When Mary-Clare awoke the next morning she heard Larry still moving about overhead as if he had been doing it all night. He was opening drawers; going to and fro between closet and bed; pausing, rustling papers, and giving the impression, generally, that he was bent upon a definite plan.

Noreen was sleeping deeply, one little arm stretched over her pillow and toward her mother as if feeling for the dear presence. Somehow the picture comforted Mary-Clare. She was strangely at peace. After her bungling––and she knew she had bungled with Larry––she had secured safety for Noreen and herself. It was right: the other way would have bent and cowed her and ended as so many women’s lives ended. Larry never could understand, but God could! Mary-Clare had a simple faith and it helped her now.

While she lay thinking and looking at Noreen she became conscious of Larry tiptoeing downstairs. She started up hoping to begin the new era as right as might be. She wanted to get breakfast and start whatever might follow as sanely as possible.

But Larry had gone so swiftly, once he reached the lower floor, that only by running after him in her light apparel could she attract his attention. He was out of the house and on the road toward the mines!

Then Mary-Clare, seized by one of those presentiments that often light a dark moment, closed the door, shivering slightly, and went upstairs.

The carefully prepared bedchamber was in great disorder. The bedclothes were pulled from the bed and lay in a heap near by; towels, the soiled linen that Larry had discarded for 73 the fresh, that had been placed in the bureau drawers, was rolled in a bundle and flung on the hearth.

This aspect of the room did not surprise Mary-Clare. Larry generally dropped what he was for the moment through with, but there was more here than heedless carelessness. Drawers were pulled out and empty. The closet was open and empty. There was a finality about the scene that could not be misunderstood. Larry was gone in a definite and sweeping manner.

Dazed and perplexed, Mary-Clare went to the closet and suddenly was made aware, by the sight of an empty box upon the floor, that in her preparation of the room she had left that box, containing the old letters of her doctor, on a shelf and that now they had been taken away!

What this loss signified could hardly be estimated at first. So long had those letters been guide-posts and reinforcements, so long had they comforted and soothed her like a touch or look of her old friend, that now she raised the empty box with a sharp sense of pain. So might she gaze at Noreen’s empty crib had the child been taken from her.

Then, intuitively, Mary-Clare tried to be just, she thought that Larry must have taken the letters because of old and now severed connections They were his letters, but–––

Here Mary-Clare, also because she was just, considered the other possible cause. Larry might use the letters against her in the days to come. Show them to others to prove her falseness and ingratitude. This possibility, however, was only transitory. What she had done was inevitable, Mary-Clare knew that, and it seemed to her right––oh! so right. There was only one real fact to face. Larry was gone; the letters were gone.

Mary-Clare began to tremble. The cold room, all that had so deeply moved her was shaking her nerves. Then she thought that in his hurry Larry might have overturned the box––the letters might be on the shelf still. Quickly she went into the closet and felt carefully every corner. The letters were not there.

Then with white face and chattering teeth she turned and 74 faced Jan-an. The girl had come noiselessly to the house and found her way to the room where she had heard sounds––she had seen Larry fleeing on the lake road as she came over the fields from the Point.

“What’s up?” she asked in her dull, even tones, while in her vacant eyes the groping, tender look grew.

“Oh! Jan-an,” Mary-Clare was off her guard, “the letters; my dear old doctor’s letters––they are gone; gone.” Her feeling seemed out of all proportion to the loss.

“Who took ’em?” And then Jan-an did one of those quick, intelligent things that sometimes shamed sharper wits––she went to the hearth. “There ain’t been no fire,” she muttered. “He ain’t burned ’em. What did he take them for?”

This question steadied Mary-Clare. “I’m not sure, Jan-an, that any one has taken the letters. You know how careless I am. I may have put them somewhere else.”

“If yer have there’s no need fussing. I’ll find ’em. I kin find anything if yer give me time. I have ter get on the scent.”

Mary-Clare gave a nervous laugh.

“Just old letters,” she murmured, “but they meant, oh! they meant so much. Come,” she said suddenly, “come, I must dress and get breakfast.”

