The Place Beyond the Winds | Page 3

Long Jean returned.
And in her heart of hearts Mary McAdam knew this to be true. The time would come to her, as it had to all Kenmore mothers, when she would have to acknowledge that by the power of the "lure" were her boys to be tested.
But Priscilla at Lonely Farm showed a hardened disregard of her state. She persisted and grew sturdy and lovely in defiance of tradition and conditions. She was as keen-witted and original as she was independent and charming. Still Theodora took long before she capitulated, and Nathaniel never succumbed. Indeed, as years passed he grew to fear and dislike his young daughter. The little creature, in some subtle way, seemed to have "found him out"; she became, though he would not admit it, a materialized conscience to him. She made him doubt himself; she laughed at him, elfishly and without excuse or explanation.
Once they two, sitting alone before the hearth--Nathaniel in his great chair, Priscilla in her small one--faced each other fearsomely for a time; then the child gave the gurgling laugh of inner understanding that maddened the father.
"What you laughing at?" he muttered, taking the pipe from his mouth.
"You!" Priscilla was only seven then, but large and strong.
"Me? How dare you!"
"You are so funny. If I screw my eyes tight I see two of you."
Then Nathaniel struck her. Not brutally, not maliciously; he wanted desperately to set himself right by--old-time and honoured methods--force of authority!
Priscilla sprang from her chair, all the laughter and joyousness gone from her face. She went close to her father, and leaning toward him as though to confide the warning to him more directly, said slowly:
"Don't you do that or Cilla will hate you!"
It was as if she meant to impress upon him that past a certain limit he could not go.
Nathaniel rose in mighty wrath at this, and, white-faced and outraged, darted toward the rebel, but she escaped him and put the width of the room and the square deal table between them. Then began the chase that suddenly sank into a degrading and undignified proceeding. Around and around the two went, and presently the child began to laugh again as the element of sport entered in.
So Theodora came upon them, and her deeper understanding of her husband's face frightened and spurred her to action. In that moment, while she feared, she loved, as she had never loved before, her small daughter. If the child was a conscience to her stern father, she was a materialization of all the suppressed defiance of the mother, and, ignoring consequences, she ran to Priscilla, gathered her in her arms, and over the little, hot, panting body, confronted the blazing eyes of her husband.
And Nathaniel had done--nothing; said nothing! In a moment the fury, outwardly, subsided, but deep in all three hearts new emotions were born never to die.
After that there was a triangle truce. The years slipped by. Theodora taught her little daughter to read by a novel method which served the double purpose of quickening the keen intellect and arousing a housewifely skill.
The alphabet was learned from the labels on the cans of vegetables and fruits on Theodora's shelves. There was one line of goods made by a firm, according to its own telling, high in the favour of "their Majesties So and So," that was rich in vowels and consonants. When Priscilla found that by taking innocent looking little letters and stringing them together like beads she could make words, she was wild with delight, and when she discovered that she could further take the magic words and by setting them forth in orderly fashion express her own thoughts or know another's thoughts, she was happy beyond description.
"Father," she panted at that point, her hands clasped before her, her dark, blue-eyed face flushing and paling, "will you let me go to Master Farwell to study with the boys?"
Nathaniel eyed her from the top step of the porch; "with the boys" had been fatal to the child's request.
"No," he said firmly, the old light of antagonism glinting suddenly under his brow, "girls don't need learning past what their mothers can give them."
"I--do! I'm willing to suffer and die, but I do want to know things." She was an intense atom, and from the first thought true and straight.
A sharp memory was in her mind and it lent fervour to her words. It related to the episode of the small, fat mustard jar which always graced the middle of the dining table. They had once told her that the contents of the jar "were not for little girls."
They had been mistaken. She had investigated, suffered, and learned! Well, she was ready to suffer--but learn she must!
Nathaniel shook his head and set forth his scheme of life for her, briefly and clearly.
"You'll have