This last matter-of-fact touch almost set Marjorie off again in hysterical laughter. Being eloped with by a gentleman who thoughtfully set towels and water outside her door was really too much. She pinned the tent together with a hatpin, slipped off some of her clothes—it did not seem enough like going to bed to undress altogether, and she mistrusted the balsam boughs with blankets over them that pretended to be a bed in the corner—and flung herself down and laughed and laughed and laughed till she nearly cried.
She did not quite cry. The boughs proved to have been arranged by a master hand, and she was very tired and exceedingly sleepy. She pulled hairpins out of her hair in a half-dream, so that they had to be sought for painstakingly next morning when she woke. She burrowed into the blankets, and knew nothing of the world till nine next morning.
"I can't knock on a tent-flap," said Francis's buoyant voice outside then. "But it's time we were on our way, Marjorie. There ought to be a bathrobe in that bundle of Lucille's. Slip it on and I'll show you the brook."
She reached for a mirror, which showed that, though tousled, she was pretty, took one of the long breaths that seemed so frequently necessary in dealing with Francis, said "in for a penny, in for a pound," and did as she was directed. The bath-robe wasn't a bath-robe, but something rather more civilized, which had been, as a matter of fact, part of her trousseau, in that far-off day when trousseaux were so frequently done, and seemed such fun to buy. She came out of the tent rather timidly. "Good gracious, child, that wasn't what I meant!" exclaimed Francis, seeming appallingly dressed and neat and ready for life. "It's too cold for that sort of thing. Here!"
He picked up one of the blankets, wrapped it around her, gave her a steer in a direction away from the road, and vanished.
She went down the path he had pushed her toward, holding the towels tight in one hand and her blanket around her in the other. It was fresh that morning, though it was warm for May. And Francis seemed to think that she was going to take a bath in the brook, which even he could not have had heated. She shivered at the idea as she came upon it.
It was an alluring brook, in spite of its unheated state. It was very clear and brown, with a pebbled bottom that you could see into, and a sort of natural round pool, where the current was partly dammed, making it waist-deep. She resolved at first to wash just her face and hands; then she tried an experimental foot, and finished by making a bold plunge straight into the ice-cold middle of it. She shrieked when she was in, and came very straight out, but by the time she was dry she was warmer than ever. She ran back to the tent, laughing in sheer exuberance of spirits, and dressed swiftly. The plunge had stimulated her so that when Francis appeared again she ran toward him, feeling as friendly as if he weren't married to her at all.
"It was—awfully cold—but I'm just as hungry as I can be!" she called.
"Was there anything to eat in the car, along with the towels?"
Francis seemed unaccountably relieved by her pleasantness. This had been something of a strain on him, after all, though it was the first time such a thought had occurred to Marjorie. His thin, dark face lighted up.
"Everything, including thermos bottles," he called back. "We won't stop to build a fire, because we have to hurry; but Lucille——"
"Lucille!" said Marjorie. "Well, I certainly never knew what a wretch that girl was."
"Oh, not a wretch. Only romantic," said Francis, grinning. "I tell you again, Marjorie, you have a fatal effect on people. Look at me—a matter-of-fact captain of doughboys—and the minute I see that you won't marry me—stay married to me, I mean—I elope with you in a coach and four!"
"I don't think you ought to laugh about it," said Marjorie, sobering down and stopping short in her tracks.
"Well, I shouldn't," said Francis penitently. "Only I'm relieved, and a little excited, I suppose. You see, I like your society a lot, and the idea of having it for maybe three months, on any terms you like, is making me so pleased I'm making flippant remarks. I won't any more, if I remember."
And he apparently meant it, for he busied himself in exploring the car, which seemed as inexhaustible as the Mother's Bag in the Swiss Family Robinson, for the food he had spoken of. There was a large basket, which he produced and set on a stump, and from which he took sandwiches, thermos flasks, and—last perfidy of Lucille!—a tin box of shrimps à la King, carefully wrapped, and ready for reheating. He did it in a little ready-heat affair which also emerged from the basket, and which Marjorie knew well. It was her own, in fact. Reheated shrimps should have killed them both, more especially for breakfast. But they never thought of that till some days later. Marjorie was so overcome by finding her own shrimps facing her, so to speak, that nothing else occurred to her—except to eat them. They made a very good breakfast, during which Francis was never flippant once. They talked decorously about the natural scenery—fortunately for the conversation there was a great deal of natural scenery in their vicinity—and somewhat about pup-tents, and a little about how nice the weather was. After that they cleared up the pieces, repacked everything like magic, and went on their way very amicably.
CHAPTER IV
"And now that things are more or less settled, wouldn't you like to know what we are going to do?" inquired Francis.
"Haven't I anything to do with it?" inquired Marjorie, not crossly, but as one seeking information.
"Almost everything. But you don't know the road to Canada. I thought we'd take it straight through in the car, but to-night we will be in more civilized parts—in an hour or so, in fact—and you can get straightened up a little—not that you look as if you needed to, but after a night in the open one does feel more or less tossed about, I imagine."
Marjorie considered. Ordinarily at this hour she would be walking into the office. She would be speaking with what politeness one can muster up in the morning to Miss Kaplan, who was quite as exuberant at five as at seven in the evening; she would be hoping desperately that she wasn't late, and that if she was she would escape Mr. Wildhack, who glared terrifyingly at such young women who didn't get down on schedule time. Marjorie was not much on schedule time, but she always felt that the occasions when she got there too late really ought to be balanced by those when she came too early. Instead of all this, she was racing north with the fresh wind blowing against her face, with no duties and no responsibilities, and something that, but for the person who shared it with her, promised to be rather fun. Just then something came to her. She had an engagement for tea with Bradley Logan.
Suddenly that engagement seemed exceedingly important, and something that she should on no account have missed. But at least she could write to him and explain.
"Have you a fountain-pen?" she inquired of Francis, "and can I write sitting here?"
"If you don't mind writing on a leaf from my notebook. It's all I have."
She was privately a little doubtful as to the impression that such a note would make on Mr. Logan, for she remembered one wild tale she had heard from him about a man who spent his whole life in a secluded room somewhere in France, experimenting on himself as to what sort of perfumes and colors and gestures made him happiest. None of them had made him happy at all, to the best of her remembrance; but the idea Mr. Logan left her with was that he was that sort of person himself, and that the wrong kind of letter-paper could make him suffer acutely. She was amused at it, really, but a bit impressed, too. One doesn't want to be thought the kind of person who does the wrong thing because of knowing no better. Still, it was that or nothing.
"Dear Mr. Logan," she began, more illegibly than she knew because of the car's motion, "I am so sorry that I have not been able to tell you in advance that I couldn't take tea with you. But Mr. Ellison has taken me away rather suddenly. He had to go to Canada to take a position. We hope we will see you when we get back."
