So Peggy, under his masculine eye, "made her soul."

"It's nothing that concerns you, Francis Ellison!" she began. "It's simply that I've learned how a man can treat a woman. And you—you that I've known since I was a child! And telling me fairy-tales of bold kidnapers and cruel husbands and all, and I never knowing that you were going to grow up and be one!"

Marjorie laughed—she couldn't help it, Peggy was so severe. Francis looked at her again in some surprise, and Peggy was plainly annoyed.

"I should say," said Francis with perfect calm, "that our honorable friend Mr. Logan had been confiding in you. His attitude is a little biased; however, let that pass. Just what did he say?"

"Just nothing at all, except that you were a charming young man, and he wished that he were as able to face the world and its problems as you," Peggy answered spiritedly. "None of your insinuations about his honor, please. And shame on you to malign a sick man!"

"Oh, is Mr. Logan sick?" asked Marjorie, forgetting other interests. She turned to Francis, forgetting their feud again, in a common and inexcusable curiosity. "Francis! Now we'll know what it really was that ailed him—the nervous spells, you know? I always told you it wasn't fits!"

"How do you know it isn't?" said Francis. "Peggy hasn't said."

"She wouldn't be so interested if it was," said Marjorie triumphantly. "It takes an old and dear wife to stand that in a man."

They had no business to be deflected from Peggy and her temper by any such consideration; but it was a point which had occupied their letters for a year, off and on, and there had been bets upon it.

"Let me see, I suppose those wagers stand—was it candy, or a Hun helmet?" said Francis.

"Candy," said Marjorie. "But it was really the principle of the thing. Ask her."

Francis turned back to Peggy, who was becoming angrier and angrier; for when you start forth to rescue any one, it is annoying, even as Logan found it, to have the rescue act as if it were nothing to her whether she was rescued or not.

"Now, what really does ail him, Pegeen?" he asked affectionately. "Did you see him, or don't you know?"

"Of course I saw him—am I not nursing him? And of course I know! Poor man, the journey up here nearly killed him."

"How? It seemed like a nice journey to me," said Marjorie thoughtlessly.

"There's no use pretending you're happy," said Peggy relentlessly. "I know you're not. It's very brave, but useless."

"But has he fits?" demanded Marjorie with unmistakable intensity.

"He has not," said Peggy scornfully. "I don't know where you'd get the idea. He fainted this morning when he tried to get up. He didn't come down to breakfast, and we thought him tired out, and let him lie. But after awhile, perhaps at nine or so, we thought it unnatural that any one should be asleep so long. So I tiptoed up, because when you're as fat as mother it does wear you to climb more stairs than are needful. And there was the poor man, all dressed beautifully, even to his glasses with the black ribbon, lying across the bed, in a faint."

"Are you sure it was a faint?" the Ellisons demanded with one voice.

Peggy looked more scornful, if possible, than she had for some time.

"We had to bring him to with aromatic spirits of ammonia, and slapping his hands. And the doctor says it's his heart. That is, it isn't really his heart, but his nerves are so bad that they make some sort of a condition that it's just as bad as if he had heart-trouble really. Simulated heart-trouble, the doctor called it. You understand, he doesn't pretend, himself; his heart makes his nerves pretend, as well as I can make it out. Sure it must be dreadful to have nerves that act that way to you. I wonder what nerves feel like, anyway."

Peggy herself was getting off the topic, through her interest in the subject.

"But how did you find out that I was beating Marjorie?" inquired Francis calmly, pulling her back.

She shot a furious glance at him.

"I wish you hadn't reminded me. I'd forgotten all about hating you for your horrid ways. It was just before he came to. He thought he was talking to you, and he said, 'You had no right to force her to do that work, Ellison, it will kill her.'"

"And was that all?" asked Marjorie.

"Wasn't that enough? And I ask you, Marjorie Ellison, isn't it true? Hasn't Francis forced you to come over here and do his cooking for him? Oh, Francis, I can't understand it in you," said poor Peggy, looking up at him appealingly. "You that were always so tender and kind with every one, to make a poor little thing like Marjorie work at cooking and cleaning for great rough men."

Francis had colored up while she spoke. One hand, behind his back, was clenching and unclenching nervously. He was fronting the two girls, but turned a little away from Marjorie and toward Peggy, so Marjorie could see it. Aside, from that he was perfectly quiet, and so far as any one could see, entirely unmoved. Only Marjorie knew he was not unmoved. That dark, thin, clenching hand—she had seen it before, restless and betraying, and she knew it meant that Francis was angry or unhappy. She felt curiously out of it all. She had made up her mind once and for all to go through with her penance, if one could call it that. Her mind was so unsettled and hard to make up that, once made up on this particular point, she felt it would be more trouble to stop than to go on. She leaned a little back against Peggy's guarding arm, and let the discussion flow on by her.

"Marjorie is free to go at any time; she knows that," he said.

Marjorie looked at him full. She said nothing whatever. But Peggy's Irish wit jumped at the right solution.

"Yes, free to go, no doubt, but with what kind of a string to it?" she demanded triumphantly. "I'll wager it's like the way mother makes me free of things. 'Oh, sure ye can smoke them little cigarette things if ye like—but if ye do it's out of my door ye'll go!'"

Marjorie thought it was time to take a hand here. Francis was standing there, still, not trying to answer Peggy. He seemed to Marjorie pitifully at their mercy; why, she did not know, for he had neither said nor looked anything but the utmost sternness. And Marjorie herself knew that he was not being kind or fair—that he had not been, in his exaction. Still she looked at that hand, moving like a sentient thing, and spoke.

"Peggy, some day I'll tell you all about it, or Francis will. You and Francis have been friends for a long, long time, and I don't want you to be angry with him because of me—just a stranger. And for the present, I can tell you only this, that Francis is right, I am doing this of my own free will. You are a darling to come and care about what happens to me."

Peggy was softened at once. She pulled Marjorie to her and gave her a sounding kiss.

"And you're a darling, too, and you're not a stranger—don't we love you for Francis's sake—oh, there, and I was forgetting! I suppose I'm not to be down on you, Francis. But I couldn't help thinking things were queer. It's not the customary way to let your bride spend her honeymoon, from all I've heard. Oh, and it's five o'clock, and it takes an hour and a half to get back, though I borrowed the priest's housekeeper's bicycle."

She sprang up, dropping from her lap the bundle of aprons which Marjorie had waited for.

"Mind, Francis, I've not forgiven you yet," she called back. "When poor Mr. Logan is better I'll have the whole story out of him, or my name's not Margaret O'Mara."

She was on her bicycle and away before they could answer her.

"And it's time I went over to the cook-shed," said Marjorie evenly, rising, too, and beginning to unfasten the bundle of aprons. They were a little hard to unfasten, from the too secure knots Mrs. O'Mara had made, and she dropped down again, bending intently over them to get them free. Suddenly they were pushed aside, and Francis had flung himself down by her, with his head on her knees, holding her fast.

"Oh, Marjorie, Marjorie!" he said. "Don't stay. I can't bear to have you acting like this—like an angel. I've been unfair and unkind—it didn't need Peggy to tell me that. Go on away from me. And forgive me, if you can, some time."

She looked down at the black head on her knees. It was victory, then—of a sort. And suddenly her perverse heart hardened.

"Please get up, Francis," she said in the same cold and even voice she had used before. "I haven't time for this sort of thing; it's time I went over and got the men their supper. They'll be ready for it at six, Pennington said."

He rose quietly and stood aside, while she took off the apron of Mrs. O'Mara's that she had been making shift with, and put one of the new ones on in its place, and went out of their cabin. She never looked back. She went swiftly and straight to the cook-shed and began work on the evening meal. There was a feeling of triumph in her heart. And nothing on earth would tempt her to go now. Francis was beginning to feel his punishment. And she wasn't through with him yet.

She found an oven which sat on top of the burners, and had just managed to lift it into its place when Pennington walked leisurely in behind her.

"I had to come back to get your husband," he explained, "and I thought I'd see if you were in any troubles. Let me set that straight for you."

He adjusted it as it should be, and lingered to tell her anything else she might wish to know.

"I'm going to give them codfish cakes for breakfast," she confided to him, "a great many! But what on earth can I have for their dinners?"

"There is canned corn beef hash," he suggested. "That would do all right for to-night. Or you might have fish."

"Where would I get it?"

"Indians. They come by with strings of fish to sell, often. I think I can go out and send one your way."

"You speak as if there were Indians around every corner," she said.

"No-o, not exactly," he answered her slowly. "But the truth is that I saw one, with a string of fish, crossing up from the stream, not long ago. As I was riding and he walking, I think it likely that I shall intercept him on my way back. That is, if you want the fish."

