working among trees, the tranquillity of the
forest had made its imprint on them.

They had found their way to the office of a steamship company that ran
boats between New York and Charleston. They had bought tickets for the
steerage. The next sailing was two days later. These two days could
easily be spent in sightseeing. But what about the nights? Lodgings in a
great city like this would surely be expensive. They might sleep in the
open. There was Central Park. What about sleeping there, asked Lunt.
Shaw said that he was game. They would choose their bed, then set out to
see the city.

The Park was impressive with its walks and its fine trees. In summer it
might be beautiful but now snow still lingered in the hollows. The trees
were bare. Women walking there for exercise were wrapped in furs. "We've
got our two heavy blankets," said Shaw, "and we can lie close together."
They picked out a sheltered spot, with a knoll crested by evergreen
shrubs rising above it and a spruce tree with low-growing boughs. The
wind would very likely fall by sunset.

There was some sort of celebration, surely. Fifth Avenue was ablaze with
flags. A band in gay uniform swung by playing a march. Every hour the
traffic increased. Shaw had not thought there were so many motorcars in
the whole country as there were in this street. To attempt to cross it
seemed to risk one's life. He looked into the faces of the people
swarming past; anxious, shallow, hard faces they seemed to him. He
remembered Searle and Varney. Their faces were hard too, but the
hardness was that of adventure, of struggle with the elements, of hard
physical work, of danger. This was the hardness of narrow space, of
human contacts seething like the press of ants in an anthill, of windows
that stared into windows, of eyes that were always conscious of other
eyes watching.

They went in an elevator to the top of the Woolworth Building. They
lingered in the grandeur of the Carnegie Library. They passed through
the bewilderment of department stores. They ate chop suey in a Chinese
restaurant, sausages and hashed potatoes in a German. "We must stoke up
with lots of fuel for the night," said Lunt.

"You have changed your tune," observed Shaw, "since you advocated
tramping on oatmeal and water."

Lunt was not usually touchy but now his feelings were hurt. For half an
hour there was a coolness between them. Shaw bought a packet of
cigarettes and offered one to Lunt, with his rare smile. They drew the
smoke into their lungs. Their shoulders touched. At night they were in
the theatrical district. Burning red and yellow and green electric signs
bewildered them. Photographs of the first moving-picture stars were
framed outside the doorways. People were pouring out of the theatres. A
girl with redder lips than Shaw had ever seen touched him on the arm,
smiling up into his face.

"Hello, boy!" she said.

"Hello," he returned, but suspiciously.

"You're a regular snail, aren't you?"

"Snail?"

"Yeh--castle on your back. Where y' off to?"

"My hotel." He began to move away.

"Come and see my apartment. I've got seventeen silk sofa pillows. Come
an' try them."

"Thanks. I prefer a park bench."

"Well. You are a mutt!" She turned to another man.

Lunt was white with anger. "What were you saying to that girl?"

"Nothing--except a polite refusal."

"It's a good thing for her she didn't tackle me!" His profile looked
like one of his Puritan ancestors.

Shaw smiled secretly as they moved through the crowd. He saw the girl's
face as it was separated from the thousand other faces.

What had she done to her lips? Painted them? Her face was pretty and
rather silly. Shaw had not expected a woman of the streets to look like
that. You could tell she was in earnest about her sofa cushions. But
she'd been mad at him all right. How quickly her face had been lost in
the crowd! She'd had a big white forehead with a curl in the middle of
it and her features all in a bunch.

Great plate-glass windows invited them to join the crowds inside,
sitting at small tables, opening their mouths wide to receive the
spoonfuls of soup or forks mounded with potato salad.

"What about something hot before we hit the hay?" asked Lunt.

"Coffee," agreed Shaw.

The coffee was strong, blazing hot, and they lingered over it. Suddenly
they felt tired, their eyes ached from staring at lights and crowds.
Lunt sat shielding his with his bony white hand. The coffee, the smoke
from their cigarettes, made them dreamy. Four young Jews were sitting at
the next table talking about music. They were fat and their lips slid
easily over their small teeth. They nestled in their fat, absorbed in
their talk of music, except one who gave curious sidelong glances at
Shaw and Lunt and their packs on the floor by their feet.

It seemed a long way to Central Park, facing the wind that swept between
the tall buildings. They bent their heads to it and pressed on, their
bodies still warm from the coffee. It was not easy to find their chosen
spot in the hollow but at last they were secure in it, the two benches
turned together, Shaw's blanket laid on them, the clothes from Lunt's
pack for a pillow. They stretched their long bodies on the blanket, then
put the second one over them, tucking it in as tightly as they could.
Shaw lay against Lunt's back, his arm clasping Lunt's thin frame.

"How do you feel, Calvin?" he asked.

"Grand. Are you all right?"

"Fine and dandy. It's as good as a house, eh?"

"Funny light in the sky?"

"That's the reflection of a billion electric lights. The treetops look
nice against the sky, don't they? That's a good spruce."

"Yeh . . . Shaw, I wonder if Eveline missed my face at the window."

"She might. It was always there when she passed."

"What do you suppose I did?"

"Can't guess."

"You'll think I'm crazy."

"Is it something about Eveline?"

"Yes. . . . I couldn't bear to leave without some sign. So I bought a
little bunch of violets and hung it on the door handle and rang and got
out of sight."

"Poor old boy."

"Well, it's over now. That chapter's closed."

"I wonder if that street walker got anyone to go home with her?"

"I hope not."

"You're a queer mixture, Calvin."

"Queer? How?"

"Puritan and romantic."

"You're queer too, if it comes to that."

"Me?"

"Yes. You're tender and you're hard. Imaginative and stolid. Pugnacious
and yielding. Lovable and cold."

"I sound like a half-wit." But he was pleased to think of himself as a
complex character.

The wind had indeed fallen but the quiet air was icy cold. Fine
particles of snow drifted on it, now sinking, now rising, as though they
shrank equally from sky and earth. Some of those formed a little ridge
on the back of the bench. Others found their way into the folds of the
blanket and after a little melted. A few clung to Lunt's hair, streaking
its darkness with white as though he had aged in the hour, the wan light
heightening this effect. Shaw's head was hidden under the blanket. In
the loneliness of his childhood he had formed the habit of hiding
himself in the bedcoverings and it still persisted. The roar of the
traffic, like the growl of a many-eyed monster, seemed held at bay by
the trees that guarded the two sleepers.

At midnight a policeman turned the light of his lantern on them. He
exclaimed in an Irish accent:--

"It's the babes in the woods y'are! I'm glad to find ye so innocent."

"Where are we?" asked Lunt, starting.

"You're safe in Central Park. I'm yer kind uncle. Don't be frightened."
He moved on.

Shaw burrowed his head against Lunt's shoulder blades. He did not wake.
His dream continued. . . . He was struggling through an almost
impenetrable forest, carrying his mother in his arms. It was a terrible
struggle, though she constantly whispered encouragements in his ear. One
of her hands, which was icy cold, played continually with his hair.
After what seemed ages of struggle the trees of the forest thinned and
out of them rose a towering mountain peak. As he reached the base of the
mountain his mother's weight became less and less; her hands, which
played with his hair, cruel. They tugged it, as though she strove to
raise herself by it. He turned his head to look reproachfully into her
face. But it was not she he carried! It was Louie Adams, the wretched
little girl he had known at school. . . . "I hate you, Shaw Manifold!"
she hissed as she twined her skinny fingers in his hair.

Toward morning it grew very cold. Shaw opened his eyes and saw Lunt's
forelock standing stiff and white. He saw the trees motionless, powdered
with snow, and above them the chill grey-blue arch of the sky. His flesh
ached on the hard bench and his feet were like ice. He slid from under
the blanket and began to do violent exercises. He ran along the paths,
the chill wind whistling in his teeth. When he returned to Lunt he found
him sitting on the bench pommeling one of his thighs.

"It's all prickly," he said. "I can't stand on it."

Shaw took him by the foot and moved his leg rhythmically. "That better?"
he asked.

"Yeh, but it hurts."

"Do some exercises."

"Not I. . . . I want some hot coffee first thing."

The coffee put new life into them. In a public washroom they made
themselves presentable. They set out on their second day of sightseeing.
In and out and round about they went, staring, wondering, absorbing.
They stood by the harbor, Lunt anxious that Shaw should be impressed by
the Statue of Liberty: Shaw resolutely unimpressed. His eyes were on a
great liner majestically parting the tumbling grey waves that closed
behind her in a lacy train of foam. He thought, Here am I, Shaw
Manifold, standing on the shore of the Atlantic, as a little while ago I
stood on the shore of the Pacific! When shall I go to Europe? When shall
I go to Asia? How soon, how soon, shall I cross the water to the old
lands? In a few months I'll be free to begin my work. And then . . . and
then . . . trees and the sea!

That night it was still colder. They got up toward morning and beat
their arms across their breasts to make their blood move. They divided a
bar of chocolate between them and lay down and slept again. Again Shaw
dreamed the dream of Cristabel and Louie Adams.

At daybreak the wind changed and a little later it began to rain. They
crouched under their blanket and slept. The rain pattered swiftly,
making its way into every crevice. The air grew milder. When they woke
they felt that their journey was now to begin in earnest. As they
gathered up their belongings they had the sensation of breaking up camp,
here in the heart of this great city.

Low mild clouds hung over the Park and the first crow of the season
opened his beak and sent out a challenging "Caw! Caw!" to the rumble of
the early traffic.

After breakfast they bought a supply of food for the boat trip--bread,
cheese, wieners, bananas. They were at the pier an hour before the boat
left. The time passed quickly, for there was the bustle, the activity of
the strange port to investigate. They were traveling steerage. They
found that their companions were to be negroes returning to South
Carolina. A procession of them straggled slowly up the gangway, negroes
of all ages, shouldering bundles, leading children and old people,
carrying babies.

When the first harsh warning from the boat whistle sounded, Shaw and
Lunt joined the procession and found a corner for themselves in the part
of the vessel given over to the steerage. First-class passengers looked
over the rail from the upper deck at the dun-colored procession. They
talked together, sometimes laughing and pointing out this one or that
who amused them. Shaw raised his face as he passed beneath, his cool
speculative gaze taking in those above. A girl going to spend the winter
in the South held an armful of flowers brought by her friends. She
tossed one to Shaw. It missed him and struck the cheek of a fat negress.
She caught it and looked up laughing.

"Thank you', honey!" she called, and fastened the flower on her dress.

Shaw was annoyed. It was the first time a girl had ever thrown a flower
to him. It would probably be the last. He would like to have caught it.
The black woman waddled cheerfully up the gangway, her fat hips shaking.

The space in the steerage was crowded. Shaw and Lunt became disagreeably
conscious of the peculiar smell of a different race. The negroes talked
loudly, cheerfully, showing their red gums and the dingy whites of their
eyes. There was a young woman with twin babies that clambered
incessantly over her, filling their fat little hands with her woolly
hair, helping themselves up by her nose and ears as though they were
handles. An old woman had a deaf-and-dumb boy of fourteen in her charge.
She led him continually about through the crowded rooms and passages.
Everything he saw pleased him. He rolled his eyes and made loud crowing
noises. Two young men had been quarreling before they came aboard. Now
they continued their quarrel from opposite sides of the saloon.

"Shut dat face o' yourn, nigger, or Ah'll push it fo' yo'!"

"Huh! Ah don' wan' no lip from yo'!"

"Yo' jus' wait till we-all gets offen dis boat!"

"Dat's what Ah is waitin' fo--jus' countin' de hours till Ah can mak yo'
lick de dust."

Sometimes the others gave no heed to them. Sometimes they egged them on.
Once Shaw and Lunt were afraid there was to be a bloody fight. Sinister
reference to razors had been made. But a little later the boat began to
roll. The darkies seemed singularly vulnerable to seasickness. Even the
prospective combatants succumbed. The deaf-and-dumb boy was noisily
vocal in his retchings.

There was no fresh air for the portholes must be kept shut. The negroes
lay huddled in the wan light of unshaded bulbs. The twins looked
suddenly like dark cherubs. The eyes of the old woman were caverns in
her head. She brooded over the mute. Lunt and Shaw lay stretched on a
bunk, sleeping, resigned to the interminable rolling. From the deck
above came the sound of an orchestra.

As darkness fell the waves subsided. The creaking and straining of the
weather-beaten timbers ceased. A steward went about opening portholes. A
fresh wind swept away the sour-smelling air. The occupants of the
steerage raised their heads. Bundles were opened and food taken out. The
twins woke and were given a banana apiece. The old woman began once more
to lead the boy about, a doughnut in his hand. The quarrel was renewed.
Dance music came from above and moonlight touched the dark sea with
fire.

The white youths sat close to a porthole eating, hungrily drinking in
the fresh air. Lunt said:--

"Just think, these niggers' lives are as important to them as ours are
to us!"

"They couldn't be," said Shaw.

"Look at that old woman's face as she leads the boy about."

"Look at the boy's face."

"That should be your answer. He's almost crazed with self-importance.
Every time he opens his mouth and makes that crowing noise he thinks the
whole world is listening. Look at the twins, those two fellows that want
to fight--gosh, I am sure they feel self-important."

"They have nothing to work for," said Shaw; "they don't know what life
can be."

"According to their lights they do. All we know is what we've been told
and read."

"I've seen the Rockies and the forests on the Pacific."

"Perhaps they've seen God."

Shaw was silent. When Lunt said things like that it embarrassed him, yet
he was not at all embarrassed when Ian talked religion; Ian spoke as an
artist, Lunt as a saint.

As they settled down for the night Shaw saw that Lunt was going to say
his prayers. He did wish he wouldn't. He touched his sleeve.

"Say, Calvin, do you think you'd better?"

"Better what?"

"Kneel. Couldn't you say them lying down for once? You don't know how
these darkies may take it. Perhaps they'll say something; interrupt
you."

"I'll be sorry for them if they do."

There was no stopping him. He was kneeling by the bench. Shaw turned his
face away as though he would disown him. "I'm a regular Judas," he
thought, "but he makes me so uncomfortable."

Lunt did not bend his head but raised his face toward the open porthole.
The light from a lamp on the wall fell on his long lean face. The line
from his nostril to the corner of his mouth looked deep and as though
drawn in pain. His sensitive lips were moving. The negroes were
beginning to take notice of him.

"What's dat man doin'?"

"Why, he's a prayin'!"

"Shore enough, he's talkin' to de Lawd."

The old woman called out--"Say de words so we can hear 'em, brudder!"

One of the fighters added--"Speak up, don' be afraid to speak out loud
to de Lawd!"

Lunt began, in his oddly pleasing voice:--

                   "Our Father which art in Heaven--"

One after the other the negroes were joining in:--

                         "Hallowed be thy name.
                         Thy kingdom come--"

The deep rich tones of the fighters were added:--

            "Thy will be done--on earth as it is in Heaven--"

The old woman rocked the sleeping mute in her arms and her voice rose
beseechingly:--

                  "Give us this day our daily bread--"

Out of the steerage the blended voices rose strongly, drowning the sound
of the orchestra above:--

             "Forgive us our trespasses,
             As we forgive them that trespass against us--"

What were their trespasses, Shaw wondered--chicken stealing--petty
theft--and against them, in the old days, slavery; in later days,
lynchings.

Their faces were raised like Lunt's, but--how different! His was almost
austere. Theirs were impassioned, but yielding, trustful; his, seeking,
questioning. The last noble words came:--

        "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
        For ever and ever. Amen."

"Amen!"

"Hallelujah!"

"Thank yo', mister!"

"You're a grand good pray-er."

The night was peaceful but the next day there was a long ground swell.
The boat rolled slowly, pompously. The sun blazed. It was hot in the
steerage. With the pompous rolling of the boat the head of the mute boy
lolled from his right shoulder to his left as his grandmother led him
about. She had taken off his upper garments and his torso was round and
smooth. The twins too were half-naked. They felt well and were never
still. They reeled about, falling against the grownups' knees. The men
played pinocle or craps, except the two belligerents who could not
forget their quarrel.

Between bouts of seasickness they reiterated their accusations and
threats till their voices rose to screaming pitch and Shaw and Lunt
prepared themselves to prevent murder. Then an officer of the boat came
rattling down the stairs and threatened to put them both under arrest if
they made any more disturbance. That made them sick again, and when they
had recovered they contented themselves with low mutterings of what they
would do to each other when they reached land.

That night Lunt again led the negroes in prayer. Then the old woman
asked him to lead in singing. "Yo' sure has a lubly voice, mister!" Lunt
began "The Glory Song." Like spirits soaring upward from a rolling,
seasick hell, their voices burst forth. They raised their eyes to the
rocking sky they could glimpse through the portholes:--

                       "Oh, that will be
                       Glory for me!
                       Glory for me!
                       Glory for me!
                       When by Thy grace
                       I shall see Thy dear face,
                       That will be glory,
                       Be glory for me!"

Tears streamed down the old woman's face and she rocked the sleeping
mute in her arms.

They sang one song after another, ending with "One more river to cross."
As night fell and all lights save one at the foot of the stairs were
extinguished, the monotonous singsong of that refrain continued. One
more river . . . one more river to cross. . . . Shaw, his arm thrown
across his eyes, lay submerged by the rhythmic heaving of the boat, the
endless-seeming repetition of the words. One more river . . . one more
river . . . one more river to cross. . . . All these souls . . . himself
. . . had one more river to cross. . . . What were their rivers? If the
boat went down, what things would remain undone? This last term of
his--his last river--let him once cross that and he would be free. . . .
All the long years--the years of boyhood, of study, of waiting--would be
over. He would stand unshackled on the shore of freedom--to work--to do
the things he had dreamed of . . . a good life lay ahead of him . . .
one more river . . . one more river to cross. . . . On its opposite
shore stood his mother and, beyond her, another figure, shadowy,
elusive, her face half turned away . . . was it Elspeth?

                 *        *        *        *        *

At Charleston it was glorious to feel the solid earth beneath them,
above all to smell the pure air. The sun shone. It was spring. The
negroes poured on to the pier laughing, eager to get to their homes.
They called out good-bye to the two white youths. The old woman shook
Lunt's hand. The two fighters bundled themselves down the gangway and
turned in opposite directions without one glance behind. The mute jumped
straight into the air in his joy.

Shaw and Lunt spent an hour walking about the town, which to them had an
unaccustomed air of picturesque mellowness. The trees were different.
The trees interested them most. The houses, the people, were different.
It was a peaceful-looking place.

They bought a supply of food, ate hot cornbread with cane syrup, drank
coffee, and stretched two pairs of long legs with delight in movement
after such cramped quarters. After leaving the town the roads were muddy
but there was a good footpath alongside. There were farms and shacks
where negroes lived. They turned their faces westward to cross South
Carolina. The great state lay before them stretched out in her spring
blossoming, her cocks crowing, her sap running, her seeds sprouting.
They covered forty miles that day and slept in a barn by permission of a
farmer.

In the days that followed they chopped wood in exchange for meals, or
cooked food on their little stove by the side of the road. They crouched
in the shadow of railway buildings to scramble, when the chance came, on
to freight trains, dropping off them again at daybreak. They washed
themselves under farm pumps or on the banks of streams. They wore out
their boots and bought new ones. As they walked they talked: politics,
philosophy, religion. When they wearied of talking they sang: Lunt
tunefully, Shaw very much out of tune but in happy ignorance of the
fact. They passed through one small town after another. There were more
and more negroes. They were in Georgia. They took off their coats and
carried them slung on their shoulders. They walked between forty and
fifty miles a day.

One morning, tramping along a narrow road that led through a swamp, they
heard the mournful howling of a dog. In that lonely spot the howls were
heart-piercing. They stood still, looking at each other in
consternation. There was a moment's respite from the sound. Then it
broke out again, deep as a bell, thinning to a high tremolo, seeming the
very voice of the desolate swamp.

"Come," said Lunt. "Let's get out of this!"

"Perhaps someone's been murdered."

"Better go for the police."

"Probably it's just a lost dog." Shaw whistled. "You're as white as a
sheet, Calvin."

"You're not so rosy yourself. . . . Look! Here he comes!"

A fine English setter came loping through the stunted cedars and steamy
undergrowth. At ten yards off Shaw he stopped and gave him a troubled,
searching look, his long, feathered tail rigid.

"Good dog," said Shaw. "Good dog."

The setter drew near cautiously. He submitted to Shaw's laying a hand on
the fine silken dome of his head. He raised his eyes mournfully and a
little slobber ran from his drooping lip.

"Where's your master, eh?"

Lunt had begun cautiously to prowl among the cedars.

"Where's your master, boy?"

The dog trotted after them as they searched, but he led them nowhere.
There were no footprints, no sign of life. At the next village they made
inquiry. No one knew the dog. No one was interested. He was a stray.
There were often strays. The tobacco-chewing police officer was
lethargic.

So the setter joined the two walkers, but trotted close to Shaw. It was
Shaw who divided his lunch with him, who begged a bone for him from a
butcher. Because of him they missed the opportunity of a ride on a
freight train. Lunt felt that he was justified in being annoyed. His
mouth went down at the corners. He walked on one side of the road. Shaw
and the setter took the other.

They slept in an empty shed by the roadside that night. It had turned
cool. The setter lay across Shaw's chest and he was glad of the warmth.
After a while Lunt crept close and laid his arm about the two.

They walked on and on. Now they were halfway across Georgia. The huts of
the negroes became smaller and smaller till they were mere hovels,
without windows, a few lean hens scratching their way in and out through
the one door, a ragged shirt switching on the line. The sun came out hot
and at noonday Shaw and Lunt lay, with the setter resting his muzzle on
Shaw's leg, in whatever shade they could find.

One evening they came upon a farmer and his horse pulling a motorcar out
of a ditch. The thistles were knee-deep and the man swore as the horse
pulled without effect and the thistles tore his legs.

"Hey, you!" he shouted. "Want a job?"

"What doing?" asked Lunt.

"Haven't you got eyes in your head? Pushing this yere autymobile outa
the ditch!"

"What will you give us?" asked Shaw.

"Fifty cents each."

"Where's the owner?"

"Gone into my house to get his head tied up."

"Jehoshaphat!" exclaimed Lunt. "It's Klein's automobile!"

Hilariously they put their shoulders against the car. They pushed and
heaved. The bony grey horse flung himself forward. The car floundered in
mud and thistles and at last was on the road. At the same moment Klein
appeared, his head bandaged and a piece of sticking plaster on his
cheek. With him was a weak-looking youth who was his very shadow and
seemed to live by Klein's favors.

"Well, mister," said the farmer, "I got your autymobile outa the ditch."

"What do I owe you?" asked Klein.

"Just wait till I pay off my helpers and I'll tell you." He handed Lunt
and Shaw fifty cents apiece. Then Klein discovered them.

"You!" he gasped.

"Yes, us," answered Shaw.

"Why, if I don't watch out you'll beat me to the camp!" He laughed
good-naturedly. "I wish I could give you a lift."

"We'll be on hand to pull you out of the next ditch," said Lunt.

"Are you much hurt?" asked Shaw.

"A mere scratch," returned Klein, in the airy tone of a gallant who had
been fighting a duel. But he was humiliated.

"Three dollars, please," said the farmer.

"And we did the job!" said Lunt.

"I've paid you for your help," said the farmer, "and I want my money."

Klein handed him three dollars. "Get into the car," he said to his
friend, and was about to follow him when he noticed the dog.

"What a beautiful English setter!" he exclaimed. "Whose is he?"

"Mine," answered Shaw. "I found him in a swamp."

Klein patted the setter and looked him over appraisingly. "Are you sure
his former owner won't turn up?" he asked.

"No," answered Shaw. "But I made inquiries and no one knew anything
about him."

"I think he was murdered in the swamp," said Lunt.

Klein stared. "Well, he's a swell-looking dog. He'd look fine sitting in
my auto. I'll buy him from you if you're willing to part with him."

"All right, but I want twenty-five dollars for him."

"That's fine! I'll pay you when we get to the camp. Unless I win the
bet, of course."

He opened the door of the car and the dog clambered in and settled
himself, looking out between his long silken ears with dignity. He did
not give a glance behind as the car sped away. Shaw felt hurt. He
trudged behind Lunt in silence. Darkness was beginning to fall.

"He didn't give a darn about leaving me," he said at last.

"Life is strange," said Lunt. "I've just been brooding on Evelina."

There was one consolation in parting with the setter. They were free to
steal or beg rides when the chance came.

The weather turned wet. They walked on and on over flooded roads, past
rivers that were torrents. Through towns, through hamlets, through
swamps, past farms and cotton fields and hovels, forty miles a day and,
at last, into Alabama.

It was a mild cool evening, with a saffron light in the west, when they
limped into the lumber camp. The pinewoods loomed black against the sky.
Pale lights showed in the windows of the camp buildings. To-night they
would sleep in snug bunks. There was a smell of cooking. Lunt's heel was
blistered.

One of the first men they met was Klein. He was delighted to meet them
and paid Shaw his fifty dollars on the spot.

"Thanks," said Shaw, pocketing it. "How is the dog?"

"He's fine. I've bought him a beautiful silver collar with my name on
it. I've bought him a currycomb. You ought to see him. But he's a darned
aristocrat. He isn't grateful for anything. You can do your best for him
and he doesn't give a darn."

The next day the setter disappeared. They never saw him again.




                              CHAPTER XII


On a warm late September day when the first night frost had repented
into a state of true summer and shrubs and plants were wavering in the
impulse of a second budding, Cristabel was getting ready Shaw's bedroom.
She was happy in his coming. Like a plant in the warmth of the sun her
mind put out fragile buds of hope in a new future for herself and her
boy. It was two and a half years since she had seen him. He had looked
almost a man then. Now he would surely be one.

She looked doubtfully at the bed. Would it be large enough? She wished
she had asked Mark to carry Luke's bed to Shaw's room. She was sure Shaw
would want to sleep in his old room under the eaves, even though there
were now empty rooms on the floor below. Shaw would find the house very
different. His aunt married and gone; Luke married and gone; Mark
married and living at home with a wife Shaw had never seen. But these
changes were as nothing compared to the change that had come over the
head of the house.

A year ago Roger Gower had had a stroke and since then he had only been
able to walk from his bed to the armchair, where he spent his day, with
the help of a stick and a strong arm on his other side. He had always
been a quiet man but now his silence was rarely broken. It would seem
very strange to Shaw, she thought, to find his grandfather so altered,
so helpless.

Now the room was in order. Cristabel gave a glance at her own reflection
in the mottled glass. She looked quite nice, she thought. But Shaw would
see many grey hairs on the head where there had been only glossy brown.
She heard the clock strike twelve. His train was past due. It would take
him half an hour to walk from the station. She wished she might have met
him but there was too much to do at home.

Then suddenly she saw him walking up the farm lane, swinging along, in
his hand a stick he had picked up. The stick had life in it, for there
was a bunch of green leaves on its tip. He carried his suitcase in his
other hand and it crossed her mind that whenever she saw him he was
always either going or coming somewhere. She had no stationary vision of
him.

Now he was on his way to Ottawa to take up the work for which he had
been engaged by the Government. How proud she was of him! Barely through
college, yet already chosen for important work. Invariably passing his
examinations with honors. Yes, he was a son to be proud of. She had done
her work, what she had laid herself out to do, with all her might. She
had brought him up to the best of her power, to be a good man, to have a
good profession, to feel the obligations of life and to face its
hardness without wavering. . . . Oh, but she wished his life might have
been easier! She would have given ten years of her own to have
remembered him as a happy little boy.

She leaned out of the open window and called:--

"Shaw!"

He threw back his head and looked up at her with a delighted grin.

"Oh, hello, Mother!"

"Come in at the front door and straight up here. I'd like to see you
alone for a little."

"All right."

She heard the door open and shut, his step on the stair. Then they were
clasping each other close.

"Shaw, I am glad to see you."

"I'm glad to see you too, Mother."

They were silent then, patting each other gently on the back, as though
each would comfort the other for the years of separation. They had been
child and young mother in this room. He had shot up and up, till now his
shoulder was her head's rest, she looked upward into his face.

"You look pretty well, Shaw. Have you been well?"

"Yes, excepting for a spell of malaria in the lumber camp. They fixed me
up with quinine."

"Malaria!"

"Yes. I had chills and fever. It was pretty mean while it lasted."

"How did you get it?"

"Oh, it turns up sometimes in that locality."

"Is your friend well? The young man you wrote me of--Calvin Lunt?"

"He's fine. He's gone home too. He's got no job yet. He's not so lucky
as me."

It was balm to her to hear him call himself lucky. She squeezed his
hand, then led him to the bed. They sat down on the edge of it together,
her arm about his waist.

"I think I should have brought Luke's bed here for you," she said.
"Perhaps you'd like to have his room."

"This is all right. I'd rather have my old things around me. How's
Grandpa?"

"He's pretty well, considering. You'll see a great change in him. He's
feeble and it takes a good time for him to get out his words. But his
appetite's good. Some days he seems like his old self almost. Ma's been
wonderful through it all."

She began then to tell him the news of all her twelve brothers and
sisters, giving him details with concentrated interest, knowing well
that he cared little for this family gossip but unable to resist the
pleasure it gave her. He listened, his eyes fixed lovingly on her face.

A smell of burning cake came to them from below. She sprang up.

"Sakes alive! My cake is burning!"

He held her by the skirt. "Let someone else take it out of the oven. You
haven't told me anything about yourself. How does the school go?"

She sighed, whether in resignation at being detained or at the thought
of her work he could not tell.

"It's a good position," she said. "The fall term will open in a week."

"One year more!" he said. "No--less than a year! Give me till next
spring and you'll have a house of your own again!"

"That will be lovely, Shaw; I don't dare let myself think of it." She
went to the door and called--"Aggie!"

A voice answered.

"Aggie, will you look at my cake?"

"All right," returned the voice.

"Who is Aggie?" asked Shaw.

"She's Mark's wife. I've mentioned her name time and again in my
letters."

"You can't expect me to remember all their names," returned Shaw
sulkily. "What's she like?"

"She's a nice girl but she's not very well. She's had a miscarriage."

