CHAPTER XVIII
IN WHICH I USE OPPORTUNITY
I squatted beside many camp fires in the next week. I sat in the flattened cones of the Chippewas' tepees and smoked innumerable pipes of rank tobacco with the old men. I traded some, but talked more, and at the end of the week I started home. I waited for a pleasant day and a westerly wind, for the small canoe was perilously laden with skins. There was scarcely room for Labarthe and myself to crowd down on our knees and use our paddles.
We slipped into Sturgeon Cove late in the afternoon, and swept with the wind up the stretches of the bay to the camping ground. Summer was at flood tide, and the air was pungent and the leaves shining. The sunset shone through tattered ends of cloud, so that the west was hung with crimson banners. It was my first homecoming.
Before we reached the camp I saw the woman. She had strayed down the shore to the west,—too far for safety, I thought,—and was standing alone on the sand, looking toward the sunset. Her head was back, and her arms flung out to the woods and the shining sky. I have sometimes found myself stretching my own arms in just that fashion when I have been alone and have felt something pressing within me that was too large for speech. I motioned Labarthe to ship his paddle that I might look. The western glow was full upon the woman, and her lips were parted. The open sleeves of her skin blouse fell away from her arms, which had grown gently rounded since I saw her first. I could not see her eyes, but she looked somewhere off into the untraveled west,—the west that was the portal of my enterprise. What was her thought? I must not let myself trap it unaware. I gave a long, low call; the call of the loon as he skirts the marshes in the twilight.
She turned instantly and saw us. I bent forward. The drabbled plume of my hat swept the water, and I heard Labarthe curse under his breath, and beg me remember that the canoe was laden. But just then I had no caution in me.
The woman's arms dropped. She had a moment of indecision, and she stood looking at me with the sunset in her face and eyes. Then she suddenly thrust out both hands towards me across the stretch of water. I could see her smooth-skinned brown fingers, and one wore my ring. She bade me welcome. I bent to my paddle, and would have crashed the canoe up to the shore.
But she forestalled me. She was already on her way back to the camp, and if she knew that I had started toward her she did not let me see. So I had, perforce, to follow. She walked with the free, gliding step of a woman whose foot had been trained on polished surfaces. I watched her, and let Labarthe paddle our way through the reeds.
We reached the camp, deafened by Pierre's bellow of greeting. The woman had kept pace with us, and stood waiting for us to disembark. She was breathing quickly and the blood was in her brown cheeks; her great eyes were frankly opened and shining. I pushed by the men and bent to kiss her hand.
"Madame, thank you for my welcome home."
She bowed, and I caught the perfume of a rose on her breast. "Monsieur, we are all rejoiced to see you safe." Her tone took, half-whimsically, the note of court and compliment. The fingers that I still held were berry stained. She showed them to me with a laugh and a light word, and so made excuse to draw them away. Her hair had grown long enough to blow into her eyes, and she smoothed a soft loose wave of it as she questioned me about my voyage.
I was new to the wonder of seeing her there, so answered her stupidly. For all my day-dreams of the week that I had been away I was not prepared for her. And indeed she had altered. The strain of fear and incessant watchfulness was removed, and with the lessening of that tension had come a pliancy of look and gesture, a richness of tone that found me unprepared. I made but a poor figure. It was as well that work clamored at me, and that I had to turn away and direct the men.
We ate our supper at the time of the last daylight, and the whippoorwills were calling and the water singing in the reeds. It was a silent meal, but I sat beside the woman, and when it was over I drew her with me to the shore. It was very still. Fireflies danced in the grasses, and the stars pricked out mistily through a gauze of cloud. I wrapped the woman in her fur coat, and bade her sit, while I stretched myself at her feet. Then I turned to her.
"Madame, have you questions for me that you did not wish the men to hear?"
She sat very quietly, but I knew that her hand, which was within touch of mine, grew suddenly rigid.
"Monsieur, you heard nothing of Lord Starling?"
I touched her hand lightly. "Nothing, madame. I have no news."
"Then matters stand just as they did a week ago?"
I hesitated. "As concerns Lord Starling, yes. As concerns ourselves—— Madame, I carry a lighter heart than I did. All this week I have feared that you were fretting at the loneliness and the rough surroundings. But I find you serene and the surface of life smooth. It is a gallant spirit that you bring to this situation. I thank you, madame."
