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The Window-Gazer

by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay · English · Gutenberg #4284 · 484,180 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Window-Gazer

Author: Isabel Ecclestone Mackay


        
Release date: July 1, 2003 [eBook #4284]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4284

Credits: Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WINDOW-GAZER ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.










THE WINDOW-GAZER


ISABEL ECCLESTONE MACKAY





     So in ye matere of Life's goodlie showe
       Some buy what doth them plese.
     While others stand withoute and gaze thereinne--
       Your eare, good folk, for these!
                              --OLD ENGLISH RHYME.






THE

WINDOW-GAZER

BY

ISABEL ECCLESTONE MACKAY

  AUTHOR OF "MIST OF MORNING," "UP THE HILL AND OVER,"
  "THE SHINING SHIP," ETC.






THE WINDOW-GAZER


CHAPTER I

Professor Spence sat upon an upturned keg--and shivered. No one had
told him that there might be fog and he had not happened to think of it
for himself. Still, fog in a coast city at that time of the year was
not an unreasonable happening and the professor was a reasonable man.
It wasn't the fog he blamed so much as the swiftness of its arrival.
Fifteen minutes ago the world had been an ordinary world. He had walked
about in it freely, if somewhat irritably, following certain vague
directions of the hotel clerk as to the finding of Johnston's wharf. He
had found Johnston's wharf; extracted it neatly from a very wilderness
of wharves, a feat upon which Mr. Johnston, making boats in a shed at
the end of it, had complimented him highly.

"There's terrible few as finds me just off," said Mr. Johnston. "Hours
it takes 'em sometimes, sometimes days." It was clear that he was
restrained from adding "weeks" only by a natural modesty.

At the time, this emphasizing of the wharf's seclusion had seemed
extravagant, but now the professor wasn't so sure. For the wharf had
again mysteriously lost itself. And Mr. Johnston had lost himself, and
the city and the streets of it, and the sea and its ships were all
lost--there was nothing left anywhere save a keg (of nails) and
Professor Benis Hamilton Spence sitting upon it. Around him was nothing
but a living, pulsing whiteness, which pushed momentarily nearer.

It was interesting. But it was really very cold. The professor, who had
suffered much from sciatica owing to an injury of the left leg,
remembered that he had been told by his medical man never to allow
himself to shiver; and here he was, shivering violently without so much
as asking his own leave. And the fog crept closer. He put out his hands
to push it back--and immediately his hands were lost too. "Really,"
murmured the professor, "this is most interesting!" Nevertheless, he
reclaimed his hands and placed them firmly in his coat pockets.

He began to wish that he had stayed with Mr. Johnston in the boat shed,
pending the arrival of the launch which, so certain letters in his
pocket informed him, would leave Johnston's wharf at 5 o'clock, or
there-abouts, Mondays and Fridays. Mr. Johnston had felt very uncertain
about this. "Though she does happen along off and on," he said
optimistically, "and she might come today. Not," he added with
commendable caution, "that I'd call old Doc. Farr's boat a 'launch'
myself."

"What," asked Professor Spence, "would you call her yourself?"

"Don't know as I can just hit on a name," said Mr. Johnston. "Doesn't
come natural to me to be free with language."

It had been pleasant enough on the wharf at first and certainly it had
been worth something to see the fog come in. Its incredible advance,
wave upon wave of massed and silent whiteness, had held him spellbound.
While he had thought it still far off, it was upon him--around him,
behind him, everywhere!

But perhaps it would go as quickly as it had come.

He had heard that this is sometimes a characteristic of fog.
Fortunately he had already selected a keg upon which to sit, so with a
patient fatalism, product of a brief but lurid career in Flemish
trenches, he resigned himself to wait. The keg was dry, that was
something, and if he spread the newspaper in his pocket over the most
sciatic part of the shrapneled leg he might escape with nothing more
than twinges.

How beautiful it was--this salt shroud from the sea! How it eddied and
funneled and whorled, now massing thick like frosted glass, now
thinning to a web of tissue. Suddenly, while he watched, a lane broke
through. He saw clearly the piles at the wharf's end, a glimpse of dark
water, and, between him and it, a figure huddled in a cloak--a female
figure, also sitting upon an upturned keg. Then the magic mist closed
in again.

"How the deuce did she get there?" the professor asked himself crossly.
"She wasn't there before the fog came." He remembered having noticed
that keg while choosing his own and there had been no woman sitting on
it then. "Anyway," he reflected, "I don't know her and I won't have to
speak to her." The thought warmed him so that he almost forgot to
shiver. From which you may gather that Professor Spence was a bachelor,
comparatively young; that he was of a retiring disposition and the
object of considerable unsolicited attention in his own home town.

He arose cautiously from the keg of nails. It might be well to return
to the boatshed, even at the risk of falling into the Inlet. But he had
not proceeded very far before, suddenly, as he had hoped it would, the
mist began to lift. Swiftly, before the puff of a warmer breeze, it
eddied and thinned. Its soundless, impalpable pressure lessened. The
wharf, the sea, the city began to steal back, sly, expressionless,
pretending that they had been there all the time. Even Mr. Johnston
could be clearly seen coming down from the boatshed with a curious
figure beside him--a figure so odd and unfamiliar that he might have
been part of the unfamiliar fog itself.

"Well, you've certainly struck it lucky today," called the genial Mr.
Johnston. "This here is Doc. Farr's boy. He's going right back over
there now and he'll take you along--if you want to go."

There was a disturbing cadence of doubt in the latter part of his
speech which affected the professor's always alert curiosity, as did
also the appearance of the "boy" reputed to belong to Dr. Farr. How old
he was no one could have guessed. The yellow parchment of his face was
ageless; ageless also the inscrutable, blank eyes. Only one thing was
certain--he had never been young. For the rest, he was utterly composed
and indifferent, and unmistakably Chinese.

"I hope there is no mistake," said Professor Spence hesitatingly. "Dr.
Farr certainly informed me that this was the wharf at which his launch
usually--er--tied up. But--there could scarcely be two doctors of that
name, I suppose? It's somewhat uncommon."

"Oh, it's him you want," assured Mr. Johnston. "Only man of that name
hereabouts. Lives out across the Narrows somewheres. Used to live here
in Vancouver years ago but now he don't honor us much. Queer old skate!
They say he's got some good Indian things, though--if it's them you're
after?"

The professor ignored the question but pondered the information.

"I think you are right. It must be the same person," he said. "But he
certainly led me to expect--"

A chuckle from the boat-builder interrupted him. "Ah, he'd do that, all
right," grinned Mr. Johnston. "They do say he has a special gift that
way."

"Well, thank you very much anyway." The professor offered his hand
cordially. "And if we're going, we had better go."

"You'll be a tight fit in the launch," said Mr. Johnston. "Miss Farr's
down 'ere somewhere. I saw her pass."

"Miss Farr!" The professor's ungallant horror was all too patent. He
turned haunted eyes toward the second nail keg, now plainly visible and
unoccupied.

"Missy in boat. She waitee. No likee!" said the Chinaman, speaking for
the first time.

"But," began the professor, and then, seeing the appreciative grin upon
Mr. Johnston's speaking countenance, he continued blandly--"Very well,
let us not keep the lady waiting. Especially as she doesn't like it.
Take this bag, my man, it's light. I'll carry the other."

With no words, and no apparent effort, the old man picked up both bags
and shuffled off. The professor followed. At the end of the wharf there
were steps and beneath the steps a small floating platform to which was
secured what the professor afterwards described as "a marine vehicle,
classification unknown." Someone, girl or woman, hidden in a loose,
green coat, was already seated there. A pair of dark eyes looked up
impatiently.

"I am afraid you were not expecting me," said the professor. "I am
Hamilton Spence. Your father--"

"You're getting your feet wet," said the person in the coat. "Please
jump in."

The professor jumped. He hadn't jumped since the sciatica and he didn't
do it gracefully. But it landed him in the boat. The Chinaman was
already in his place. A rattle and a roar arose, the air turned
suddenly to gasoline and they were off.

"Has it a name?" asked the professor as soon as he could make himself
heard.

"What?"

The professor was not feeling amiable. "It might be easier to refer to
it in conversation if one knew its name," he remarked, "'Launch' seems
a trifle misleading."

There was a moment's silence. Then, "I suppose 'launch' is what father
called it," said his companion. He could have sworn that there was cool
amusement in her tone. "I see your difficulty," she went on. "But,
fortunately, it has a name of its own. It is called the Tillicum.'"

"As such I salute it!" said Spence, gravely.

The other made no attempt to continue the conversation. She retired
into the fastness of the green cloak, leaving the professor to ponder
the situation. It seemed on the face of it an absurd situation enough,
yet there should certainly be nothing absurd in it. Spence felt a
somewhat bulky package of letters even now in the pocket of his coat.
These letters were real and sensible enough. They comprised his
correspondence with one Dr. Herbert Farr, Vancouver, B. C. As letters
they were quite charming. The earlier ones had dealt with the
professor's pet subject, primitive psychology. The later ones had been
more personal. Spence found himself remembering such phrases as "my
humble but picturesque home," "my Chinese servant, a factotum
extraordinary," "my young daughter who attends to all my simple wants"
and "my secretary on whose efficient aid I more and more depend--"

"I suppose there is a secretary?" he asked suddenly.

"Oh yes," answered the green cloak, "I'm it."

"And, 'a young daughter who attends'--"

"--'to all my simple wants?' That's me, too."

"But you can't be 'my Chinese servant, a factotum extraordinary?'"

"No, you have already met Li Ho."

"There?" queried the professor, gesturing weakly.

"Yes."

Spence pulled himself together. "There must be a home, though," he
asserted firmly, "'Humble but picturesque'--"

"Well," admitted the voice from the green cloak, "it is rather
picturesque. And it is certainly humble."

Suddenly she laughed. It was a very young laugh. The professor felt
relieved. She was a girl, then, not a woman.

"Isn't father too' amusing?" she asked pleasantly.

"Quite too much so," agreed the professor. He was very cold. "I beg
your pardon," he added stiffly, remembering his manners.

"Oh, I don't mind!" The girl assured him. "Father is a dreadful old
fraud. I have no illusions. But perhaps it isn't so bad after all. He
really is quite an authority on the West Coast Indians,--if that is
what you wish to consult him about."

Professor Spence was in a quandary. But perfect frankness seemed
indicated.

"I didn't come to consult him about anything," he said slowly. "I am a
psychologist. I wish to do my own observing, at first hand. I came not
to question Dr. Farr, but to board with him."

"BOARD WITH HIM!"

In her heartfelt surprise the girl turned to him and he saw her face,
young, arresting, and excessively indignant.

"Quite so," he said. "Do not excite yourself. I perceive the
impossibility. I can't have you attending to my wants, however simple.
Neither can I share the services of a secretary whose post, I gather,
is an honorary one. But I simply cannot go back to Mr. Johnston's grin:
so if you can put me up for the night--"

She had turned away again and was silent for so long that Spence became
uneasy. But at last she spoke.

"This is really too bad of father! He has never done anything quite as
absurd as this before. I don't quite see what he expected to get out of
it. He might know that you would not stay. He wouldn't want you to
stay. I can't understand--unless," her voice became crisp with sudden
enlightenment, "unless you were foolish enough to pay in advance!
Surely you did not do that?"

The professor was observing his boots in an abstracted way.

"I am afraid my feet are very wet," he remarked.

"They are. They are resting in at least an inch of water," she said
coldly. "But that isn't answering my question. Did you pay my father
anything in advance?"

The professor fidgeted.

"A small payment in advance is not very unusual," he offered.
"Especially if one's prospective host is anxious to add a few little
unaccustomed luxuries--"

"Yes, yes," she interrupted rudely. "I recognize the phrase!" Without
looking up he felt her wrathful gaze upon his face. "It means that
father has simply done you brown. Oh, well, it's your own fault. You're
old enough to know your way about. And the luxuries you will enjoy at
our place will certainly be unaccustomed ones. Didn't you even ask for
references?"

Her tone irritated the professor unaccountably.

"Are we nearly there?" he asked, disdaining to answer. "I am extremely
cold."

"You will have a nice climb to warm you," she told him grimly, "all up
hill!"

"'A verdant slope,'" quoted the professor sweetly, "'rising gently from
salt water toward snowclad peaks, which, far away,--'" They caught each
other's eyes and laughed.

"Here is our landing," said the girl quite cheerfully. "And none too
soon! I suppose you haven't noticed it, but the 'Tillicum' is leaking
like a sieve!"




CHAPTER II

Salt in the air and the breath of pine and cedar are excellent sleep
inducers. Professor Spence had not expected to sleep that night; yet he
did sleep. He awoke to find the sun high. A great beam of it lay across
the foot of his camp cot, bringing comforting warmth to the toes which
protruded from the shelter of abbreviated blankets. The professor
wiggled his toes cautiously. He was accustomed to doing this before
making more radical movements. They were a valuable index to the state
of the sciatic nerve. This morning they wiggled somewhat stiffly and
there were also various twinges. But considering the trying experiences
of yesterday it was surprising that they could wiggle at all. He lifted
himself slowly--and sank back with a relieved sigh. It would have been
embarrassing, he thought, had he not been able to get up.

All men have their secret fears and Professor Spence's secret fear was
embodied in a story which his friend and medical adviser (otherwise
"Old Bones") had seen fit to cite as a horrible example. It concerned a
man who had sciatica and who didn't take proper care of him-self. One
day this man went for a walk and fell suddenly upon the pavement unable
to move or even to explain matters satisfactorily to a heartless
policeman who insisted that he was drunk. The doctor had laughed over
this story; doctors are notoriously inhuman. The professor had laughed
also, but the possible picture of him-self squirming helplessly before
a casually interested public had terrors which no enemies' shrapnel had
ever been able to inspire.

 Well, thank heaven it hadn't happened yet! The professor confided
his satisfaction to an inquisitive squirrel which swung, bright eyed,
from a branch which swept the window, and, sitting up, prepared to take
stock of the furnishings of his room. A grim smile signalled his
discovery that there were no furnishings to take stock of. Save for his
camp bed, an affair of stout canvas stretched between crossed legs, the
room was beautifully bare. Not a chair, not a wash-stand, not a table
cumbered it--unless a round, flat tree stump, which looked as if it
might have grown up through the floor, was intended for both washstand
and table. It had served the latter purpose at any rate as upon it
rested the candle-stick containing the solitary candle by which he had
got himself to bed.

"Single room, without bath," murmured the professor. "Oh, if my Aunt
Caroline could see me now!"

Oddly enough, something in the thought of Aunt Caroline seemed to have
a reconciling effect upon Aunt Caroline's nephew. He lay back upon his
one thin pillow and reviewed his position with surprising fortitude.
After all, Aunt Caroline couldn't see him--and that was something.
Besides, it had been an adventure. It was surprising how he had come to
look for adventures since that day, five years ago, when the grim
adventure of war had called him from the peace-filled beginnings of
what he had looked forward to as a life of scholarly leisure. He had
been thirty, then, and quite done with adventuring. Now he was
thirty-five and--well, he supposed the war had left him restless.
Presently he would settle down. He would begin his great book on the
"Psychology of Primitive Peoples." Everything would be as it had been
before.

But in the meantime it insisted upon being somewhat different--hence
this feeling which was not all dissatisfaction with his present absurd
position. He was, he admitted it, a badly sold man. But did it matter?
What had he lost except money and self-esteem? The money did not matter
and he was sure that Aunt Caroline, at least, would say that he could
spare the self-esteem. Besides, he would recover it in time. His
opinion of himself as a man of perspicacity in business had recovered
from harder blows than this. There was that affair of the South
American mines, for instance,--but anybody may be mistaken about South
American mines. He had told Aunt Caroline this. "It was," he told Aunt
Caroline, "a financial accident. I do not blame myself. My father, as
you know, was a far-sighted man. These aptitudes run in families." Aunt
Caroline had said, "Humph!"

Nevertheless it was true that the elder Hamilton Spence, now deceased,
had been a far-sighted man. Benis had always cherished a warm
admiration for the commercial astuteness which he conceived himself to
have inherited. He would have been, he thought, exactly like his
father--if he had cared for the drudgery of business. So it was a habit
of his, when in a quandary, to consider what his parent would have done
and then to do likewise--an excellent rule if he had ever succeeded in
applying it properly. But there were always so many intruding details.
Take the present predicament, for instance. He could scarcely picture
his father in these precise circumstances. To do so would be to
presuppose actions on the part of that astute ancestor quite out of
keeping with his known character. Would Hamilton Spence, senior, have
crossed a continent at the word of one of whom he knew nothing, save
that he wrote an agreeable letter? Would he have engaged (and paid for
in advance) board and lodging at a place wholly supposititious? Would
he have neglected to ask for references? Hamilton Spence, junior, was
forced to admit that he would not.

But those letters of old Farr had been so blamed plausible!

Well, anyhow, he would have the pleasure of meeting and outfacing the
old rascal. This satisfaction he had expected the night before. But
upon their arrival at the "picturesque though humble" cottage (after a
climb at the memory of which his leg still shuddered), it was found
that Dr. Farr was not at home.

"He has probably gone 'up trail'" Miss Farr had said casually, "and in
that case he won't be back until morning."

"Did you say up?" The professor's voice held incredulity. Whereupon his
hostess had most unkindly smiled: "You're not much of a walker, are
you?" was her untactful comment.

"My leg--" He had actually begun to tell her about his leg! Luckily her
amused shrug had acted as a period. He felt very glad of this now. To
have admitted weakness would have been weak indeed. For the girl was so
splendidly strong! Only a child, of course, but so finely moulded, so
superbly strung--light and lithe. How she had swung up the trail, a
heavy packet in either hand, with scarcely a quickened breath to tell
of the effort! Her face?--he tried to recall her face but found it
provokingly elusive. It was a young face, but not youthful. The
distinction seemed strained and yet it was a real distinction. The eyes
were grey, he thought. The eyebrows very fine, dark and slanted
slightly, as if left that way by some unanswered question. The nose was
straight, delightful in profile. The mouth too firm for a face so
young, the chin too square--perhaps. But even as he catalogued the
features the face escaped him. He had a changing impression, only, of a
graceful contour, warm and white, dark careless eyes, and
hair--quantities of hair lying close and smooth in undulated waves--its
color like nothing so much as the brown of a crisping autumn leaf. He
remembered, though, that she was poorly dressed--and utterly
unconscious, or careless, of being so. And she had been amused,
undoubtedly amused, at his annoyance. A most unfeminine girl! And that
at least was fortunate--for he was very, very weary of everything
feminine!




CHAPTER III

Yawningly, the professor reached for his watch.

It had run down.

"Evidently they do not wake guests for breakfast," he mused. "Perhaps,"
with rising dismay, "there isn't any breakfast to wake them for!"

He felt suddenly ravenous and hurried into his clothes. It is really
wonderful how all kinds of problems give place to the need for a wash
and breakfast. Somewhere outside he could hear water running, so with a
towel over his arm and a piece of soap in his pocket he started out to
find it. His room, as he had noted the night before, was one of two
small rooms under the eaves. There was a small, dark landing between
them and a steep, ladderlike stair led directly down into the
living-room. There was no one there; neither was there anyone in the
small kitchen at the back. Benis Spence decided that this second room
was a kitchen because it contained a cooking stove. Otherwise he would
not have recognized it, Aunt Caroline's idea of a kitchen being quite
otherwise. Someone had been having breakfast on a corner of the table
and a fire crackled in the stove. Window and door were open, and leafy,
ferny odors mingled with the smell of burning cedar. The combined scent
was very pleasant, but the professor could have wished that the bouquet
of coffee and fried bacon had been included. He was quite painfully
hungry.

Through the open door the voice of falling water still called to him
but of other and more human voices there were none. Well, he could at
least wash. With a shrug he turned away from the half cleared table
and, in the doorway, almost ran into the arms of a little, old man in a
frock coat and a large umbrella. There were other items of attire, but
they did not seem to matter.

"My dear sir," said the little, old man, in a gentle, gurgling voice.
"Let me make you welcome--very, very welcome!"

"Thank you," said the professor.

There were other things that he might have said, but they did not seem
to suggest themselves. All the smooth and biting sentences which his
mind had held in readiness for this moment faded and died before the
stunning knowledge of their own inadequacy. Surprise, pure and simple,
stamped them down.

"Unpardonable, my not being at home to receive you," went on this
amazing old gentleman. "But the exact time of your coming was somewhat
indefinite. Still, I am displeased with myself, much displeased. You
slept well, I trust?"

The professor was understood to say that he had slept well.

Dr. Farr sighed. "Youth!" he murmured, waving his umbrella. "Oh, youth!"

"Quite so," said the professor. There was a dryness in his tone not
calculated to encourage rhapsody. The old gentleman's gurgle changed to
a note of practical helpfulness.

"You wish to bathe, I see. I will not detain you. Our sylvan bathroom
you will find just down the trail and behind those alders. Pray take
your time. You will be quite undisturbed."

With another dry "Thank you," the professor passed on. He was limping
slightly, otherwise he would have passed on much faster. His instinct
was to seek cover before giving vent to the emotion which consumed him.

Behind the alders, and taking the precaution of stuffing his mouth with
a towel, he could release this rising gust of almost hysterical
laughter.