"Oh, indeed, I do," she assured him eagerly. "That is—do you think the Indian—he won't hurt me, will he? And do you think he would clean them for me?"

"I think I can arrange that with him," Pennington, who was rapidly assuming the shape of a guardian angel to Marjorie, assured her.

"And now I must go and tell your husband that he's wanted down where the men are."

"Thank you," she said, looking up at his plump, tanned, rather quaint face—so like, as she always thought, a middle-aged rector's in an English novel—with something grotesque and yet pathetic about it. "I don't know what I'd do without your help. In a day or so I may get to the point where I'll be very clever, and very independent."

She smiled up at him, and he looked down at her with what she characterized in her own mind as his motherly expression. "You're such a little thing!" he said as if he couldn't help it. Then, after a hasty last inquiry as to whether there was anything more he could do, he went off in search of Francis.

She looked after him with a feeling of real affection.

"He's the nearest I have to a mother!" she said to herself whimsically, as she addressed herself to the preparation of the evening meal. She had conceived the brilliant plan of doing the men's lunches, where it was possible, the night before. In this way, she thought, though it might take a little more time in the afternoon, it would make things easier in the mornings. Such an atmosphere of hurry as she had lived in that morning, while it had been rather fun for once, would be too tiring in the long run, she knew. And the run would be long—three months.

The Indian came duly with the fish, all cleaned and ready to fry. She was baking beans in the oven for to-morrow's luncheons. So she baked the potatoes, too, and hunted up some canned spinach, and then—having miscalculated her time—conceived the plan of winning the men's hearts with a pudding. She was sure Pierre's cookery had never run to such delicacies. And even then there was time to spare. The men were late, or something had happened. So she looked to be sure that there was nothing more she could do, and then strayed off to the edges of the woods, looking for flowers. She found clumps of bloodroot, great anemone-flowers that she picked by the handful. There were some little blue flowers, also, whose name she did not know; and sprays of wintergreen berries and long grasses. Greatly daring, she put one of the low, flat vases she had found in her cabin in the center of the men's trestle-table, and filled it with her treasure-trove. Then, a little tired, she sat down by the table herself, resting for a moment before the drove should come home.

They were in on her before she knew it. She thought afterward that she must have fallen asleep. How dainty and how winning a picture of home she made for the rough men, she never thought. But the men did, and the foremost one, a big, rough Yankee, instinctively halted on tiptoe as he saw her, leaning back in her chair with her eyes shut. Marjorie was not in the least fragile physically, but she was so little and slender that, in spite of her wild-rose flush and her red lips, she always impressed men with a belief in her fragility.

"Look at there, boys!" he half said, half whispered; and the crew halted behind him, looking at Marjorie as if she were some very wonderful and lovely thing.

The steps, or perhaps the eyes fixed admiringly on her, woke Marjorie. She opened her eyes, and smiled a little. She had gone to sleep very pleased, on account of the flowers, and of having arranged her work so it fitted in properly.

"Oh, you've come!" she said, smiling at them as a friendly child might smile, flushed with sleep. "Did you have a hard day? Everything's ready."

She was up and out in the cook-shed, half-frightened of their friendly eyes, before they could say any more. That is, to her.

"Gosh, that's some wife of yours!" said one of them to Francis, who was a little in the rear of the others. "But ain't she a little thing?"

Francis simply said "Yes" constrainedly. He had heard all that before. Pennington, who did not as a rule like girls, had been telling him what a lucky devil he was, as they went over to the working place together. He also had said that Marjorie was a little thing. And the note in his voice as he said it had insinuated to Francis, who was all too sensitive for such insinuations, that she was scarcely the type of woman to cook for a men's camp. Francis felt quite remorseful enough already. He sat down with the rest, while Marjorie brought in first the big platter of fish, then the vegetables, and a big pitcher of cocoa which she had made.

"Some eats!" said another of the crew, and Marjorie dimpled appreciatively. While she went out again, after something she had forgotten, one of the Frenchmen whispered bashfully to Pennington, who was Francis's assistant. He smiled his slow, half-mocking, half-kindly smile, and passed it on to Francis.

"Ba'tiste says that he wonders if the lady would sit down and eat with us. Do you think she would, Ellison? It's a long time since any of us had a lady keep house for us."

"I'll ask her," said Francis, the taciturn. He would rather have done a good many things than go to Marjorie with a request, as things stood between them, but there was nothing else for it. He came on her, standing on tiptoe at the cupboard, like a child, trying to reach down a cup. She had counted one too few.

He stood behind her and took it down, reaching over her head.

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Pennington!" she said, taking it for granted that it was her accustomed helper.

"It isn't Pennington; it's—me," said Francis. "I—I wouldn't have bothered you, but you see the men sent me out here on an errand."

"The men sent you on an errand?" she said wonderingly. "That sounds topsy-turvy. I thought you sent them on errands."

"Not this kind. They want to know if you won't sit down and eat with them to-night. The flowers and the food made a hit, and they agree with everybody else in the world, as far as I can see," said Francis, with bitterness in his voice, "that this is no work for you to be doing."

"Did they dare to say so?" said Marjorie angrily.

"No—oh, no. Don't mind me, Marjorie. I'm a little tired and nervous, I expect—like Logan," he ended, trying to smile. "Will you come?"

"Why, of course!" said Marjorie instantly. "And I think it's sweet of them to want me! Tell them just to wait till I take my apron off, and I'll be with them."

He went back and she followed him and sat down. At first she felt embarrassed, a little—she felt as if she were entertaining a large dinner-party, and most of them strangers. But Pennington, her unfailing comfort, was at one side of her, and the friendly, if inarticulate, Ba'tiste at the other; and presently she was chattering on, and liking it very much.

None of the men had seen much of women for a long time. A couple of the better-class ones went into town, or what passed for it, occasionally, to such dances as the few women near by could get up. But that was practically all they saw of girls. And this "little thing"—it was a phrase they always used in speaking of her, till the very last—with her pretty face and pretty, shy ways, and excellent cooking—and more than all, her pluck—won them completely.

And when she finally, with obvious delight in their delight, produced the pudding, everything was over but the shouting, as they told her husband afterward. She had been a bit apprehensive about it, but it proved to be a good pudding, and large enough. Just large enough, though. They finished it to the very last crumb, sauce and all, and thanked her almost with tears. Pierre, it appeared, had not cooked with any art, he had merely seen to it that there was enough stoking material three times a day. From the moment of that meal on, anything that Marjorie wanted of those men, to the half of their weekly wages, was hers for the asking.

She liked it very much. Everybody likes to be admired and appreciated. She could not help casting a glance of triumph over at Francis, where he sat maritally at the other end of the table, the most silent person present.

Pennington helped her clear away after supper. Indeed, competition to help Marjorie clear away was so strong that Pennington had to use his authority before the men settled down to their usual routine of card-playing or lounging about on the grass outside. She accepted his help gratefully, for she was beginning to feel as if she had always known him. She did not think of him in the least as a man. He seemed more like an earthly providence.

"You know, I really am very strong," she explained to him as he said something that betrayed his feeling that this work would be too much for her. "I think I shall be able to do all this. Really, it isn't anything more than lots of women have to do who keep boarders. And it isn't for——"

She stopped herself. She had been on the point of saying, "And it isn't for long, anyway." She did not know what Francis had told the men about their plans, or his plans for her cooking, and she was resolved to be absolutely loyal to him. When she went he should have nothing to say about her but that she had behaved as well as any woman could.

"If you're ready, we'll go back to the cabin, Marjorie," said Francis, appearing on the edge of the threshold, looking even more like a thundercloud than normal lately.

She hung up the dishcloth, gave Pennington a last grateful smile, and followed Francis back.

"Pennington's a good fellow," he said abruptly as they gained their own porch, "but I don't want you to have too much to do with him. He's kindly and all that, but he's a remittance man."

Marjorie's eyes opened wide with excitement at this. She had heard of remittance men, but never seen one before.

"How perfectly thrilling!" she said.



CHAPTER X

Francis looked at her as if she had said something very surprising.

"Thrilling?" he said, apparently considering it the wrong adjective.

She nodded.

"Why, yes. I've read of remittance men all my life, but I never dreamed I'd meet one. And—I always wanted to know, Francis," said she, as she opened the door and walked in and settled herself cozily on the window-seat. "What does he remit? They never say."

"He doesn't remit," explained Francis rather disgustedly, following her over and sitting down by her at the other corner of the seat. "Other people do it."

"'Curiouser and Curiouser! I begin to think I'm in Wonderland!'" she quoted. "I think the easiest way for you to do will be just to tell me all about remittance men, the way you do a child when it starts to ask questions. Just what are they, and do they all look like Pennington, and are they trained to be it, or does it come natural?"