She did not speak for a moment, so that I wondered if I had vexed her. I looked up straight into her great eyes that were full on me, and there was something disquietingly alight in her glance, a flicker of that lightning that had played between us on the day of the storm.
"Monsieur!" she cried, with a little sobbing laugh. "I beg you never to thank me—for anything. The stream of gratitude must always run from me to you. I have not been serene because of any will of mine. It has been instinctive. I can sometimes carry out a fixed purpose, but I do it stiffly, inflexibly, not as you do, with a laugh and a shrug, monsieur. No, no! My serenity has not been calculated. I have been—I have been almost happy. It is strange, but it is true."
I drew my hand away from her finger tips, for my own were shaking.
"Madame, what makes you happy?"
She looked down at me with frank seriousness, but her eyes still kept their sweet, strange brightness; she pressed her palms together as she always did when much in earnest.
"Monsieur, is it so strange after all? Think of the wonder of what I see about me! The great stars, the dawns, and the strange waters that go no one knows where. I have lived all my life in courts and have not felt trammeled by them, but now—— Monsieur, there is a freedom, yes, and a happiness stirring in me that I have not known. I wonder if you understand?"
I watched the starlight draw elfin lines across her face, and my heart suddenly cried through my tongue words that my brain would have forbidden.
"I understand this at least. Madame, you talk of happiness. I am finding happiness at this moment that I never felt at court,—no, nor in the wilderness till now."
She did not draw back nor protest, but she looked at me with wistful gravity.
"Monsieur—— Monsieur"——
"I am your servant, madame."
She halted. "This is a masque, a comedy," she stumbled. "This—this life in the greenwood. Does it not seem a fantasy?"
"You seem very real to me, madame."
"Monsieur, I tell you, it is a masque. Will you not help me play it as such?"
"You treat it as a masque in your own heart, madame?"
She turned her face into the shadow. "I eat, I sleep, I laugh with the birds, and I play with Singing Arrow. I do not look ahead." She rose. "Play with me. Play it is a dream, monsieur."
I rose and stepped beside her toward her cabin. "I am a man," I said, with a short laugh of my own. "I cannot spin words nor cheat myself. But I shall not distress you. Do not fear me, madame."
But her step lingered. "You leave us soon?"
"At dawn to-morrow."
"Monsieur! And you go"——
"To the Winnebagoes. I shall return in a week."
She clasped her hands behind her as if her white cloak bound her. "To the Winnebagoes,—to another tribe of Indians! Are you sure that they are friendly? I forget that there are Indians in the forest, since I see none here. Ah, you must sleep now if you are to rise so early. Good-night, and—thank you, monsieur. Good-night." I had hardly bowed to her in turn before her long light step had brought her to her door.
And then I went back to work. The furs had been sorted, labeled, and cached; the canoe had been dried, and its splints examined and new bales of merchandise had been made up for the trip on the morrow. But there remained much writing and figuring to be gone over. It seemed as if I had but closed my eyes when Labarthe touched me on the shoulder and told me it was dawn.
And out in the dawn I found the woman. She had seen to it that the whole camp was astir, and the fire was crackling and the kettle already puffing steam. The morning was austere and gray-veiled, so that the red blaze was like the cheer of home. We ate with laughter, and sleepy birds scolded in the thickets. The woman sparkled with dainty merriment that held my thanks at bay. It was only when she waved her adieus at the beach that she dropped her foils.
"I shall pray for fair winds, monsieur," she called.
I looked back at her across the widening water. "Madame, can you hear me? The wind I pray for will blow me back to you."
Metaphor aside, it was a favorable day and the breeze was with us. We pushed up a tarpaulin on our paddles for a square sail, and covered the distance to the west shore of La Baye in a few hours. Before night we were lifting the rush mats that hung before the reed-thatched lodges of the Winnebagoes.
And here for seven days I plied my trade. A man has many coats and all may fit him. The one that I wore in those days showed the bells and ribands of the harlequin, but there was chain armor underneath. I counted my results as satisfactory when I started home.
We did not reach the camp on this second homecoming till after the stars were out. That left me too few hours for a large labor, and I had but hurried greetings from the woman while all the camp looked on. The men were sleek from idleness, and I had need to goad them with word and eye. It was late before I could linger at the woman's cabin and beg a word. She sat with Singing Arrow, watching the soft night, and again her first question was of her cousin.
"You have heard nothing of Lord Starling?"
