"Might a common mortal, who has both eyes and ears and generally can see through a barn door if it is wide open, ask in what manner you celebrated that you escaped notice of every member of this household?" Jamie spoke ironically.
"Jamie, I outwitted even you that time. Of course I 'll tell you: I made a gift to some one, which was a good deal more satisfactory than to receive one myself."
"The deuce you did! Perhaps you 'll tell me what it was and who was the man? I was n't aware of any extra purchases in the village."
"Not now." I spoke decidedly. "Let's talk about the camp. I can't wait for the spring. When can we go?" I asked Mr. Ewart.
"Not before the first of July, but we can remain until into September."
The words were commonplace enough; but the tone in which they were spoken belonged to another day, another hour, to that moment when he accepted my gift of service "gratis". He, at least, knew how I celebrated that third of December!
Content, satisfied, I began to jest with Jamie. We made and enlarged upon the most ideal plans it ever befell mortals to make. The others listened to our chaffing and found amusement in it, for we tried to outdo each other in camp-hyperbole. The Doctor, Mr. Ewart and Cale, whose presence Mr. Ewart insisted upon having the entire evening, smoked in silence. I knew where the Doctor's thoughts were. I would have given a half-hour of that evening's enjoyment—at least I think I would—to have read Mr. Ewart's.
Late, very late, Cale rose, put a chunk into the soapstone, and said good night. I followed him into the kitchen. I wanted to speak with him, for I saw something was out of gear.
"What's the matter, Cale?" I whispered, as he fumbled about for the candle somewhere on the kitchen dresser.
"Marcia," he whispered in turn, "I 've pretty nigh lied myself inter hell for you ter-night. On the way over ter the junction the Doctor put his probe inter what's 'twixt you an' me mighty deep; but I was a match fer him! An' then I come home jest ter hear you give yourself all away! What in thun—"
"Sh, Cale! Somebody 's coming—"
"Wal, a gal's 'bout the limit when—" I heard him say in a tone of utter disgust, and, laughing to myself, I ran up stairs.
XXIII
After the Doctor's departure on the Saturday of that week, I wrote to Delia Beaseley, telling her how far I had ventured upon the disclosure of the fact that I was the daughter of her whom she had helped to save, and that she was now free to tell him whatever he might ask in regard to me, as far as she could answer; but that on no consideration was she to speak of the papers in his possession; and if he spoke to her of them, she was to say that he must settle that with me; that on no account was she to learn anything of their contents. I wrote her this as a precautionary measure only, for I was convinced the Doctor would not mention those papers. They belonged to me, to me alone. It was a matter of business.
She wrote in answer that she would do as I requested.
The spring was both long and late in coming. Day after day, week after week the wind held steadily from the east or northeast. When, at last, it turned right about face, and the sun, climbing high in the north, warmed the breast of mother-earth, already swelling with its hidden abundance, the waters were loosened and the great river and all its tributaries were in ice-throes, travailling for deliverance.
Then it was that the plank sidewalks throughout the length and breadth of Richelieu-en-Bas were securely chained to each householder's fence or tree, to prevent them from sailing away on the rising flood. Then it was that rowboats were in evidence in many a front yard. The creek was impassable; the high-road bridge was threatened. Cale and Mr. Ewart seemed to live in rubber boots, both by day and by night. Pierre called frantically on all the protecting saints to withhold rain at the time of the "débâcle": the breaking up of the river. His son came in twice a day, on an average, with soaked stockings and knickerbockers wet through and through; was duly castigated—lightly, I say to his father's credit—and as regularly comforted by Angélique with flagons of spiced hot milk or very sweet ginger tea. It finally dawned upon us that the youngster deliberately waded through slush to obtain the creature comforts. After that, they were withheld.
Cale looked grim and Mr. Ewart anxious for one twenty-four hours. All night they were out on horseback with lanterns and ropes. Then the heavy rainclouds dispersed without the dreaded deluge; the sun shone clear and warm; the small ice jams gave way, and the great floes went charging down on the black waters towards the sea.
During this time of east wind, rain and snow, Jamie often chafed inwardly, for the weather kept him housed; but he busied himself with his work and soon became wholly absorbed, lost to what went on around him.