“I’ve et.” Jan-an was gathering the bedclothes from the floor. She selected the coverlid and brought it to Mary-Clare. “There, now,” she whispered, wrapping it about her, “you come along and get into bed downstairs till I make breakfast. You need looking after more than Noreen. God! what messes some folks can make by just living!”

Things were reduced to the commonplace in an hour.

The warmth of her bed, the sight of Noreen, the sound of Jan-an moving about, all contributed to the state of mind that made her panic almost laughable to Mary-Clare.

Things had happened too suddenly for her; events had become congested in an environment that was antagonistic to change. A change had undoubtedly come but it must be met bravely and faithfully.

The sun was flooding the big living-room when Mary-Clare, Noreen, and Jan-an sat down to the meal Jan-an had prepared. There was a feeling of safety prevailing at last. And then Jan-an, her elbows on the table, her face resting in her cupped hands, remarked slowly as if repeating a lesson:

“He’s dead, Philander Sniff. Went terrible sudden after taking all this time. I clean forgot––letters and doings. I can’t think of more than one thing at a time.”

Mary-Clare set her cup down sharply while Noreen with one of those whimsical turns of hers drawled in a sing-song:

“Old Philander Sniff, he died just like a whiff–––”

“Noreen!” Mary-Clare stared at the child while Jan-an chuckled in a rough, loose way as if her laugh were small stones rattling in her throat.

“Well, Motherly, Philander was a cruel old man. Just being dead don’t make him anything different but––dead.”

“Noreen, you must keep quiet. Jan-an, tell me about it.”

Mary-Clare’s voice commanded the situation. Jan-an’s stony gurgle ceased and she began relating what she had come to tell.

“I took his supper over to him, same as usual, and set it down on the back steps, and when he opened the door I said, like I allas done, ‘Peneluna says good-night,’ and he took in the food and slammed the door, same as usual.”

“Old Philander Sniff–––” began Noreen’s chant as she slipped from her chair intent upon a doll by the hearthside.

Mary-Clare took no notice of her but nodded to Jan-an.

“And then,” the girl went on, “I went in to Peneluna and told her and then we et and went to bed. Long about midnight, I guess, there was a yell!” Jan-an lost her breath and paused, then rushed along: “He’d raised his winder and after all the keeping still, he called for Peneluna to come.”

Mary-Clare visualized the dramatic scene that poor Jan-an was mumbling monotonously.

“And she went! I just lay there scared stiff hearing things an’ seeing ’em! Come morning, in walked Peneluna looking still and high and she didn’t say nothing till she’d gone and 76 fetched those togs of hers, black ’uns, you know, that Aunt Polly gave her long back. She put ’em on, bonnet and veil an’ everything. Then she took an old red rose out of a box and pinned it on the front of her bonnet––God! but she did look skeery––and then said to me awful careful, ‘Trot on to Mary-Clare, tell her to fotch the marriage service and the funeral one, both!’ Jes’ like that she said it. Both!”

“This is very strange,” Mary-Clare said slowly and got up. “I’m going to the Point, Jan-an, and you will take Noreen to the inn, like a good girl. I’ll call for her in the afternoon.”

“Take both!” Jan-an was nodding her willingness to obey. And Mary-Clare took her prayer-book with her.

Mary-Clare had the quiet Forest to herself apparently, for on the way to the Point she met no one. On ahead she traced, she believed, Larry’s footprints, but when she turned on the trail to the Point, they were not there.

All along her way Mary-Clare went over in her thought the story of Philander Sniff and Peneluna. It was the romance and mystery of the sordid Point.

