Was it the writing on the flyleaf that had stirred some forgotten
memory? It had seemed to him familiar, somehow--yet not like the
handwriting in Herold's business letters to him. Yet it was Herold's
writing--"Jim, from Daddy"--that was the inscription. And that
inscription had riveted his attention from the first moment he saw it.
Who was Herold? Who was this man whose undoubtable breeding and personal
cultivation had stamped his children with the same unmistakable
distinction?
Somehow or other there had been a great fall in the world for him--a
terrible tumble from higher estate to land him here in this desolation
of swamp-bound silence--here where only the dark pines broke the vast
sky line, where the only sound was the far rumor of the sea. Sick,
probably with coast fever, poor, dependent, no doubt, on the salary
Marche paid him, isolated from all in the world that made the world
endurable to intelligence, responsible for two growing children--one
already a woman--what must be the thoughts of such a man on a night like
this, for instance?
"I want to see that man," he kept repeating to himself. "I want to see
him; and I'm going to."
Restless, but now always listening for the sound of a light tread which
he had come to know so well--alas!--he began to walk to and fro, with
keen glances toward the illuminated kitchen window every time he passed
it. Sometimes his mind was chaotic; sometimes clear. The emotions which
had awakened in him within the week were complex enough to stagger a
more intelligent man. And Marche was not a fool; he was the typical
product of his environment--the result of school and college, and a New
York business life carried on in keenest competition with men as
remorseless in business as the social code permitted. Also, he went to
church on Sundays, read a Republican newspaper, and belonged to several
unexceptionable clubs.
That was the kind of a man he had been only a week ago--a good fellow in
the usual sense among men, acceptable to women, kind hearted, not too
cynical, and every idea in his head modeled upon the opinions he heard
expressed in that limited area wherein he had been born and bred.
That was the kind of a man he had been a week ago. What was he
now--to-night--here in this waste corner of the world with the light
from a kitchen window blazing on him as though it were the flashing
splendor streaming through the barred portals of paradise? Was it
possible that he, John Benton Marche, could be actually in love--in love
with the daughter of his own game warden--with a girl who served him at
supper in apron and gingham, who served him further in hip boots and
ragged jacket--this modern Rosalind of the marshes, as fresh and
innocent, as modest and ardent, as she of the Arden glades?