# "Timber"/Chapter 13

CHAPTER XIII
Windigo Lodge is a huge, rambling building of logs, high on a bluff overlooking the south branch of the Au Sable. Great chimneys of boulders flank the structure, a wide verandah runs about three sides, screened in and furnished in wicker, with those refinements which are not native to the plains country: luxurious swinging seats, lounges, winged rockers, tea wagons and flower baskets.
Inside is a great main hall. A fireplace fills one end, bright rugs are on the floor, a piano with its floor lamp is in one corner; there are shelves of books and wide window-seats; electric lights are about the walls and glow from beneath lampshades on tables, and from the center of the beamed ceiling hangs the massive root of a cedar tree, polished expertly and each of the two-score root prongs holds its small frosted light bulb.
A girl in riding breeches played the piano and three couples danced with abandon to the primitive measure. At the far end of the room a table of bridge occupied four others. Mrs. Mason, Dick's mother, read in a corner, unmindful of sounds or movement. Only one of the gay party was alone: Marcia Murray sat in a rocker on the verandah, tapping the concrete floor nervously with a small pump, staring with sullen eyes toward the river, where a firefly winked through the spruces.
It had been a difficult day for her, the culmination of weeks which had been beset with increasing perplexities. Soon after her return to Detroit from Florida she had dropped an occasional word to be carried by curious minds to meet other words that John Taylor had dropped, ​and it was not long before her best girl friends came to her with those hopeful kisses and smiles which are designed to provoke confidence.
But Marcia had made no actual response to their advances, because those perplexing factors had commenced to present themselves to her in John's letters before the gossips had gotten very far into her affairs, but she let it be known that there might be something to say—before very long. She knew that they were watching her at this house party as they had never had the opportunity of watching her before; they listened to her every word, remembered her every action, for the snaring of the heir to the Taylor millions was a matter of no small importance. To heighten this curiosity John had not appeared, though he was only forty miles away. At heart Marcia was worried and petulant and suspicious from the first day of her arrival, but she sparred alertly before the others, letting them know little, for her pride was as great—as some of her other qualities.
But her hope that he would spend this first Sunday with her had been too high for hiding. She had let them become aware that she expected him and when he did not come she knew that they detected her dismay, try as she did to cover it. After dinner she went to her room, begging a headache, and was aware that lifted eyebrows and a smirk or so and perhaps a cautious I-thought-as-much followed her. She opened a bag, took out John's letters and read them slowly, carefully, weighing words, reading again and again his references to the Foraker pine and to the girl who owned it. He was very enthusiastic over the forest—but of Helen he said little—much too little.
​Marcia's cheeks became flushed and that cool calculation which was characteristic of her eyes gave way to temper. She was not nice to behold as she sat on the floor, reading those letters—after that she lay down, stretching her slim legs and throwing her arms wide, staring at the ceiling, thinking, thinking. She slept a few moments and moaned once or twice lightly. When she awakened, she opened her door and listened; it was quiet below; most of the others were gone. She went down and sat at a desk and wrote a lengthy letter, a bright, light charming letter, completed with much pains and deliberation and some rewriting.
The letter was for Philip Rowe.
She kept her front of gaiety very well thereafter until darkness when the others found agreeable diversion, but she did not care for cards or dancing and reading was out of the question, so she slipped outside and sat alone, watching the night, brooding, planning, with temper in her eyes again.
It was there Fan Huston found her. Fan was thirty, married at twenty-two, childless, given to tightly drawn hair nets, much rice powder, stiff gowns and personal difficulties. She went in for trouble as some women go in for surgery and some men for the collecting of stamps or obsolete firearms. She came to the door, saw Marcia, looked cautiously about to see that her husband was occupied with a girl in a yellow sweater and came swiftly across the verandah, drawing a chair to Marcia's.
The girl looked up with a casual word, but the turn of her head exposed her worried face to the revealing shaft of light. Fan said nothing for a moment, but took Marcia's hand in hers and squeezed it significantly. The ​music stopped, voices arose; then the piano thumped again and Fan Huston sighed as in relief and leaned forward.
"I understand, Marcia dear," she said lowly. The girl bit her lip and turned her face away and made as if to withdraw her hand, but Fan leaned nearer. "Now don't think I'm butting in! I understand, and there isn't a bit of use thinking that you can keep me from helping you! It's a shame, and I'm here to say so! If John Taylor had come over today I was prepared to take the first chance and give him a generous piece of my mind—and make him like it."
Her brittle voice vibrated indignation and that quality met a need in Marcia's heart. Taylor's growing indifference had given her the feel of a jilted woman; she had been helplessly furious at the serene interest these other women took in her misfortune. But she had not yet reached the point of storming against the shabby treatment John had given her, and that is the specific which brings relief to the feminine heart when everything else has failed.
"You know that you can trust me, dear," Fan was saying. "You've been very sweet through it all, but you couldn't keep it from Fanny! I know; I've been through it and I've helped others through it and I can't help telling you that you're going too far, taking too much from John! It's a downright shame that he should treat a girl like you this way, but you're a little goose to put up with it! You have the right of every woman to protect her pride, and if you don't exercise that right, he may—walk on you, dear!"
Marcia's hand, which had lain rather tentatively in ​Fan's, moved and its fingers twined with the older woman's. Fan lowered her voice and went on. Later they walked together, arm in arm, up and down the terrace before the house and Marcia cried a bit and steadied and grew indignant.
Before they went in they stood looking at the play of northern lights.
"You would do that?" Marcia asked in the pause.
"Positively I would! I wouldn't let a day go by. If there should be another girl—"
"Oh, there isn't! I'm sure he isn't interested in Miss Foraker!" There were limits to which Marcia could go even in that sympathetic company and her pride prompted that lie. "It's—it's just that he's so wrapped up in his business."
"Well, in either case," Fan was not quite convinced, it seemed, "the best way to bring him to time is to go there, have it out."
Marcia watched the bank of light on the horizon throw out a fresh fringe of pale green.
"Miss Foraker has asked me to come," she lied again. "I might—Yes, I think you're right. I could drive over—tomorrow—"
Fan patted her hands.
"That's the girl! Don't be too abrupt with him, but just have everything clearly understood. Of course, I know your feeling for John, but I can't help remarking, as Dr. Mason remarked to Dick yesterday when the big trout went through his tackle, 'there are several big ones left in the stream yet'—
"And if I were you, Marcia dear, I'd wear that blue sport suit—"