She did not know till much later that owing to the thank-you-ma'am which they reached simultaneously with the word "suddenly" that when Mr. Logan got that note he thought it was "severely," and that the bad penmanship and generally disgraceful appearance of the loose-leaf sheet, the jerky hand, and the rather elderly envelope which was all Francis could find—it had been living in a pocket with many other things for some time—gave him a wrong idea. Mr. Logan, to anticipate a little, by this erroneous means, acquired an idea very near the truth. He thought that Marjorie Ellison was being kidnapped against her will, and made it the subject of much meditation. His nervous ailment prevented him from dashing after her.
Marjorie fortunately knew nothing of all this, for she was proud to the core, and she would rather have died than let any one but Lucille, of necessity in on it, know anything but that she was spending the most delightful and willing of honeymoons.
So when they found a little up-state town with a tavern of exceeding age and stiffness, and alighted in search of luncheon, the landlord and landlady thought just what Marjorie wanted them to think; that all was well and very recent.
She sank into one of the enormous walnut chairs, covered with immaculate and flaring tidies which reminded her of Cousin Anna and stuck into the back of her neck, and viewed the prospect with pleasure. For the moment she almost forgot Francis, and the problem of managing just the proper distance from him. There was a stuffed fish, glassy-eyed and with cotton showing from parts of him, over the counter. There were bills of forgotten railroads framed and hung in different places. There was a crayon portrait of a graduated row of children from the seventies hung over the fireplace, four of them, on the order of another picture, framed and hanging in another part of the room, and called "A Yard of Kittens." Marjorie wondered with pleasure why they hadn't added enough children to bring it up to a yard, and balanced things properly. The fireplace itself was bricked up, all except a small place where a Franklin stove sat, with immortelles sticking out of its top as if they aimed at being fuel. Marjorie had seen immortelles in fireplaces before, but in a Franklin they were new to her. She made up her mind to find out about it before she was through.
"Why—why, I'm not worrying about being carried off by Francis!" she remembered suddenly. She had been quite forgetful of him, and of anything but the funny, old-fashioned place she was in. She lay back further in the walnut chair, quite sleepily.
"Would you like to go upstairs now, ma'am?" the landlord said. She looked around for Francis, but he was nowhere to be seen. She picked up the handkerchief which had slipped from her lap, cast a regretful look at the yard of kittens, and followed him.
"Here it is, ma'am," said the landlord, and set the suitcase he had been carrying down inside the door. She shut the door after her, and made for the mirror. Then she said "Oh!" in a surprised voice, because Francis was standing before it, brushing his hair much harder than such straight black hair needed to be brushed.
He seemed as much surprised as she.
"Good heavens, I beg your pardon, Marjorie!" he said. "This isn't your room. Yours is the next one."
"I beg your pardon, then," said Marjorie, with a certain iciness.
"You can have this one if you like it better. They're next door to each other. You know"—Francis colored—"we have to seem more or less friendly. Really I didn't know——"
He was moving away into the other room as he spoke, having laid down his brush on her bureau as if he had no business with it at all.
"This isn't my brush," she said, standing at the connecting door and holding it out at arm's length.
"No," said Francis. "I didn't know I'd left it. Thank you."
He took it from her, and went into his own room. She pushed the door to between them, and went slowly back and sat down on the bed. A quite new idea had just come to her.
Francis wasn't a relentless Juggernaut, or a tyrant, or a cave-man, or anything like that really. That is, he probably did have moments of being all of them. But besides that—it was a totally new idea—he was a human being like herself. Sometimes things embarrassed him; sometimes they were hard for him; he didn't always know what to do next.
She had never had any brothers, and not very much to do with men until she got old enough for them to make love to her. The result was that it had never occurred to her particularly that men were people. They were just—men. That is, they were people you had nothing in common with except the fact that you did what they said if they were fathers, or married them when the time came, if they weren't. But she had actually felt sorry for Francis; not sorry, in a vague, rather pitying way because she didn't love him—but sorry for him as if he had been Lucille, when he was so embarrassed that he walked off forgetting his own brush. She smiled a little at the remembrance. She really began to feel that he was a friend.
So when he tapped at her outside door presently and told her that luncheon was ready, and that they had better go down and eat it, instead of the severity for which Francis had braced himself, she smiled at him in a very friendly fashion, and they went down together, admiring the wallpaper intensely on their way, for it consisted of fat scarlet birds sitting on concentric circles, and except for its age was almost exactly like some that Lucille and Marjorie hadn't bought because it was two dollars a yard.
Luncheon proved to be dinner, but they were none the less glad of it for that. And instead of freezing every time the landlord was tactlessly emotional, Marjorie found that she could be amused at it, and that her being amused helped Francis to be amused.
She always looked back tenderly to that yard of kittens, and to those other many yards of impossible and scarlet birds. They gave her the first chance at carrying through her wild flight with Francis decently and without too much discomfort.
The rest of the trip to Canada was easier and easier. Once admitting that Francis and she were friends—and you can't spend three days traveling with anybody without being a friend or an enemy—she had a nice enough time. She kept sternly out of her mind the recollection that he was in love with her. When she thought of that she couldn't like him very much. But then she didn't have to think of it.
"Here we are," said Francis superfluously as they stopped at the door of a big house that was neither a log cabin nor a regular house.
Marjorie gave a sigh of contentment.
"I admit I'm glad to get here," she said.
She slipped out of the car in the sunset, and stood drooping a minute, waiting for her bag to be lifted down. She was beginning to feel tired. She was lonely, too. She missed everything acutely and all at once—New York, the little apartment, Lucille, being free from Francis—even the black kitten seemed to her something that she could not live one moment longer without. She turned and looked at Francis, trim and alert as ever, just steering the car around the side of the house, and found herself hating him for the moment. He was so at home here. And she hadn't even carfare to run away if she wanted to!
"Well, now, you poor lamb!" said somebody's rich, motherly voice with a broad Irish brogue. "You're tired enough to die, and no wonder. Come along with me, darlin'."
She looked up with a feeling of comfort into the face of a black-haired, middle-aged Irishwoman, ample and beaming.
"I'm Mrs. O'Mara, an' I know yer husband well. I kep' house for him an' the other young gintlemen when they were workin' up here before the fightin' began. So he got me to come an' stay wid the two of ye, me an' Peggy. An' I don't deny I'm glad to see ye, for there does be a ghost in this house!"
The ending was so unexpected and matter-of-fact that Marjorie forgot to feel lost and estranged, and even managed to laugh. Even a ghost sounded rather pleasant and friendly, and it was good to see a woman's face. Who or what Peggy might be she did not know or care. Mrs. O'Mara picked up the suitcase with one strong arm, and, putting the other round Marjorie in a motherly way, half led her into the house.
"Ye'll excuse me familiarity, but it's plain to see ye're dead,
Miss—ma'am, I mean. Come yer ways in to the fire."