And what was going on around him? Just this: two lives, a man's and a woman's, long bound by the frost of circumstance, like the ice-bound river in full view from the manor, were in the process of being warmed through and through, thawed out; the ice obstructing each channel was beginning to move, that the courses of their lives, under the power of love's rays, might, at last, flow unhindered each into the other. So it seemed to me, at least, during those weeks of waiting for the spring.
Did I know he loved me? Yes, I knew it; was sure of it; but no word was spoken, for no word was needed then. We understood each other. We were man and woman, not boy and girl. We recognized what each of us was becoming to the other in the daily intimate household ways of life—an enduring test; in the community of our human interests, in the common wealth of our friends, of our books. His best friends were mine; mine were his—all except Delia Beaseley; sometime I intended he should know her.
I thought at first that would come about through the farm project; but Mrs. Macleod, Jamie and I had to acknowledge, soon after the Doctor returned, that the development of this plan was at a standstill. Naturally this pleased both mother and son. For them it meant the prospect of a return in the near future to their home in Scotland; finally to England, and London. Jamie confided to me he should cast anchor there for a time, his second book having been accepted by a good publisher in that city.
He found opportunity in my presence to ask Doctor Rugvie, just before he left us, about his further plans for the farm scheme, and was told rather brusquely that certain complications had arisen, which must be cleared up before he could proceed to develop them. Not once did he drive over to the farm on his last visit. As for Mr. Ewart, he never mentioned the subject. Jamie was wise enough to refrain from asking questions of him.
The Doctor's announcement kept Jamie guessing for weeks, his curiosity being unsatisfied; but as for me—I laughed in my sleeve, for I knew how that "third of December" birthday on my innocent part, had disarranged the good Doctor's philanthropic scheme, for the present at least. I was curious to know how he would proceed to "clear away" those complications.
The fear of leaving Lamoral for good was diminishing; I knew that what held me there, held Mr. Ewart also. I rested content in this knowledge.
XXIV
It was the second week in May when the seigniory farmers began to arrive and closet themselves with Mr. Ewart in the office. The "going" was atrocious, and the appearance at the side door of the clay-clogged cariole, buggy, calèche and farm-cart, bore witness to this fact.
Jamie and I were on the watch for each arrival. We knew nearly all of these habitant-farmers. They hitched their "team", and spent hours with Mr. Ewart. Sometimes, when we were in the living-room, we could hear voices from the office in lively and earnest discussion. We remarked the air of pride and satisfaction with which each one unhitched his horse, climbed into his special conveyance, slapped the reins on his animal's back and was off with a merry "Bonnes nouvelles!" to his habitant-wife who, while waiting for her husband, had been in the kitchen exchanging courtesies with Angélique, and feasting on freshly fried doughnuts and hot coffee. The notary from Richelieu-en-Bas, as well as the county surveyor, were also closeted with Mr. Ewart; they arrived after breakfast and left before supper. At dinner they were our guests, but no business topics were mentioned.
By Saturday, the routine of visitation was concluded. The notary departed with his green baize bag apparently bursting with documents. It was Angélique who informed us after his departure that the seignior had been receiving the seignioral rents with his own hand.
The next morning at the breakfast table, Mr. Ewart asked me if I would help him to audit some accounts, the farmers having just paid their half-yearly rents.
"At what hour?" I asked.
"I shall need your help for the entire forenoon and probably for an hour or two after dinner. Shall we say at nine?"
"Can't I help?" said Jamie, rather half-heartedly I must confess.
Mr. Ewart took in the situation by the tone, and smiled as he answered:
"No; you 're too busy with your work; the prose of figures would n't appeal to you just now."
"Would n't they though! Try me on a check from my publisher."
"It's the point of view, after all, that changes proportions, is n't it? Are you going to work in here?"
"Yes; I need about four by eight feet of surface to keep my ideas from jostling one another, and this dining-room table is about the right fit when I 'm comparing pages of manuscript with first galley proofs."
"Good luck, then; we 'll not disturb you till dinner."
An hour later when I went into the office, I found Mr. Ewart at his desk. Beside him was a large tin box, twice as large as a bread-box. On top lay two pairs of his thick driving-gloves. I must have looked my surprise, for he laughed as he rose to place two chairs, one on each side of the only table in the room—a fine old square one of ancient curly birch, generally bare, but now covered with a square of oil cloth.