"A remittance man," Francis explained again, "is a term, more or less, of disgrace. He is a man who has done something in his own country which makes his relatives wish him out of it. So they remit money to him as long as he stays away."

If he expected to make Marjorie feel shocked at Pennington by this tale he was quite disappointed.

"And does Pennington get money for staying away, besides what he helps you and gets?" she demanded. "What does he do with it all?"

"I don't suppose it's a great deal," said Francis reluctantly.

"Well, all I have to say is, I'm perfectly certain that if anybody's paying Pennington to stay away from England, they're some horrid kind of person that just is disagreeable, and doesn't know his real worth. Why, Francis, he's helped me learn the ways here, and looked after me, as if he was my mother. He's exactly like somebody's mother."

Francis could not help smiling a little. Marjorie, when she wanted to be—sometimes when she did not want to be—was irresistible.

"But, Marjorie," he began to explain to her very seriously, "however much he may seem like a mother, he isn't one. He's a man, though he's rather an old one. And he did do things in England so he had to leave. I don't want him to fall in love with you; it would be embarrassing for several reasons."

"But why should he fall in love with me?" she demanded innocently. "Lots of people don't."

"But, Marjorie," her husband remonstrated, "they do. Look at Logan, now. No reason on earth would have brought him up here but being in love with you. You might as well admit it."

"All I ever did was to listen to him when he talked," said Marjorie, shrugging one shoulder. She liked what Francis was saying, but she felt in honor bound to be truthful about such things. "And besides you, there was only one other man ever asked me to marry him—I mean, not counting Logan, if you do count him. Oh, yes, and then there was another one yet, with a guitar. He always said he proposed to me. He wrote me a letter all mixed up, about everything in the world; and I was awfully busy just then, selling tickets for a church fair of Cousin Anna's. I never was any good selling tickets anyhow," explained Marjorie, settling herself more nestlingly in her corner of the window-seat; "and so when he said somewhere in the letter that anything he could ever do for me he would do on the wings of the wind, I wrote back and said yes, he could buy two tickets for the church fair. And, oh, but he was furious! He sent the check for the tickets with the maddest letter you ever saw; and he accused me of refusing him in a cold and ignoring manner. And I'd torn up the letter, the way I always do, and so I couldn't prove anything about it to him. But he didn't come to the fair. Ye-es, I suppose that was a proposal. The man ought to know, shouldn't he?"

Francis was tired; he had a consciousness of having behaved unkindly that weighed him down and made for gloom. He had come in with Marjorie for the purpose of delivering an imposing warning. But he couldn't help laughing.

"I suppose so," he acknowledged. "Never mind, Marjorie, you didn't really want him, did you?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, no. Nobody could. Or—wait, somebody must, because I think he's married. But he wasn't the kind a girl that cared what she got wanted."

But Francis went back to Pennington.

"About Pennington," he began again. "You don't know how easy it is for you to let a man think you're encouraging him, when you really aren't saying a word or doing a thing, or think you aren't. I want you to promise me you'll be very careful where he's concerned, even cold."

"Cold!" she said indignantly. "But I'm married! You seem to forget that!"

Francis had not forgotten it in the least. He forgot it all too little for his own comfort, he might have told her. But he was rebuked.

"I didn't know you went on the principle that you had to act exactly like a regular married woman," he apologized with meekness.

"I do," she said shortly.

He rose and went over to where the banjo lay and brought it back to her. It was growing dusk now in the little cabin.

"Play for me, and sing, won't you, Marjorie?" he asked abruptly. "I haven't heard you for a long time."

In Marjorie's mind there arose the memory of that boyish, loving little note that she had found under the banjo, and for a minute her throat clutched so that she couldn't answer. She had moments of being so intolerably sorry for Francis that it hurt; quite irrational moments, when he seemed to need it not at all. This was one.

"Yes," she said, pulling herself together. "That is, if you will take my word for it that I have no designs on poor old Mr. Pennington."

"Of course I know you haven't," he said. "It was the other way about that I was afraid of."

"His having designs on me?"

She laughed aloud as she began tuning her strings. It did seem like the funniest thing she had ever heard. The picture of Pennington, girt with a sack for an apron, with that plump, quaint face of his, and those kindly, fussy ways, drying cups for her and having designs while he did it—it was enough to make even Logan laugh, and he had never been known to be amused by anything that wasn't intellectual humor.

"Just a-wearyin' for you,"

she began, in her soft little sympathetic voice, that wasn't much good for anything but just this sort of thing, but could pull the heartstrings out of you at it, and sang it through. She went on after that without being asked, just because she liked it. She knew where the simple chords were in the dark, and she sang everything she wanted to, forgetting finally Francis, and the woods, and everything else in the world except the music and the old things she was singing.

When she had finally done, after an hour or so, and laid the banjo across her lap and leaned back with a little laugh, saying "There! You must be tired by this time!" Francis rose with scarcely a thank-you, and walked out of the door.

"I want a turn in the air before I come to bed," he said.

Marjorie said nothing. She was sleepy, as usual—would she never get over being sleepy up here?—and she laid the instrument on the floor and stretched out thoughtlessly on the window-seat, instead of going off to bed as she had been intending to do. As for her husband, he walked across the veranda straight into a group of his listening men. The music had drawn them over, and, regardless of mosquitoes, they were sitting about on the steps, liking the concert.

"We owe you a vote of thanks for importing that little wife of yours, Ellison," said Pennington, getting up and stretching himself widely in the moonlight. "Maybe if I do some more dishes for her, she'll come and sing for us when she knows it, sometime soon."

Francis had an irrational wish to hit Pennington. But there was no reason why he should. Pennington's particular kind of flippancy was merely a result of his having been, in those far days before he was a remittance man, an Oxford graduate. So was his soft and charmingly inflected voice. But, quite reasonlessly, it was all Francis could do to respond with the politeness which is due to your almost irreplaceable second-in-command on a rush job. His manners once made, he decided that he didn't want the air, after all. He faced about, saying good-night to the risen men, who responded jovially or respectfully, according to their temperaments, and returned to the cabin where he was, for all they knew, living an idyllic life with the wife he adored and who adored him.

He went over, drawn in spite of himself, to the window-seat where Marjorie lay. There was enough moonlight to see her dimly, and he could tell that she had, all in a minute, fallen asleep. She looked very young and tired and childish in the shadows, with her lips just parted, and her hands out and half open at her sides.

"Marjorie! Marjorie, dear!" he said. "Wake up! It's time you were in bed."

He spoke to her affectionately, scarcely knowing that he said it. She was very tired, and she did not wake till he put his hand on her shoulder. Even then she just moved a little, and turned back to her old position.

He finally bent and lifted her to a sitting position, but she only lay against him, heavy still with sleep.

"Don't want to get up," she murmured, like a child. So finally he had to do as he had done the night he brought her home, pick her up bodily and lay her on her own bed. Her arms fell from his shoulders as he straightened himself from laying her down. "'Night," she said, still sleepily and half-affectionately; and Francis did not kiss her good-night. But he did want to badly. Francis, unlike Marjorie, was not sleeping well these nights.

But then he was used to his work and she was not used to hers. He called her quite unemotionally next morning, and she rose and went through her routine as usual. All the camp watched its mascot apprehensively, as if she might break—well, not every one, for two of them were tough old souls who thought that hard work was what women were "fur." But, aside from these unregenerates, they did more. Fired by Pennington's example of unremitting help, they did everything for her that thought could suggest. They brought her in posies for the table; they swept out the cabin for her; they dried her dishes in desperate competition; they filled the kerosene stoves so thoroughly that there was always a dripping trail of oil on the floor, and Pennington had to lay down the law about it; they ate what she fed them gladly, and even sometimes forbore to ask for more out of a wish to seem mannerly.

And Marjorie liked it to the core. The lightening of the work was a help, and it made things so that she was not more than healthfully tired, though sometimes she felt that she was more than that; but, being a woodland queen, as Pennington called it, was pleasantest of all. She came to feel as the time went on, there alone in the clearing with them, that they were all her property. She mended their clothes for them, she settled their disputes, she heard their confidences and saw the pictures of their sweethearts and wives, or, sometimes, photographs of movie queens who were the dream-ideals of these simple souls. Sometimes she went out to the place where they worked, before the work moved too far away for her to reach it in a short time. And, curiously enough, she found that she was not lonely, did not miss New York, and—it seemed to her that it was a rather shocking way to feel—she did not in the least feel a "lack of woman's nursing, or dearth of woman's tears."

