“I wish I could.”
“Why, of course you can,” said Mason. “Imagine the delight of smuggling your purchases back to Boston. Confess that this is a pleasure you hadn’t thought of.”
“I admit the fascination of it all, but you see I am with a party that has gone on to Quebec, and I just got away for a day. I am to meet them there to-night or to-morrow morning. But I will return in the autumn, Mrs. Mason, when it is too late for the picnics. Then, Mr. Mason, take warning. I mean to have a canoe to myself, or—well, you know the way we Bostonians treated you Britishers once upon a time.”
“Distinctly. But we will return good for evil, and give you warm tea instead of the cold mixture you so foolishly brewed in the harbour.”
As the buckboard disappeared around the corner, and Mr. and Mrs. Mason walked back to the house, the lady said—
“What a strange girl Eva is.”
“Very. Don’t she strike you as being a trifle selfish?”
“Selfish? Eva Sommerton? Why, what could make you think such a thing? What an absurd idea! You cannot imagine how kind she was to me when I visited Boston.”
“Who could help it, my dear? I would have been so myself if I had happened to meet you there.”
“Now, Ed., don’t be absurd.”
“There is something absurd in being kind to a person’s wife, isn’t there? Well, it struck me her objection to any one else being at the falls, when her ladyship was there, might seem—not to me, of course, but to an outsider—a trifle selfish.”
“Oh, you don’t understand her at all. She has an artistic temperament, and she is quite right in wishing to be alone. Now, Ed., when she does come again I want you to keep anyone else from going up there. Don’t forget it, as you do most of the things I tell you. Say to anybody who wants to go up that the canoes are out of repair.”
“Oh, I can’t say that, you know. Anything this side of a crime I am willing to commit; but to perjure myself, no, not for Venice. Can you think of any other method that will combine duplicity with a clear conscience? I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I will have the canoe drawn up, and gently, but firmly, slit it with my knife. One of the men can mend it in ten minutes. Then I can look even the official from Quebec in the face, and tell him truly that the canoe will not hold water. I suppose as long as my story will hold water you and Miss Sommerton will not mind?”
“If the canoe is ready for her when she comes, I shall be satisfied. Please to remember I am going to spend a week or two in Boston next winter.”
“Oh ho, that’s it, is it? Then it was not pure philanthropy—”
“Pure nonsense, Ed. I want the canoe to be ready, that’s all.”
When Mrs. Mason received the letter from Miss Sommerton, stating the time the young woman intended to pay her visit to the Shawenegan, she gave the letter to her husband, and reminded him of the necessity of keeping the canoe for that particular date. As the particular date was some weeks off, and as Ed. Mason was a man who never crossed a stream until he came to it, he said, “All right,” put the letter in his inside pocket, and the next time he thought of it was on the fine autumn afternoon—Monday afternoon—when he saw Mrs. Mason drive up to the door of his lumber-woods residence with Miss Eva Sommerton in the buggy beside her. The young lady wondered, as Mr. Mason helped her out, if that genial gentleman, whom she regarded as the most fortunate of men, had in reality some secret, gnawing sorrow the world knew not of.
“Why, Ed., you look ill,” exclaimed Mrs. Mason; “is there anything the matter?”
“Oh, it is nothing—at least, not of much consequence. A little business worry, that’s all.”
“Has there been any trouble?”
“Oh no—at the least, not yet.”
“Trouble about the men, is it?”
“No, not about the men,” said the unfortunate gentleman, with a somewhat unnecessary emphasis on the last word.
“Oh, Mr. Mason, I am afraid I have come at a wrong time. If so, don’t hesitate to tell me. If I can do anything to help you, I hope I may be allowed.”
“You have come just at the right time,” said the lumberman, “and you are very welcome, I assure you. If I find I need help, as perhaps I may, you will be reminded of your promise.”
To put off as long as possible the evil time of meeting his wife, Mason went with the man to see the horse put away, and he lingered an unnecessarily long time in ascertaining that everything was right in the stable. The man was astonished to find his master so particular that afternoon. A crisis may be postponed, but it can rarely be avoided altogether, and knowing he had to face the inevitable sooner or later, the unhappy man, with a sigh, betook himself to the house, where he found his wife impatiently waiting for him. She closed the door and confronted him.
“Now, Ed., what’s the matter?”
“Where’s Miss Sommerton?” was the somewhat irrelevant reply.
“She has gone to her room. Ed., don’t keep me in suspense. What is wrong?”
“You remember John Trenton, who was here in the summer?”
“I remember hearing you speak of him. I didn’t meet him, you know.”
“Oh, that’s so. Neither you did. You see, he’s an awful good fellow, Trenton is—that is, for an Englishman.”
“Well, what has Trenton to do with the trouble?”
“Everything, my dear—everything.”
“I see how it is. Trenton visited the Shawenegan?”
“He did.”
“And he wants to go there again?”
“He does.”
“And you have gone and promised him the canoe for to-morrow?”
“The intuition of woman, my dear, is the most wonderful thing on earth.”
“It is not half so wonderful as the negligence of man—I won’t say the stupidity.”
“Thank you, Jennie, for not saying it, but I really think I would feel better if you did.”
“Now, what are you going to do about it?”
“Well, my dear, strange as it may appear, that very question has been racking my brain for the last ten minutes. Now, what would you do in my position?”
“Oh, I couldn’t be in your position.”
“No, that’s so, Jennie. Excuse me for suggesting the possibility. I really think this trouble has affected my mind a little. But if you had a husband—if a sensible woman like you could have a husband who got himself into such a position—what would you advise him to do?”
“Now, Ed., don’t joke. It’s too serious.”
“My dear, no one on earth can have such a realisation of its seriousness as I have at this moment. I feel as Mark Twain did with that novel he never finished. I have brought things to a point where I can’t go any further. The game seems blocked. I wonder if Miss Sommerton would accept ten thousand feet of lumber f.o.b. and call it square.”
“Really, Ed., if you can’t talk sensibly, I have nothing further to say.”
“Well, as I said, the strain is getting too much for me. Now, don’t go away, Jennie. Here is what I am thinking of doing. I’ll speak to Trenton. He won’t mind Miss Sommerton’s going in the canoe with him. In fact, I should think he would rather like it.”
“Dear me, Ed., is that all the progress you’ve made? I am not troubling myself about Mr. Trenton. The difficulty will be with Eva. Do you think for a moment she will go if she imagined herself under obligations to a stranger for the canoe? Can’t