Marjorie had been feeling that life would be too hard to bear if she had to climb any stairs now; so it was very gladly that she let Mrs. O'Mara establish her in a rude chaise-longue sort of thing, facing a huge fire in a roughly built fireplace. The housekeeper bent over her, loosening knots and taking off wraps in a very comforting way. Then she surrounded her with pillows—not too many, or too much in her way—and slipped from the room to return in a moment with tea.
Marjorie drank it eagerly, and was revived by it enough to look around and see the place where she was to dwell. It looked very attractive, though it was not in the least like anything she had ever seen.
Where she lay she stared straight into a fire of great logs that crackled and burned comfortingly. The mantel over it was roughly made of wood, and its only adornment was a pipe at one side, standing up on its end in some mysterious manner, and a pile of Government reports at the other. The walls were plastered and left so. Here and there were tacked photographs and snapshots, and along one wall—she had to screw her neck to see it—some one had fastened up countless sheets from a Sunday supplement—war photographs entirely. She wondered who had done it, because what she had seen of returned soldiers had shown her that the last thing they wanted to see or hear about was the war.
There were couches around the walls, the other chairs were lounging chairs also. There was fishing-tackle in profusion, and a battered phonograph on a table. It looked as if men had made themselves comfortable there, without thinking much about looks. The only thing against this was one small frilled chair. It was a most absurd chair, rustic to begin with, with a pink cushion covered with white net and ruffled, and pink ribbons anchoring another pink and net cushion at its back. Mrs. O'Mara, hovering hospitably, saw Marjorie eying it, and beamed proudly.
"That's Peggy's chair," she said. "Peggy's me little daughter."
"Oh, that's nice," said Marjorie. "How old is she?"
"Just a young thing," said Mrs. O'Mara. "She'll be in in a minute."
Marjorie leaned back again, her tea consumed, and rested. She was not particularly interested in Peggy, because she was not very used to children. She liked special ones sometimes, but as a rule she did not quite know what to do with them. After a few sentences exchanged, and an embarrassed embrace in which the children stiffened themselves, children and Marjorie were apt to melt apart. She hoped Peggy wouldn't be the kind that climbed on you and kicked you.
A wild clattering of feet aroused her from these half-drowsy meditations.
"Here's Francis, mother! Here's Francis!" called a joyous young voice, and Marjorie turned to see Francis, his eyes sparkling and his whole face lighted up, dashing into the room with an arm around one of the most beautiful girls she had ever seen, a tall, vivid creature who might have been any age from seventeen to twenty, and who brought into the room an atmosphere of excitement and gaiety like a wind.
"And here's Peggy!" said Francis gaily, pausing in his dash only when he reached Marjorie's side. "She's all grown up since I went away, and isn't she the dear of the world?"
"Oh, but so's your wife, Francis!" said Peggy naïvely, slipping her arm
from around his shoulder and dropping on her knees beside Marjorie.
"You don't mind if I kiss you, do you, please? And must I call her
Mrs. Ellison, Francis?"
"Peggy, child, where's your manners?" said her mother from the background reprovingly, but with an obvious note of pride in her voice.
"Where they always were," said Peggy boldly, laughing, and staying where she was.
She was tall and full-formed, with thick black hair like her mother's, not fluffy and waving like Marjorie's, but curling tight in rings wherever it had the chance. Her eyes were black and her cheeks and lips a deep permanent red. She looked the picture of health and strength, and Marjorie felt like a toy beside her—fragile to the breaking-point. She seemed much better educated than her mother, and evidently on a footing of perfect equality and affection with Francis.
Marjorie was drawn to her, for the girl had vitality and charm; but she found herself wondering why Francis had never told her about this Peggy, and why he had never thought of marrying her.
"You wouldn't think this young wretch was only sixteen, would you?" said Francis, answering her silent question. "Look at her—long dresses and hair done up, and beaux, I hear, in all directions!"
Of course. If Peggy had been scarcely past fourteen when Francis saw her last, he couldn't have considered marrying her. Marjorie tried to think that she wished he had, but found that she did not like to cease owning anything that she had ever possessed, even such a belonging as Francis Ellison.
"That's very nice," she said inadequately, smiling at Peggy in as friendly a manner as so tired a person could manage. "I'm glad I shall have Peggy to be friends with while I'm up here."
"Oh, me dear, ye'll be up here forever an' the day after, be the looks of the job Mr. Francis has on his hands," said Mrs. O'Mara.
"No, I won't," she began to say hurriedly, and then stopped herself. She had no right to tell any one about her bargain with Francis. She didn't want to, anyway.
"The poor child's tired," said Mrs. O'Mara, whom, in spite of her relation to Peggy, Marjorie was beginning to regard as a guardian angel. "Come upstairs to yer room, me dear."
Marjorie rose, with Francis and Peggy hovering about her, carrying wraps and hats and suitcases; and Mrs. O'Mara led the way to a room on the floor above, reached by a stair suspiciously like a ladder.
"Here ye'll be comfortable," said Mrs. O'Mara, "and rest a little till we have supper. Peggy will get you anything you want."
But Marjorie declined Peggy. All she wanted was to rest a little longer.
She flung herself on the softly mattressed cot in one corner of the room; and nearly went to sleep.
She was awakened—it must have been quite sleep—by Francis, on the threshold. His eyes were blazing, and he was evidently angry at her to the last degree—angrier even than he had been that time in the city when he nearly threw the telephone at her.
"Is this the sort of person you are?" he demanded furiously. "Look at this telegram!"
Marjorie, frightened, rose from the couch with her heart beating like a triphammer.
"Let me see," she asked.
He handed the telegram to her with an effect of wanting to shake her.
"Am coming up to arrange with you about Mrs. Ellison," it said. "Know all."
It was signed by Logan.
"Good heavens!" said Marjorie helplessly.
"Knows all!" said Francis bitterly. "And that's the sort of girl you are!"
CHAPTER V
Marjorie froze in consternation. She had forgotten to allow for Francis's gusts of anger; indeed, there had been no need, for since his one flare-up over the telephone he had been perfectly gentle and courteous to her.
She stared at him, amazed.
"But I didn't do anything to make that happen!" she protested. "I never dreamed—why, I'd have too much pride——"
"Pride!" thundered Francis. "It's plain cause and effect. You write to that pup in New York, and I give you the envelope and paper—help you straight through it, good heavens!—and you use my decency to appeal to him for help, after you've agreed to try it out and see it through!"
Marjorie stiffened with anger.
"I was going to try it out and see it through," she countered with dignity. "But if you treat me this way I see no reason why I should. Even this housekeeper of yours would give me money to escape with."
"Escape! You act as if you were in a melodrama!" said Francis angrily. "We made a bargain, that's all there is to it; and the first chance you get, you smash it. I suppose that's the way women act. . . . I don't know much about women, I admit."