She got along excellently without Lucille, Cousin Anna, and the girls in the office. And, thinking it over sometimes at twilight, in those rare moments when there weren't from one to three of the men grouped adoringly around her, and Francis wasn't chaperoning her silently in the background, she felt that the work was a small price to pay for the pleasantness of the rest of her life there. Always before she had been a cog in the machinery, wherever she had been. At Cousin Anna's she was a little girl, loved and dominated. With Lucille she was free, but Lucille, in compensation, helped herself to the ungrudgingly given foreground. But here she was lady and mistress, and pet besides. In short, the punishment Francis had laid out for her was only a punishment to him. She could see that he felt guilty by spells. She thought, too, that he had times of being fond of her. How much they meant she could not tell. But in spite of his warnings she became better and better friends with Pennington, always exactly, at least as far as she was concerned, as if he were a maiden aunt of great kindness and experience. Indeed, Pennington, she thought, was what kept her from missing girls so.

He never told her anything about himself. He might or might not have been a remittance man; but he mentioned no remittances, at least. Once he spoke of his childhood, the kind of childhood she had read sometimes in English children's books, not like her own prim American suburban memories of Sunday-school and being sent to school and store, and sometimes playing in her back yard with other little girls. He had had a pony, and brothers and sisters to play with, and a governess, she gathered; and an uncle who was an admiral, and came home once to them in his full uniform, as a treat, so they could see how he looked in it. And there had been a nurse, and near by was a park where the tale went that there were goblins. But it all must have been very long ago, she thought, because Pennington looked forty and over. And all his stories stopped short before he was ten. After that he went to Eton, he told her, and told her no more.

She did not ask. She liked him, but, after all, he was not an important figure in her life. The goal she never forgot was Francis's admission that she was an honorable woman; and, underneath that, Francis's missing her terribly when she was through and left. Still, when Pennington would come and demand tea from her of a Sunday, and she would sit in her little living-room, or out on the veranda, with the quaint yellow tea-set that was a part of the furnishings, and pour it for him and one or two of the other men, she would like having him about. He talked as interestingly as Logan, but not as egotistically. She felt as if she were quite a wonderful person when he sat on the step below her, and surrounded her with a soft deference that was almost caressing, but not quite. And in spite of Francis's warnings she made more and more of a friend of him.

The explosion came one Sunday afternoon in June. She came out on the veranda, as usual, with her tea-tray, about four, and waited for her court. Peggy came over once in awhile on Sundays, too. Logan never came. Peggy had never said any more about him since her one outburst, but Marjorie knew that he was ill yet, and being nursed by the O'Maras. This day no Peggy appeared. Indeed, nobody appeared for some time, and Marjorie began to think of putting away the tea-things and considering the men's supper. And then, just as she had come to this resolve, Pennington came through the woods.

He was not sauntering in a seemingly aimless manner, as he usually did. He was walking straight for her, as if she were something he had been aiming for for hours. And he did not drop at her feet negligently on the steps, as he usually did, and call her some fanciful name like "Queen of the Woodlands," or "Lady Marjorie." He sat erectly on a chair across from her, and Marjorie bethought herself that he was very much like a curate making a call. The kindly expression was always on his face, even when he was most deeply in earnest, and he was apparently in earnest to-day.

"I stopped the other men from coming," began Pennington with no preface. "I wanted to have a long talk with you. I want to tell you a story."

"I wish you would," she said, though she had had so many scenes of late that, without any idea what was coming, a little tremor of terror crept around her heart. She leaned back in her rustic rocker, there on the veranda, and looked at him in her innocent, friendly fashion. He paused a little before he began.

"Once upon a time," he began abruptly, "there was a man who had a very fair start in life. His people saw to it that everything was smooth for him—too smooth, perhaps. He didn't realize that he could ever be in a position where they wouldn't be able to straighten things out for him. He was a decent enough chap; weak, perhaps, but kind, at least. He went to school and college, and finally took orders, and was given a living in a county near where his people lived. Life went along easily enough for him, and perhaps a bit stupidly. Too stupidly. He got bored by it. So after a while he gambled. He played the stock-market. Presently he used some money that was not his—that had been intrusted to him by another. He lost that. So he had to give up everything—home, friends, profession, country—and go and live in a strange country. His people, good always, straightened things out for him, at a great sacrifice; but they made it a condition that he should stay where he was. Time went on, and things were forgotten. And the people who had made him promise not to return died. They left him, in dying, some money. Not a great deal, but enough to keep him comfortably. And he didn't know what to do. He was happy, for the first time in his life, with a little friend he had found, some one almost like a daughter, some one who seemed, in humble ways, to need him to help her in what wasn't a very easy part of her life. So he stayed yet a little longer. And presently he found that he was in danger of something happening. He had never been very good at making himself feel as he wished to feel, or at holding his feelings to what they should be, let us say. And his feelings for this little daughter were not quite, he was afraid, like a father's. But he still did not know what to do, Marjorie. She would never care, and there were reasons why he did not want or expect her to. It was only that he wondered which was right—which he ought to do."

Pennington stopped.

Marjorie colored up.

"What—what do you mean? Why—why do you tell me about it?"

"Because," said Pennington, "I would like to know what you think that man ought to do. Ought he to go back home, against his people's wish, but where he belongs, and try to pick up the rest of his life there, or do you think that the need of him over here is enough to counterbalance the danger he runs? You see, it's rather a problem."

Marjorie was a perfectly intelligent girl. She knew very well that Pennington was, at last, telling her the outlines of his own pitiful story. And he was leaving the decision in her hands.

She sat quietly for awhile, and tried to think. It was hard to think, because there was a queer, hazy feeling in her head, and her hands were hot. She had felt unusually excited and energetic and gay earlier in the day, but that was all gone, and only the hazy feeling left. She did not want to move, or, particularly, to speak. She wondered if a trip she had made that afternoon before to a little swampy place, where she had sat and strung berries for an hour, had been bad for her.

But there was Pennington—he looked very large, suddenly, and then seemed to fade away far off for a minute, and have to be focused with an effort—and he had to be answered.

"I think," she said hesitatingly, "that he ought to do what seemed to him right, without thinking of his feelings, or—or any one else's."

"But that's just the trouble. He couldn't see which was right."

Marjorie tried to focus harder than ever. She wanted to be unselfish, and tell him the thing that was right to do, at any cost—though she had not realized how much Pennington's help and society had been to her. She felt a terror at the idea of his going, the more because she felt ill. But that didn't count—that mustn't count. You have no right to let a man stay where he may fall in love with you, merely because you need him for a maiden aunt or something of the sort. And that was the ultimate and entire extent of her affection for him, strong though it had come to be.

"I think—I think that man had better go back to the place where he had really belonged at first," she said in a low voice. "No matter how much the girl missed him, or needed him, she had no right to want him to be hurt by staying near her."

"You really think that?" he said.

"Yes," she answered. And then incoherently, "Oh, Mr. Pennington, I do want to be good!"

She meant that she had done enough wrong, in acting as she had toward Francis in the first place. She felt now, very strongly, that all the trouble had come from her cowardice when Francis came home. She should have shut her teeth and gone through the thing, no matter what her personal feelings had been at first. It would all have come out right then. She knew now that she and Francis, the plunge once taken, could have stood each other. And she would have kept her faith. She had learned the meaning of honor.

"You are good," said Pennington in a moved tone. "Then—I have my answer. Yes—I'll go back."

She leaned her heavy head on the chair-back again. He seemed once more suddenly remote.

"I—I wish you weren't going," she said, only half conscious of what she said.

He leaned forward, suddenly moved, and caught her hand hard. Still in that dream, she felt him kiss it. She did not care. And then, still in the dream, Francis's quick tread up the steps, and his sharp voice—

"And I believed in you!"



CHAPTER XI

She looked at him in a blind sort of way. His words made only a hazy impression; but neither of the men could know that.

"Believed in me?" she echoed, smiling faintly. "Why, did you?"

"Yes," said Francis with a concentrated fury that reached even her confused senses. "But I never will again! I thought—I was beginning to think—you were the sort of woman you said. But you're just a flirt. Any man is better than the one you're married to."

"I—I think you want me to go," she said, trying to see him. She could see two Francises, as a matter of fact, neither of them clearly.

"Yes, I do. Either of these men you've befooled can see you on your way. And I'll start divorce proceedings, or you may, immediately."

He said more than that; but that was all she could get. The words hurt her, in spite of their lack of meaning. Francis hated her; he thought she was a bad girl, who never kept her word. And she wasn't.

"I—I want to be good," she said aimlessly, as she had said to Pennington a little earlier. "I"—she lost the thread again—"I'll go."

She rose, dropping the cup and saucer on her knee, and not stopping to pick them up. She caught hold of the doorpost to carry her in, and dropped down on a seat inside. It was not that she was weak, but she felt giddy. She wondered again if it was the swamp. Probably. She finally made her way back to her own room, mixed herself some spirits of ammonia and took it, and sat down to pull herself together. Through the wooden partition she could hear the furious voices of the men on the porch outside. She wondered if Francis would say more dreadful things to her while he took her over in the side-car. She hoped not.