Was this fear of him or a covert wish to meet him? "Nothing, madame,"
I replied. "But I have been to the south far out of your cousin's way.
I go next to the Malhominis. I think I shall certainly hear tidings of
him there."
"You go to-morrow?"
"I must, madame. Madame, I have been anxious about you. Will you promise me not to stray alone from the camp?"
She left the cabin and came and stood beside me in the quiet and starshine. She looked off at the forest.
"Is there danger around us, monsieur?"
I followed her look back into the dark timber. We both hushed our breathing till we heard the moan of the water and the lament of some strange night bird. The woman was so small, and yet I left her in the wilderness without me!
"Keep close to the camp," I said hoarsely. "No, I know of no danger.
But keep close to the camp."
Her glance came back to me. "Ah, you do think there is danger! But, monsieur, of yourself—— If there is peril for me there must be more for you."
She looked at me fully, with no fear in her eyes, but with quick, intelligent concern. She stood beside me in the dusk, as wife should stand with husband, and feared for my safety and forgot her own. Yet I dared not touch her hand. I lifted my sword and slammed it in its scabbard.
"There is no danger," I said, with stupid brusqueness. "I am over-anxious. I bid you good-night, madame."
I went to the Malhominis with haste pushing me, for I hoped for news of Starling. I pressed forward, yet I recoiled. There would be cross-threads to untangle when I met my wife's cousin.
It was wonderful voyaging to the Malhominis. Their village was near the mouth of a river, and they were close bound with great rice swamps that gave them their name. Our low canoe burrowed through a tunnel of green as we nosed our way up to their camp. Birds fluttered in the tangle, and fish bubbled to the surface under our paddles. I did not wonder that I found the tribe as well fed as summer beavers. But I learned nothing from them. They were a good-natured people, as running over with talk as idle women, and they assured me that I was the first white man they had seen since the moon of worms. We talked of the Huron situation at Michillimackinac, but they said nothing of having seen a warrior of that tribe, so I made sure that Pemaou had not been with them. I swallowed relief and disappointment. They said that a small company of Sacs was encamped to the north, and that Father Nouvel was with them. So after a few days I went on.
A waft of fetid air on a hot day will bring the smell of that Sac camp to me even now. The Sacs were a migratory, brutish people, who snatched at life red-handed and growling, and as I squatted in their dirty hovels, I lost, like a dropped garment, all sense of the wonder and freedom of my wilderness life. Suddenly all the forest seemed squalid, and a longing for the soft ease and cleanliness of civilization came on me like a wave. But I hid the feeling, and lingered, though my welcome was but slight. Even my small cask of brandy failed to buy their smiles, and it was only when I talked of war that they listened. They were a useless people on the water, for they could not handle canoes, but land warfare was their meat. So I talked long.
I found Father Nouvel among them, his delicate old face shining white and serene amid their grime. I fell upon him eagerly, but he could tell me nothing. He had left the Pottawatamies the day after the wedding, and had heard no rumors of any Englishman. I did not take him into my confidence. He had outlived the time when the abstract terms "ambition" and "patriotism" had meaning to him. The story of my hopes would have tinkled in his ears like the blarings of a child's trumpet. But in one matter he questioned me.
"Your wife,—should you not have brought her with you, monsieur?"
I felt piqued. "But her comfort, Father Nouvel!"
He looked me over. "I think somehow that she would prefer your company to her own comfort," he said, and when I did not answer he looked troubled. When he bade me good-by, he spoke again.
"Your wife came strangely near my heart. You are giving her a hard life. You will be patient with her, monsieur?"
I bowed, for I did not wish to answer. Mine was a real marriage to Father Nouvel. I thought of the look in the priest's eyes as he made us man and wife, and of the voices of the Indian women as they chanted of life and marriage, and I shut my teeth on a sudden feeling of bitterness. A man may be counted rich yet know himself to be a pauper. I never saw Father Nouvel again. If he were living now I would go far to meet him.
It was a long day's travel back to Sturgeon Cove, and night had fallen before we wound our passage around the curves of the bay and saw the clear eye of the evening fire burning steadily on the shore. Our double trip had taken eleven days, and for me the time had lagged. I had carried an unreasoning weight of oppression, and the shout that I gave at sight of the black figures around the blaze was an outburst of relief.
My company flung themselves at the shore, and all talked at once.
"For three days we have watched," Singing Arrow scolded.