That was Dr. Herbert Farr! The fulfilled vision of the learned scholar
he had come so far to see capped with nicety the climax of this absurd
adventure. What an utter fool, what an unbelievable idiot he had made
of himself! For the moment he saw clear and all normal reactions proved
inadequate. There was left only laughter.

When this was over he felt better. Withdrawing the towel and wiping the
tears of strangled mirth from his eyes he looked around him. The sylvan
bathroom was indeed a charming place. Great rocks, all smooth and brown
with velvet moss, curved gently down to form a basin into which fell
the water from the tiny stream whose musical flowing had called to him
through his window. Around, and somewhat back beneath tall sentinel
trees, crept the bushes and bracken of the mountain; but, above, the
foliage opened and the sun shone in, turning the brown-green water of
the pool to gold. With a sigh of pure delight the laughter-weary
professor stepped into its cool brightness--and with a gasp of
something very different, stepped quickly out again. But, quick as he
was, the liquid ice of that green-gold pool was quicker. It ran through
his tortured nerve like mounting fire--"Oh--oh--damn!" said the
professor heartily.

The sweat stood out on his forehead before he had rubbed and warmed the
outraged limb into some semblance of quietude again. The pool seemed no
longer lovely. Very gingerly he completed such ablutions as were
strictly necessary and then, very cold, very stiff and very, very empty
he turned back toward the house.

This time, instead of passing through the small vegetable garden behind
the kitchen, he skirted the clearing, coming out into the wide, open
space in front of the cottage. On one side of him, and behind, spread
the mountain woods but before him and to the right the larger trees
were down. There was a vista--for the first time since he had sat upon
a keg in the fog he forgot him-self and his foolishness, his hunger,
his aching nerves, his smarting pride, everything! The beauty before
him filled his heart and mind, leaving not a cranny anywhere for lesser
things. Blue sea, blue sky, blue mountains, blue smoke that rose in
misty spirals as from a thousand fairy fires and, nearer, the
sun-warmed, dew-drenched green--green of the earth, green of the trees,
green of the graceful, sweeping curves of wooded point and bay. Far
away, on peaks half hidden, snow still lay--a whiteness so ethereal
that the gazer caught his breath.

And with it all there was the scent of something--something so fresh,
so penetrating, so infinitely sweet--what could it be?

"Ambrosia!" said Benis Spence, unconscious that he spoke aloud.

"Balm of Gilead," said a practical voice beside him. "It smells like
that in the bud, you know."

"Does it?" The professor's tone was dreamy. "Honey and wine--that's
what it's like--honey and wine in the wilderness! You didn't tell me it
would be like this," he added, turning abruptly to his companion of the
night before.

"How could I tell what it would be like--to you?" asked the girl. "It's
different for everyone. I've known people stand here and think of
nothing but their breakfast."

At the word "breakfast" (which had temporarily slipped from his
vocabulary) the famished professor wheeled so quickly that his knee
twisted. Miss Farr smiled, her cool and too-understanding smile.

"There's something to eat," she said. "Come in."

She did not wait for him but walked off quickly. The professor followed
more slowly. The path, even the front path, was rough (he had noticed
that last night); but the cottage, seen now with the glamour of its
outlook still in his eyes, seemed not quite so impossible as he had
thought. The grace of early spring lay upon it and all around. True, it
was small and unpainted and in bad repair, but its smallness and its
brownness seemed not out of keeping with the mountain-side. Its narrow
veranda was railed by unbarked branches from the cedars. Its walls were
rough and weather-beaten, its few windows, broad and low. The door was
open and led directly into the living room whence his hostess had
preceded him.

The marvellous scent of the morning was everywhere. The room, as he
went in, seemed full of it. Not such a bad room, either, not nearly so
comfortless as he had thought last night. There was a fireplace, for
instance, a real fireplace of cobble-stones, for use, not ornament; a
long table stood in the middle of the room, an old fashioned sofa
sprawled beneath one of the windows. There was a dresser at one end
with open shelves for china and, at the other, a book-case, also open,
filled with old and miscellaneous books....

And, best and most encouraging of all, there was breakfast on the table.

"I told Li Ho to give you eggs," said Miss Farr. "It is the one thing
we can be sure of having fresh. Do you like eggs?"

The professor liked eggs. He had never liked eggs so well before,
except once in Flanders--he looked up to thank his hostess, but she had
not waited. Nevertheless the breakfast was very good. Not until he had
finished the last crumb of it did he notice that the comfort of the
place was more apparent than real. The table tipped whenever you
touched it. The chair upon which he sat had lost an original leg and
didn't take kindly to its substitute. The china was thick and chipped.
The walls were unfinished and draughty, the ceiling obviously leaked.
There had been some effort to keep the place livable, for the faded
curtains were at least clean and the floor swept--but the blight of
decay and poverty lay hopelessly upon it all.

And what was a young girl--a girl with level eyes and lifted
chin--doing in this galley? ... Undoubtedly the less he bothered
himself about that question the better. This young person was probably
just as she wished to appear, careless and content. And in any case it
was none of his business.

The sensible thing for him to do was to pack his bag and turn his
back--the absurd old man with the umbrella ... pshaw! ... He
wouldn't go home, of course. Aunt Caroline would say "I told you so" ...
no, she wouldn't say it--she would look it, which was worse ...
he had come away for a rest cure and a rest cure he intended to have
... with a groan he thought of the pictures he had formed of this
place, the comfortable seclusion, the congenial old scholar, the
capable secretary, the--he looked up to find that Miss Farr had
returned and was regarding him with a cool and pleasantly aloof
consideration.

"Are you wondering how soon you may decently leave?" she inquired. "We
are not at all formal here. And, of course--" her shrug and gesture
disposed of all other matters at issue. "Yours are the only feelings
that need to be considered. I should like to know, though," she
continued with some warmth of interest, "if you really came just to
observe Indians. Father might think of a variety of attractions.
Health?--any-thing from gout to tuberculosis. Fish?--father can talk
about fish until you actually see them leaping. Shooting?--according to
father, all the animals of the ark abound in these mountains.
Curios?--father has an Indian mound somewhere which he always keeps
well stocked."

Professor Spence smiled. "So many activities," he said, "should bring
better results."

"They are too well known. Most people make some inquiry." The faint
emphasis on the "most" made the professor feel uncomfortable. Was it
possible that this young girl considered him, Benis Spence, something
of a fool? He dismissed the idea as unlikely.

"Inquiry in my case would have meant delay," he answered frankly, "and
I was in a hurry. I wanted to get away from--I wanted to get away for
rest and study in a congenial environment. Still, I will admit that I
might not have inquired in any case. I am accustomed to trust to my
instinct. My father was a very far-sighted man--what are you laughing
at?"

"Nothing. Only it sounded so much like 'nevertheless, my grandsire drew
a long bow at the battle of Hastings'--don't you remember, in
'Ivanhoe?'"

The professor sighed. "I have forgotten 'Ivanhoe,'" he said, "which
means, I suppose, that I have forgotten youth. Sometimes its ghost
walks, though. I think it was that which kept me so restless at home. I
thought that if I could get away--You see, before the war, I was
gathering material for a book on primitive psychology and when I came
back I found some of the keenness gone." He smiled grimly. "I came back
inclined to think that all psychology is primitive. But I wanted to get
to work again. I had never studied the West Coast Indians and your
father's letters led me to believe that--er--"

It was not at all polite of her to laugh, but he had to admit that her
laughter was very pleasant and young.

"It is funny, you know," she murmured apologetically. "For I am sure
you pictured father as a kind of white patriarch, surrounded by his
primitive children (father is certain to have called the Indians his
'children'!). Unfortunately, the Indians detest father. They're half
afraid of him, too. I don't know why. Years ago, when we lived up
coast--" she paused, plainly annoyed at her own loquacity, "we knew
plenty of Indians then," she finished shortly.

"And are there no Indians here at all?"

"There is an Indian reservation at North Vancouver. That is the
nearest. I do not think they are just what you are looking for. But
both in Vancouver and Victoria you can get in touch with men who can
direct you. Your journey need not be entirely wasted."

"But Dr. Farr himself--Is he not something of an authority?"

"Y-es. I suppose he is."

"What information the letters contained seemed to be the real thing."

"Oh, the letters were all right. I wrote them."

"You!"

"Didn't I tell you I was the secretary? My department is the
'information bureau.' I do not see the actual letters. There are always
personal bits which father puts in himself."

"Bits regarding boarding accommodation, etc.?"

She did not answer his smile, and her eyes grew hard as she nodded.

"Usually I can keep things from going that far. I can't quite see how
it happened so suddenly in your case."

"I happen to be a sudden person."

"Evidently. Father was quite dumbfounded when he knew you had actually
arrived. He certainly expected an interval during which he could invent
good and sufficient reasons for putting you off."

"Such as?"

"Such as smallpox. An outbreak of smallpox among the Indians is quite a
favorite with father."

"The old--I beg your pardon!"

"Don't bother. You are certainly entitled to an expression of your
feelings. It may be the only satisfaction, you will get. But aren't we
getting away from the question?"

"Question?"

"When do you wish Li Ho to take you back to Vancouver?"

Professor Spence opened his lips to say that any time would suit. It
was the obvious answer, the only sensible answer, the answer which he
fully intended to make. But he did not make it.

"Must I really go?" he asked. He was, so he had said himself, a sudden
person.

His hostess met his deprecating gaze with pure surprise.

"You can't possibly want to stay?"

"I quite possibly can. I like it here. And I'm horribly tired."

The hostility which had begun to gather in her eyes lightened a little.

"Tired? I noticed that you limped this morning. Is there anything the
matter with you?"

It was certainly an ungracious way of putting it. And her eyes, while
not exactly hostile, were ungracious, too. They would make anyone with
a spark of pride want to go away at once. The professor told himself
this. Besides, his only possible reason for wishing to stay had been
some unformed idea of being helpful to the girl herself--ungrateful
minx!

"If there is anything really wrong--" the cold incredulity of her tone
was the last straw.

"Nothing wrong at all!" said Professor Spence. He arose briskly. Alas!
He had forgotten his sciatic nerve. He had forgotten, too, the
crampiness of its temper since that glacial bath, and, most completely
of all, had he forgotten the fate of the
man-who-didn't-take-care-of-himself. Therefore it was with something of
surprise that he found himself crumpled up upon the floor. Only when he
tried to rise again and felt the sweat upon his forehead did he
remember the doctor's story.... Spence swore under his breath and
attempted to pull himself up by the table.

"Wait a moment!"

The cold voice held authority--the authority he had come to respect in
hospital--and he waited, setting his teeth. Next moment he set them
still harder, for Li Ho and the girl picked him up without ceremony and
laid him, whitefaced, upon the sprawling sofa.

"Why didn't you say you had sciatica?" asked Miss Farr, belligerently.

It seemed unnecessary to answer.

"I know it is sciatica," she went on, "because I've seen it before. And
if you had no more sense than to bathe in that pool you deserve all
you've got."

"It looked all right."

"Oh--looked! It's melted ice--simply."

"So I realized, afterwards."

"You seem to do most things afterwards. What caused it in the first
place, cold?"

"The sciatica? No--an injury."

There was a slight pause.

"Was it--in the war?" The new note in her voice did not escape Spence.
He lied promptly--too promptly. Desire Farr was an observant young
person, quite capable of drawing conclusions.

"I'm not going to be sympathetic," she said. "That," with sudden
illumination, "is probably what you ran away from. But you'd better be
truthfull Was it a bullet?"

"Shrapnel."

"And the treatment?"

"Rest, and the tablets in my bag."

"Right--I'll get them."

It was quite like old hospital times. The sofa was hard and the pillows
knobby. But he had lain upon worse. Li Ho was not more unhandy than
many an orderly. And the tablets, quickly and neatly administered by
Miss Farr, brought something of relief.

Not until she saw the strain within his eyes relax did his
self-appointed nurse pass sentence.

"You certainly can't move until you are better," she said. "You'll have
to stay. It can't be helped but--father will have a fit."

"A fit?" murmured Spence. Privately he thought that a fit might do the
old gentleman good.

"He hates having anyone here," she went on thoughtfully. "It upsets
him."

"Does it? But why? I can understand it upsetting you. But he--he
doesn't do the work, does he?"

"Not exactly," the girl smiled. "But--oh well, I don't believe in
explanations. You'll see things for your-self, perhaps. And now I'll
get you a book. I won't warn you not to move for I know you can't."

With a glance which, true to her promise, was not overburdened with
sympathy, his strangely acquired hostess went out and closed the door.

He tried to read the book she had handed him ("Green Mansions"--ho-r
had it wandered out here?) but his mind could not detach itself. It
insisted upon listening for sounds outside. And presently a sound
came--the high, thin sound of a voice shaking with weakness or rage.
Then the cool tones of his absent nurse, then the voice
again--certainly a most unpleasant voice--and the crashing sound of
something being violently thrown to the ground and stamped upon.
Through the closed door, the professor seemed to see a vision of an
absurd old man with pale eyes, who shrieked and stamped upon an
umbrella.

"That," said Hamilton Spence, with resignation, "that must be father
having a fit!"




CHAPTER IV

Letter from Professor Hamilton Spence to his friend, John Rogers, M.D.

DEAR Bones: Chortle if you want to--your worst prognostications have
come true. The unexpectedness of the sciatic nerve, as set forth in
your parting discourse, has amply proved itself. The dashed thing is
all that you said of it--and more. It did not even permit me to
collapse gracefully--or to choose my public. Your other man had a
policeman, hadn't he?

Here I am, stranded upon a sofa from which I cannot get up and detained
indefinitely upon a mountain from which I cannot get down. My nurse (I
have a nurse) refuses to admit the mountain. She insists upon referring
to this dizzy height as "just above sea-level" and declares that the
precipitous ascent thereto is "a slight grade." Otherwise she is quite
sane.

But sanity is more than I feel justified in claiming for anyone else in
this household. There is Li Ho, for instance. Well, I'm not certain
about Li Ho. He may be Chinese-sane. My nurse says he is. But I have no
doubts at all about my host. He is so queer that I sometimes wonder if
he is not a figment. Perhaps I imagine him. If so, my imagination is
going strong. What I seem to see is a little old man in a frock coat so
long that his legs (like those of the Queen of Spain) are negligible.
He has a putty colored face (so blurred that I keep expecting him to
rub it out altogether), white hair, pale blue eyes--and an umbrella.

Yesterday, attempting to establish cordial relations, I asked him why
the umbrella. He had a fit right on the spot?

Let me explain about the fits. When his daughter just said, "Father
will have a fit," I thought she spoke in a Pickwickian sense, meaning,
"Father will experience annoyance." But when I heard him having it, I
realized that she had probably been quite literal. When father has a
fit he bangs his umbrella to the floor and jumps on it. Also he tears
his hair. I have seen the pieces.

I said to my nurse: "The mention of his umbrella seems to agitate your
father." She turned quite pale. "It does," she said. "I hope you
haven't mentioned it." I said that I had merely asked for information.
"And did you get it?" asked she. I said that I had--since it was
apparent that one has to carry an umbrella if one wishes to have it
handy to jump upon. She didn't laugh at all, and looked so withdrawn
that it was quite plain I need expect no elucidation from her.

I had to dismiss the subject altogether. But, later on, Li Ho (who
appears to partially approve of me) gave a curious side light on the
matter. At night as he was tucking me up safely (the sofa is slippery),
he said, "Honorable Boss got hole in head-top. Sun velly bad. Umblella
keep him off."

"But he carries it at night, too," I objected.

Li Ho wagged his parchment head. "Keep moon off all same. Moon muchy
more bad. Full moon find urn hole. Make Honorable Boss much klasy."

Remarkably lucid explanation--don't you think so? The "hole in head
top" is evidently Li Ho's picturesque figure for "mental vacuum."
Therefore I gather that our yellow brother suspects his honorable boss
of being weak-headed, a condition aggravated by the direct rays of the
sun and especially by the full moon. He may be right--though the old
man seems harmless enough. "Childlike and bland" describes him usually.
Though there are times when he looks at me with those pale eyes--and I
wish that I were not quite so helpless! He dislikes me. But I have
known quite sane people do that.

I am writing nonsense. One has to, with sciatica. I hope this
confounded leg lets me get some sleep tonight.

Yours,

B.

P.S.: Not exactly an ideal home for a young girl--is it?




CHAPTER V

It had rained all night. It had rained all yesterday. It had rained all
the day before. It was raining still. Apparently it could go on raining
indefinitely.

Miss Farr said not. She said that it would be certain to clear up in a
day or two. "And then," she said, "you will forget that it ever rained."

Professor Spence doubted it. He had a good memory.

"You look much better this morning," his nurse went on. "Have you tried
to move your leg yet?"

"I am thinking of trying it."

This was not exactly a fib on the part of the professor because he was
thinking of it. But it did not include the whole truth, because he had
already tried it, tried it very successfully only a few moments before.
First he had made sure that he was alone in the room and then he had
proceeded with the trial. Very cautiously he had drawn his lame leg up,
and tenderly stretched it out. He had turned over and back again. He
had wiggled his toes to see how many of them were present--only the
littlest toe was still numb. He had realized that he was much better.
If the improvement kept on, he knew that in a day or so he would be
able to walk with the aid of a cane. And he also knew that, with his
walking, his status as an invalid guest would vanish. Luckily, no one
but himself could say when the walking stage was reached--hence the
strict privacy of his experiments.

"Father thinks that you should be able to walk in about three days,"
said Miss Farr cheerfully.

Spence said he hoped that Dr. Farr was right. But the rain, he feared,
might keep him back a bit, "I am really sorry," he added, "that my
presence is so distasteful to the doctor. I have been here almost two
weeks and I have seen so little of him that I'm afraid I am keeping him
out of his own house."

"No, you are not doing that," the girl's reassurance was cordial
enough, "Father is having an outside spell just now. He quite often
does. Sometimes for weeks together he spends most of his time out of
doors. Then, quite suddenly, he will settle down and be more
like--other people."

It was her way, the professor noticed, to state facts, not to explain
them.

"Then he has what I call an 'inside spell,'" she went on. "That is when
he does most of his writing. He does some quite good things, you know.
And a few of them get published."

"Scientific articles?" asked Spence.

"Well--articles. You might not call them scientific. Science is very
exact, isn't it? Father would rather be interesting than exact any day."

Her hearer found no difficulty in believing this.

"His folk-lore stories are the best--and the least exact," continued
she, heedless of the shock inflicted upon the professorial mind. "He
knows exactly the kind of things Indians tell, and tells it very much
better."

"You mean he--he fakes it?"

"Well--he calls it 'editing.'"

"But, my dear girl, you can't edit folk-lore!"

"Father can."

"But--but it isn't done! Such material loses all value if not
authentic."

"Does it?"

The question was indifferent. So indifferent, in the face of a matter
of such moment, that Hamilton Spence writhed upon his couch. Here at
least there was room for genuine missionary work. He cleared his throat.

"I will tell you just how much it matters," he began firmly. But the
fates were not with him, neither was his audience. Attracted by some
movement which he had missed she, the audience, had slipped to the
door, and was opening it cautiously.

"What is it?" asked the baffled lecturer crossly.

"S-ssh! I think it's Sami."

"A tame bear?"

"No. Wait. I'll prop you up so you can see him. Look, behind the
veranda post."

The professor looked and forgot about the value of authenticity; for
from behind the veranda post a most curious face was peeping--a round,
solemn baby face of cafe au lait with squat, wide nose and flat-set
eyes.

"A Jap?" exclaimed Spence in surprise.

"No. He's Indian. Some of the babies are so Japaneesy that it's hard to
tell the difference. Father says it's a strain of the same blood. But
they are not all as pretty as Sami. Isn't he a duck?"

"He is at home in the rain, anyway. Why doesn't he come in?"

"He's afraid of you."

"That's unusual--until one has seen me."

"Sami doesn't need to see a stranger."

"Well, that's primitive enough, surely! Let's call him in."

"I'd like to, but Sami won't come for calling."

"Oh, won't he? Leave the door open and watch him."

As absorbed now as the girl herself, the professor put his finger to
his lips and whistled--a low, clear whistle, rather like the calling of
a meditative bird. Several times he whistled so, on different notes;
and then, to her surprise, the watching girl saw the little wild thing
outside stir in answer to the call. Sami came out from behind the post
and stood listening, for all the world like an inquiring squirrel. The
whistle sounded again, a plaintive, seeking sound, infinitely alluring.
It seemed to draw the heart like a living thing. Slowly at first and
then with the swift, gliding motion of the woods, the wide-eyed
youngster approached the open door and stood there waiting, poised and
ready for advance or flight. Again the whistle came, and to it came
Sami, straight as a bird to its calling mate.

"Tamed!" said the professor softly. "See, he is not a bit afraid."

"How on earth did you do it?" asked Miss Farr when the shy, brown baby
had been duly welcomed. The whistler was visibly vain.

"Oh, it's quite simple. I merely talked to him in his own language."

"I see that. But where did you learn the language?"

"Well, a fellow taught me that--man I met at Ypres. He could have
whistled back the dodo, I think. He knew all kinds of calls--said all
the wild things answered to them."

"Was he a great naturalist?"

The cheerful vanity faded from Spence's face, leaving it sombre.