Shaw made a movement of distaste with his broad shoulders. All this
breeding. . . . He'd not mind if he never had a child, if he could have
the girl he loved. He asked abruptly:--

"How are the Blairs?"

"I suppose you know that Ian's been working where the new silver mines
are, in New Ontario."

"Yes, I've had letters. . . . I was thinking of his father and
mother--and Elspeth."

"His parents are well. For a while Elspeth went about with Douglas
Scott, but nothing's come of that. Those Scott boys are fickle and
Douglas wasn't good enough for her. He's wild and he drinks too much.
Her mother was pleased, because she's ambitious for Elspeth, but Mr.
Blair was worried. He told me so. He said--'I'd rather it was a poor
young man like your son, trustworthy and clean-living.' "

"Hmph!"

"Shaw, why do you look annoyed?"

"I don't like his description of me. He hasn't seen anything of me for
years."

"He knows all about you. Every time he and I meet we talk about you. Ian
looks on you as his best friend."

"I guess I'm envious of Douglas's reputation. He makes me sound like a
prig. . . . There is one thing certain--I'll not be poor for long. Oh,
Mother, I'm dying for the day to come when you'll no longer be the
mother of a poor young man! A poor young prig! I could be a little wild
too--if I had the chance."

Cristabel knitted her forehead and smiled.

"I do _not_ understand you, Shaw. I couldn't be prouder of being your
mother if you were worth a million."

"That's nonsense," he returned grimly.

They went down the narrow stairs to the dining room. Jane Gower was
laying the table. She looked smaller and more bent than Shaw had
remembered her, her hair more silver, her face pinker. She gave her
crooked smile up at him.

"Well, Shaw, so you're here. I didn't know you'd come in."

They stood rather awkwardly facing each other.

"You look pretty well, Grandma," he said. Was this the woman, he
thought, who used to drag me into that bedroom and thrash me? This
little pink-and-white benevolent-looking old body, not taller than my
shoulder!

"I am pretty well, considering. My sakes, you _have_ grown! You're
taller than Mark, isn't he, Cristabel?"

Mark's wife came in from the kitchen. She was scarcely bigger than a
child and held her little body close, as though she would make herself
even smaller.

"This is Agnes," said Jane, as though she approved of her
daughter-in-law, who in truth had brought a little land and a little
money with her.

Agnes put a hard little hand into Shaw's and showed two deep dimples in
a smile.

"Now," said Jane, "your grandfather will want to see you. He's sitting
on the verandah."

It seemed strange to think of Roger Gower sitting at this time of day, a
time when he had always been hard at work. Shaw followed his grandmother
with a feeling of unreality in the scene, even a feeling of depression.

But Roger Gower looked extraordinarily natural. His stocky body was well
covered with flesh, his face fresh-colored. The neatness of his clothes,
the clean, unused look of his hands, there was where the difference lay.
He moved his eyes slowly to Shaw's face, as though with a great effort
he included him in the restricted world where he now had his being.

"Here's Shaw, Pa," said Jane, in her low gruff voice.

Roger's eyes were now full on Shaw's face. How amazingly blue they were
above the grizzled expanse of his spread beard! The sun glimmered on the
smoothness of his bald head, the delicate whiteness of the wen on its
dome. After a profound stare he brought out the words:--

"Howdy-do, Shaw?"

"Howdy-do, Grandpa?" said Shaw. He took Roger's right hand in his. The
hand was smooth and scarcely returned the clasp. It lay thick and soft
and acquiescent. Shaw returned it to the arm of the chair. He did not
know what to say.

"Want anything, Pa?" asked Jane.

He appeared not to hear her. Then slowly he brought words up from his
chest, out through the density of his beard.

"Did I hear the churn?"

"Yes. There's nice fresh buttermilk."

"Bring me some."

The men were left alone. Shaw said:--

"I'm sorry to find you like this, Grandpa."

Roger Gower stared straight ahead of him into the changeful sunshine and
shadow that flickered among the branches of the old elms. A full minute
passed before he answered:--

"I'm mending."

"That's good."

They sat silent. Jane returned with two glasses of buttermilk on a small
black tray with a bunch of tight little dahlias painted on it. Particles
of rich butter floated on top of the milk. Shaw was embarrassed to have
his grandmother wait on him.

"Thanks," he muttered, and put the drink to his lips.

Roger took the goblet in both hands and raised it with protracted
caution to the streak of darker hair that showed where his beard and
moustache met. Jane watched him anxiously. With a long steady drain the
buttermilk disappeared. She took a corner of her snow-white apron and
wiped a trickle from his beard.

"Don't make him talk too much," she said to Shaw. "It tires him." She
left them.

"The place looks just the same," said Shaw.

Roger turned his eyes on him. Words were coming. He said ponderously:--

"The old dog's dead."

Shaw had not noticed the absence of the collie.

"That's too bad," he said. "What did he die of?"

Roger considered the question for some time and then returned:--

"I don't remember."

He turned his gaze once more into the green depths of the elm, as though
there he expected to find a solution to some problem that troubled him.
Shaw said:--

"I think I'll have a look round the farm."

He went down the steps of the verandah and passed the kitchen windows.
He could hear his mother and grandmother talking inside. Behind the
house there was the woodpile, and an axe propped against the sawhorse.
Here was the scene of boyhood tribulations. He had not forgotten them,
nor was their bitterness softened in his mind. He remembered how, in his
helpless anger, he had hurled sticks against the woodshed. Well, he had
been a miserable kid, but it was all over. He was free. A year more
would see his mother with her own roof over her head, a modest one
perhaps, but she at no one's beck and call. He pictured the two of them
sitting down at table together. There would be flowers on the table and
fine linen and fruit in season. . . . He'd buy a phonograph for her and,
on each birthday, an additional article of silver for her dressing
table. He would choose the design carefully. He would buy the hairbrush
first. Then the mirror, the clothes brushes, the manicure set--whatever
was needed to complete it.

He met his uncles in a distant field, on their way home to dinner. Mark
was more robust than ever but Herbert looked wizened. The stubble fields
lay golden in the ruddy sunlight. Crows walked along the furrows seeking
what grain had been dropped. Overhead a flock of swallows flew
compactly, with sweet twitterings, on their way South. A huge sow lay in
a fence corner suckling a troop of struggling piglets, all clean and
pink, with hard hams and neat little hoofs. Behind them flamed a clump
of goldenrod.

Herbert and Mark were friendly.

"Well, you've traveled some since we last saw you," said Herbert
enviously. "We never get away, now that Pa's laid up."

"I suppose you'll be off to British Columbia next," said Mark. "You were
sensible not to go in for farming."

"I never liked farming."

The two farmers laughed. "We'll bet you didn't. You were the laziest kid
I ever saw."

"Did you ever have any other kid working with you?" asked Shaw.

They confessed that they hadn't but they were irrevocably convinced of
his idleness.

In the house Shaw's eyes sought his mother as of old, but no longer with
yearning and dependence. Now there was a protective light in them. He
had a feeling that she was always being imposed upon in this house. She
felt his gaze that scarcely left her and shook her head smiling, forming
with her lips the words:--

"Shaw, don't stare so."

But that grave stare, how it went through her like balm--filled her with
happy pride! At one and the same moment she hoped her family would
notice and hoped they would not. No one noticed.

Roger Gower, assisted by Mark, shuffled to the table. He looked very
natural sitting there in his black-painted armchair but he no longer
served the food. Jane cut up his for him and he ate it with a spoon like
a child. It put life into him and he asked:--

"What day is to-morrow?"

"Sunday," answered Mark.

"Then Merton will come to see me . . . and Becky." His eyes sought his
wife's face. "You tell Shaw what Leslie has."

"He's got an automobile," said Jane in grudging admiration.

Roger blew through his beard. "Goes like the wind," he mumbled.

Herbert and Mark spoke scornfully of the car. "Leslie's a loon. He can't
talk of anything but the automobile, and half the time it's broke down."

"He used to be the same about horses."

"Uncle Merton and Aunt Becky had one drive in his automobile and they
never wanted another."

"Beaty screams her head off, she gets that scared."

Roger wanted to speak but no one noticed. The words were struggling
behind his beard. He hit the table a feeble blow in his exasperation.

"What is it, Pa?" asked Cristabel.

He stared at her, his large blue eyes disturbed.

"Leslie . . ." he got out.

"Yes, Pa? Leslie . . ."

"He wants me . . . to have . . . a drive with him . . . and . . . I'm a
going to!"

He was being funny. That was plain by the quirk where his beard and
moustache met. His sons grinned good-naturedly, but Jane said:--

"I guess that would be the end of all for you, Pa."

In the afternoon Cristabel and Shaw set out to call on Dr. Clemency.
They looked on him as Shaw's benefactor and had a keen sense of
gratitude. During the long walk to Thornton Shaw poured out his doings
of the past months, his plans for the future. Cristabel clasped his arm.
She drank in all he said.

The village looked just the same. There were the great blue and green
glass urns in the window of the drugstore. There in the baker's window
were the sugar sticks and caramels and bull's-eyes that had once made
his mouth water.

"Would you like some candies, Mother?" he asked.

"No, thanks, dear. They make my teeth ache."

"There's a nice-looking hat," he said, outside the drygoods store. "Do
you need a hat?"

"Goodness, no! And, if I did, I'd not buy that girlish thing. It looks
more like Elspeth."

He felt a little rebuffed. They walked on in silence. They came to Dr.
Clemency's house set far back behind a hedge, his name, Morgan Clemency,
on a brass plate on the door. The lawn was somewhat below the level of
the street and was green with the strange intensity of autumn. The paved
walk was bordered by beds of cannas in brilliant red flower.

As Cristabel was about to pull the bell the door opened and the doctor
appeared, ushering out a young woman. He looked quite unchanged to Shaw.
Time seemed to have no effect on him. He was as erect, as
haughty-looking in his sallow aquiline way, as ever. But there was a
kindly light in his deep-set eyes when he looked at Cristabel.

"Come in, come in, Mrs. Manifold! And Shaw--walk right in! No need to
ask how you are. You both look very well indeed." He shook them warmly
by the hand.

The young woman was staring at Shaw with a self-conscious smile. She was
stylish, he thought, but had a shrewish air that rather spoiled her.
There was something vaguely familiar in her pale searching gaze, her
sharp, cold-looking nose and the deep dimple that incongruously dented
one cheek when she smiled.

"This is Miss Adams," said Dr. Clemency. "I think you and she were at
school together. In fact she and I have just been talking of you."

"Are you Louie Adams?" asked Shaw as they shook hands. Her hand was very
small, very bony, and gripped his almost painfully.

"I am," she answered, with a note of defiance. "I suppose I've changed a
lot. You haven't changed at all. You look as solemn and as dogged as
ever."

"Did you say doggish?" asked Dr. Clemency, showing his teeth.

"No. I said dogged. No one could stop Shaw doing what he wanted to."

Cristabel thought the girl was rude. She said:--

"I think Shaw is very reasonable. Not a bit dogged, like you say."

"Well, well," said the doctor, "don't you young people begin to quarrel.
I'm going to take you all into the garden to see my wife."

He said this as though he were about to confer on them a great honor
and, leading the way down the steps, escorted them to the garden at the
back of the house. Here they found Mrs. Clemency ensconced on a rustic
seat with a number of shawls about her and a hot-water bottle on a
cushion at her feet. She had the pleased air of a little girl proud of
being the centre of grown-up attention. Beside her sat Elspeth Blair.
They turned their two faces, Mrs. Clemency's pale, sandy, pointed,
Elspeth's rosy and round, toward the newcomers.

"I have brought more visitors for you, my dear," said the doctor.

His wife greeted them kindly but with an invalid's detached air. He
tucked the shawls more closely about her, brought another seat for
Cristabel and himself. Louie and Shaw dropped to the grass. The air was
heavy with the lazy sweetness of September, and laggard bees raped the
scant honey of late flowers to augment their winter store.

Mrs. Clemency talked of her sweet peas, her poodle, her ill-health, the
doctor giving his profound attention to her every word. When she talked
of her sweet peas he stalked to the corner of the garden where they grew
and brought back a few large blooms which she declared were paltry
compared to those of the early summer. When she wondered a little
anxiously where the poodle was, Dr. Clemency went to the house and
brought back the comforting word that he was asleep on the gilt chair in
the parlor. When she turned to the subject of her health he laid his
long ivory-colored hand on the hot-water bottle to see that it was still
a benefit to her.

Cristabel's eyes had a gentle longing in them when she looked at him.
Her mind went back to her dead husband and she pictured him living, with
a good practice and herself the mistress of a happy home. What must it
be like to be cared for--to have one's every wish anticipated? But she
would never have changed places with Mrs. Clemency. She had her boy, her
health. Soon they would be together under their own roof. As the doctor
took her to see his melons, she said:--

"Shaw had a touch of malaria at the lumber camp, doctor."

"He did! I am sorry to hear that. Was it caused by bad water?"

"He doesn't think so. No one else had it. I get so anxious about him
when he has any sickness."

"Don't you worry, Mrs. Manifold. Your son looks very well to me. The
malaria has come from a germ he has picked up on that journey of his."

"A germ!" Cristabel had never heard of such a thing.

"Well--a microbe. One never knows where they may lurk. The South is a
good place for breeding them. I saw a lot of sickness in the American
Civil War."

"It must have been terrible . . . and to think that you were a prisoner
and almost shot for a spy!"

"I said my prayers and never thought to see Canada again. But thanks to
a Yankee whose wounds I had dressed, I escaped." He repeated the story
she already knew well but never tired of. The golden-green melons lay
unnoticed at their feet.

They heard the voices of the young people from beneath a pear tree where
Mrs. Clemency had sent them to get themselves fruit. Louie's laugh came
high and shrill.

"That poor young girl," said the doctor, "is far from well."

"Louie Adams?"

"Yes. She has a touch of--what your husband died of. She has spent the
summer in a tent in an orchard. It's now considered the best treatment
to keep them out of doors."

"Yes. So I've been told. Poor Louie! She's worked so hard. And she's
doing so well at schoolteaching. How long will it be till she's cured?"

"A year. The school board is keeping her school for her. They ought to,
for it was the unshoveled paths and the freezing cold of the schoolroom
that started her trouble."

Cristabel felt a deep compassion for the girl. Yet Louie's face was
bright with laughter when they saw her collecting pears in a basket. She
was so improved that Shaw could scarcely believe in her. Her hair, which
had been drab and stringy as a child, was thick and well cared for. Her
pale eyes had a new brightness and her thin bluish lips were scarlet.
She set herself violently to attract him, but he turned from her to the
unaffected sweetness of Elspeth and Elspeth's honest grey-blue eyes.

On the walk home Cristabel told Shaw of Louie's illness. He was sorry
for her but his mind was on Elspeth. She had invited him and Cristabel
to tea the next day. She had said that her parents would be glad to have
them. Ian would be home.

"Didn't she ask Louie?"

"No, Mother. Louie never has gone to the Blairs'. You couldn't expect
Elspeth to invite her."

"I feel very sorry for her, Shaw."

"Yes," he agreed. "It's a pity." But his mind was too full of the new
life opening before him to dwell on Louie's misfortunes.

Cristabel continued--"I do admire the way she's got on. Did you notice
how nicely she was dressed? And her hair was done in the latest style.
But there was a feverish excitable look about her." Cristabel pressed
Shaw's arm as though she would hold him with her strength against all
dangers. He looked down at her, feeling himself a wall between her and
the future. From now on her life would be different.

Already life seemed changed to them. The years of his education were
over. Before him now lay achievement. For her, security and pride. They
felt lighter, as though they had laid down a burden. The road, with the
golden stubble fields and little woods and gentle hills on either side,
was scarcely long enough for the happiness of that walk. If only, she
thought, he were not going away so soon! Since he was eight years old it
had always been meetings and partings for them.

The next day was Sunday. Since Roger's illness, that meant a succession
of visits from his married sons and daughters who were within reach of
the farm, and a crowded table for the two-o'clock dinner and for tea.
Wilfred, the manager of a branch bank in a small town, brought his wife
and three children in a shiny new buggy. Letitia and her husband walked
from Thorriton, pushing a baby carriage, their three older children
marching alongside swinging empty baskets which they would fill with
pears and apples from the orchard. Leslie and Beatrice and their
children arrived in the motorcar which was a source of envy, derision,
and sometimes anger when horses were frightened. But Leslie and Beatrice
were favorites, he for his knowingness and jokes, she for her unfailing
laughter which bubbled all the more spontaneously as she put on flesh
with each succeeding child.

Uncle Merton and Aunt Becky did not come to dinner but appeared in
midafternoon, she in a new blue velvet dress and a beribboned hat for
which she had discarded her bonnet, he looking a little smaller, a
little more bent, but benign and good-humored as ever. He sat himself
down by his brother and laid a stubby hand on his knee.

"Well, well, Roger," he said, "you don't look at all ailing. We'll soon
have you working on the farm again."

Roger fixed his large blue eyes on his brother's face. Words were on the
way but they were slow.

"I'll not work on the farm again," he said.

"Well, perhaps not hard work, but you'll get about and see that the
others are doing their share."

Roger stared and brought out--"I hope so."

"You should have been at our church this morning," said Becky. "It was
the Harvest Festival. 'Twould have done you good to see the pumpkins and
squashes and grapes and ears of corn. The rector preached a fine
sermon."

"And only twenty minutes long," added Merton. "Not one of those
long-winded harangues like your minister gives you."

The eyes of the two old brothers met; Roger drew a deep breath. Then he
said--"Your rector . . . can tell . . . all he knows . . . in twenty
minutes."

A quirk came at the corner of his moustache. He had seen the pleased
look Jane gave him.

Merton, delighted to have roused his brother to retort, went on--"It
would cheer you up to hear the singing, Roger. No droning of psalms but
good hearty hymns. Leslie led the choir."

"The decorations were lovely," repeated Becky.

Roger turned his gaze on her. "Was . . . your . . . hat . . . a part of
them?" he asked.

Jane, whose merriment was usually in undertone, cackled out loud.

Beatrice came to the door of the parlor.

"Tea is ready," she said. "Can I help you, Pa? Or would you like one of
the boys?"

"I'll help him," said Merton. "My goodness, he'll scarcely need any help
at all, the way he is improving."

He heaved Roger from his chair. Roger grasped his stick and the two
moved towards the tea table. Jane was still chuckling over Roger's quip
at Becky's hat.

But Becky was not annoyed. She tossed her head with the hat on it in
spiteful pride. To come to table in a relative's house wearing a hat was
an unheard-of thing. It was an insult. Jane, from feeling amused at
Becky's expense, now was disconcerted. She pushed out her upper lip and
fiddled nervously with the cups and saucers.

The massive beards of the old men gave solidity to the scene which
otherwise would have seemed frivolous in this house. Leslie was making
jokes about his mother's hat, knowing it pleased her. She sat with it
perched high on her black head. Her relations-in-law said that she dyed
her hair, but this was not so. Black as a coal it remained though her
face was wrinkled as an old apple.

                     "Where did you get that hat?
                     Where did you get that tile?"

Leslie sang softly in his reedy tenor.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Becky, "to sing comic songs
with a voice like yours. Coming out of church people told me they almost
cried when you sang the solo part of the anthem."

Leslie flushed a deeper hue with pride. Jane thrust out her lip still
further. Luke gave a snort. Roger made as though to speak. Watching him,
Jane was torn between the wish to have him say something that would
prick Leslie's conceit and the fear that such a remark would hurt Beaty.
Her mother love prevailed.

"Will you have stewed blueberries or pears, Pa?" she interrupted.

Roger's eyes were still fixed on Leslie. A tremor went through his
beard. The words began to come.

"I'd cry too," he said.

Jane hurriedly repeated--"Blueberries or pears, Pa?"

Roger's gaze was turned on the fruit.

"Plums," he said.

"Roger's like I am," said Becky. "He finds blueberries sloppy and pears
windy."

Jane was now thoroughly disconcerted. Leslie drummed with his fingers on
the tablecloth and sang:--

                   "Where'er I go they shout 'Hello!
                   Where did you get that hat?' "

Becky addressed him--"You must sing the solo from the anthem after tea,
Leslie. There's no use in hiding your light under a bushel."

"It would take more than a bushel to hide your hat, Ma," returned
Leslie. "It would take a barrel."

Becky cackled delightedly. "When I gave up bonnets I thought I might as
well go in for hats that were worth looking at."

"Pa, do you want plums?" asked Jane. Roger was troubled.

He did not know what he wanted. When Merton laid a slice of layer cake
on his plate he began to eat it docilely.

Jane rose from the table.

"What do you want, Ma?" asked Letitia.

"Plums. I'll get them myself."

They heard her heavy tread descending the steps into the cellar. Soon
she returned and set a glass bowl of golden plums on the table.

"Help your Pa to some," she said to Esther.

But Roger shook his head. "No . . . no!" he said, quite briskly.

"Roger's like I am," put in Becky. "If he doesn't get a thing when he
wants it, it's no use to him." She nodded gayly at Roger.

He was bewildered, but he was pleased. He felt a smile rippling up
through the cords of his throat to his lips and his cheeks. It came
rippling softly, even to his beard, and quietly vibrated there.

"Where are Cristabel and Shaw?" asked Merton, thinking it would be well
to change the subject.

Becky had not missed them. Now her beady eyes flew about the table. "To
think of their going off when we were expected! Where are they?"

"They're to tea at the Manse," returned Jane primly.

"Out to tea!" Becky's sense of dignity was outraged.

"To _tea_--and _us_ here!"

"I'm not sure they knew you were coming."

Becky pushed back her chair. Her voice was like a file.

"Well, if we're of as little importance as that I think we'd better be
off, eh, Merton?"

Merton ran his fingers nervously through his beard, scratched his head.
"Just as you say, Becky," he mumbled.

Those about the table began to be conscious that something was wrong.
Leslie saved the situation. "Keep your hat on, Mother," he said.
"Cristabel told me she was real sorry to miss you and hoped to be back
before you left. The folks at the Manse wanted to see Shaw."

Becky was only partly mollified, but the reference to her hat amused
Roger. He chuckled deeply. He wanted to speak. Everyone waited for that.

"She . . . is keeping . . . it on, Leslie," he drew up from the depth of
his chest. "I'll bet . . . she . . . sleeps in it. . . ."

Jane quite graciously urged her sister-in-law to another cup of tea.

Becky drew in her chair. "I always liked Shaw," she said. "He's got
brains. I like people with brains. He takes after his father's folks."

"Shaw may have brains," said Luke, "but he was a poor tool on the farm.
I never saw a lazier boy."

Mark grinned. "I remember once putting him to saw wood and I found him
lying on his back reading. He'd rigged up a contraption that he could
work with his legs and make the noise of sawing. He'd been fooling us
for days that way."

Becky cackled in delight. "That's a boy after my own heart! He'll make
his mark in the world and it won't be like his grandmother's Mark,
either."

This pun completely restored her. Her eyes twinkled from one face to
another. Jane knew the joke was against her but she could not make it
out. She sat dumbly making puzzled faces while her needle-pricked
fingers nervously pleated the edge of the snowy tablecloth.

When the meal was over Mark and Luke helped their father to his feet,
then resumed their places. Roger still said grace. There was a long
silence before he was able to bring his tongue to the point of speech.
Leslie gave Beaty a look from under his lowered lids and she had
difficulty in restraining an hysterical giggle. From across the table
Wilfred stared at her disapprovingly. She saw her mother's lips forming
the words "Behave yourself, Beaty!"

Then from their father's beard the grace issued:--

"For what we have received . . . may the Lord . . . make us . . ."

Silence again fell.

At first it was a soft light silence, then it grew heavy, pressing upon
them, with Roger as its centre. Jane's lips quivered. She prompted:--

"Truly thankful, Pa."

But he could not speak. He made a sign with his head to his brother.

From the other beard came the remainder of the grace:--

"Truly thankful. For Christ's sake, Amen."

But instead of the Presbyterian "Ay-men," Merton intoned the long "Ah"
of the Church of England. The two pairs of china-blue eyes of the
brothers met: Merton's defiant, Roger's truculent. He found his voice.

"Ay-men," he growled.

Cristabel and Shaw were very happy at the Manse. The Blairs were kind.
They were deeply interested in Shaw, Cristabel could see that. She felt
that Elspeth was more than interested. She felt that Elspeth was very
fond of him and thought how much she would like the girl for a
daughter-in-law when the time came for Shaw to marry. Shaw seemed to
have eyes only for Ian. But how could one look away from Ian when he was
in the room? He made one feel light-hearted. She thought that was why
Shaw found so much pleasure in his companionship. When he was laughing
and talking with Ian, Shaw's face softened. He looked boyish and his
laugh made Cristabel's heart glad.

Ian wanted to talk of nothing but the trip up the coast of British
Columbia the year before. He recalled one incident after another. Where
was old Varney to-day? Where was Searle? How they had bickered! What
workers they were! Far better than the lot Ian had since had working
under him in the mining country of New Ontario. He wished he were going
West with Shaw. He reiterated that never again would they have such a
summer.

Elspeth was pensive. She wandered off by herself to find her little
kitten that was chasing moths in the dusk. Beyond the white picket fence
she could see the windows of the Presbyterian Church shining in the
afterglow. She walked slowly, peering into every shadow for the kitten.
Because it was black it was not easy to find. It heard her coming and
crouched in the long grass in the fence corner. But its glowing eyes
betrayed it. They were like two little green moons. . . . "Oh, now I've
got you!" she exclaimed, and caught it and held it to her cheek. It
snuggled there as though it had wanted nothing so much as to be
captured. She could feel the flutter of its tiny heart and she was
filled with tenderness. She felt a little lonely, too, and she was glad
when she saw Shaw coming along the path toward her. Ian had monopolized
him. Now she would have him to herself for a little. She wished she
could think of something clever to say, something witty like Ian would
have said. She wished that the things that came into her head to say
were not always so sensible. People were always calling her a nice
sensible girl. Well, it could not be helped. . . .

"I have found the kitten," she said.

"Oh, have you?" he said, as though relieved.

"Yes, I found it in that dark corner."

"Did you?" He put a finger under the kitten's chin and tickled it
softly.

"I'd never have seen it if it hadn't been for its eyes."

His hand touched her cheek and he withdrew it quickly.

"It's a pretty little kitten," he said.

"Yes, isn't it! It weighs next to nothing. Feel it."

She offered it to him and he took it gravely. It sat in his hand as
though there it wanted to be of all places in the world. But a moment
later it leaped to the fence and scampered along it, its tail erect, and
from the fence dropped among some currant bushes.

"Oh, say, Elspeth, I am sorry!"

"Never mind! We'll find it again. Kitty! Kitty!"

He called too. "Kitty--Kitty--Kitty!"

They knelt side by side peering under the bushes. They could hear it
moving. The sweet smell of the black-currant leaves rose on the soft
air.

Before he knew what he was doing he put his lips against her cheek.

All motion ceased for them--the stir of the leaves, the sigh of the
breeze in the poplar tree, the very beat of their hearts. All the life
of the village, the life of the whole world, was suspended as his lips
pressed the round firmness of her cheek.

They rose slowly from their knees. She struck her palms lightly together
because particles of the garden loam clung to them. The kitten darted
into view and sidled down the path. Cristabel's voice came from the
lawn.

"Shaw! We must go now. Where are you?"

On the long walk home she kept thinking:--

"I shall remember this night. It is so nice, walking home with Shaw
after being out to tea together. It has been a happy day. The
remembrance of it will help me bear up all the while he is away."

"Let's not go in yet," he said when they had reached the house. "Let's
sit on the steps for a little."

"But we ought to go in, dear."

Still she humored him. They sat on the steps of the verandah and he laid
his head on her lap.

"Stroke my hair," he said. "The way you used to when I was a kid."




                              CHAPTER XIII


Shaw secured the same room he had before in Ottawa, but his work was now
permanent instead of temporary. He had a salary of two hundred dollars a
month and might have taken even better quarters and still saved money,
but there was the loan from Mr. Scott to be paid. When that was
accomplished he would save all that was possible for furnishing a home
for Cristabel. Her home and his! In a year she would come to it. In a
year she would be freed from the long thraldom of her successive
situations. For the rest of her life, free--to rest, to enjoy, to spend
the money he would surely be able to lavish on her.

For he would get on! The heads of the Department were interested in him.
He was a queer young fellow but worth watching. When he talked of
forests his face lighted as a young priest's might when he spoke of his
religion. That was the sort of man who was wanted. One whose mind could
keep pace with the expansion of the West. All through the West there was
the invasion of new settlers. From the east of Canada, from Britain,
from the States, from Europe. Later on Shaw was to choose what parts
should be set aside for forest reserves and what tracts kept free for
settlement.

His body, his mind, were vibrant with energy as he strode through the
clear frosty air one March evening to the Scotts'. In his pocket was the
payment of the loan. No more would that shadow hang over him. Now he
could save. His eyes swept the houses he passed. He considered each in
the light of its suitability as a home for Cristabel and himself. Size
did not baffle him or sense of proportion to his salary depress. That
house, with the tall white portico, that would do. The room next the
conservatory should be her own sitting room. The one with the round end,
like a tower, his study. There was a house with a fine garage--well, why
shouldn't he own a car before long! He saw himself driving through
tree-shaded streets, along the road by the river in a handsome car,
Cristabel at his side, a white motoring veil flying over her shoulder.
Or was it Elspeth at his side? He narrowed his mental gaze to make
sure. . . . Yes, it was certainly Elspeth at his side. Cristabel was at
home in the garden picking sweet peas. Her arms were full of them.

He was so deep in thought that he turned in at the Scotts' gate without
being aware that he did so. He stared at the door. Where was he? Oh yes,
he had come to pay his debt! He had the money ready in his pocket and
that was the end of money's ebb. Now the flow would begin. Next month he
would buy furniture. Always paying cash. But he would have only good
things. He already had an eye on a brass bed for Cristabel, very ornate,
on which she would rest like a queen. In one shop there was a study lamp
he wanted. In another a parlor table with carved legs and a top like
satin. . . . He saw Cristabel setting a silver vase, with red roses in
it, on the table. . . . What was she wearing? Why . . . a lovely new
dress, like one he had seen on a lady in Charleston--blue silk, with a
lacy thing falling down the front. . . . The door opened. He must have
rung the bell! The maid looked at him inquiringly.