Presently the dizziness departed for a few minutes, and she tried to pack. She did not seem able to manage it. If she was allowed to stay at the Lodge with the O'Maras, she could send Peggy over to gather up her things. Yes, that would be the best way to do.

She pinned on her hat and drew her cloak around her, just as she was, and came out. Pennington and Francis were standing up, facing her, and having a quarrel which might last some time.

"I'm ready," she said weakly.

She knew she should have stood up there, and told Francis how unkind and unjust and bad-tempered and jealous he was, and defend herself from his accusations. But she was too tired to do it; and besides, words seemed so far away, and feelings seemed far away, too. Francis and the work at the cabin and Pennington, with his kind, plump, rueful face, and even the O'Maras and Logan, seemed suddenly unreal and of little account. The only thing that really mattered was a chance to go somewhere and lie down and sleep. Perhaps she could lean back a little in the side-car as he took her over.

Francis broke off short in what he was saying, and went without looking at her toward the place where he kept his motor-cycle. Perhaps he thought that it did not matter, now, whether he left her with Pennington or not.

Pennington, for his part, turned around—he had been standing so that his back was toward her—and began to speak. Marjorie thought he was saying something to the effect that he was very sorry that he had made this trouble for her, and that he had been trying to explain; and thought he could make Francis hear reason when he had cooled off.

"It doesn't really matter," she said wearily. "Only tell him to hurry, because I'm—so—sleepy."

She sank into the chair where she had been sitting before Francis appeared, and leaned back and shut her eyes. Pennington, with a concerned look on his face, came nearer her at that, and looked down at her, reaching down to feel her pulse. She moved her hand feebly away.

"Francis—wouldn't like it," she said; and that was the last thing she remembered distinctly, though afterwards when she tried she seemed to recall hearing Pennington, very far off in the distance, calling peremptorily, "Ellison! Ellison! Come here at once!"

She wondered faintly why Pennington should want to hurry him up. It was about this time that she quietly slipped sidewise from her chair, and was in a little heap on the veranda before he could turn and catch her, or Francis could respond to the summons.

"This is what you've done," was what Pennington said quietly when Francis reappeared. He did not offer to touch Marjorie or pick her up.

Francis flung himself down on his knees beside his wife. Then he looked up at Pennington, with a last shade of suspicion in his eyes.

"What do you think it is?" he asked. "Is she really fainting?"

"You young fool, no!" said Pennington. "She's ill."

"Ill!" said Francis, and gathered her up and laid her on the settee at the other end of the porch. "What's the matter, do you think? Is it serious?"

His words were quiet enough, but there was a note of anguish in his voice which made Pennington sorry for him in spite of himself. But he did not show much mercy.

"It is probably overwork," he said. "We've all done what we could to spare her, but a child like this shouldn't be put at drudgery, even to satisfy the most jealous or selfish man. You've had a china cup, my lad, and you've used it as if it was tin. And it's broken, that's all."

Francis looked down at Marjorie, holding her head in his arms. It lay back limply. Her eyes were half open, and her heart, as he put his hand over it, was galloping. Her cheeks were beginning to be scarlet, and her hand, when he reached down and touched it, burned. He looked up at Pennington with an unconscious appeal, unmindful of the older man's harsh words.

"Do you think she'll die?" he asked.

"I have no way of knowing. If she does, you have the consolation of knowing that you've done what you could toward it."

"Oh, my God, don't, Pennington!" cried out Francis, clutching Marjorie tighter unconsciously. "It's as true as gospel. But let up now. Get somebody. Do something, for heaven's sake! You know about medicine a little, don't you?"

"Take her inside and put her to bed," Pennington commanded shortly. "I'll take your motor-cycle and go for Mother O'Mara. I can get a doctor from there by to-morrow, perhaps."

Francis gathered the limp little body up again without a word. Only he turned at the door for a last appeal.

"Can't you tell at all what it is?"

"Fever, I think. She's caught malarial fever, perhaps. She wouldn't have done if she'd been stronger. Take her in."

So Francis carried his wife over the threshold, into the little brown room he had decked for her so long ago, and laid her down again. Her head fell back on the pillow, and her hands lay as he dropped them. He stood back and looked at her, a double terror in his heart. She would never love him again. How could she? And she would die—surely she would die, and he had killed her.

"I'm—going," she said very faintly, as a sleep-talker speaks. She was not conscious of what she said, but it was the last straw for Francis. He had not slept nor eaten lately, and he had worked double time all day to keep his mind from the state of things, ever since he had brought her back. So perhaps it was not altogether inexcusable that he flung himself on the floor by the bedside and broke down.

He was aroused after awhile by the touch of Marjorie's hand. He lifted his head, thinking she had come to and touched him knowingly. But he saw that it was only that she was tossing a little, with the restlessness of the fever, and his heart went down again.

He pulled himself up from the bedside, and went doggedly at his work of undressing her and putting her to bed.

She was as easy to handle as a child; and once or twice, when he had to lift or turn her in the process of undressing, he could feel how light she was, and that she was thinner. She had always been a little thing, but the long weeks of work had made her almost too thin—not too thin for her own tastes, because, like all the rest of the women of the present, she liked it; but thin enough to give Francis a fresh pang of remorse. He felt like a slave-driver.

When he had finished his task, he stood back, and wondered if there was anything else he could do before Pennington came back with Mrs. O'Mara, and with or without a doctor. He felt helpless, and as if he had to stand there and watch her die. He got water and tried to make her drink it—ineffectually—he filled a hot water bottle and brought it in, and then thought better of it. She had a fever already. Then he thought of bathing her in cold water; but he could not bring himself to do that. He had already done enough that she would hate him for, in the way of undressing her. He must never tell her he had done that. . . . But she would hate him anyway. So he ended by sitting miserably down on the floor beside her, and waiting the interminable hours that the time seemed until the others returned.

He had expected Mrs. O'Mara to reproach him, as Pennington had, as being the person to blame for Marjorie's state. But the dear soul, comforting as always, said nothing of the sort. She said very little of any sort, indeed; she merely laid off the bonnet and cloak she had come in, and went straight at her work of looking after Marjorie. Only on her way she stopped to give Francis a comforting pat on the shoulder.

"It's not so bad but it might be worse," she said. "Anybody might git them fevers without a stroke of work done. An' she's young an' strong."

Francis looked up at her in mute gratitude from where he sat.

"An' now clear out, lie down and rest, down on the couch or annywhere ye like, till I see what's to be done to this girl," she went on.

He went out without a word, and sat down on the window-seat, where the banjo lay, still, and picked it up mechanically. He could see Marjorie, now, with it in her hands, singing to it for the men—or, sometimes, just for him. How gay she had been through everything, and how plucky, and how sweet! And just because she was gay he had thought she was selfish and fickle, and didn't care. And because she had never said anything about how hard the work was, he had thought—he could forgive himself even less for this—that it wasn't hard. Looking back, he could see not one excuse for himself except in his carrying her off. That might have worked all right, if he could have kept his temper. He let his mind stray back over what might have been; suppose he had accepted Logan's following her up here as just what it was—the whim of a man in love with Marjorie. Suppose he had believed that Pennington could kiss his wife's hand without meaning any harm; suppose, in fine, that he had believed in Marjorie's desire and intention to do right, even if she had been a coward for a few minutes to begin with?

Then—why, then—

By this time, perhaps, he could have won her back. If he had not laid down the law to her—if he had not put her to the test. What business had a man in love to make terms, anyhow? It was for him to accept what terms Marjorie had chosen to make for him.

He flung himself down on his knees by the window-seat, heedless of any one who might come or go.

"Oh, God," prayed Francis passionately, as he did everything. "Give me another chance! Let her get well, and give me one little chance then to have her forgive me! I don't care what else happens if that only does!"

He did not know how long he knelt there, praying with such intensity that he sprang aside when some one touched him on the shoulder.

"She's goin' to be all right in the long run," said Mrs. O'Mara. "I gev' her a wee drink o' water, an' she kem to herself fur a minute. An' I says, 'Me dear, where did ye git yer fever?' An' she says, 'The swamp, I think. Don't I have to travel to-day? I'm in bed.' An' I says, 'Not to-day nor anny day till ye want, me child,' and she turns over an' snuggles down like a lamb. An' I've sponged her off with cool water, an' she feels better, though she's off agin, an' I'm afraid the fever'll be runnin' up on us before the doctor can git here."

"You mean she isn't sensible now?" demanded Francis, whose eyes had lighted up with hope when she began to speak.

"Well, not so's ye could talk to her. An' ye might excite her. Them they loves does often."