The woman stood near, and I went to her. "Have you watched for three days?" I asked, with my lips on her hand.
"Yes," she said, and then I felt ashamed, for her eyes looked worn and troubled.
"Forgive me, madame," I murmured, though I scarcely knew for what, and
I felt embarrassed and without words.
"I will stay here to-morrow," I said stupidly, and when she said that she was glad, it did not seem to me that she meant it. I saw her no more that night.
But with the fresh morning I forgot all chill. We lingered over a breakfast of broiled bass, and the woman showed me a canoe that Simon had made for her. Simon was the deft-fingered member of my crew, and he had fashioned a fairy craft. I saw that it would carry two, and I said to the woman that we would take it, and have a day of idleness together. I feared she might demur, but she did not. Indeed, she suddenly laughed out like a child without much reason, and there was that in the sound that satisfied me, until I swore at the men and their blundering to keep down my own joy.
We took materials for lunch and started before the dew was dry. The woman showed me her new skill with the paddle, and I praised her without care for my conscience. We went slowly and we talked much. Yet we talked only of the birds and the woods and the paddling. Never of ourselves.
At noon we landed in a pocket of an inlet on the south side of the cove toward its mouth. There was a wonderful meadow there with tiger lilies burning like blood and a giant sycamore leaning to the water. I cooked a venison steak on hot stones, and we had maize cakes and wild berries and water from a spring. We sat alone at meat as we had never done.
After lunch the woman sat under the sycamore and I lay at her feet. I looked up at her till her eyes dropped.
"Madame," I whispered, "madame, you were vexed with me last night."
She forced her glance to mine. "Monsieur, I had been terribly anxious for three days. When I saw you"——
A sun ray fell across her face, and I took my hat and held it between her and the light. "You did not finish," I said. "I will help you. When you saw that I was safe you were vexed that I had not come earlier and so saved you anxiety? Is that what you were about to say, madame?"
She turned to smile and shake her head at my seriousness. She fought down her rising color and held her head like a gallant boy.
"I was unreasonable," she said. "Please forget it. Did your trading prosper, monsieur?"
But I would not shift my eyes. "I shall try not to vex you again in that way. I did not think—except of my own anxiety. Let me tell you what I have been doing. I have been trading, yes, but I have also"——
"Careful, monsieur!"
"I wish you to know. Madame, I am succeeding in my intriguing among the tribes. I talk more than I trade. You would smile at my rhetoric and call me a mountebank, but I am succeeding. I tell the tribes that when more than one Englishman reaches here the whole race will follow and will overflow the hunting grounds as a torrent does the lowlands. I tell them the English will bring the Iroquois. I show them that the French are their only protection. They listen, for what I say is not new. It has been talked around their fires for a long time, but the tribes are not powerful enough to act alone, and they have lacked a leader who could unite them. I think that they will follow me if I call them to war, madame!"
She looked at me steadily. "War upon whom, monsieur?"
"War upon the Iroquois. Upon the English if they venture near."
"And you tell me this because"——
"Because I wish sincerity between us."
My hat lay at her feet, and she pressed its sorry plume between her fingers. "Monsieur, if you had heard news of Lord Starling during this last week you would have told me at once."
"I should have told you at once, madame. I am glad you introduced this matter. Does your mind still hold? Or do you now think that we should seek your cousin?"
Again she lowered her eyes, but I did not miss the sudden flash in them. "My cousin chose his path. Why need we interfere? Have you—have you theories as to where he can be?"
I flicked my finger at a wandering robin. "I am as guiltless of theories as that bird. It is passing strange. Your cousin and our ghostly Huron seem to have gone up in vapor."
"Our ghostly Huron, monsieur?"
I planted my elbows on the grass that I might face her. "Listen, madame. It is time you knew the story of Pemaou." And thereupon I recited all that had happened between the Huron and myself from the day when we had played at shuttlecock with spears till the night when he had shadowed us at the Pottawatamie camp,—the night before our wedding. I even told her of the profile in his pouch.
She winced at that. "Why did you not tell me before?"
"It seemed useless to alarm you."
"But you tell me now."
I smiled at her. "I know you better. It seems fitting to tell you everything now, madame."
She looked at me with a frown of worry. "Monsieur, you are in danger from that Huron. He hates you if you humbled him."
I laughed at her. "He would not dare harm a Frenchman, madame."
"Then why does he follow you?"
