CHAPTER XXIII

IN THE MATTER OF JOHN BARRETT'S DAUGHTER

"Warmth and comfort? Ay, all these Under the arch of the great spruce trees; But our cup o' content holds naught but foam!-- No woman's hand to make a home."

Wade did not wake when the cook's wailing hoot called the camp in the morning. It was black darkness still. He slept through all the clatter of tin dishes, the jangle of bind-chains as the sleds started, the yowl of runners on the dry snow, and the creaking of departing footsteps. The sun quivered in his eyes when he rolled in the bunk at touch of old Christopher's hand on his shoulder.

"Oh, but you needed it all, my boy!" protested the woodsman, checking the young man's peevish regrets that he had slept so long. "Come to breakfast."

Barnum Withee had eaten with his men, but he was waiting in solitary state in the cook camp, smoking his pipe, and moodily rapping the horn handle of a case-knife on the table.

"Law says," he remarked to his guests, continuing aloud his meditations, "that employer shall send out remains of them that die in camp. But I ain't employer in this case, and I'm short of hosses, anyway, and the tote team only came in yesterday, and ain't due to go out again for a week."

"It makes a lot of trouble, old critters dyin' that ain't got friends," observed Christopher, spooning out beans.

"You may mean that sarcastic, but it's the truth just the same," retorted Withee. "He ain't northin' to me. What I was thinkin' of, if you were bound out--"

"Ain't goin' that way," said the woodsman, giving Wade a significant glance.

"Well, from what things you let drop last night," grumbled the operator, "I figured that you were more or less interested in old Lane, and perhaps were lookin' him up for somethin', and if so you ought to be willin' to help get him out and buried in a cemetery. He ain't a friend of mine and never was, and it ain't square to have the whole thing dumped onto me."

Wade, his heart made tender by his own grief, gazed towards the lonesome isolation of the lean-to with moistening eyes. Alone, living; alone, dead! But Christopher put into cold phrase the burning fact they had to face.

"We've got business of our own for to-day, Barnum, and mighty important business, too."

And pulling their caps about their ears, and tugging their moose-sled, they set away, up the tote road to the north, leaving Barnum Withee not wholly easy in his mind regarding their motives.

It was from the snow-swirl on Dickery Pond that "Ladder" Lane had emerged, even then death-struck. It was straight to Dickery that Christopher led the way, and two hours' steady trudging brought them there.

"So it was from off there he came," muttered the woodsman, blinking into the glare of the snow crystals on its broad surface. "But where, in God's name, he came from it ain't in me to say!"

It was one of those still winter days when even the wind seems to be bound by the hard frost. The sliding snow-shoes shrieked as shrilly with the sun high as they had in the early morning. There was no hint of melting.

"There are five old operations around this pond, and a set of empty camps on each one," said Straight. "I've been to each one of them in times past, and I know where the main roads come out to the landings. But it's slow business, takin' 'em one after the other. Perhaps we ought to go back and beat the truth of this thing into Barnum Withee's thick head, and start the hue and cry--but--but--I'd hoped to do it some better way."

"Straight," panted the young man, "it's getting to be perfectly damnable, this suspense! Let's do something, if it's only to run up the middle of that pond and shout!"

"Well," snorted the old guide, irrelevantly, "I've been lookin' for old Red Fins to come along for two days now, and I ain't disappointed. If there's trouble anywhere in this section, old Eli has got a smeller that leads him to it." Wade whirled from his despairing survey of the pond and saw Prophet Eli. He was coming down the tote road on his "ding-swingle," urging on his little white stallion with loose, clapping reins. Huge mittens of vivid red encased his hands, and his conical, knitted cap was red, and was pulled down over his ears like a candle-snuffer.

Wade felt a queer little thrill of superstition as he looked at him, and then sneered at himself as one who was allowing good wit to be infected by the idle follies of the woods. And yet there was something eerie in the way this bizarre old wanderer turned up now, as he had appeared twice before at times that meant so much, at moments so crucial, in Wade's woods life.

Prophet Eli swung up to them, halted, and peered at them curiously out of his little eyes.

"Green, blue, and yellow," he blurted, patting his much-variegated wool jacket. "And red! Red mittens good for the arterial blood. Why don't you wear them?"

"Say, look here, prophet--" began Christopher, blandly respectful.