"What next? I can't wait for developments to explain all this paraphernalia," I said; my curiosity was thoroughly roused.
"These." He held out a pair of the driving-gloves. "You are to put them on, please, and not to take them off till I give you permission."
Mystified, I obeyed. He set down the tin box on the table between us; opened wide both windows to let in the tonic air, that began to hint of real spring, and, drawing on the other pair of gloves, took his seat opposite me at the table. I could not help laughing.
"How does this performance strike you?" he asked, amused at my amusement.
"Like the prelude to some absolutely ridiculous rite, unknown to me."
"That is just what it is." He spoke so emphatically, so earnestly, that I was still further mystified. "You have hit the bull's-eye. It is a ridiculous rite, and, thank God, it's for the last time that I am chief mummer in it. Here in this box, Miss Farrell," he went on unlocking it and displaying a conglomerate mass of silver and soiled paper money, "are rents, seigniorial rents, paid by men who farm it on the seigniory, whose fathers and fathers' fathers have worked this ground before them, men who should own this land, to a man who should not own it in the existing conditions—conditions that have no place in the body politic, here or anywhere else. It's a left-over from medievalism—and I am about to do away with this order of things, to prove myself a man."
"You believe, then, in the ownership of the land by the many?" I asked eagerly. I was glad to get his point of view. The discussions between him, Doctor Rugvie and Jamie, were always of great interest to me. Although I knew something of his plans from the other two, he had never mentioned them to me. I saw he was speaking with great feeling.
"Believe in it! It's the first article in my political and sociological creed. I 've come back here to Canada, where I was born, to incorporate it in action.– And you 're wondering where you come in, in this experiment, I 'll wager," he said gayly.
I answered him in the same vein: "I confess, I fail to see the connection between your driving-gloves on my hands, your strong box between us—and the first article of your creed."
"Of course you don't!" He laughed aloud at my mental plight and his own manner of announcing his special tenet. "I 'll begin at the beginning and present the matter by the handle. I want you to grasp it right in the first place."
"Thank you," I said meekly; "not being a feminine John Stuart Mill, I need all the enlightenment I can have on the presence of this worldly dross that lies between us. Facts contradict theories."
With a sudden, almost passionate movement, he shoved the box to one side on the table; it was no longer between us. I knew there was significance in his impulsive action, but I failed to understand what it indicated.
"It's taking rather a mean advantage of a woman, I own, to ask her on the spur of the moment to share a man's political and sociological views—but I want you to share mine, and enlightenment is your due."
"And in the meantime am I to keep on the gloves?"
He laughed again. "Yes; keep them on and help me out of this scrape—I have never felt so humiliated in my life as I have taking this money. Now I 'll be rational. You see, smallpox roams at times through Canada. This money has been stored in stockings, instead of banks, after having been hoarded, handled, greased, soiled by a generation or more. You 'll find dates of issue on these notes that are a good deal older than you, and silver minted in the early sixties. Now I want your help in counting over—auditing, we 'll call it—this mass of corruption. And I don't intend you shall run any risk in handling even a small part of it—hence the gloves and the fresh air. After we 're through with it, we will pack the filthy lucre in the box and express it to a Montreal bank. It is n't mine—at least I do not consider it so."
"Why not?"
"Because I am going to apply these half-yearly rents in reducing the interest on the money I am loaning these farmers, in order to enable them to buy the best implements and cultivate their land more intelligently. This I may say to you, but to no one else."
"You are going to sell them the land?"
"The greater part of it. The forest I keep, because I love that work and hope in time to make a sufficient income from it, in case of actual need. In fact, I 've been working all the week with the notary to get the deeds in order."
"So that was their 'bonnes nouvelles'?"
"You heard them?"
"Yes. They looked so happy—"
"Oh, I am glad; glad too, that you could see something of their pleasure in this special work of mine. Do you know,"—he leaned towards me over the table,—"that I have asked you to help me with this as a matter of pure sentiment?"
His eyes sought mine, but I am sure they found only an enquiring turn of mind in them, for I could not imagine where the sentiment was in evidence.