"You don't know much about me," said Marjorie icily, "if you jump to conclusions like that about me. Whatever that Logan man knows he doesn't know from me. Have you forgotten Lucille?"
"Lucille wouldn't——" began Francis, and stopped.
"And why wouldn't she? Didn't she tell me that I was a poor little pet, and that men could always take care of themselves and, then turn around and help you carry me away? And it was carrying me away—it was stealing me, as if I were one of those poor Sabine women in the history book."
They were fronting each other across the threshold all this time, Francis with his face rigid and pale with anger, his wife flushed and quivering.
"I admit I hadn't thought of that," said Francis, referring presumably to Lucille's possibilities as an informer, and not to Marjorie's being a Sabine woman.
Marjorie moved back wearily and sat on the bed.
"And you were just getting to be such a nice friend," she mourned. "I was getting so I liked you. There never was anybody pleasanter than you while we were coming up from New York. Why, you weren't like a person one was married to, at all!"
"More like a friend nor a 'usband," quoted Francis unexpectedly.
Marjorie looked at him in surprise. Any one who could stop in the middle of a very fine quarrel to see the funny side of things that way wasn't so bad, her mind remarked to itself before she could stop it.
"What do you mean?" she asked, mitigating her wrath a little.
"Why, you know the story; the cockney woman who had a black eye, and when the settlement worker asked her if her husband had given it to her said, 'Bless you, no, miss—'e's more like a friend nor a 'usband!'"
"Oh," said Marjorie, smiling a little. Then she remembered, her eyes falling on the yellow paper Francis still held. There was still much to be settled between them.
"But, as you were saying about Mr. Logan——"
"I was saying a lot I hadn't any business to about Mr. Logan," said
Francis frankly.
"Then it's all right?" said Marjorie. "At least as far as you're concerned?"
He nodded.
"Well," said she most unfairly, "it isn't, as far as I am. Francis, I don't think we'd better think any more of ever trying to be married to each other. It's too hard on the nervous system."
Francis colored deeply.
"What do you want to do?" he demanded.
Marjorie paused a minute before she answered. The truth was, she didn't know. She had definitely given up her New York position. She liked it up here, very much indeed. She liked the O'Maras and the house, and she was wild to get outdoors and explore the woods. Leaving Francis out of the question, she was freer than she had been for years. Altogether it was a bit hard to be entirely moved by lofty considerations. She wanted to stay; she knew that.
"Canada's a nice place," she began, dimpling a little and looking up at
Francis from under her eyelashes.
"Oh, then——" he began eagerly.
"And I want to stay, for perfectly selfish reasons," she went on serenely. "But if my staying makes you think that there is any hope of—of eventualities—I think I'd better go. In other words, I like the idea of a vacation here. That's all. If you are willing to have me as selfish as all that, why, it's up to you. I think myself I'm a pig."
"You will stay, but not with any idea of learning to like me better—is that it?"
"That's it," she said. "And, as I said, I feel colossally selfish—a regular Hun or something."
"That's because you used the word 'colossal,'" he said absently. "They did, a lot. All right, my dear. That's fair enough. Yes, I'm willing."
"But no tempers, mind, and no expectations!" said Marjorie firmly, making hay while the sun shone.
"No," said Francis. He looked at her appraisingly. "You know," he remarked, "the gamble isn't all one way. It's just possible that I may be as glad as you not to see the thing through when we've seen something of each other. I don't feel that way now, but there's no telling."
She sprang to her feet, angry as he had been. But he had turned, after he said that, and gone quietly downstairs.
The idea was new to her, and correspondingly annoying. Francis—Francis, who had been spending all his time since he got back trying to win her—Francis suggesting that he might tire of her! Why, people didn't do such things! And if he expected to tire of her what did he want her for at all?
She sprang up and surveyed herself in the glass that hung against the rough wall, over a draped dressing-table which had apparently once been boxes. Yes, she did look tired and draggled. Her wild-rose color was nearly gone, and there were big circles under her eyes. And there was a smudge on her face that nobody had told her a thing about. And her hair was mussed too much to be becoming, even to her, who looked best with it tossed a little. And there was not a sign of water to wash in anywhere, and the room had no furniture except the cot and the dressing-table——
Another knock stopped her here, and she turned to see young Peggy, immaculate and blooming, at the door.
"I just came to bring you towels, and to see that everything was all right, and show you the way to the bathroom," she said most opportunely. "We have a bathtub, you know, even up here in the wilds!"
Marjorie forgot everything; home, husband, problems, life in general—what were they all to the chance at a real bathtub? She followed Peggy down the hall as a kitten follows a friend with a bowl of milk.
"O-o! a bathtub!" she said rapturously.
Peggy threw open a door where, among wooden floor and side-wall and ceiling and everything else of the most primitive, a real and most enticingly porcelain bathtub sat proudly awaiting guests.
"It'll not be so good as you've been used to," she said with more suggestion of Irishry than Marjorie had yet heard, "but I guess you'll be glad of it."
"Glad!" said Marjorie. And she almost shut the door in Peggy's face.
She lingered over it and over the manicuring and hairdressing and everything else that she could linger over, and dressed herself in the best of her gowns, a sophisticated taupe satin with slippers and stockings to match. She'd show Francis what he was perhaps going to be willing to part with! So when Mrs. O'Mara's stentorian voice called "Supper!" up the stair, she had not quite finished herself off. The sophisticated Lucille had tucked in—it was a real tribute of affection—her own best rouge box; and Marjorie was on the point of adding the final touch to beauty, as the advertisement on the box said, when she heard the supper call. She was too genuinely hungry to stop. She raced down the stairs in a most unsophisticated manner, nearly falling over Francis and Peggy, who were also racing for the dining-room.
They caught her to them in a most unceremonious way, each with an arm around her, and sped her steps on. She found herself breathless and laughing, dropped into a big wooden chair with Francis facing her and Peggy and her mother at the other two sides. It was a small table, wooden as to leg under its coarse white cloth; but, oh, the beauty of the sight to Marjorie! There were such things as pork and beans, and chops, and baked potatoes, and apple sauce, and various vegetables, and on another table—evidently a concession to manners—was to be seen a noble pudding with whipped cream thick above it.
"The food looks good, now, doesn't it?" beamed Mrs. O'Mara. "I'll bet ye're hungry enough to eat the side o' the house. Pass me yer plate to fill up, me dear."
Marjorie ate—she remembered it vaguely afterwards, in her sleep—a great deal of everything on the table. It did not seem possible, when she remembered, also vaguely, all the things there had been; but the facts were against her. She finished with a large cup of coffee, which should have kept her awake till midnight; and lay back smiling drowsily in her chair.
The last thing she remembered was somebody picking her up like a small baby and carrying her out of the dining-room and up the stairs to her own bed, and laying her down on it; and a heavy tread behind her carrier, which must have been Mrs. O'Mara's, for a rich voice that belonged to it had said, "Shure it's a lovely sight, yer carryin' her around like a child. It's the lovely pair yez make, Mr. Francis!" And then she remembered a tightening of arms around her for an instant, before she was laid carefully on her own cot and left alone.