"Mr. Scott," he said hesitatingly. "I'd like to see Mr. Scott. I'm
expected to dinner." And he added apologetically, "I'm afraid I'm
early."

Mr. Scott was sitting at a desk in a small room furnished in a style
suitable for what was then called a "den." His shrewd tired eyes took
Shaw in as he entered. He welcomed him warmly.

"I've come," said Shaw, "to pay my debt." He took out a wallet and from
it fifteen twenty-dollar bank notes. "I've brought it in cash."

Mr. Scott took the notes and looked at them thoughtfully.

"You're sure you want to pay now?"

"Yes. I'm anxious to have it off my mind."

"Well, I admire you for that. I'm glad you're getting on so well, Shaw.
What are you earning?"

"Two hundred a month, sir. But I could have made more than double that
if I'd gone to Oregon."

"Oregon?"

"I was offered a job there to take charge of the Forest Department."

Mr. Scott stared. "Then why didn't you go?"

"I like the job here better."

Mr. Scott's face fell. "Well, that's a funny reason. I thought you were
out for success."

"So I am. There's a wider scope here. I'll learn more. Next summer
they're sending me to inspect the Glacier National Park, so we shall
know what the Americans are doing in that way. The heads of the railway
and the ministers have to decide what we should include in our National
Park. I'm to make the choice next fall."

"Well, well, well," said Mr. Scott, "I hope you're doing the right
thing, but in your place I couldn't possibly have forgone the bigger
salary."

"I want to learn all I can about forests," said Shaw. He set his lips in
a stern, almost ascetic line. There was a hungry look in his eyes.

Why that look, Mr. Scott wondered, fingering the notes he hated to take.
But it was good for the boy to pay his debts. "If you want another loan
at any time . . ." he said.

"I'll not want another," said Shaw. "I'm on my own feet now and I don't
intend to stand still."

"It's a wonderful thing to like your work," said Mr. Scott. "I've never
liked politics but I expect I shall be submerged in them for the rest of
my days. . . . I like an outdoor life."

They were silent as the thought of mountains and rivers and forests came
into the room like a palpable essence. Mr. Scott straightened his
sagging body. "I'd not have this corporation," he said, "if . . ." He
did not finish the sentence but picked up a framed photograph from his
desk. It was Ronald in uniform.

"Taken in India," he said.

Shaw examined it. "He looks fine," he said.

"He's lost to us," returned Mr. Scott. "And now Douglas has got himself
engaged to a society girl--as hard as nails." He sighed and again
slumped in his chair. "You'll meet her at dinner."

Shaw did, and felt uncomfortable in her presence.

Douglas was just the same, talkative, bold, and restless. He and the
girl were like opponents in some game rather than lovers. They spoke a
language Shaw could not learn. He had never liked Mrs. Scott, who had
held herself aloof from the country people and had resented her
husband's whim of sending their sons to the common school. He had wanted
them to be educated as he had been, but the boys were like their mother.

Mr. Scott tried to draw Shaw out but Shaw felt that anything he had to
say bored Mrs. Scott and mystified the young girl. He grew silent and
was glad when the evening was over.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He had a day with Cristabel on his way to Glacier Park. She looked well,
he thought. Her blue eyes were bright. Never had they had so much to
talk of, so many plans to discuss, but they found few words. They were
silent at times, while she held his hand and his imagination strained,
now toward the West, now toward the moment when he would take her away
from the life that was hateful to him. He said something of this and she
replied:--

"I don't hate it, Shaw. I'm fairly happy. And why shouldn't I be? I do
wish you wouldn't hate things." But she was glad he hated to have her
work.

"This summer is the turning point in my life," he said. "If I carry this
job through successfully, our future is secure."

"Is anything secure, Shaw?"

"Mother, that's not like you."

"Well, just once in my life I have felt secure. It lasted only a little
while."

"Don't you believe in me?"

"Yes . . . in you, but . . ."

"But what?"

"I'm no great hand at explaining what I feel."

"Then you don't believe in me!"

"I think . . . oh, I don't know . . . I guess I'm just afraid to be
happy."

"Don't be afraid, Mother."

"I'm not really. It's just these everlasting meetings and partings."

He put his arm about her. "Everyone says what a courageous woman you've
been."

"Courageous! That's too big a word. . . . Shaw, I do worry about your
clothes. I wish you had sent me your trunk to go over."

"Mother, clothes simply don't matter where I'm going."

"What time is it?"

"Forty minutes to train time."

"I hate trains."

"Who's hating now?"

"I can't help it--I hate them."

                 *        *        *        *        *

In the late fall Shaw was on one of the foothill ranches in the valley
of the Belly River that flowed from Montana into Alberta. He was making
preparations for the final survey for the National Park but he could
find no one to go with him. It was his first experience of the kind.
There had always been men eager for such expeditions. But this was the
time of the fall roundup and every available man was needed for the
bringing in of the cattle. They came in russet hordes across the dry
plains, their horns shining in the October sunlight. No one was
interested in Shaw's expedition. Among these scattered ranches he found
himself and his work unimportant. For so long he had looked on it as the
most important work in the Western provinces, himself as dedicated to
it, that he was irritated and a little baffled to find it held of small
account. He had traveled from ranch to ranch--they were twelve and
fifteen miles apart--finding no prospect, no immediate hope of getting a
man. He could not delay much longer, because of the coming cold weather.

His host, Mr. Barton, was an Englishman, an erect man of medium height,
the bronzed skin drawn tightly over his aquiline features, his eyes
searching, defensive yet tolerant. He kept repeating:--

"It's too bad. I'm very sorry, very sorry." Shaw was not certain whether
the rancher really was sorry for him or whether he was just being
polite, but it was the first expression of sympathy he had had and it
cheered him. He said:--

"I don't know what to do about it. I've a good mind to set out alone."

"You can't do that," said Barton decidedly. "It would be too dangerous."

"I will, if I can't get a man," returned Shaw doggedly.

"You see the way I am fixed. I can't possibly let you have a man."

"I know . . . but this is my job . . . I've got to do it."

"If only you could wait till the roundup was over!"

"I daren't wait. It's getting late now."

"Have a drink," said Barton.

"No. Thanks."

They stood silent in front of the low irregular house. Half a dozen dogs
were stretched in the mellow sunlight. A servant brought Barton the copy
of the London _Times_ which was handed out to him daily from the packet
that came every fortnight. Barton began to glance at the headlines.

Shaw's attention was caught by a weedy youth strolling across the space
between the enclosure where the first cattle of the roundup were
confined and the back of the house.

"Who is that?" he asked.

"Why, it's Freddy Chase! I wonder if you could get him to go with you.
He is not much of a prize but he'd be better than nobody. Hi--Freddy!"
he shouted.

The boy turned his head.

"Come here!"

"You can tell by the way he moves," said Barton, "how energetic he is.
But he's a decent boy. He's a nephew of my cook. He comes from the
Mormon colony."

Freddy now stood before them. He was very fair, tall, thin, taciturn.
Barton explained in a few words what was wanted of him. Freddy fixed his
light blue eyes on the far horizon, as though nothing either of them
might say could interest him.

"Well," said Barton, "what about it?"

"About what?" asked Freddy, in a thin high-pitched voice.

"Making the trip with this gentleman?"

"What would I make out of it?"

Shaw told him.

Freddy considered. "Well," he brought out at last, "I guess I'll go."

Shaw could almost have embraced him. He arranged with Barton for horses
and spent the rest of the day in putting the packs in order and gauging
the weight for each horse. He was much more nervously exact than usual.
Nothing must go wrong in the expedition. He could look back with content
on his summer's work in the American Glacier Park, his early autumn in
an old Hudson's Bay Company's fort from where he made long trips on
horseback. But this was the most important, this was the apex. With this
well done he could go back to Ottawa with a light heart. He dreaded
letting the boy out of his sight for fear of losing him. He felt nothing
stable in him.

"Must you go to your home before we leave?" he asked.

"Sure." Freddy's eyes rested languidly on the sharply etched line of the
horizon. "I go to git my clothes."

"You promise to be back here in time to leave at seven to-morrow
morning?"

"Yeh." Freddy began to roll a cigarette in thin tobacco-stained fingers.

Shaw was tempted to threaten or bribe him but he only said:--

"Well, you must be here on the tick. I depend on you."

The rancher was glad to have Shaw's company for the night. They sat up
late talking. The Englishman prophesied a war in Europe and said he
would be off to it when it came.

"What about you?" he asked.

"War doesn't interest me," answered Shaw. "I'm not interested in
destruction. I'm all for building up."

"But if the Empire was involved in a war?"

"I suppose I'd go--but I'd hate it. The fight against forest fires is
war enough for me." His sombre eyes turned toward the blackness of the
uncurtained window. He pictured the mountains and the mountain torrents
rearing themselves, rushing down through the night. The air coming in at
the window was cold. He shivered.

"Have a drink," urged Barton. "Then we'll go to bed. I hope you'll stop
with me on your way back."

"Thanks. I'd like to," answered Shaw.

They drank in silence, the smoke from Barton's cigar lying in a bluish
plain between them. Shaw looked at the clock, longing for morning. He
felt tired but as though sleep were far away.

It was not. He slept dreamlessly till he was roused by a knock on his
door. His first thought was--"Will the boy come?" He was so anxious
about the boy that he could scarcely eat his breakfast. The word came
from the kitchen that he was there. Shaw, at that moment, loved him. He
felt that he would do anything for him.

This morning Freddy looked more businesslike. He wore corduroy riding
breeches and a cowboy hat and scarf knotted about his thin throat. He
had on three sweaters, he said. The air was indeed as sharp as steel at
that moment. It had different degrees of heat and cold, turning
sometimes soft, bearing on it the scent of the manure from the cattle
enclosure, then suddenly sharp again. The sunrise was red against the
purple sky as they rode out into the open. The horses were fairly good
ones. They lifted up their feet as though eager to be off. The breath
from their nostrils hung white. There were two saddle horses and two
pack horses. Eight pairs of hoofs sounded their clip-clop on the morning
sharpness.

"How old are you?" asked Shaw.

"Seventeen."

"Ever been up in the mountains before?"

"No, I went to school three years--no, it was four years. Since then I
work round the cattle ranches." He added, after a little--"I'm a
Mormon."

"I don't suppose you've begun marrying yet, have you?" asked Shaw.

"There's time enough for me," answered the boy. "But my father has three
wives. They all have sisters. I've got a lot of nice aunts. One of them
is Mr. Barton's cook."

The only subject on which Freddy would willingly talk was the doings of
his aunts, his uncles, and many cousins. His interest in them was
apparently greater than his interest in anything he himself could
possibly do. Whenever the horses came abreast and Shaw tried to draw
some information about the country from the boy, Freddy would turn the
questions aside with: "My Uncle Alf in Seattle says," or "My Aunt Mary
in Winnipeg once had an awful experience," or "My Cousin Elmer pretty
near broke his neck on this trail. . . ." Shaw resigned himself to the
prolonged saga of Freddy's relations, in Freddy's tired, high-pitched
voice. But he never referred to his parents. Shaw concluded that the
father's matrimonial relations kept him too busy for intercourse with
his children and that, of the three wives, Freddy was possibly uncertain
which was his mother. But he was a willing boy and Shaw thanked
Providence for producing him.

Now that they were well on their way, Shaw gave him scarcely a thought.
In the distance the mountains rose up and up, vast, grey, snow-capped.
Serene and glittering, a glacier towered like a wall. Down through the
forest of spruce little streams flung themselves from the mountains. The
horses trotted across a great gravel flat where small willow trees
whispered in the breeze. Here once a lake had spread.

Shaw followed an old trail remaining from the days of Indian traders. It
left the low-lying land and followed a stream toward its mountainous
source. He would follow this, he thought, to a six-thousand-foot
elevation where the timber line was. From there what a godlike survey of
the country! The sound of the horses' hoofs, the creaking of the saddle
leather, the enticing Indian-summer breeze in his face, were the
orchestral accompaniment to the aspiring song of his spirit. He became
more and more absorbed in his own thoughts. He gave less and less
thought to Freddy.

At night they made themselves a shelter of spruce boughs and curled up
in it together. Bacon and eggs and hot coffee lay comfortingly in their
stomachs. The smell of the spruce boughs was spicy on the air. Moonlight
glimmered between the needles.

They could hear the soft stumbling movements of the horses, their slow
crunching of the coarse grass. Freddy would begin to murmur something
about an uncle, an aunt, or a cousin. Then they would be asleep, and so
on for three days and nights, getting higher and higher, up from the lap
of the plain to the shoulder of the mountain.

Each day the beneficent warmth of the sun increased, the harebell blue
of the sky deepened, the flaming autumnal colors became more piercingly
beautiful. The four horses, the two men, moving up the mountainside
became but figures in a tapestry depending from the wall of heaven. They
could not escape the design by their progress or alter the pattern by
their changeful poses. They were immutably interwoven there.

On the fourth day, and it was the last of the upward climb, Freddy fell
behind with the two pack horses. He often did this but to-day it was
farther. Shaw had the great hump of the mountain to himself, for all of
hoof sound or echoing voice. He was happier at this moment than ever
before in his life. The state of his mind approached bliss. He scarcely
thought but, in every fibre, he absorbed the well-being of his world.
There was understanding between him and his horse. The going was easy.
Her solid flanks and shoulders moved with little effort.

Evening came in a blaze of purple and saffron. The purple clouds hung
low, as though weighted. The wind rose and sang itself into a gale that
bent the trees and hastened the clouds onward, but still it was not
cold. The trail ran through a narrow valley where were glossy-leaved
shrubs and red shale and boulders that seemed to have been rolled down
from the peaks by sportive giants. Through the valley the gale blew
restlessly. Shaw was on the summit above the timber line and the
permanent snow spread to its verge.

Shaw rode in his shirt, for the day had been very warm. Now suddenly the
sun sank and he wanted his sweater. He remembered that he had left it on
a pack horse. He wished Freddy would come along with the camp things and
the food. He dismounted and stood by the trail, the bridle on his arm,
the mare arching her neck and looking sideways down the trail for her
companions. The shadows that had been growing each moment longer now
merged themselves into one violet dusk. A windy afterglow flared in the
west. The gale, like a naked barbarian, raced through the valley.

Shaw stroked the mare's neck and they heaved a mutual sigh. Both were
happy, but she wanted the comforting presence of her companions and Shaw
wanted his sweater and some food. A little farther on they would find a
good place to spend the night. He whistled softly between his teeth and
his fingers played an accompaniment on the curve of the mare's neck.
Suddenly she gave a joyful whinny. Shaw strained his ears. A pine cone
fell and rolled down the track. Then came an answering whinny. The boy
appeared riding the mare's brother.

"Hurry up!" shouted Shaw cheerfully. Then his jaw dropped.

"Where are the pack horses?" he shouted.

"I've lost 'em!" The boy looked ready to cry.

"_Lost them!_"

"Yeh. Down there." He pointed down into the valley. "I bin huntin' for
them ever since, till now."

Shaw snapped his teeth together and spoke through them. "Are you telling
me that you've _lost_ the pack horses?"

Freddy's lips trembled. "Yeh."

Shaw stood petrified. His mind refused to take in the disaster. Instead
it noted the hastening purple clouds, a cluster of little red berries
growing at the side of the trail.

Freddy was telling him a rigmarole about tying the three horses while he
went to investigate something, the remains of a trapper's camp, a
charred circle, something--it did not matter what--and when he came back
. . .

"On'y the saddle horse was there," he blubbered. "The other two sons of
guns had got away on me, mister."

Shaw stood silent, his fingers still drumming on the mare's neck. She
was gently nuzzling her brother's face.

"Honest to goodness, mister," said Freddy, "I tied them two horses tight
but the sons of guns fixed it up between them to get away. They never
wanted to come on this trip. My Uncle Jake had a horse that didn't like
mountains. There was no use trying to get him up them. He--"

"To hell with your uncle!" interrupted Shaw. "We've got to find those
pack horses!" He sprang into his saddle and led the way furiously down
the trail. Freddy came galloping after. The horses' tails and manes flew
out on the gale. They were glad to be together again.

They found the hoofprints of the pack horses where Freddy had tied them.
They found the prints again far down the valley, facing towards the
ranch. But now it was almost dark and a flurry of snow swept toward them
on the gale. Shaw shivered in his thin shirt. The boy was lucky. He had
kept on his sweater.

The night came down on them like the wings of a great bird. There was
nothing to do but surrender oneself to the blackness, for the food, the
blankets, the matches, were on the pack horses. There would be no food,
no warmth, that night. Unless a miracle restored the horses to them,
they must turn back the next day. Every time Freddy came near to Shaw he
began some story of an uncle, an aunt, or a cousin. Shaw no longer
cursed the boy or his relations. He cursed only himself as they lay
huddled together under the shelter of spruce boughs they had cut with
their penknives.

"Fool . . . fool . . . fool," Shaw repeated over and over to himself.
"What a fool--to set out with this boy--a fool to leave him in charge of
the pack horses--a fool to carry no matches on me . . . a blasted
blithering fool who is just getting what he deserves!" His lips moved
continuously, as though in prayer. He clutched Freddy close to him. His
breast was warm but chills were running up and down his back.

He heaved himself over so that the boy was against his back.

"Put your arms about me," he growled. "Hug me, you young devil!"

They huddled together under the saddle blankets. Freddy's breath came
warm and soft against Shaw's ear. In and out from the centre of his
being, as though in deep peace, it came against Shaw's ear, warming it
while the rest of him shivered. They were safe from the wind that still
winged its way through the valley, swifter and swifter, unhampered by
its weight of snow.

What was to be done? Shaw considered the position as coolly as he could,
yet--"Fool! Fool! Fool that I was!" he kept repeating. By the time they
had returned to the ranch, recovered the pack horses, a week would be
lost--and he could hear the breath of winter in the singing of that
wind! If it were humanly possible he would get a man who knew something
of the mountains to come with him. If he couldn't--well, he must just
make the best of Freddy. On the ride back to the ranch he must be civil
to Freddy, much as he would like to thrash him, or the boy might refuse
to return with him. . . . He pressed his back against Freddy's chest to
stay its shivering. "Come closer to me, can't you?" he growled, and
pulled the blanket over his head.

They were still in that position when he woke. He felt half-suffocated
under the blanket. It lay heavy on his face and smelled strong of the
horses. It was heavy and sodden and he flung it off almost wildly. He
sat up and looked around.

Surely he was dreaming! Why . . . it couldn't have snowed like that! It
_couldn't_ and he not know it! Everything was weighted, buried,
smothered, in snow! His body and Freddy's were one white mound like a
grave. What if Freddy were dead! He shook him wildly.

"Freddy! Freddy!"

The boy grunted and wriggled into the blanket.

"Wake up!"

He opened a pair of lazy, mild blue eyes.

"Look what's happened!"

Freddy raised himself on his elbow and looked round.

"My cousin Jake . . ." he began.

Shaw clambered up and went to the horses. The snow was at least two feet
deep and still falling fast in feathery flakes, prime for mounding,
heaping, burying alive what it encountered.

"Thank God I woke!" he exclaimed. Freddy called after him: "My Aunt
Henrietta always says that you've lovely dreams when you're being frozen
to death. Did you have lovely dreams, mister?"

"Not a darned dream," said Shaw.

"I did. I dreamed that I was stopping with my Auntie Belle. She's Mr.
Barton's cook. I always call her _Auntie_ Belle because . . ."

Now Shaw was out of earshot. He was glad of that. It would be hard to be
kind to Freddy on the journey back. The horses looked at him with
reproachful eyes. They had kept the snow stamped down in their space.

"There is no breakfast for you," said Shaw, "so you need not look at me
like that."

He slapped them encouragingly on the flanks. Freddy was rolling up the
blankets.

"There's a terrible lot of snow, mister," he called.

"So I've noticed!" answered Shaw.

"There's more coming, too."

"It looks like it. Never mind. We'll get back quickly--the horses will
be glad to go."

Freddy came plodding through the snow carrying the blankets. His nose
was a deep pink and his lips a sort of magenta. He said in his
expressionless voice:--

"My Cousin Elmer says it's dangerous to ride a horse over rough ground
after a fresh fall of snow. He says you're liable to break their legs if
you do."

"I had no intention of riding," answered Shaw curtly. But he was hot all
over with the thought of his own ignorance. He had intended to ride! He
had intended to ride!

"Then what made you say we'd get back quickly?" asked Freddy.

"I meant we'd have to walk quickly."

"Walk quickly through two feet of snow!" There was a jeering note in
Freddy's voice.

Shaw longed to plant a kick on the boy's thin behind but he said
cheerfully:--

"Well, the sooner we set out the sooner we'll get there."

They began to lead the horses down the steep trail. Coming up, the
horses had picked their way delicately, but now their hoofs struck the
sharp points of hidden rocks. They started nervously. They looked with
suspicion into the snow. They had to be urged and pulled along. The
snowflakes fell thick and grey, jostling each other in haste to smother
the earth. The mountains, the glaciers, were hidden behind the moving
curtain of the snow. The streams were lulled. The forest life was still.
Massive boulders were turned into more massive snowballs. Horses and men
moved monotonously, in shuffling, stumbling Indian file down the trail.

Shaw envied the boy his heavy sweater. His own thin shirt was soaked
with melted snow. The exertion made him sweat profusely. The progress
was so slow that he began to doubt if by nightfall they could reach the
trapper's hut they had sighted on the way up. He planned to spend the
night there, buy food, a coat, fodder of some sort for the horses. After
that, as they approached the level country, they would make better time.
He turned these things over in his mind as he stumbled down the uneven
trail.

The indefinite sweep of the landscape about him made him acutely
conscious of the loneliness of his own personality. He saw himself a
solitary figure moving from birth to death across the inviolable
monotony of the seasons. What he had done so far seemed no more enduring
than footsteps in snow, all his hopes nothing more than the beating of a
bird against the immensity of a glacier. . . . Sometimes he roused
himself and spoke encouragingly to Freddy, who always capped what he
said by some experience of uncle, aunt, or cousin. Sometimes, in an
excess of self-blame, he repeated over and over in his mind--"Fool . . .
fool . . . fool . . . you deserve all you've got!"

When dusk fell they had little idea how far they had traveled but no
sight of the trapper's cabin gratified their straining eyes. They cut
branches of spruce, hacked and tore them off with pocketknives and
fingers. In sudden mercy the snow had stopped. They had no fear of being
buried alive. The horses pawed the snow beneath the sheltering branches
and discovered a little grass. Freddy ate a handful of the snow itself,
making his lips red and sore. "A feller could kill hisself eating this,"
he said. "My Aunt Lizzie knew a feller that did."

"Come to bed! Come to bed!" urged Shaw peevishly. Under the horse
blanket he clutched Freddy to him and shuddered against his back.

He scarcely slept for the aching in his legs. Somehow he must have
strained his back, for a spot below his shoulder blade burned and
pained. Oh, to be up and struggling on! His restless brain tortured him.
Oh, to find the trapper's cabin, to dry himself in front of a fire, to
have food! Above all, to be back at the ranch--to make a fresh start!

The grey dawn changed to a delicate blue. The blue was suffused by pink.
The red sun disclosed the theatrical immensity of the landscape. The
mountain peaks looked fragile as eggshells. The glittering glacier
towered, as a mirror for the world. Mist curled like a white snake in
the valley and the mountains called to each other from gorge to gorge.

But now the snow had gone wet and heavy. It was all a man could do to
walk through it. Deep and heavy it sank beneath their feet. The upward
lift was a cruel drag on the muscles. One foot, one leg, sunk deep, the
other dragged out by a dogged effort of the will. By noon the sun was
hot. Shaw's shirt was dripping with sweat. His hair clung in wet locks
to his forehead. Into his eyes, down his cheeks, into his mouth, the
salt sweat trickled. Freddy said:--

"I'm as hot as fire but I know better than to take my sweater off. My
Uncle Hank always says . . ." Shaw did not hear. He was examining the
mare's hoofs, which were cut to ribbons by the points of the rocks.

A bear came out from among the trees to look at them, a light-colored
bear with a silvery tip to every hair. Shaw had his revolver but the
bear was not unfriendly. It looked at them out of patronizing, quizzical
little eyes. Then humped itself softly away, giving grunts of amusement
as it went.

A moose thrust its fine clean antlers from between the boughs of a
spruce, its liquid gaze fixed in wonder on men and horses. Then, as
though to express its contempt for their struggles, it gave a grand
sidewise leap that shook the snow from the weighted boughs and galloped
into the forest.

The snow was melting into slush. The sun blazed with the ardor of June.
Shaw's clothes were wringing wet. He said:--

"I don't see how you can bear that sweater."

"I am pretty hot," said Freddy, "but it's safer to keep it on. My Aunt
Jinny says your body is a temple and you'd ought to take care of it."

One of the horses fell and there was difficulty in getting it on its
feet again. It did not want to walk because its hoofs were cut to the
quick. The other one had discovered a patch of grass beneath an
overhanging branch and was tearing stubbornly at it.

"Come on!" shouted Shaw. "We've got to find that cabin before night."

He strained his bloodshot eyes down the trail.

"It's the other side of that boulder," said Freddy. "I know the spot,
the very spot."

But the cabin was not there.

As the shadows lay clean and blue on the snow and the wind rose again
and swept down the valley and clouds of rose and amethyst heaped
themselves in the west, Freddy cried out:--

"I see the smoke of the cabin! Down in that gully."

Shaw answered, with a break in his voice:--

"Good for you, Freddy! If you're right I'll give you that knife you
admired."

They cursed the horses and dragged them forward, but the smoke of the
cabin was transformed into a fantastically shaped branch hung with a
cobweb of snow.

"My Aunt Hetty . . ." began Freddy.

"Shut up!" shouted Shaw. "If you speak of one of your relations again
I'll brain you!"

They struggled on for a while, then made themselves a shelter for the
night. In it they lay wrapped close like two people that loved each
other. The horses stood, head to tail, their sides pressed together in
loving heat.

"Are you all right, Freddy?" Shaw asked gently, in a voice that had gone
very hoarse.

"Sure. I'm all right."

"When we come up next time it won't be like this."

"No--we'll have it swell next time."

"I'll bring a good supply of chocolates and cigarettes for you."

"Yeh. I'll bet you will."

They slept.

It was afternoon of the next day when, without warning, they came on the
trapper's cabin. They stood staring unbelievingly at it. The trapper sat
on a bench outside the door doing something to the skin of a fox. He
rose and came toward them smiling. He had a French face, a French head,
but his smile was Indian. Two black bear dogs rushed out yapping, light
as feathers blown across the snow. They circled about the horses, as
they would about a bear or wapiti, harassing them.

"Hi--hi!" The trapper called them off and they returned reluctant to
him.

"We want some food," said Shaw hoarsely, "and a dry coat. We've lost our
pack horses." And as he said the words the bitter refrain sounded in his
humming ears--"Fool . . . fool that I was!"

The cabin stank horribly of a heap of coyote skins but there was a fire,
and a stew sizzling in a pot. The two dogs drifted in like leaves and
sniffed the rich reek of it. The trapper began to ladle out the stew.

"I seen your horses," he said; "they went down the valley like the wind.
A pack had got loose and was flapping against the legs of one."

Shaw groaned. He dropped on to a stool and put his dripping head in his
hands. His hair stuck out in stiff locks. The trapper handed Freddy a
tin dish of the stew. Then he brought out a mug half full of brandy.

"This is for you," he said.

Shaw gulped it down.

Freddy ate only a small amount of the stew, then set the dish down.
"It's safer," he said, "to eat just a little at a time when you're
pretty near starved, my Uncle Jake says."

Shaw lay on the heap of coyote skins babbling feverishly. "Horses . . .
bring the horses . . . I must go . . . no time to spare . . . up to the
mountains."

Freddy looked down at him dispassionately.

"The poor stiff," he said, "thinks he'll git back to the mountains this
fall. But he'll never do it. My Auntie Belle says . . ."




                              CHAPTER XIV


Snow . . . was there a spot in the whole world that was not smothered in
snow? As the train sped eastward through valleys, along the precipitous
sides of mountains, across the white monotony of plains, Shaw conjured
up the thought of greenness for the relief of his mind. Beautiful gentle
greenness, the color of repose, of intellect, of the young leaves of
trees. He closed his eyes and saw hills clothed in the green of May, he
saw them gently rolling toward the greenish-blue horizon, and, on the
level places, young maples fluttering their silken green. . . . He saw
books bound in green, shelf upon shelf of them, the titles in gold, but
he could not read the titles. . . . He saw green curtains hanging in
front of an arched window . . . then an unseen hand drew back the
curtains and he saw the emerald depths of a garden and a kingfisher
flashing towards a pool. . . . His mind was content to occupy itself
with pleasant images for in the past weeks it had been tortured by
delirium. While his body in the small space of a cot had struggled
against death, his mind had ranged the world to discover fantastic
scenes for its own distress. Now the two had come together again, the
body relaxed, renewing its strength, the mind submissive to the soul's
need.

But even while Shaw imagined the color of springtime the train stopped
at a station and a number of people entered the coach where he sat. They
were talking loudly, shaking the snow from their clothes, stamping it
from their feet. Shaw opened his eyes and peered through the frosted
window. It was midafternoon but already dusk. He could see the lights of
the station blurred by the heavy flakes and as the train moved out
whiteness again . . . always whiteness.

He shut his mind against the snow and tried to turn his thoughts to the
future. After all it was not so bad but that it might have been worse.
He might have died in that trapper's hut. But he had pulled through.
Freddy had nursed him till he was able to be taken back to the ranch.

There Mr. Barton had had everything possible done for him. The cook,
Freddy's aunt, had taken him in hand. Telegrams, letters, had been sent
to Ottawa and to Cristabel. The heads of the Department had taken his
failure philosophically. He was to work in Ottawa during the winter and
return to the West next spring. Then he would have the open season
before him. His achievement was postponed. That was all. He would give
himself heart and soul to the work of the winter. . . . But his mind
refused to dwell on the work of the winter, or any work. It returned to
its imaginings that were now placid and seen through a greenish mist,
now faintly sad, as though with longing, he knew not for what. He was in
truth convalescent, not recovered.

