With the opening of spring and the close of the sledding season, work had stopped at Adams’ camp. Rather, the entire plant had been shipped twenty miles deeper into the forest—mill, bunk-house, cook-shed, and such corrugated-iron shacks as were worth carting away.
All that was left on the site of the busy camp were huge heaps of sawdust, piles of slabs, discarded timbers, and the half-burned bricks into which had been built the portable boiler and engine.
And old Judy Mason. She was not considered worth moving to the new site of the camp. She was bedridden with rheumatism. This was the report Tim, the hackman, had brought in.
The old woman’s husband had gone with the outfit to the new camp, for he could not afford to give up his work. Judy had not been so bad when the camp was broken up, but when Tim went over for a load of slabs for summer firewood, he discovered her quite helpless in her bunk and almost starving. The rheumatic attack had become serious.
Amanda Parlow had at once ridden over with Dr. 255 Nugent. Then she had come home for her bag and had insisted on the carpenter’s driving her back to the abandoned camp, proposing to stay with Judy till the old woman was better.
Aunty Rose had one comment to make upon it, and Carolyn May another. Mr. Stagg’s housekeeper said:
“That is just like a parcel of men folks—leaving an old woman to look out for herself. Disgraceful! And Amanda Parlow will not even be thanked for what she does.”
“How brave and helpful it is of Miss Amanda!” Carolyn May cried. “Dear me, when I grow up, I hope I can be a gradjerate nurse like Miss Mandy.”
“I reckon that’s some spell ahead,” chuckled Mr. Parlow, to whom she said this when he picked her up for a drive after taking his daughter to the camp.
“And you’ll come nigh to wantin’ to be a dozen other things ’fore you’re old enough to go to work in a hospital, I shouldn’t wonder. Gid-ap, Cherry!”
Cherry tossed his head and increased his stride. The carpenter had one weakness—that was horseflesh. He was always the owner of a roadster of note.
“That’s a funny name for a horse, Mr. Parlow,” observed Carolyn May.
“Cherry red. That’s his colour.”
“Oh!”
“And I got a cat home that’s cherry colour, too.”
“Why-e-e-e!” exclaimed the little girl, “I’m sure 256 I never saw that one, Mr. Parlow. Your cat is black—all black.”
“Well,” chuckled the old man over the ancient joke, “he’s the colour of a blackheart cherry.”
“Oh, my! I never thought of that,” giggled Carolyn May. She looked up into his hard, dry face with an expression of perplexity in her own. “Mr. Parlow,” she went on seriously, “don’t you think now that Miss Amanda ought to be happy?”
“Happy!” exclaimed the carpenter, startled. “What about, child?”
“Why, about everything. You know, once I asked you about her being happy, and—and you didn’t seem fav’rable. You said ‘Bah!’”
Carolyn May’s imitation of that explosive word as previously used by Mr. Parlow was absolutely funny; but the carpenter only looked at her sidewise, and his face remained grim.
“So I said ‘Bah,’ did I?” he grunted. “And what makes you think I might not say it now?”
“Why,” explained Carolyn May earnestly, “I hoped you’d come to see things like—like I do. You are lots pleasanter than you used to be, Mr. Parlow—indeed, you are. You are happier yourself.”
The old man made no reply for a minute, and Carolyn May had the patience to wait for her suggestion to “sink in.” Finally, he said:
“I dunno but you’re right, Car’lyn May. Not that it matters much, I guess, whether a body’s happy or not in this world,” he added grudgingly. 257
“Oh, yes, it does, Mr. Parlow! It matters a great deal, I am sure—to us and to other people. If we’re not happy inside of us, how can we be cheerful outside, and so make other people happy? And that is what I mean about Miss Amanda.”
“What about Mandy?”
“She isn’t happy,” sighed Carolyn May. “Not really. She’s just as good as good can be. She is always doing for folks, and helping. But she can’t be real happy.”
“Why not?” growled Mr. Parlow, his face turned away.
“Why—’cause—Well, you know, Mr. Parlow, she can’t be happy as long as she and my Uncle Joe are mad at each other.”
Mr. Parlow uttered another grunt, but the child went bravely on.
“You know very well that’s so. And I don’t know what to do about it. It just seems too awful that they should hardly speak, and yet be so fond of each other deep down.”
“How d’you know they’re so fond of each other—deep down?” Mr. Parlow demanded.
“I know my Uncle Joe likes Miss Mandy, ’cause he always speaks so—so respectful of her. And I can see she likes him, in her eyes,” replied the observant Carolyn May. “Oh, yes, Mr. Parlow, they ought to be happy again, and we ought to make ’em so.”
“Huh! Who ought to?” 258
“You and me. We ought to find some way of doing it. I’m sure we can, if we just think hard about it.”
“Huh!” grunted the carpenter again, turning Cherry into the dooryard. “Huh!”
This was not a very encouraging response. Yet he did think of it. The little girl had started a train of thought in Mr. Parlow’s mind that he could not sidetrack.