"Green is nature's color. Calms the nerves. Blue, electricity for the system--got a stripe of it all up and down my backbone. Good for you. Ought to wear it. Yellow, kidneys and cathartic. You'd rather be sick, eh? Be sick. Clek-clek!" He clucked his tongue and clapped his reins. But Christopher grabbed at the stallion's headstall and checked him.

"I believe the idea is all c'rect, prophet, and I'll use it, and I'll try to make it right with you. But just now I'm wantin' a little information, and I'll make it right with you for that, too. You're sky-hootin' round these woods all the time. Now, where's Lane been makin' his headquarters?--you ought to know!"

"What do you want him for? State-prison or insane asylum?" snapped the prophet.

"I don't want him," said the woodsman, solemnly. "He's spoken for, Eli. He's down there, dead, in Barn Withee's camps."

The little gray eyes blinked quickly. What that emotion was, one could not guess. For the voice of the prophet did not waver in its brisk staccato. "Dead, eh? Hate-bug crawled into him and did it. I told him to stay in the woods and the hate-bugs couldn't get him. Told him twenty years ago. But he wasn't careful. Let the hate-bug get him at last. Dead, eh? I'll go and get him."

"Get him?" echoed Christopher.

"Promised to bury him," explained the prophet, promptly. "Wanted to be buried off alone, just as he lived. Rocks for a pillow. Expects to rest easy. I helped him dig his grave and lay out the rocks a long time ago. And I'll tell no one the place--no, sir."

"Well, that lets Withee out of trouble and expense," said the woodsman, "and you'll get a good reception down that way. Now, prophet, where's he been hiding? You know, probably. It's important, I tell you." The old man had struck his stallion, and the animal was trying to get away. But Christopher held on grimly.

"You call yourself a good woodsman?" squealed the indignant Eli.

"I reckon I'll average well."

"If any one wants anything of 'Ladder' Lane now," cried the prophet, "it must be for something that he's left behind him! Left behind him!" he repeated. He stood up on the "ding-swingle," and ran his keen gaze about the ridges that circled the lake.

"Was it something that could build a fire?" he demanded, sharply. Christopher, in no mood for confidences, stared at the peppery old man. "You call yourself a good woodsman, and don't know what it means to see that!" He pointed his whip at a thin trail of white smoke that mounted, as tenuous almost as a thread, above the distant shore of Dickery Pond. "No lumbermen operating there for three years, and you see that, and are lookin' for something, and don't go and find out! And you call yourself a woodsman!" Without further word or look he lashed the stallion; the animal broke away with a squeal, and Prophet Eli's "ding-swingle" disappeared down the tote road in a swirl of snow.

"No, I ain't a woodsman!" snorted Christopher. He started away across the pond at a pace that left Wade breath only for effort and not for questions. "I ain't a woodsman. Standin' here and not seein' that smoke! Not seein' it, and guessin' what it must mean! I ain't a woodsman!" Over and over he muttered his bitter complaints at himself in disjointed sentences. "I'm gettin' old. I must be blind. A lunatic can tell me my business." His anger rowelled him on, and when he reached the opposite shore of the lake he was obliged to wait for the younger man to come floundering and panting up to him.

"I don't feel just like talkin' now, Mr. Wade," he said, gruffly. "I don't feel as though I knew enough to talk to any one over ten years old." He strode on, tugging the sled.

An abandoned main logging-road, well grown to leafless moose-wood and witch-hobble, led them up from the lake. Christopher did not have to search the skies for the smoke. His first sight of it had betrayed the camp's location. He knew the roads that led to it. And in the end they came upon it, though it seemed to Wade that the road had set itself to twist eternally through copses and up and down the hemlock benches.

The camps were cheerless, the doors of main camp, cook camp, and hovel were open, and the snow had drifted in. But from the battered funnel of the office camp came that trail of smoke, reaching straight up. Crowding close to the funnel for warmth, and nestled in the space that the heat had made in the snow, crouched a creature that Wade recognized as "Ladder" Lane's tame bobcat. This, then, was "Ladder" Lane's retreat. Inside there--the young man's knees trembled, and there was a gripping at his throat, dry and aching from his frantic pursuit of his grim guide.

"Mr. Wade," said Christopher, halting, "I reckon she's there, and that she's all right. I'll let you go ahead. She knows you. I don't need to advise you to go careful."