But there I could only shrug. "He was probably in Lord Starling's pay, and was keeping track of us that he might direct your cousin to us. But we have shaken him off."
She thought this over for some time without speaking, and I was content to lie silent at her feet. Bees droned in the flowers and white drifts of afternoon clouds floated over us. I was happy in the moment, and more than that, I was drugged with my dreams of the future. There were days and days and days before us. This was but the threshold. And then, with my ear to the ground, I heard the sound of an axe. The sound of an axe in an untraveled wilderness!
I crowded closer to the ground. My blood beat in my temples, and I was awake with every muscle. But I learned nothing. The sound of an axe and then silence.
The woman looked at me. "Monsieur, is something wrong? Your face has changed."
I stretched out my hand to her. "You must not grow fanciful. But come. It is time to go home, madame."
I pushed her into the canoe in haste, but when we had once rounded the turn of the bluff we floated home slowly. The light of late afternoon is warm and yellow. It cradled the woman in lapping waves, and she sat glowing and fragrant, and her eyes were mirrors of the light. I dropped my paddle.
"Tell me more about yourself. Talk to me. Tell me of your childhood,"
I breathed.
She put out her hand. "Monsieur! Our contract!"
I let the canoe drift. "Madame; tell me the truth. Why do you hold yourself so detached from me? Is it—— Madame, is it because you fear that we shall learn to love each other,—to love against our wills?"
She looked down. "It would be a tragedy if we did, monsieur."
"You would think it a tragedy to learn to love me?"
"It could be nothing else, monsieur."
The breeze took us where it willed. The mother-of-pearl shimmer of evening was turning the headlands to mist, and the air smelled of cedar and pine. Tiny waves lapped complainingly on the sides of our rocking canoe. I leaned forward.
"Listen, madame, you know life. You know how little is often given under the bond of marriage. You know how men and women live long lives together though completely sundered in heart, and how others though separated in life walk side by side in the spirit. As this is so, why do you fear to see or know too much of me? Propinquity does not create love."
Still she looked down. "Men say that it does, monsieur."
"Then why are so many marriages unhappy? No, madame, you know better than that. And you know that if love should grow between us it would sweep away your toy barriers like paper. Nearness or absence would not affect it. Madame, let me have your hand."
"No, no! Monsieur, I do not know you."
"You shall know me better. Come, what is a hand? There. Madame, would you prefer, from now on, to travel in hardship with me rather than be left in comfort here?"
"I should indeed, monsieur."
"Then you shall go with me."
"But your work, monsieur!"
I released her hand and picked up my paddle. "I see that Indian tribes are not my only concern," I explained. "I have other matters to conquer. We shall not be separated from now on."
She did not answer, and I paddled home in silence with my eyes on her face. As we landed, she gave me her hand.
"I do not care for supper, and am going to my house. Good-night, monsieur."
I bowed over her hand. "Are you glad that you are to travel with me and know me better? Are you glad, madame?"
She smiled a little. "I—I think so, monsieur."
"You are not sure? Think of it to-night. Perhaps you will tell me to-morrow. Will you tell me to-morrow, madame?"
She drew back into the dusk. "Perhaps—to-morrow. Good-night, monsieur."
I walked through the meadow. I would not eat supper and I would not work. Finally I called Simon. He was a strange, quiet man, not as strong as the others of the crew, but of use to me for his knowledge of woodcraft. As a boy he had been held captive by the Mohawks, and he was almost as deft of hand and eye as they.
"Have you seen any sign or sound of Indian or white men in these three weeks?" I asked him.
He looked at me rather sullenly. "Yes. A canoe went through here one night about a week ago."
"Who was in it?"
"I do not know."
"You should have followed."
"I did."
"You should have reported to me."
He glowered at me with the eye of a rebellious panther. "I watched. The master went away." Then he showed his teeth in open defiance. "I watched every night on the beach. The master slept or went away."
I opened my mouth to order him under guard, but I did not form the words. I thought of the way that he had spent his days working on the delicately fashioned canoe and his nights in keeping guard. And all for the woman. Women make mischief in the wilderness. I grew pitiful.
"Watch again to-night," I said kindly, "and you shall sleep to-morrow. Simon, I thought that I heard the sound of an axe off the south shore to-day. I shall take the small canoe at daybreak and see what I can find. Tell the camp I have gone fishing. I shall return by noon. And, Simon"——
"Yes, master."
"Madame de Montlivet is your special care till I return."