And his state remained much the same throughout the long journey. He did
not separate into individuals his companions in the railway coach. His
heavy eyes regarded them with detached interest and he noticed some
peculiarity of face or gesture and watched for it as the only important
characteristic of that person. He was hungry for his meals and allowed
the negro waiter to choose what food he would for him.

When he neared Southern Ontario a change came over the landscape. Though
it was December there was very little snow. It lay on the fields between
the dark ridges, and as the train sped onward even that disappeared and
a dim sunlight discovered the dark farmlands.

Shaw had made up his mind to see Dr. Clemency before returning to
Ottawa. He had a childlike faith in him. He thought he would go to his
grandfather's house and spend a few days there. It might be even
possible to arrange a meeting with Cristabel. It might be that he would
have a glimpse of Elspeth. But he had no strong yearning to see either
of them. He was too conscious of the failure of his expedition. He did
not want to return to them disappointed.

At the station he arranged to have his baggage kept there and he set out
on the long walk to the farm. Reason told him that he was not fit for
the walk but he could not bring himself to hire a conveyance. He had
never done so, why should he begin now? But he was not halfway there
when he wished he had written to ask Herbert or Mark to meet him with
the buggy. There would be little work on the farm these days. Surely
they would have done that for him.

The absence of snow, the damp air without sharpness, the sparrows
chirping on the roadside, were a relief to his spirit after the
soundless snow of the West. He plodded resolutely on till he reached the
farm gate, then rested against it while the muddy length of the lane
stretched before him.

In the lane he met Herbert carrying some harness over his arm. He stared
at Shaw as though he scarcely recognized him.

"Well," he said, in his dry voice, "this is a surprise! I didn't know
you were coming back here."

"I thought I'd stop off for a day or two on my way to Ottawa," said
Shaw. "I thought I'd see Dr. Clemency and get some medicine from him."

"His medicine didn't do Uncle Merton much good," said Herbert.

"Uncle Merton! What's the matter with him?"

"Why, he died a week ago. Ma wrote you and I suppose your mother did
too. Didn't you get the letters?"

"They must have come after I left the ranch."

They walked on in silence for a little. Herbert had turned back with
Shaw. In his dry way he seemed pleased to see him. He said:--

"We're all sorry. It's made a difference in Pa. He talks less than he
did."

"How about Aunt Becky?"

Herbert gave a short laugh. "Oh, she made a fuss at the _first_. Leslie
and Beatrice are taking over the farm."

They were at the door now. Herbert opened it and they found Jane Gower
in the living room. She did not seem to feel surprised at seeing Shaw.
His gaunt appearance touched her, though his gaunt boyhood had made no
appeal to her compassion.

"Cristabel told me how sick you'd been, Shaw," she said. "Sit right down
by the fire and I'll make you a cup of tea. Land's sakes, it's a pity
you had to turn back before your work was done!"

"Yes," he agreed, "it is a pity."

He moved toward the "self-feeder" stove which, though the day was mild,
glowed hotly. He discovered his grandfather sitting in the corner behind
the stove.

"Here's Shaw, Pa!" said Jane. "He's come back from the West. He's been
sick."

Roger Gower stared at his grandson. He looked immovable and uninterested
as a rock, but Jane knew from the clear protuberance of his eyes that he
desired to speak.

"He's going to say something," she remarked in her low gruff voice, and
she and Herbert and Shaw stood waiting as though for an oracle to speak.

The clock with the roses on its face ticked hurriedly as though to fill
in the gap. The funnel of the self-feeder let down a fresh supply of
coals that tumbled over those which were already ignited, dimming their
glow. Roger's hands pressed the arms of his chair. He brought out the
words:--

"Merton's . . . gone."

"Yes," said Shaw. "I've just heard about it. I'm very sorry."

Jane's eyes scrutinized her husband's face.

"He's not finished," she said. "He wants to say more."

Again the three stood waiting. Again Roger brought up words from the
depth of his being.

"Merton . . . suffered," he said. "I . . . don't."

It was evident to Jane that he had no more to say. She turned her
attention to making a cup of tea for Shaw. Herbert, still carrying the
harness on his arm, went out. Shaw sat down in a chair near Roger. His
legs shook from weakness. He took out his handkerchief and mopped his
dripping face and neck. He said:--

"I'm glad you don't suffer, Grandpa."

If Roger heard him he made no sign. They sat silent while Jane made the
tea. As she set it before Shaw she said:--

"My goodness, Shaw, you look hot!"

"I'm shivering just the same," he answered. He gulped the scalding tea.
"Thanks, Grandma," he said. "This is just what I need."

"When are you going to see Dr. Clemency?" she asked.

"In the morning. Then I thought I'd stay here over Sunday if you don't
mind and go on to Ottawa on Monday."

"Stay here as long as you like."

"How is Mother?" he asked.

"She's pretty well. She was here for your Uncle Merton's funeral. But
she's worrying about you. They gave her a scare with their telegrams.
She was pretty near ready to go to you."

"I'll write to her to-morrow and tell her I'm all right."

Mark and his wife came in. They had had a long drive to the nearest town
to do shopping. The young wife was cold but exhilarated. Mark had bought
her a winter coat with a lynx collar and a muff. She was like a child in
her excitement. Even that house could not subdue her. Her hands trembled
as she undid the packages. She hopped up and down with the coat on and
her hands in the muff.

"Feel it! Feel it!" She rubbed the soft fur of the muff against Shaw's
cheek.

"Quit that, Aggie!" Mark said gruffly.

She laughed teasingly but there was no fun in Shaw, she thought. She
gathered up the purchases, and she and Mark went to their room.

Roger showed that he wanted to speak. His beard vibrated with the
effort.

"Yes, Pa?" encouraged Jane.

"The girl . . ." he got out, "the girl's . . . a fool. . . ."

                 *        *        *        *        *

The next morning Mark offered Shaw the grey mare and buggy to drive to
the doctor's. I must be looking pretty bad, Shaw thought, for him to do
that. Mark harnessed the mare and brought it to the door for him--gosh,
I must be looking pretty sick!

"Thanks," Shaw murmured, in some embarrassment. "Thanks, Mark, it'll be
a good deal easier than walking."

The mare trotted briskly down the lane. Shaw had rested better than of
late and this morning he felt stronger. The soft damp air was refreshing
against his face, which felt curiously hot.

He thought of the hundreds of times he had walked along this road on his
way to the country school and, later, to the railway station when he
went to the high school. He had trudged along in the soft thick dust of
summer, over its ringing hardness in the fall, through the snow ruts of
winter and the half-frozen slush of spring. He had passed over it in
eagerness, in depression, in apprehension. Up and down, up and down,
this road had been woven like the guiding thread in the pattern of his
boyhood. Over there lay the pool where he had met and bathed with
Searle. What was Searle doing now, he wondered, and how did Searle's
wife and child fare? There was the orchard beyond, in which the pirates'
cave was hid. His mind turned toward his three companions of those days
and while it dwelt on them he saw Ian walking along the road ahead. He
could not mistake the slender grace of his carriage.

"Hello!" he called. "Hello, Ian!"

Ian halted, turned toward him, startled and pleased.

"Shaw!" He strode to meet the buggy. "I'd no idea you were here."

Shaw pulled in the horse.

"Blood on your brow," he said.

"Blood on your brow, brother," returned Ian.

Shaw stretched out his arm and touched Ian's forehead with his fingers.

"Bloody deeds are to be done," continued Shaw.

"Our deeds will be bloody indeed, brother."

Ian clambered into the buggy and settled himself beside Shaw. He looked
into his face with concern. "What have you been doing to yourself?" he
asked. "You look all in."

"I'm all right now, but I was a pretty sick man in the West."

He told Ian of his misadventure and that he was on his way to see Dr.
Clemency.

"I'll go with you," said Ian. "I'd like to know what he says. Do you
mind if I come?"

"I'd like to have you. . . . Look, Ian--over there is the pirates' cave!
Will you ever forget the fun we had?"

"Never! Nor the lickings you got, after the fun."

All the way to Dr. Clemency's they talked of those days, interrupting
each other in their eagerness. As always, Shaw, in Ian's company, felt
younger, threw off something of his sense of responsibility toward life.
His face flushed.

"Why, you look better already!" exclaimed Ian as they stood before the
doctor's door. "A bottle of tonic from him and you'll be fixed up."

An elderly servant opened the door. A wave of air so hot that it smelt
scorched came through it almost palpably. The doctor greeted them in his
consulting room. He was immaculate as ever and his ivory-skinned face
showed no sign of the excessive heat of the house. He shook hands with
them in turn. When they inquired after Mrs. Clemency's health he gave a
sigh.

"It is all I can do to keep her alive," he said. "From the time winter
sets in I never allow the temperature of the house to fall below eighty
if I can help it. If by any chance I do, she instantly becomes
depressed, shows signs of nervous chill and even hysteria."

The young men looked impressed.

"How is the poodle?" asked Ian.

"Still flourishing at sixteen." Dr. Clemency turned to Shaw. "Now tell
me about your adventures in the West."

"I had a pretty bad time out there. Haven't you heard anything about it
from my folks?"

"Your mother told me she was anxious about you. But it was at your
uncle's funeral. We had not much time together. A very nice man, Mr.
Merton Gower; I was sorry I could not save him. But he had had a long
life. Now what about your sickness? A chill, wasn't it?"

Shaw, with a feeling of depression at the mere recital of his
misadventure and the disappointment it entailed, told him briefly what
had happened.

"You did well," said Dr. Clemency, "to pull through. Now what do you
want me to do for you?"

"I thought you might give me a tonic or something."

"A tonic or something!" echoed Dr. Clemency sarcastically. "Really we've
hardly advanced from the days of charms and witchcraft! You expose
yourself to the point of death. You struggle through what was apparently
pneumonia--then you come to me and ask for 'a tonic or something' to
repair the damage!" His tone became suddenly harsh. "Well--let's strip
off that coat and shirt and see what's wrong with you!"

"Strip!" repeated Shaw vaguely.

"Yes. Don't you know how?" He turned to Ian. "These clever people--how
stupid they can be!"

"Oh yes," said Shaw. "I understand."

He took off his coat and laid it on a chair. His waistcoat, shirt, and
vest followed. His broad-shouldered, well-developed torso was uncovered.
Dr. Clemency took a stethoscope from a drawer and placed it against his
chest.

"Breathe deep," he said.

Shaw did.

"Say ninety-nine."

"Ninety-nine."

The stethoscope moved from spot to spot over his chest.

"Ninety-nine."

"Hm . . . again."

"Ninety-nine."

"Now your back! A good flat back, isn't it, Ian? A very good straight
back."

"Very good," answered Ian with a strained smile.

The stethoscope moved delicately about Shaw's shoulder blades. Dr.
Clemency blew softly between his pursed lips.

"Now, Shaw, ninety-nine."

"Ninety-nine."

"Breathe deep!"

Shaw did as he was told. The examination continued. At last Dr. Clemency
laid down the instrument. He looked at Shaw almost accusingly out of his
deep-set eyes.

"I've some bad news for you," he said.

"What sort of bad news, sir?"

"Well . . . you've got to be very careful of yourself for a while."

"Yes. I suppose I shall . . . not go about with wet feet or sit in
draughts, eh?"

"More than that. . . ."

Shaw frowned. "What do you mean, doctor?"

"I was going to suggest . . ." Dr. Clemency turned sharply to Ian.
"Young man, do you realize the importance of health to you in your
work?"

Ian's smile was still more strained. He tapped his white teeth with the
tips of his nails. "Yes . . . yes . . . it's awfully important, I know."

"You two will never make your mark as civil engineer or forestry expert
without it, will you?"

"Certainly not," agreed Ian, with overemphasis.

"What do you think, Shaw?"

"I'm as strong as a horse."

The doctor laid his ivory-colored hand on Shaw's breast.

"All but here," he said.

Shaw turned white. "Do you mean that I show signs of . . . the trouble
my father had?"

"Yes, that's what I mean."

Ian got up quickly from his chair and went to the window. His body threw
a shadow over the room. In another part of the house the poodle began to
give the muffled monotonous barks of an old dog.

"What had I better do?" asked Shaw. He moved back from the pale hand
that lay like death on his chest.

He spoke in a tone of childlike meekness. He stood with his body
stripped, like a youth prepared for pagan sacrifice.

"I was going to suggest," said Dr. Clemency, "that you should go into a
sanatorium for a few months."

"Am I as bad as that?" asked Shaw.

"I am not quite sure how bad you are. But I don't think the disease has
made great progress. Now is the time to take it in hand. In these
sanatoria they keep you right outdoors. They have every facility for
your cure."

"Oh," said Shaw blankly. His body looked very white and vulnerable in
the shadowed room.

"I am convinced," went on Dr. Clemency, "that a few months under the
right treatment will cure you. They'd never allow you to breathe a dry
hot atmosphere like this. They'd keep you right out on a balcony, day
and night."

"Oh," repeated Shaw, "I see."

"I'm thinking of a very up-to-date sanatorium in the Adirondack
Mountains. I'll write to-day and find out about terms if you agree."

"I can't go," said Shaw. "I can't afford it."

"Haven't you saved any money?"

"Yes, but . . ."

"Don't say you cannot afford it. You _must_ afford it. Your future
depends on it. Let me tell you that."

Shaw began to put on his clothes. "If it comes to living outdoors I can
do that on the farm."

"Listen to him!" exclaimed Dr. Clemency irritably. "He doesn't know the
difference between the air in this hollow and mountain air."

"I ought to know," said Shaw. "It was mountain air that put me where I
am."

Ian turned from the window. He said:--

"If you will go to Ottawa and see the Minister of your Department, he'll
help you. Mr. Scott will help you. You've got to do what Dr. Clemency
says, Shaw. Just think of your mother!"

"I am thinking of her," said Shaw bitterly. He fumbled with his tie. Ian
came to him and put it straight.

"I'll write for particulars to-day," said the doctor, "and you arrange
for an interview with the head of your Department. See your mother, too.
Tell her you'll be as sound as a nut in three months."

"I'll take him home with me," said Ian. "We'll talk it over."

But the young men were almost silent as they drove through the village
street. They avoided each other's eyes as though they had some shameful
secret between them. They were relieved when Ian's father met them and
seconded Ian's invitation to dinner.

Like other country people of the time they had dinner not much later
than noon. Elspeth came in a little late. She pulled off her gloves
hurriedly and her cheeks flushed a deeper pink as she shook hands with
Shaw. Something in the way he greeted her was a disappointment. She
spoke little during the meal. Her grey eyes searched Shaw's face when he
talked to her father or mother, but when he turned to her she looked
down at her fingers that crumbled a bit of bread on the cloth.

Ian too was less talkative than usual. He marveled at the way Shaw had
accepted the bitter news, the postponement of what he had so eagerly
been straining toward for years. Shaw seemed more excited than
depressed. Ian had never known him so voluble. He was amusing in his
description of Freddy and his train of uncles, aunts, and cousins. His
eyes looked hot and bright, his prominent cheekbones were flushed. He
did not refer to what the doctor had discovered, but toward the end of
the meal he asked abruptly:--

"What became of that girl, Louie Adams?"

"I don't know," answered Ian. "Do you know, Elspeth?"

"I think she's quite well again but she's not teaching. She is in the
States."

Shaw had lifted his head as though he felt a fresh breeze on his face.
"She's well again, is she?" he said with relief in his voice.

Elspeth's eyes sought his face. Why was Shaw concerned over Louie? What
was that peculiar expression in his eyes when he spoke of her?

"I hear that Louie has gone into business in New York. It's a strange
business. It's what they call a beauty parlor over there. They do
hairdressing and sell cosmetics for the face and somehow rub wrinkles
away." Elspeth looked shamefaced for Louie.

"Cosmetics!" echoed Mrs. Blair. "Paint! Powder! However did Louie get
into such a business?"

"When I think of her at school!" said Ian. "But she had always something
different about her. Do you remember the day you threw her down in the
road, Shaw?"

"And I came along in my buggy," said Mr. Blair, "and picked you both
up!"

"And got a licking for Shaw from the teacher!" added Ian.

"Did I? I'd forgotten about that and I'm sure Shaw has, haven't you,
Shaw?"

"Yes, sir. I'd forgotten it."

Mrs. Blair said--"What a skinny miserable-looking child Louie was!"

"I'll bet she's a screaming beauty now," said Ian. "I wish I could see
her."

"She wasn't hard to look at when we saw her last year," said Shaw.

"I wish I could see you look a little stronger, Shaw," observed Mrs.
Blair.

"I'll be all right," answered Shaw curtly.

His animation left him. He spoke little through the remainder of the
meal. Later, in the stiff parlor of the Manse, he was alone with
Elspeth. The room was cold and indeterminate raindrops trickled down the
pane.

"It seems strange," she said, "to think that it will soon be Christmas.
It looks more like early November."

"Christmas!" he echoed. "Yes, it will soon be Christmas."

"I suppose you will be in Ottawa. Christmas must be lovely there."

"I don't expect to spend Christmas in Ottawa."

"Don't you? Where will you be then?"

"I . . . am not quite sure."

A cat had leaped on to the window sill and was looking in at the window.
It opened and shut its pink mouth in inaudible mews. Between these it
sought angrily to dry its draggled fur with its tongue.

"Poor puss," said Elspeth. "She wants to come in so badly but I can't
let her in here. She is wet."

"Is that the kitten we searched for in the garden?" asked Shaw.

"Yes. She's grown, hasn't she?"

"I'd not have known her. She was as pretty as a picture then and full of
play. . . . Elspeth, I'll never forget that evening when we found her
among the bushes. Do you remember?"

"Yes, Shaw."

Her voice was scarcely above a whisper. She twisted her fingers
together. What is he going to say now, she wondered. Is he going to ask
me to marry him?

"Everything is different with me now," he said.

"You mean you've been ill?"

"I mean . . . I am ill."

She looked at him startled.

"But you're not frightened about yourself, are you?"

"Not exactly frightened . . . no, not that. . . . But Dr. Clemency says
I ought to go into a sanatorium for the winter and I guess he's right."

She drew a deep breath. "Oh, Shaw, I'm so sorry!"

"I'm sorry too, Elspeth. I'd made up my mind that when I saw you next
I'd ask you to marry me. But--I'm not fit to be married now. . . . I
mustn't think about that till I'm well again."

"If you had asked me--I'd have said yes."

His face flushed. "Would you, Elspeth? That's beautiful of you. . . . Do
you guess what's wrong with me?"

"Yes, I think I know."

"Marriage is out of the question then, isn't it?"

"Till you're well again! Dr. Clemency says you will be well again soon,
doesn't he?"

"He thinks it will take about three months. He's going to arrange for me
to go to a place in the Adirondacks. That's where I'll be spending my
Christmas, Elspeth."

Her lips trembled. "I don't mind waiting for you, Shaw. I'd wait much
longer than three months for you. And if you're willing to be engaged--I
am too."

He drew his brows together. "I oughtn't to ask you to do that. But it
would be wonderful. It would help me to go through with it--more
cheerfully--if I thought you were waiting."

"Well, we shouldn't neglect anything for your cure, should we? If it
will help you, I think we ought to consider ourselves engaged."

"All the money I've saved will go into this, you know."

"When you are well again you'll make more money. What does money matter
anyway?"

Shaw looked into her eyes. "I'm a lucky man," he said, "to have two such
women to love me . . . to trust me. Of course, it's natural for my
mother, but I don't see why you . . ."

"Oh, Shaw, I've always thought you wonderful!" She raised her face
toward his eagerly.

She wants me to kiss her, he thought, but I mustn't do it. I've got to
be careful for other people--especially young people. . . . He touched
her hand with his, then withdrew it and thrust it into his pocket.

"How hot your hand is!" she exclaimed.

"I am shivering," he said.

Elspeth thought she was going to cry. She had so wanted him to kiss her.
Abruptly she threw open the window.

"I must let this poor cat in!" she said.

But the cat, now that the window was open, needed to be coaxed. It came
sidling, half of it in the room, half out, rubbing its back shyly
against the window frame. Elspeth gathered it into her arms. "Poor, poor
Kitty!" She felt an access of pity for the cat. Tears dropped on its fur
as she stroked it. Shaw also laid his hand on it. In some mysterious way
it became the symbol of their sadness.

They stood close together stroking the cat, which stared up at them out
of strange green eyes.

Ian brought the mare and buggy from the stable. He stood talking, with
rather self-conscious cheerfulness, of Shaw's plans for the immediate
future.

Back at the farmhouse Shaw told his grandmother briefly what Dr.
Clemency had said to him.

"A sanatorium!" said Jane Gower. "It's ridiculous! You stay right where
you are, Shaw, and I'll nurse you till you're well again. I've nursed a
good many people in my time."

"I don't think you could have nursed my father to health, Grandma," said
Shaw.

"Yours is a very different case from your father's. He went on and on
with his practice long after he should have given up, but you're taking
it in good time. I wouldn't think much of myself as a nurse if I
couldn't pull you round."

"That's kind of you, Grandma. I'll talk it over with Mother."

"It'll be a terrible shock for Cristabel." Jane Gower's face softened in
pity for her daughter. "It was a shock to me when you told us."

Roger Gower had listened to the conversation without apparent interest.
Now it was evident that he wanted to speak. A preliminary heavy
breathing came from the dim corner behind the stove. His wife and
grandson turned toward him expectantly but it was a long time before the
words came. They came mumbling through the depth of his beard.

"I knew," he said, "he'd got . . . the consumption . . . the minute
. . . I set . . . eyes on him."

Shaw lay awake that night going over and over in his mind what he would
say to the head of the Department in Ottawa. He had pictured a
triumphant return. Now he must frame sentences to mitigate the folly of
his defeat. In the distortion of night thought no words he could
conceive made him seem anything but futile. He pictured them laughing at
him, dismissing him with a shrug, pushing him into some routine job,
giving the work of choosing the Park to someone else. He searched the
Department for the probable candidate, selected him, sent him with
proper equipment to the mountains, saw himself languishing at a desk.
Then, dripping with sweat, flung himself on his other side and began the
spinning of the fateful web once more. All that was real to him became
unreal.

But with the dim December dawn hope and resolve fortified him once more.
He saw Dr. Clemency again and by a late train left for Ottawa. Two days
later he stood in Cristabel's little sitting room in the boys' school
waiting for her. He saw the familiar objects belonging to her and
thought how long she had lived in this place and he not seen it. Always
it was so. The everyday life of each was an unknown world to the
other. . . . He opened her workbox that had a picture of Niagara Falls
on the lid, and saw the familiar shabby sweet implements of her sewing.
He took the thimble that was worn into a tiny hole in one place, and put
it on his smallest finger. He heard her step. He replaced the thimble.

He turned toward her. How pale and tired she looked! Had she been
worrying over him? Her eyes devoured him. His looked gravely into hers.

"Well, Mother, I'm back."

"Shaw, you do look poorly! How do you feel? Are you really better?"

"I'm much better."

She took him in her arms.

"Why have you come to see me, Shaw?"

"Well, it's natural that I should want to see you, isn't it?"

She answered almost irritably--"Naturalness has nothing to do with it."
She held him from her and looked into his face. "What have you come to
tell me, Shaw?"

"You've got to be sensible, Mother."

She gave her little crooked smile.

"Haven't I always been sensible?"

"Well--folks admire you for it."

"What is it I must be sensible about now?" she cried in a tense voice.

There was a fire in the small grate. He went to it and began to break a
lump of coal with the poker. She repeated her question.

"About my sickness, Mother," he answered.

She stared at the smooth back of his head, his broad shoulders.

"Your sickness?" she repeated tremblingly.

He turned and faced her.

"You're not to worry. Dr. Clemency says three months in the sanatorium
will fix me up. Please don't worry, Mother."

"Then--" her voice was barely audible--"all my worst fears are true."

A spasm crossed his face. For a moment he thought he would put his head
on her shoulder and cry. They would cry their two hearts out together in
their disappointment and defeat. But there was something in her that
restrained him. She could not have borne at this moment to have him
touch her. He was sure of that.

Some boys outside were kicking a football about.

"Hurrah!" came their thin treble shout.

Shaw felt his bones melting in compassion for Cristabel.

"Mother!" he said. "Don't look like that."

"How would you expect me to look?" she answered harshly. "Would you
expect me to laugh and say, How lovely it will be for you to have three
months in a sanatorium?"

"No, Mother, but . . ."

"Would you expect me to jump for joy to hear that my child, my son--my
only--" Sobs extinguished her voice.

From outside came the treble shouts. "Hurrah! Go it! Go it!"

Now he could go to her. He took her in his arms and held her close
against him, patting her back, pressing his lips to her hair.

"I know how disappointing it is, Mother. But it might be worse. They
were very kind to me in Ottawa. Everything is fixed up. My salary will
go on just the same for the three months. It just means a little delay.
That's all, Mother. . . ."

"But you . . . you've what your father had . . . that's all that matters
to me!"

"But my father went on working. He struggled against it, instead of
giving up to it and resting. Rest is the thing for it. And dry mountain
air. You must believe that, Mother. It will help me to get well if I
know you believe I shall."

She released herself gently from his arms and stood staring before her
out of the window. Her face looked so pale and drawn that he was
conscious, for the first time, of its bony formation, the contours of
the eye sockets and cheekbones. The shadow beneath her eyes was dark as
a bruise.

The football bounced with a soft thump against the window. Cristabel
went to it, rapped on the pane and shook her head sternly. The boys
called out to her, unafraid, but they scampered away.

"Little brutes!" exclaimed Shaw.

His show of the jealousy he felt for any boys she was connected with in
her work relieved the sense of despair that was engulfing her. She gave
a little smile and laid her hand on his arm.

"Poor Shaw," she said, "you haven't much of a mother! Just when you need
her to comfort you, too!"

"Everything is going to be all right!" he said with almost feverish
eagerness. "I'm sure of it. It took a load off my mind the way they
received the news in Ottawa. And the Scotts are keeping furniture for
me. I'm to go back to B. C. in the spring. You will give up this job and
move into your own house next fall--just as we planned. So do say you
won't fret any more, Mother!"

"I won't fret any more, Shaw," she answered as though repeating a
lesson.

They sat down side by side on a small hard sofa and he told her of his
illness, his visit to Dr. Clemency and his afternoon with the Blairs. He
said:--

"You know, Mother, that I'm very fond of Elspeth."

"Yes, Shaw, and so am I."

"Well, she's promised that when I'm better and able to afford it, she'll
marry me. Does that please you?"

"Yes, I can't think of any other girl I'd like so well for a daughter."
Then she added, as though to herself-- "Poor little Elspeth!"

"Why do you say poor little Elspeth?"

"I don't know. I should say lucky Elspeth! The girl is lucky who will
have you for a husband, Shaw. You're the sort of man who will be loyal
to the woman he loves."

"Yes--I think I am. But I'm not a passionate man, Mother. There's so
much in life besides that."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, dear. You and Elspeth will be happy
together, I am sure. . . . Now about your clothes--I do worry about your
clothes! I don't think you can say they won't matter where you're going.
I guess there'll be some very well-dressed people in the sanatorium."

He gave a short laugh. "I don't know how fashionable it will be." But he
did know what a comfort it was to her to put his clothes in order.

"I'll give you a bundle of my things to mend," he said. "You can send
them after me."

"When are you going, Shaw?"

"I'm leaving to-night. I'll be there in time for lunch to-morrow."

She caught her breath, then laid her hand against her throat, stroking
it as though to ease the strain there.

"I guess it's better not to waste any time," she said.

He felt such a relief now that he had told her all and she was
reconciled, or resigned, to the change in his life, to the new obstacle
he had to overcome, that he felt almost happy. He looked about the
little room.

"You're very comfortable here," he said. "I'm glad of that. I'm glad
I've seen where you live. It will be nice for me when I'm in the
sanatorium to know just what sort of place you're in. . . . Do you know,
Mother, I'm hungry! I haven't enjoyed a meal since I've come East--I've
been so worried."

With fervent eagerness she rose to get him something to eat, as though
she could in that moment of effort instill strength and courage into
him. She brought him an eggnog and a plate of brown bread and butter.

"This will be very nourishing for you," she said. "You will need plenty
of good food to make you well again."

"From what Dr. Clemency says they'll feed me well, and you know I have a
good appetite."

They talked almost cheerfully and when he left her she stood straight
and smiling in the door. By a great effort she stood so--till he was out
of sight.

On through the December night the train rushed, bearing him and his
belongings, his burden of thought, southward toward the Adirondacks. He
lay in his berth looking out through the window, seeing the landscape
turn from black to white in the pale moonlight. He saw fields hidden
under snow, roofs white with it, before he slept.

In the morning it was bright winter weather under a clear blue sky. At
the little station where he left the train there was a small car to meet
him. The road led through a hamlet, then rose, steeper and steeper,
toward the mountains crested with pinewoods. On a sunny slope stood the
sanatorium, a long, low, frame building with many windows and balconies
in which he could see people sitting.




                               CHAPTER XV


It was a pleasant enough corridor, Shaw thought, as he walked along it
that afternoon, very clean and airy, not quite so stark as a hospital
but rather more like an hotel. His own room was at the far end, and as
he passed the long rows of closed doors he wondered what lay behind
them. He felt uncomfortably nervous as he went down the wide uncarpeted
stairs and entered the narrow passage that led to the room where
examinations were held. His heart beat heavily, as indeed it did most of
the time now, and he breathed with some difficulty as though he had a
cold in the head. He took the wrong turning and was led finally to the
door by an attendant in a white coat and apron. He knocked.

"Come in!" called a hearty voice.

He opened the door and closed it behind him. He was in a small, very
white room, with charts tacked to the walls, a bookcase full of books, a
filing cabinet, and three desks. Behind one sat a nurse in uniform and
at the others, in swing chairs, two men who were in great contrast to
each other. One was tall, fair, athletic-looking, with a skin so pink,
hands, teeth, and hair so well cared for, so superlatively clean, that
he looked like a walking advertisement of shaving soap, hair tonic, and
mouth wash. He came forward and took Shaw's hand in a grip that
corresponded to his voice.