And Wade went, tottering across the unmarked expanse of snow, the pure carpet nature had laid between him and the altar of his love--an altar within log walls, an altar whose fires were tended by--He pushed open the door! Foolish Abe was kneeling by the hearth of the rusty Franklin stove. And even as he had been toiling on Enchanted, so here he was whittling, whittling unceasingly, piling the heaps of shavings upon the fire--unconscious signaller of the hiding-place of Elva Barrett.

For a moment Wade stood holding by the sides of the door, staring into the gloom of the camp, for his eyes were as yet blinded by the glare of out-doors.

And then he saw her. Her white face was peering out of the dimness of a bunk. Plainly she had withdrawn herself there like some cowering creature, awaiting a fate she could not understand or anticipate. One could see that those eyes, wide-set and full of horror, had been strained on that uncouth, hairy creature at the hearth during long and dreadful suspense.

Through all that desperate search, in hunger, weariness, and despair, he had forgotten John Barrett, contemptuous millionaire; he remembered that John Barrett's daughter Elva had confessed once that she returned his love, and he had thought that when they met again, this time outside the trammels of town and in the saner atmosphere of the big woods, she might understand him better--understand him well enough to know that John Barrett lied when he made honest love contemptible by his sneers about "fortune-seekers." They were all very chaotic, his thoughts, to be sure, but he had believed that the ground on which they would meet would be that common level of honest, human hearts, where they could stand, eye to eye, hands clasping hands, and love frankly answering love.

But love that casts all to the winds, love that forgets tact, prudence, delicacy, love without premeditation or after-thought, is not the love that is ingrained in New England character. She gazed at him at first, not comprehending--her fears still blinding her--and he paused to murmur words of pity and reassurance.

And then Yankee prudence, given its opportunity to whisper, told him that to act the precipitate lover now would be to take advantage of her weakness, her helplessness, her gratitude. If he took this first chance to woo her, demanding, as it were, that she disobey her father's commands, and putting a price on the service that he was rendering her, might her good sense not suggest that, after all, he was a sneak rather than a man?

They call the New England character of the old bed-rock sort hard and selfish. It is rather acute sensitiveness, timorous even to concealment.

And in the end Dwight Wade, faltering banal words of pity for her plight, went to her outwardly calm. And she, her soul still too full of the horror of her experience to let her heart speak what it felt, took his hands and came out upon the rough floor.

The shaggy giant squatting by the hearth bent meek and humid eyes on the young man. "Me do it--me do it as you told!" he protested. He patted his hand on the shavings. He was referring to the task to which Wade had set him on Enchanted. To the girl it sounded like the confession of an understanding between this unspeakable creature and her rescuer. Wade, eager only to soothe, protested guilelessly, when she shrank back, that the man was not the ogre he seemed, but a harmless, simple fellow whom he had been sheltering and feeding at his own camp. And then, by the way she stared at him, he realized the chance for a horrible suspicion.

"I don't understand," she moaned. "It's like a dreadful dream. There was an old man who sat here and muttered and raved about my father! And this--this"--she faltered, shrinking farther from Abe--"who brought me here in his arms! And you say he came from your camp! Oh, these woods--these terrible woods! Take me away from them! I am afraid!"

She dropped the shrouding blanket from her shoulders, and he saw her now in the garb of the waif of the Skeets. And under his scrutiny he saw color in her cheeks for the first time, replacing the pallor of distress.

"I had thought there was excuse for this folly--reason for it. I thought it was my duty to--" She faltered, then set her teeth upon her lower lip, and turned away from him. "Oh, take me away from these woods! Something--I do not know--something has bewitched me--made me forget myself--sent me on a fool's errand! The woods--I'm afraid of them, Mr. Wade!"

It came to him with a pang that the woods were not offering to his love the common ground of sincerity that he had dreamed of. Elva Barrett, ashamed of her weakness, would not remember generously an attempt to take advantage of her distress when every bulwark of reserve lay in ruins about her, and he felt afraid of his burning desire to take her in his arms and comfort her. Thus self-convinced, he failed to realise that the girl with her bitter words was merely striving, blindly and innocently, to be convinced--and convinced from his own mouth--that she had been wise in her folly, devoted in her mission, and honest in the love that had found such heroic expression in her adventuring.

She looked at him, and saw in his face only the struggle of doubt and hopelessness and fear, and misinterpreted. "You know what the woods have done to make shame and wretchedness, Mr. Wade!" she cried, a flash of her old spirit coming into her eyes. "Men who have been honest with the world outside and honest with themselves have forgotten all honesty behind the screen of these savage woods."