"Then I wouldn't," said Francis recklessly. "Oh, Mother O'Mara, I've been such a brute——"

"Hush, hush now, don't ye be tellin' me. Sure we're all brutes wanst in awhile. Ye feel that way because the child's sick. Now go out and watch fer the doctor, or do annything else that'll amuse ye."

He obeyed her as if he were a little boy. He was so miserable that he would have done what any one told him just then—if Logan, even, with his cane and his superciliousness, had given him a direction he would probably have obeyed it blindly.

Mrs. O'Mara went back to the sick-room. How much she knew of the situation she never told. But Peggy was not a secretive person, and Peggy had arrived at a point with Logan where he told her a good deal, if she coaxed. They never got it out of the old lady, at any rate.

Marjorie was quieter, but still not herself. Mrs. O'Mara, who was an experienced nurse, did not like the way she had collapsed so completely. She was afraid it was going to be a hard illness, and she knew Francis was breaking his heart over it.

"Still it may be a blessin' in a way," she said half aloud. "You never can tell in this world o' grief and danger. I wonder has she people besides Mr. Francis. They've never either of them said."

The doctor came and went, and Monday morning dawned, when Francis had to go to work whether or no. And Pennington quietly took over Marjorie's duties again, and the men tiptoed up to the cabin where she lay, and asked about her anxiously, and young Peggy came over and took turns with her mother in the nursing, and Logan, much more robust and tanned than he had been in several years of New York life in heated apartments, came with her and sat on the porch waiting till she came out; and Francis saw him there, and thought nothing of it except that he was grateful to him for being interested in Marjorie.

He realized now that it was all he need ever have thought. But he realized so many things now, when it might be too late!

The days went on relentlessly. Finally they decided to send for her cousin, the only relative she had. Francis was a little doubtful as to the wisdom of this, for he knew that Marjorie had never been very happy with her cousin, but it was one of those things which seem to have to be done. And just as they had come to this resolution; a resolution which felt to Francis like giving up all hope, Marjorie took a little turn for the better.

It was not much to see. She was a little quieter, that was all, and the nursing did not have to be so intensive. Mrs. O'Mara and Peggy did not feel that they had to sit with her all the time; there were periods when she was left alone. Francis felt more bitterly than anything else that he had to go on with his work, instead of staying in the house every moment, but it was better for him. He would have driven the O'Maras mad, they told him frankly, walking up and down, looking repentant. Peggy was not quite softened to him yet; but the older woman was so sorry for him that any feelings she may have had about the way he had behaved were swallowed up in sympathy.

"And it isn't as if he weren't gettin' his comeuppance, Peg," she reminded her intolerant young daughter. "Sure annything he made her suffer he's payin' for twice over and again to that."

"And a very good thing, too," retorted Peggy, who was just coming off duty, and casting an eye toward the window to see where Logan was. He was exactly where she wished, waiting with what, for him, was eagerness, to go off through the woods with her.

"I suppose, now ye've a man trailin' ye, there's nothin' ye don't know," said her mother. "And him a heretic, if not a heathen itself. I've only to say to ye, keep yer own steps clean, Peggy."

"He is a heathen—he doesn't believe a blessed thing; he said so himself!" said Peggy with what sounded like triumph. "The more reason for me to convert him, poor dear! Empty things are easier filled than full ones. If he was like them in there, with a religion of his own, I wouldn't have a show. But as it is, I have my hopes."

"Oh, it's converting him you are! Tell that to the pigs!" said her mother scornfully. "And now go on; I suppose you're taking a prayer book and a rosary along with you in that picnic basket."

"No," said Peggy reluctantly. "I'm softening his heart first."

She had the grace to giggle a little as she said it, and the O'Mara sense of humor rode triumphant over both of them then, and they parted, laughing. Francis, entering on one of his frequent flying trips from work to see how Marjorie was, felt as if they were heartless.

Mrs. O'Mara, at the sight of his tired, unhappy young face, sobered down with one of her quick Irish transitions.

"Ah, sure now it's the best of news. The doctor's been, and he says she's better. So it won't be necessary to send after the old aunt or cousin or whatever, that ye say she wasn't crazy over. Come in an' see her."

Francis, a new hope in his heart, tiptoed into the little brown bedroom where Marjorie lay. It was too much to hope that she would know him. She had been either delirious or asleep—under narcotics—through the days of her fever. And once or twice when she had spoken rationally, it had never been Francis who had happened to be near at the time.

She lay quite quietly, with her eyes shut, and her long lashes trailing on her cheeks. When Francis came in she opened her eyes as if it was a trouble to make that much effort. She was very weak. But she looked at him intelligently, and even lifted one hand a little from the coverlet, as if she wanted to be polite and welcome him. He had been warned not to make any fuss or say anything exciting, if this should come; so he only sat down across from her and tried to speak naturally.

"Do you know me, Marjorie?" he asked, trying to make his voice sound as it always sounded. But it was a little hoarse.

She spoke, in a thread of a voice, that yet had a little mockery in it. She seemed to have taken things up where she dropped them.

"Yes, thank you. You're my sort of husband. This—this is really too bad of me, Francis. But, anyway, it was your swamp!"

Just the old, mocking, smiling Marjorie, or her shadow. But it did not make him angry now; it seemed so piteous that he should have brought her to this. The swamp faded to nothingness as a cause of her illness when he compared it to his own behavior.

"Marjorie," he asked, very gently so as not to disturb her, "would it be too exciting if I talked to you a little bit about things, and told you how sorry I was?"

"Why—no," she said weakly, shutting her eyes.

"I was wrong, from start to finish," he said impetuously. "I'm sorry. I want you to forgive me."

"Why, certainly," she said, so indifferently that his heart sank. It did not occur to him that he had never said that he cared for her at all.

"Is there anything I could get you?" he asked futilely as he felt.

"I'd like to see Mr. Pennington. He was kind to me."

"Marjorie, Marjorie, won't you ever forgive me for the way I acted?"

"Oh, yes," she said, lying with shut eyes, so quiet that her lips scarcely moved when she talked. "I said so. But you haven't been kind. It's like—don't you know, when you get a little dog used to being struck it gets so it cowers when you speak to it, no matter if you aren't going to strike it that time. I don't want to be hurt any more. I don't love Pennington—he's too funny-looking, and awfully old. But he was kind—he never hurt my feelings. . . ."

She spoke without much inflection, and using as few words as she could. When she had finished she still lay there, as silent and out of Francis's reach as if she were dead. He tiptoed out with a sick feeling that everything was over, which he had never had before. She was so remote. She cared so little about anything.

He went back to work, and told Pennington that Marjorie wanted to see him. When the day was over he returned to the cabin again, and found Mrs. O'Mara on duty once more. Pennington sat by Marjorie, holding her hand in his, and speaking to her occasionally. Francis looked at him, and spoke to him courteously. Pennington smiled at him, and stayed where he was. Marjorie, Mrs. O'Mara said, seemed to cling to him, and his presence did her good. And—she broke it as gently as she could—though the patient was on the road to getting well now, she was disturbed by his coming in and out. She seemed afraid of him.

Francis took it very quietly. After that he only came to the bedroom door to ask, and stepped as softly as he could, so that she would not even know he had been there. And time went on, and she got better, and presently could be dressed in soft, loose, fluffy things, and lie out on the veranda during the warmest part of the day, and see people for a little while each. It was about this time that Francis went to sleep at the bunk-house.

"Why doesn't Francis ever come to see me?" she asked finally. "There are a great many things I want to know about."

Pennington, whom she had asked, told her gently.

"We thought—the physician thought—that he upset you a little when you were beginning to be better. He is staying away on purpose. Would you like to see him?"

"Yes, I think I would," she said. "Can Peggy come talk to me?"

Peggy could, of course. She came dashing up, from some sylvan nook where she had been secluded, presumably with Logan, fell on Marjorie with hearty good-will and many kisses, and demanded to know what she could do.

"I—I want to see Francis and talk to him about a lot of things," said Marjorie, "and I thought perhaps if you'd get me a mirror and a little bit of powder, and——"

"Say no more!" said Peggy. "I know what you want as well as if you'd told me all. I'll be out in a minute with everything in the world."

She returned with her arms full of toilet things, and for fifteen minutes helped Marjorie look pretty. She finished by brushing out her hair and arranging it loosely in curls, with a big ribbon securing it, like Mary Pickford or one of her rivals. She touched Marjorie's face with a little perfume to flush it, and draped her picturesquely against the back of the long chair, with a silk shawl over her instead of the steamer rug which Mrs. O'Mara, less artistic than utilitarian, had provided.

"There," she said, "you look like a doll, or an angel, or anything else out of a storybook. Now I'll get Francis."