"Glad to meet you," he said. "You're the young man from Canada, aren't
you? Sent here by a doctor with a funny name--Clem--something."

Shaw agreed to both statements.

"I'm Dr. Maybee and this is my colleague Dr. Knott. Welcome to our
sanatorium. We're here to fix you up and send you home as sound as a
nut."

Dr. Knott was short, fat, and of nondescript coloring. He wore a look of
complete pessimism and it took all of Dr. Maybee's heartiness to
overcome the gloom of his presence. They both wore horn-rimmed
spectacles.

"It will take about three months to cure me, Dr. Clemency says,"
observed Shaw, attempting to make it clear from the start that that was
the limit of his stay.

Dr. Maybee burst out laughing. "Well, he's cleverer than we are if he
can tell that at the start! Isn't he?" He grinned at his colleague.

Dr. Knott gave a grunt that expressed complete contempt for Dr.
Clemency's diagnosis. He examined a broken thumbnail as though it were
of deeper interest to him than the patient.

"Now, let's have your upper garments off!" said Dr. Maybee in a
businesslike tone. He whistled through his teeth as Shaw undressed.

Shaw hung his clothes on a rack provided for them and stood gravely
looking at the two doctors. He felt calmer now. He had a feeling of
detachment from his body, as though he were no longer responsible for
it. The nurse regarded him speculatively.

Dr. Maybee took him by the shoulder, moved him peremptorily a little
nearer to his desk, and began to tap his back high up on the shoulder
blade with a practised middle finger. He swung him about then and tapped
his chest, tapping his way across and above and below the breast. Then
he went over him with the stethoscope, throwing phrases abruptly over
his shoulder to the nurse, who entered them in a book.

"Breathe deeply," he ordered.

Shaw breathed deeply and was then ordered to cough. When he started
coughing it was difficult to stop. He went on and on till his face was
flushed and his eyes moist.

"Stop it!" exclaimed Dr. Maybee. "There's no need to cough all over the
place."

Shamefaced, Shaw controlled himself.

"Thank you!" said Dr. Maybee with extra heartiness, as though to
counteract his former harshness.

"You've done very well indeed! Very well indeed!" He laid the
stethoscope on his desk.

"What do you think of me?" asked Shaw.

"I think it's a good thing for you that you didn't delay coming here."
With springy step he took a turn up and down the room. Then said
abruptly:--

"Your father died of tuberculosis, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"Either of his parents?"

"His mother."

"What about your mother's family?"

"There's nothing of the kind in them."

"Well, as I said before, you've come here in good time. I wouldn't give
much for you if you'd delayed. You have old scars. You're not a fresh
case. When did you last have a sickness?"

"I had a touch of malaria in Alabama last year."

"Malaria! Who said it was malaria?"

"A local doctor who came to the lumber camp."

Dr. Maybee gave a hoot of laughter. "He said you had malaria, did he?"
He turned to Dr. Knott. "A queer sort of malaria." He almost pounced on
Shaw. "What were your symptoms?"

"I was very heavy and felt sick all over. I'd quite a temperature."

"Well--you show the scars of that. And you've a fresh place. Actually a
focus of softening. Well . . . as I said before, you haven't come here a
minute too soon, has he, Dr. Knott?"

Dr. Knott gave a pessimistic nod.

"Now the first thing you'll do," continued Dr. Maybee, "is to stay in
bed for a couple of weeks and get thoroughly rested. Then your regular
treatment will begin. We'll have another examination then and they will
continue once in every three weeks. You must come back here to-morrow
morning and have an X-ray. Now you can put on your clothes."

Shaw began to dress himself. He felt a little dazed but still detached
from his body.

"I hope you'll find living here agreeable," said Dr. Maybee, with a
smile that showed his large, perfectly cared-for teeth. "There are a lot
of interesting people among our eighty guests. We have all sorts of
amusements. Oh, I think you'll get along fine! I think he'll make a good
patient, don't you, doctor?"

Dr. Knott gave a sickly smile. There was a tremulous knock on the door.

"Come in!" called out Dr. Maybee in the same hearty tone with which he
had bidden Shaw enter.

At the door Shaw passed a young woman. She gave a frightened, appealing
look at him as though she would ask him to save her from the two
doctors. The door closed behind her and Shaw set out to find his way
back to his room. He did not feel unwilling to go to bed.

He was very tired after the succession of long journeys by train, the
anxiety he had felt before his visit to Ottawa, and the emotion
attendant on breaking the news to Cristabel. All he wanted to do at this
moment was to rest. His room was cold. The bed looked inviting and from
it he would be able to see through the window the pinewoods that clad
the mountainside. The Adirondacks were unimpressive after the Rockies,
still he was conscious of the dry clarity of the air as compared to the
air of Southern Ontario.

He folded his clothes neatly and arranged himself in the bed with the
two pillows behind him. Dr. Maybee had said he believed he would be a
good patient. He intended to be. He would concentrate on his cure as he
would on a college examination. He would, after this term of three
months, pass with honors to health and strength.

He lay with his eyes resting on the pinewood, striving to absorb repose
from the proud trees that reared the sombre steeples of their pride
against the cold blue sky. They had grown from a hard stern soil and so
had he. They had fought their way upward against storm and drought and
all that had impeded them, and so would he. Root and branch he would be
unafraid.

He had not been long in bed when an orderly came in carrying a tray
loaded with a substantial meal. Shaw was beginning to be drowsy. He felt
no hunger but the food was temptingly arranged; it was well cooked.
"Here goes the first plunge into the cure," he thought, as he helped
himself to the thick cream soup. It was followed by fish, vegetables,
and stewed prunes with cream. He lay back on the pillows replete and
drowsy. He did not let himself think, but sought to absorb the goodness
of the food into all his being. . . . What was that Dr. Maybee had said?
A focus of softening? That sounded pretty bad! The nurse's expression as
she wrote it down . . . well, it hadn't changed . . . yes, it had! It
had! He was a sick man! Far worse than he had expected! He might get
worse instead of better! A flush of heat rushed over him. A singing
sound raved through his ears. He flung off the quilt. His heart was
pounding.

Now was this the way to get cured? No--never, never--he would make
himself worse instead of better. . . . He must pull himself
together--digest the nourishing food--drink in the pure mountain
air--keep his mind empty except for hope. . . .

Dr. Knott had a strange face. He looked at you as though he didn't care
whether you lived or died, as though he was pretty sure you were in for
a tough time. There had been a moment when Dr. Maybee had tapped and
listened and not said a word. He had just exchanged a look with Dr.
Knott. . . . God, what had that look said?

He pulled the quilt close over him, for now he was shivering. The pillow
was a nice soft one, pleasant to burrow in. His burning eyes drank in
the deep soft darkness. Thought slowly receded from him as he willed it
to recede, and he was left to rest. . . . Three whole months for rest
and recuperation--that would do the trick. Funny how a country
practitioner like Dr. Clemency could give you a feeling of comfort while
these two specialists made you feel that the earth was no longer solid
beneath you. . . . That was what he felt--the round earth turning
beneath him and he balancing himself like a clown on its slippery curve!
If only he hadn't been such a fool as to leave the matches with Freddy
that day on the mountain! He wouldn't be where he was to-day! He
wouldn't be burrowing in the pillow trying to keep torturing thoughts
out of his head! Let's see--what would he be doing?

A knock came on the door.

"Come in," he said, fearing it might be one of the doctors.

The door opened and a small pale man of about thirty, with a high
forehead and a sharp-featured boyish face, came in.

"I am your next-door neighbor," he said. "My name's Pember. I thought
I'd better call on you as we're likely to see a good deal of each other
in the coming year."

Shaw sat up and shook hands with him. "I'm only here for three months,"
he said, "but it's very kind of you to come and see me. Won't you sit
down?"

Pember sat down. "You're lucky," he said, "to be able to do the cure in
three months. I've been in here off and on for the last six years."

Shaw stared at him incredulously. How could anyone make such a statement
with such an air of cheerfulness! He said:--

"Then you've never been really cured?"

Pember coughed softly. "Oh, I get cured but it always attacks me again.
Fortunately I have private means and I find my time here does not pass
unpleasantly. I'm a keen amateur photographer and I find the atmosphere
here very good for taking pictures. I'd like to show you some of them if
it would interest you. It helps to pass the time."

Shaw said he would like to see the photographs and Pember went out,
returning shortly with a folio full of them.

The photographs were very good and Pember had something interesting or
amusing to say about each of them. The time passed quickly. Shaw, who
had never had leisure, whose body and mind had always been active, had a
sense of unreality in this relaxed atmosphere. Pember's soft drawling
voice soothed him. He liked Pember and was glad he was to have him for a
neighbor. Shaw had brought with him the sketches Ian had done during the
summer on the Pacific Coast and he produced them to show Pember. Pember
was enthusiastic.

"What a country!" he exclaimed. "I'd give anything to spend a year there
and take photographs in all seasons. I think your friend's sketches are
very good." He examined them again and again as though he would draw out
the pleasure of them to its utmost.

Shaw questioned him about the sanatorium, the other patients, the
doctors.

"But you mustn't call us patients," said Pember. "They call us guests.
It sounds much homier, don't you think so?"

"Yes," agreed Shaw, "I suppose it does."

"I'm a shy sort of man," said Pember. "I make very few friends, though
I've been in and out of the place for six years. For instance, I'd never
have come in to call on you if you hadn't been my neighbor, and if I
hadn't thought you were in here for a good long spell."

"I hope," said Shaw, "that me being here for only three months won't
frighten you away."

Pember looked at him out of large grey eyes. "Oh no, the ice is broken
and I think we'll enjoy each other's company. I can put you on to the
ropes and introduce you to the few people I think worth while."

He rose and collected his photographs, saying as he did so:--

"I must go and do my cure now. I oughtn't to have stayed here so long."

"What are you going to do?"

"Lie out on my balcony."

"Gosh, it must be pretty cold, in this weather."

"We're well wrapped up. You'll find that the weather doesn't count for
anything here. No sort of weather keeps us indoors. Well, ta-ta, see you
later."

The door was scarcely shut behind him when Shaw fell asleep. He slept
for hours. The shadows were falling when he was waked by a touch on the
shoulder. Dr. Maybee was looking down at him.

"I said you'd make a good patient!" he smiled. "How are you feeling?"

"Pretty good," murmured Shaw sleepily.

"Had a good meal?"

"Oh yes."

"Well, I thought I'd just drop in and see how you are and bring you your
thermometer. I'll show you how to measure your temperature. You must do
it twice a day and make a note of it for me."

"I had a visitor," said Shaw, and then wished he had not spoken. He
could not have explained why, but he did not like the thought of
discussing anything personal with Dr. Maybee.

"Who?" asked the doctor.

"His name is Pember."

Dr. Maybee thrust out his lips in an expression of contempt. It changed
almost immediately into a wide smile that gave a fine view of his
healthy mouth.

"Yes, yes," he said. "Pember's been here a good deal off and on. The
trouble with him is that he is too impatient. He never waits to make his
cure complete. There's no use being impatient with this disease. Now
you're an entirely different type. You'll go through with it. I can see
that. Before I go I must tell you the story about . . ." And he repeated
an amusing and slightly ribald story with the air of administering a
dose of medicine.

After he left Shaw remained relaxed in mind and body for a long while.
He felt too indolent, too weary, to move or think. He was very
comfortable and gently allowed the sounds of the sanatorium to penetrate
his mind, giving himself up to becoming accustomed to his surroundings.
He heard the muffled sounding of a gong, then the passing of feet and
cheerful voices in the corridor. A little later another substantial meal
was brought to him.

And so the weeks in bed passed. He was drowsy, feverish, resigned, and
restless in turn but on the whole he was not unhappy. In his mind he set
apart the months of his stay in the sanatorium as a sort of postgraduate
course in the making of character and courage. "It's being a pretty
stiff lesson," he thought, "but I'll learn it well. I know now that I
have a weakness and I'll guard it. I know now what a bit of stupidity
can bring about and I'll watch my step as never before."

Sometimes he almost persuaded himself that the disaster would, in the
long run, be good for him. After such an experience he was bound to be
more mature. He sought as ever to leave boyishness behind him. Yet, as
he lay in bed, his thoughts were a boy's thoughts and it was with a
boy's love that he kissed Elspeth's letters and put them under his
pillow to comfort him. She wrote every few days. There had been no such
arrangement between them and it was a surprise and a delight to him as
her succession of letters flocked like birds bearing straws of comfort
for the building of the nest of future happiness. For he came to know
Elspeth through her letters as he had never known her before. There was
a freedom of phrase in them which there had never been in her talk.
There was a depth of love and feeling she had been too shy to show.

Ian wrote, too, letters in which nonsense did not quite conceal anxiety
and flippancy was a transparent cloak for the latent melancholy of his
nature.

Cristabel's letters were what they had always been, restrained and
gentle. She was no letter writer but with each one the dark sweet bond
of her motherhood drew Shaw's heart close. She was not well. It was
nothing serious, she said, but he was anxious about her.
"Health--health--we must get health and keep it!" he said over and over
to himself. He grew more and more interested in watching his own
progress, in measuring his own temperature and making notes of it for
the doctor.

He and Pember compared their curve every day. Pember visited him twice
and sometimes three times a day, always cheerful, talkative, and eager
to display his latest photographs. He presented Shaw with some of these,
pictures of mountain scenery, and pinned them on the wall alongside the
sketches made by Ian. Shaw felt that he was fortunate in making such a
friend in that place.

When his time for lying in bed was over he felt a little shy about
meeting the other patients, but Pember took him under his wing and they
went to the dining room together. Shaw's knees felt shaky after the
prolonged inactivity.

The dining room was light and airy, with open windows though the day was
cold. Hot radiators made a sizzling sound and the food was admirably
cooked and served. There seemed a great crowd of people in the room. The
tables were all small with the exception of one in the middle at which a
dozen people were seated, including the two doctors. Dr. Maybee was
smiling and talkative, Dr. Knott somewhat gloomy, though he seemed a
favorite with the women who sat on either side of him. Shaw found
himself seated at table with Pember and another man about Pember's age
of whom he had often spoken to Shaw. This was Such, a handsome man who
had rather a foreign look about him. He had thick dark hair, a small
dark moustache and closely trimmed beard. His brown eyes were long and
pensive. He had a clear fair skin. One of the women patients, Pember
said, was "crazy" about Such.

Shaw did not know whether or not he liked this man. The beard, he
thought, made him look conceited. He was used to young men who grew
beards in the wilds and shaved them off on the return to civilization.
But Such was agreeable, though not nearly so friendly as Pember.
Everyone settled down with apparent determination to eat as much as
possible.

In a corner of the room there was a second large table at which were
seated ten young men. They were there, Pember said, through some
Government fund. He did not quite understand it but they had special
terms and seemed not to worry at all about when they would leave or
recover. Perhaps it was a matter of complete cynicism. A few of them
looked very ill, a few quite normal, and two in the pink of health. They
were noisy and ate enormously.

When they left the dining room the patients scattered about the lounge
and living room. A young girl put on a gramophone record. Shaw and
Pember followed the group of young men to the verandah, where the sun
was now shining brightly and with a certain warmth. One began to sing a
snatch of something. Others joined in.

"Listen!" said Pember smiling, with an air of showing them off.

Shaw made out the words they sang:--

                   "Doctor, can I go home next year?
                       Now don't go talking rot!
                   Doctor, shall I ever go home?
                       Maybee--Maybee--Knott!"

"Pretty cynical, eh?" said Pember. "But those young fellows are like
that. They just don't care a darn for anything. I was afraid you might
be the same but you're not."

"No, I'm not."

"Tell me what you think of Such. Handsome, isn't he? I'm always at him
to pose for me, but he won't. Do you think you'll like him?"

"I can't judge yet. He's not like anyone I know. Is he very bad?"

Pember gave a sly smile. "He says not but I'm inclined to think he's
worse than he lets on. He's as proud as Lucifer." Pember suddenly
pinched Shaw's arm. "Look--that's Mrs. Mellon! She's the one who's gone
on Such."

A thickset young woman of about thirty with a mass of curly bronze hair
came out through the door and went to where Such lounged against a
pillar of the verandah. She began at once to talk animatedly to him. He
answered languidly, scarcely taking his pensive brown eyes from the
pine-clad slopes. After a little she turned to Pember and asked:--

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"

"Certainly," returned Pember. "Mrs. Mellon--Mr. Manifold."

"How d'you do?" said Mrs. Mellon, taking his hand and holding it a
moment. "I hope you'll bring manifold blessings to us here."

"I hope so," said Shaw, with his accustomed gravity.

"Why, you've brought a mellion blessings yourself," returned Pember
gallantly.

"Oh, oh," she cried, "what a horrible pun! Wasn't it a horrible pun,
Aleck?"

"Very horrible," said Such in his rather precise accent.

"I guess you don't agree with the sentiment either." She looked
challengingly into Such's inscrutable face.

"Beards aren't fair!" she cried. "You can't tell what a man with a beard
is thinking, can you, Mr. Manifold?"

"My grandfather," said Shaw, "has a beard that would throw Mr. Such's
into the shade. I've never been able to guess his thoughts."

"Now you're so different--you have a frank, open, honest face. And what
a strong face!"

She continued to flatter Shaw and to draw him out.

When Pember and he were taking their afternoon cure--they shared the
same balcony--Pember said:--

"I think I ought to warn you that Mrs. Mellon makes a dead set at every
passable-looking man that comes here. But it's done to excite Such,
that's all. I think it's sort of pathetic, don't you?"

"I haven't much sympathy for a woman who behaves like that," said Shaw.
"And she's chasing a sick man. It isn't fair."

"Such can take care of himself. I just thought I'd better let you know
that she isn't really interested in you."

"Don't you worry about me," said Shaw. "I'm engaged to the only girl who
cuts any ice with me. We're going to get married as soon as I can afford
it."

Pember was sympathetic. He wanted to hear about Elspeth. He appeared to
have no connections of his own. Amateur photography satisfied the
yearnings that others had for love, but he liked to hear of emotional
experience. In the long clear winter afternoon, swathed in their
blankets, they talked and talked, Shaw of his adventures and ambitions,
Pember of the perils and pride of photography.

From a distant balcony came the noise and chaffing of the group of young
men, and once again Shaw heard the refrain:--

                     "Doctor, shall I ever go home?
                     Maybee--Maybee Knott."

When the sunlight became ruddy and a rich purple tone shone from the
trunks of the pines, they gathered themselves from their reclining
posture and rose from their rugs as from a chrysalis. They were a little
cold, a little stiff, quite ready for the substantial meal which was
being prepared for them below. They went into Shaw's bedroom and took
their temperatures. Shaw brought out a photograph of Elspeth in her
graduation dress at the time of leaving the Presbyterian Ladies' College
and showed it to Pember.

"A sweet girl, a very sweet girl," said Pember, "but if I had been
taking the photograph I'd never have allowed her to hold that bouquet so
stiffly. I'd have had her hold it gracefully and I'd have let the light
just touch the eyelid on the off side and bring out the curve of the
cheek. But it's a very nice photo just the same. You don't mind my
criticism?"

"Not at all," said Shaw.

Pember's companionship was soothing. He and Shaw sometimes sat for long
on their balcony without speaking, or talked in desultory fashion of the
books they read. There was a strange collection of books in the lounge,
brought there and left by the procession of patients. Shaw devoured
them, for he was a fast reader. Pember read slowly, with long
interruptions for the discussion or contemplation of photography. His
great excitement was the day when the amateur photographer's magazine he
subscribed to appeared. Once it contained a picture of a group of pines
at sunset, taken by himself. He showed it to everybody in the
sanatorium. It was the day of his monthly examination by the doctors,
but he was more interested in what they had to say of the photograph
than of his condition.

Christmas, with an illuminated tree in the grounds and an elaborate
dinner, came and went. Elspeth sent Shaw an embroidered case for his
neckties. Cristabel a pair of fur-lined gloves. His grandmother a heavy
knitted muffler. It was the first Christmas present she had ever given
him and he was touched.

A month had passed. He settled down to complete the cure in the next two
months, cheerfully and methodically. It was a bitter cold winter. He lay
swathed in his rugs for hours, not speaking, scarcely thinking, feeling
stiff and half frozen when he rose. The attitude of the doctors at his
examinations was the same, Maybee aggressively cheerful, Knott
determinedly the reverse in his expression, though in his brief remarks
he always agreed with his colleague.

At the end of three months they both declared that it would take another
three to complete the cure. Maybee seemed surprised that Shaw had
contemplated going. "Haven't you studied your chart?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"What does it show?"

"My temperature measures about the same."

"A little higher!"

"Yes."

"Yet you talk of going!"

"I feel much better. I'm stronger."

"Of course you're stronger! When you came here you were just getting
over a severe illness. You were worn-out. Now you are rested. You are
fed to the limit of your capacity. Everything is set for your cure. But
you're not out of the wood yet. The truth is that this high altitude is
exciting to your disease at the beginning. Now you'll just have to be
sensible and not risk your future by impatience."

"I _must_ go!" exclaimed Shaw.

Maybee grinned athletically. "There's no such word as _must_ here. Is
there, Dr. Knott?"

"Not till the undertaker says it," said the other.

But the undertaker was never in evidence. Patients certainly died.
Certain bedrooms about which there would be a good deal of activity
would suddenly become very quiet and there would be the smell of
disinfectant about their doors. That was all. One of the group of youths
died, but soon a new arrival filled his place and learned to sing:--

                   "Doctor, can I go home next year?"

There was nothing for Shaw to do but write to the head of the Forestry
Department and ask for an extension of leave. It was hard but he had to
do it. Harder still to write to his mother and Elspeth of the
disappointment. Hardest of all to curb the wild longing of his own heart
for the forests of the Pacific. He thought of them flaunting their April
greenness. He saw the mountainsides rosy with flowers. He saw the coast
where forest and sea met and his heart was sick with longing.

From official quarters he received a sympathetic letter granting him an
extension of leave for three months, his salary to continue. The relief
was great--so great that he felt almost reconciled to the protracted
stay in the sanatorium.

Pember's heart was set on going that spring to the Annapolis Valley in
Nova Scotia to take photographs of orchards in bloom and villages set
among them. He could think and talk of little else. One day he announced
to Shaw that he was leaving. The doctors were up in the air, he said,
about his going, but he was determined to go. He was practically cured,
he said. A summer of knocking about with his camera would complete the
cure, he was convinced.

Shaw had not imagined that he would feel the parting with Pember so
keenly. In truth he felt that his best prop in the place was gone.
Pember was one of those weak, comforting people who are of more support
to the strong than other strong would be. With him gone, Shaw drew more
into himself. Ian had sent him a bundle of books and he buried himself
in them. No one else came to share his balcony. He took long walks in
the pinewoods, sometimes encountering Such and walking a while with him.
They found little to say, for both were reticent, but they liked each
other's company. Shaw gathered that Such was troubled by Mrs. Mellon's
devotion to him. Her advances to Shaw had been passing. Now she ignored
him except when he was with Such.

She would walk between them talking and laughing continually, stopping
sometimes to cough. But she seemed to be in robust health. Her curly
hair stood out from her head and her complexion was like a child's.

One day Shaw came upon her with Such in a remote spot on the
mountainside. He would have turned back for she was crying bitterly. But
she saw him and called out:--

"Don't go away!"

Shaw hesitated, turning his eyes from her and Such. He had seen that
Such looked also on the point of tears.

"What do you suppose?" she cried. "They tell me I'm cured! They tell me
I've got to go away! The brutes! I'm not cured. I'm just as bad as
ever!"

Shaw went to them. He was embarrassed and said to Such:--

"I think I'd better go."

"No, don't go," returned Such. "Stay and talk some sense into Lydia.
Tell her that the doctors wouldn't send her away if she wasn't cured."

"Wouldn't they!" she cried bitterly. "Perhaps Knott wouldn't but Maybee
would. He's jealous, I tell you! He's as jealous as hell!"

Shaw looked puzzled. She threw out her hand in a tragic gesture. "He's
jealous of Such. He's mad about me. Everyone knows that. If you knew the
things he's said to me! Now he's having his revenge. He's determined to
get rid of me."

"I wish to God he'd tell me I was cured!" exclaimed Such.

"You're just as much cured as I am! I'm no more fit to go back into the
world than you are. But I won't be put out, I tell you! He can't make me
go!" She threw her arms about Such's neck and hung on his shoulder
weeping.

"Look here, Mrs. Mellon," said Shaw. "I don't believe that Dr. Maybee--"

She interrupted him fiercely. "What do you know about Dr. Maybee? I
understand him, I tell you. He's a brute and he's determined to separate
me from the man I love."

Such gently stroked her hair. "Don't go on so, Lydia. You'll have your
temperature up."

"It _is_ up!" she cried. "It's never been down!" She began to cough
violently. Shaw could not help feeling that the cough was assumed.

Such looked at him in despair. Together they urged her gently down the
steep path, soothing her to a sort of calmness by the time they reached
its end.

That night Such ate little and the next day he was in bed. He was much
worse, it was said.

Returning from a walk, Shaw heard a commotion in the corridor where
Such's room was. He hesitated, his heart beating quickly, and saw Dr.
Maybee pushing Mrs. Mellon out of Such's room into the corridor.

"Oh, you brute!" she shouted, and struck Dr. Maybee on the cheek.

Such's voice came from the room. "For God's sake, don't go on like that!
I can't bear it!"

"You'll get out of here," said Dr. Maybee roughly, "or I'll know the
reason why." He pushed her down the corridor.

Shaw hurried back to his room. The next day Mrs. Mellon's place was
empty. Such was still confined to his bed. His curve had risen still
more because of the emotional strain. Shaw felt lonely and depressed.
The three people he knew best in the sanatorium were suddenly swept away
from him, two by their recovery, one by illness. Twice he went to see
Such, but they found little to say to each other and the memory of Mrs.
Mellon's distraught figure rose between them. Such gave the impression
that he was torn and confused by all that had happened to him since
coming to this place.

In his walks under the swaying shadows of the pines, Shaw meditated on
the love of women. The passionate love of Mrs. Mellon that had been a
torment to Such, that could only drag down and embitter its object. The
love of Laura Page for the worthless Searle, a love that begged no
reward but the privilege of loving. The love of Elspeth for himself
which enriched his life and quickened all that was best in him. He had
unselfish love, he reflected, from a woman, and loved in return, but of
passion could give only what was not absorbed by the forests.

The weather grew very hot. During the day exertion was impossible but at
evening he walked solitary through the woods where the shadows of the
pines dipped and bowed before him, under the cooling breeze where the
pointed cones, glittering with resin, filled the air with their scent.

One day the mail brought him a letter from Mrs. Searle. It read:--

    Dear Shaw,

    I hope you don't mind me calling you by your first name. As I
    knew you when you were a little boy, it seems more natural than
    Mister. I am in great trouble. Jack was sent to prison last
    March for six months because of a fight he got into with three
    other men and one of them got killed, though it was not Jack's
    fault. Some people are unkind enough to say that he got off
    easily but he didn't deserve any punishment. The other men
    started the fight. Jack swore that on his honor. Would you send
    me twenty-five dollars for old time's sake? I wouldn't ask you
    except for my little girl who is not getting enough to eat. She
    sends her love to you. She is counting the days till her poor
    daddy comes home and so am I.

    I am terribly sorry to hear of your illness and hope you will
    soon be well again.

                                               Your worried friend
                                                       Laura Searle

    P.S.--I still feel that I don't regret anything I've done.

How had Mrs. Searle got his address, Shaw wondered. He guessed that it
was from Ian, who was now in British Columbia. Could he afford to send
her the money? He could not, he knew, yet the thought of her want nagged
at his mind, gave him no peace till he sent it. He wrote also to Ian,
who answered by return post:--

    The Searles have bled me dry! Don't send them another dollar.
    What a fool I was to tell her where you are! The woman has no
    conscience. . . .

For one reason or another Shaw's next examination was put off from time
to time. Dr. Maybee had an operation to perform. New cases had to be
diagnosed. The doctors were in turn called away from the sanatorium for
consultations. But at last it came. Shaw, now so adept at going through
his paces, held up his arms so that he might be tapped beneath the
armpits, breathed deeply, coughed.

"I may as well tell you," observed Dr. Maybee shortly, "that the lobe of
the other lung is badly affected. I was suspicious of it at your last
examination but I did not want to worry you. But leaving any time in the
near future is out of the question." He gave a hearty laugh. "In for a
penny, in for a pound! You're a good patient, Manifold. Give us another
six months of your company and you'll leave here so full of beans you
won't know what to do with yourself. Isn't that so, Dr. Knott?"

"You bet it is," said Dr. Knott.

Shaw stumbled up the stairs and along the corridor to his own room. As
he passed Such's door he saw outside it the tank of oxygen. From the
balcony below drifted the refrain:--

                   "Doctor, can I go home this year?
                   Now don't go talking rot!
                   Doctor, shall I ever go home?
                   Maybee--Maybee--Knott."

Shaw threw himself on his bed and lay there face downward. Despair
welled up in a black tide and engulfed him. He struggled against it,
sprang to his feet and strode up and down the room.

"Liars! Liars!" he raged. "I won't stay! I won't stay! I'm better--I'm
well--I'll leave to-morrow."

Suddenly he had a vision of himself as a little boy hurling sticks at
the woodshed, declaring that he would chop no more wood. Pretending to
revolt--not really revolting!

He found himself dripping with sweat. He took his thermometer and
measured his curve. Higher. . . . Higher. . . . He would kill himself if
he went on this way. . . . There was nothing for it but to acquiesce--to
make the cure complete. He must write for an extension of leave. God
only knew if they would grant him an extension of salary!

The leave was granted kindly enough but with a little less sympathy than
before. The salary was halved. This meant that Cristabel would have to
use her savings to make up the deficiency.