"I see I 'll have to explain," he said smiling. "I want you, an American with all the free inheritance of the American, to share with me in this last rite of mediævalism, in order that in the future we may look back to it—and mark our own progress."
Oh, that word "our"! Used so freely, it rejoiced me. He intended this affair to mark some epoch in his life and mine. I waited for him to say something further. But, instead, he turned to the business in hand and we set to work. To be sure the "auditing" on my part was a mere farce; for not only did Mr. Ewart do most of the counting, and making into bundles of a hundred, but he insisted on my not bending close over the currency to watch him. As I told him, "After asking me to help you, you keep me at arm's distance."
Whereupon he smiled in an amused way, and said engagingly, but firmly:
"There is no question of my keeping you at a distance. Don't mind my crotchets, Miss Farrell, I have a fancy to have you here with me at the obsequies of all this sixteenth-in-the-twentieth century nonsense. At forty-six, I still have my dreams. You 'll be good enough to indulge me, won't you?"
"If that's all, I think I can indulge you. But is there nothing I can do to be of some real help?"
"Nothing but to lend me your companionship during this trying ordeal. You might fill out some labels—you 'll find them in that handy-box on the desk—with the words 'hundred' and 'fifty', and I 'll gum them on to these slips for the money rolls."
For a few minutes I busied myself with the labels. After that, I watched his swift counting of bills and silver, and his ordering them into neat packages and rolls. Before long, however, I took matters into my own gloved hand and, without so much as "by your leave", began the recount, labelling as I went on. Within an hour the work was finished and a smaller tin box packed.
"How much did you make it?" he asked, before locking the box.
"Three thousand four hundred and twenty-two, just."
"The rate of interest I charge them is two per cent, and this amount will reduce that greatly."
"Do you mean that you are letting them have the land, supplying money to help them cultivate it, and charging only two per cent interest?"
"Why should I charge more? They are the ones who are doing the land good. You see, the use of this rent-accumulation to reduce their interest rate for the first year or two, is a part of my general scheme. They are to apply their half-yearly rents as purchase money for their land; this is in the deeds. Within a comparatively short period, this assures to each of them a freehold. The valuation I have put on their land is regulated by the amount of work they have put out on it, and the time they have lived on it.
"Take old Mère Guillardeau, for instance. She has an 'arpent' now of her very own. She, and her father, and her father's father have lived on these seigniory lands for nearly two hundred years. I value that land by discounting the value of the service rendered to it in four generations. Her little 'cabane' is her own, having been built by her father. The land is worth to her all the accumulated value of those generations of toil; to me, who have never done anything for it, neither I nor my fathers, it is worth exactly ten dollars—now, don't laugh!—her yearly rent."
"And that buys it!" I exclaimed, wondering what kind of finance this might be, frenzied or sane.
"It is hers—and I have the pleasure of knowing it is hers while I am living. She and her old daughter of seventy drove out here the other day in Farmer Boucher's cart, and when she went home she carried the deed with her to have it registered. Old André's sister is a hundred years old in January—a hundred years, the product of one piece of land, for, practically they have lived from it with a yearly pig, a cow, a few hens and a garden. Ninety years of toil she has spent upon it. Would you, in the circumstances, have dared to make the time of purchase one year, six months even, and she nearly a centenarian?"
"No." I was beginning to understand.
"And take old Jo Latour. You know him well, for I hear from him how many times you have been there on snow-shoes to take him something 'comforting and warming', as he says. Jo has rheumatism, the kind that catches him when he is sitting in his chair or stooping, and prevents his getting up; and at last, when he manages to stand upright, it won't let him bend or sit down again until after painful effort. What can he do? Boil maple syrup once a year, or chop a cord or two of wood at a dollar a cord? He is seventy-two and has no family as you know. What is he going to do when the pinch becomes too hard? He has a small woodlot, a little garden, a patch of tobacco—is happy all day long with his dog and pipe, despite that rheumatic crippling. I have valued his lot at twenty dollars, and a year's rent will pay for it—with the help of this," he added, touching the box.
"I am learning how to take hold of the matter by the handle. Enlighten me some more, please."
