CHAPTER XVI
THE STORM
We embarked in good season that morning and followed the line of the peninsula in its slant to the southwest. It was a pleasant shore, limestone-scarped and tree-bannered, and we paddled so near to it that the squirrels scolded at us, and a daisy-spotted fawn crashed through the young cedars and stared at us with shy eyes. The birds were singing and calling like maids in a hayfield, and the woman sat with her back straight and her eyes laughing, and imitated each new note as the breeze brought it to her. She did it fairly well, but Singing Arrow could have done it better. In my heart I commended the Indian for sitting silent, for I knew that the vanity of her sex and the inherent boastfulness of her savage blood must both be whispering to her that this was the place to show her superiority. But she resisted.
I had taken her in the canoe with the woman and myself, and putting Pierre in her canoe had bidden him follow. I was well satisfied to keep them apart for a time. Yet no sister of the Ursulines could have been more exemplary with her glances than this Indian was just then. She sat like a figure of destiny and watched the woman. Whether she admired or not I should not know till I saw whether she intended to imitate.
Cadillac's letter lay heavy in my pocket that day and disinclined me to speech. Should I show it to the woman and ask her what she would like to do? And having asked her, should I let her preference warp my final decision? I was not sure. The manner of my life had confirmed me in my natural inclination to decide things for myself and take no counsel. And now all my desires called out to me to destroy this letter and say nothing. Why should I wish to meet Lord Starling? And by keeping out of the way I should be playing into Cadillac's hands and therefore furthering my own ends. Yet the woman! After all, Starling was her cousin. Had she not the right to choose for herself whether she should see him? My training and instinct said no to this last question. Women were made to be cared for, at whatever cost, but not to be taken into confidence as to ways and means. Still I had entered into a bond with this woman. I breathed hard. I had always been restive under any bond, though by nature plodding enough when it was removed. I was aware that I was but sullen company while I rolled this matter in my mind.
The day was warm, and by afternoon soaring pinions of cloud pushed up from the western horizon. I watched their white edges curl and blacken, and when they began to be laced with red lightning I said to the woman that we should have to land.
"Though I hoped to make the Sturgeon Cove," I added idly.
The breeze was rising, drawing sharp criss-cross furrows on the water, and I noticed how it ruffled the woman's hair; her hair was like her eyes, a warm red-brown.
"What is Sturgeon Cove?" she asked. "Is it a bay,—a larger one than we have passed?"
I took a rough map from my wallet and handed it to her. "Much larger, you see," I said. "It almost bisects the peninsula. Only the Sturgeon portage, about a mile long, separates it from the lake of the Illinois. We must be near it now."
She gave but a look at the map, then glanced at the cloud-streaked west and at the shore.
"Try to make it. Try to reach Sturgeon Cove," she urged.
I was thinking of something else, so I answered her only by a shake of the head. Perhaps that angered her. At all events she smote her palms together with a short, soft little clap, such as I use when I call my dog.
"I do not wish to land here," she said, throwing back her head at me quite as she had done when I thought her a boy. "I wish to go on. Why not?"
I motioned Pierre to the shore. "Because you would get wet," I answered stoically.
She flushed as redly as if I had hurt her. "And if I did?" she cried. "Better discomfort than this constant humiliation. Monsieur, I refuse to be made a burden of in this fashion. It is not fair. You made your plans to reach a certain point, and you would go on, rain or otherwise, if it were not for me. For me, for me, for me! I am sick of the sound of the words in my own brain. I am sick of the excuse. Each added sacrifice you make for me weighs me like lead. It binds me. I cannot endure the obligation. Believe me, monsieur."
I had no choice but to believe her. Yet she stopped with a gasp of the breath, as if she had said too much, or perhaps too little,—as if she were dissatisfied. Well, I had but scant desire to reply. I should have liked to walk away, and rebelled in my heart at our forced nearness in the canoe. My feeling was not new. When I had thought her a man she had antagonized me in spite of my interest; as a maid she had troubled me, and now as my wife I found that she had already power to wound. Still, with all my inner heat, I could look as it were in a mirror and understand her unhappiness and vexation. She was trying to act towards me with a man's fairness and detachment, but each move that I made showed that I considered her solely as a woman and therefore an encumbrance. Let her act with whatever bravery and wisdom she might, her sex still enmeshed us like a silken trap. We could not escape it. And it was a fetter. Mask it as courteously as I would, the fact remained that it was undoubtedly a fetter. I felt a certain compassion for her and her forced dependence, and said to myself that I would hide my own soreness. But her words had bitten, and I am not a patient man.
I turned my canoe inland, and looked to it that the others did the same. Then I leaned toward her.
"No, we will land here," I said. "Madame, I am frequently forced to look behind your words, which are sharp, and search for your meaning, which is admirable. You resent being an encumbrance. May I suggest that you will be less one if you follow my plans without opposition? I mean no discourtesy, madame, when I say that no successful expedition can have two heads in control."