Mrs. O'Mara undressed her and put her to bed, she told her next morning; but Marjorie remembered nothing at all of that. All she knew was that the lady's voice, raised to say that it was time to get up, wakened her about eight next day.
It is always harder to face any situation in the morning. And theoretically Marjorie's situation was a great deal to face. Here she was alone, penniless, at the mercy of a determined young man and his devoted myrmidons—whatever myrmidons were. Marjorie had always heard of them in connections like these, and rather liked the name. Mr. Logan was imminent at any moment, and a great deal of disagreeableness might be looked for when he turned up and had it out with Francis. Altogether the Sabine lady felt that she ought to be in a state of panic terror. But she had slept well,—it was an excellent cot—the air was heavenly bracing, Mrs. O'Mara was a joy to think of, with her brogue and her affectionate nature, and altogether Marjorie Ellison found herself wondering hungrily what there would be for breakfast, and dressing in a hurry so that she could go down and eat it.
Peggy, rosy and exuberant, rushed at her and kissed her when she got to the foot of the stairs.
"Oh, isn't it lovely to think you're here, and I've got somebody to have fun with, and Francis has to be out a lot of the time? Do you like to dance? There's a French-Canadian family down the road, two girls and three boys, and seven or eight other men out working with Francis, and under him, and if you only say you like to dance I'll telephone them to-night. Mother said I was too young to dance—and me three years learning at the convent!—but with you here sure she can't say a word. Oh, do say you'll have a little dance to-night! Francis dances, too, if you haven't stopped it in him."
She stopped for a minute to take breath, and Marjorie clapped her hands.
"I love to dance! Do have them up! Never mind whether Francis likes it or not!"
"Sure you have to mind what your own wedded husband likes," said the Irish girl, shocked a little. "But unless he's been more sobered than's likely by the big war, he'll be as crazy over it all as we are. There's a dozen grand dance records on the phonograph, and sure a bit of rosin on the floor and it'll be as fine as silk. Let's try them now."
She made for the phonograph and had a dance-record on it before Marjorie could answer, and in another minute had picked the smaller girl up and was dancing over the rough floor with her. And so Francis, coming in a little apprehensively, found them flushed and laughing, and whirling wildly around to the music of a record played much too fast. Peggy, in an effort to show off heavily before Francis, came a cropper over a stool at his feet, pulling Marjorie down in her fall; both of them laughing like children as they fell, so that they could scarcely disentangle themselves, and had to be unknotted by Francis.
"Come on to breakfast now, you young wild animals," said he, his thin, dark face sparkling all over with laughter as Marjorie had never seen it.
"I'm killed entirely," said Peggy. "I have to be taken."
She made herself as limp and heavy as possible, and it ended in a free-for-all scuffle which was finally shepherded into the dining-room by Mrs. O'Mara, who was laughing so herself that she had to stop and catch her breath.
So there was little time to think of one's sad lot at breakfast, either. And Peggy was so keen on the dance proposition that it took all breakfast time to discuss it.
"I'm taking the motor-cycle over to the clearing, and I don't think I'll be back till night," said Francis unexpectedly when breakfast was over.
Peggy made a loud outcry.
"Is this your idea of a honeymoon? Well, when my time comes may I have a kinder man than you! And poor Marjorie sitting home darning your socks, I suppose!"
"No. Not at all. I have to go over first to take some things. When I come back I'll take her, too, if she'd like to go. Think you'd enjoy it, Marjorie?"
"What is it?" she asked cautiously, not particularly willing to implicate herself.
"Well, it's a little cabin—or two little cabins, rather, and a lean-to—several miles away. A motor-cycle can go there by taking its life in its hands. It's in the middle of a clearing, so to speak; but it's also in the middle of a pretty thick patch of woods around the clearing. There's a spring, and a kettle, and we make open fires. There are provisions in the lean-to, locked up so the deer can't get them—yes, deer like things to eat. We go there to stay when there's such work to do that it isn't convenient to come back and forth at night. There are lots of rabbits and birds, and once in a while a harmless little green snake—do you mind harmless snakes, my dear?—comes and looks affectionately at you, finds you're a human being, and goes away again rather disappointed. Once in a long while an old bear comes and sniffs through the cracks of the lean-to in hopes of lunch, and goes away again disconsolately like the snake. But only once since I can remember. I tell you, Marjorie, I don't ever remember having a better time than when I'd built a fire out there in an open spot near the trees, and just lay on the ground with my hands behind my head, all alone, and everything in the whole world so far away that there wasn't a chance of its bothering me! Just trees and sky and wood-smoke and the ground underneath—there's nothing like it in the world!"
He had flushed up with enthusiasm. Marjorie looked at him admiringly. This was a new Francis, one she had never met. She had not realized that any one could love that sort of thing—indeed, no one had ever told her that such things existed. Her life had been spent between Cousin Anna's little prim house with a pavement in front of it and a pocket-handkerchief of lawn behind, and the tiny New York flat she had occupied with Lucille. She had never really been out-of-doors in her life.
"Oh, please do take me!" she cried.
He seemed extremely pleased at her asking.
"I can't this first trip; the side-car will be full of junk that I have to get over there. But I would like to take you on my second trip, about noon to-day. Or it may be later when I get back—it's quite a distance."
"That will be all right," said Marjorie sedately. "I'd like to rest a little this morning, anyway."
So Francis, with a light in his eyes, and whistling happily, fussed about for a while assembling a mysterious collection of tools and curious bundles, and rode blithely off in the general direction of what looked like virgin forest.
"And now we'll plan all about the dance," said Peggy gaily.
"You will not, Miss! You'll plan how to help me clean the back cellar this beautiful sunny morning that was just made for it," said her mother sternly, appearing on the scene, and carrying off a protesting Peggy.
Marjorie, left alone, addressed herself to resting up in preparation for the afternoon's trip. There was a big hammock on the porch, and thither, wrapped in her heavy coat, she went to lie. She tried to think out some plans for her future life without Francis; but the plans were hard to make. There were so many wild things to watch; even the clouds and sky seemed different up here. And presently when Peggy, no more than healthfully excited by her hard morning's work on the cellar, came prancingly out to enjoy more of her guest's society, she found her curled up, asleep, one hand under her cheek, looking about ten years old and very peaceful.
"Isn't she the darling!" she breathed to her mother.
"She is that!" said Mrs. O'Mara heartily. "But they've both got fine young tempers of their own, for all they're so gay and friendly. Somebody's going to learn who's rulin' the roost, when the first edge of the honeymoon's off. And it's in me mind that the under-dog won't be Mr. Francis."
"Oh, mother! How can you talk so horridly?" remonstrated Peggy. "As if they ever had any chance of quarreling!"