The summer passed. In the valley the maple trees flamed but the pines
remained green on the mountain. Patients came and went. Patients took to
their beds and died. Among these was Such. His death made little
difference to Shaw. He had not seen him in months.

When the cold fall rains and winds came, Pember returned. He looked
sheepish as he greeted Shaw. He was tanned a dark brown and showed
little sign of his malady.

"I'm afraid I left too soon," he said. "But I had a wonderful time. Just
you wait till you see the photographs I've taken. They're perfectly
marvelous. I'm going to enter some of them in an international
competition." He could scarcely bear to wait for the displaying of them
to Shaw and the other patients.

There was a sense of comfort in his return. They took up the threads of
the old life. Again he was in the room next door and came several times
a day to see Shaw, who was at the time forced to remain in bed because
of a chill. He was anmic too, the doctors said. They were very careful
of him.

Shaw had reached a state of almost complete acquiescence and lassitude.
He no longer counted the weeks, the days, till his next examination. His
mind was no longer tortured by delay. It was murky, like a fouled
stream. His answers to letters became merely a few scrawled words,
perfunctory and loveless. He was able to take no exercise beyond the
fifteen steps between his bed and his chair.

One December day he and Pember were stretched in their chairs on the
balcony. There was little snow yet, but a sharp wind sang its way
through the pines and swept the rising road to the sanatorium. They lay
watching the figure of a woman walking up the road, her garments pressed
against her limbs by the wind, her head bowed to meet its buffeting.
They watched her progress, indolently wondering what was her business,
for now she had turned in at the gate and her face was raised toward the
rows of balconies.

There was something in her walk that roused Shaw from his languor. She
was now more sheltered from the wind and her skirt fell about her knees
naturally. The skin of her face was whipped to scarlet by the biting
air. He could see the blueness of her eyes. He raised himself to a
sitting posture and stared down at her, astounded, almost horrified.

"Mother!" he shouted.

He fell back on his pillow. Blood gushed from his mouth.

                 *        *        *        *        *

She had come to take him away!

She could endure this no longer. She had come to take him away. Now he
did not even want to go.

"Mother," he said, looking up at her out of wistful eyes as she sat by
his bed, "I'm not able to go. I don't want to go. It will be the end of
me!"

"You must be sensible, dear," she said, stroking his hand which she
held. "You are not getting well here. I am going to take you to a place
that Dr. Clemency has heard of. He's sure it will be better than this."

"Is it less expensive?" he asked.

"It costs about half what this does."

"That's good," he sighed, and resigned himself to her bidding.

He was her child again. She had only to stretch out the wing of her
love, he thought, half dreaming, and under its shelter he would find
oblivion, safety from life or death or whatever might be seeking
him. . . . On her part she strove to forget the horror of her first
sight of him--his red mouth against his white face--the caverns of his
eyes.




                              CHAPTER XVI


"Are you comfortable?" asked Cristabel as they sat in the train two
weeks later on their way to Quebec.

"Yes, Mother, I'm fine."

They smiled at each other.

They were happy to be speeding away from the place that had swallowed a
year of Shaw's life, all of his salary, and much of his savings. She had
had a time of it with Dr. Maybee. He had been rude to her, almost
brutal. If her son died as the result of this change she would have only
herself to blame. He would give Shaw no more than two months to live if
he were moved. If people would be pigheaded they must take the
consequences. Dr. Knott, however, had taken her aside and unexpectedly
told her that he believed she was doing the right thing. Those words had
cheered her, though support was not necessary to her. Her mind was set,
with the energy of despair, on getting Shaw to the Quebec sanatorium
while he still lived.

All the long journey she had scarcely taken her eyes from him. Her hands
had fluttered over him like two birds over their feeble young. She had
not allowed the porter to make up her berth but had sat up all the night
across the aisle from him, ready to tend him, springing up in fear at
the sound of a cough. Yet through all her anguish of spirit there shone
a thread of tremulous joy at his nearness, of being able to care for him
with her own hands.

He felt oddly happy, though the excessive heat of the train, the lack of
air, caused him great discomfort. He sat gazing out of the window
watching the snowy landscape wheel by, the villages, the towns, the
frozen fields, the woods. His heavy eyes would brighten as he looked at
the trees. He sought to make out their varieties, what species grew
together, their breadth and strength. It seemed to him that the trees
were conscious of him, that they wanted to make sure that he had a mind
to them. It seemed that, when the country was open and bare because of
the ignorant slaughter of them, they always contrived to set one of
their number, even though it were only a stunted cedar, in some
conspicuous spot, on the lookout for him.

As they crossed the border into Quebec the cold became more intense. The
snow rolled beside the railway in great blue-white billows. The mufflers
about people's throats became heavier and fur caps were worn. But in the
railway carriage the air was still breathless, parched by heat, as hot
as steaming pipes could make it.

"Are you comfortable, Shaw?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Will you have something to eat?"

"Yes, I must eat."

She would give him a sandwich and a cup of milk, rejoice in his
nearness. Since he was eight years old she had never so had him to
herself as in the past fortnight. She had brought him back from death.
Dr. Clemency said the air in that northern place could work miracles.
Surely a miracle was needed to restore Shaw to health! His gaunt young
face, his thin shoulders, his limp hands that had been so full of
strength, each evidence of his stricken state pierced her heart with a
fresh pang.

She leant toward him.

"Comfortable, dear?"

"Yes, Mother. Fine. Except for the heat. You don't think I might have a
window open?"

"I'm afraid the other passengers would object."

"But they're well. I'm not."

"I shall open your window just a crack." She struggled with it, clamped
with ice as it was to the frame. The negro porter hurried to her.

"Land's sakes, lady, yo' ain't gwine ter open de window, is yo'?"

"My son needs air."

"He ain't faintin', is he?"

"It's all right!" exclaimed Shaw, shrinking from the eyes turned toward
him. "I don't mind."

The porter raised the window the fraction of an inch. A needle of pure
air pierced the parched atmosphere. Shaw felt himself reviving. He
turned the pages of the _Geographic Magazine_ Pember had given him at
parting. Cristabel's hands moved nervously in her lap. She longed to be
doing something for him.

On and on, on and on, across the frozen St. Lawrence, farther and
farther north. . . . Sky and land embraced each other in a whirling
snowstorm . . . little hamlets of wooden houses, each hamlet with its
tapering spire, were scattered alongside the railway, and beyond them
the stretch of whiteness, beyond the whiteness the vast dark forest.
Cristabel peered through the pane. . . . Was this where she was to leave
her boy? In this frozen vastness! Her heart felt the iron clutch of
apprehension. Surely Dr. Clemency was mistaken! Surely no human life
could be cherished or warmed to strength in such grimness! She felt her
fortitude ebbing from her. She laid her hand on Shaw's knee.

"Look out of the window, Shaw. What do you think of this country?"

He bent his head to peer out through the space he had scratched with his
nail on the frosted pane.

"I like the looks of it, Mother."

"You like the looks of it?"

"Yes. I guess the air will be good and you know I like trees."

She gazed at him in wonder. To be able to look into that gloomy
distance, where the massed trees seemed almost borne down by their
weight of snow, while skeletons of birch and aspen stood outside the
forest against the chill sky, and to say he liked the look of it! What
sort of man was this! How had she got him--this odd strange boy of hers?
But his words quieted her fear. If he saw no dread in such a prospect,
if he thought only of the pure air and the trees, then surely the
benefit must be there to cure him.

The lamps of the carriages swung dimly in the hot air as dusk came on.
The faces of other passengers looked pallid. There were few of them now.
The train was almost empty. This was a branch line to which they had
changed at a junction. The seats were hard and uncomfortable. Shaw
looked ready to drop when at last they drew in to the station where they
were to alight. The little station looked no more than a lost outpost,
but it was something to feel the steady earth beneath them again, after
the whirling monotony of the wheels. Down the platform they could see
Shaw's trunk being put off from the baggage car. Moving figures looked
dim and unreal. Yet how real was the sudden, sharp, clear jingle of
sleigh bells. Lights were seen through snowflakes. Shaw raised his head
and drank deeply of the icy air. With a noisy outlet of steam and a
grinding of wheels that scarce could grip the frosty rails, the train
moved out. An elderly man, almost as broad as he was long, came across
the platform and greeted Cristabel. He wore moccasins over heavy grey
woolen socks, a short cloth coat lined with fur and with an upturned fur
collar, a cloth cap with ear lugs lined with rabbitskin. He had a broad
face and large grizzled moustache from which two icicles hung. He broke
them off with his stumpy fingers before he spoke.

"I am Dr. Sullivan," he said, speaking with a precise accent. "I suppose
you are Mr. and Mrs. Manifold. I've come to meet you." He shook hands
with gravity. "Is that your trunk?" he asked.

Between them he and the stationmaster picked it up and, with the other
baggage, carried it to the back of the sleigh. Dr. Sullivan courteously
invited Cristabel and Shaw to seat themselves in it. He covered their
knees with a bearskin rug and himself mounted the driver's seat. With
another clear jingle of bells the bony grey horse sprang forward along
the snowy road, straining toward his evening feed.

"Are you warm enough, Shaw?"

"Yes, Mother. Isn't this air glorious?" He felt as though he should
never have enough of it.

In the distance they heard the shriek of the locomotive. A few luminous
stars shone out. The bells kept up an incessant music which at times was
pierced by the sharp screech of the sleigh runners on the snow.
Sometimes a rut sent them forward on their seats. Sometimes they glided
as though on wings, while the steam from the horse's nostrils hung white
on the air.

Cristabel spoke close to Shaw's ear. "It's like a drive with Santa
Claus."

He laughed.

"Oh, Shaw, how lovely it is to hear you laugh!"

"I'll get well here, Mother. See if I don't!"

"Are you comfortable?"

"Yes. Glad to be outdoors."

"There are lights ahead. Do you see?"

A cluster of lights showed where the hamlet lay. A little apart stood a
house much larger than the others. It was, in fact, a house and a barn
joined together by an addition, so that a kind of court was formed. Into
this the horse turned so eagerly that the sleigh skidded. The driver
shouted:--

"Hi! _Prenez garde, mon vieux!_"

The door of the house was thrown open and a shock-headed man in
moccasins came out and shouldered the trunk.

"Welcome!" exclaimed Dr. Sullivan with a dramatic spread of his arms. He
swung Cristabel down from the seat. She sank almost knee-deep in snow,
yet she was on the shoveled path. On either side of her the drifts rose
above her head.

Shaw alighted and stood weak and bewildered. Suddenly the two men came
on either side of him. They made a chair of their arms and raised him on
it. "_Alors!_" exclaimed Dr. Sullivan. "_Pas si vite, Napolon!_"

Shaw and Cristabel found themselves in a small square hall where a
Quebec heater was glowing, and in a niche in the wall a statue of the
Virgin and Child had a red lamp burning before it. Cristabel felt that
she was in a foreign country. She felt afraid for Shaw. What strange
places his illness forced him into! He did not seem perturbed. He looked
tired and resigned.

A thin dark woman with a brooding aquiline face came to meet them.

"My sister," said Dr. Sullivan.

She greeted mother and son in English almost as good as her brother's.

"You are puzzled," she said, "by our Irish name. We had an Irish
great-great-grandfather. Our mother and our two sisters speak no
English, but my brother studied medicine in Montreal and I nursing. We
learned the language there. Then we got the idea of a sanatorium. We
worked and saved for it. Now we have twelve patients. Your son, madam,
makes the thirteenth." She smiled proudly.

"The thirteenth," repeated Cristabel. "That's an unlucky number."

"There are no unlucky numbers here," said the doctor confidently. "Now
we must put this young man to bed, Hortense, and show him and madame,
his mother, how good our cooking is."

Two hours later Cristabel came to Shaw's room and sat down by his
bedside. He smiled up at her and took one of her hands in his.

"When must you go?" he asked.

"The day after to-morrow. But I must have to-morrow to see you settled.
I've been talking to the doctor about you and he thinks . . ." She
paused.

"He hasn't examined me yet!"

"No. He can only judge by your appearance. He thinks . . ." Her voice
faltered.

"Yes, Mother?"

"He thinks it will take a year, Shaw."

"I am not surprised," he answered in a resigned tone. Then he
added--"Does he think I look very bad?"

"No--considering the long journey. He is very kind. I like him much
better than those other doctors. But I wish it wasn't all so Catholic.
Did you see the statue with the light in front of it?"

"Yes. I have no religious prejudices, Mother."

"There is someone here, Shaw, I must tell you about. I wouldn't tell you
before for fear it might be upsetting to you. A young person you used to
know at school."

He looked startled. "Not Ian?"

"Goodness, no! It is Louie Adams. She's been here since last fall."

"Then she wasn't cured after all!"

"No. I know how sorry you will be. I hated to tell you."

His hollow cheeks flushed. Cristabel knew little of the tremor of
satisfaction that had run through the sanatorium when someone who had
left returned, or when someone developed more advanced symptoms.
Savagely Shaw thrust this feeling from him. He said slowly:--

"I'm sorry for Louie. Is she very ill?"

"She was, but I think she's improving. Dr. Sullivan speaks hopefully.
She's up and about."

"Does she know I'm here?"

"Yes. It was through her that Dr. Clemency heard of this place."

A silence fell between them while their senses readjusted themselves to
the new environment. The room was very small and furnished cheaply, the
bed less comfortable than the one to which Shaw was used. It was cold
and Cristabel sat with her coat on. From the next room came the sound of
coughing and from the room below, through the thin flooring, the sound
of a rapid reiterated prayer in women's voices. An oil lamp on the table
threw the shadow of Cristabel on the wall. Shaw lay looking at it,
impressing it on his mind. He wished he might have outlined it in
crayon, it was so perfect. He said:--

"There's something I want you to do for me, Mother."

Her blue eyes turned to him eagerly. She was so eager to help him. "Yes,
dear, what is it?"

"I want you to tell Elspeth that she is free. It's a shame to hold her
to an engagement like ours. I should have told her long ago, but I sort
of hated to." His lips trembled.

"Oh, I don't think Elspeth wants that! I was talking to her when I was
home last and she told me that you are the only boy she's ever cared
for. She thinks you're wonderful, Shaw."

"She should see me now," he returned bitterly.

"I wouldn't give much for a girl who would throw a man over because he's
sick."

"It isn't fair to hold her in this case. Another year--think of it! And
even then I'll not be able to marry--perhaps not for a long while."

"Well, I'll tell her what you say."

He flung across the bed in anger. "Tell her--tell her!" he reiterated.
"I'm tired of it! I can't bear it any more."

Cristabel was aghast. "You mean you don't love her any more?"

"Of course I love her! That's why I must be fair to her. Don't you
understand? I can't chain the woman I love to a wreck!"

She laid her hand on his head. "I'll do just what you say. I'll repeat
our conversation to her and tell her to write to you. Now you must rest.
It's late."

He saw how wan and tired she looked. He thought:--

"I'm wearing her out. I'm killing her. . . . What if she should die!"

"Mother," he said, "you must go to bed. You're so tired." Tears of pity
for them both misted his eyes. He caught at her skirt. "Poor
Mother. . . ."

She bent and kissed him, tucked the coverings close about his shoulders.
"Have you got everything you want?"

"Yes, everything."

"Good night, dear. . . . I'm glad those women have stopped praying. It
sounded so mournful."

"I sort of liked it."

"It's nice and quiet after the train."

"I guess you hadn't a wink last night."

"Don't worry about me, Shaw."

She put out the light. The door opened and closed. He slept.

In the barn which had been transformed into a part of the sanatorium
those patients who were bedridden were accommodated. There were six, all
French Canadians. Two of the doctor's sisters also slept there. In the
house proper were the seven other patients, the doctor, his third
sister, and his mother, who had been blind for several years. The house
had a single long verandah enclosed at the ends and fitted with canvas
curtains for protection in times of extreme cold.

Here, with the wintry sunshine pouring down on him and wrapped in a fur
sack, Cristabel found Shaw the next day. She had been shown every corner
of the sanatorium by Hortense Sullivan, with concentrated French pride.
Cristabel was more tranquil than, the day before, she would have thought
possible. These people were kind, she was sure of that. The place was
genuinely clean. The food was plain but well cooked. The patients were
given all they could eat. In the adjoining field, cows, pigs, and
poultry were kept. Hortense had shown Cristabel all, down to the last
hen. They had plodded through snow and frozen manure to see the hens and
to collect the eggs before they would be frozen. Cristabel enjoyed this,
being a countrywoman. Though this place seemed so foreign, the cows and
hens were the same and it gave a comforting familiarity to her
conception of it.

She and Hortense took off their heavy felt overshoes and, to make the
final perfect impression, Hortense led her to the parlor, the best room
of all, papered in dark red, with maroon plush chairs, figured yellow
window curtains, a piano with a red felt cover with balled fringe, a
highly colored lithograph of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and, under a
glass case, a wreath of white wax flowers and a memorial card of the
death of the father of the family.

Hortense showed all to Cristabel. The two women sat down and talked like
sisters. Hortense promised to keep a special eye on Shaw, to write to
Cristabel herself of his progress. Before they went upstairs she took
Cristabel's face between her hands and kissed her.

"Your son will recover!" she exclaimed. "I know he will. He will drink
in the pure air of Quebec to heal his lungs. My good brother will watch
over him like a father. I myself will not neglect to pray for him. At
night by the shrine of Our Lady in my mother's room, and at early Mass
each morning in the Church of the Good Shepherd."

Cristabel could not speak for the tightness in her throat but her eyes
shone with gratitude as she looked into the fine dark face. Passing the
statue in the niche, Hortense genuflected and, scarcely knowing what she
did, Cristabel followed her example, then straightened herself in
dismay. What would her mother have thought of that popish gesture?

                 *        *        *        *        *

Shaw smiled up at her. She sat down on the edge of his chair.

"Are you comfortable, Shaw?" she asked, while her eyes took in the
ravages suffering had made on his strong-boned young face.

"Yes, Mother. I slept like a log."

"I'm glad. You are to have your examination at two, so I shall know the
doctor's opinion before I go."

"Don't you worry. I'll be all right. The air is wonderful."

"It's as cold as Greenland." She shivered in her not very heavy coat.

"I'm used to cold."

She lowered her voice. "Have you seen Louie?"

"Yes. She came to me first thing. She's at the far end of the verandah."

Cristabel peered in that direction. "Oh, I see her! She doesn't look too
bad, Shaw."

"You can't tell by looks. Some look in the pink when they've only a few
months to live."

"Poor girl! She sees me. I must go and speak to her."

Louie peered up from her wrappings, a smile lighting her sharp little
face.

"Oh, hello, Mrs. Manifold!"

"Well, Louie. I'm glad to see you looking so well."

"I'm getting on wonderfully. It's lovely seeing a face from home."

"You and Shaw will be company for each other."

"Yes. There's no one here I much like talking to. Shaw's intellectual. I
guess he and I'll have some great arguments. Of course, I'm leaving
pretty soon."

"I'm glad for you, Louie. I only wish Shaw were."

"This air will fix him up. Dr. Sullivan's just grand. We all love him."

Cristabel's eyes moved over the recumbent forms that separated Shaw and
Louie. "I suppose you know them all," she said wistfully.

"Yes. I wish I might sit next to Shaw, but they keep the sexes separated
by that railing down the middle and the two next the railing are
terribly gone on each other. They're engaged to be married--when they
recover--if ever they do!" Louie gave a hard little laugh. She drew back
her upper lip from her teeth that looked sharp and cruel.

Cristabel glanced with compassion at the two young people who sat with
faces toward each other across the intervening space. They were talking
rapidly together. "The woman between the girl and me is a dress designer
from Montreal," said Louie. "The two men between the girl's fianc and
Shaw are priests. They're perfect lambs."

Louie's strange way of talking disturbed Cristabel. The idea of calling
members of the clergy lambs! Shepherds--yes, that was natural and good,
but lambs--well, New York must be a queer place. She stayed a little
longer with Louie telling her news of the Blairs and the Scotts, then
went back to her boy. It was hard to think that she must leave him so
soon. Every moment was precious.

The examination was long and tiring to one in Shaw's weak state. He
stood, bare to the waist, in a little room alone with Dr. Sullivan.

"You have been put through the paces often," said the doctor, "yes? You
have been well taught but--not well cured! I shall do my best for you.
But it will take a year! Perhaps eighteen months. If only you had come
to me first!" He shook his shaggy grey head in a sudden abandon to
melancholy. "Why don't people come to me sooner! I am tired of them
coming on their last legs! It is not fair to me! It is very hard on me.
It makes it difficult to build up a reputation."

"Yes," agreed Shaw, "it is hard on you." He began to put on his clothes.

With Cristabel's departure his life in the sanatorium began in earnest.
Spiritually the change had already done him good. He was no longer
resigned to defeat but woke each morning in new determination to hold
his own, to gain if it were humanly possible.

"You are a good patient," Dr. Sullivan said to him, as Dr. Maybee had
said.

After the exhilaration of the change Shaw's condition moved steadily in
a decline. He might have been unconscious of its speed had not Dr.
Sullivan's moving finger hesitated with palpable foreboding on his naked
breast and back, had not the doctor given him that almost tender smile
at the end of each examination. The doctor would put his arm about him
and help him to his bed. Shaw would lie there, gazing out into the
wintry sky through his open window, thinking, thinking, always thinking.
The horizontal position became the natural one. He saw his long lean
body stretched before him under the bed coverings. He felt his legs
heavy and weak, his lungs shaken by coughing.

The doctor came one day and sat by his bed.

"Do you feel that you are getting better?" he asked.

"I don't know. I don't think about it now."

"Then I must tell you that you are not getting better."

"Am I going to die?"

"I am afraid so."

The northwest wind blew into the room. The sky looked colder and greyer,
though Shaw, a moment before, would have said that was not possible. His
heart sank in an abyss of despair. But his face remained impassive.

"The trouble is," said the doctor, "that you are not trying hard
enough."

Shaw heard a hollow voice answer: "I have been trying for a year and a
half."

"Yes. . . . But there is one part of you . . . a small, a small
invisible part of you, that is not trying. On that part rests the
responsibility of your life or death. This feeble part of you must come
out like a warrior and wrestle with your disease."

There was silence between them. A gust of wind entered, carrying
snowflakes that settled on the bed. Shaw looked up into the doctor's
eyes.

"I will bring out that final bit of me," he said, "and it shall fight
the disease."

After the doctor went he lay motionless for a long while. Then he raised
himself slowly and looked out through the window. The street was empty,
except for two Sisters of Mercy belonging to the convent next the
church, whose voluminous robes billowed on the wind. He watched them out
of sight and then lay back.

The final struggle began. Shaw kept a chart, not only of his temperature
but of the number of times he coughed each day, the time of his first
cough each morning. He fought to delay that first cough to the last
possible moment--to prolong the periods between spells of coughing with
the utmost strength that was in him. He almost suffocated himself doing
it. He lay rigid, with clenched teeth, bursting lungs, and distended
ribs, fighting the cough, saying to himself, "I'll fight you--damn
you!--I won't cough!"

In all his waking moments he fought. From the first moment of opening
his heavy eyes, even into the realms of sleep, his will pursued the
thing that would destroy him.

At last the turning point came. At last he felt the current of his life
strengthening. He began to take more interest in what went on about him.

Dr. Sullivan was interested in forestry. He and Shaw had long talks
about trees. And all along the mountainsides the forest spread dark
against the snow, the trees reared their proud pinnacles toward the cold
sky. Shaw set it as his ambition for the spring that he should then be
able to walk into the forest. But now he was weak. It was long before he
could walk down the village street as far as the church. It took all his
strength to push open the heavy door and go inside to rest. It was warm
in the church, for a fire burned in a stove near the door. Shaw liked it
here in the twilight that was enriched by shafts of color from stained
glass, and the glint of brass and painted pictures, statues with
bright-colored robes. But the smell of stale incense made him cough and
he could not stay for long.

Sometimes Louie Adams went with him, their two frail figures passing
unnoticed along the little street, for snow was mounded high in the
yards and no footfall was heard. The two would lay their shoulders
against the big door. Louie would breathe, "Now!" Their combined
strength would open the door easily. They would smile at their
achievement as they went softly along the aisle. They would sit side by
side gazing toward the chancel, the stained-glass window showing the
Good Shepherd with a lamb in His arms, the mystery and candlelit
brightness. Sometimes their minds went back to the Presbyterian Church
in Ontario and they remembered Mr. Blair standing tall and handsome in
the pulpit. More often they were without thought and sat with blank
faces gazing at the brightness. But, though they might be without
conscious thought, the twinkling candles like distant stars, the
brooding statues, gave them a sense of peace. The first time a priest
and his acolyte entered the chancel when Shaw and Louie were in the
church they hastened out, afraid of being caught in some service they
could not understand, but they grew bolder and one day remained, rising
and kneeling when the others did, not understanding, but reverent.

An odd exhilaration would possess them when they came out into the cold.
They would feel stronger and the piercing purity of the air, after the
scent of incense, would go through them like wine.

"Isn't it fun being together?" Louie asked him once as, arm in arm, they
were moving through the blue-and-white twilight toward the orange
squares of the sanatorium windows.

"Fun!" repeated Shaw.

"Yes. It makes you feel so young, so sort of carefree."

"I don't think it makes us feel young or carefree. I think it just makes
us forget for a little."

"Well, that's almost the same thing, isn't it?"

"I haven't any carefree childhood days to look back on. Have you,
Louie?"

She gave a shrill laugh. "No. I was always worrying. But one sort of
thinks of childhood that way."

"I don't."

"What a funny little fellow you were, Shaw! Like a little man. But you
were nice."

"Me nice! Do you forget the time I pushed you down in the road?"

"I don't wonder you did. I was a little worm. And I had such awful
clothes. How I hated them! I always longed for pretty things."

"Did you really?" he asked, astonished.

"Well, I was human, wasn't I?" she answered tartly. "Even if I did have
a yellow neck and taggy hair and pale eyes."

"You're a lot better-looking now, Louie."

He looked down at her almost admiringly. She walked prettily in her
narrow black-and-white check skirt, her short black jacket with a band
of fur at the neck, her hat with the backward-springing wings. Beneath
the hat brim her hair waved about her ears, in which she wore imitation
pearl earrings. Her skin was clear, her eyes bright--what had happened
to change her eyes?

"Louie, your eyes are different."

"Can't you guess why?"

He could not guess.

"I wasn't a whole year in a beauty parlor for nothing. My eyelashes are
darkened."

He stared at them, incredulous.

"No! Are they really?"

To him there was something indecent in the admission. A girl might do it
but--to tell a man of it! What about her lips, then? Perhaps she had
some sort of enamel all over her face!

Louie laughed almost brazenly. "Oh, New York is so different! Things
that seem terrible at home are just nothing there. And the right kind of
powder makes all the difference to a girl. I've the right kind on now,
but my lips aren't painted. The red is quite natural. Old man
temperature sees to that!"

Well, it wasn't his business to criticize her. And certainly she had
improved her appearance. He said shyly:--

"I like the way you look, Louie. I think your clothes are awfully
stylish."

"Do you remember," she said, "how at high school that rich girl gave me
money to buy shoes and things--right in front of everybody!"

"It was a mean thing to do. Both Ian and I thought so."

"What I thought won't bear repeating! What I wanted to do was to throw
the money in her face and spit at her!"

Why should she drag out her humiliations? He strove to forget his. He
said:--

"Never mind, that's all over now. You look pretty and I like your looks.
We're both going to get well. That's enough, isn't it?"

"Not quite," she answered in a tense voice. "I want us to be friends for
keeps. Better friends than we've ever been."

She raised her dark-lashed eyes to his face in conscious allure. Her
thin fingers pressed his arm. Suddenly he remembered his dream about
her, how she had clung to him and his carrying her through a rough wild
land.

But their intimacy did not advance. For all her efforts she found
herself facing the wall of his reticence. Their walks, their talks, grew
longer but she made no progress into intimacy. Then she began to talk of
a boy she knew in New York. He was crazy about her, she said. She
couldn't help confiding in Shaw, she declared. This boy came of an old
family in Virginia. His name was Randolph and his family had once owned
slaves. Often he had taken her out to shows and to supper and a dance
afterward. He was young but he was a man of the world. Sometime they
might get married, though she wasn't sure she liked him enough for that.
You had to know really a lot about a person and to love him a lot before
you let yourself in for marriage and having children. She allowed Shaw
to see her poring over letters bearing the American stamp and addressed
to Miss Lucille Adams. Shaw had not known that her name was Lucille.

Now their intimacy did advance. He was interested in all she had to say
of Randolph, though in his heart he disliked what he heard of him. On
his side he told her of his love for Elspeth and their engagement. Louie
said over and over, with tears in her eyes, that she'd always loved
Elspeth and that she was glad that Shaw and Elspeth were to make a match
of it.

The life of the sanatorium moved on in its own isolated orbit. Every
morning in the bitter cold Shaw was waked by the sound of old Mrs.
Sullivan and her daughters preparing to go to Mass. Through the thin
partition he could hear them talking eagerly as they dressed. He could
hear them leading the old woman carefully down the stairs. Then came the
closing of the front door, the sharp crunching of footsteps in the snow.
He could hear the clangor of the church bell. After a while they
returned and Hortense made haste to prepare the breakfast for the
patients. There were few days so wild or cold that they did not spend
some hours on the verandah. Often no word was uttered except when the
doctor passed among them with his heartening voice and sturdy figure,
his moccasins making a soft shuffling sound.

Shaw came to know the other patients well except the two young lovers,
who knew no word of English. He tried his scant French on them but his
mistakes mystified them. They seemed to make no attempt to understand
him but just stared and smiled, then turned again to each other. With
the dress designer from Montreal it was different. She came from Paris
and her name was Madame Dunois. She spoke English fluently. She and
Louie became close friends. In the evenings, in the sitting room, they
and Shaw sat together. Madame Dunois talked of France and drew the young
people on to talk of their experience, of literature and life. She had
friends who sent her books and she lent these to Shaw. He devoured them,
even the long French novels, with the aid of a dictionary. By spring he
saw that Madame Dunois was getting worse and knew the supply of reading
from that quarter would fail.