Years before, when Mary-Clare was a little child, Philander had drifted, from no one knew where, to the mines and the Point. He lived in one of the ramshackle huts; gave promise of paying for it, did, in fact, pay a few dollars to old Doctor Rivers, and then became a squatter. He was injured at the mines and could do no more work and at that juncture Peneluna had arrived upon the scene from the same unknown quarter apparently whence Philander had hailed. She took the empty cottage next Philander’s and paid for it by service in Doctor Rivers’s home. She was clean, thrifty, and strangely silent. When Philander first beheld her he was shaken, for a moment, out of his glum silence. “God Almighty!” he confided to Twombly who had worked in the mines with him and had looked after him in his illness; “yer can’t shake some women even when it’s for their good.”

That was all. Through the following years the two shacks became the only clean and orderly ones on the Point. When Philander hobbled from his quarters, Peneluna went in and 77 scrubbed and scoured. After a time she cooked for the old man and left the food on his back steps. He took it in, ate it, and had the grace to wash the dishes before setting them back.

“Some mightn’t,” poor Peneluna had said to Aunt Polly in defence of Sniff.

As far as any one knew the crabbed old man never spoke to his devoted neighbour, but she had never complained.

“I wonder what happened before they came here?” After all the years of taking the strange condition for granted, it sprang into quickened life. Mary-Clare was soon to know and it had a bearing upon her own highly sensitive state.

She made her way to the far end of the Point, passing wide-eyed children at play and curious women in doorways.

“Philander’s dead!” The words were like an accompaniment, passing from lip to lip. “An’ she won’t let a soul in.” This was added.

“She will presently,” Mary-Clare reassured them. “She’ll need you all, later.”

There was a little plot of grass between Peneluna’s shack and Philander’s and a few scraggy autumn flowers edged a well-worn path from one back door to the other!

At Philander’s front door Mary-Clare knocked and Peneluna responded at once. She was dressed as Jan-an had described, and for a moment Mary-Clare had difficulty in stifling her inclination to laugh.

The gaunt old woman was in the rusty black she had kept in readiness for years; she wore gloves and bonnet; the long crÊpe veil and the absurd red rose wobbled dejectedly as Peneluna moved about.

“Come in, child, and shut the world out.” Then, leading the way to an inner room, “Have yer got both services?”

“Yes, Peneluna.” Then Mary-Clare started back.

She was in the presence of the dead. He lay rigid and carefully prepared for burial on the narrow bed. He looked decent, at peace, and with that unearthly dignity that death often offers as its first gift.

Peneluna drew two chairs close to the bed; waved Mary-Clare majestically to one and took the other herself. She was going to lay her secrets before the one she had chosen––after that the shut-out world might have its turn.

“I’ve sent word over to the Post Office,” Peneluna began, “and they’re going to get folks, the doctor and minister and the rest. Before they get here––” Peneluna paused––“before they get here I want that you should act for the old doctor.”

This was the one thing needed to rouse Mary-Clare.

“I’ll do my best, Peneluna,” she whispered, and clutched the prayer-book.

“The ole doctor, he knew ’bout Philander and me. He said”––Peneluna caught her breath––“he said once as how it was women like me that kept men believing. He said I had a right to hold my tongue––he held his’n.”

Mary-Clare nodded. Not even she could ever estimate the secret load of confessions her beloved foster-father bore and covered with his rare smile.

“Mary-Clare, I want yer should read the marriage service over me and him!” Peneluna gravely nodded to her silent dead. “I got this to say: If Philander ain’t too far on his journey, I guess he’ll look back and understand and then he can go on more cheerful-like and easy. Last night he hadn’t more than time to say a few things, but they cleared everything, and if I’m his wife, he can trust me––a wife wouldn’t harm a dead husband when she might the man who jilted her.” The words came through a hard, dry sob. Mary-Clare felt her eyes fill with hot tears. She looked out through the one open window and felt the warm autumn breeze against her cheek; a bit of sunlight slanted across the room and lay brightly on the quiet man upon the bed. “Read on, Mary-Clare, and then I can speak out.”

Opening the book with stiff, cold fingers, Mary-Clare read softly, brokenly, the solemn words.

At the close Peneluna stood up.

“Him and me, Mary-Clare,” she said, “’fore God and you is husband and wife.” Then she removed the red rose from 79 her bonnet, laid it upon the folded wrinkled hands of the dead man and drew the sheet over him.