"He--would have been," he said briefly.

Miss Farr asked no more questions. It was a restful way she had. And
perhaps because she did not ask, the professor felt an unaccustomed
impulse. "He was a wonderful chap," he volunteered. "There are few like
him in a generation. It seemed--rather a waste."

The girl nodded. "Used or wasted--it's as it happens," she said. "There
is no plan."

"That's a heathen sentiment!" The professor recovered his cheerfulness.
"A sentiment not at all suited for the contemplation of extreme youth."

"I am not extremely young."

"You? I was referring to our brown brother. He is becoming uneasy
again. What's the matter with him?"

Whatever was the matter, it reached, at that moment, an acute stage and
Sami disappeared through the door into the kitchen. Perhaps his ears
were sharper than theirs and his eyes keener. He may have seen a large
umbrella coming across the clearing.

Miss Farr frowned. "Sami is afraid of father," she explained briefly.
The door opened as she added, "I wonder why?"

"A caprice of childhood, my daughter," said the old doctor mildly. "Who
indeed can account for the vagaries of the young?"

"They are usually quite easy to account for," replied his daughter
coldly. "You must have frightened the child some time."

"Tut, tut, my dear. How could an old fogey like myself frighten anyone?"

"I don't know. But I should like to."

Father and daughter looked at each other for a moment. And again the
captive on the sofa found himself disliking intensely the glance of the
old man's pale blue eyes. He was glad to see that they fell before the
grey eyes of the girl.

"Well, well!" murmured Dr. Farr vaguely, looking away. "It doesn't
matter. It doesn't matter. Tut, tut, a trifle!"

"I don't think so," said she. And abruptly she went out after the child.

"Fanciful, very fanciful," murmured the old man, looking after her.
"And stubborn, very stubborn. A bad fault in one so young. But,"
beaming benevolently upon his guest, "we must not trouble you with our
small domestic discords. You are much better, I see, much better. That
is good."

"Getting along very nicely, thanks," said Spence. "I was able to change
position this morning without assistance."

"Only that?" The doctor's disappointment was patent. "Come, we should
progress better than that. If you will allow me to prescribe--"

"Thank you--no. I feel quite satisfied with the treatment prescribed by
old Bones--I mean by my friend, Dr. Rogers. He understands the case
thoroughly. One must be patient."

"Quite so, quite so." The curiously blurred face of the doctor seemed
for a moment to take on sharper lines. Spence had observed it do this
before under stress of feeling. But as the exact feeling which caused
the change was usually obscure, it seemed safest to ignore it
altogether. He was growing quite expert at ignoring things. For, quite
contrary to the usual trend of his character, he was reacting to the
urge of a growing desire to stay where he wasn't wanted. He didn't
reason about it. He did not even admit it. But it moved in his mind.

"I'm not fretting at all about being tied up here," he went on
cheerfully. "I find the air quite stimulating. I believe I could work
here. In fact, I have some notes with me which I may elaborate. I fancy
that, as you said in your letters, Miss Farr will prove a most capable
secretary. I am going to ask her to help me."

"Are you indeed?" The doctor's tone was polite but absent.

"You do not object, I hope?"

"Object--why should I object? But Desire is busy, very busy. I doubt if
her duties will spare her. I doubt it very much."

"Naturally, I should wish to offer her ample remuneration."

Again the loose lines of the strange old face seemed to sharpen. There
was a growing eagerness in the pale eyes ... but it died.

"Even in that case," said Dr. Farr regretfully, "I fear it will be
impossible."

Spence pressed this particular point no further. He had found out what
he wanted to know, namely, that his host's desire to see the last of
him was stronger even than his desire for money. His own desire to see
more of his host strengthened in proportion.

"Supposing we leave it to Miss Farr herself," he suggested smoothly.
"Since you have personally no objection. If she is unwilling to oblige
me, of course--"

"I will speak to her," promised the doctor.

Spence smiled.

"What surprises me, doctor," he went on, pushing a little further, "is
how you have managed to keep so very intelligent a secretary in so
restricted an environment. The stronger one's wings, the stronger the
temptation to use them."

He had expected to strike fire with this, but the pale eyes looked
placidly past him.

"Desire has left me, at times, but--she has always come back." The old
man's voice was very gentle, almost caressing, and should certainly
have provided no reason for the chill that crept up his hearer's spine.

"She has never found work suited to her, perhaps," suggested Spence.
"If you will allow me,--"

"You are very kind," the velvet was off the doctor's voice now. He rose
with a certain travesty of dignity. "But I may say that I desire--that
I will tolerate--no interference. My daughter's future shall be her
father's care."

Spence laughed. It was an insulting laugh, and he knew it. But the
contrast between the grandiloquent words and the ridiculous figure
which uttered them was too much for him. Besides, though the most
courteous of men, he deliberately wished to be insulting. He couldn't
help it. There rose up in him, suddenly, a wild and unreasoning anger
that mere paternity could place anyone (and especially a young girl
with cool, grey eyes) in the power of such a caricature of manhood.

"Really?" said Spence. There was everything in the word that tone could
utter of challenge and derision. He raised himself upon his elbow. The
doctor, who had been closely contemplating his umbrella, looked up
slowly. The eyes of the two men met.... Spence had never seen eyes
like that ... they dazzled him like sudden sunlight on a blade of
steel ... they clung to his mind and bewildered it ... he forgot
the question at issue ... he forgot--

Just then Li Ho opened the kitchen door.

"Get 'um lunch now," said Li Ho, in his toneless drawl. "Like 'um egg
flied? Like 'um boiled?"

Spence sank back upon his pillow.

"Like um any old way!" he said. His voice sounded a little breathless.

The doctor, once again absorbed in the contemplation of his umbrella,
went out.




CHAPTER VI

Luncheon, for which Li Ho had provided eggs both boiled and fried, was
eaten alone. His hostess did not honor him with her company, nor did
her father return. Li Ho was attentive but silent And outside the rain
still rained.

Professor Spence lay and counted the drops as they fell from a knot
hole in the veranda roof--one small drop--two medium-sized drops--one
big drop--as if some unseen djinn were measuring them out in ruthless
monotony. He counted the drops until his brain felt soggy and he began
to speculate upon what Aunt Caroline would think of fried eggs for
luncheon. He wondered why there were no special dishes for special
meals in Li Ho's domestic calendar; why all things, to Li Ho, were good
(or bad) at all times? Would he give them porridge and bacon for
dinner? Spence decided that he didn't mind. He was ready to like
anything which was strikingly different from Aunt Caroline....

One small drop--two medium-sized drops--one big drop.... He wondered
when he would know his young nurse well enough to call her by her first
name? (Prefixed by "miss," perhaps.) "Desire"--it was a rather charming
name. How old would she be, he wondered; twenty? There were times when
she looked even younger than twenty. But he had to confess that she
never acted like it. At least she did not act as he had believed girls
of twenty are accustomed to act. Very differently indeed.... One
small drop--two medium-sized--oh, bother the drops! Where was she,
anyway? Did she intend to stay out all afternoon? Was that the way she
treated an invalid? ... He couldn't see why people go out in the
rain, anyway. People are apt to take their deaths of cold. People may
get pneumonia. It would serve people right--almost.... One drop--oh,
confound the drops!

The professor tried to read. The book he opened had been a famous
novel, a best-seller, some five years ago. It had been thought
"advanced." Advanced!--but now how inconceivably flat and stale! How on
earth had anyone ever praised it, called it "epoch-marking," bought it
by the thousand thousand? Why, the thing was dead--a dead book, than
which there is nothing deader. This reflection gave him something to
think of for a while. Instead of counting drops he amused himself by
strolling back through the years, a critical stretcher-bearer, picking
up literary corpses by the wayside. They were thickly strewn. He was
appalled to find how faintly beat the pulse of life even in the living.
Would not another generation see the burial of them all? Was there no
new Immortal anywhere?

"When I write a novel," thought the professor solemnly, "which, please
God, I shall never do, I will write about people and not about things.
Things change always; people never." It was a wise conclusion but it
did not help the afternoon to pass.

Desire, that is to say Miss Farr, had passed the window twice already.
He might have called her. But he hadn't. If people forget one's very
existence it is not prideful to call them. And the Spences are a
prideful race. Desire (he decided it didn't matter if he called her
Desire to himself, she was such a child) was wearing--an old tweed coat
and was carrying wood. She wore no hat and her hair was glossy with
rain.... People take such silly risks--And where was Li Ho? Why
wasn't he carrying the wood? Not that the wood seemed to bother Desire
in the least.

The captive on the sofa sighed. It was no use trying to hide from
himself his longing to be out there with her in that heavenly
Spring-pierced air, revelling in its bloomy wetness; strong and fit in
muscle and nerve, carrying wood, getting his head soaked, doing all the
foolish things which youth does with impunity and careless joy. The new
restlessness, which he had come so far to quiet, broke over him in
miserable, taunting waves.

Why was he here on the sofa instead of out there in the rain? The war?
But he was too inherently honest to blame the war. It was, perhaps,
responsible for the present state of his sciatic nerve but not for the
selling of his birthright of sturdy youth. The causes of that lay far
behind the war. Had he not refused himself to youth when youth had
called? Had he not shut himself behind study doors while Spring crept
in at the window? The war had come and dragged him out. Across his
quiet, ordered path its red trail had stretched and to go forward it
had been necessary to go through. The Spences always went through. But
Nature, every inch a woman, had made him pay for scorning her. She had
killed no fatted calf for her prodigal.

So here he was, at thirty-five, envying a girl who could carry wood
without weariness. The envy had become acute irritation by the time the
wood was stacked and the wood-carrier brought her shining hair and
rain-tinted cheeks into the living-room.

"Leg bad again?" asked Desire casually.

"No--temper."

"It's time for tea. I'll see about it."

"You'll take your wet things off first. You must be wet through. Do you
want to come down with pneumonia?"

 The girl's eyebrows lifted. "That's silly," she said. And indeed
the remark was absurd enough addressed to one on whom the wonder and
mystery of budding life rested so visibly. "I'm not wet at all," she
went on. "Only my coat." She slipped out of the old tweed ulster,
scattering bright drops about the room. "And my hair," she added as if
by an afterthought. "I'll dry it presently. But I don't wonder you're
cross. The fire is almost out. We'll have something to eat when the
kettle boils. Father's gone up trail. He probably won't be back." For
an instant she stood with a considering air as if intending to add
something. Then turned and went into the kitchen without doing it. She
came back with a handful of pine-knots with which she deftly mended the
fire.

The professor moved restlessly.

"I'll be around soon now," he said, "and then you shan't do that."

"Shan't do what?"

"Carry wood."

"That's funny." Desire placed a crackling pine-knot on the apex of her
pyramid and sat back on her heels to watch it blaze. Her tone was
ruminative. "There's no real sense in that, you know. Why shouldn't I
carry wood when I am perfectly able to do it? Your objection is purely
an acquired one--a manifestation of the herd instinct."

There was a slight pause. Professor Spence was wondering if he had
really heard this.

"W--what was that you said?" he asked cautiously.

Desire laughed. He had observed with wonder, amounting almost to awe,
that she never giggled.

"Score one for me!" She turned grey, mirthful eyes  on his. "Amn't I
learned? I read it in an article in an old Sociological Review--a copy
left here by a man whom father--well, we needn't bother about that part
of it. But the article was wonderful. I can't remember who wrote it."

"Trotter, perhaps,--yes, it would be Trotter," murmured the professor.

Desire swung round upon her heels, regarding him a trifle wistfully.

"I should like to know all that you know," she said. "All the strange
things inside our minds."

"Would you? But if you knew what I know you would only know that you
knew nothing at all."

"Yes, it's all very well to say that," shrewdly, "but you don't mean
it. Besides, even if you don't know anything, you have glimpses of all
sorts of wonderful things which might be known. You can go on, and it's
the going on that matters."

"But I can't carry wood."

A little smile curled the corners of Desire's lips. He did not see it
because she had turned to the fire again and, with that deliberate
unself-consciousness which characterized her, was proceeding to unpin
and dry her hair. Spence had not seen it undone before and was
astonished at its length and lustre. The girl shook it as a young colt
shakes its mane, spreading it out to the blaze upon her hands.

"I know what you mean, though," admitted Spence, "there is nothing like
the fascination of the unknown. It very nearly did for me."

Desire looked up long enough to allow her slanting brows to ask their
eternal question.

"Too much inside, not enough outside," he answered. "I ought to have
made myself a man first and a student afterward. Then I might have been
out in the rain you."

 She considered this, as she considered most things, gravely. Then
met it in her downright way.

"There's nothing very wrong with you, is there? Nothing but what can be
put right."

"No."

"Well then, you can begin again. And begin properly."

"I am thirty-five."

"In that case you have no time to waste."

It was a thoroughly sensible remark. But somehow the professor did not
like it. After all, thirty-five is not so terribly old. He decided to
change the subject. But there was no immediate hurry. It was pleasant
to lie there in the firelight watching this enigma of girl-hood dry her
hair. Perhaps she would notice his silence and ask him what he was
thinking about.

"You really ought to offer me a penny for my thoughts," he observed
plaintively.

"Oh, were you thinking? So was I."

"I'll give you a penny for yours!"

Desire shook her head.

"No? Then I'll give you mine for nothing. I was thinking what a pity it
is that you are only an amateur nurse."

"I hate nursing."

"How unwomanly! Lots of women hate it--but few admit it. However, it
wasn't a nurse's duties I was thinking of, but a patient's privileges.
You see, if you were a professional nurse I could call you 'Nurse
Desire.'"

"Do you mean that you want to call me by my first name?"

"Since you put it more bluntly than I should dare to,--yes. It is a
charming name. But perhaps--"

"Oh, you may use it if you like," said the owner of the name
indifferently. "It sounds more natural. I am not accustomed to 'Miss
Fair.'"

This ought to have been satisfactory. But it wasn't. And after he had
led up to it so tactfully, too! Not for the first time did it occur to
our psychologist that tact was wasted upon this downright young person.
He decided not to be tactful any longer.

"I'm getting well so rapidly," he said, "that I shall have to admit it
soon."

The girl nodded.

"Are you glad?"

"Of course I am glad."

"I shall walk with a cane almost in no time. And when I can walk, I
shall have to go away."

"Yes." There was no hesitation in her prompt agreement. Neither did she
add any polite regrets. The professor felt unduly irritated. He had
never become used to her ungirlish taciturnity. It always excited him.
The women he had known, especially the younger women, had all been
chatterers. They had talked and he had not listened. This girl said
little and her silences seemed to clamour in his ears. Well, she would
have to answer this time.

"Do you want me to go?" he asked plainly.

"I don't want you to go." Her tone was thoughtful. "But I know you
can't stay. One has to accept things."

"One doesn't. One can make things happen."

"How?"

"By willing."

"Do you honestly believe that?" He was astonished at the depth of
mockery in her tone.

"I certainly do believe it. I'll prove it if you like."

"How?"

"By staying."

Again she was silent.

He went on eagerly. "Why shouldn't I stay--for a time at least? I have
plenty of work to go on with. Indeed it was with the definite intention
of doing this work that I came. If you want me, I'll stay right enough.
The bargain that was made with your father was a straight, fair
business arrangement. I have no scruples about requiring him to carry
out his part of it The trouble was that it seemed as if insistence
would be unfair to you. But if you and I can arrange that--if you will
agree to let me do what I can to help, chores, you know, carrying wood
and so on, then I should not need to feel myself a burden."

"You have not been a burden."

"Thanks. You have been extraordinarily kind. As for the rest of it--I
mentioned the matter to Dr. Farr this morning."

She was interested now. He could see her eyes, intent, through the
falling shadow of her hair.

"I reminded him that he had offered me the services of a secretary and
explained that I was ready to avail myself of his offer."

"And what did he say to that?"

"Well--er--we agreed to leave the decision to you."

"Was that all?"

"Practically all."

"Practically, but not quite. You quarreled, didn't you? Frankly, I do
not understand father's attitude but I know what his attitude is. He
does not want you here. Neither you nor anyone else. The secretarial
work you offer would be--I can't tell you exactly what it would be to
me. It would teach me something--and I am so hungry to know! But he
will find some way to make it impossible. You will have to go."

"Nonsense! He cannot go back on his agreement."

"You mean he has accepted money? That," bitterly, "means nothing to
him."

"Nevertheless it gives me ground to stand on. And you, too. You have
done secretarial work before?"

"Yes. I have certain qualifications. At intervals I have tried to make
myself independent. Several times I have secured office positions in
Vancouver. But father has always made the holding of them impossible."

"How?"

"I would rather not go into it." There was weary disgust in her voice.

"But what reason does he give?"

"That his daughter's place is in her father's house--funny, isn't it?"

"You do not think that affection has anything to do with it?"

"Not even remotely. Whatever his reason may be for keeping me with him,
it is not that. Affection is something of which one knows by instinct,
don't you think? Even Li Ho--I know instinctively that Li Ho is fond of
me. I am absolutely certain that my father is not."

"It is no life for a young girl."

"It has been my life."

The professor felt uncomfortable. There was that in her tone which
forbade all comment. She had given him this tiny glimpse and quite
evidently intended to give no more. But Spence, upon occasion, could be
a persistent man.

"Miss Desire," he said gravely, "do you absolutely decline my
friendship?" If she wanted directness, she was getting it now.

"How can I do otherwise?" Her face was turned from him and her low
voice was muffled by her hair. But for the first time she had cast away
her guard of light indifference. "Friendship is impossible for me. I
thought you would see--and go away. Nothing that you can do would be
any real help. I have tried before to free myself. But I could not.
Nor, in the little flights of freedom which I had, did I find anything
that I wanted. I am as well here as anywhere. Unless--"

She was silent, looking into the fire.

"Unless I were really free," she added softly.

He could not see her face. But she looked very young sitting there with
her unbound hair and hands clasped childishly about her knees.

"You have wondered about me--in a psychological way--ever since you
came." She went on, her voice taking on a harsher note. "You have been
trying to 'place' me. Well, since you are curious I will tell you what
I am. When I was younger and we lived in towns I used to wander off by
myself down the main streets to gaze in the windows. I never went into
any of the stores. The things I wanted were inside and for sale--but I
could not buy them. I was just a window-gazer. That's what I am still.
Life is for sale somewhere. But I cannot buy it."

The throb of her voice was like the beating of caged wings through the
quiet room.

"But--" began Spence, and then he paused. It wasn't at all easy to know
what to say. "You are mistaken," he went on finally. "Life isn't for
sale anywhere. Life is inside, not outside. And no one ever really
wants the things they see in other people's windows."

"I do," said Desire coldly.

She was certainty very young! Spence felt suddenly indulgent.

"What, then--for instance?" he asked.

The girl shook back her hair and arose.

"Freedom, money, leisure, books, travel, people!"

"I thought you were going to leave out people altogether," said Spence,
whimsically. "But otherwise your wants are fairly comprehensive. You
have neglected only two important things--health and love."

"I have health--and I don't want love."

"Not yet--of course--" began the professor, still fatherly indulgent.
But she turned on him with a white face.

"Never!" she said. "That one thing I envy no one. You are wondering why
I have never considered marriage as a possible way out? Well, it isn't
a possible way--for me. Marriage is a hideous thing--hideous!"

She wasn't young now, that was certain. It was no child who stood there
with a face of sick distaste. The professor's mood of indulgent
maturity melted into dismay before the half-seen horror in her eyes.

But the moment of revelation passed as quickly as it had come. The
girl's face settled again into its grave placidity.

"I'll get the tea," she said. "The kettle will be boiling dry."




CHAPTER VII

In the form of a letter from Professor Spence to his friend, Dr. John
Rogers.

No letter yet from you, Bones; Bainbridge must be having the measles.
Or perhaps I am not allowing for the fact that it takes almost a
fortnight to go and come across this little bit of Empire. Also Li Ho
hasn't been across the Inlet for a week. He says "Tillicum too muchy
hole. Li Ho long time patch um."

On still days, I can hear him doing it. Perhaps my hostess is right and
we are not so far away from the beach as I fancied on the night of my
arrival. I'll test this detail, and many others, soon. For today I am
sitting up. I'm sure I could walk a little, if I were to try. But I am
not in a hurry. Hurry is a vice of youth.

And I am actually getting some work done. Bones, old thing, I have made
a discovery for the lack of which many famous men have died too soon. I
have discovered the perfect secretary!

These blank lines represent all the things which I might say but which,
with great moral effort, I suppress. I know what a frightful bore is
the man who insists upon talking about a new discovery. Therefore I
shall not indulge my natural inclination to tell you just how perfect
this secretary is. I shall merely note that she is quick, accurate,
silent, interested, appreciative, intelligent to a remarkable
degree--Good Heavens! I'm doing it! I blush now when I remember that I
engaged Miss Farr's services in the first place from motives of
philanthropy. Is it possible that I was ever fatuous enough to believe
that I was the party who conferred the benefit? If so, I very soon
discovered my mistake. In justice to myself I must state that I saw at
once what a treasure I had come upon. You remember what a quick, sure
judgment my father had? Somehow I seem to be getting more like him all
the time. The moment any proposition takes on a purely business aspect,
I become, as it were, pure intellect. I see the exact value, business
value, of the thing. Aunt Caroline never agrees with me in this. She
insists upon referring to that oil property at Green Lake and that
little matter of South American Mines. But those mistakes were trifles.
Any man might have made them.