Her cheeks were burning now. She drew the blanket over herself, hugging its edges close in front, covering the attire she wore as though it were nakedness. And in that bitter moment it was nakedness--for the garb she had borrowed from Kate Arden symbolized for her and for him a father's guilty secret laid bare.

"Take me away from the woods!" she gasped.

The look that passed between them was speech unutterable. He had no words for her then. In silence he made the long sledge ready for her. Christopher helped him, silent with the reticence of the woodsman. If he had even glanced at Elva Barrett no bystander could have detected that glance. There were thick camp spreads on the sled. Christopher's thoughtfulness had provided them, and when they had been wrapped about her the two men set away, each with hand on the sled-rope.

"We'll go the short way back to Enchanted," said the old guide, answering Wade's glance. "Back across Dickery, up the tote road, and follow the Cameron and Telos roads. It will dodge all camps, and keep us away from foolish questions. I've got enough in my pack from Withee's camp for us to eat."

Abe floundered behind, keeping them in sight with the pertinacity of a dog, and he ate the bread that Straight threw to him with a dog's mute gratitude.

Only the desperation of men utterly resolved could have accomplished the journey they set before them. The girl rode, a silent, shrouded figure; the men strode ahead, silent; Abe struggled on behind, ploughing the snow with dragging feet. When the night fell they went on by the lantern's light.

It was long after midnight when they came at last to the Enchanted camps, walking like automatons and almost senseless with fatigue. Wade lifted the girl from the sled when they halted in front of the wangan. Her stiffened and cramped limbs would not move of themselves. And when she was on her feet, and staggered, he kept his arm about her, gently and unobtrusively.

"This is the best home I have to offer you," he said. "Nina Ide is here waiting. We will wake her, and she will do for you what should be done. Oh, that sounds cold and formal, I know--but the poor girl waiting in there will put into words all the joy I feel but can't speak. My head is pretty light, and my heels heavy, and I don't seem to be thinking very clearly, Miss Barrett," he murmured, his voice weak with pathetic weariness.

She was struggling with sobs, striving to speak; but he hastened on, as though at last his full heart found words.

"This is--this--I hardly know how to say this. But I understand why you came." He felt her tremble. "But, my God, Elva, I don't dare to believe that you thought so ill of me that you were coming to plead with me for your father's sake." It was not resentment, it was passionate grief that burst from him, and she put her hands about his arm.

"I told you it was folly that sent me," she sobbed. "But he had been unjust to you, Dwight. Oh, it was folly that sent me, but I wanted to know if you--if you--" She was silent and trembled, and when she did not speak he clasped her close, trembling as pitifully as she.

"Oh, if you only dared say that you wanted to know whether I still loved you!" he breathed, in a broken whisper. "And I would say--"

It seemed that his heart came into his throat, for her fingers pressed more closely upon his arm. In that instant he could not speak. He pretended to look for Christopher, but that wise woodsman's tact did not fail. He saw Christopher disappearing into the gloom of the dingle, and heard the careful lisp of the wooden latch in its socket and the cautious creak of the closing door. There was only the hush of the still night about him, and when he turned again the starlight was shining on Elva Barrett's upraised face. And her dark eyes were imperiously demanding that he finish his sentence--so imperiously that his tongue burst all the shackles of his sensitive prudence.

"And I would say that my love is so far above the mean things of the world that they can't make it waver, and it is so unselfish that I can love you the more be-because you love your father and obey him. And all I ask is that you don't misunderstand me." There was deep meaning in his tones.

"Oh Dwight, my boy," she moaned, "it's an awful thing for a daughter to disobey her father. But it's more awful when she finds that he--" But he put his fingers tenderly on her lips, and when she kissed them, tears coursing on her cheeks, he gathered her close, and his lips did the service that his fingers retired from in tremulous haste.

"My little girl," he said, softly, "keep that story off your lips. It is too hard, too bitter. I may have said cruel things to your father. He may tell you they were cruel. But remember that she had your eyes and your face--that poor girl I found in the woods. And before God, if not before men, she is your sister. And so I gave of my heart and my strength to help her. And I know your heart so well, Elva, that I leave it all to you. It's better to be ashamed than to be unjust."

"She _is_ my sister," she answered, simply, but with earnestness there was no mistaking. "And you may leave it all in my hands."