"I could go on for hours into more detail, but I am going to mention only two other families, to show how my plan works. There are Dominique Montferrand and Maxime Longeman, men of thirty or thereabouts, fine strong men with their broods of six and eight. They marry young; work hard and faithfully; shun the cabarets; save their surplus earnings. They were born on the land; they love it and give it of their best toil; it responds to good treatment. Their dairy is one of the best; their stock superior. They have seventy-five acres each. I asked them to value it themselves. They showed they appreciated the worth of the land by the price they set: four thousand dollars—four thousand 'pièces'. They would not cheapen it—not even for the sake of getting it more quickly. A man appreciates that spirit. I have set the period for half-yearly payments at ten years—and I will help out with improved farm implements at the rate of interest I mentioned.
"In less than ten years, if the crops are good, it is theirs. If the crops are poor, they can still pay for it in the period set. They are young. They have something to work for during the best years of their lives."
"But how do you feel about parting with all this land that was your ancestors? Are n't you, too, bound to it by ties of value given?"
"Me? My ancestors!" he exclaimed. "Where did you get that idea? Who told you that this was ancestral land of mine?"
"Mrs. Macleod, or Jamie, intimated it was yours by inheritance."
"Hm—I must undeceive them. But you are not to harbor such a thought for a moment."
"I won't if you say so—but I would like to know how things stand." I grew bold to ask, at the thought of his expressed confidence in me.
"Why, it's all so simple—"
"More simple, I hope, than all that matter of seigniorial rights and transferences I read upon, in the Library before I came—and was no wiser than before."
"And you thought— Oh, this is rich!" he said, thoroughly amused.
I nodded. "Yes; I thought you were a seignior. I dreamed dreams, before coming here of course, of retainers and ancestral halls, and then—I was met by Cale at the boat landing!"
Mr. Ewart fairly shouted as he sensed my disappointment on the romantic side upon discovering Cale.
"And the first thing you did, poor girl, was to lay a rag carpet strip in the passageway for my seigniorial boots—spurred, of course, in your imagination—to make wet snow tracks on! Oh, go on, go on; tell me some more. I would n't miss this for anything."
Before I could speak there was a decided rap on the door.
"That's Jamie," I said; "he has come for the fun."
"Come in," cried Mr. Ewart. Jamie intruded his head; his rueful face caused an outburst on my part.
"I say, Ewart, is it playing fair to a man to have all this unwonted hilarity in business hours, and keep me out?"
"No more it is n't, mon vieux. Come in and hear about Miss Farrell's seigniorial romancing."
"Go on, Marcia," said Jamie, sitting down by me.
"You 've misled me, Jamie. Did n't you, or Mrs. Macleod, tell me when I first came that this Seigniory of Lamoral was Mr. Ewart's by inheritance?"
"Well, it was in a way, was n't it, Gordon? It was a Ewart's?"
"Not in a way, even. I never thought enough about your view of the matter to speak of it. Let's have a cigar, if Miss Farrell does n't object, and I 'll tell what there is to tell—there 's so little!"
Jamie looked at me when Mr. Ewart rose to get the cigars—and looked unutterable things. I read his thought: "Now is our time to find out the truth of things heard and rumored."
"I was born in Canada, Miss Farrell," he said, between puffs, "as Jamie knows, and educated in England. My mother's great-uncle, on her mother's side, was a Ewart of Stoke Charity, a little place in the south of England. While I was there, I was much with this great-uncle; I bear his name. He owned this estate of Lamoral in Canada, that is, two-thirds of the original seigniory; the other third belongs to the present seignior and seignioress in Richelieu-en-Bas. He purchased it from a Culbertson who inherited it from his grandfather, an officer of prominence in the French and Indian wars. At that time, many of the old French seigniories fell into the conqueror's hands, and, by the power of a might that makes right, were allotted to various English officers for distinguished services. The original Culbertson never lived here. His grandson, my great-uncle's friend, never cared enough for it to manage it himself; he left all to an agent and found it paid him but little—so little that he was willing enough to sell two-thirds of it, the neglected two-thirds, to my great-uncle.