In this case, where I am right on the spot, there can be no possibility
of a mistake. I see with my own eyes. Miss Farr is a dream of
secretarial efficiency. She combines, with ease, those widely differing
qualities which are so difficult to come by in a single individual. It
is inspiring to work with her. I find that her co-operation actually
stimulates creative thought. My notes are expanding at a most
satisfactory rate. My introductory chapter already assumes form.
And--by Jove! I seem to be doing it again.

But one simply does not make these discoveries every day.

The other aspects of the situation here, the non-business aspects, are
not so satisfactory. The menage is certainly peculiar. I had what
amounted to a bloodless duel with mine host the other day. Perhaps I
was not as tactful as I might have been. But he is an irritating
person. One of those people who seem to file your nerves. In fact there
is something almost upsetting' about that mild old scoundrel. He gives
me what the Scots call a "scunner." (You have to hear a true Scot
pronounce it before you get its inner meaning.) And when, that day, he
began talking about his daughter's future being her father's care, I
said--I forget exactly what I said but he seemed to get the idea all
right. It annoyed him. We were both annoyed. He did not put his
feelings into words. He put them into his eyes instead. And horrid,
nasty feelings they were. Quite murderous.

The duel was interrupted by Li Ho. Li Ho never listens but he always
hears. Seems to have some quieting influence over his "honorable Boss,"
too.

But I wish you could have seen the old fellow's eyes, Bones. I think
they might have told some tale to a medical mind. Normally, his eyes
are blurry like the rest of his fatherly face. And their color, I
think, is blue. But just then they looked like no eyes I have ever
seen. A cold light on burnished steel is the only simile I can think
of--perfect hardness, perfect coldness, lustre without depth! The
description is poor, but you may get the idea better if I describe the
effect of the look rather than the look itself. The warm spot in my
heart froze. And it takes something fairly eerie to freeze the heart at
its core.

From this, as a budding psychologist, I draw a conclusion--there was
something abnormal, something not quite human in that flashing look.
The conclusion seems somewhat strained now. But at the time I was
undoubtedly glad to see Li Ho. Li Ho may be a Chink, but he is human.

You may gather that our "battle of the Glances" did not smooth my
pillow here. If the old chap didn't want me to stay before, he is even
less anxious for my company now. But I am going to stay. Aunt Caroline
would call this stubbornness. But of course it isn't. It is merely a
certain strength of character and a business determination to carry out
a business bargain. Dr. Farr allowed me to engage board here and to pay
for it. I am under no obligation to take cognizance of his deeper
feelings.

The only feelings which concern me in this matter are the feelings of
his daughter. If my staying were to prove a burden for her I could not,
of course, stay. But I see many ways in which I may be helpful, and I
know that she needs and wants the secretarial work which I have given
her. Usually she holds her head high and one isn't even allowed to
guess. But one does guess. Her meagre ration of life is plain beyond
all artifice of pride.

John, she interests me intensely. She is a strange child. She is a
strange woman. For both child and woman she seems to be, in fascinating
combination. But, lest you should mistake me, good old bone-head, let
me make it plain that there is absolutely no danger of my falling in
love with her. My interest is not that kind of interest. I am far too
hard headed to be susceptible. I can appreciate the tragedy of a
charming girl placed in such unsavory environment, and feel impelled to
seek some way of escape for her without being for one moment disturbed
by that unreasoning madness called love. Every student of psychology
understands the nature and the danger of loving. 'Every sensible
student profits by what he understands. You and I have had this out
before and you know my unalterable determination never to allow myself
to become the slave of those primitive and passing instincts. Nature,
the old hussy, is welcome to the use of man as a tool for her own
purposes. But there are enough tools without me. The race will not
perish because I intend to remain my own man. But I shall have to
evolve some way of helping Miss Farr. She cannot be left here under
these conditions.

I am writing to Aunt Caroline, briefly, that I am immersed in study and
that my return is indefinite. Don't, for heaven's sake, let her suspect
that I have employed Miss Farr as secretary. You know Aunt Caroline's
failing. Do be discreet!

Yours,

B. H. S.

P.S.: Any arrangement I may find it necessary to propose in Miss Farr's
case will be based on business, not sentiment.        B.




CHAPTER VIII

Desire was seated upon a moss-covered rock, hugging her knees and
gazing out to sea. It was her favorite attitude and, according to
Professor Spence, a very dangerous one, especially in connection with a
moss-covered rock. He would have liked to point out this obvious fact
but that would have been fussy--and fussy the professor was firmly
determined not to be. Aunt Caroline was fussy. The best he could do was
to select another rock, not so slippery, and to provide an object
lesson as to the proper way of sitting upon it. Unfortunately, Desire
was not looking. They had come a little way "up trail"--at least Desire
had said it was a little way, and her companion was too proud of his
recovered powers of locomotion to express unkind doubt of the
adjective. There had been no rainy days for a week. The air was
sun-soaked, and salt-soaked, and somewhere there was a wind. But not
here. Here some high rock angle shut it out and left them to the drowsy
calm of wakening Summer. Below them lay the blue-green gulf,
white-flecked and gently heaving; above them bent a sky which only
Italy could rival--and if Miss Farr with her hands clasped round her
knees were to move ever so little, either way, there was nothing to
prevent her from falling off the face of the mountain. The professor
tried not to let this reflection spoil his enjoyment of the view. He
reminded him-self that she was probably much safer than she looked. And
he remembered Aunt Caroline. Still--

"Don't you think you might sit a little farther back?" he suggested
carelessly.

"Why?"

"I can't talk to the back of your head."

"Talk!" dreamily, "do you really have to talk?"

Naturally the professor was silent.

"That's rude, I suppose," said Desire, suddenly swinging round (a feat
which brought Spence's heart into his mouth). "I don't seem to acquire
the social graces very rapidly, do I?"

"I thought," the professor's tone was somewhat stiff, "that we came up
here for the express purpose of talking."

"Y-es. You did express some such purpose. But--must we? It won't do any
good, you know."

"I don't know. And it will do good. One can't get anywhere without
proper discussion."

The girl sighed. "Very well--let's discuss. You begin."

"My month," said Spence firmly, "is almost up. I shall have to move
along on Friday."

"On Friday?" If he had intended to startle her, he had certainly
succeeded. "Was--was the arrangement only for a month?" she asked in a
lowered voice.

"The arrangement was to continue for as long as I wished. But only one
month's payment was made in advance. With Friday, Dr. Farr's obligation
toward me ends. He is not likely to extend it."

She sat so still that he forgot how slippery the moss was and thought
only of the growing shadow on her face.

"But, the work!" she murmured. "We are only just beginning. I wish--oh,
I shall miss it dreadfully."

"'It,'" said Spence, "is not a personal pronoun."

"I shall miss you, too, of course."

"Well, be careful not to overemphasize it."

Her grey eyes looked frankly and straightly into his. Their clear
depths held a rueful smile. "You are conceited enough already," she
said, "but if it will make you feel any better, I don't mind admitting
that I shall miss you far, far more than you deserve."

"Spoken like a lady!" said Spence warmly. "And now let us consider my
side of it. After the month that I have spent here--do you really think
that I intend to go away--like that?"

"There is only one way of going, isn't there?"

"Not at all. There are various ways. Ways which are quite, quite
different."

"You have thought of some other--some quite different way?"

"Yes. But I daren't tell it to you while you sit on that slippery rock.
It is a somewhat startling way and you might--er--manifest emotion. I
should prefer to have you manifest it in a less dangerous place."

Desire's very young laugh rippled out. "Fussy!" she said. But
nevertheless she climbed down and sat demurely upon stones in the
hollow. There was an unfamiliar light in her waiting eyes, the light of
interest and of hope.

Spence, rather to his consternation, realized that it was up to him to
justify that hope. And he wasn't at all sure ... however, he had to
go through with it, ... There was a fighting chance, anyway.

"Let's think about the work for a moment," he began nervously. "That
work, my book, you know, is simply going all to pot if you can't keep
on with it. You can see yourself what it means to have a competent
secretary. And you like the work. You've just admitted that you like
it."

He saw the light begin to fade from her eyes. She shook her head.

"If you are going to suggest that I go with you as your secretary," she
said with her old bluntness, "it is useless. I have tried that way out.
I won't try it again." Her lips grew stern and her eyes dark with some
too bitter memory.

"I honestly don't see what Dr. Farr could do," said Spence tentatively.

"You would," said Dr. Farr's daughter with decision.

"And anyway," proceeding hastily, "that wasn't what I was thinking of.
I knew that you would refuse to go as my secretary. I ask you to go as
my wife."

Desire rose.

"Is this where I am expected to manifest emotion?" she asked dryly.

"Yes. And you're doing it! I knew you would. Women are utterly
unreasoning. You won't even listen to what I have to say."

The girl moved slowly away.

"And I can't get up without help," he added querulously.

Desire stopped. "You can," she said.

"I can't. Not after that dreadful climb."

"Then I shall wait until you are ready. But we do not need to continue
this conversation."

The professor sighed. "This," he said, "is what comes of taking a woman
at her word."

"What?"

"I might have known," he went on guilefully, "that you didn't really
mean it. No young girl would."

"Mean what?"

"That you had no room in your scheme of things for ordinary marriage.
Of course you were talking nonsense. I beg your pardon."

"Will you kindly explain what you mean!"

"I will if you will sit down so that I may talk to you on my own level.
You see, your determination not to marry struck me very much at the
time because it voiced my own--er--determination also. I said to
myself, 'Here are two people sufficiently original to wish to escape
the common lot.' I thought about it a great deal. And then an idea
came. It was, I admit, the inspiration of a moment. But it grew. It
certainly grew."

Desire sat down again and folded her hands over her knees.

"I will listen."

"It is very simple," he hastened to explain. "Simplicity is, I think,
the keynote of all true inspiration. An idea comes, and we are filled
with amazement that we have so long ignored the obvious. Take our case.
Here are we two, strongly of one mind and wanting the same thing. A
perfectly feasible way of getting that thing occurs to me. Yet when I
suggest this way you jump up and rush away."

"I haven't rushed yet."

"No. But you were going to. And all because you cannot be logical. No
woman can."

His listener brushed this away with a gesture of impatience.

"I can prove it," went on the wily one. "You object to marriage, yet
you covet the freedom marriage gives. Now what is the logical result of
that? The logical result is fear--fear that some day you may want
freedom so badly that you will marry in order to get it."

"It is not--I won't."

"I knew you would not admit it. But it is true all the same. The other
night when you said 'marriage is hideous,' I saw fear in your eyes.
There is fear in your eyes now."

The girl dropped her eyes and raised them again instantly. Her slanting
eyebrows frowned.

"Nevertheless," she said, "I shall not marry."

"But you will, as an honest person, admit the other part of the
proposition--that you want something at least of what marriage can
give?"

"Yes."

"Well then--that states your case. Now let me state mine. I, too, have
an insuperable objection to marriage. My--er--disinclination is
probably more soundly based than yours, since it is built upon a wider
view of life. But I, too, want certain things which marriage might
bring. I want a home. Not too homey a home, in the strictly domestic
sense (Aunt Caroline is strictly domestic) but a--a congenial home. I
want the advice and help of a clever woman together with the sense of
permanence and security which, in our imperfect state of civilization,
is made possible only by marriage. And I, too, have my secret fear. I
am afraid that some day I may be driven--in short, I am afraid of Aunt
Caroline."

Desire's inquiring eyebrows lifted.

"A man--afraid of his aunt?"

"Yes," gloomily, "it is men who are afraid of aunts. It is not at all
funny," he added as her eyes relaxed, "if you knew Aunt Caroline you
wouldn't think so. She is determined to have me married and she has a
long life of successful effort behind her. One failure is nothing to an
aunt. She is always quite certain that the next venture will turn out
well. And it usually does. In brief, I am thirty-five and I go in
terror of the unknown. If I do not marry soon to please myself, I shall
end by marrying to please someone else. Do you follow me?"

"Make it plainer," ordered Desire soberly. "Make it absolutely plain."

"I will. My proposition is, in its truest and strictest sense, a
marriage of convenience. Marriage, it appears, can give us both what we
want, a formal ceremony will legalize your position as my secretary and
free you entirely from the interference of your father. It will permit
you to accept freely my protection and everything else which I have.
Your way will be open to the things you spoke of the other night,
freedom, leisure, money, travel, books. The only thing we are shutting
out is the thing you say you have no use for--love. But perhaps you did
not mean--"

"I did."

"Then, logically, my proposal is sound."

"Am I to take all these things, and give nothing?"

"Not at all. You give me the things I want most, freedom, security, the
grace of companionship, and collaboration in my work, so long as your
interest in it continues. I will be a safely married man and you--you
will be a window-gazer no longer. There is only one point"--the
speaker's gaze turned from her and wandered out to sea--"I can be sure
of what I can bring into your life," his voice was almost stern, "but I
warn you to be very sure of what you will be shutting out."

"You mean?"

"Children," said Spence crisply.

"I do not care for children."

The professor's soberness vanished. "Oh--what a whopper!" he exclaimed.

"I mean, I do not want children of my own."

"But supposing you were to develop a desire for them later on?"

She nodded thoughtfully.

"I might," she acknowledged. "But in my case it would be merely the
outcropping of a feminine instinct, easily suppressed. I am not at all
afraid of it. Look at all the women who are perfectly happy without
children."

"Hum!" said the professor. "I am looking at them. But I find them
unconvincing. There are a few, however, of whom what you say is true.
You may be one of them. How about Sami?"

"Sami? Oh, Sami is different. He is more like a mountain imp than a
child. I don't think Sami would seem real anywhere but here. If anyone
were to try to transplant him he might vanish altogether. Poor little
chap--how terribly he would miss me!" finished Desire artlessly.

She had accepted the possibility, then! Spence's heart gave a leap and
was promptly reproved for leaping. This was not, he reminded himself,
an affair of the heart at all. It was a coldly-thought-out, hard-headed
business proposition. Such a proposition as his father's son might
fittingly conceive. The thing to do now was to stride on briskly and
avoid sentiment.

"Then as we seem to agree upon the essentials," he said, "there remains
only one concrete difficulty, your father. He would object to marriage
as to other things, I suppose?"

"Yes, but we should have to ignore that."

"You wouldn't mind?" somewhat doubtfully.

"No. I have always known that a break would come some day. It isn't as
if he really cared. Or as if I cared. I don't. If I should decide that
there is an honest chance for freedom, a chance which I can take and
keep my self-respect, I am conscious of no duty that need restrain me."

Spence said nothing, and after a moment she went on.

"Why should I pretend--as he pretends? I loath it! Day after day, even
when there is no one to see, he keeps up that horrible semblance of
affection. And all the time he hates me. I see it in his eyes. And once
or twice--" She hesitated and then went rapidly on without finishing
her sentence. "There is some reason why it is to his advantage to keep
me with him. But it imposes no obligation upon me. I do not even know
what it is."

"Perhaps Li Ho may know?"

"Li Ho does know. Li Ho knows everything. But when I asked him he said,
'Honorable boss much lonely--heap scared of devil maybe.' Li Ho always
refers to devils when he doesn't wish to tell anything."

"I've noticed that. He's a queer devil himself. Would he stay on, do
you think?"

"Yes. And that's odd, too. In some way Li Ho is father's man. It's as
if he owned him. There must be a story which explains it. But no one
will ever hear it. Li Ho keeps his secrets."

Spence nodded. "Yes. Li Ho and his kind are the product of forces we
only guess at. I asked a man who had spent twenty years in China if he
had learned to understand the Oriental mind. He said he had learned
more than that, he had learned that the Oriental mind is beyond
understanding. But--aren't we getting away from our subject? Let's
begin all over again. Miss Farr, I have the honor to ask your hand in
marriage."

She was silent for so long a time that the professor had opportunity to
think of many things. And, as he thought, his heart went down--and
down. She would refuse. He knew it. The clean edge of her mind would
cut through all his tangle of words right to the core of the real
issue, And the core of the real issue was not as sound as it would need
to be to satisfy her demands. For in that core still lay a possibility,
the possibility of love. He had not eliminated love. Many a man has
loved after thirty-five. Many a girl who has sworn--but no, she would
not admit this possibility in her own case. It was only in his case
that she would recognize it. She would see the weak spot there.... She
would refuse. He could feel refusal gathering in her heart. And his own
heart beat hotly in his throat. For if this failed, what other way was
left? Yet to go and leave her here, alone in that rotting cottage on
the hill.... the prey of any ghastly fate.... no, it couldn't be done.
He must convince her. He must.

"My friend," said Desire (he loved her odd, old-fashioned way of
calling him "my friend"), "I admit that you have tempted me. But--I
can't. It wouldn't be fair. It is easy to feel sure for one's self but
it's another thing to be sure for others. A marriage of that kind would
not satisfy you. You say your outlook is wider than mine and of course
it is. But I have seen more than you think. Even men who are
tremendously interested in their work, like you, want--other things.
They want what they call love, even if to them it always sinks to
second place, if indeed it means nothing more than distraction. And
love would mean more than that to you. I have an instinct which tells
me that, in your case, love will come. You must be free to take it."

It was final. He felt its finality, and more than ever he swore that it
should not be so. There must be an argument somewhere--wait!

"Supposing," said Spence haltingly, "Supposing.... supposing I am not
free now? Supposing love has come--and gone?"

He was not a good liar. But his very ineptitude helped him here. It
tangled the words on his tongue, it brought a convincing dew upon his
forehead. "I'd rather not talk about it," he finished. "But you see
what I mean."

"Yes. I hadn't thought of that. It might make a difference. I should
want to be very sure. If there were any chance--"

"There is no chance. Positively none. That experience, which you say
you feel was a necessary experience in my case, is over and done with.
It cannot recur. I am not the man to--to--" he was really unable to go
on. But she finished it for him.

"To love twice," said Desire, looking out over the sea. "Yes I can
understand that--what did you say?"

"I think I may be able to walk now," said the professor.




CHAPTER IX

With the recovery of a leg sufficiently workable in the matter of
climbing stairs, Dr. Farr's boarder had resigned the family couch in
the sitting-room and had retired to his spartan chamber under the
eaves. From its open window that night he watched the moon. Let nothing
happen to the universe in the meantime, and there would be a full moon
on Friday night. The professor hoped that nothing would happen.

She had not exactly said "Yes" yet. He must not forget that. But it
could do no harm to feel reasonably sure that she was going to. He did
not conceal from himself that he had brought things off remarkably
well. That last argument of his had been a masterpiece of strategy.
There were other, shorter, words which might have described it. But
they were not such pleasant words. And when a thing is necessary it is
just as well to be pleasant about it. No harm had been done. Quite the
opposite. Desire's one valid objection had been neatly and effectually
disposed of. And now the matter could be dropped. It would be
forgotten.... What did it amount to in any case? Other men lied
every day saying they had never loved. He had lied only once in saying
that he had.... At the same time it might be very embarrassing to....
yes, certainly, the matter must be dropped!

They would, he supposed, find it necessary to elope.... No sense in
looking for trouble! The old gentleman had been odder than ever the
last day or so. He had ceased even to pretend that his guest's presence
was anything but an annoyance. He had refused utterly to enter into any
connected conversation and had been restless and erratic to a degree.
"Too muchy moon-devil," according to Li Ho. That very afternoon he had
met them coming down from their talk upon the rocks and the ironic
courtesy of his greeting had been little less than baleful. At supper
he had remarked sentimentally upon the flight of time, referring to the
nearness of Friday in a way eminently calculated to speed the parting
guest.

Friday, at latest, then? If they were to go they would go on
Friday.--Friday and the full moon.

In the meantime he felt no desire for sleep. The moon, perhaps?
Certainly there is nothing in the mere business-like prospect of
engaging a permanent secretary to cause insomnia. The professor
supposed it was simply his state of health in general. It might be a
good idea to drop a line to his medical man. He had promised to report
symptoms. Besides, it was only fair to prepare John. The candle was
burnt out, but the moon would do--pad on knee, he began to write....


"Beloved Bones--I am writing in the hope that the thought of you may
cause cerebral exhaustion. I find the moon too stimulating. Otherwise I
rejoice to report myself recovered. I can walk. I can climb hills. I
can un-climb hills, which is much worse, and I eat so much that I'm
ashamed to look my board money in the face. You might gently prepare
Aunt Caroline by some mention of an improved appetite.

I had a letter from Aunt Caroline yesterday. That is to say, three
letters. When you included (by request) "positively no letter writing"
in my holiday menu, you did not make it plain who it was that was
positively not to write. So, although she tells me sadly that she
expects no answers, Aunt Caroline positively does. I may say at once
that I know all the news.

On the other hand, there is some news which Aunt Caroline does not
know. Owing to your embargo on letters, I have not been able to inform
my Aunt of the progress of my book, nor of my discovery of the perfect
secretary. I have not, in short, been able to tell her anything.

So you will have to do it for me.

But first, as man to man, I want to ask you a question. Having found,
by an extraordinary turn of luck, the perfect secretary, would you
consider me sane if I let her go? Of course you would not. I asked
myself the same question yesterday and received the same answer.

So I have asked her to marry me.