"There's none," said Mrs. O'Mara wisely, "but has the chancet of quarrelin' when they're man an' wife. An' why not? Sure it brightens life a bit! 'Tis fine when it's over, as the dentist said to me whin he pulled out the big tooth in me back jaw."
"Well, I know I'm never going to quarrel," said Peggy vehemently.
"Then ye'd be a reformed character itself, an' why not start to curb yer temper now?" said her mother. "I can mind a certain day——"
But Peggy engulfed her mother in a violent embrace, holding her mouth shut as she did so, and as Peggy was even taller than Mrs. O'Mara and quite as strong, the ensuing struggle and laughter woke Marjorie.
"Now, see that! An' take shame to yerself!" said Mrs. O'Mara apologetically. "'Twas me angel girl here, Mrs. Ellison, explainin' by fine arguments how peaceful-minded she is. Now let me away, Peggy, for there's the meal to make."
Peggy, laughing as usual, sat down unceremoniously by Marjorie.
"I was just saying that I didn't see why married people should quarrel," she explained, "and mother says that they all have to do some of it, just to keep life amusing. I think you and Francis get along like kittens in a basket."
"And does she think we quarrel?" inquired Marjorie sleepily, yet with suspicion.
Peggy shook her head with indubitable honesty.
"No, she only says you will sooner or later. But that's because she's Irish, I think; you know Irish people do like a bit of a shindy once in awhile. I admit I don't mind it myself. But you Americans born are quieter. When you quarrel you seem to take no pleasure whatever in it, for all I can see!"
Marjorie laughed irrepressibly.
"Oh, Peggy, I do love you!" she said. "It's true, I don't like quarreling a bit. It always makes me unhappy. It's my Puritan ancestry, I suppose."
"Well, you can't help your forebears," said Peggy sagely.
"And now shall I call up the folks for the dance to-night?"
"Oh, yes, do!" begged Marjorie, who had slept as much as she wanted to and felt ready for anything in the world.
She lay on in the khaki hammock in a happy drowsiness. The wind and sunshine alone were enough to make her happy. And there was going to be a dance to-night, and she could wear a little pink dress she remembered . . . and pretty soon there would be luncheon, and after that she was going off on a gorgeous expedition with Francis, where there was a fire, and rabbits and maybe a nice but perfectly harmless little green snake that would look at her affectionately . . . but everybody looked at you affectionately, once you were married . . . it was very warming and comforting. . . .
She was asleep again before she knew it. It was only Francis's quick step on the porch that woke her—Francis, very alert and flushed, and exceedingly hungry.
"Yes, yes, Mr. Francis, the food's been waitin' you this long time," said Mrs. O'Mara, evidently in answer to a soul-cry of Francis's, for he had not had time to say anything aloud. "Bring yer wife an' come along an' eat."
So they went in without further word spoken, and after all Marjorie found herself the possessor of as good an appetite as she'd had for breakfast.
"Be sure to get back in time to dress for the dance," Peggy warned them as they started off in the motor-cycle. "It's to be a really fine dance, with the girls in muslin dresses, not brogans and shirtwaists!"
"The girls?" asked Marjorie of Francis wonderingly.
"I think she means that the men aren't to wear brogans, or the girls shirtwaists," he explained, as they whizzed down what seemed invisible tracks in a trackless forest. "Smell the pines—aren't they good?"
Marjorie looked up, beaming.
"Stunning!" she said. "I don't see how you ever wanted to come to New
York, after you'd had this."
"After a long time of this New York is pleasant again," he said. "But
I hope you won't tire of this, my dear."
"Oh, no!" she said fervently. "I'm crazy to go on, and see the cabins you told me about. I can amuse myself there the whole afternoon, if you have other things you want to do."
"You dear!" said Francis.
After that they were quiet, and rode on together, enjoying the glorious afternoon.
"Here we are," said Francis after about two hours on the motor-cycle.
He slipped off and held the machine for her to get out.
"Oh," said Marjorie, "it's like something out of a fairy-book!"
CHAPTER VI
They had gone through what seemed to Marjorie's city-bred eyes a dense forest, but which Francis had assured her was only a belt of woodland—quite negligible. And they had come out, now, on what Francis called a clearing. It was thick with underbrush, little trees, and saplings; while bloodroot flowered everywhere, and the gleam of thickly scattered red berries showed even as they rode quickly over the grass. In the center of things were the two cabins Francis had spoken of; one quite large—Francis seemed given to understatement—and the other of the conventional cabin size.
"The larger one is where my men stay," he explained. "Two of them are there now. That's why you see a red shirt through the window. Pierre is probably leaving it there to dry. I'll take you through if you like, but it's just a rough sort of place. The lean-to is the cook-place. All that cabin has inside is bunks, and a table or two to play cards on, as far as I remember. The other cabin——"
He stopped short, and turned away, pretending to fuss over his motor-cycle, which he had already laid down tenderly in just the right spot and the right position. Marjorie, eager and swift, sprang close to him like a squirrel. She did not look unlike one for the moment, wrapped in the thick brown coat with its furry collar.
"The other one! Oh, show me that, and tell me all about it!" she demanded ardently.
"The other one——" he said. "Well—it's nothing. That's where I wanted to bring you to stay—before I knew there wasn't anything to it but—this. I—fixed it up for—us."
In spite of all the things she had against Francis, Marjorie felt for the moment as if there was something hurting her throat. She was sorry for him, not in a general, pitying way, but the close way that hurts; as if he was her little boy, and something had hurt him, and she couldn't do anything about it.
"I'm—I'm sorry," she faltered, not looking at him.
He had evidently expected her to be angry—could she have been angry so much as all that?—for he looked up with a relieved air.
"I thought you might like to go in there and rest while I went over to where the work is being done," he said matter-of-factly. "I can't get back to you or to the Lodge till just in time for Peggy's dance. But you'll find things in the little cabin to amuse you, perhaps."
"Oh, I don't need things in the cabin to amuse me!" said Marjorie radiantly. "There's enough outside of it to keep me amused for a whole afternoon! But I do want to see in."
He took a key out of his pocket, and together they crossed the clearing to where the little cabin stood, its rustic porch thick with vines. Francis stood very still for a moment before he bent and put the key into the padlock, and Marjorie saw with another tug at her heart that his face was white, and held tense. She felt awed. Had it meant so much to him, then?
She followed him in, subdued and yet somehow excited. He moved from her side with a sort of push, and flung open the little casement windows. The scented gloom, heavy with the aromatic odors of life-everlasting and sweet fern, gave place to the fresh keen wind with new pine-scents in it, and to the dappled sunshine.
"Oh, how lovely!" said Marjorie. "Oh, Francis! Do you know what this place is? It's the place I've always planned I'd make for myself, way off in the woods somewhere, when I had enough money. Only I thought I'd never really see it, you know. . . . And here it is!"