He knew very well that what she had said about his daughter and Joseph Stagg was quite true. In his selfishness he had been glad all these years that the hardware merchant was balked of happiness. As for his daughter’s feelings, Mr. Parlow had put them aside as “women’s foolishness.” He had never much considered women in his life.
The carpenter had always been a self-centred individual, desirous of his own comfort, and rather miserly. He had not approved, in the first place, of the intimacy between Joseph Stagg and his daughter Amanda.
“No good’ll come o’ that,” he had told himself.
That is, no good to Jedidiah Parlow. He foresaw at the start the loss of the girl’s help about the house, for his wife was then a helpless invalid.
Then Mrs. Parlow died. This death made plainer still to the carpenter that Mandy’s marriage was bound to bring inconvenience to him. Especially if she married a close-fisted young business man like Joe Stagg would this be true. For, at the reading of his 259 wife’s will, Mr. Parlow discovered that the property they occupied, even the shop in which he worked, which had been given to Mrs. Parlow by her parents, was to be the sole property of her daughter. Mandy was the heir. Mr. Parlow did not possess even a life interest in the estate.
It was a blow to the carpenter. He made a good income and had money in bank, but he loved money too well to wish to spend it after he had made it. He did not want to give up the place. If Mandy remained unmarried there would never be any question between them of rent or the like.
Therefore, if he was not actually the cause of the difference that arose between the two young people, he seized and enlarged upon it and did all in his power to make a mere misunderstanding grow into a quarrel that neither of the proud, high-spirited lovers would bridge.
Jedidiah Parlow knew why Joe Stagg had taken that other girl to Faith Camp Meeting. The young man had stopped at the Parlow place when Amanda was absent and explained to the girl’s father. But the latter had never mentioned this fact to his daughter.
Instead, he had made Joe’s supposed offense the greater by suggestion and innuendo. And it was he, too, who had urged the hurt Mandy to retaliate by going to the dance with another young man. Meeting Joe Stagg later, the carpenter had said bitter things to him, purporting to come from Mandy. It 260 was all mean and vile; the old man knew it now—as he had known it then.
All these years he had tried to add fuel to the fire of his daughter’s anger against Joe Stagg. And he believed he had benefited thereby. But, somehow, during the past few months, he had begun to wonder if, after all, “the game was worth the candle.”
Suddenly he had gained a vision of what Amanda Parlow’s empty life meant to her. And it was empty, he knew—empty of that love which every woman craves; empty of the greatest thing that can come into her life.
Mr. Parlow had realised what had been denied his daughter when he had first seen Carolyn May in Mandy’s arms. That was the thing lacking. The love of children, the right to care for children of her own. He had been practically the cause of this denial. Sometimes, when he thought of it, the carpenter was rather shaken. Suppose he should be called to account for his daughter’s loss?
Carolyn May, interested only in seeing her friends made happy, had no idea of the turmoil she had created in Mr. Parlow’s mind. She went her way as usual, scattering sunshine, and hiding as much as she could the trouble that gnawed in her own heart.
The love of Uncle Joe and Aunty Rose and Miss Amanda and Mr. Driggs and the host of her other friends at The Corners and in Sunrise Cove could not take the place in faithful little Carolyn May’s heart of that parental affection which had been so 261 lavished on her all the days of her life, until the sailing of the Dunraven.
Had the little girl possessed brothers and sisters, it might have been different. Mr. and Mrs. Cameron could not, in that case, have devoted themselves so entirely to the little girl.
She had been her mother’s close companion and her father’s chum. True, it had made her “old-fashioned”—old in speech and in her attitude towards many things in life, but she was none the less charming because of this difference between her and other children.
Her upbringing had indeed made her what she was. She thought more deeply than other children of her age. Her nature was the logical outgrowth of such training as she had received from associating with older people.
She was seriously desirous of seeing Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda made happy in their love for each other. She was a born matchmaker—there was no doubt of that.
During the time that the nurse was at the abandoned lumber camp caring for Judy Mason, Carolyn May hoped that something might take Uncle Joe there. She even tried to get him to drive her over to see Miss Amanda on Sunday afternoon. But Uncle Joe did not keep a horse himself, and he would not be coaxed into hiring one for any such excursion.
“Besides, what would your Aunty Rose say?” 262 he asked his little niece. “She would not approve of our doing such a thing on the Lord’s Day, I am sure.”
Nevertheless, he was as eager as a boy to do it. It was because he shrank from having the neighbours comment on his doing the very thing he desired to do that he so sternly refused to consider Carolyn May’s suggestion. Those neighbours might think that he was deliberately going to call on Miss Amanda!
The next Friday, after school was out, Miss Amanda appeared at the Stagg home and suggested taking Carolyn May into the woods with her, “for the week-end,” as she laughingly said. Tim, the hackman, had brought the nurse home for a few hours and would take her back to Judy’s cabin.
“Poor old Judy is much better, but she is still suffering and cannot be left alone for long,” Miss Amanda said. “Carolyn May will cheer her up.”
Delighted, Carolyn May ran to get ready. Spring was far advanced and the woods were very beautiful. And to stay all night—two whole nights—in a log cabin seemed wonderfully attractive to the little girl.