I put it that way because I know you like to have things broken to you.
And now, having heard all your objections (oh, yes, I can hear them.
Distance is only an idea) I shall proceed to answer them.--

No. It is not unwise to marry a young girl whom I scarcely know. Why
man! That is part of the game. Think of the boredom of having to live
with some one you know? Someone in whose house of life you need expect
no odd corners, no unlooked for turnings, no steps up, or down, no
windows with a view? Only a madman would face such monotony.

No. It is not unfair to the other party. The other party has a mind and
is quite capable of making it up. She will not marry me unless she
jolly well wants to. Far more than most people, I think, she has the
gift of decision. Neither is it as if what I have to offer her were not
bona fide. Take me on my merits and I'm not a bad chap. My life may
have been tame but it has been clean. (Only don't tell Aunt Caroline).
I have a sufficiency of money. What I promise, I shall perform. And as
for ancestors--Well, I refer everyone to Aunt Caroline for ancestors.
If Miss Desire marries me she will receive all that is in the bond and
any little frills which I may be able to slip in. (There will not be
many frills, though, for my lady is proud.)

Yes. Aunt Caroline will make a fuss. I trust you will bear up under it
for my sake. I think it will be well for her to learn of my marriage
sufficiently long before our return to insure resignation, at least,
upon our arrival. After the storm the calm, and although, with my dear
Aunt, the calm is almost the more devastating, I trust you will acquit
yourself with fortitude.

And now we come to the only valid objection, which you have,
strong-mindedly, left until the last--my prospective father-in-law! He
is a very objectionable old party, and I do not mind your saying so.
But one simply can't have everything. And Bainbridge is a long way from
Vancouver. Also, as a husband I can take precedence, and, by George,
I'll do it! So you see your objection is really an extra inducement. It
is only by marrying the daughter of Dr. Farr that I can protect Dr.
Farr's daughter.

Are you satisfied now? I don't know whether I mentioned it, but she
hasn't actually said "yes" yet. She had certain objections, or rather a
certain objection which I found it necessary to meet in a--a somewhat
regrettable manner. I was compelled to adopt strategy. She thought our
proposed contract (we do things in a business manner) might not be
quite fair to me. She was ready to admit that I was getting a good
thing in secretaries but she feared that, later on, I might wish to
make a change. I had to meet this scruple somehow and I seemed to know
by instinct that she would not believe me if I expounded those theories
of love and marriage which you know I so strongly hold. Pure reason
would not appeal to her. So I had to fall back upon sentiment. Instead
of saying, "I shall never love. It is impossible," I said, "I have
loved. It is over."

Sound tactics, don't you think? ... Well I don't care what you think!
I have to get this girl safely placed somehow.

We shall have to elope probably. Fancy, an elopement at thirty-five!
The father seems to consider her continued presence here as vital to
his interest, though why, neither of us can understand. Well, I'm not
exactly afraid of the old chap but it will certainly be easier for her
if there are no wild farewells. Therefore we shall probably fold our
tent like the Arabs and steal away as silently as the "Tillicum" will
allow.

Li Ho will have to be told. He will know anyway, so we may as well tell
him. It appears that whatever may be the reasons for keeping a young
girl buried here, they do not extend to Li Ho. It will not be the first
time that his Chinese inscrutability has assisted at a (temporary)
departure.

I shall let Aunt Caroline know as soon as the act is irrevocable and
shall inform you at the same time so that you may not be unprepared.
You realize, I suppose, that you will be accused of being accessory?
Didn't you tell me that a trip would do me good?

We shall not come home for a few weeks. My secretary has spoken of an
old Indian whom she knows, a perfect mine of simon-pure folk-lore. He
lives some-where up the coast, about a day's journey, I think. We may
visit him. With her to interpret for me, I may get some very valuable
notes. I may add that we are both very keen on notes. When we have done
what can be done out here, we shall come home. The fall and winter we
shall spend upon the book. My secretary will insist upon attending to
business first. And then--well, then she wants to go shopping. So we
shall have to go where the good shops are.

What does she wish to buy? Oh, not much--just life, the assorted kind.

B. H. S.




CHAPTER X

It was the day before Friday. Friday, so very near, seemed already
palpably present in the surcharged air of the cottage. No one mentioned
it, but that made its nearness more potent. At his usual hour for
dictation, Professor Spence had come out upon the narrow veranda. But,
although his secretary was there, pencil in hand, he had not dictated.
Instead he had sat contemplating Friday so long that his secretary
tapped her foot in impatience.

"Are you really lazy?" she asked, "Or are you just pretending to be?"

"I am really lazy. All truly gifted people are. You know what Wilde
says, 'Real industry is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to
do.'"

The prompt, "Who is Wilde?" of the secretary did not disconcert him. He
had discovered that her ignorance was as unusual as her knowledge.

"Who is Wilde? Oh, just a little bit of English literature. Christian
name of Oscar. You'll come across him when you go shopping."

A faint pucker appeared between the secretary's eye-brows.

"You are coming shopping, aren't you?" asked Spence, faintly stressing
the verb.

"I--want to."

"That's settled then."

The pucker grew more pronounced. The secretary resigned all hope of
dictation and laid down her pencil.

"Tomorrow," reminded Spence gently, "is Friday."

"Yes, I know. And if I go, do I--we--go tomorrow?"

"It would be advisable."

"The time doesn't matter," mused Desire. "But--do you mind if I speak
quite plainly?"

"Not at all. You have hardened me to plain speaking."

"I have been thinking over what you told me. It does make a difference.
I see that I need not be afraid of--of what I was afraid of. It's as
if--as if we had both had the measles."

"You can take--" began Spence, but stopped him-self. It would never do
to remind her that one may take the measles twice.

"Of course you won't believe it, not for a long time anyway," she went
on in the tone of an indulgent grand-mother, "but love is only an
episode. You are fortunate to be well over it."

Spence sighed. He hadn't intended to sigh. It just happened.
Fortunately it was the correct thing.

"I don't want to distress you," kindly, "but we were rather vague the
other night. I understood the main fact, but that is about all. You
didn't tell me what happened after."

The professor's chair, which had been tilted negligently back, came
down with a thud.

"After?" he murmured meekly. "After--?"

"I mean," prompted Desire gently, "did she marry the other man?"

"The other man? I--I don't know." The professor was willing to be
truthful while he could. But instantly he saw that it wouldn't do.

"You--don't--know?" If ever incredulity breathed in any voice it
breathed in hers. It gave our weak-kneed liar the brace that he needed.

"No," he said sadly, "they were to have been married--I have never
heard."

"Oh! Then, of course, she did not live in your home town."

"Didn't she?" asked Spence, momentarily off guard. "Oh, I see what you
mean--no, naturally not."

"I thought that perhaps you might have been boy and girl together,"
dreamily. "It so often happens."

"It does," said Spence. "But it didn't."

"And is there no one--no friend, from whom you could naturally inquire?
You feel you wouldn't care to ask anyone?"

"Ask? Good heavens, no--certainly not!"

"Men are queer," said Desire naively. "A woman would just simply have
to ask."

"She would."

"You think me inquisitive?" Her quick brain had not missed the dry
implication of his tone. "But you see I had to know something. It's all
right, I'm sure. But it would have been so much--more comfortable if
she were quite married."

(Oh course it would--why in thunder hadn't he thought of that? The
professor was much annoyed with himself.)

"She is probably quite, utterly married long ago," he said gloomily.
"What possible difference can it make?"

"None. Don't look so bitter! Perhaps I should not have asked questions.
I won't ask any more--except one. Would you mind very much telling me
her name?"

Her name!

The harassed man looked wildly around. But there was no escape. Not
even Sami was in sight. Only a jeering crow flapped black wings and
laughed discordantly.

"Just her first name, you know," added Desire reasonably.

"Oh yes--certainly. No, of course I don't mind. I am quite willing to
tell you her name. But--do you mean her real name or--or--the name she
was usually called?" The professor was sparring wildly for time.

"Wasn't she called by her real name?"

"Well--er--not always."

Desire's eyebrows became very slanting. "Any name will do," she said
coldly.

The professor gathered himself together. "Her name," he said
triumphantly, "Was--is Mary."

He had done well for himself this time! His questioner was plainly
satisfied with the name Mary. Perhaps lying gets easier as you go on.
He hoped so.

"My mother's name was Mary," said Desire. "It is a lovely name."

Spence felt very proud of himself. Not only had he produced a lovely
name in the space of three seconds and a half, but he had also provided
a not-to-be-missed opportunity of changing the subject.

"I suppose you do not remember your mother," he said tentatively.

"Oh yes, I do, although I was quite small when she died. Father says I
fancy some of the things I remember. Perhaps I do. I always dream very
vividly. And fact and dream are easily confused in a child's mind. My
most distinct memories are detached, like pictures, without any before
or after to explain them. There is one, for instance, about waking up
in the woods at night, wrapped in my mother's shawl and seeing her
face, all frightened and white, with the moon, like a great, silver
eye, shining through the trees. But I can't imagine why my mother would
be hiding in the woods at night."

"Why hiding?"

"There is a sense of hiding that comes with the memory--without
anything to account for it But, although I do not remember connected
incidents very well, I remember her--the feeling of having her with me.
And the terrible emptiness afterwards. If she had gone quite away, all
at once, I couldn't have borne it."

"Do you mean that she had a long illness?" asked Spence, greatly
interested.

"No. She died suddenly. It was just--you will call it silly
imagination--" she broke off uncertainly.

"I might call it imagination without the adjective."

"Yes. But it wasn't. It was real. The sense, I mean, that she hadn't
gone away. Nothing that wasn't real would have been of the slightest
use."

"It all depends on how we define reality. What seems real at one time
may seem unreal at another."

She nodded.

"That is just what has happened. I am not sure, now. The sense of
nearness left me as I grew up. But at that time, I lived by it. Do you
find the idea absurd?"

"Why should I? Our knowledge of our own consciousness is the absurdity.
All we know is that our normal waking consciousness is only one special
type. Around it lie potential forms of consciousness entirely
different, and quite as real. Sometimes we, or it, or they, break
through. I am paraphrasing James. Do you know James?"

"I have read 'Daisy Miller.'"

"This James was the Daisy Miller man's brother."

"Did he believe in the possibility of the dead helping the living?"

"He believed in all kinds of possibilities. But I don't think he
considered that possibility proven."

"It couldn't be proved, could it?" asked Desire thoughtfully.
"Experiences like that are so intensely individual. One cannot pass
them on."

"Can you describe yours at all?"

"Hardly. It was just a feeling of Presence. A sense of her being there.
It came at all sorts of times and in all sorts of places. We lived in
Vancouver when mother died. It was a much smaller town then, not like
the city you have seen. But after her death we moved about a great
deal, never staying very long anywhere, until we came here. There
were--experiences." Her eyes hardened. "But, as long as I had that
sense I am speaking of, I was safe. I used to have long crying fits in
the dark, a kind of blind terror of everything. And after one of them
it nearly always came. I never questioned it. Never once did I ask
myself, 'Is it mother?'. I just knew that it was. There seemed nothing
unusual about it."

"Was there no one, no woman, to take care of you?"

"There were--women." Desire's lips tightened into a thin red line. "We
did not travel alone. Once I remember terrifying a--a friend of
father's who was 'looking after' me. She heard me crying in my little,
dark room one night, and as soon as she could slip away, came in. She
was a kindly sort. But when she got there I was quite content and
happy--which surprised her much more than the crying had done. She
asked me what had 'shut me up,' and I said 'My mother is here--go
away.' She turned quite pasty-white and the candle shook so that the
hot grease fell upon my hands."

"What a life for a child!" exclaimed Spence in sudden rage. "Desire
dear, you must come with me! I couldn't--couldn't leave you here.
I--oh, dash it! I mean, it's so evident, isn't it, that we need each
other?"

"You really and truly need me?" doubtfully.

"Really and truly."

"But if I come, you ought to know something of the life I have lived.
You must realize that I am not an innocent young girl."

"Aren't you?" The professor found it difficult to say this with the
proper inflection. It did not sound as business-like as he could have
wished. But she was too much absorbed to notice.

"No. I've seen things which young girls do not see. I have heard things
which are never whispered before them. No one cared particularly what I
saw or heard. When I was smaller there was always someone--some
'housekeeper.' They were all kinds. None of them ever stayed long.
Looking back, it seems as if they passed like lurid shadows. Only one
of them seemed a real person. The others were husks. Her name was Lily.
She was very stout, her face was red and her voice loud. But there was
something real about Lily. And she was fond of children. She liked me.
She went out of her lazy way to teach me wisdom--oh, yes, it was
wisdom," in answer to Spence's horrified exclamation, "hard, sordid
wisdom, the only wisdom which would have helped me through the back
alleys of those days. I am unspeakably grateful to Lily. She spared me
much, and once she saved me--I can't tell you about that," she finished
simply.

Spence bit his lip on a word to which the expression of his face gave
force and meaning. But Desire was not looking at him.

"Do you see why I am different from other girls?" She asked gravely.

The professor restrained himself. "I see that you are different," he
said. "I don't care why. But I'm glad that you have told me what you
have. It explains something that has bothered me--" he paused seeking
words. But she caught up his thought with lightning intuition.

"You mean it explains why marriage isn't beautiful to me, like it may
be to a sheltered girl? Yes. I wanted you to see that. It may be holy,
but it isn't holy to me. I want to live my life apart from all that. To
me it is smirched and sodden and hateful. And now, do you still wish me
to come and be your secretary?"

"Now more than ever," said Spence. It was only the sealing of a
business transaction. But greatly to his annoyance he could not
entirely control a certain warmth and eagerness.

Desire held out a frank hand.

"Then I will marry you when you are ready," she said.




CHAPTER XI

Being a delayed letter from Dr. John Rogers to his friend and patient,
Benis Hamilton Spence.

DEAR Idiot: I knew you would get it--and you got it. Perhaps after this
you will learn to treat your sciatic nerve with proper respect. But
there is a worse complaint than sciatica. It lasts longer. Certain
symptoms of it are indicated in the things which your letter leaves
unsaid. Beans, old thing, you alarm me.

Now here is a sporting offer. If you'll drop it and come home at once
I'll promise never to tell Aunt Caroline. Come the moment you can put
foot to the ground. And, until then, I recommend strict seclusion and
no nursing. Nursing might well be fatal. Stick to Li Ho. He is your
only chance.

Your Aunt Caroline sends her love. (I told her I was writing you
directions for further treatment). She feels the deprivation of your
letters keenly. She can't see why the writing of a nice, chatty letter
to one's only living Aunt should prove an undue drain upon nervous
energy. Life has taught her not to expect consideration from relatives,
but it does seem hard that her only sister's boy should treat her as if
she were the scarlet fever. To allow himself to be ordered away from
home for a rest cure was certainly less than courteous. To anyone not
understanding the situation it would almost imply that his home was not
restful. And after all the trouble she had taken even to the extent of
strained relations with those Macfarland people who own a rooster. If
the slight had been aimed entirely at herself she could have taken it
silently, but when it included the three or four charming girls whom
she had asked to visit (one at a time) for the purpose of providing
pleasant company, she felt obliged to protest. Although protest, she
knew, was useless. All this, however, she could have borne. The thing
that she could scarcely forgive was the slight offered to his native
town by a departure three days before the set date, thereby turning his
"going away" tea into a "gone away"--an action considered by all
(invited) Bainbridge as a personal insult.

Pause here for breath.

To continue. Your Aunt Caroline does not believe in rest cures anyway.
She thinks poultices are much more effective. It stands to reason that
if a thing is in, it ought to come out. Rest cures are just laziness.
But, thank goodness, she never expected anything from the Spence family
but laziness. And she had told her sister so before she married into
it....

Allow an hour here for ancestral history with appropriate comment and
another hour for a brief review of your own conduct from youth up and
we come within measurable distance of a few words by me. I took up the
point of the four or five nice girls who had been invited to visit. I
put the whole thing down to shock and pointed out that patience is
required. A return to physical normality, I said, would doubtless bring
with it a reviving interest in the sex. It was indeed very fortunate, I
told her, that you were, at present, indifferent. Any question of
selecting a life partner in your present nervous state would be most
dangerous. Your power of judgment, I pointed out, was temporarily
jarred and out of gear. You might marry anybody. The only safe, the
only humane way, was to give you time to recover yourself.

"Power of judgment!" said Aunt Caroline. "Do you mean to tell me that
my sister's son is in danger of becoming an idiot?"

I said not exactly an idiot. Yet your strong disinclination toward
marriage could certainly be traced to a shocked condition of the
nerves. Certain fixed ideas--

"Fixed ideas!" said your Aunt. She has a particularly annoying habit of
repeating one's words. "Benis has always had fixed ideas--though when
he was young," she added with satisfaction, "I knew how to unfix them.
If this absurd rest cure can do anything to cure chronic stubbornness,
I've nothing to say. Why, even his father was easier to manage."

"Benis," I said, "considers himself very like his father."

"Does he?" retorted your dear Aunt with withering scorn. "He is just as
much like his father as a lemon is like a lobster."

This ended our conversation. But the effect of it is still with me.
Last night I dreamed of lemons and today I prescribed lobster for a man
with acute dyspepsia. I tell you what, you old shirker, it's up to you
to come home and bear your own Aunt. I'm through.       Bones.

P.S. The office nurse has been changed since you left. I have now Miss
Watkins, returned from overseas. I think you knew her--name of Mary?
Very good looking--almost her only fault.

P.P.S. What you say about your pleasant old gentle-man with the
umbrella sounds very much like masked epilepsy. Ought to be under
treatment. I should say dangerous.

S.O.S. Aunt Caroline has just 'phoned to know whether all
letter-writing is barred or if not, wouldn't it be helpful if you were
to drop a line to a few of your young-friends? For herself she expects
nothing, but she does think, etc., etc., etc.!

Come back!          B.




CHAPTER XII

Comprising a lengthy letter from, Benis Spence to John Rogers, M.D.

DEAR and Venerable Bones: Your fatherly letter came too late. What was
going to happen has happened. But I will be honest and admit that its
earlier arrival would have made no difference. Calm yourself with the
thought that our fates are written upon our foreheads. I have been able
to read mine for some little time now. For there are some things which
are impossible and leaving Desire here was one of them.

I call her "Desire" to you because it is what you will be calling her
soon. Strange, how that small fact seems to place her' Fancy my
marrying someone whom you would naturally call "Mrs. Spence"? There are
such people. All Aunt Caroline's young friends are like that. You would
say, "I have looked forward to meeting you, Mrs. Spence," and she would
giggle and say, "Oh, Dr. Rogers, I have heard my husband speak of you
so often!" But Desire will say, "So this is John." And then she will
look at you with that detached yet interested look and you will find
yourself saying "Desire" before you think of it. You see, she belongs.

But before I bring you up to date with regard to recent events, I had
better tell you a few facts about my more remote past. I refer to Mary.
I have already told you that I found a past necessary. At that time I
hoped that something fairly abstract would do. But Desire does not like
abstractions. She likes to "know where she is." So I had to tell her
about Mary. I'll tell you, too, before I forget details and for
heaven's sake get them right! You never can tell when your knowledge
may be needed. In the first place there is the name. I'm rather proud
of that. I had to choose it at a moment's notice and I did not
hesitate. Desire herself says it is a lovely name. And so safe--amn't I
right in the impression that every second girl in Bainbridge and
elsewhere is called Mary? Mary, my Mary, might be anybody.

Here, then, are the main facts. I have had (pre-war) a serious
attachment. It was an affection tragically misplaced. She did not love
me. She loved another. She may, or may not, have married him. (It would
have been better to have had the marriage certain, but I didn't see it
in time.) I will never care for another woman. Her name was Mary.
Please tabulate this romance where you can put your hand on it. I may
need your help at any time. As a doctor your aid would be invaluable
should it become necessary for Mary to decease.

And now to leave romance for reality. Your long and lucid discourse on
masked epilepsy was most helpful. It was almost as informing as Li Ho's
diagnosis of "moon-devil." Both have the merit of leaving the inquirer
with an open mind. However--let's get on. If you have had my later
letters you will know that circumstances indicated an elopement. But
the more I thought of eloping, the more I disliked the idea. My father
was not a man who would have eloped. And, in spite of Aunt Caroline's
lobsters and lemons, I am very like my father. "That I have stolen away
this old man's daughter--" Somehow it seemed very Othelloish. I decided
to simply tell Dr. Farr, calmly and reasonably, that Desire and I had
decided to marry. I did tell him. I was calm and reasonable. But he
wasn't.

There is a bit of sound tactics which says, "Never let the enemy
surprise you." But how is one to keep him from doing it if he insists?
The surer you are that the enemy is going to do a certain thing, the
more surprised you are when he doesn't. Now I felt sure that when Dr.
Farr heard the news he would have a fit. I expected him to use language
and even his umbrella. But nothing of this kind happened. He simply sat
there like a slightly faded and vague old gentleman and said
"So?"--just like that.

I assured him, as delicately as possible that it was so.

Then, without warning, he began to weep. John, it was horrible! I can't
describe it. You would have to see his blurred old face and depthless
eyes before you could understand. Tears are healthy, normal things.
They were never meant for faces like his. I must have said something,
in a kind of horror, for he got up suddenly and trotted off into the
woods, without as much as a whisper.