Just then, outside the window, a bird flew past, peeped in, fluttered away, singing.

“Seems like it might be the soul of Philander,” Peneluna said––she was crying as the old do, hardly realizing that they are crying. Her tears fell unheeded and Mary-Clare was crying with her, but conscious of every hurting tear.

“In honour bound, though it breaks the heart of me, I’m going to speak, Mary-Clare, then his poor soul can rest in peace.

“The Methodist parson, what comes teetering ’round just so often, always thought Philander was hell-bound, Mary-Clare; well, since there ain’t anyone but that parson as knows so much about hell, to send for, I’ve sent for him and there’s no knowing what he won’t feel called upon to say with Philander lying helpless for a text. So now, after I tell you what must be told, I want that you should read the burial service over Philander and then that parson can do his worst––my ears will be deaf to him and Philander can’t hear.”

There was a heavy pause while Mary-Clare waited.

“Hell don’t scare me nohow,” Peneluna went on; “seems like the most interesting folks is headed for it and I’ll take good company every time to what some church folks hands out. And, too, hell can’t be half bad if you have them you love with you. So the parson can do his worst. Philander and me won’t mind now.

“Back of the time we came here”––Peneluna was picking her words as a child does its blocks, carefully in order to form the right word––“me and Philander was promised.”

Drifting about in Mary-Clare’s thought a scrap of old scandal stirred, but it had little to feed on and passed.

“Then a woman got mixed up ’twixt him and me. In her young days she’d been French and you know yer can’t get away from what’s born in the blood, and the Frenchiness was terrible onsettling. Philander was side-twisted. Yer see, Mary-Clare, when a man ain’t had nothing but work and working folks in his life, a creature that laughs and dances 80 and sings gets like whiskey in the head, and Philander didn’t rightfully know what he was about.”

Peneluna drew the end of her crÊpe veil up and wiped her eyes.

“They went off together, him and the furriner. Least, the furriner took him off, and the next thing I heard she’d taken to her heels and Philander drifted here to the mines. I knew he needed me more than ever––he was a dreadful creature about doing for himself, not eating at Christian hours, just waiting till he keeled over from emptiness, so I came logging along after him and––stayed. He was considerable upset when he saw me and he never got to, what you might say, speaking to me, but he was near and he ate the food I left on his steps and he washed the plates and cups and that meant a lot to Philander. If I’d been his proper wife he wouldn’t have washed ’em. Men don’t when they get used to a woman.

“And then”––here Peneluna caught her breath––“then last night he called from his winder and I came. He said, holding my hand like it was the last thing left for him to hold: ‘I didn’t think I had a right to you, Pen’––he used to call me Pen––‘after what I did. And I’ve just paid for my evil-doing up to the end, not taking comfort and forgiveness––just paying!’ I never let on, Mary-Clare, how I’d paid, too. Men folks are blind-spotted, we’ve got to take ’em as they are. Philander thought he had worked out his soul’s salvation while he was starving me, soul and body, but I never let on and he died smiling and saying, ‘The food was terrible staying, Pen, terrible staying.’”

Mary-Clare could see mistily the long, rigid figure on the bed, her eyes ached with unshed tears; her heart throbbed like a heavy pain. Here was something she had never understood; a thing so real and strong that no earthly touch could kill it. What was it?

But Peneluna was talking on, her poor old face twitching.

“And now, Mary-Clare, him and me is man and wife before God and you. You are terrible understanding, child. With all the fol-de-rol the old doctor laid on yer, he laid his own 81 spirit of knowing things on yer, too. Suffering learns folks the understanding power. I reckon the old doctor had had his share ’fore he came to the Forest––but how you got to knowing things, child, and being tender and patient, ’stead of hot and full of hate, I don’t know! Now read, soft and low, so only us three can hear––the last service.”