Then fearfully, anxiously, grief and shame at shattered faith in a father showing in the face she lifted to him, she asked:

"It was he, was it not--the old man that took me away and sat before me and cursed me? He was her--her husband?"

His look replied to her. Then he said, soothingly: "It was not in our hands, dear. But that which is in our hands let us do as best we can, and so"--he kissed her, this time not as the lover, but as the faithful, earnest, consoling friend--"and so--to sleep! The morning's almost here, and it will bring a brighter day."

She drew his head down and pressed her lips to his forehead.

"True knighthood has come again," she murmured. "And my knight has taken me from the enchanted forest, and has shown me his heart--and the last was best."

Still clasping her, he shook the door and called to the girl within; and when she came, crying eager questions, he put Elva Barrett into her arms and left them together.

As he walked away from the shadow of the camp into the shimmer of the starlight he felt the wine of love coursing his veins. His muscles ached, weariness clogged his heels, but his eyes were wide-propped and his ears hummed as with a sound of distant music. His thoughts seemed too sacred to be taken just then into the company of other men. He dreaded to go inside out of the radiance of the night. He turned from the door of the main camp when his hand was fumbling for the latch, pulled his cap over his ears, and began a slow patrol on the glistening stretch of road before the wangan. The crisp snow sang like fairy bells under his feet. Orion dipped to the west, and the morning stars paled slowly as the flush crept up from the east. And still he walked and dreamed and gazed over the sombre obstacles near at hand in his life into the radiance of promise, even as he looked over the black spruces into the faint roses of the dawn.

Tommy Eye, teamster, stumbling towards the hovel for the early foddering, came upon him, and stopped and stared in utter amazement. He came close to make sure that the eerie light of the morning was not playing him false. Wade's cheerful greeting seemed to perplex him.

"It isn't a ha'nt, Tommy," said the young man, smiling on him.

"I have said all along as how it had got you," declared Tommy, with ingenuous disappointment, looking Wade up and down for marks of conflict. "But it may be that the ha'nts want only woods folk and are afraid of book-learnin'! So you're back, and the girl ain't, nor Christopher, nor--"

"We're all back," explained Wade, calculating on Tommy's news-mongering ability to relieve him of the need of circulating information. "We found the--the one that was lost. That was all! She was lost, and we found her, and we even found Foolish Abe, and he came back with us last night. There was no mystery, Tommy. They were simply lost, and we found them. They're asleep."

Tommy fingered the wrinkled skin of his neck and stared dubiously at Wade.

"You'll see Abe whittling shavings just the same as usual this morning," added the young man. "By-the-way, you and he may be interested to know that Lane, the old fire warden, died at Withee's camp the other day." For reasons of his own Wade did not care to make either the news of the rescue or its place too definite.

"Then," declared Tommy, hanging grimly to the last prop left in his theory, "that accounts for it. 'Ladder' Lane is dead, and has turned into a ha'nt. It was him that called out the fool. And he'll be making more trouble yet. You'd better send for Prophet Eli, Mr. Wade, because the prophet is a charmer-man and can take care of old Lane."

"He has taken care of him already," said the young man. "We saw Prophet Eli, and he started right away to attend to the case." And Tommy's face displayed such eminent satisfaction that Wade had not the heart to destroy the man's belief that his book-learned boss had adopted a part of the woods creed of the supernatural. It was a day on which he felt very gentle towards the dreams of other persons, for his own beautiful dream shed its radiance on all men and all of life.

That she was there, safe, brought by amazing circumstances into the depths of the woods, and under his protection, seemed like a vision of the night as he walked back and forth and watched the morning grow.

When the sun was high and the men had been gone for hours, he put his dream to the test. He rapped gently on the wangan door, and her voice, a very real and loving voice, answered. With his own hands he brought food for the two girls and spread a cedar-splint table, and served them as they ate, and ministered in little ways, through the hours of the day, and watched Elva's pallor and weariness give way before tenderness and love. With the poor shifts of a lumber-camp he, not intending it, taught her heart the lesson that love is independent of its housing.

He rode with them on the tote team to the northern jaws of Pogey Notch the next day, and sent them on, nestled in a bower of blankets. There had been no further word between them of the great thing that had come into their lives. They tacitly and joyously accepted it all, and left the solution of its problem to saner and happier days. But the face that she turned back to him as she rode away under the frowning rocks was a glowing promise of all he asked of life. And as he plodded back up the trail he went to his toil with tingling muscles and a triumphant soul.