It looked like an easy victory. But I knew it wasn't. I admit that I
felt rather sorry we had not eloped. Li Ho made me still sorrier.

"Not much good, you make honorable Boss cly," said Li Ho. "Gettie mad
heap better."

I felt that, as usual, Li Ho was right. And, just here, let me
interpose that I am quite sure Li Ho can speak perfectly good English
if he wishes. He certainly understands it. I have tried to puzzle him
often by measured and academic speech and never yet has he missed the
faintest shade of meaning. So I did not waste time with Pigeon English.
I told him the facts briefly.

"Me no likee," said Li Ho.

"You don't have to," said I.

Li Ho explained that it was not the contemplated marriage which
received his disapproval but the circumstances surrounding it. "Me
muchy glad Missy get mallied," said he. "Ladies so do, velly nice! When
you depart to go?"

"Tomorrow," I said. Since we had given up the elopement it seemed more
dignified to wait and depart by daylight.

Li Ho shook his head.

"You no wait tomolla," said he, "You go tonight. You go click."

"We can't go too quickly to suit me," I said. "It is for Miss Desire to
decide."

"Me tell Missy," he said and hurried away.

Somehow, Li Ho always knows where to find Desire. She vanishes from my
ken often, but never from his. He must have found her quickly this time
for she came at once. She looked troubled.

"Li Ho says we had better go tonight," she said.

"Can you be ready?"

"Yes. It isn't that. It's just that it would seem more--more sensible
by daylight. But Li Ho says you have told father, and that father
was--upset. He said something about tonight being the full moon. But I
can't see why that should matter. Do you?"

"Only that it will be easy to cross the Inlet."

"It can't be that. Li Ho can take the Tillicum' over on the darkest
night. It has something to do with father. He seems to think that the
full moon affects him. And it's true that he often goes off on the
mountain about that time. But I can't see why that should hurry us."

I did not see it either. And yet I felt that I should like to hurry.

"We certainly will not go unless you wish," I began. But Li Ho
interrupted me in his colorless way.

"Alice same go this eveling," he said blandly. "No take 'Tillicum'
tomolla. Velly busy tomolla. Velly busy next day. Velly busy all week."

"Look here," I said, "you'll do exactly what your mistress tells you."

His celestial impudence was making me hot. But Desire stopped me. "It's
no use," she explained. "I have really no authority. And he means what
he says. We must go tonight or wait indefinitely."

I was eager to be gone. But it went against the grain to be hustled off
by a Chinaman. Perhaps my face showed as much, for Desire went on. "You
needn't feel like that about it. He doesn't intend to be impudent. He
probably thinks he has a very real reason for getting us away. And Li
Ho's reasons are liable to be good ones. We had better go."

The rest of the day was uneventful, save for the incident of Sami. I
think I told you about Sami, didn't I? A kind of brown familiar who
follows Desire about. He is a baby Indian as much a part of the
mountain as the leaping squirrels and not nearly so tame. He is the one
thing here that I think Desire is sorry to leave. And for this reason I
hoped he wouldn't appear before we were gone. I had done all my
packing--easy enough since I had scarcely unpacked--and I could hear
Desire moving about doing hers. The place seemed particularly peaceful.
I could, have felt almost sorry to leave my cool, bare room with its
tree-stump for a table and all the forest just outside. But as I sat
there by the window there came upon me, for the second time that day, a
mounting hurry to be gone. There was nothing to account for it, but I
distinctly felt an inward "Hurry! Hurry!" So propelling was it that
only the knowledge that the "Tillicum" would not float until high tide
kept me from finding Desire and begging her to come away at once. I did
go so far as to wander restlessly down into the garden where she had
gone to feed the chickens. Perhaps I would have gone farther and
mentioned my misgivings but just then Sami came and I forgot all about
them. I don't believe I have ever seen any child so frightened as that
little Indian! He simply fell through the bushes behind the chicken
house and shot, like a small, brown catapult, into Desire's arms. His
round face was actually grey with fear. And he huddled in her big apron
shivering, for all the world like some terrified animal.

Naturally the first thing to do was to get the thing that had
frightened him. An axe seemed a likely weapon, so, picking it up, I
slid into the bushes at the point where Sami had come out of them.

Perfect serenity was there! The afternoon light lay golden on the moss
above the fallen trees. No hidden scurrying in the underbrush told of
wild, wood things hastening to safety from some half-sensed danger. No
broken branches or trampled earth told of any past or present struggle.
There was no trace of any fearsome creature having passed along that
peaceful trail.

I searched thoroughly and found nothing. On my way back to the clearing
I met Li Ho.

'"Find anything, Li Ho?" I asked eagerly.

The Celestial grinned.

"Find honorable self," said he. "Missy she send. Missy heap scared
along of you."

"Nonsense!" I said. "I can take care of myself. Even if it had been a
bear, I had an axe."

"Bear!" said Li Ho. And then he laughed. Did you ever hear a Chinaman
laugh? I never had. Not this Chinaman anyway. It was so startling that
I forgot what I was saying. Next moment I could have sworn that he had
not laughed at all.

We found Sami, much comforted, sitting upon Desire's lap, a thing he
could seldom be induced to do. At our entrance he began to shiver again
but soon quieted. Desire had tried questioning but it was of no use. He
either couldn't, or wouldn't, say anything about what had frightened
him. Desire was inclined to think that he did not know. But I was not
so sure. It's a fairly well established fact that children simply can't
speak of certain terrors. And the more frightened they are the more
powerful is the inhibition. In any case it was useless to question Sami
so we fed him instead and presently he went to sleep.

I suppose we all forgot him. I know I did. One doesn't elope every day.
And it was never Sami's way to insist upon his presence as ordinary
children do. Li Ho departed to tinker with the "Tillicum" and
afterwards returned to give us a late supper. Desire kept out of my
way. One might almost have thought that she was shy--if so, a most
perplexing development. For why should she feel shy? It wasn't as if we
had not put the whole affair on a perfectly business basis. Perhaps
there is some elemental magic in names, so that, to a woman, the very
word "marriage" has power to provoke certain nervous reactions?

However that may be, even Desire forgot Sami. We left the house just as
the clearing began to grow brighter with light from the still hidden
moon, and we were halfway down to the boat landing before anyone
thought of him. Oddly enough it was I who remembered. "Sami!" I
exclaimed, with a little throb of nameless fear. "We have forgotten
Sami."

Desire, I thought, looked surprised and somewhat vexed at her
oversight. But displayed no trace of the consternation which had
suddenly fallen on me.

"He is all right," she said. "He will sleep till morning unless his
mother comes for him."

"Where you leave um?" asked Li Ho briefly. He had already set down the
bag he was carrying.

"In my own bed."

"Me go get!" said Li Ho.

But I had not waited. I had started to "go get" myself. The sense of
breathless hurry was on me again. I did not pause to argue that the
child was perfectly safe. I forgot that I had ever been lame. Perhaps
that sciatic nerve is only mortal mind anyway. When I came out into the
clearing the cottage was turning silver in the first rays of the full
moon. Very peaceful and secure it looked. And yet I hurried!

I made no noise. To myself I explained this by a desire not to waken
the youngster. No use frightening him. I stole, as quietly as one of
his own ancestors, to the foot of the stairs. The door of Desire's room
was open. I could see a moonlit bar across the dark landing....

I think I went straight up that stair. I hope so. You know that one of
my worst nervous troubles has been a dread that I might fail in some
emergency? I dread a sort of nerve paralysis.... But I got up the
stair. The fear that seemed to push me back wasn't personal, or
physical--one might call it psychic fear, only that the word explains
nothing.... I looked in at the open door. There seemed to be nothing
there but the moonlight. The room must have been almost as bare as my
own. But over on the far side, beyond the zone of the window, was the
dim whiteness of a bed. I could see nothing clearly--but the Fear was
there. I dragged, actually dragged, my feet across the floor--my sight
growing clearer, until at last--I saw!

I think I shouted, but it was so like a nightmare that I may not have
made a sound.... The dragging weight must have left my feet as I
sprang forward ... but it is all confused! And the whole thing lasted
only a minute.

In that minute I had seen what I would have sworn was not human. Even
while I knew It for the little old man with the umbrella, I had no
sense of its humanness. Something bent above the bed--the old man's
face was there, the thin figure, the white hair, and yet it seemed the
wildest absurdity to call the Fury who wore them by any human name.

The eyes looked at me--eyes without depth or meaning--eyes like bits of
blue steel reflecting the light of Tophet--, incarnate evil, blazing,
peering ... I caught a glimpse of long, thin hands, like claws,
around the folded umbrella, a flash of something bright at the ferrule
... and then the picture dissolved like an image passing from a dimly
lighted screen. Before I could skirt the bed, whatever had been upon
the other side of it had melted into the darkness beyond the moon. I
bent over the bed. Sami was there--Sami, rolled shapelessly in the
concealing bedclothes, his round face hidden in the pillow, his black
hair just a blot of darkness on the white.... It might have been
Desire lying there! ...

I found the door through which the Thing had slipped. But it was
useless to try to follow. There was no one in the house nor in the
moonlit clearing. And Desire and Li Ho were waiting on the trail. I
picked up the still sleeping child and blundered down to them.

It seemed incredible to hear Desire's laugh.

"Good gracious!" she said. "You're carrying him upside down."

She had had no hint of danger. But with Li Ho it was different. He fell
back beside me when Desire had relieved me of the child. I could feel
his inscrutable eyes upon my face.

"You see um," said Li Ho. It was an assertion, not a question.

I nodded.

"No be scare," muttered he. "Missy all safe. Everything all safe now.
Li Ho go catch um. Li Ho catch um good. All light--tomolla."

"You mean you can manage him and he'll be all right tomorrow?" I said.
"But--what is it!"

The Celestial shrugged.

"Muchy devil maybe. Muchy moon-devil, plaps. Velly bad."

"There's a knife in that umbrella, Li Ho."

But though his eyes looked blandly into mine, I couldn't tell whether
this was news to Li Ho or not....

Well, that's the story. I've written it down while it's fresh, sparing
comment. Desire sang as we crossed the Inlet; little, low snatches of
song with a hint of freedom in them. She had made her choice and it is
never her way to look back. The old "Tillicum" rattled and chugged and
the damp crept in around our feet. But the water was a path of gold and
the sky a bowl of silver--and as an example of present day elopements
it had certainly been fairly exciting.

Yours, Benis.




CHAPTER XIII

Desire Spence bent earnestly over the writing pad which lay open upon
her knee.

"Mrs. Benis Hamilton Spence," she wrote. And then:

"Mrs. B. Hamilton Spence."

And then:

"Mrs. Benis H. Spence."

Over this last she sucked her pencil thoughtfully.

"One more!" prompted her husband encouragingly. "Don't decide before
you inspect our full line of goods."

"Initials, only, lack character," objected Desire. "There is nothing
distinctive about 'Mrs. B. H. Spence'. It doesn't balance well, either.
I think I'll decide upon the 'Benis H.' I like it--although I have
never heard of 'Benis' as a name before."

"You are not supposed to have heard of it," explained its owner
complacently. "It is a very exclusive name, a family name. My mother's
paternal grandmother was a Benis."

Desire was not attending. "Your nickname, too, is odd," she mused. "How
on earth could anyone make 'Beans' out of 'Benis Hamilton?'"

"Very easily--but how did you know that anyone had?"

"Oh, from a touching inscription on one of your books, 'To Beans--from
Bones.'"

"Well--there's a whole history in that. It happened by a well defined
process of evolution. When I went to school I had to have a name. A
school boy's proper name is no good to him. Proper names are simply not
done. But the christening party found my combination rather a handful.
No one could do anything with Benis and the obvious shortening of
Hamilton was considered too Biblical. 'Ham', however, suggested
'Piggy'. This might have done had there not already existed a 'Piggy'
with a prior right. 'Piggy' suggested 'Pork', but 'Pork' isn't a name.
'Pork' suggested 'Beans'. And once more behold the survival of the
fittest."

Desire laughed.

The professor listened to her laugh with a strained expression which
relaxed when no words followed it.

"I was afraid," he admitted penitently, "that you might want to know
why 'Pork' is not as much a name as 'Beans'."

"But--it isn't."

"Quite so. Only you are the first member of your delightful sex who has
ever perceived it. You are a perceptive person, Mrs. Spence."

It was the fourth day of their Business Honeymoon. Four days ago they
had landed from the cheerful little coast steamer whose chattering load
of summer campers they had left behind on the route. For four
sun-bright days and dew-sweet nights they had found themselves sole
possessors of a bay so lovely that it seemed to have emerged bodily
from a green and opal dream.

"'Friendly Bay,' they calls it," a genial deckhand told them, grinning.
"But you folks will be the only friends anywheres about. There's a sort
of farm across the point, though, and maybe you could hit the trail by
climbing, if you get too fed up with the scenery."

"Oh, we shan't want any company," said the new Mrs. Spence
innocently--a remark so disappointing in its unembarrassed frankness
that the deck-hand lost interest and decided that they were "just
relations" after all.

They had carried their camp with them, and, from where they now sat,
they could see its canvas gleaming ivory white against its background
of green. Desire's eyes, as she raised them from her name-building,
lingered upon it proudly. It was such a wonderful camp!--her first
experience of what money, unconsidered save as a purchasing agent, can
do. Even her personal outfit was something of a revelation. How
deliciously keen and new was this consciousness of clothes--the smart
high-laced boots, the soft, sand-colored coat and skirt, the knickers
which felt so easy and so trim, the cool, silk shirt with its wide
collar, the dainty, intimate things beneath! She would have been less
than woman, had the possession of these things failed to meet some
need,--some instinct, deep within, which her old, bare life had daily
mortified.

And it had all been so easy, so natural! How could she ever have
hesitated to make the change? Even her pride was left to her, intact.
He, her friend, had given and she had taken, but in this there had been
no spoiling sense of obligation, for, presently, she too was to give
and to give unstintedly: new strength and skill seemed already tingling
in her firm, quick hands; new vigor and inspiration stirred in her
eager brain--and both hands and brain were to be her share of
giving--her partnership offering in this pact of theirs. She was eager,
eager to begin.

But already they had been four days in camp without a beginning. So far
they had not even looked for the trail which was to lead them to the
cabin of Hawk-Eye Charlie whose store of Indian lore had been the
reason for their upcoast journey. This delay of the expeditionary party
was due to no fault of its secretary. During the past four days she had
proposed the search for the trail four times, one proposal per day. And
each day the chief expeditioner had voted a postponement. The chief
expeditioner was lazy. At least that was the excuse he made. And
Desire, who was not lazy, might have fretted at the inaction had she
believed him. But she knew it was not laziness which had drawn certain
new lines about the expeditioner's mouth and deepened the old ones on
his forehead. It was not laziness which lay behind the strained look in
his eyes and the sudden return of his almost vanished limp. These
things are not symptoms of indolence. They are symptoms of nerves. And
Desire knew something of nerves. What she did not know, in the present
case, was their exciting cause. Neither could she understand this new
reticence on the part of their victim nor his reluctance to admit the
obvious. She puzzled much about these problems while the lazy one
rested in the sun and the quiet, golden days wrought the magic of their
cure.

And Spence, mere man that he was, fancied that she noticed nothing. The
pleasant illusion hastened his recovery. It tended to restore a
complacency, rudely disturbed by an enforced realization of his own
back-sliding. He had been quite furious upon discovering that the
"little episode" of the moonlit cottage had filched from him all his
new won strength and nervous stamina, leaving him sleepless and
unstrung, ready to jump at the rattling of a stone. More and more,
there grew in him a fierce disdain of weakness and a cold determination
to beat Nature at her own game. Let him once again be "fit" and wily
indeed would be the trick which would steal his fitness from him.

Meanwhile, laziness was as good a camouflage as anything and lying on
the grass while Desire chose her name was pleasant in the extreme.

"Names," murmured the lazy one dreamily, "are things. When a thing is
'named true' its name and itself become inseparable and identical. That
is why all magic is wrought by names. It becomes simply a matter of
knowing the right ones."

"Is that a very new idea, or a very old one?"

"All ideas are ageless, so it must be both."

"I wonder how they named things in the very, very first?" mused Desire.
"Did they just sit in the sun, as we are sitting, and think and think,
until suddenly--they knew?"

"Very likely. There is a legend that, in the beginning, everything was
named true--fire, water, earth, air--so that the souls of everything
knew their names and were ruled by those who could speak them. But, as
the race grew less simple and more corrupt, the true names were
obscured and then lost altogether. Only once or twice in all the ages
has come some master who has known their secret--such, perhaps, as He
who could speak peace to the wind and walk upon the sea and change the
water into wine."

Desire nodded. "Yes," she said. "It feels like that--as if one had
forgotten. Sometimes when I have been in the woods alone or drifting
far out on the water, where there was no sound but its own voice, it
has seemed as if I had only to think--hard--hard--in order to remember!
Only one never does."

"But one may--there is always the chance. I fancied I was near it
once--in a shell hole. The stars were big and close and the earth
seemed light and ready to float away. I almost had it then--my lips
were just moving upon some mighty word--but someone came. They found me
and carried me in ... I say, the sun is climbing up, let's follow it."

Hand in hand they followed the line of the sinking sun up the slippery
slope. They both knew where they were going, for every evening of their
stay they had wandered there to sit awhile in the little deserted
Indian burying-ground which lay, white fenced and peaceful, facing the
flaming west. When they had found it first it had seemed to give the
last touch of beauty to that beautiful place.

"It is so different," said Desire, searching carefully, as was her way,
for the proper word. "It is so--so beautifully dead. It ought to be
like that," she went on thoughtfully. "I never realized before why our
cemeteries are so sad--it is because we will not let them really
die--we dress them up with flowers--a kind of ghastly life in death.
But this--"

They looked around them at the little white-fenced spot with its great
centre cross, grey and weather-beaten, and all its smaller crosses
clustering round. There was warmth here, the warmth of sun upon a
western slope. There was life, too, the natural life of grass and vine,
the cheerful noise of birds and squirrels and bees. And, for color,
there were harmonies in all the browns and greens and yellows of the
rocky soil.

"Let us sit here. They won't mind. They are all sleeping so happily,"
Desire had declared. "And the crosses make it seem like one large
family--see how that wild rose vine has spread itself over a whole
group of graves! It is so friendly."

Spence had fallen in with her humor, and had come indeed to love this
place where even the sun paused lingeringly before the mountains
swallowed it up.

This afternoon he flung himself down beside their favorite rose-vine
with the comfortable sense of well-being which comes with returning
health. Even more than Desire, he wondered that he had ever hesitated
before an arrangement so eminently satisfying. If ever events had
justified an impulse, his impulse, he felt, had been justified. He
stole a glance at Desire as she sat in pleasant silence gazing into the
sunset. She was happier already, and younger. Something of that hard
maturity was fading from her eyes--the tiny dented corners of her lips
were softer.... Oh, undoubtedly he had done the right thing! And
everything had run so smoothly. There had been no trouble. No unlocked
for Nemesis had dogged his steps even in the matter of that small
strategy concerning his unhappy past. He had been unduly worried about
that, owing probably to early copy-book aphorisms. Honesty is the best
policy. Yes, but--nothing had happened. Mary, bless her, was already
only a memory. She had played her part and slipped back into the void
from whence she came. He could forget her very name with impunity. A
faint smile testified to a conscience lulled to warm security.

But security is a dangerous thing. It tempts the fates. Even while our
strategist smiled, the girl who sat so silently beside him was
wondering about that smile--and other things. He was much better, she
reflected, if he could find his passing thoughts amusing. Amusement at
one's own fancies is a healthy sign. And today she had noticed, also,
that his laziness was almost natural. Perhaps it might be safe now to
say what she had made up her mind should be said. But not too abruptly.
When next she spoke it was merely to continue their previous discussion.

"Do you think people may have 'true' names, too?" she asked presently.
"Just ordinary people, like you and me?"

Spence nodded. "Always noting," he added, "that you and I are not
ordinary people."

"Then if anyone knew another's true name, and used it, the other could
not help responding?"

"Um-m. I suppose not."

"Perhaps that is what love is," said Desire.

Even then no presentiment of coming trouble stirred beneath Spence's
dangerous serenity. Perhaps it was because the air had made him
comfortably drowsy. He merely nodded, deftly swallowing a yawn. Desire
went on:

"Then love is only complete understanding?"

"Always thought it might be some trifle like that," murmured the drowsy
one. "But don't ask me. How should I know? That is," rousing hastily,
"I do know, of course. And it is. There's a squirrel eating your hat."

Desire changed the position of the hat. But the subject remained and
she resumed it dreamily.

"Then in order that it might be quite complete, the understanding would
have to be mutual. If only one loved, there would always be a lack."

"Not a doubt of it!" said Spence firmly.

"Well, then--don't you see?"

"See? See what? That squirrel's eating your hat again."

"Go away!" said Desire to the squirrel. And, when it had gone, "Don't
you see?" she repeatedly gravely.

The professor always loved her gravity. And he had not seen. He was, in
fact, almost asleep. "You tell me," he said, rushing upon destruction.

Then Desire said what she had made up her mind to say. He never knew
exactly what it was because before she actually said the word "Mary,"
he was too sleepy, and afterwards he was too dazed.