Aunty Rose let her go because she knew that Uncle Joe would approve of it. Indeed, they had talked the matter over already. Carolyn May missed Miss Amanda so that the hardware dealer had already agreed to some such arrangement as this. Mr. Parlow would drive over on Sunday afternoon and bring the little girl home. Of course, Prince had to go along. 263
That Friday evening at supper matters in the big kitchen of the Stagg house were really at a serious pass. Joseph Stagg sat down to the table visibly without appetite. Aunty Rose drank one cup of tea after another without putting a crumb between her lips.
“What’s the matter with you to-night, Joseph Stagg?” his housekeeper finally demanded. “Aren’t the victuals good enough for you?”
“No,” said Mr. Stagg drily, “I think they’re poisoned. You don’t expect me to eat if you don’t set an example, do you?”
“What I do has nothing to do with you, Joseph Stagg,” said Mrs. Kennedy, bridling. “I’m pecking and tasting at victuals all day long. I get so I despise ’em.”
“Yes,” returned Mr. Stagg. “And if Hannah’s Car’lyn don’t come back, I shall get to despise ’em, too.”
“Ha!” ejaculated the old lady. “You do miss the little thing.”
“Miss her? Bless me! I wouldn’t believe it made so much difference having her about. It’s knowing she really is away, and is going to be gone for a couple of days, that’s the matter, I s’pose. Say, Aunty Rose!”
“What is it, Joseph Stagg?”
“What under the sun did we do before Hannah’s Car’lyn came here, anyway? Seems to me we didn’t really live, did we?” 264
Aunty Rose had no answer to make to these questions.
Uncle Joe missed kissing the little girl good-night. He even missed the rattle of Prince’s chain at the dog-house when he came back from the store late in the evening.
The air had grown heavy and close, and he stood on the porch for a minute and snuffed knowingly at the odour a good deal as the dog might.
“There’s a fire over the mountain, I guess,” he said to Aunty Rose when he entered the house. “We’re having a dry spring.”
They went to bed. In the morning there was a smoky fog over everything—a fog that the sun did not dissipate, and behind which it looked like an enormous saffron ball.
Mr. Stagg went down to the store as usual. On the way he passed the Parlow place, and he saw the carpenter in his shop door. Parlow was gazing with seeming anxiety into the fog cloud, his face turned towards the forest. Joseph Stagg did not know that, in all the years of their estrangement, the carpenter had never been so near speaking to the hardware dealer.
The smoky tang in the air was as strong in Sunrise Cove as out in the country. The shopkeepers were talking about the fire. News had come over the long-distance wires that thousands of acres of woodland were burning, that the forest reserves were out, and that the farmers of an entire township on the 265 far side of the mountain were engaged in trying to make a barrier over which the flames would not leap. It was the consensus of opinion, however, that the fire would not cross the range. It never had on former occasions, and the wind was against such an advance. The top of the ridge was covered with boulders and the vegetation was scant.
“Scarcely any chance of its swooping down on us,” decided Mr. Stagg. “Reckon I won’t have to go home to plough fire furrows.”
At the usual hour he started for The Corners for dinner. Having remained in the store all the morning, he had not realised how much stronger the smell of smoke was than it had been at breakfast time. Quite involuntarily he quickened his pace.
The fog and smoke overcast the sky thickly and made it of a brassy colour, just as though a huge copper pot had been overturned over the earth. Women stood at their doors, talking back and forth together in low tones. There was a spirit of expectancy in the air. Every person he saw was affected by it.
There seemed scarcely any danger of a forest fire sweeping in upon Sunrise Cove, or even upon The Corners. There was too much cleared land surrounding the town. But what was happening on the other side of the mountain? The peril that other people were in moved his neighbours. Joseph Stagg was affected himself. And for another reason.
Down in the thick woods, ten miles away, were 266 two women and a child in a cabin. Suppose the fire should cross the range?
The hardware merchant was striding along at a quick pace when he came to the Parlow place; but he was not going so fast that he did not hear the carpenter hailing him in his cracked voice.
“Hey, you, Joe Stagg! Hey, you!”
Amazed, Mr. Stagg turned to look. Parlow was hobbling from the rear premises, groaning at every step, scarcely able to walk.
“That sciatica’s got me ag’in,” he snarled. “I’m a’most doubled up. Couldn’t climb into a carriage to save my soul.”
“What d’you want to climb into a carriage for?” demanded Mr. Stagg.
“’Cause somebody’s got to go for that gal of mine—and little Car’lyn May. Ain’t you heard—or is your mind so sot on makin’ money down there to your store that you don’t know nothin’ else?”
“Haven’t I heard what?” returned the other with fine restraint, for he saw the old man was in pain.
“The fire’s come over to this side. I saw the flames myself. And Aaron Crummit drove through and says that you can’t git by on the main road. The fire’s followed the West Brook right down and is betwixt us and Adams’ old camp.”
“Bless me!” gasped the hardware dealer, paling under his tan.
“Wal?” snarled Parlow. “Goin’ to stand there chatterin’ all day, or be you goin’ to do something?”