With all her great self-discipline in some directions, she had none in others, and I braced myself for her retort. But none came. Instead she looked at me almost wistfully.
"I lose my temper when I wish I did not," she said. "But I should like to help you, monsieur."
I laid down my paddle. "Help is a curious quantity," I replied. "Especially here in the wilderness where what we say counts for so little and what we are for so much. I think,—it comes to me now,—madame, you have given me strength more than once when you did not suspect it. So you need not try to help me consciously. But now I need your counsel. Will you read this?" and I took Cadillac's letter from my pocket and handed it to her.
She examined the seal with amazement as I had done, then looked at
Singing Arrow. "The Indian brought this? It must be very important.
Ought I—— Is it right for me to see it, monsieur?"
I laughed. I looked off at the piling thundercaps and the ruffling water, and the exhilaration of the coming storm whipped through me. There was a pleasant tang to life.
"Read it, yes," I insisted. "You are Madame de Montlivet. No one can have a better right. Read it after we land."
It took some moments to make a landing, for the waves were already high and the shore rough. In spite of ourselves we tore the canoes on hidden rocks. We unloaded the cargo and had things snug and tidy by the time the first great drops plumped down upon us. We worked like ants, and I did not look at the woman. I knew that she was reading the letter, and I had no wish to spy.
But when I went to her there was no letter in sight. I did not stop to talk, but I wrapped her in the cloak that Onanguissé had given her, and wound her still further with blankets. "You will be cool enough in a few minutes," I assured her, and I made a nest for her in a thicket of young pines. She obeyed me dumbly, but with a certain gentleness, a sort of submission. As she gazed up at me with her brown face and inscrutable eyes, my hands were not quite steady. Heretofore I had felt her power; now I felt only her inexperience, her dependence. Child, woman, sphinx! What should I do with her? I turned away. The rain was upon us in earnest.
I looked for my crew. The men were curled under trees, but Singing Arrow had used more craft. She had hidden herself under her light canoe,—which she had first secured with pegs that it might not blow away,—and she lay as compact and comfortable as a tree-housed grub. I lifted the corner of the canoe and peered at her, whereat she giggled happily, serene in the thought that I was wet while she was dry. She was as restful to the brain as a frolicking puppy, and I shook my head at her to hear her giggle again. I was about to wonder whether she had ever known awe of anything, but just then the thunder, which had been merely growling, barked out like a howitzer above us, and she covered her head and screamed like any of her sex.
The thunder sent me back to the woman. I crept, wet as I was, into her pine-needled hollow, and started to ask if she were afraid. But the question died at sight of her. She was propped on her elbows, and had parted the low boughs in front of her that she might look out at the storm. She turned at sound of me, and the blood was in her cheeks as I felt it in mine.
"Come," she cried with her motion.
I went and lay close beside her, peering, as she did, through the trees. The world was all wind and red light and churning water. I could feel her quick breathing.
"I can hear the spirit of the wilderness crying," she said to me. The lightning played over her face and eyes, and they shone like flame.
I laid a hand on her wet blankets. "Has the rain soaked through?"
But she did not listen. The exultation in her look I have seen sometimes in the face of a young priest; I have also seen it in a savage dancer. It is all one. It is the leaping response of the soul to the call of a great freedom. Storm was summoning storm. I found the woman's hand, and lay with it in mine.
She remembered me again after a time. "Does it call to you?" she cried.
I could feel the blood racing in her palm. "As it does to you," I answered, and I lay still, and let the storm riot in me, and around me, with her hand held close.
We could not speak for some time. The thunder was constant, and the play of the lightning was like the dazzle of a fencer's sword. Mingled with the thunder came the slap of frothing water and the whine of bending trees. The wind was ice to the cheeks.
At the first lull the woman turned to me. "If you had followed my wishes we should have been drowned."
I nodded. I had no wish to speak. The storm in me was not lessening.
I kept the woman's hand and was swept on by the tempest.
And the woman, too, lay silent. I saw her look at me once, and look away. And then, because I could think more coherently, it came to me that she had changed. The change had come since she had read Cadillac's letter. She had said nothing, but she was different. What did it mean? Was she natural at last because she thought succor was near? I was not ready to know. The moments that I had now were mine. Ten minutes later they might, if she decreed, belong to Benjamin Starling.
The storm passed as swiftly as the shifting of a tableau. The rain stopped, not lingeringly, but as if a key had been turned, and cracks came in the clouds like clefts in black ice and showed the blue beyond. In five minutes the sun was shining. We all crept out from under trees and canoes, and shook ourselves like drenched fowls.