Louie was studying French and soon far outstripped Shaw. The philosophy
of the French novels he accepted as too remote from him for criticism,
but Louie absorbed it with her whole being. She began to talk as the
people in these books talked and she picked up expressive little foreign
gestures from Madame Dunois.

The two priests were approaching middle age. One was swarthy and stout,
the other swarthy and thin. They sat close together all day reading
their breviaries. But in the evening they gave themselves up to the game
of chess.

In the sitting room there was an oil lamp set in a bracket in a corner,
as well as the hanging lamp that was depended from the ceiling by
chains. Under the bracket lamp the two priests, Pre Lombard and Pre
Beaumont, established themselves with their chessboard each evening.
There they sat brooding over the chessmen, oblivious of all that went on
about them, their black heads bent, Pre Lombard's face strongly marked
in folds of swarthy flesh, Pre Beaumont's finely etched in ascetic
thinness. He was the more intellectual of the two and it had been in
assisting him in the translation of a religious work that Pre Lombard
had contracted the disease which so far had made but little outward mark
on his stout person.

Their pauses were so profound as they considered their next moves that
they seemed at times to be carven statues rather than living men. Pre
Lombard would sit, chin in palm, his blunt fingers denting his dark
cheek, his eyes of a greenish brown bent on the board. Pre Beaumont
would crouch, hands clasped as though in prayer, his luminous eyes half
shut, his thin lips set in a brooding line. He was descended from the
sister of a Jesuit priest who had been martyred after terrible torture
by Indians in the days of French Canada, and in his face there was
something of the beauty and tragedy of the martyr.

In another corner Shaw, Louie, and Madame Dunois compared notes on the
books they were reading and on their experiences in life. Madame Dunois
drew on the two young people to talk, which they did in the simplicity
of their egotism, but when she told them of her life they felt young and
inexperienced. Each week Louie became more proficient in the French
language, more expressive in her gestures, her little shrugs of disdain
or appeal. Was this the little girl he had known in the country school,
Shaw asked himself. She talked a good deal of Randolph's passionate love
for her. Shaw repeated to her the news that came in Elspeth's letters.

The spring was slow in coming. It was still winter in April, till one
day the blazing sun set all the ditches raging and the gurgling of
running water mingled with the sound of church bells. Crows flew like
black-robed choristers across the high arch of the sky. The twigs of
maple saplings turned rosy. The sap of the sugar maple turned sweet and
oozed into the bark. The rumps of cattle were plastered with mud. A cow
in a field next the sanatorium had a calf and from the verandah the
patients watched its first gambolings and heard its mother low in
anguish when it was taken from her.

They heard other anguish too when a patient in the bedridden ward died.
Here death was not tactfully concealed as it had been in the sanatorium
in the Adirondacks. Relatives came and mourned without restraint. The
church bell loudly tolled. The coffin, carried on the shoulders of
black-garbed men, was borne through the street to the church, followed
by weeping children and women.

The patients sat staring over the railing of the verandah at the
progress of the little procession, subdued by the fact that one of their
number had succumbed to the enemy, thankful that they themselves still
lived.

They had many visitors, especially the two priests, whose former
parishioners came when they could and poured out news of the parish and
their own trials and triumphs. They often brought gifts of fresh eggs or
jars of cream. The priests always sought to share these with the other
patients.

"_Alors_, a little cream, M'sieur Manifold! A new-laid egg, Madame
Dunois!"

What they could not give away they themselves ate with unfailing
appetite.

The lovers, Marcel and lise, had many visitors too. Parents, aunts,
uncles, cousins, brothers, and sisters came to see them. The two were
pale-eyed, fair-haired, shy creatures who were interested in nothing but
their own love. As the spring advanced they seemed more and more wrapped
up in each other. They strained their strength to walk to the forest's
edge to gather the first blossoms of the bloodroot and the downy-stemmed
hepaticas. These had already faded in their feverish hands by the time
they returned to the sanatorium. Dr. Sullivan would scold them for
walking so far and for a short while they would satisfy themselves with
climbing the winding path that led to a wayside shrine. Here they would
kneel and say a prayer, then sit, hand in hand, looking down across the
plain, always talking of their love and planning for their future.

But soon they would struggle up the mountainside and into the woods
again. At last one June day they did not return till evening. They did
not return for food or their afternoon "cure." And when evening brought
them, they dragged themselves back, faint and hollow-eyed, white
trilliums drooping in their hands.

They were in disgrace. The next day their chairs were moved and they
were separated by the bodies of the two priests, who read their
breviaries without raising their eyes. Marcel and lise sat crying,
their faces turned from each other.

"It's a damned shame!" Louie exclaimed to Shaw. "Why can't they be
allowed to do what they want to?"

"Well, I suppose they've got to conform to the rules of the sanatorium."

"You know what I mean," she returned sulkily.

"They ought to be thinking of getting well," said Shaw. "Love can wait."

"Not for them! My goodness, you're cold-blooded, Shaw! You were always
the same. I suppose you're planning to beat me out of this place like
you used to plan to beat me at exams."

Shaw smiled imperturbably. "Perhaps I am," he said.

"I guess you think it's fun being so inscrutable," she answered
bitterly.

"I think it's safer--with you."

"What _do_ you mean?"

"You're an unknown quantity to me."

"Well--I'm glad of one thing . . . that Randolph is impulsive
and--healthy."

Shaw flushed slowly but deeply.

"Yes, it's a good thing for you, Louie," he answered, with a faint
tremor in his voice.

They turned away from each other and walked in different directions.

The stab of Louie's sneer faded from his mind for he had formidable
anxieties that set him apart from trivial hurts. The first of these was
that Cristabel's health was not good. She who had always seemed able to
bear endless worry and fatigue now wrote to say that she was obliged to
give up her position as matron of the boys' school because she no longer
had strength for the work. She was going to join a widowed sister-in-law
in setting up a dressmaking establishment. Times were good. They ought
to be able to make it pay. They would have to work hard but the work
would be done sitting down.

At times the fear that the Department would cease to pay him his salary
made the sweat of apprehension start out on him. He knew that his post
awaited his recovery, but would his salary be continued in the interval?
His feverish mind fixed on this as an instrument for its own torture.
Each month that the check came he feared it might be the last. He knew
what was ahead of him--a year more in the sanatorium--possibly longer.
He wrote to Douglas Scott and asked him to sell the furniture the Scotts
were keeping for him. He thought it was better to sell it while it was
still new and fresh. Douglas agreed and the check he sent was larger
than Shaw had expected. He wrote in deep gratitude to Douglas.

That summer was almost fiercely hot. The grass turned grey, then brown.
A myriad insects filled the air with their humming. The walls of the
frame building were small protection against the sun. The patients gave
themselves up to trance-like acquiescence in the heat of the day, but at
night a breeze sprang up and heavy dews revived the air.

Shaw looked about him critically at the other patients, appraising their
advance toward or retreat from the goal of health, comparing them with
himself. He was advancing, he felt sure of that. He went to the monthly
examinations with trepidation, his nerves tense, his heart thudding in
apprehension. But the roaming stethoscope and gently tapping fingers of
Dr. Sullivan always achieved a final word--"_Meilleur! Bon!_ You are
improving, but it will take time, _mon enfant_." Then Shaw could have
kissed the doctor's stumpy hands. As he returned to his room the bugle
of hope sounded in his heart.

The priests changed little. Sometimes they seemed better, sometimes
worse, but the variations of their health did not affect their daily
routine. Each night, though moths and mosquitoes buzzed about the lamp,
they sat enthralled by their game of chess. This over, they bowed
gravely to each of the patients in turn, Pre Beaumont raised his thin
hand in blessing, and they departed together.

Madame Dunois, contrary to Shaw's expectation, appeared stronger and
more animated than ever. She still received many books, both French and
English, and these she passed on to Shaw and Louie, so avidly eager that
they all but quarreled over them. Ian also sent books to Shaw. Cristabel
sent him newspapers. Elspeth's letters were so long, so filled with
every detail which she thought might interest Shaw, that Louie said they
were books in themselves. It was Marcel and lise who were definitely
worse. After their disgraceful absenting of themselves their frail
bodies faded like the spring flowers. But they had no thought of dying.
They wanted to get married and were determined to do so after the
harvest was in and their relatives free to attend the ceremony. There
seemed no reason for denying them this and the wedding was arranged for
a day in late September. The weather was superb, blue of sky, golden and
fiery scarlet of foliage. lise's mother brought her wedding dress and
veil and dressed her in the little room in the sanatorium. Louie sent to
the nearest town for a wedding bouquet of white lilies and pink roses
for her. It was so beautiful that the little bride and groom wept in
their gratitude and the women relatives embraced Louie.

The bell rang out joyfully as the party walked slowly to the church.
Marcel and lise, standing before the priest, had the pale radiance of
two lighted candles burning all too quickly to the last spark.

Perhaps their disease made them emotional. However it was, the patients
in the sanatorium were caught up in the excitement of the wedding. They
could talk of nothing else for days. The wedded pair had come straight
back to their places on the verandah and reclined there, proud and
satisfied, the centre of the scene. Hortense and her sisters had made
special dishes. Everyone was happy. But perhaps it was the strain of the
ceremony or that simply Marcel and lise were now satisfied and content
to lose their fragile hold on life. At any rate, they grew rapidly
weaker, and before the days of Indian summer were past they had migrated
to the bedridden section of the sanatorium.

Their going was almost a relief to the remaining five, who settled down
tranquilly to face the long Northern winter. Every movement of the body,
every line in the face of each, was now familiar to the other four. They
were as familiar to each other as animals in a stable. They had long
gone past the possibility of boredom. Their lives fitted together like
mosaic in the pattern of the day.

"You'd think we two were married, Shaw," laughed Louie one day, her
breath soaring in a white cloud from her thin red lips.

"Yes," he agreed, "if you didn't know us."

They had reached the wind-blown ridge where the shrine was. Now they
perceived that the two priests were kneeling in the snow before the thin
figure of the Christ. About them spread the immaculate snow and, beyond,
the dark forest. Far below, the hamlet, the church, the sanatorium where
Madame Dunois was at this moment having an examination, where Marcel and
lise coughed feebly and sent looks of undying love from one bed to the
other.

The four who had climbed to the shrine wore snowshoes. Now, as they
retraced their steps, the prints of these lay exquisitely etched on the
snow like the shadows of birds.

"I wish I were a Catholic," said Louie. "I think I'd feel safer."

"Safer from what?" asked Shaw.

"You tell him, Pre Lombard."

"Possibly from herself, _monsieur_."

"I think I must get you to instruct me," said Louie with a daring look.

"I must be sure you are in earnest, _mam'selle_!"

"I'll let you know later," she laughed.

She ran lightly down the hillside on her snowshoes, showing off in front
of the three men, but when at last they overtook her she was panting
sharply and her hand was pressed to her breast.

"If you'd any care over me," she said bitterly to Shaw, "you'd not let
me run like that. It's enough to bring on a hemorrhage."

"How on earth am I to stop you?" he asked in astonishment.

"You're just about as understanding as this snow," she returned. Tears
filled her eyes, froze on her darkened lashes.

They took off her snowshoes and half-carried her into the house. She
remained in bed for several days and when she again reappeared she
begged Pre Lombard to instruct her in the Catholic faith. She spent
hours studying the books he gave her.

Now it was Madame Dunois's turn to go to the other building. She was
emaciated and too weak to walk. Dr. Sullivan was almost in tears. "If
only," he complained, "they would send me patients who were curable! I
shall be ruined! You are my only hope, M'sieur Manifold."

"Not the priests?" asked Shaw. "Not Miss Adams?"

"Only you! Only you!" mourned the doctor.

When Madame Dunois died there were few books to read. Shaw remarked one
day to Louie:--

"It's a wonder that Randolph of yours never sends you anything to read."

The very next week a package of books arrived for Louie. Oddly enough it
was composed of those Shaw had expressed a wish to read. He was
delighted. A feeling of gratitude and friendship for Randolph swept over
him. He buried himself in the books, oblivious of all else. Over and
over he took his temperature. He was steadily improving.

Books came again from time to time. Spring came and maple sugar was made
in the woods. The spring was early and snow melted so quickly that the
land seemed in a ferment of floods and springing sap. Marcel and lise
outlived Madame Dunois by a month. Shaw and Louie followed their funeral
procession to the church. They had become so used to death that it
scarcely troubled them, so long as they themselves still lived. Pre
Beaumont had long since gone to the bedridden ward. Pre Lombard visited
him twice daily. They even had a game of chess sometimes.

Dr. Sullivan might have been deeply depressed but, with the coming of
spring, six new patients had arrived and of them five were in the early
stages of the disease. He and his sisters moved among the patients with
happy faces. At night the prayers of old Madame Sullivan and her
daughters rose in thankfulness before the shrine in her bedroom.

There was a second reason for gratitude. A new member was to be taken
into the fold. Louie Adams had already been baptized and was to be
confirmed when the Bishop next visited the parish.

She came to Shaw one day and laid her hand on the book he was reading.

"That's the last of them," she said.

He looked up, petulant of the interruption to his reading.

"What do you mean, the last of them?"

"I mean I'm not going to send for any more of them. It's acting a lie."

"Acting a lie?"

"Yes. I sent for the books myself. There isn't any Randolph. I just made
him up to show off. But I've got to get him off my chest--now I'm going
to be confirmed."

Shaw sat silent, digesting this.

"Then you weren't really engaged after all?" he said.

"No. There never was anyone but you, Shaw. I always loved you--from the
time we went to school. But it doesn't matter to me now. I'm done with
that sort of thing."

"I'm sorry," he said, "that you spent all that money on books for me to
read. I can't do anything in return."

"It doesn't matter! There's a rich old lady in New York who was one of
my clients in the beauty parlor. She said I had the nicest touch of any
girl who had given her treatments. She's paid my expenses here. I wrote
to her for the books."

Shaw looked at her in wonder. He was deeply embarrassed. His hand
trembled as he turned the page on which he saw nothing but a blur.

Louie looked like the ghost of a bride in her confirmation veil, her
eyes feverishly alight, conscious in every nerve that she was the centre
of attention. She was like a bride, she thought, and the white-clad
children about her, her attendants.

Shaw knelt watching the ceremony with attention. Though he knew the
church so well, there was something unreal and dramatic in it at this
moment. Was this Louie, this palely radiant creature, the shabby little
girl he had known in the country school? He gave her a lace handkerchief
for a confirmation present. He had written to Cristabel for this.

Pre Lombard was disappointed that he was not able to go to the
confirmation. He had joined Pre Beaumont in the other building. On a
little table between their beds they still set out the chessmen. Often
the game was not begun, but it was a comfort to see the knights and
castles and pawns standing there!

Louie and Shaw did not make friends with the new arrivals, who were
grouped at one end of the verandah. In early summer Ian Blair wrote that
he and Elspeth wanted to come and see Shaw. It was nearly three years
since they had met. But when Shaw read the letter to Louie she became
almost beside herself with fear and anger at the prospect of meeting
Elspeth.

"I won't see that girl! I won't let her see me!" she stormed. "Imagine
her coming here--bursting with health--and seeing me like this!"

"It's me she's coming to see--not you," returned Shaw curtly.

Louie gave a sneering laugh.

"Oh, you don't look so fine, either, let me tell you! One look at you
might be enough for her! If I were in your place I'd not let her come
till I looked a little more sound."

"You have a cruel tongue, Louie," said Shaw, coloring deeply.

She burst into a storm of weeping. He had made her worse, she said.

Her words about Elspeth gnawed at his mind. He wrote to Ian saying that
he did not want to see Elspeth till he was quite well again. He expected
to leave the sanatorium that fall. The time would soon pass. At moments
he had a sense of fear at the thought of leaving the cloistered
seclusion of the sanatorium to face the confusing activities of the
world. From the safe harbor of invalidism he looked out on the
shouldering waves, wondering what it would feel like to breast them once
more.

There was only one tree in the grounds of the sanatorium. It was a fine
straight pine and it stood just beyond Shaw's bedroom window. It had
always seemed to him like one of the sentinels of the forest set to
watch him, to find out if he in his heart were faithful to his work and
if he would return to it.

One morning, in the first intense cold of October, he looked out and saw
that Dr. Sullivan and his man Napolon were preparing to fell the tree.
He hastened out and asked the reason, his voice trembling in
consternation.

"But the pine has much good wood in him to keep us warm!" cried
Napolon. He spat on his palms and struck the first blow.

"My real reason," said Dr. Sullivan, "is that it is keeping sunlight
from the bedrooms, especially yours."

"But I shall soon be going!"

"Ah! But there will be others to come after you and they must have the
sun."

With his moccasined feet planted well apart, he swung his axe and drove
the wedge deep into the wood. All the frost-stiffened needles vibrated
and a squirrel leaped from its boughs and scampered across the shining
crust of the snow. Shaw turned away. He felt that the time of his
sojourn there had indeed ended. The pine's work was done. It had sent
its last signal to the forest. Powdered snow was blown in a biting
squall against his face. His body felt vigorous and strong. He yearned
toward the next examination.

That month Pre Beaumont died, but Pre Lombard lingered on.

"The little _mademoiselle_," he said to Shaw, "insists that I shall live
to give her the last Communion. She has a strong will, that little one,
so I think she will have her way."

Louie did have her way. She was the first of those who died in the
sanatorium to be buried in the graveyard of the hamlet. Shaw had not
seen her for a month and he had a sense of unreality as he followed the
light coffin to the church. Was it indeed the body of Louie that lay
inside? How many strange places she had traversed before she reached
this resting place on the chancel steps with the priest chanting above
and the incense rising with the prayers for her soul!

Well--this was the end of her, thought Shaw, and turned his thoughts
resolutely westward. He would go back to life and to Elspeth. He would
forget Louie, who had now become for him the symbol of death, yet in
that death possessed of a feverish life. Could those burning little
hands have turned cold? Those feverish black-lashed eyes have taken on
dullness? He wished she had never come to the sanatorium. She had
captivated some part of him,--he could not tell what,--taken it with
her.

Suddenly his heart swelled with love for Elspeth. It seemed to him that
not till that moment had his love really flowered. He felt sick with
longing to see her, to feel the touch of her shoulder against his. He
could scarcely bear to wait for his next examination.

When it came Dr. Sullivan beamed at him. He made a dramatic gesture, the
stethoscope still in his hand.

"If you remain as you are--after the next examination--you shall go, my
friend! Healed! Healed!"

Another month to wait! Shaw watched all the preparations for winter. He
saw the great woodpile growing--the pine, the spruce, the red birch. He
saw the quarters of pork put into brine, the quarters of venison hanging
from the beams in the shed to dry. He watched Napolon making nets for
catching rabbits--Hortense Sullivan knitting a thick muffler for the
doctor. He heard the sharp cracking of the walls, like reports of a
pistol, as they settled themselves for the bitter cold of the winter. He
heard the rise and fall of the blind old mother's prayers in the room
below. He saw stout Pre Lombard's funeral pass like a hooded black worm
down the snowy road. But he no longer felt himself a part of the life of
the place. He was an impatient spectator, straining to be off.

A month later Dr. Sullivan embraced him.

"You may go, my friend! You are healed."

Shaw stared at him in sudden embarrassment: for a moment he could not
find words. Then he said--"Thank you, doctor." Tears filled his eyes.

"Out of those first thirteen," said the doctor, "you are the only
survivor. And, let me tell you now, I scarcely hoped to save you. But--"
he held up a warning finger--"you have a stiff time in front of you, to
hold what you have gained. I want you to promise me that you will go to
bed every night at six o'clock for the next two years. I want you to
promise me that, for the next five years, you will spend each day as
though the rest of your life depended on that day's caution, abstinence
from all excess, and self-discipline!"

He snapped his mouth shut as though his last word were spoken.

"I promise," said Shaw solemnly.




                              CHAPTER XVII


What was going on, Shaw wondered. Surely there was some special
excitement to give the street this air of conscious bustling! It was
late afternoon and already the lights were on, the shop windows blazing.
They were filled with flowers and brightly bound books and silk lingerie
and a thousand toys. In one beamed a figure of Santa Claus. Now Shaw
realized what was happening. People were doing their Christmas shopping.
The festival was near at hand.

He felt almost dazed by the traffic. After his cloistered life, Ottawa
seemed a metropolis. He leant forward in his seat to stare through the
window of the taxi that was carrying him to the flat where Cristabel
awaited him. He was like a man who had passed through an interminable
tunnel and, emerging at long last, found himself in a strange new world
which he could not comprehend.

There were soldiers in the streets too, boyish figures with pink cheeks,
their necks sticking up out of ill-fitting khaki tunics. He saw the
smart figure of an officer. Now the war seemed real. In the Quebec
sanatorium it had been too remote to touch his life. He wondered if
Ronald Scott would be sent to France. That would be hard on his parents.

The driver of the taxi had to halt because of sleighs and motorcars
crossing in the opposite direction. It was all so interesting to Shaw!
He felt like a visitor from another planet. It even seemed extraordinary
to him that his mother should be waiting for him. It seemed
unbelievable.

True to their promise the Department had kept his post free for his
return. In truth they knew of no other man to fill it so well as he. He
had written to Cristabel:--

    Mother, don't refuse me this. Give up your work and come and
    keep house for me. I need you. It will mean everything to me to
    have you. So don't refuse, Mother. Please don't refuse!

She had not refused, though her heart had sunk at the thought of burning
her bridges. But she must be at hand to care for her boy, to guard him
on his return, whatever else might happen. She had preceded him to
Ottawa by a fortnight, had taken a flat, had bought enough furniture to
set up house-keeping, and now was counting the moments since train time.
They would spend their first Christmas together since he was seven.

He saw a florist's window and rapped on the glass behind the driver. The
taxi stopped. He told the man to wait while he bought flowers. He
thought he would have flowers on the table for the first meal under
their own roof. He was astonished at the price, which had been raised
for Christmas. Even half a dozen roses would cost a lot . . . but he
would not take her half a dozen. "A dozen," he said, "the deep pink
long-stemmed ones." The shop assistant looked approving. Shaw handed out
the money, almost the last of what the sale of his furniture had
brought. But he did not care. In a few days he was going to work. He
felt suddenly happy and full of confidence. The roses in his hands, he
stood a moment outside the shop, his face alight with expectancy.

People were jostling each other in an attempt to see someone who was
entering a limousine. From his height he had a glimpse of a beautiful
profile. The limousine glided away.

"Who is she?" he asked a woman.

She stared. "Why, the princess, of course!"

"What princess?"

"_What_ princess! Wherever do you come from? The Princess Patricia, to
be sure!"

He got into the taxi abashed.

It was strange to be handling money. Now there was the taxi driver to be
paid. He had a nice face. Shaw tipped him well. He said--"Thank you,
sir. A Merry Christmas to you!"

"The same to you," said Shaw.

He entered the vestibule of the small apartment house and saw his name
on a card among five others. He rang the bell beneath it. He remembered
that he should not have paid the man till the trunk was upstairs. But
the man had shouldered it. His ruddy face beamed. . . . The second floor
. . . Shaw heard the opening of a door. As his head appeared his mother
ran forward to meet him.

"Oh, Shaw!" Then she saw the man with the trunk. "Bring it right in
here," she said.

The driver lowered it to the floor of the little passage.

"Thank you," said Cristabel, and looked inquiringly at Shaw.

"He's paid," he nodded.

"Merry Christmas," said the man again. He touched his cap and hurried
down the stairs.

"What a polite man!" said Cristabel.

She and Shaw stood looking at each other.

Tremulously they drank in each other's looks. It was two years since
they had parted. Twice three hundred and sixty-five days and nights,
more than two dozen waxings and wanings of the moon, a world of thought,
talk, planning, fear, hope, and death filled that space. Now again they
could speak to each other.

"I saw the Princess Patricia," he said.

"Did you? How nice! I'd love to see her."

He thought: Why, her rosy cheeks are gone! And her hair is quite grey.
She's bent a little--that's the sewing. . . . She's my mother and I've
come to her from death. . . . It's like a new birth . . . but I can't
find anything to say to her.

Cristabel thought: Who is he like? Not me. Not his father. If I didn't
know him and saw him suddenly I'd say, "What a sad face! And stern too!"
But he's just Shaw. . . . I really do know him. . . . Why, he's my son!
How can I help knowing him! Yet I don't know what to say at this moment.

"I saw a lot of soldiers, too!" he said. "I'd scarcely believed in the
war before."

"Not believed in it! Didn't you read the newspapers I sent you?"

"Yes . . . but my chief had sent me a new lot of books and pamphlets on
forestry. I was completely absorbed by them. Has Ronald Scott been
sent?"

"Yes. And Douglas has had an officer's training course and Ian is coming
from the West to join up."

"Ian!"

"Yes. His parents are anxious, but still they feel he should go."

"Should go! Yes . . . I suppose so."

"You'd go if you were able, wouldn't you? You'd look fine in uniform,
with your figure."

He frowned. "Show me the flat, Mother."

Now suddenly she could talk. She found so much to say that she scarcely
knew what to say first. She took him by the arm and led him into the
bedrooms. It was a new building. No one had occupied these rooms before.

"How fresh and clean it is!" he said. "However did you find it?"

"It belongs to Mr. Scott. He's been wonderful, Shaw. He has lent me the
bedroom furniture and he says we're not to worry about being prompt with
the rent for the first months."

"I shall be prompt with it."

"But isn't it kind of him?"

"Yes, yes, Mother . . . it's terribly kind, but how I hate taking
favors!"

She sighed. "This is your bedroom--next mine."

"Mother . . . I can't believe it . . . next yours! We can call out to
each other!"

"Yes. Now you must mind your _p_'s and _q_'s. . . . This is my room.
Look at the clothes cupboard! Big enough for a society lady!"

"It'll need to be big to hold all the clothes you'll have, Mother!"

"Shaw, you are silly! Look--here is the bathroom!" She beamed with
pride.

"Mother! It's fit for a millionaire!"

"Well, I do think it's nice."

"After those in the sanatorium, it's unbelievable."

"Oh, those French don't understand plumbing!"

"Now let's see the living room."

Cristabel's pale face flushed scarlet. She opened the door of the room
with a mysterious air. Inside, Shaw saw the furniture he had bought
three years before and had asked Douglas Scott to sell for him. At first
he did not recognize it, then the oval walnut table, the four chairs,
the china cabinet, detached themselves. He saw them once again in the
shop window. He saw himself appraising, hesitating, making up his mind,
buying.

"Mother!" he exclaimed. "It's--why--how did these things come here?
Douglas sold them for me. He sent me the check."

"Douglas wrote and told me what you wanted him to do. I bought the
furniture, Shaw. I couldn't bear to part with it."

"But where did you get the money?"

She gave a little laugh. "Just where I get all my money."

"Mother," he said, "you have a will like iron."

"But you're glad, aren't you?"

"Glad! I'm tickled to death." But his lips were quivering. "It's a
beautiful room," he said.

"Well, it will be nice when we get a rug and some pictures."

"And my books!"

"And your books!"

She led him to the tiny kitchen. "This is my pet spot. Isn't it clean
and pretty? It will be lovely to work in. Oh, I do hope we haven't been
reckless in taking this flat! It frightens me when I let myself think
about it."

He answered almost vehemently--"Don't think, Mother! We'll not think.
We'll just live and work and enjoy!"

She turned her back on him and looked out of the window. He saw her
press her forehead to the cold pane. "This is the second time," she
said, "that I have made a home. The thought of that other time . . ."

"I know. It's been hard."

"I've no right to complain to you, Shaw. You must be tired and hungry."

"Remember, I've to go to bed at six."

"Goodness! I'd forgotten! It will be six before we can turn round! You
go and wash, dear, while I lay the table."

"What are we having?"

"You'll see! Something you like."

He stood in the little bathroom washing his hands. He saw his reflection
in the mirror. "Is this really me?" he thought. "Really Shaw
Manifold--beginning life again! Walking in and out--just like anyone
else! Is Mother really out there, in the kitchen, cooking my supper?
What will Elspeth say? How will she look?"

He unstrapped his trunk and began to take out his clothes, but they
spoke in every fold of the sanatorium. He banged the lid shut--he would
unpack to-morrow morning. . . . He had laid the box of roses on a window
sill. Now he took out the flowers. In the living room he had seen a tall
cut-glass vase, a wedding present of his mother's, ugly and ornate,
which unscathed had accompanied her on all her journeyings. He would
fill it with the roses, he thought, unknown to her.

He tiptoed, still wearing his overshoes, to the living room and
possessed himself of the vase. Then to the bathroom and filled it at the
tap. It was a serious matter, squeezing into it a dozen roses of full
habit, but he managed it and stood back pridefully to view his work. It
was the first time he had arranged flowers in a vase and it pleased him.
He tiptoed back to the living room and had just placed the roses in the
middle of the table when Cristabel came from the kitchen carrying a
covered dish. She almost dropped it in her astonishment.

"Shaw, whatever have you been doing?"

He grinned half sheepishly, half proudly.

"Turning over a new leaf, Mother!"

"You're an extravagant boy!"

"Mother, they're for you. Do you like them?"

Between the heat of the stove and her pleasure and pride, Cristabel's
cheeks were as pink as the roses. Why, she looks just like her old self
at this moment, thought Shaw. To think that roses could do that to a
woman! He repeated:--

"Do you like them?"

"_Like them!_" She set down the covered dish and came to him. "I think
they are the loveliest flowers I've ever seen." She put her hands on his
shoulders and kissed him.

"Do you like the way they're arranged?"

"They look simply grand. And you were real clever to discover that vase.
Do you know it's never been used before?"

"Never been used!"

"Well, cut glass cracks easily, they say. Then--I was keeping it for a
proper occasion."

"Surely this is one."

"Shaw, it's the happiest day of my life."

Again she turned her face away.

"What is in the dish?"

"You'll see."

They sat down opposite one another.

"Whew, it's scrambled eggs! Mother, I haven't tasted your scrambled eggs
in years. No one can do them like you. And hot buttered toast! Really
hot! And ham! And chili sauce! Great Scott, I can scarcely believe it!"

She heaped his plate. "Taste it! Then you'll believe it."