CHAPTER XII

Marjorie waited, with a quietness which was only outward, for Francis. She did not even know whether he would come; she had only seen him once; he had said he was sorry for the way he had acted, and asked her to forgive him, but then it wasn't the first time he had done that.

"It's getting to be just a little morning custom of his," said Marjorie to herself, trying to laugh. But she was in earnest about seeing him. Away down deep in her she was not quite sure why she wanted to. She was not angry with him—she seemed to herself past that. Of course, there were things to arrange.

It seemed like a sorry ending to it all. She had meant to ride triumphantly through the work, and walk off leaving a crushed Francis behind her; and make such a success of something back in New York that he would spend years being very, very sorry. . . . Well, he did seem sorry. But it was only because he felt guilty about her being ill, not, so far as she could tell, because he cared a bit about her any more. And it really was not his fault, her illness. She had been well and happy, and even liked the work. The doctor had said that the miasma in the swamp, and her sitting by it for hours, making a wreath of flowers like a small girl, were alone responsible. And even if he was softening the blow, she had been tired and worried before she came up; the housework at the cabin wouldn't have been enough. She must tell Francis so. He did take things so hard.

When he came, led by Peggy, neither of them seemed to know what to say for a little while. Francis sat down by her and spoke constrainedly, and then merely stared and stared.

"Well, what is it then?" demanded Peggy, who was hovering about, and, unlike the Ellisons, seemed to have no emotions to disturb her. "Has she two heads, or had you forgotten her looks entirely?"

"I think I must have forgotten her looks entirely," he answered slowly, never taking his eyes off Marjorie. "You know—well, I hadn't seen you, Marjorie, for some time. But you always were beautiful."

Marjorie turned pink up to the ribbon bow that sat out like a little girl's at one temple.

"Was I?" was all she found to say.

"Yes," he said, and said no more.

At this juncture Peggy rose.

"Well, I'm sorry not to stay here and help you carry on this fluent conversation," she said, tossing her head. "But I have an engagement elsewhere. If you want me ring the bell."

This was more or less metaphorical—probably a quotation from Thackeray—because there was no bell in sight. But at any rate Peggy left with one of her goddess-like sweeps, and was to be heard thereafter calling Mr. Logan with a good-will. Presently the others, sitting silently, heard his voice answer gaily, and then no more. They had met and were off together as usual.

"You see," said Marjorie, "he really didn't care for me. I think he and Peggy will marry each other one of these days, even if she is only sixteen."

"She will get over being sixteen, of course," said Francis, still in the preoccupied voice. "I suppose it's her superb vitality that attracts him. She is actually making him almost human."

Marjorie smiled faintly at that.

"You don't like him much, do you?" she said.

"Do you remember, in your letters, how you always called him 'your friend with the fits?'"

"Well, wasn't he?" said Francis defensively.

"Well, I don't think it was fits," she answered, balancing her ideas as if they had met only to discuss Logan; "it was some sort of a nervous seizure. At any rate, Peggy nursed him through one of the attacks, so if she does marry him she knows the worst. But maybe they won't be married. I remember, now, he told me once that an emotion to be really convincing must be only touched lightly and foregone."

"That man certainly talks a lot of rot," said Francis. It was curious how, whenever they were together, they fell into intimate conversation—even if everything in the world had been happening the minute before. The thought came to Marjorie. "Now, my emotions," Francis went on, "have certainly been too darn convincing for comfort for the last year. If I could have touched any of them lightly and foregone them I'd have been so proud you couldn't see me for dust. But they weren't that kind. . . . Marjorie, I've been through hell this last while that you've been sick."

"I'm sorry," she said. It gave her the opening she had been looking for. "But that partly was what I sent for you to talk about. Not hell—I mean—well, our affairs. I'm well enough now to be quite quiet and calm about them, and I think you are, too. That is," she added, half laughing, "if you could ever be quiet and calm about anything. What I've seen of you has either been when you've been repressing yourself so hard that I could see the emotions bubble underneath, or when you'd stopped repressing, and were telling me what you really thought of me."

"Oh, don't!" he said, wincing.

"Well, why not, Francis? You see, it's sort of as if we were both dead now, and talking things over calmly on the golden shore. . . . Isn't it lovely here! Oh, you don't know how nice it is to be getting well!"

"And I made you go through all that," he said chokingly, reaching out instinctively for one of the thin little hands that lay contentedly outside the silk shawl, and then pulling back again.

Marjorie looked at him consideringly. She couldn't help thinking, for a moment, how lovely this would be if it wasn't a case of the golden shore; if Francis and she hadn't messed things up so; if they had come up here because they loved each other, and trusted each other to make happiness; and if Francis, instead of taking his hand back that way, had held hers as if he had the right to. And she remembered suddenly their marriage night. He had flung himself down beside her and wrapped her in his arms, and she had not quite liked it; she had shrunk away from him. She was so weak now, and it felt a little lonely—if he put his arms around her now she thought she would like it. But then she was ill yet, and emotional; probably it was the same feeling that made men propose to their nurses when they were convalescing. A nurse had told her about it once, and added that it was considered very unethical to take a man up on that sort of a proposal. That was it—you just wanted somebody to be kind to you.

"Perhaps if I had a cat," said Marjorie inadvertently, aloud.

"Would you like one?" demanded Francis. "I'll get it this afternoon."

"Yes, I guess so," she answered, coloring again. "But what made you think of a cat?"

"Oh, I just did," she answered untruthfully. "You see—you see, I'm not strong yet, and my mind rambled around in an inconsequent sort of way. It just happened on cats. But, Francis, you mustn't reproach yourself. I know you are feeling altogether too badly about what you did. But you mustn't. That's just the way you're made. You haven't nice tame emotions, and in a way you're better so. Why, people like you, all energy and force and attraction, get so much farther in life. You're going to be a wonderful success, I know, just because you are so intense. You meant all right. I know lots of girls who would have been awfully flattered at your being so jealous. They'd have thought it meant you were in love with them terribly."

"They'd have thought right," he said.

She looked at him—she had been talking with her eyes on a green tree over in the distance. His head was bowed, and his hands clenched on his knees, and he had spoken again in the muttering voice he had begun with.

"I suppose you were," she said with a little wistful note in her voice that neither of them knew was there. "But never mind; I want to talk now about what we are both to do next. If you are really feeling as badly as you say about my being sick, I don't suppose you mind how long I take to get well. I'm afraid it will be quite a little while longer."

He started to speak, but she held up one hand and stopped him.

"And after that I'll go back to Lucille, if Billy isn't home."

"He is," said Francis. "He came over in one of the transports in July, while you were ill. That was the only reason I didn't drag Lucille up here."

"Where are they?" demanded Marjorie a little blankly. But after all she should have expected this.

"In the flat you and Lucille had. Lucille likes it."

"How can she?" sighed Marjorie. "Well, she's never tried this. . . . I wonder what I'd better do? I think I heard something about a place where they have flats just for business women. Perhaps Billy could arrange for me to get one before they're all gone. He always loved attending to things like that for people. I can't go back to Cousin Anna. I've been through too much. Why, you mayn't think it, but I'm grown up, Francis! I'm about twenty years older than that foolish little girl you married. I—I wonder I haven't wrinkles and a little wisp of fuzzy gray hair!" she added, trying to smile.

"Don't!" said Francis again, looking at her childish face, with its showers of loose curls, that was trying to be so brave. He dropped his eyes again to the clenched hands that were tensed, one on either knee. "I was foolish and young, too, then," he added. "I think I'm older, too."

"Yes . . . it was a mistake," she said in a far-off voice.

"I wish it hadn't been," he said.

"Why, I was thinking that, too!" she said. "Isn't it a pity that we weren't as old then as we are now! Responsible, I mean, and wanting as much to do right things. That was one thing about it all. I want to do right more than anything else these days; and I think you do, too. And it wasn't in style then—do you remember our talking it over up here once, when we were having a little friendly spat? But I suppose——"

"I suppose you would never have married me if you'd been so old and wise," he said.

She considered.

"But neither would you have," she objected.

Francis looked up at her suddenly, flashingly. "You know better," he burst out. "You know I'd marry you over again if I were forty years old, and as wise as Solomon. The kind of love I had for you isn't the kind that gets changed."

Marjorie lay for a minute silently. Then she looked at him incredulously.

"But you said——" she began very softly.

"I said things that I ought to be horsewhipped for. I loved you so much that I was jealous. I do think I've learned a little better. Why, if you wanted to talk to some other man now, even if I knew you loved him madly, if it would make you happier I think I'd get him for you. . . . No. No, I don't believe I could. I want you too much myself. But—I've learned a better kind of love, at least, than the kind that only wants to make you miserable. I did get Pennington for you when you were so ill, and wanted him instead of me. Count that to me for righteousness, Marge, when you think about me back there in the city."