Solemnly, with sweet intonations, Mary-Clare read on and on. Again the bird came to the window ledge, looked in, and then flew off singing jubilantly. Peneluna smiled a fleeting wintry smile and closed her eyes; she seemed to be following the bird––or was it old Philander’s soul?

When the service came to an end, Peneluna arose and with grave dignity walked from the room, Mary-Clare following.

“Now the Pointers can have their way ’cording to rule, Mary-Clare,” she whispered, “but you and me understand, child. And listen to this, I ain’t much of a muchness, but come thick or thin, Mary-Clare, I’ll do my first and last for you ’cause of the secret lying ’twixt us.”

Then Mary-Clare asked the question that was hurting her with its weight.

“Peneluna, was it love, the thing that made you glad, through it all, just to wait?”

“I don’t rightly know, Mary-Clare. It was something too big for me to call by name, but I just couldn’t act different and kill it, not even when her as once was French made me feel I oughter. I wouldn’t darst harm that feeling I had, child.”

“And it paid?”

“I don’t know. I only know I was glad, when he called last night, that I was waiting.”

Then Mary-Clare raised her face and kissed the old, troubled, fumbling lips. The thing, too big for the woman, was too big for the girl; but she knew, whatever it was, it must not be hurt.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“God knows, Mary-Clare. The old doctor gave this place to Philander, and he gave me mine, next door. I think, till I get my leadings, I’ll hold to this and see what the Lord 82 wants me to do with my old shack. I allas find someone waiting to share. Maybe Jan-an will grow to fit in there in time. When she gets old and helpless she’ll need some place to crawl to and call her own. I don’t know, but I’m a powerful waiter and I’ll keep an eye and ear open.”

On the walk home Mary-Clare grew deeply thoughtful. The recent scene took on enormous significance. Detached from the pitiful setting, disassociated from the two forlorn creatures who were the actors in the tragic story, there rose, like a bright and living flame, a something that the girl’s imagination caught and held.

That something was quite apart from laws and codes; it came; could not be commanded. It was something that marriage could not give, nor death kill. Something that could exist on the Point. Something that couldn’t be got out of one’s heart, once it had entered in. What was it? It wasn’t duty or just living on. It was something too big to name. Why was the wonder of it crowding all else out––after the long years?

Mary-Clare left the Point behind her. She entered the sweet autumn-tinted woods beyond which lay her home. She hoped––oh! yearningly she hoped––that Larry would not be there, not just yet. She would go for Noreen; she would stay awhile with Aunt Polly and tell her about what had just occurred––the service, but not the secret thing.

Suddenly she stood still and her face shone in the dim woods. Just ahead and around a curve, she heard Noreen’s voice. But was it Noreen’s?

Often, in her wondering moments, Mary-Clare had pictured her little girl as she longed for her to be––a glad, unthinking creature, such as Mary-Clare herself had once been, a singing, laughing child. And now, just out of sight, Noreen was singing.

There was a rich gurgle in the flute-like voice; it came floating along.

“Oh! tell it again, please! I want to learn it for Motherly. It is awfully funny––and make the funny face that goes with it––the crinkly-up face.”

“All right. Here goes!

that’s the way, Noreen, scuffle your feet in the leaves––

Here, you, Noreen, play fair; scuffle and keep step, you little beggar!”

“But I may step on the wee men, the good men,” again the rich chuckle.

“No, you won’t if you scuffle and then step high; they’ll slip between your feet.”

Then came the tramp, tramp of the oncoming pair. Big feet, little feet. Long strides and short hops.

So they came in view around the turn of the rough road––Northrup with Noreen holding his hand and trying to keep step to the swinging words of the old song.

And Northrup saw Mary-Clare, saw her with a slanting sunbeam on her radiant face. The romance of Hunter’s Point was in her soul, and the wonder of her child’s happiness. She stood and smiled that strange, unforgettable smile of hers; the smile that had its birth in unshed tears.

Northrup hurried toward her, taking in, as he came, her loveliness that could not be detracted from by her mud-stained and rough clothing. The feeling of knowing her was in his mind; she seemed vividly familiar.

