The Pines of Lorey

Summary

Fog-throttled and fate-scarred, The Pines of Lorey unspools like a fever dream caught between rosary beads and salt-stung deck planks: Patrick Boyd, prodigal son excommunicated from family and faith, drags the malarial haze of equatorial missions back to the St. Lawrence littoral; Elinor Marshall, novitiate on the cusp of eternal vows, boards the Maid of the North as if stepping onto the blade of her own virgin sacrifice. A chance introduction—Mr. Townsend’s polite cough of recognition—sets these two celestial misfits on collision course with a private island whose conifers whisper in Gallic tongues. The steamer’s horn still quivers in the low cloud when the vessel vanishes beneath black water, erasing every witness to their arrival and stranding the travelers inside a gothic diorama: manoir stocked for eternity, chair-back portrait of a sloe-eyed comtesse, dog that bays at the moon like a requiem soloist, twin graves—one weather-worn, one obscene in its freshness—plus a seated marquis whose heart has quit but whose eyes still glitter with aristocratic disdain. While Patrick’s temperature climbs toward hallucination, Elinor trades her habit of detachment for the rough homespun of desire, each sponging of his sweat-drenched brow a secular absolution. Cartography scrawled on butcher’s parchment promises deliverance; instead it delivers tragedy—Elinor’s plunge from a makeshift raft, Patrick’s vanishing beneath bottle-green combers, the princess-errant arriving from Dieppe just in time to catch the novice’s faltering soul mid-fall. Resurrection arrives in the guise of Breton fishermen who snare the half-drowned prodigal in their nets; reconciliation, in the Boyd ancestral manse where paternal portraits no longer glower but beam—yet every embrace is shadowed by salt still drying on Patrick’s cuffs and by the knowledge that the Maid will never again whistle its way toward Montreal.

Synopsis

The coastwise steamer "Maid of the North" was about to leave for Montreal when Mr. Townsend, recognizing Patrick Boyd among the passengers, presented him to Elinor Marshall. They were both bound for Patrick's home, where Elinor was to pay a short visit to her school girl friend before proceeding to Montreal to become a nun. Her reception of Patrick was cool as she remembered the cloud under which he left home several years earlier. Patrick, it seemed, had refused to enter the church in accordance with his father's plan, and in the resulting quarrel, Mr. Boyd succumbed to a sudden stroke of heart failure. As the result of his older brother's accusations, Patrick left his home, an outcast, and was now returning after a severe attack of fever in Africa. In due time they were landed from the steamer, but owing to the dense fog the young couple found themselves in an entirely strange place. Nothing was left but to hunt for some habitation. That very night, the "Maid of the North" went down with all on board. Their search was soon rewarded but the house turned out to be one of mystery. It was fully provisioned and furnished, but, with the exception of a dog, no sign of life could be found. The mystery was added to when they entered the dining room and noticed the portrait of a beautiful woman affixed to the back of one of the chairs. Further search in the garden brought them to a grave, while beside it was another one, freshly dug, and finally they came upon an old gentleman sitting in the garden, but on addressing him they found, to their horror, that he was dead. Completely mystified, they buried the mysterious owner in the freshly dug grave, and set about finding some escape from their predicament. In the midst of this effort Patrick's fever returned, and the whole burden was thrown upon Elinor, and little by little she became cognizant of a new sympathy for her fellow exile, which ripened during his convalescence into mutual love. A rude chart, found in a desk, spurred them on to greater effort, but, in building a raft, Elinor fell into the water and though Patrick quickly sprang after her and brought her to shore, his strength was unequal to the tide, and he was quickly carried out to sea. In the meantime, the daughter of the mysterious owner (who was, in reality, a banished French nobleman) waited anxiously in France for news of her father. Finally she decided to visit the island, and her arrival there came just at the very moment to save Elinor from madness, through her loneliness. Elinor's story was soon told and the Princess cleared the mystery by telling of her parents' banishment. They were about to leave the island when Patrick, who had been rescued by fishermen, appeared on the scene, and all repaired to the Boyd home, where happiness over Patrick's and Elinor's escape from disaster quickly brought about a reconciliation.