Mary! The word went through him like an electric shock. It tingled to
his criminal toes. It whirled through his cringing brain like a
pinwheel suddenly lighted. It exploded like a bomb in the recesses of
his false content.

Desire was talking about Mary! Talking about her in that frank and
unembarrassed way which he had always admired. But good heavens! didn't
she realize that Mary was dead and buried? No. She evidently did not.
Far from it. When he was able to listen intelligently once more, Desire
was saying:

"... and, to a man like you, philosophy should be such a help. I feel
you will be far, far less unhappy if you do not shut yourself up with
your memories. Do you suppose I have not noticed how nervous and worn
out you have been since the night we came away? Why have you tried to
hide it?"

"I haven't--"

"Yes you have. Please, please don't quibble. And hidden things are so
dangerous. It isn't as if I would not understand. You ought to give me
credit for a little knowledge of human nature. I knew perfectly well
that when you married me--you would think of Mary. You could hardly
help it."

The professor sat up. He was not at all sleepy now. Mary had "murdered
sleep." But he was still dazed.

"Wait a moment." He raised a restraining hand. "Let me get this right.
You say you have noticed a certain lack of energy in my manner of late?"

"Anyone must have noticed it."

"But I explained it, didn't I?"

"Yes?" The slight smile on Desire's lips was sufficient comment on the
explanation. The professor began to feel injured.

"Then I gather, further, that you do not accept the explanation?"

"Don't be cross! How could I? I have eyes. And my point is simply that
there is no need for any concealment between us. You promised that we
should be friends. Friends help friends when they are in trouble."

The professor rumpled his hair The pinwheel in his brain was slowing
down. Already the marvelous something which accepts and adjusts the
unexpected was hard at work restoring order. Mary was not dead. He had
to reckon with Mary. Very well, let Mary look to her-self. Let her
beware how she harassed a desperate man! Let her--but he was not pushed
to extremes yet.

"I thought," he said slowly, "that we had tacitly agreed not to reopen
this subject."

Desire looked surprised.

"And I still think that it would be better, much better to ignore it
altogether."

"Oh, but it wouldn't," said Desire. "See how dreadfully dumpy you have
been since Friday."

"I have not been dumpy. But supposing I have, there may be other
reasons. What if I can honorably assure you that I have not been
thinking of the past at all?"

"Then I should want to know what you have been thinking of."

"But supposing I were to go further and say that my thoughts are my own
property?"

"That would be horridly rude, don't you think? And you are not at all a
rude person. If you'll risk it, I will."

Her smile was insufferably secure.

"You are willing to risk a great deal," snapped Spence. "But if it's
truth you want--"

He almost confessed then. The temptation to slay Mary with a few well
chosen words almost overpowered him. But he looked at the expectant
face beside him and faltered. Mary would not die alone. With her would
die this newborn comradeship. And Desire's smile, though insufferable,
was sweet. How would it feel to see that bright look change and pale to
cold dislike? Already in imagination he shivered under the frozen anger
of that frank glance.

He could not risk it!

Should he then, ignoring Mary, ascribe his symptoms to their true
cause? By dragging out the horror of that moonlit night, he could
account for any vagary of nerves. But that way of escape was equally
impossible. He could not let that shadow fall across her path of
new-found freedom. Nor would he, in any case, gain much by such
postponement. The wretched professor began to realize that the devil is
indeed the father of lies and that he who sups with him needs a long
spoon.

Meanwhile, Desire was waiting.

He felt that he would like to shake her--sitting there with untroubled
air and face like an inquiring sphinx--to shake her and kiss her and
tell her that there wasn't any Mary and--he brought himself up with a
start. What nonsense was this!

"Look here," he said irritably, "you are all wrong. You really are.
It's perfectly true I've been feeling groggy. But there doesn't have to
be a reason for that, unfortunately. Old Bones warned me that I might
expect all kinds of come-backs. But I'm almost right again now. Another
day or two of this heavenly place and I shan't know that I have a
nerve."

"Yes," critically. "You are better. I should say that the worst was
over."

"I'm sure it is. Supposing we leave it at that."

Desire smiled her shadowy smile. "Very well. But I wanted you to know
that I understand. It's so silly to go on pretending not to see, when
one does see. And it's only natural that things should seem more
poignant for a time. Only you will recover much more quickly if you
adopt a sensible attitude. I do not say, 'do not think of Mary,' I say
'think of her openly.'"

"How," said Spence, "does one think openly?"

"One talks."

"You wish me to talk of Mary?"

"It will be so good for you!" warmly.

They looked for a moment into each other's eyes. And Spence was
conscious of a second shock. Was there, was there the faintest glint of
something which was not all sympathy in those grey depths of hers?
Before his conscious mind had even formulated the question, his other
mind had asked and answered it, and, with the lightning speed of the
subconscious, had acted. The professor became aware of a complete
change of outlook. His remorse and timidity left him. His brain worked
clearly.

"Very well," said the professor.

The worm had turned!




CHAPTER XIV

Mornings are beautiful all over the earth but Nature keeps a special
kind of morning for early summer use at Friendly Bay. In sudden
clearness, in chill sweetness, in almost awful purity there is no other
morning like it. It wrings the human soul quite clear of everything
save wonder at its loveliness.

Desire never bathed until the sun was up, not because she feared the
dawn-cold water but because she would not stir the unbroken beauty of
its opal tide. With the first rays of the sun, the spell would break,
the waves would dance again, the gulls would soar and dip, the crabs
would scuttle across the shining sand, the round wet head of a friendly
seal would pop up here and there to say good-morning. Then, Desire
would swim--far out--so far that Spence, watching her, would feel his
heart contract. He could not follow her--yet. But he never begged her
not to take the risk, if risk there were. Why should she lose one happy
thrill in her own joyous strength because he feared? Better that she
should never come back from these long, glorious swims than that he
should have held her from them by so much as a gesture.

And she always did come back, glowing, dripping, laughing, her head as
sleek as a young seal's, salt upon her lips and on her wave-whipped
cheek. Spence, whose swims were shorter and more sedate, would usually
have breakfast ready.

But upon this particular morning Desire loitered. Though the smell of
bacon was in the air, she sat pensively in the shallows of an outgoing
tide and flung shells at the crabs. She would have told you that she
was thinking. But had she used the word "feeling" she would have been
nearer the truth. And the thing which she obscurely felt was that
something had mysteriously altered for the worse in a world which, of
late, had shown remarkable promise. It was a small thing. She hardly
knew what it was. Merely a sense of dissonance somewhere.

Whatever it was, it had not been there yesterday. Yesterday morning she
had felt no desire to sit in the shallows and throw shells at crabs.
Yesterday morning her mind had been full of that happy inconsequence
which feels no need of thought. Today was different. Mentally she shook
herself with some irritation. "What is the matter with you?" she asked.
But the self she addressed seemed oddly reluctant. "Come now," said
Desire, hitting an especially big crab, "out with it! There's no use
pretending that you don't know." Thus adjured, the self offered one
single and sulky word. The word was "Mary." "Oh, nonsense!" said Desire
hastily.

But there it was. She had forced the answer and had to make the best of
it. Her memory trailed back. Once started, it had small difficulty in
tracking her dissatisfaction to its real beginning. Everything, it
reminded her, had been perfect until she and Benis had sat upon the
hill in the sunset and talked about Mary. Something had happened then.
Like a certain ancestress she had coveted the fruit of knowledge and
knowledge had been given her. Not at once--Benis had at first been
distinctly reluctant--but by gentle persistence she had won through his
cool reserve. Abruptly and without visible reason, his attitude had
changed. He had said in that drawling voice of his, "You wish me to
talk about Mary?" And then, suddenly, he had talked.

He had told her several things. The color of Mary's hair, for instance.
Her hair was yellow. Benis had been insistent in pointing out that when
he said "yellow" he did not mean goldish or bronze, or fawn-colored or
tow-colored or Titian, but just yellow. "Do you see that patch of sky
over there where the mountain dips?" he had said. "Mary's hair was
yellow, like that."

That patch of sky, as Desire remembered it, was very beautiful. Quite
too beautiful to be compared to any-one's hair. No doubt it was only in
Benis's imagination that Mary's hair was anything like it.

But nevertheless it was there that the world had gone wrong. It was
while Benis had sat gazing into that patch of amber sky that Desire,
gazing too, had, for the first time, realized the Other. Up until then,
Mary had been an abstraction--thenceforth she was a personality. That
made all the difference. Desire, throwing shells at crabs, admitted
that, for her, there had been no Mary until she had heard that her hair
was yellow.

It was ridiculous but it was true. Mary without hair had been a gentle
and retiring shade. A phantom in whom it had been possible to take an
academic interest. But no shade has a right to hair like an amber
sunset. Desire threw a shell viciously. Very little more, she felt, and
she would positively dislike Mary!

She jumped up and stamped in the shallow water. The crabs, big and
little, scuttled away.

"Hurr-ee!" called the professor waving a frying-pan.

"Com-ing!" Desire's voice rose gaily. For the present, her small
dissatisfaction vanished with the crabs.

"This coffee has been made ten minutes," grumbled the
getter-of-breakfast with a properly martyred air. "Whatever were you
doing?"

"Thinking."

"It isn't done. Not before breakfast."

"I was thinking," fibbed Desire, "that I have never been so spoiled in
my life and that it can't go on. My domestic conscience is beginning to
murmur. As soon as we are at home, you will be expected to stay in bed
until you smell the coffee coming up the stairs."

"Aunt Caroline," said the professor, "does not believe in coffee for
breakfast, except on Sunday."

"I do."

"Eh? Oh--I see. Well, I'll put my money on you. Only I hope you aren't
really set on making it yourself. Because the cook would leave.'"

"Good gracious! Do we have a cook?"

"We do. At least, we did. Also a maid. But maids, I understand, are
greatly diminished. There appear to have been tragedies in Bainbridge.
Have you eaten sufficient bacon to listen calmly to an extract from
Aunt Caroline's last? Sit tight, then--

"'As to what the world is coming to in the matter of domestic
service,'" writes Aunt Caroline, "I do not know. I do not wish to worry
you, Benis, but as you will be marrying some day, in spite of that
silly doctor of yours who insists that it's not to be thought of, you
may as well be conversant with the situation. To put it briefly--I have
been without competent help for two weeks. You know, dear boy, that I
am easily satisfied. I expect very little from anyone. But I think that
I am entitled to prompt and willing service. That, at the very least!
Yet I must tell you that Mabel, my cook, has left me most ungratefully
after only three months' notice! She is to be married to Bob Summers,
the plumber. (Lieutenant Robert Summers, since the war, if you please!)
Well, she can never say I did not warn her. I did not mince matters. I
told her exactly what married life is, and why I have never tried it.
But the foolish girl is beyond advice. I have had two cooks since
Mabel, but one insisted upon whistling in the kitchen and the other
served omelette made with one egg. My wants are trifling, as you know,
but one cannot abrogate all personal dignity--'

"Do you get the subtle connection between the one egg and Aunt
Caroline's personal dignity?" asked Spence with anxiety. "Because if
you don't, I'll never be able to ask you to live in Bainbridge. I may
as well confess now that it was only my serene confidence in your sense
of humor which permitted me to marry you at all. I should never have
dared to offer Aunt Caroline as an 'in-law' to anyone who couldn't see
a joke."

"You are very fond of her all the same," said Desire shrewdly. "And
though she expects very little from anyone, she evidently adores you.
She can't be all funny. There must be an Aunt Caroline, deep down, that
is not funny at all. I think I'm rather afraid of her. Only you have so
often said that she wished you to get married--"

"Excuse me, my dear. What I said was, 'Aunt Caroline wished to get me
married.' The position of the infinitive is the important thing. Aunt
Caroline never intended me to do it all by myself."

"Oh. Then, in that case, she may resent your having done it."

"Resent," cheerfully, "is a feeble word. It doesn't express Aunt
Caroline at all."

"You take it calmly."

"Well, you see I've got you to fight for me now."

They looked at each other over the empty coffee cups and laughed.

It is easy to laugh on a fine morning. But if they had known where Aunt
Caroline was at that moment--how-ever, they didn't.

"Once," said Spence "my Aunt read a book upon Eugenics. I don't know
how it happened. It was one of those inexplicable events for which no
one can account. It made a deep impression. She has studied me ever
since with a view to scientific matrimony. Alas, my poor relative!"

"I once read a book upon Eugenics, too," said Desire with a reminiscent
smile. "It seemed sensible. Of course I was not personally interested
and that always makes a difference. One thing occurred to me,
though--it didn't seem to give Nature credit for much judgment."

Benis chuckled. "No, it wouldn't. Terrible old blunderer, Nature!
Always working for the average. Never seems to have heard the word
'specialize.' We've got her there."

"Then you think--"

"Oh no," hastily, "I don't. I observe results with interest, that is
all."

Desire began to collect the breakfast dishes. "That was where the book
seemed weak," she said thoughtfully. "It hadn't much to say about
results. It dealt mostly with consequences. They," she added after a
pause, "were rather frightening."

The professor glanced at her sharply. Had she been worrying over this?
Had she connected it with that dreadful old man whom she called father?
But her face was quite untroubled as she went on.

"I think they've missed something, though," she said. "There must be
something more than the things they tabulate. Some subtle force of life
which isn't physical at all. Something that uses physical things as
tools. If its tools are fine, it will do finer work, but if its tools
are blunt it will work with them anyway. And it gets things done."

"By Jove!" said Spence. This was one of Desire's "windows with a view."
He was always stumbling upon them. But he knew she was shy of comment.
"We'll tell Aunt Caroline that," he murmured hopefully. "It may
distract her mind." ...

That day they found and followed the trail to the shack of Hawk-Eye
Charlie. It proved to be neither long nor arduous. The professor
managed it with ease. But he would have been quite unable to manage the
hawk-eyed one without the expert aid of his secretary. To his
unaccustomed mind their quarry was almost witless and exceedingly
dirty. But Desire knew her Indian.

"It isn't what he is, but what he knows," she explained. "And he has a
retiring nature."

So very retiring was it that only fair words, aided by tactful displays
of tea and tobacco, could penetrate its reservations. Desire was quite
unhurried. But presently she began to extract bits of carefully hidden
knowledge. It had to be slow work, for, witless as he of the hawk-eye
seemed, he was well aware of the value (in tobacco) of a wise
conservation. He who babbles all he knows upon first asking is a fool.
But he who withholds beyond patience is a fool also. Was it not so?
Desire agreed that a middle course is undoubtedly the path of wisdom.
She added, carelessly, that the white-man-who-wished-stories was in no
hurry. Neither had he come seeking much for little. Payment would be
made strictly on account of value received. The tea was good. And the
tobacco exceptionally strong, as anyone could tell from a distance. Why
then should the hawk-eyed one delay his own felicity?

This hastened matters considerably and the secretary's note-book was
soon busy. Spence felt his oldtime keenness revive. And Desire was
happy for was not this her work at last? It was a profitable day.
Should anyone care to know its results, and the results of others like
it, they may look up chapter six, section two, of Spence's Primitive
Psychology, unabridged edition. Here they will find that the fables of
Hawk-Eye Charlie, properly classified and commented upon, have added
considerably to our knowledge of a fascinating subject. But far be it
from us to steal the professor's thunder. We are not writing a book
upon primitive psychology. We are interested only in the sigh of
pleasurable satisfaction with which the professor's secretary closed
her fat note-book and called it a day.

From that point our interest leads us back to camp along the trail
through the warm June woods with the late sunlight hanging like golden
gauze behind the fretted screens of green. We are interested in sunsets
and in basket suppers eaten in the dim coolness of a miniature canyon
through which rushed and tumbled an icy stream from, the snow peaks far
above. We are interested in a breathless race with a chattering
squirrel during which Desire's hair came down--a bit of glorious autumn
in the deep green wood--and the tying of it up again (a lengthy
process) by the professor with cleverly plaited stems of tender
bracken. All these trifles interest us because, to those two who knew
them, they remained fresh and living memories when the note-book and
its contents were buried in the dust of yesterday.

It was twilight when they came out of the wood. The sun had gone and
taken its golden trappings with it. A clear, still light was everywhere
and, in the brilliant green of the far sky, a pale star shone. They
watched it brighten as the green grew dark. A wonderful purple blueness
spread upon the distant hills.

Desire sighed happily.

"It is the end of the first day of real work," she said. "The end and
the beginning."

Her companion, usually like wax to her moods, made no answer. He did
not seem to hear. His gaze seemed drowned in that wonderful blue.
Desire, who had been unaccountably content, felt suddenly lonely and
disturbed.

"What is it?" she asked. Her voice had fallen from its glad note. She
put out her hand, touching his coat sleeve timidly. It was the first
time she had ever touched him save in service. But if her touch brought
a thrill there was no> sign of it. Her voice dropped still lower, "What
are you thinking of?" she almost whispered.

The professor did not answer. Instead he turned to her with a sad
smile. (Very well done, too!)

Desire dropped her hand with a sharp exclamation. "Oh," she said, "I
forgot! You were thinking--"

The professor's smile smote her.

"Her eyes were blue like that!" he said.

Desire tripped over a fallen branch. And, when she recovered herself,
"Purple, do you mean?" she asked. "I have always thought purple eyes
were a myth."

"Now you are making fun," said the professor after a reproachful pause.

"How do you mean--making fun?"

"'I never saw a purple cow,'" quoted he patiently.

"Oh, I wasn't!" cried Desire in distress.

Spence begged her pardon. But he did it abstractedly. His eyes were
still upon the sky.

"You'll fall over that root," prophesied she grimly. "Do look where you
are going!"

The professor returned to earth with difficulty. "Sorry!" he murmured.
"I doubt if I should allow these moods to bother you. But you told me
it might do me good to talk."

"Not all the time!" said Desire a trifle tartly.

He looked surprised. "But--" he began.

"Oh, I'm so hungry!" said Desire. "Do let's hurry."

She hastened ahead down the slope towards the camp. The tents lay in
the shadow now but, as they neared them, a flickering light shot up as
if in welcome. Desire paused.

"Someone lighting a fire!" she exclaimed in surprise. "Who can it be?"

Against the glow of the new-lit blaze a tall figure lifted itself and a
clear whistle cut the silence of the Bay.

Spence's graceful melancholy dropped from him like a forgotten cloak.

"Bones!" he gasped in an agitated whisper. "Oh, my prophetic soul, my
doctor!"

Another figure rose against the glow--a wider figure who called shrilly
through a cupped hand.

"Ben--is!"

"My Aunt!" said the professor.

He sat down suddenly behind a boulder.




CHAPTER XV

To understand Aunt Caroline's arrival at Friendly Bay we should have to
understand Aunt Caroline, and that, as Euclid says, is absurd.
Therefore we shall have to take the arrival for granted. The only light
which she herself ever shed upon the matter was a statement that she
"had a feeling." And feelings, to Aunt Caroline, were the only reliable
things in a strictly unreliable world. To follow a feeling across a
continent was a trifle to a determined character such as hers. To
insist upon Dr. Rogers following it, too, was a matter of course.

"I shall need an escort," said Aunt Caroline to that astonished
physician, "and you will do very nicely. If Benis is off his head, as
you suggest, it is my plain duty to look into the matter and your plain
duty, as his medical adviser, to accompany me. I am a woman who demands
little from her fellow creatures, knowing perfectly well that she won't
get it, but I naturally refuse to undertake the undivided
responsibility of a deranged nephew galavanting, by your own orders,
Doctor, at the ends of the earth."

"I did not say he was deranged," began the doctor helplessly, "and you
said you didn't believe me anyway."

"Don't quote me to excuse yourself." Aunt Caroline sailed serenely on.
"At least preserve the courage of your convictions. There is certainly
something the matter with Benis. He has answered none of my letters. He
has completely ignored my lettergrams. To my telegram of Thursday
telling him that I had been compelled to discharge my third cook since
Mabel for wiping dishes on a hand towel, he replied only by silence.
And the telegraph people say that the message was never delivered owing
to lack of address. Easy as I am to satisfy, things like this cannot be
allowed to continue. My nephew must be found."

"But we don't know where to look for him," objected her victim weakly.

Aunt Caroline easily rose superior to this.

"We have a map, I hope? And Vancouver, heathenish name! must be marked
on it somewhere. If not, the railroad people can tell us."

"But he is not in Vancouver."

"There--or thereabouts. When we get there we can ask the policeman,
or," with a grim twinkle, "we can enquire at the asylums. You forget
that my nephew is a celebrated man even if he is a fool."

The doctor gave in. He hadn't had a chance from the beginning, for Aunt
Caroline could answer objections far faster than he could make them.
They arrived at the terminus just four days after the expeditionary
party had left for Friendly Bay.

If Aunt Caroline were surprised at finding more than one policeman in
Vancouver, she did not admit it. Neither did the general atmosphere of
ignorance as to Benis daunt her in the least. She adhered firmly to her
campaign of question asking and found it fully justified when inquiry
at the post-office revealed that all letters for Professor Benis H.
Spence were to be delivered to the care of the Union Steamship Company.
From the Union Steamship Company to the professor's place of refuge was
an easy step. But Dr. Rogers, to whom this last inquiry had been
intrusted, returned to the hotel with a careful jauntiness of manner
which ill accorded with a disturbed mind.