He only said "Is it?" in a sort of suppressed way; but she said no more. She only stood and looked about her.
There was a broad window-seat under the casement windows he had just thrown open. It was cushioned in leaf-brown. A book lay on it, which Marjorie came close to and looked at curiously.
"Oh—my own pet 'Wind in the Willows!'" she said delightedly. "How queer!"
"No, not queer," said Francis quietly, from where he was unlocking an inner door.
So Marjorie said no more. She laid the book down a little shyly and investigated further. The walls were of stained wood, but apparently there were two thicknesses, with something between to keep the heat and cold out, for she could see a depth of some inches at the door. There was a perfectly useless and adorable and absurd balcony over the entrance, and a sort of mezzanine and a stair by which you could get to it; something like what a child would plan in its ideas of the kind of house it wanted. There was a door at the farther end leading into another room, and crossing the wooden floor, with its brown fiber rug, Marjorie opened it and entered a little back part where were packed away most surprisingly a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom.
"Why, it isn't a cabin—it's a bungalow!" she said, surprised. "And what darling furniture!"
The furniture was all in keeping, perfectly simple and straight-built, of brown-stained wood. There was a long chair at one side of the window-seat, with a stool beside it, and a magazine thrown down on the stool. Everything looked as if it had just been lived in, and by some one very much like Marjorie.
"When did you do all this?" she asked curiously.
"I didn't know you'd had any time for ages and ages. Was it——"
"Was it for some other girl," was hovering on her lips. But she did not ask the question. As a matter of fact, she didn't want to hear the answer if it was affirmative. "You don't remember," he said quietly. "I put in some time training recruits not far from here. No, of course you don't remember, because I never told you. It was in between my first seeing you, and the other time when I was going around with you and Billy and Lucille. After I saw you that first time, when I had to come back here, near as it was to my old haunts,—well, I didn't know, of course, whether I was ever going to marry you or not. But—there was the cabin, my property, and I had time off occasionally and nothing to do with it. So—well, it was for the you I thought might possibly be. It made you realer, don't you see?"
Marjorie sank down as he finished, on the broad, soft window-seat; and began to cry uncontrollably.
"Oh—oh—it seems so pitiful!" he made out that she was saying finally.
"I—I'm so sorry!"
Francis laughed gallantly.
"Oh, you needn't be sorry!" he said, smiling at her, though with an obvious effort. "I had a mighty good time doing it, my dear. Why, the things you said, and the way you acted while I was doing it for you—you've no idea how nice they were. You sat just——"
"Oh, that was why the book was on the window-seat, and the other things——"
"That was why," nodded Francis.
"And the stool close up to the lounge-chair——"
He nodded.
"You lay there and I sat by you on the stool," he said. "And you whispered the most wonderful things to me——"
"I didn't!" said Marjorie, flushing suddenly. "You know perfectly well all the time that was going on I—the real Me—was being a filing-clerk in New York, and running around with Lucille, and being bored with fussy people in the office, and hunting up letters for employers and hoping they wouldn't discover how much longer it took me to find them than it did really intelligent people——"
"No," said Francis, suddenly dejected, "you didn't. But—it was a nice dream. And I think, considering all that's come and gone, you needn't begrudge it to me."
"I don't," said Marjorie embarrassedly. "I—I only wish you wouldn't talk about it, because it partly makes me feel as if my feelings were hurt, and partly makes me feel terribly self-conscious."
"Then perhaps it was you, a little," said Francis quietly.
Marjorie moved away from him, and went into the kitchen again, with her head held high to hide the fact that her cheeks were burning. He hadn't any right to do that to her. Why, any amount of men might be making desperate love to dream-Marjories—Mr. Logan, for instance,—only his love-making would probably be exceedingly full of quotations, and rather slow and involved.
She turned, dimpling over her shoulder at Francis, who had been standing in rather a dream, where she had left him.
"Francis! Do you suppose any other men are doing that?" she asked mischievously. "Supposing our good friend Mr. Logan, for instance, has installed me in a carved renaissance chair in his apartment, and is saying nice things to me——"
"Marjorie!"
"Well, you see!" said Marjorie. "It isn't a good precedent."
"Well, I'm your husband," muttered Francis quite illogically.
"Oh, this has gone far enough," said Marjorie with determination. And she went back to the kitchen.
"I'll leave you here, if that's the case," said Francis in a friendly enough way. "I have to go over to the other cabin and see how things are and then out to where some work is going on. Can you find amusement here for awhile?"
"Oh, yes," said Marjorie. She felt a little tired, after all; and a little desirous of getting away from Francis.
"Well, if you're hungry, I think there are some things in the kitchen; and the stove is filled, and there are matches," he said in a matter-of-fact way. She wondered if he intended her to get herself a large and portentous meal. She did not feel at all hungry.
"If you'll tell me when you think you'll be back for me I'll have a little lunch ready for you before we go," she was inspired to say.
"That's fine," said Francis with the gratitude which any mention of food always inspires in a man. "Don't overwork yourself, though. You must be tired yet from your trip."
She smiled and shook her head. She went over to the door with him, and watched him as he went away, as bonny and loving a wife to all appearances as any man need ask for. Pierre, who had been dwelling in the cabin along with his red shirt, for the purpose of doing a much-needed housecleaning for himself and his mates, looked out at them with an emotional French eye.
"By gar, it's tarn nice be married!" he sighed, for his last wife had been dead long enough to have blotted out in his amiable mind the recollection of her tongue, and he was thinking over the acquirement of another one.
Meanwhile Marjorie went back to the cabin that had been built around the dream of her, picked up "The Wind in the Willows," and tried to read. But it was difficult. Life, indeed, was difficult—but interesting, in spite of everything. Francis was nice in places, after all, if only he wouldn't have those terrifying times of being too much in earnest, and over her. It was embarrassing, as she had said. She rose up and walked through the place again. It was so dainty and so friendly and so clean, so everything that she had always wanted—how had Francis known so much about what she liked?
She curled down on the window-seat, tired of thinking, and finally slept again. It was the change to the crisp Canada air that made her sleep so much of the time.
She sprang up in a little while conscious that there was something on her mind to do. Then she remembered. She had promised to get luncheon—or afternoon tea—or a snack—for Francis before he went. She felt as if she could eat something herself.
"At this rate," she told herself, "I'll be as fat as a pig!"
She thought, as she moved about, to look down at the little wrist-watch that had been one of Francis's ante-bellum gifts to her. And it was half-past five o'clock. Then it came to her that by the time she had something cooked and they had made the distance back to the lodge it would be time for the dance, and therefore that this meal would have to be supper at least. It was more fun than cooking in the kitchenette of the apartment, because there was elbow-room. Marjorie's housewifely soul had always secretly chafed under having to prepare food in a kitchen that only half of you could be in at a time.