He filled his mouth and stared blissfully about the room. Through the
uncurtained window a full moon could be seen above the tower of the
Parliament Buildings. It hung there, gleaming like a great gold watch in
the purple pocket of the night.

"It will be great fun," said Shaw, "furnishing this flat. Should you
like red chenille curtains with a fringe with little balls?"

"I like cretonne," said Cristabel. "Cretonne with pink roses, to remind
us of to-night."

"Just the thing! And, Mother, a cream-colored carpet! And built-in
bookcases! And a rocking chair for you. . . . I wonder what Elspeth will
think of it."

"She'll be sure to like it."

"When can I see her?"

"Ah, that's a secret!"

"Soon?"

"Yes, very soon."

"Mother, Elspeth was wonderful about my wanting to break off our
engagement, you remember . . . two years ago."

"Yes, I remember."

"She wouldn't hear of it! She'd never marry anyone else, she said."

"She's one girl in a thousand, Shaw."

After a pause he said--"Louie Adams was a strange girl."

"What made you think of her?"

"I don't know. She often comes into my mind. It's strange to think of
her buried in that place."

"Don't think of sad things to-night, Shaw."

"No. . . . Mother, is Elspeth coming to Ottawa?"

"Please don't ask questions. I've promised not to tell. Do you like the
scrambled eggs?"

"I've never tasted anything so delicious in my life."

"Will you have more?"

"All you've got." He emptied the dish.

Cristabel had to bend over the roses to smell them as she changed the
plates. They were so sweet and lovely it seemed they never could fade.
Her heart was full of joy, yet afraid too. Dare she be happy? Could it
last? But there was Shaw sitting broad-shouldered, almost massive, at
the table, a confident smile on his mouth. She could, she would, believe
in the certainty of happiness.

The sound of marching feet came from the street and an officer's voice
on the sharp air.

"What's that?" asked Shaw.

"The soldiers drilling. You can hear them in the street every evening."

She brought canned raspberries and a coconut cake.

"Mother! Great Scott, you _are_ spoiling me!"

"I wanted to have what you like best this first night."

They had barely time to walk round the flat once more when Shaw had to
go to bed. He had dried the dishes for Cristabel and he could hear her
putting them away as he undressed. She was humming softly to herself. He
propped himself up in bed and settled down to read. Cristabel came in
patting a soothing lotion on her hands.

"This water is very hard," she said.

He looked up from his book, smiling.

"All right, Mother."

"All right what?"

"Whatever you said."

"You _are_ a bookworm, Shaw! Shall I bother you if I bring my sewing?"

"Not a bit."

She sat beside the bed stitching. Every now and again she put out her
hand, as though unconsciously, and smoothed the bedcoverings.

"Comfortable, Shaw?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Here comes that battalion again."

"Does it?"

"My, how well they march!"

"It does sound pretty good."

The next day Shaw returned to the Government office and his work began
again. Surely no man had ever entered that building with greater
eagerness, a greater desire to put out roots, a deeper longing to find
himself again in a recognizable place among men. To live, to work, to
walk along the pavement in the morning, shoulder to shoulder with other
men going to other offices, filled him with a serene joy. Coming home in
the wintry twilight he drank deep of the pure air, filled his lungs, his
whole being a prayer for their soundness. Cristabel had the hot meal
waiting for him, the aired bed, the serenity of her expectation. Three
times a week a letter from Elspeth awaited him. He laid it on his
dressing table, took his hot bath, and, propped up in bed, read it. He
wrote long letters in reply. He gathered, secret though she and
Cristabel strove to keep it, that she and Ian were coming to spend
Christmas with the Scotts. Mr. and Mrs. Blair had gone South for the
winter for the sake of her health.

One night, as he returned from the office, a battalion of soldiers
passed him. He saw that the officer in command was Douglas Scott. He
looked handsome in his uniform. Shaw tried to catch his eye but it had
become a military eye and saw nothing of civilians. Shaw and Cristabel
had not yet been to the Scotts but were invited there for Christmas
dinner.

Cristabel had given Shaw a new necktie and handkerchief to match. He
felt that they made him look less shabby. He had bought new shoes and
gloves. What would Elspeth think of him? He remembered Louie's cruel
words and his heart beat anxiously as he and Cristabel waited in the
Scotts' drawing-room on Christmas Day. She wore the taffeta dress she
had got for his graduation from the Agricultural College. She had made
it over and to Shaw at least she looked fashionable, even elegant. A
holly wreath tied with a large red satin bow hung in each window of the
Scotts' drawing-room.

Mr. and Mrs. Scott came in with Elspeth. Perhaps it was easier meeting
her so, among other people. Their greeting was conventional. They felt
unreal. Mr. Scott somewhat pointedly led Cristabel to the conservatory
to see the chrysanthemums. Mrs. Scott was called to the telephone. Shaw
and Elspeth faced each other alone.

"You look exactly the same, Elspeth," said Shaw. "No--not exactly the
same--you're even prettier."

"Am I? You look well, Shaw. You look strong. Far stronger than I had
expected."

"That's good. I was afraid to meet you, you know."

"Afraid! But why?"

"I thought . . . oh, well, a fellow has strange thoughts . . . when he
lives the life I have."

"But you're well again! That's all that matters, isn't it?"

"It matters to me terribly--just what you feel about our engagement."

Her grey eyes looked at him astonished. "You know what I feel! I've told
you over and over again in my letters."

"That's not the same as from your lips. I want to hear you say that you
still love me and want to marry me, Elspeth."

"I love you more and more," she said, with a little smile as though
humoring a child, "and I want more and more to marry you. Is that
enough?"

He took her hands in his. "The last time we met," he said, "I wanted
very much to kiss you--but I was afraid. It's a hard thing, Elspeth, to
be afraid to kiss the girl you love because of some sickness in
yourself."

"I'd not have minded!" she exclaimed vehemently. "I'd have let you kiss
me a thousand times, Shaw!"

He looked at her sombrely. "You don't know what you are saying. But I'm
sound now. Everything is different." He took her in his arms and pressed
his lips to hers. She clung to him. Before the reality of that embrace
the years of waiting faded to mist. They heard voices from the
conservatory. They heard the coals sinking in the grate. A youth with a
snow shovel over his shoulder passed the window whistling. But they
heard these sounds as in a dream. More real to each was the beating of
the other's heart, the inarticulate murmured words of love.

"Elspeth," he said after a little, "you have never had an engagement
ring. I would not give you one because I didn't want you to wear any
tangible sign of our engagement. Not while I was--as I was--I wanted you
to feel free to break it off--if--if another fellow--"

She tilted her head so that she could look into his face.

"Shaw, you are so silly! As though a ring could make me feel bound any
closer to you than my own love bound me!"

"I often thought," he said, "how you wore no ring on that finger and I
was glad I hadn't done that to you."

"Done that to me! Imagine! As though wearing an engagement ring was a
disgrace!" She laid her forehead against his shoulder and laughed.

"It would have been a disgrace in this case," he said sombrely.

"Shaw, I won't hear you say such things! I'd have loved a ring."

"You shall have one now--at last."

"How lovely! But not an expensive one, mind!"

He put her gently from him.

"Here it is! No--don't look! Shut your eyes!" He took her left hand and
she felt the ring slide along her third finger. "Now look!"

"Oh, Shaw, how lovely!"

She held up her hand, the cluster of small pearls shimmering against the
white flesh. She was frightened at the thought that he must have gone
into debt for the ring, but that fear lasted only a moment. He was
strong. He was daring. What he did was right.

"Oh, darling, I am happy!"

Darling! She had called him darling!

"Elspeth, I'm the happiest man in Canada!"

They heard the others coming. Shaw was embarrassed, but Elspeth darted
forward to show the ring. Cristabel kissed her and held her close.

"But," Elspeth whispered to Cristabel, "he shouldn't have bought it
. . . not yet, should he?" She looked eagerly into the other's face,
seeking the approval her words denied.

"Of course he should," declared Cristabel. "I'd have been ashamed of him
if he hadn't."

While the ring was still being admired, Douglas, his wife, and year-old
daughter arrived. Douglas looked strikingly handsome in his uniform. His
mother could not keep her eyes off him.

"Blood on your brow, brother," said Shaw, touching the young officer's
forehead.

His wife cried out angrily--"Don't say such a horrible thing!"

"Rot!" said Douglas. "It's only our old pirate greeting." He proceeded,
as he touched Shaw's forehead in return--"Blood on your own brow,
brother. There are bloody deeds to be done."

"Our deeds shall indeed be bloody," said Shaw.

"It's splendid to see you," exclaimed Douglas, "_and_ looking so fit!
You remember my wife?"

Shaw did, but thought the girl looked changed. For some reason she had
had her hair cut. It lay in brown waves over her head and curled about
her neck. She had a little upturned nose and a square jaw. Douglas could
not go near her without playing with her curls, rumpling them, as though
she were a child. Their attitude toward each other made Shaw and Elspeth
feel prim and old-fashioned.

From the moment his grandchild entered the room, Mr. Scott could see no
one else. He carried her about while she snatched at the holly wreaths
and at last pricked her finger. There were screams. The child's nurse
was sent for. Mr. Scott was rueful. The gong sounded softly for dinner.

What a dinner, thought Cristabel and Shaw. They had never sat down to a
Christmas dinner so fine as this--such glass and silver--such flowers
and fruit--such sweets and nuts and wine with crackers to follow!
Elspeth looked adorable in a pink-and-blue paper sunbonnet; Cristabel
frivolous in a pale blue jockey cap. Mr. Scott wore a dunce's cap on his
bald head, while toy whistles were blown, paper snakes uncurled, and
sham jewelry was pinned to the ladies' breasts.

"All we need," sighed Mrs. Scott, "is to have Ronnie with us. I wonder
what he is doing."

"Eating his Christmas dinner out of a tin can in a mudhole in Flanders,
I expect," said Douglas.

"Oh, don't say that!" said his mother. "Surely they will see that there
is a proper Christmas dinner!"

Ian did not arrive till the dinner was over. He came in looking young
and small and shy in his private's uniform. Shaw felt that he had never
really believed in the war till that moment when he saw Ian in uniform.
He will go over there, he thought, and be killed. He is just the sort
who would be killed.

But Ian was gay and full of life. He and Douglas and Shaw chaffed each
other. The baby was again brought in. They had named her Patricia, after
the princess. There was a Christmas tree in the sitting room. There were
presents for everyone.

Cristabel forgot what time it was till Shaw caught her eye. She took the
old-fashioned watch her husband had given her from her belt. It was five
o'clock. There was no time to be wasted if Shaw was to be in bed by six.

"But you can't do it!" exclaimed Douglas. "It's ridiculous--an old
doctor's whim!"

"I've promised," returned Shaw briefly.

"Well, I call it hard luck," said Mr. Scott, "to be obliged to leave
your girl at five o'clock on Christmas afternoon!"

"Oh, but he must!" cried Elspeth, blushing.

"When are you two going to get married?" asked Douglas. He gave an odd
reminiscent look at Elspeth. The glance was bold and his wife saw it.
She tossed back her curls and gave him a slanting glance.

"I wonder what _Elspeth_ will think of going to bed at six o'clock," she
said.

"I shan't mind," said Elspeth with dignity.

"Good for you!" said Douglas. He and his wife laughed.

Cristabel rose. She thought Douglas's wife was too free altogether in
her speech. It was hard on a girl like Elspeth.

Douglas and Ian accompanied them to the door. They hated to part with
Shaw. As they were saying good-bye a boy came running through the snow
with a small envelope in his hand.

"Is Scott the name here?" he asked.

"Yes," said Douglas, and took the envelope. He signed for it in the
boy's book.

"It's a telegram," he said.

Cristabel looked at him anxiously. "I suppose your father gets lots of
telegrams," he said.

"Yes, he does. But"--Douglas's eyes were troubled--"I feel as though I'd
better open it."

Cristabel hesitated while he tore open the envelope. He read, his face a
mask. Then suddenly his mouth was contorted. He said:--

"It's Ronald--he's been killed!"

The three others looked at him unbelieving. They felt that such words
could not be true on such a Christmas night, the stars dancing out, the
air brilliant, laughing voices and shouts from people passing with
skates in their hands.

"Are you sure there's no mistake?" asked Shaw.

"No, there's no mistake. It says--'Sorry to report Lieutenant Ronald
Scott killed in action December twenty-third. . . .' I'll have to go in
and tell Mother and Father! Isn't it awful?"

"I'll tell them for you," said Ian.

"Shall we come back with you?" asked Cristabel.

"No, we'll be all right if Ian will tell them," said Douglas.

"I'll come and see your mother in the morning," said Cristabel. She drew
down Douglas's head and kissed him. He put his arm across his eyes. They
saw him leaning against the door in that posture as they went down the
street.

A group of young men in uniform passed them. They were singing, "It's a
long way to Tipperary." It was the first time Shaw had heard it.

A passing girl looked him over critically, then thrust a leaflet into
his hand. He did not read it till they had reached the flat. Then he saw
the words--"Your King and Country need you!"

He took off his coat and vest and sat down on the side of his bed, his
chin resting on his hand. Ronald lying dead in France--and he going to
bed at six! How much of his life he had spent in bed, thinking,
thinking, longing to be up and doing! Ronnie had always been up and
doing and now--so young--he was dead! Would Douglas and Ian perhaps die
too?

Cristabel came in carrying a glass of hot milk. "Drink this, dear," she
said. He saw that she had been crying.

He took the glass and mechanically raised it to his lips, then he
said:--

"I can't, Mother--I don't want it!"

"Shaw, you must! Think of your health! Think of your promise to Dr.
Sullivan. Do you know what time it is? It's a quarter to seven!"

Shaw drank the milk.

He thought of Ronnie--remembered him at the little country school--one
of "the rich little Scotts" who had always had everything. He thought of
Louie--the poor little girl who had had nothing. Both dead, one in Old
France, one in New. . . . Oh, if only Ian might be spared! He could not
bear to lose Ian!

Cristabel came in to tuck him up.

"Comfortable, Shaw?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Are you going to read to-night?"

"No, you may put out the light."

"That's my sensible boy!"

She bent and kissed him.




                             CHAPTER XVIII


Shaw was sitting on the verandah of the farmhouse beside his
grandfather. He was dressed for his wedding and as he was early he
thought he would spend the spare time with the old man. It was a May
morning two years and five months after his leaving the sanatorium. And
there he sat, dressed in his wedding suit, with a white carnation in his
buttonhole and nervous elation in his heart! He sat with clasped hands
looking at his grandfather, who, he thought, had changed scarcely at all
since he had last seen him.

Roger was not going to the wedding but, just the same, he had demanded
that he should wear his Sunday suit that day and, when he had seen the
carnation in Shaw's buttonhole, he had asked Jane to pick a bloom from
the white geranium that stood on the verandah and place it in his. It
peeped out just at the edge of his beard and now and again he bent his
Socratean old head to sniff its scent.

How little he had changed, Shaw thought, yet how many changes had come
in the last few years! Swiftly the remembrance came to him of the
Christmas night when the news of Ronald Scott's death had been brought.
It had been less than a year when another telegram came to the Scotts
telling of Douglas's death while gallantly fighting. Shaw had been
surprised at the resignation of the parents. Mrs. Scott would talk
endlessly of the bravery of her two boys, of herself as "one of the
mothers who have sacrificed all." She installed chimes in the church she
attended, in memory of her sons. When Shaw heard these bells ring out he
thought of Ronnie and Douglas and how they were now a few bones.

Mr. Scott had turned dotingly to the little granddaughter who had
inherited not one feature from Douglas. But Shaw's heart was full of
happiness when he thought of how Ian had been invalided home and was now
almost well again but not fit for service at the Front. Ian was to be
best man at the wedding.

But Dr. Clemency would not be there. Shaw was sorry for that. He had
died suddenly that spring. The worst was that he had been so sure that
he would long outlive his wife that he had left her nothing in his will.
It had been a terrible blow to her, enough to kill her, everyone said,
but it had not killed her. On the contrary, she seemed stronger than she
had in his lifetime. The money had been left to two worthless nephews,
but the courts had been able to claim just enough for Mrs. Clemency to
pay her old servant for her keep in a single room.

Roger Gower was speaking. Shaw leant toward him encouragingly.

"It . . . would be a wonder," Roger got out, "if the . . . old doctor
. . . didn't turn over . . . in his . . . grave."

"Yes," agreed Shaw. "It would. But he shouldn't have been so sure she
would die first."

"You . . . never . . . can be . . . sure."

"No. He looked good for another ten years at the least."

Roger pondered on this remark doubtfully.

After a silence he spoke again.

"Merton's . . . gone."

"Yes," said Shaw. "Some years ago, isn't it?"

"He . . ." The words seemed to come from the nethermost part of Roger's
being. "He . . . suffered . . . I . . . don't."

"That's good, Grandpa," said Shaw.

A gentle spring breeze came to them across the freshly ploughed fields.
An old apple tree in the yard had sent out jaunty white blossoms on
every gnarled twig. Roger beamed at it benignly. Slowly he raised his
hand and pointed with one stubby finger.

"All dressed up . . ." he said, "for . . . your wedding!"

Shaw laughed. Jane came out of the house carrying a tray with a cup of
tea and some currant bread and butter. She was wearing a new silk dress
and her expression was one of pleased excitement.

"You'd better have this, Pa," she said, "before we go. The bread's just
fresh out of the oven."

Though his features moved not a hair's breadth, Roger managed to convey
an expression of waggishness.

"Wedding . . . breakfast," he rumbled, and filled his mouth with the
warm currant bread.

"It's a pity you can't come with us, Grandpa," said Shaw.

"He's better where he is," said Jane. "A lot of people tire him. And
he's seen weddings before now, what with his own and his brother's and
his twelve children's."

"And my own . . . golden wedding . . . and my diamond wedding, too . . .
I . . . kissed your grandmother on her diamond . . . wedding day, Shaw."

"And on the golden one too, Roger," said Jane.

Mark now drove round in the wagonette. He looked a heavy middle-aged
man. His wife and Cristabel came out of the house dressed in their best.
Shaw was suddenly frightened of the ceremony ahead. He went into the
house to give his hair a last brushing and survey himself in the glass.

It was a large wedding, for the families had lived in that place all
their lives. The church was full and Mr. Blair, wearing his black gown,
performed the ceremony. Ian stood up with Shaw, even more nervous and
excited than he. Elspeth was calm, but an inner radiance made her comely
little face almost beautiful.

Two days after their marriage Shaw and Elspeth, accompanied by
Cristabel, were to go to British Columbia. In Ottawa Shaw had ceased to
be "the promising young man" and had become a force in the Department.
He had been sent to attend conferences on the subject of forestry.
Considering, he thought, how he had steeped himself in the subject year
in and year out, it was small credit to him that he had become an
authority on it. Yet, when he considered how his heart was in it, how
his love for trees had outstripped all his study of them, he thought he
merited the confidence his chief had in him. He was going to be head of
the Department of Forestry in the West. He was going to devote his life
to the protection of the forest, to the planning of new forests. He was
the bridegroom, he thought, of the forest just as of Elspeth. He was the
son of the woods just as of Cristabel. These three he would honor and
work for to the limit of his strength.

To Cristabel the dismantling of the flat in Ottawa had been one of the
hard things of her life. She felt that she could not complain openly of
it because it was a happiness to Shaw. To tear apart all they had so
carefully put together meant to him the spreading of wings and the
gaining of power. But she had loved every corner of this home of theirs.
She had dusted, polished, and arranged it with untiring pleasure. There
she had regained her health, nursed her boy back to the fullness of his
man's strength. She would never forget those long happy evenings when
she tucked him in his bed at six and sat beside him with her book or
knitting.

The distance to British Columbia was so great that they took only the
most cherished pieces of their furniture with them. Cristabel almost
wept at parting with what was sold. But Shaw gave her the money for
these. She was to buy new things to please herself when they reached
Vancouver. He was like his father, she thought, generous. But his father
had had so little to be generous with! Now, in this new appointment,
Shaw's salary was trebled. All the family looked on him with respect.
And her sisters on Cristabel with envy. Oh, how glad she was that Shaw's
success blazed before the eyes of her family! The little boy--that
little boy no one had wanted. . . . She stretched out her hand, where
they faced each other in the railway carriage, and laid it on his knee.

There the three sat--wonder of wonders--not in the ordinary carriage but
in a private drawing-room compartment. Even though Shaw told Cristabel
that as he was sent out by the Government all his expenses were paid,
and a drawing-room more or less signified little, still she poured out
her gratitude on some vague personage. Elspeth and she enjoyed the
glances of interest they received from passengers who had achieved no
such luxury.

Shaw bent over the pile of books which took up far too much room in the
compartment, and handled them tenderly. Essays, fiction, travel,
biography. They were a pool of delight in which he was impatient to
plunge. He turned to Elspeth.

"Have something to read?"

"No, thanks, not yet. I want to look out of the window."

"Do your reading now and look out of the window when there is real
scenery to see."

"I think this is pretty."

"This flatness!" He blew out his breath. "Wait till you see the Rockies!
Here is a biography of John Knox. That ought to interest you."

"It doesn't a bit. I like Mary Stuart far better."

"Elspeth--if your father could hear you!"

"He has--and agrees."

Cristabel listened to them, wondering how they would get on together.
Elspeth had a will of her own, that was clear. Was Shaw stubborn? Had he
any faults? Cristabel wondered. She had never been able to see him
clearly, not blinded by her mother love, she was sure of that, but her
vision of him dimmed by his loneliness, his privations, and his
suffering. But now he was a strong man. She looked at his bent head, his
smooth broad brow, his blunt features, his mouth that, in repose, looked
severe. She saw Elspeth, the color moving in her cheeks, a smile ready
at the corner of her mouth. Her head was thrown back, her lips parted.
There was something in the way she was looking at Shaw out of her
half-closed eyes. They should be alone together, thought Cristabel. I
must never let them be sorry I came with them. She said:--

"I'm going into the observation car. I want to see everything there is
to see."

"All right," agreed Shaw. "I'll take you there."

"I'm quite able to go by myself," she said firmly.

She spent a good deal of time after that in the observation car. She met
other women near her own age and enjoyed talking to them, gently
boasting, when the opportunity came, of her son's achievements. When
snow-capped mountains appeared and the train ran along the edge of
breath-taking declivities she sat with folded hands, drinking in the
grandeur, feeling in some vague way that the credit of it all belonged
to Shaw.

In Vancouver the first thing was to secure a house. This was not easy
because houses were scarce and, added to that, the tastes of all three
were at variance. Cristabel wanted something new and convenient, as much
like the flat in Ottawa as possible. Elspeth did not care what the house
was like so long as it had a garden and she could see mountains and sea
from its windows. Shaw's ideas were so extravagant that mother and wife
joined forces to quell him. But they could not. He ended by taking a
house which, he declared, combined the requirements of all three, for it
was large and fitted with the most modern equipment, and it had a garden
and it fronted the sea.

When it came to furnishing, the women were faced with the same problem.
Shaw's reaction to his past caution and economy was almost truculent. He
hated economy. He did not mind how much he ran into debt. He was urgent
in his desire that Cristabel and Elspeth should have everything of the
best.

"But we don't want it," they would exclaim.

"I want it for you," he would return grimly.

They were settled in the new house when Ian, recovered in health and
engaged with a surveying party, arrived in Vancouver. He was delighted
with everything. To visit his best friend and his only sister in the
country he loved best, in so admirable a house, filled him with content.
He shattered their somewhat serious atmosphere into nonsense and
laughter. He admired everything they had bought, backed up Shaw in his
extravagance, teased Elspeth, and went over the garden with Cristabel.

"You were wrong, Ian," Shaw exclaimed, "when you said that that summer
of work up the coast was the best we should ever have. This is better
still, isn't it?"

Ian's face changed. It was shadowed by regret. "No," he said, "I wasn't
wrong. We never could have another summer like that. It was glorious! I
wonder where Searle is now."

"I haven't seen him. He went to the war, didn't he?"

"Yes. And was reported missing. I hear his wife gets a pension."

"I guess," said Shaw, "that to be missing was the best thing Searle ever
did for his wife."

"Let's look her up!" exclaimed Ian. "I've a sort of feeling of
responsibility for her. A sort of pastoral feeling, you know--one of my
flock!"

He made inquiries and a day or two later took Shaw to the back street
where Mrs. Searle was living. She was glad to see them both. She looked
fat and middle-aged. Her first question was:--

"Have you ever heard anything of Jack?"

"He was reported missing, wasn't he?" said Shaw.

"Yes, but I never believed it. He'll come back, I'm sure he will."

"Then your pension will cease, won't it?"

"I'd rather have him than any pension. Do you remember the night you
brought him home and he sat with his poor head resting on my shoulder
and his head was bleeding?"

"Yes, I remember."

"Oh, he was wonderful to me, Jack was! He has his faults but there's no
one to compare to him!" There was a look of exaltation on her face.

"Where is Gloria?" asked Ian.

"Oh, she's gone to Hollywood! Hadn't you heard? She says she'll make our
fortune there, and she will! She's beautiful--just like Jack."

Contrary to Shaw's expectation she did not ask them for money. She was
satisfied that here were two people who could talk to her of Searle
without reviling him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Two years later Shaw was sailing from San Francisco for a world tour of
investigation of the subject of forestry. It was evening and he was
sitting on the deck of the ocean liner. It had been a day of calm heat,
but now a breeze had arisen and the still gleam of the sea was changed
into sparkling ripples reddened by the setting sun. San Francisco lay
just visible, its windows glittering, its buildings etherealized. Behind
the liner the wake streamed in brilliant froth. Shaw had taken off his
cap and the air moved coolly on his forehead. He was tired. Or perhaps
resting at regular intervals had become a habit with him, as it had once
been a necessity. But he felt a delicious quiet and enjoyment in the
moment. He had the deck almost to himself. Though his body felt tired,
his mind had never moved more strongly or more at ease. It was restless
and moved quickly but strongly, like the sea. Though he had achieved so
much, ambition still stirred. He remembered a conversation he had had
with a man in San Francisco, a man who wanted a young and energetic
partner in the lumber business. The man had money but he wanted a
partner who knew the forests, who had a complete knowledge of the forest
land of British Columbia, and who knew when and where trees should be
cut. They had talked long together.

He had fought and had not been defeated, Shaw thought. He had won. But
he wanted more. He wanted to fight again, to achieve more than he could
in his present position. But why should he not be satisfied? His mind
turned back to his parting with his family. He saw them on the lawn,
Elspeth pushing the baby carriage with their year-old son, Ian, in it.
She was dressed in white and looked even prettier than when he had
married her. And to the prettiness were now added self-possession and a
young matronly dignity. Her child was the image of her and already
showed traits of hers. How Cristabel rejoiced in him! She delighted in
giving him the things her own child had been denied. She spoilt him,
Elspeth said, and he showed more love for her than for either parent.
Cristabel looked younger than she had five years ago. The freedom from
care, the spectacle of Shaw's success, the open life in the sea air, all
had joined to lift the years from her. The wonder of the mountains never
left her. When a mist came from the sea and hid them, she watched it
with a speculative, knowing eye, calculating how long it would last.
When it rolled away and again revealed the dramatic snow-clad peaks
against the azure sky, she watched the transformation with the air of a
master of pageantry.

The child held out his bare dimpled arms and bounced his plump body
toward Cristabel. She hastened to take him up, to lay his tender weight
against her shoulder. Again Shaw felt the old pang of jealousy as he saw
her attention lavished on others than himself. Try though he did, he
could not keep the expression of it from his eyes. Cristabel saw it and
gave her little crooked smile. Elspeth saw nothing.

The picture of the three grouped together on the flower-bordered lawn
remained with Shaw for a space, obliterating all else. Then it faded and
his heavy eyes rested on the sea that was now taking on the purple tones
of evening, except where the wake of the ship still spun its dazzling
foam.

A deck steward had appeared and was leaning against the rail in an
attitude that displayed the peculiar grace of his body and his well-set
head on which the steward's cap was placed jauntily. He was looking
seaward with an expression reflective and sombre. He was familiar to
Shaw. Where had he seen that head outlined against sky and sea? He could
not think, yet he had most surely seen it. The man was familiar and not
quite pleasantly familiar. Shaw stared and wondered. His gaze attracted
the steward, who came briskly to his side.

"Would you like your rug tucked about you, sir?" he asked.

"Yes, I should."

Shaw looked up into his face as the steward deftly tucked in the rug.
Their eyes met.

"Why," exclaimed Searle, "if it isn't Mr. Manifold! What a surprise!"

"Yes," said Shaw, "you're the last man I was expecting to see."

"Might I ask," said Searle, "where you're bound for?"

"I'm on a tour of inspection for the Government."

"Didn't I prophesy it?" cried Searle. "Didn't I tell you when you were
just a kid you'd make your mark? Didn't I say that one day you'd travel
on a luxury liner and a steward would come to wrap your legs in your rug
and that steward would be me? Why, I'm a blooming oracle, ain't I, Mr.
Manifold?"

"It certainly is queer," agreed Shaw. "You are supposed to be dead, you
know."

"Don't you go and tell of me, mister!"

"You need not worry about that. I think your wife is better off without
you."

"She's got a pension! I know that."

"Better leave her with it."

"Do you think she'd like to have me back, Mr. Manifold?" asked Searle
unabashed.

"I think she'd love to," returned Shaw.

Other people came on to the deck. Searle moved to his duty of
establishing them in their chairs, bringing them drinks. He moved from
Shaw's mind and it returned to its dalliance with the future. He saw
himself as sending ships to the Seven Seas laden with sweet-smelling
lumber, lumber not butchered from the forests, leaving a wasted land
behind, but chosen with care, with a new growth to follow. He saw
himself as a great hirer of ships, with ships sailing to every port, he
waiting, watching, controlling, receiving messages of their whereabouts
from all over the world.

San Francisco had melted into the night. The sea was dark. Shaw lay
stretched in his deck chair, resting and thinking, resting and thinking.
He filled his lungs with the pure air.




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES


Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed.

Inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained.






[End of Growth of a Man, by Mazo de la Roche]
