"_I_ comforting, _I_ cheering, Delia?"

She nodded emphatically. "Yes, my dear, just that. Your work is cut out for you right here, for a few weeks anyway. You come upstairs with me now and set with one of 'em, and give her a bowl of gruel--I was just going to come up with one from the kitchen when you rung,--while I get Jane's things together; she 'll be in by ten. She 's over to one of the Settlement Houses helping out to-night."

Somehow, on hearing this account of Jane's activity--tired Jane who could help and rescue at home, and then go out to the Settlement House to give of her best till ten at night--my own life dwindled into insignificance. The true spirit of the great city entered into me. I felt the power of it for good. I felt its altruism; I realized its deepest significance; and I saw wherein lay my own salvation from selfish brooding, from forbidden craving, from morbid thinking.

"Let me have Jane's work," I said.

We talked no more that night of matters that were personal. I gave my whole time and strength to help "bring her through", as Delia defined the state of things in regard to a girl, five years younger than I, "who had missed her footing".

It was an anxious week. There was delirium, despair, suicidal intent; but we "brought her through".

While watching by that girl's bedside, I relived that experience of my mother, the result of which was that I, Marcia Farrell, was there to help. In those night watches I had time for many thoughts. Cale's voice grew insistent, for the roar of the city was subdued at one and two in the morning:

"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."

Over and over again I heard those words. The undertone of metropolitan life, when at its lowest vitality, went on and on.--Two o'clock, three.

The girl on the bed grew quiet; delirium ceased. Four--I heard the rattle of the milk-carts and the truck gardeners' wagons coming up from the ferries.

"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Over and over again I heard it.

Cale's voice was louder now, more and more insistent. All that day I heard it above the push-cart vendors' cries and the hurdy-gurdy's dance music, above the roar of the Second Avenue Elevated and the polyglot street clamor.

Yes, I had to acknowledge it: my mother had wronged him. I visualized that act in her life. I saw her promising to marry him, although she was unwilling. I saw her giving herself in marriage to him in the presence of the minister and her sick father. I saw her young husband creeping out in the night to watch for her shadow on the curtain. I saw him lying down to sleep a little after his vigil--but I could not see my mother when she left the house. Not until she made sunshine in the old manor, where I was conceived, not until she made sunshine in the forest for old Andre, could I see her again in her youth and beauty, in the enjoyment of her stolen bliss.

But I could see him whom she deserted. I saw him in the pasture among the colts. I saw him raving at being made her dupe; I saw him even raising his hand against Cale. I saw him in his fruitless search, east, west, north, south. I saw him leaving the very house in which I was watching. I saw him broken, changed, "cutting loose" from his old life, determined to relive in other conditions, in other lands. I saw him returning from that far Australian country to that house where my mother's steps had resounded on the old flagging in the pa.s.sageway at Lamoral,--unknowing of her former presence there, unknowing that her daughter was there awaiting him,--to that place which I, also unknowing, had made home for him. I saw him living again in his love for me who was her daughter!--and he knew this! Knew I was her daughter.

How had he dared? And he her husband--my mother's husband! The thought was staggering.

I looked at the girl on the bed. She was asleep, but her respiration was rapid; she was breathing for two. "What if--"

I dared scarcely formulate my thought. Was he her husband? Did merely the spoken word make Gordon Ewart and my mother, man and wife? What was it Cale said: she had pleaded so with his mother not to be with her husband that first night of her marriage. And there was no second.

I began to see differently, as Cale predicted. Horror, shame, humiliation, despair, jealousy of my own mother--all this that obstructed vision, deflected, distorted it, was being cleared away.

Had Mr. Ewart come to look at this matter in the same light, that he had never been my mother's husband? That words, alone, could never make him that?

"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."

Perhaps Cale was right.

"Why was he silent?" I asked myself, and found the answer: he could not have gained my love, had I known. And he wanted my love--wanted me, and me alone of all the world for his mate. But how could he, knowing?

I lost myself in conjecture, but I began to see clearly, differently.

My own act, my desertion of him, after what he had mutely promised, was becoming a base thing in my eyes.

I asked Delia Beaseley once, if she had heard any word from Mr. Ewart.

"No, not a word," she said decidedly, "and remembering how he looked when he braced up and walked into this very bas.e.m.e.nt twenty-seven years ago, I don't expect to hear from him. I ain't judgin' you, my dear, but you 've done an awful thing."

"And what of his act?"

"Well, there are two ways of looking at that," was all she would say.

She used Cale's very words, when he told his story.

I asked once again, if she had heard from the Doctor?

"No. He was going out to California. He come to see me before he went, and he said he 'd about given up the farm plans; that he could n't see his way clear to carry them out for the present. And I don't mind telling you, that he said he would put half the interest money on that 'conscience fund', as he calls it, that he thinks your father provides to ease his soul, to helping me here in my work."

I remembered what I had advised on that memorable evening in Lamoral--and I wondered at the ways of life.

We "brought the girl through" with help of nurse and doctor. She and her child were saved, saved for good as I have every reason to believe, for I have kept in touch with her ever since. I am her friend, why quite such a friend, I do not feel called upon to explain.

I answered the door bell one day when the baby upstairs was ten days old--and found myself face to face with Cale.

III

When I saw him, I acknowledged to myself my weakness. Deep down in my heart I had been longing, with a desire which was prayer, that I might have some word from Lamoral.

"Cale--Cale, dear, come in." I caught his hand, which was not outstretched to mine, to draw him in. "If we were n't the observed of all in this court I would kiss you on the spot." He continued to stare at me; he did not speak.

"Cale, forgive me for my hardness of heart--say you forgive me, for I can't forgive myself; I was--"

He interrupted me, speaking quietly:

"I know what you was; you can't tell me nothin' 'bout _thet_, Marcia.

I ain't laid up nothin' you said to me, nor nothin' you said against n.o.body; but I ain't fergiven yer fer leavin' me without knowin' of your whereabouts--

"Cale, I had to be alone--"

"I don't care whether you had to be alone or not," he said testily; "you might have let me know where you was goin'. You was n't fit to go alone, nor be alone. My hair 's turned gray thinkin' what might happen. Where was you?" he demanded sternly.

"I was in Iberville."

I led him unresisting into the back room; it was my turn to place some one in the rocking-chair.

"Iberville! How in thunder did you get to Iberville when you did n't go on the train?"

"How did you know I did n't go on the train?"

"The baggage-master told me. How did you go?"

"In the apple-boat."

"Wal, I 'm stumped. How long did you stay there?"

"Nearly four weeks. Why?"