There was a trusty kerosene stove here, and a generous white-painted cupboard full of stores and of dishes. She had another threatening of emotion for a minute when she saw that the dishes were some yellow Dutch ones that she remembered admiring. But she decided that it was no time to feel pity—or indeed any emotion that would interfere with meal-getting—and continued prospecting for stores. Condensed milk, flour, baking-powder, and a hermetically-sealed pail of lard suggested biscuits, if she hurried; cocoa and tins of bacon and preserved fruit and potatoes offered at least enough food to keep life alive, if Francis would only stay away the half-hour extra that he might.
Heaven was kind, and he did. The biscuits and potatoes were baked, the fruit was opened and on the little brown table with the yellow dishes, and the bacon was just frizzling curlily in the pan when Francis walked into the kitchen.
If it seemed pleasantly domestic to him he was wise enough not to say so. He only stated in an unemotional manner that there were eggs put down in water-glass in the entry back; and as this conveyed nothing to Marjorie he went and got some and fried them, and they had supper together.
"You're a bully good cook," he told her, and she smiled happily. Anybody could tell you that much, and it meant nothing. Sometimes dealing with Francis reminded her of a Frank Stockton fairy-tale in her childhood, where some monarch or other went out walking with a Sphinx, and found himself obliged to reply "Give it up!" to every remark of the lady's, in order not to be eaten.
"We won't have time to clear up much," was his next remark, looking pensively at a table from which they had swept everything but one biscuit and a lonely little baked potato which had what Marjorie termed "flaws," and they had had to avoid. "But then, I suppose you might say there wasn't much to clear. We'll stack these dishes and let Pierre or somebody wash 'em. Us for the dance."
They piled the yellow dishes in a gleeful hurry, and Francis went out and disposed of the scraps and did mysterious things to the kerosene stove. They were whizzing back the way they had come before Marjorie had more than caught her breath.
"We'll be a little late, if you have to do anything in the dressing line. I have to shave," said Francis.
Marjorie, who really wasn't used to men, colored a little at this marital remark, and then said that she supposed that it must have been hard not to do it in the trenches.
"Oh, that was only the poilus," said Francis, and went on into a flood of details about keeping the men neat for the sake of their morale. It was interesting; but Marjorie thought afterward that perhaps it was because anything would have been while she was whirring along through the darkening woods in the keen, sharp-scented air. She loved it more and more, the woods and the atmosphere, and the memory of the little cabin. She promised herself that she would try some day to find the place by herself. Maybe she could borrow a horse or a bicycle or some means of locomotion and go seeking it in the forest.
"Now hurry!" admonished Francis as he landed her neatly by the veranda. "Don't let them stop you for anything to eat, as Mother O'Mara will want to."
So she scurried up to her room, not even waiting to hear the voice of temptation, and began hunting her belongings through for something. It was foolish, but she was more excited over the thought of this rough, impromptu backwoods dance than she ever had been in the city by real dances, or out with Cousin Anna at the carefully planned subscription dances where you knew just who was coming and just what they were going to wear.
Finally she gave up her efforts at decision, and went out to find
Peggy. Her room, she knew, was on the third floor.
"Come in!" said Peggy's joyous voice. Marjorie entered, and found
Peggy in the throes of indecision herself.
"You're just what I wanted to see!" said she. "Would you wear this green silk that's grand and low, but a bit short for the last styles, or this muslin that I graduated in, and it's as long as the moral law, and I slashed out the neck—but a bit plain?"
"Why, that's just what I came to ask you," said Marjorie. "What kind of clothes do you wear for dances like these?"
"Well, the grander the better, to-night, as I was telling everybody over the telephone. Mrs. Schneider, now, the priest's housekeeper, she has a red satin that she'll be sure to wear,—and the saints keep her from wearing her pink satin slippers with it, but I don't think they can. It would be a strong saint at the least," said Peggy thoughtfully. "I'd better be in my green."
"Then I can wear——" said Marjorie, and stopped to consider. She had one frock that was very gorgeous, and she decided to wear it. It would certainly seem meek contrasted with Mrs. Schneider's red satin.
"Come on, and I'll bring this, and we can hook each other up," Peggy proposed ardently, and followed her down in a kimono.
So they hooked each other up, except where there were snappers, and admired each other exceedingly. Marjorie's frock was a yellow one that Lucille had hounded her into buying, and she looked as vivid in it as a firefly.
Francis had been given orders to wear his uniform, which he was doing. He looked very natural that way to Marjorie; there were others of the men in uniform as well. There were perhaps twenty people already arrived when the girls came downstairs, seven or eight girls and twelve or fourteen men. And Marjorie discovered that young persons in the backwoods believed in dressing up to their opportunities. Some of the frocks were obviously home-made, but all were gorgeous, even in the case of one black-eyed habitant damsel who had constructed a confection, copied accurately and cleverly from some advanced fashion-paper, out of cheesecloth and paper muslin!
One of the men was sacrificed to the phonograph, and for hours it never stopped going. Records had been brought by others of the men and girls, and Marjorie had never seen such gay and unwearied dancing. She was tossed and caught from one big backwoodsman to another, the dances being "cut-in" shamelessly, because the women were fewer than the men. They nearly all danced well, French or Yankee or Englishmen. There were a couple of young Englishmen whom she particularly liked, who had ridden twenty miles, she heard, to come and dance. And finally she found herself touched on the shoulder by her own husband, and dancing smoothly away with him.
"This isn't much like the last time and place where we danced," he said, smiling down at her and then glancing at the big, bare room with its kerosene lamps and bough-trimmed walls. "Do you remember?"
She laughed and nodded. "Maxim's, wasn't it? But I like this best. There's something in the air here that keeps you feeling so alive all the time, and so much like having fun. In spite of all our tragedies, and your very bad temper"—she laughed up at him impertinently—"I'm enjoying myself as much as Peggy is, though I probably don't look it."
"There isn't so much of you to look it," explained Francis. Their eyes both followed young Peggy, where, magnificent in her green gown and gold slippers, she was frankly flirting with a French-Canadian who was no match for her, but quite as frankly overcome by her charms. "But what there is," he added politely, "is very nice indeed."
They laughed at this like a couple of children, and moved on toward a less frequented part of the floor, for there was a big man in khaki, one of Francis's men, who was coming dangerously near, and had in his eye a determination to cut in. Francis and Marjorie moved downwards till they were almost opposite the door. And as they were dancing across the space before the door there was a polite knock on it. They stood still, still interlaced, as an unpartnered man lounging near it threw it open. And on the threshold, like a ghost from the past, stood Mr. Logan. In spite of his mysterious nervous ailment he had nerved himself to make the journey after Marjorie, and walked in, softly and slowly, indeed, and somewhat travel-soiled, but very much himself, and apparently determined on a rescue. Marjorie stared at him in horror. Rescue was all right theoretically; but not in the middle of as good a party as this. And what could Francis do to her now?