"Well, we've found him," he announced cheerfully. "And now, if we are
wise, I think we'll leave him alone. He is camping up the coast at a
place called Friendly Bay--no hotels, no accommodation for ladies--he
is evidently perfectly well and attending to business. You know he came
out here partly to get material for his book? Well, that's what he's
doing. Must be, because there are only Indians up there."

"Indians? What do you mean--Indians? Wild ones?"

"Fairly wild."

Aunt Caroline snorted. She is one of the few ladies left who possess
this Victorian, accomplishment. "And you advise my leaving my sister's
child in his present precarious state of mind alone among fairly wild
Indians?"

"Well--er--that's just it, you see. He isn't alone--not exactly."

"What do you mean--not exactly?"

"I mean that his--er--secretary is with him. He has to have a secretary
on account of never being sure whether receive is 'ie' or 'ei.' They
are quite all right, though. The captain of the boat says so. And
naturally on a trip of that kind, research you know, a man doesn't like
to be interrupted."

Aunt Caroline arose. "When does the next boat leave?" She asked calmly.

"But--dash it all! We're not invited. We can't butt in. I--I won't go."

Aunt Caroline, admirable woman, knew when she was defeated. She had a
formula for it, a formula which seldom failed to turn defeat into
victory. When all else failed, Aunt Caroline collapsed. She collapsed
now. She had borne a great deal, she had not complained, but to be told
that her presence would be a "butting in" upon the only living child of
her only dead sister was more than even her fortitude could endure! No,
she wouldn't take a glass of water, water would choke her. No, she
wouldn't lie down. No, she wouldn't lower her voice. What did hotel
people matter to her? What did anything matter? She had come to the
end. Accustomed to ingratitude as she was, hardened to injustice and
desertion, there were still limits--

There were. The doctor had reached his. Hastily he explained that she
had mistaken his meaning. And, to prove it, engaged passage at once,
for the next upcoast trip, on the same little steamer which a few days
earlier had carried Mr. and Mrs. Benis H. Spence.

It was a heavenly day. The mountains lifted them-selves out of veils of
tinted mist, the islands lay like jewels--but Aunt Caroline, impervious
to mere scenery, turned her thought severely inward.

"I suppose," she said to her now subdued escort, "that we shall have to
pay the secretary a month's salary. Benis will scarcely wish to take
him back east with us."

The doctor attempted to answer but seemed to have some trouble with his
throat.

"It's the damp air," said Aunt Caroline. "Have a troche. If Benis
really needs a secretary I think I can arrange to get one for him. Do
you remember Mary Davis? Her mother was an Ashton--a very good family.
But unfortunate. The girls have had to look out for themselves rather.
Mary took a course. She could be a secretary, I'm sure. Benis could
always correct things afterward. And she is not too young. Just about
the right age, I should think. They used to know each other. But you
know what Benis is. He simply doesn't--your cold is quite distressing,
Doctor. Do take a troche."

The doctor took one.

"Of course Benis may object to a lady secretary--"

"By Jove," said Rogers as if struck with a brilliant idea. "Perhaps his
secretary is a lady!"

"How do you mean--a lady! Don't be absurd, Doctor. You said yourself
there was no proper hotel. Benis is discreet. I'll say that for him."

The doctor's brilliance deserted him. He twiddled his thumbs. But
although Aunt Caroline's repudiation of his suggestion had been
unhesitating there was a gleam of new uneasiness in her eye. She said
no more. It was indeed quite half an hour before she remarked
explosively.

"Unless it were an Indian!"

Her companion turned from the scenery in pained surprise.

"An Indian what?" he asked blankly.

"An Indian secretary--a female one."

"Nonsense. Indians aren't secretaries."

But Aunt Caroline had "had a feeling." "It was your-self who suggested
that she might be a girl," she declared stubbornly, "and if she is a
girl, she must be an Indian. Indians are different--look at Pullman
porters."

The doctor gasped.

"Even I don't mind a Pullman porter," finished Aunt Caroline grandly.

"That's very nice," the doctor struggled to adjust him-self. "But
Pullman porters are not Indians, and even if they were I can't quite
see how it affects Benis and his lady secretary."

"The principle," said Aunt Caroline, "is the same."

Rogers wondered if his brain were going. At any rate he felt that he
needed a smoke. Aunt Caroline did not like smoke, so comparative
privacy was assured. Also, a good smoke might show him a way out of his
difficulty.

It didn't. At the end of the second cigar the cold fact, imparted by
the clerk in the steamship office, that Professor Spence and wife had
preceded them upon this very boat, was still a cold fact and nothing
more. The long letter from the bridegroom which would have made things
plain had passed him on his trip across the continent and was even now
lying, with other unopened mail, in his Bainbridge office.

If Benis were married, then the bride could be no other than the
nurse-secretary he had written about in that one inconsequent letter to
which he, Rogers, had replied with unmistakable warning. But the thing
seemed scarcely credible. If it were a fact, then it might very easily
be a tragedy also. Marriage in such haste and under such circumstances
could scarcely be other than a mistake, and considering the quality of
Benis Spence, a most serious one.

John Rogers was very fond of his eccentric friend and the threatened
disaster loomed almost personal. He felt himself to blame too, for the
advice which had thrown Spence directly from the frying-pan of Aunt
Caroline into the fire of a sterner fate. Add to all this a keen
feeling of unwarranted intrusion and we have some idea of the state of
mind with which Dr. John Rogers saw the white tents of the campers as
the steamer put in at Friendly Bay.

"There are two tents," said Aunt Caroline lowering her lorgnette. "I
shall be quite comfortable."

The doctor did not smile. His sense of humor was suffering from
temporary exhaustion and his strongest consciousness was a feeling of
relief that neither Benis nor anyone else appeared to notice their
arrival. Even the unique spectacle of a middle-aged lady in
elastic-sided boots proceeding on tiptoe, and with all the tactics of a
scouting party, toward the evidently deserted tents provoked no
demonstration from anyone.

"They're not here!" called the scouting party in a carrying whisper.

"Obviously not." The doctor wiped his heated fore-head. "Probably
they've gone for the night. Then you'll have to marry me to save my
reputation."

"Jokes upon serious subjects are in very bad taste, young man," said
Aunt Caroline. But her rebuke was half-hearted. She looked uneasy.
"John," she added with sudden suspicion, "you don't suppose they could
have known we were coming?"

"How could they possibly?"

"If she is an Indian, they might. I've heard of such things. I--oh,
John! Look!"

"Snake?" asked John callously. Nevertheless he followed Aunt Caroline's
horrified gaze and saw, with a thrill of more normal interest, a pair
of dainty moccasins whose beaded toes protruded from the flap of one of
the tents.

"Indian!" gasped Aunt Caroline. "Oh John!"

"Not a bit of it!" Our much tried physician spoke with salutary
shortness. "They may be Indian-made but that's all. I'll eat my hat if
it's an Indian who has worn them. Did you ever see an Indian with a
foot like that?"

Indignation enabled Aunt Caroline to disclaim acquaintance with any
Indian feet whatever.

"It's a white girl's moccasin," he assured her. "Lots of girls wear
them in camp. Or," hastily, "it may be a curiosity. Benis may be making
a collection."

Aunt Caroline snorted. Her gaze was fixed with almost piteous intensity
upon the tent.

"D'you think I might go in?" she faltered.

"You might" said John carefully.

Aunt Caroline sighed.

"How dreadful to have traditions!" she murmured. "There's no real
reason why I shouldn't go in. And," with grim honesty, "if you weren't
here watching I believe I'd do it. Anyway we may have to, if they don't
come soon. I can't sit on this grass. I'm sure it's damp."

"I'll get you a chair from Benis's tent," offered John unkindly. "There
are no traditions to forbid that, are there?"

"No. And, John--you might look around a little? Just to make sure."

The doctor nodded. He had every intention of looking around. He felt,
in fact, entitled to any knowledge which his closest observation might
bring him. But the tent was almost empty. That at least proved that the
tent belonged to Spence. He was a man with an actual talent for
bareness and spareness in his sleeping quarters. Even his room at
school had possessed that man-made neatness which one associates with
sailor's cabins and the cells of monks. The camp-bed was trimly made, a
dressing-gown lay across a canvas chair, a shaving mug hung from the
centre pole--there was not so much as a hairpin anywhere.

John crossed thoughtfully to the folding stand which stood with its
portable reading lamp beside the bed. There was one unusual thing
there, a photograph. Benis, as his friend knew, was an expert amateur
photographer--but he never perched his photographs upon stands. This
one must be an exception, and exceptions are illuminating.

It was still quite light inside the tent and the doctor could see the
picture clearly. It was an extraordinarily good one, quite in the
professor's happiest style. Composition, lighting, timing, all were
perfect. But it is doubtful if John Rogers noticed any of these
excellencies. He was absorbed at once and utterly in the personality of
the person photographed. This was a girl, bending over a still pool.
The pose was one of perfectly arrested grace and the face which was
lifted, as if at the approach of someone, looked directly out of the
picture and into Roger's eyes. It was the most living picture he had
ever seen. The lips were parted as if for speech, there was a smile
behind the widely opened eyes. And both face and form were beautiful.

The doctor straightened up with a sharply drawn breath. It seemed that
something had happened. For one flashing instant some inner knowledge
had linked him with his own unlived experience. It was gone as soon as
it came. He did not even realize it, save as a sense of strangeness.
Yet, as a chemist lifts a vial and drops the one drop which changes all
within his crucible, so some magic philtre tinged John Roger's cup of
life in that one stolen look.

"Have you found anything?" Aunt Caroline's voice came impatiently.

"Nothing."

But to himself he added "everything" for indeed the mystery of Benis
seemed a mystery no longer. The photograph made everything clear. And
yet not so clear, either. The doctor looked around at the ship-shape
bachelorness of the tent, at the neat pile of newly typed manuscript
upon the bed, and felt bewildered. Even the eccentricity of Benis, in
its most extravagant mode, seemed inadequate as a covering explanation.

Giving himself a mental shake, the intruder picked up the largest chair
and rejoined Aunt Caroline.

"It's Benis right enough," he announced. "He is probably off
interviewing Indians. I had better light a fire. It may break the news."




CHAPTER XVI

We left the professor somewhat abruptly in the midst of a cryptic
ejaculation of "My Aunt!"

"How can it be your Aunt?" asked Desire reasonably.

"I don't know how. But, owing to some mysterious combination of the
forces of nature, it is my Aunt. No one else could wear that hat."

"Then hadn't we better go to meet her? You can't sit here all night."

"I know I can't. It's too near. We didn't see her soon enough!"

"Cowardly custard!" said Desire, stamping her foot.

The professor's mild eyes blinked at her in surprise. "Good!" he said
with satisfaction. "That is the first remark suitable to your extreme
youth that I've ever heard you make. But the sentiment it implies is
all wrong. Physical courage, as such, is mere waste when opposed to my
Aunt. What is wanted is technique. Technique requires thought. Thought
requires leisure. That is why I am sitting here behind a boulder--what
is she doing now?"

Desire investigated.

"She is walking up and down."

"A bad sign. It doesn't leave us much time. The most difficult point is
the introduction. Now, in an introduction, what counts for most?
Ancestors, of course. My dear, have you any ancestors?"

"Not one."

"I was afraid of that. In fact I had intended to provide a few. But I
never dreamed they would be needed so soon. What is she doing now?"

"She has stopped walking. She has turned. She is coming this way."

"Then we must take our chance." The professor rose briskly. "Never
allow the enemy to attack. Come on. But keep behind me while I draw her
fire."

Aunt Caroline advanced in full formation.

"Benis. Ben--nis!" she called piercingly. "He can't be very far away,"
she declared over her shoulder. "I have a feeling--Benis!"

"Who calls so loud?" quoted the professor innocently, appearing with
startling suddenness from behind the boulder. "Why!" in amazed
recognition. "It is Aunt Caroline!"

"It is." Aunt Caroline corroborated grimly.

"This is a surprise," exclaimed the professor. As we have noted before,
he liked to be truthful when possible. "How'd'do, Aunt! However did you
get here?"

"How I came," replied Aunt Caroline, "is not material. The fact that I
am here is sufficient."

"Quite," said Benis. "But," he added in a puzzled tone, "you are not
alone. Surely, my dear Aunt, I see----"

"You see Dr. Rogers who has kindly accompanied me."

"John Rogers here? With you?" In rising amazement.

"It is a detail." Aunt Caroline's voice was somewhat tart. "I could
scarcely travel unaccompanied."

"Surely not. But really--was there no lady friend--"

"Don't be absurd, Benis!" But she was obscurely conscious of a check.
Against the disturbed surprise of her nephew's attitude her sharpened
weapons had already turned an edge. Only one person can talk at a time,
and, to her intense indignation, she found herself displaced as the
attacking party. Also the behavior of her auxiliary force was
distinctly apologetic.

"Hello, Benis!" said Rogers, coming up late and reluctant. "Sorry to
have dropped in on you like this. But your Aunt thought--"

"Don't say a word, my dear fellow! No apology is necessary. I am quite
sure she did. But it might be a good idea for you to do a little
thinking yourself occasionally. Aunt is so rash. How were you to know
that you would find us at home? Rather a risk, what? Luckily, Aunt,"
turning to that speechless relative with reassurance, "it is quite all
right. My wife will be delighted--Desire, my dear, permit me--Aunt, you
will be glad, I'm sure--this is Desire. Desire, this is your new Aunt."

"How do you do?" said Desire. "I have never had an Aunt before."

It was the one thing which she should have said. Had she known Aunt
Caroline for years she could not have done better. But, unfortunately,
that admirable lady did not hear it. She had heard nothing since the
shattering blow of the word "wife."

"John," she said hoarsely. "Take me away. Take me away at once!"

"Certainly," said John, "Only it's frightfully damp in the woods. And
there may be bears."

"Bears or not. I can't stay here."

"Oh, but you must," Desire came forward with innocent hospitality. "You
can sleep on my cot and I'll curl up in a blanket. I am quite used to
sleeping out."

Aunt Caroline closed her eyes. It was true then. Benis Spence had
married a squaw! Blindly she groped for the supporting hand of the
doctor. "John," she moaned, "did you hear that? Sleeping out--oh how
could he?"

"Very easily, I should think." Under the slight handicap of assisting
the drooping lady to her chair, John Rogers looked back at Desire,
standing now within the radius of the camp fire's light--and once again
he felt the strangeness as of some half-glimpsed prophecy. "She is
wonderful," he added. "Look!"

Aunt Caroline looked, shuddered, and collapsed again upon a whispered
"Indian!"

"Nonsense!" Rogers almost shook her. And yet, considering the
suggestive force of the poor lady's preconceived ideas, the mistake was
not unpardonable. In those surroundings, against that flickering light,
standing, straight and silent in her short skirt and moccasins, her
leaf-brown hair tied with bracken and turned to midnight black by the
shadows, her grey eyes mysterious under their dark lashes, and her lips
unsmiling, Desire might well have been some beauty of that vanishing
race. A princess, perhaps, waiting with grave courtesy for the welcome
due her from her husband's people.

"And not a bit ashamed of it," murmured Aunt Caroline in what she
fondly hoped was a whisper. "Utterly callous! Benis," in a wavering
voice, "I had a feeling--"

"Wait!" interrupted Benis, producing a notebook and pencil. "Let us be
exact, Aunt. Just when did you notice the feeling first?"

"What difference does that make?" Aunt Caroline's voice was perceptibly
stronger.

"Why," eagerly, "don't you see? If you had the feeling at the time
(allowing for difference by the sun) it is a case of actual
clairvoyance. If the feeling was experienced previous to the fact then
it is a case of premonition only, and, if after, the whole thing can be
explained as mere telepathy."

"Oh," said Aunt Caroline. But she said it thoughtfully. Her voice was
normal.

"Wonderful thing--this psychic sense," went on her nephew. "Fancy
you're knowing all about it even before you got my letter!"

"Did you send a letter?" asked Aunt Caroline after a pause. "Why Aunt!
Of course. Two of them. Before and after. But I might have known you
would hardly need them. If you had only arrived a few days sooner, you
might have been present at the ceremony."

"Ceremony? There was a ceremony?"

"My dear Aunt!"

"The Church service?"

"My dear Aunt!"

"In a church?"

"Not exactly a church. You see it was rather late in the evening. The
care-taker had gone to bed. In fact we had to get the Rector out of
his."

"Bern's!"

"He didn't mind. Said he'd sleep all the better for it. And he wore his
gown--over his pyjamas--very effective."

"Had the man no conscientious scruples?" sternly.

"Scruples--against pyjamas?"

"Against mixed marriages."

"I don't know. I didn't ask him. We weren't discussing the ethics of
mixed marriage."

"Don't pretend to misunderstand me, Benis. For a man who has married an
Indian, your levity is disgraceful."

"How ridiculous, Aunt! If you will listen to an explanation--"

"I need no explanation," Aunt Caroline, once more mistress of herself
rose majestically. "I hope I know an Indian when I see one. I am not
blind, I believe. But as there seems to be no question as to the
marriage, I have nothing further to say. Another woman in my place
might feel justified in voicing a just resentment, but I have made it a
rule to expect nothing from any relative, especially if that relative
be, even partially, a Spence. When my poor, dear sister married your
father I told her what she was doing. And she lived to say, 'Caroline,
you were right!' That was my only reward. More I have never asked. All
that I have ever required of my sister's child has been ordinary
docility and reliance upon my superior sense and judgment. Now when I
find that, in a matter so serious as marriage, neither my wishes nor my
judgment have been considered, I am not surprised. I may be shocked,
outraged, overwhelmed, but I am not surprised."

"Bravo!" said Benis involuntarily. He couldn't help feeling that Aunt
Caroline was really going strong. "What I mean to say," he added, "is
that you are quite right Aunt, except in these particulars, in which
you are entirely wrong. But before we go further, what about a little
sustenance. Aren't you horribly hungry?"

"I am sure they are both starved," said Desire. "And I hate to remind
you that you ate the last sandwich. Will you make Aunt Caroline
comfortable while I cut some more? Perhaps Dr. John will help
me--although we haven't shaken hands yet."

She held out her hands to the uneasy doctor with a charming gesture of
understanding. "Did you expect to see a squaw, too', Doctor?"

"I expected to see, just you." His response was a little too eager. "I
had seen you before--by a pool, bending over--"

"Oh, the photograph? Benis is terribly proud of it,"

"Best I've ever done," confirmed the professor. "Did you notice the
curious light effect on that silver birch at the left?"

"Wonderful," said Rogers, but he wasn't thinking of the light effect on
the silver birch. As he followed Desire to the tent his orderly mind
was in a tumult. "He doesn't know how wonderful she is!" he thought.
"And she doesn't care whether he does or not. And that explains--" But
he saw in a moment that it didn't explain anything. It only made the
mystery deeper.

"And now, Benis, that we are alone--" began Aunt Caroline....

We may safely leave out several pages here. If you realize Aunt
Caroline at all, you will see that at least so much self-expression is
necessary before anyone else can expect a chance. Time enough to pick
up the thread again when the inevitable has happened and her exhausted
vocabulary is replaced by tears.

"Not that I care at all for my own feelings," wept Aunt Caroline.
"There are others to think of. What will Bainbridge say?"

Her nephew roused himself. From long experience he knew that the worst
was over.

"Bainbridge, my dear Aunt," he said, "will say exactly what you tell it
to say. It was because we realized this that we decided to leave the
whole matter in your hands--all the announcing and things. But of
course," with resignation, "if we have taken too much for granted; if
you are not equal to it, we had better not come back to Bainbridge at
all."

"Oh," cried Aunt Caroline with fresh tears. "My poor boy! The very
idea! To think that I should live to hear you say it! How gladly I
would have saved you from this had I known in time."

"I am sure you would, Aunt. But the gladness would have been all yours.
I did not want to be saved, you see, and people who are saved against
their will are so frightfully ungrateful. Wouldn't you like a dry
hanky? Just wait till you've had a couple of dozen sandwiches. You'll
feel quite differently. Think what a relief it will be to have me off
your mind. You can relax now, and rest. You've been overworking for
years. Consider how peaceful it will be not to have to ask any more
silly girls to visit. You know you hated it, really, and only did it
for my sake."

"I did everything for your sake," moaned Aunt Caroline brokenly. "And
they were silly. But I hoped you would not notice it. And you will
never know what I went through trying to get them down for breakfast at
nine."

"I can imagine it," with ready sympathy. "They always yawned. And there
must have been many darker secrets which I never guessed. You kept them
from me. Do you remember that hole in Ada's stocking?"

"Yes, but I--"

"Never mind. The fib wasn't nearly as big as the hole. But how could
you expect me to help noticing the general lightness and frivolity of
your visitors, shown up so plainly against the background of your own
character?"

"Y-es. I didn't think of that"

"Perhaps I should never have married if I had not got away--from the
comparison, I mean."

"There was a danger, I suppose. But," with renewed grief, "Oh, Benis,
such a wedding! No cards, no cake--and in pyjamas--oh!"

"Come now, Aunt, don't give way! And do you feel that it is quite right
to criticise the clergy? I always fancy that it is the first step
toward free-thinking. And you couldn't see much of them, you know, only
the legs. Besides, consider what a we

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