"On my great-uncle's death, his grandson, my contemporary, inherited it. I bought it of him ten years ago; but I have used it only as a camping-place when I have been over from England or the Island Continent. I paid for it with a part of what I earned on my sheep ranch in Australia—so linking two parts of the Empire in my small way—and I have never regretted it. That's all there is to tell of the 'inheritance' romance, Miss Farrell."
"Gordon—" Jamie stopped short; blew the smoke vigorously from his lips, and began again. "Would you mind telling me how you came to want to settle here?"
"Why? Because I am a Canadian, not an Englishman."
"Why do you always take pains to make that distinction?"
"That's easy to explain. Because a Canadian is never an Englishman; he is Canadian heart and soul. You can't make him over into an Englishman, no matter if you plant him in Oxford and train him in Australia. I 've been enough in England to know that we are looked upon for what we are—colonials, Canadians, just the other side of the English pale although within the bounds of the British Empire. You feel it in the air, social, political and economic. No drawing-room in England accepts me as an Englishman—and I enter no drawing-room with any wish to be other than a Canadian of the purest brand. We 're not even English in our political rights over there. We are English only in the law, as is the pariah of India. We want to be just Canadians, inheritors of a land unequalled in its possibilities for human growth, for human progress, for the carrying out of just, wise laws, for a far-reaching economical largesse undreamed of in other lands—not excepting yours," he said, turning to me.
"And would you mind telling me," I asked, emboldened by Jamie's personal question, "how it has come about that you look upon your special land ownership with such a broad human outlook?"
"And this really interests you?" He asked me in some surprise.
"It really interests me—why should n't it when I have my own livelihood to earn? The economic question, so-called, seems to me to resolve itself into the question: How are we, I and my brothers and sisters, who work in one way and another, going to feed and clothe ourselves—and yet not live by bread alone? But, I don't suppose you know that side of it, only theoretically?"
"Yes, and no. I got all my inspiration about this land question in England."
"In England!" Jamie repeated, showing his surprise. "That would seem the last place for the advancement of such theories about land as I have heard you explain more than once."
"In this way. The object lesson came from England—but was upside down on my national retina. I had to re-adjust it in Canada. It's just here; the condition of England is this—I have seen it with both bodily and spiritual eyes:—That snug little, tight little island is what you might call in athletic parlance 'muscle bound'. I 'll explain. For more than a century she has colonized. What is left now? Her land owned by the few; her population, that which is left, rapidly pauperizing. England, with a land for the sustenance of millions, is powerless to help, to succor her own. She has too much unused land, as the muscle-bound athlete has too much muscle. It handicaps her in all progress. Her classes are now two: the very poor, and the poor who have no land; the rich who have practically all the land. In this condition of things her economical and political system is drained of it best.
"Scotch, English, Irish—the clearest brains, the best muscle, the highest hearts, are coming over here to Canada. This land is the great free land for the many. In settling here, I wanted to add my quota of effort in the right direction. And I cannot see but that this little piece of earth, three thousand acres in all, on which, for two hundred years, men, women and children have succeeded one another, multiplying as generation after generation, have gone on caring for the land, living from it,—but never owning a foot of it,—is the best kind of an experiment station for working out my principles. I am about to apply the result of my English object lesson here in Lamoral. I have been telling Miss Farrell about the disposition I intend to make of it, gradually, of course. Perhaps you would like to hear sometime."
"Will you tell me about it in detail?" Jamie asked eagerly.
"I am only too pleased to find a listener, an interested one. Miss Farrell has proven a good one—I've kept you already two hours." He rose.
"Is it possible!" I was genuinely surprised. "The time had seemed so short. I must go now and help Angélique with her new cake recipe—a cake we eat only in the States, and a good object lesson on the economic side." I rose and laid the gloves on the table. I had kept them on just a little longer than was necessary—because they were his! Foolish? Oh, yes, I knew it to be; but it was such a pleasure to indulge myself in foolishness that concerned nobody's pleasure but my own.
"Sometime I want to ask you a few questions, Miss Farrell," said Mr. Ewart, as I turned to the door.
"What about?" I was a little on the defensive.
"I want to know how you came to have any such economic ideas in your thinking-box?"
I turned again from the door to face him. "Have you ever lived in New York?"
"No."
"Have you ever been there?" There was a moment's hesitancy before he replied, thoughtfully: