Evelyn Raymond - A Daughter of the Forest

“Oh! no. He doesn’t understand who you are, yet. We had a man here last year, helping uncle, and Tom acted just as he does now. Though he never would make friends with the Canadian, as I hope he will with you.”

Angelique flashed a glance toward the girl. Why should she, or anybody speak as if this lad’s visit were to be a prolonged one? And they had, both she and the master. He had bidden the servant fill a fresh “tick” with the dried and shredded fern leaves and pine needles, such as supplied their own mattresses; and to put all needful furnishings into the one disused room of the cabin.

“But, master! When you’ve always acted as if that were bein’ kept for somebody who was comin’ some day. Somebody you love!” she protested.

“I have settled the matter, Angelique. Don’t fear that I’ve not thought it all out. ‘Do unto others,’ you know. For each day its duty, its battle with self, and, please God, its victory.”

“He’s a saint, ever’body knows; and there’s somethin’ behind all this I don’t understand!” she had muttered, but had also done his bidding, still complaining.

Commonly, meals were leisurely affairs in that forest home, but on this morning Mr. Dutton set an example of haste that the others followed; and as soon as their appetites were satisfied he rose and said:

“I’ll show you your own room now, Adrian. Occupy it as long as you wish. And find something to amuse yourself with while I am gone; for I have much to do out of doors. It was the worst storm, for its duration, that ever struck us. Fortunately, most of the outbuildings need only repairs, but Snowfoot’s home is such a wreck she must have a new one. Margot, will you run up the signal for Pierre?”

“Yes, indeed! Though I believe he will come without it. He’ll be curious about the tornado, too, and it’s near his regular visiting time.”

The room assigned to Adrian excited his fresh surprise; though he assured himself that he would be amazed at nothing further, when he saw lying upon a table in the middle of the floor, two complete suits of clothing, apparently placed there by the thoughtful host for his guest to use. They were not of the latest style, but perfectly new and bore the stamp of a well-known tailor of his own city.

“Where did he get them, and so soon? What a mammoth of a house it is, though built of logs. And isn’t it the most fitting and beautiful of houses, after all? Whence came those comfortable chairs? and the books? Most of all, where and how did he get that wonderful picture over that magnificent log mantel? It looks like a room made ready for the unexpected coming of some prodigal son! I’m that, sure enough; but not of this household. If I were – well, maybe – Oh! hum!”

The lad crossed the floor and gazed reverently at the solitary painting which the room contained. A marvelously lifelike head of the Man of Sorrows, bending forward and gazing upon the onlooker with eyes of infinite tenderness and appealing. Beneath it ran the inscription: “Come Unto Me”; and in one corner was the artist’s signature – a broken pine branch.

“Whew! I wonder if that fellow ran away from home because he loved a brush and paint tube! What sort of a spot have I strayed into, anyway? A paradise? Hmm. I wish the mater could see me now. She’d not be so unhappy over her unworthy son, maybe. Bless her, anyhow. If everybody had been like her – ”

He finished his soliloquy before an open window, through which he could see the summit of the bare mountain that crowned the centre of the island, and was itself crowned by a single pine-tree. Though many of its branches had been lopped away, enough were left to form a sort of spiral stairway up its straight trunk and to its lofty top.

“What a magnificent flagstaff that would make! I’d like to see Old Glory floating there. Believe I’ll suggest it to the magician – that’s what this woodlander is – and doubtless he’ll attend to that little matter! Shades of Aladdin!”

Adrian was so startled that he dropped into a chair, the better to sustain himself against further Arabian-nights-like discoveries.

It was a flagstaff! Somebody was climbing it – Margot! Up, up, like a squirrel, her blond head appearing first on one side then the other, a glowing budget strapped to her back.

Adrian gasped. No sailor could have been more fleet or sure-footed. It seemed but a moment before that slender figure had scaled the topmost branch and was unrolling the brilliant burden it had borne. The stars and stripes, of course. Adrian would have been bitterly disappointed if it had been anything else this agile maiden hoisted from that dizzy height.

In wild excitement and admiration the watcher leaned out of his window and shouted hoarsely:

“Hurrah! H-u-r-rah! H-u-r – !”

The cheer died in his throat. Something had happened. Something too awful to contemplate. Adrian’s eyes closed that he might not see. Had her foot slipped? Had his own cry reached and startled her?

For she was falling – falling! and the end could be but one.

Adrian was not a gymnast though he had seen and admired many wonderful feats performed by his own classmates. But he had never beheld a miracle, and such he believed had been accomplished when, upon reaching the foot of that terrible tree, he found Margot sitting beneath it, pale and shaken, but, apparently, unhurt.

She had heard his breathless crashing up the slope and greeted him with a smile, and the tremulous question:

“How did you know where I was?”

“You aren’t – dead?”

“Certainly not. I might have been, though, but God took care.”

“Was it my cheers frightened you?”

“Was it you, then? I heard something, different from the wood sounds, and I looked quick to see. Then my foot slipped and I went down – a way. I caught a branch just in time and, please, don’t tell uncle. I’d rather do that myself.”

“You should never do such a thing. The idea of a girl climbing trees at all, least of any, such a tree as that!”

He threw his head back and looked upward, through the green spiral to the brilliant sky. The enormous height revived the horror he had felt as he leaped through the window and rushed to the mountain.

“Who planned such a death-trap as that, anyway?”

“I did.”

“You! A girl!”

“Yes. Why not. It’s great fun, usually.”

“You’d better have been learning to sew.”

“I can sew, but I don’t like it. Angelique does that. I do like climbing and canoeing and botanizing, and geologizing, and astronomizing, and – ”

Adrian threw up his hands in protest.

“What sort of creature are you, anyway?”

“Just plain girl.”

“Anything but that!”

“Well, girl, without the adjective. Suits me rather better;” and she laughed in a way that proved she was not suffering from her mishap.

“This is the strangest place I ever saw. You are the strangest family. We are certainly in the backwoods of Maine, yet you might be a Holyoke senior, or a circus star, or – a fairy.”

Margot stretched her long arms and looked at them quizzically.

“Fairies don’t grow so big. Why don’t you sit down? Or, if you will, climb up and look toward the narrows on the north. See if Pierre’s birch is coming yet.”

Again Adrian glanced upward, to the flag floating there, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Excuse me, please. That is, I suppose I could do it, only seeing you slip – I prefer to wait awhile.”

“Are you afraid?”

There was no sarcasm in the question. She asked it in all sincerity. Adrian was different from Pierre, the only other boy she knew, and she simply wondered if tree-climbing were among his unknown accomplishments.