“Your little daughter got homesick, or mother-sick, Mrs. Rivers”––Northrup took off his hat––“Aunt Polly gave me the privilege of bringing her to you. We became friends from the moment we met. We’ve been making great strides all day.”

“Thank you, Mr.–––”

“Northrup.”

“Thank you, Mr. Northrup. You have made Noreen very happy––and she does not make friends easily.”

“But, Motherly,” Noreen was flushed and eager. “He isn’t a friend. Jan-an told me all about him. He’s something the wild-wind brought. You are, aren’t you, Mr. Sir?”

Northrup laughed.

“Well, something like that,” he admitted. “May I walk along with you, Mrs. Rivers? Unless I go around the lake, I must turn back.”

And so they walked on, Noreen darting here and there quite unlike her staid little self, and they talked of many things––neither could have told after just what they talked about. The conversation was like a stream carrying them along to a definite point ordained for them to reach, somewhere, some time, on beyond.

“How on earth could she manage to be what she is?” pondered Northrup. “She’s read and thought to some purpose.”

“What does he mean by being here?” pondered Mary-Clare. “This isn’t just a happening.”

But they chatted pleasantly while they pondered.

When they came near to the yellow house, Noreen, who was ahead, came running back. All the joyousness had fled from her face. She looked heavy-eyed and dull.

“She’s tired,” murmured Mary-Clare, but she knew that that was not what ailed Noreen.

And then she looked toward her house. Larry stood in the doorway, smoking and smiling.

“Will you come and meet my husband?” she asked of Northrup.

“I’ll put off the pleasure, if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Rivers. I have learned that one cannot tamper with Aunt Polly’s raised biscuits. It’s late, but may I call to-morrow?” Northrup stood bareheaded while he spoke.

Mary-Clare nodded. She was mutely thankful when he strode on ahead and toward the lake.

It was while they were eating their evening meal that Larry remarked casually:

“So that’s the Northrup fellow, is it?” Mary-Clare flushed and had a sensation of being lassoed by an invisible hand.

“Yes. He is staying at the inn––I sent Noreen there this morning while I went over to the Point; he was bringing her home.”

“He seemed to know that you weren’t home.”

“Children come in handy,” Larry smiled pleasantly. “More potato, Mary-Clare?”

“No.” Then, almost defiantly: “Larry, Mr. Northrup asked his way to the inn the day he was travelling through. I have never spoken to him since, until to-day. When he found the house empty this afternoon, he naturally–––”

“Why the explanation?” Larry looked blank and again Mary-Clare flushed.

“I felt one was needed.”

“I can’t see why. By the way, Mary-Clare, those squatters at the Point are going to get a rough deal. Either they’re going to pay regular, or be kicked out. I tell you when Tim Maclin sets his jaw, there is going to be something doing.”

This was unfortunate, but Larry was ill at ease.

“Maclin doesn’t own the Point, Larry.”

“You better listen to Maclin and not Peter Heathcote.” Larry retraced his steps. His doubt of Northrup had led him astray.

Mary-Clare gave him a startled look.

“Maclin’s a brute,” she said quietly. “I prefer to listen to my friends.”

“Maclin’s our friend. Yours and mine. You’ll learn that some day.”

“I doubt it, Larry, but he’s your employer and I do not forget that.”

“I wouldn’t. And you’re going to change your mind some fine day, my girl, about a lot of things.”

“Perhaps.”

“I’m sleeping outside, Mary-Clare.” Larry rose lazily. “I just dropped in to––to call.” He laughed unpleasantly.

“I’m sorry, Larry, that you feel as you do.”

“Like hell you are!” The words were barely audible. “I’m going to give you a free hand, Mary-Clare, but I’m going to let folks see your game. That’s square enough.”

“All right, Larry.” Mary-Clare’s eyes flickered. Then: “Why did you take those letters?”

Larry looked blankly at her.

“I haven’t taken any letters. What you hoaxing up?” He waited a moment but when Mary-Clare made no reply he stalked from the house angrily and into the night.

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