"Then—you mean—that you love me just as much as ever?"

She lay there, wide-eyed, flushed and unbelieving.

"As much? A thousand times more—you know it. Good heavens, how could any one live in the house with you and not care more and more for you all the time?"

"But, then, why did you——"

"Because I was a brute. I've told you that. And because it made me unhappier and unhappier to see you drifting away from me, and then, every time I could have done anything to draw you a little closer I'd lash out and send you farther away with my selfishness and jealousy. I didn't know it was any surprise to you. It's been the one thing you've known from the beginning——"

She shook her head.

"Every time you lost your temper you said you'd stopped loving me. And that nobody could love the bad girl I was, to flirt and deceive you——"

"I've no excuse. I haven't even the nerve to ask you to try it a little longer. But believe this, Marjorie; the very hardest thing you could ask me to do——"

She laughed a little, starry-eyed,

"If I asked you to go and do the cooking and cleaning for your beloved men, that you made me do?" she asked whimsically.

He nodded matter-of-coursely.

"It would mean Pennington doing my directing, and I don't think he's up to it; he's a fine second in command, but he can't plan. Yes, I'd do it in a minute, though it would probably mean the job I'm making my reputation on going smash. Do you want me to? If the whole thing went to the devil it would be a small price to pay for getting even another half-chance to make good with you. May I, Marjorie? Say I may!"

He was bending forward, alert and passionate, as if it were a chance to own the world that he was begging for. She told him so.

"It is—my world. I mean it, Marjorie. I don't deserve it, and I don't see how you can trust me, but let me do that. Or anything. I don't care how hard or how ridiculous, if it would mean that some day I could come back to you and you'd consider—just consider—being my wife."

"But, Francis! But, Francis, I don't want you to be ridiculous! I don't want you to fall down on your work. I don't want you to do anything——"

"I know you don't. That's the worst of it. And it's coming to me."

She was silent for a little while.

"It hadn't occurred to you, then, that perhaps—perhaps living in the house with you might have made me—well, a little fonder of you?"

She did not know what she had expected him to do when she said that. Anything but what he did do—sit perfectly still and unbelieving, and look as if she had stabbed him.

"No," he said finally. "That couldn't happen. Don't talk to me that way, Marjorie. It's cruel. Not that you haven't the right to be cruel."

It was Marjorie's time of triumph, that she had planned for so long, in those days when the work was hard and things were lonely sometimes. But she did not take it. She only put out one shy hand, for it was a little hard for her to go on talking, she was getting so tired, and said timidly:

"But it is true, Francis. I—I am fond of you. And if there's anything to forgive, I have. You know you can't be so dreadfully angry with people when—when you like them. You—why, you don't have to wait and have tests. I'll stay with you now, if you want me."

He stared at her a little longer, still incredulous. Then with an inarticulate cry he was down on his knees beside her long chair, and he had her in his arms, just as he had held her the night before he went away, just after they were married. No, not just the same; for though he held her as closely and as tenderly, there was something of fear still in the way he kept his arms about her; as if he did not really think it was true. He knelt there for a long time, and neither of them moved. He did not call her affectionate names; he only kept repeating, "Marjorie! Marjorie! Marjorie!" over and over again, as if her name would keep her close to him, and hold her real.

She laughed a little again presently.

"It's really so, you know, Francis."

"I don't believe it in the least!" said Francis, in a more assertive voice than he had used yet. He laughed, too. She looked at the dark, vivid face so near hers, and so changed from what it had been five minutes before.

"Well, you did take a lot of convincing!" she said demurely. "I felt so bold——"

"Darling," said Francis, kissing her parenthetically, "do you think it would be too much for you if you sat on my knees a little while? I can't get at half enough of you where you are. And doctors say that being too long in one position is very bad for invalids."

"You might try," said Marjorie docilely; "though, honestly, Francis, I don't feel any more like an invalid than you do. I feel perfectly well and strong—let me see if I can stand up!"

He really shouldn't—Mrs. O'Mara told him that severely two hours afterwards—but at that particular moment he would have done anything in the world Marjorie requested. He lifted her to a standing position very carefully, and held her supported while she tried how she felt being really on her feet again. It was the first time. Until now, Pennington had carried her in and out, while Francis felt a deadly envy in his heart.

"See, I'm all well!" she said triumphantly, looking exactly, as he told her, like a doll, with her lacy draperies and her shoulder-length curls, and her slim arms thrown out to balance herself. He let her stand there a minute or so, and then pulled her gently over and held her for a while.

At least, they thought it was a while. It was much more like two hours; there was so much to talk over, and explain, and arrange for generally. They decided to stay just where they were, for a little while at least, after Francis's work was done. Marjorie was to get strong as quickly as possible, and they were both, after their long practice at being unhappy, to try to be as happy as possible. And the very first time that Francis was jealous, or objected to any one kissing her hand or traveling from New York to take her away from a cruel husband, Marjorie was to leave him forever. This was his suggestion.

"But I don't think I would," said Marjorie thoughtfully, lifting her head a little from his shoulder. "I never did, did I, no matter what you did to me? You couldn't even make me go when you sent me—I preferred malarial fever."

Francis said nothing to that, except to suddenly tighten his arms about her. He was not yet at the point where he could make a joke of her illness. She had been too near the Valley of the Shadow for that.

So they were still sitting very comfortably together, discussing their mutual life—they had planned as far as the tenth year of their marriage—when Peggy descended upon them again.

Marjorie flushed and made a faint effort to escape, but Francis sat immovably, exactly as if Peggy were not there at all.

"Oh!" said Peggy.

"We've made up," said Francis coolly.

"Then I suppose you won't be wanting me on the premises," said Peggy, making a dive for the door.

"I would be delighted if there was a whole procession of you, like a frieze," said Francis, "walking by and seeing how happy I am."

"Oh, but I wouldn't!" protested Marjorie. "Do let me get up and be respectable, Francis. There will be a procession going by presently—you know the men all come and ask how I am every day."

At that reluctantly he did put her back in her chair, where she lay for a little longer, starry-eyed and quite unlike an invalid. Peggy went inside, judging that in spite of Francis's protests they would be perfectly happy alone; and, besides, she wanted to tell her mother. The two on the veranda stayed where they were.

"But what about the cooking?" demanded Marjorie presently.

"It's been all right while you were sick. We are going to get through sooner than I thought."

"Oh, I'm so glad," she sighed. "I really did want you to get the work done, and succeed—I never hated you that much, at the worst."

"Don't talk about the work!" he said passionately. "The work didn't matter a bit. And I tell you this, Marjorie, if I can help it you shall never do another stroke of work as long as you live!"

"That's going too far, as usual," said Marjorie calmly. "You certainly are a tempestuous person, Francis Ellison! I'd be unhappy without something to do. . . . May I play on the banjo sometimes in the evening, and will you stay quite close to me when I do?"

"You mean——" he asked.

"I mean that you didn't destroy all those notes when you lost your temper with me. To begin with, you left note-shaped places in the dust, on all the things you had put there for me—you really will have to let me do a little dusting occasionally, dear!—and so I hunted. One note was under the fresh banjo strings. . . . And you may well be glad you forgot it."

"Why, dearest? Did it make you a little sorry for me?"

"Oh, so sorry! In spite of all you'd said and done, somehow—somehow when I read that I think I began to fall in love with you all over again. . . . I cried, I know. I didn't know then that was what was the matter with me, but I know now it was. You had wanted me so much, there in our dear little cabin; and try as I would to keep telling myself that it was a last year's you, it kept feeling like a this year's."

"It was," he said fervently. "It was this year's, and every year's, as long as we both live."

"As long as we both live," echoed Marjorie.

They were both quiet for a while. The sun was setting, and the rays shone down through the trees; through a gap they could see the west, scarlet and gold and beautiful. Things felt very solemn. Marjorie put out one hand mutely, and Francis took it and held it closely. It was more really their marriage day than the one in New York, when they were both young and reckless, and scarcely more than bits of flotsam in the tremendous world-current that set toward mating and replacement. They belonged together now, willingly and deliberately; set to go forward with what love and forbearance and earnestness of purpose they could, all the days of their life. They both felt it, and were still.

But presently Marjorie's laughter awakened Francis from his muse. He had been promising himself that he would make up to her—that he would try to erase all his wild doings from her mind. She should forget some day that he had ever put her in an automobile, and borne her away, Sabine fashion, to where he could dominate her into submission and wifehood. He had gone very far into himself, and that light laugh of hers, that he loved, drew him back from the far places.

"What is it, dear?" he asked.

"I was just thinking—I was just thinking what awfully good common sense you showed, carrying me off that way. And how proud of it I'll be as long as I live!" said Marjorie.

THE END