It was magic the way the world changed. The wind died, and the sun shone low and yellow, and a robin began to sing. The water was still white and fretting, and the sand was strewn with torn leaves, but otherwise there was peace. I told Pierre to take one of the men and find dry fuel for a fire, and Labarthe to take the other and attend to gumming the canoes. Then I went to the woman, who had slipped dry and red-cheeked from her wrappings, and was walking in the sun.
"Well, Madame Montlivet," I said, with a bow, "what shall we do about
Monsieur Cadillac's letter?"
There was laughter in my voice, and it confused her. "What shall we do?" she echoed doubtfully. "Did you mean to say 'we'?"
I bowed again. "'We' assuredly. It must be a joint decision. Come, it is for you to declare your mind. Do we seek Lord Starling, do we hide from him, or do we stand still and let Fate throw the dice for us? What do you wish, madame?"
She looked at me with a little puzzled withdrawal. "Why do you laugh?" she asked.
I was loath to vex her. But, indeed, I could not check the tide of joyous excitement that was surging through me. "I do not know quite why I laugh," I answered truly. "Perhaps it is because the sun is shining, and because life looks so fair and rich and full of possibilities. But, madame, we have been tragic too long; it irks us both. Tell me, now. It rests with you. Shall we paddle northwest and search for your cousin, Lord Starling?"
She thought a moment. "You wish it?"
"No, madame."
She turned away. "Then why ask me? You said there could not be two heads in this command."
I sobered. "Now that was a cat's scratch," I rebuked. "You have never done that before."
The gentleness of her look made me ashamed. "You are suspicious of me," she said a little sadly. "That was not a scratch, monsieur. I said what I mean; I prefer to leave the decision in your hands."
"But your wish?"
"It is confused, monsieur."
"But your sense of justice in the matter?"
She was silent a moment, and walked up and down. "I have been trying to see the right ever since I read the letter," she said quietly. "This is the best answer I can make. I think that we had better avoid meeting Lord Starling, monsieur."
I stepped to her side and matched my pace to hers. The robin had been joined by his mate, and they were singing. "Why, madame?" I asked her, and when she was still silent I persisted. "Why, madame?"
She lifted grave eyes to me. "I think it will be wise to keep Lord Starling in the wilderness as long as possible," she answered. "If he does not find me it may be that he will keep on searching. He may not,—but again he may. On the other hand, if he finds me he will assuredly go home."
"And if he does go home? I assure you the wilderness is no sweeter in my eyes while he is here."
She handed me Cadillac's letter. "I think that you know what I mean," She said. "Your commandant is a wise man. Monsieur, I do not understand Lord Starling's purpose in this journey, but I am afraid that Monsieur de la Mothe-Cadillac is right. My cousin may be treating secretly with the Indians. He is a capable man, and not easy to read. I do not know why he should be here."
I looked down at her. "But I know. He is here to find you. Have you forgotten what I said to you yesterday morning? He will not rest till he has found you. Ought we to save him anxiety? I can understand that he has suffered."
But she shook her head, and her eyes as she looked up at me showed the deep sadness that always seemed, while it lasted, to be too rooted ever to be erased.
"You are an idealist, monsieur. You believe in man's constancy as I do not. I cannot believe that I am the moving cause of Lord Starling's journey. He would undoubtedly like to find me, for I am of his house and of use to him, but he has other purposes. Of that I am sure."
I grew cruel because I was glad; there is nothing so ruthless as happiness. "And you would thwart his purposes, madame?" I cried.
She looked at me coldly. "I will not be used as a tool against you," she said.
"And that is all?"
"It is enough. I have said this to you many times. Why do you make me say it again? I have undertaken to do something, and I will carry it through. I will not lend myself to any plot against your interests. I will not. So long as we are together, I will play the game fair."
"And when we are no longer together?"
She pushed out her hands. "I do not know. I am glad that you asked me that. Monsieur, if any chance should free us from each other, if we should reach Montreal in safety, why, then, I do not know. I come of an ambitious race. It may be that I shall use the information that I have. I love my country as you do yours, and when a woman has had some beliefs taken from her there is little remaining her but ambition. So let me know as little as possible of your plans, for I may use my knowledge. I give you warning, monsieur."
The happiness in me would not die, and so, perhaps, I smiled. She looked at me keenly.
"You think that I am vaunting idly," she said. "Perhaps I am. I do not know what I shall do. But, monsieur, for your own sake do not underestimate my capacity for doing you harm. I mean that as a gauge."
She stood against the sunset, and her delicate height and proud head showed like a statue's. I stooped and lifted an imaginary glove from the sand.
"I take your gauge," I said. "But I find it a small and delicate gauntlet for so warlike a purpose. May I wear it next my heart, madame?"
She looked at me proudly. "I am serious," she said.
"And I take you seriously," I rejoined. I stepped to her and let my hand touch hers. "You wrong me. I find that I take you very seriously indeed. Believe me. But I have always lived in the present. Come, we have been grave long enough. Let us be children and take the passing moment. Madame, Montreal is very far away."