Annette, the Metis Spy Part 11

Very soon, the party was in motion along the trail, Annette leading, Captain Stephens riding in rear beside Phillips, who was again feverish with his wounds.

They rode till the post meridian sun became too warm, and then obtaining shelter in a bluff, they lunched and rested for several hours. They then resumed their march and continued it till the set of sun. During the day Stephens rode frequently by the side of Annette, but she invariably made her horse mend its pace, and rode alone.

Despite his admiring glances, and his deep expressions of grat.i.tude, Stephens gradually began to resume his old playful manner of address.

He referred to her as "the little Cree boy," and in speaking of her to Julie or Phillips, always used the word "he." Annette took no heed of this; she led the party through mazes of woodland, across stretches where there was no trail, or selected the camping-ground.

"The moon rises to-night about twelve, monsieur," she said to Stephens when supper had been ended, "and we had better resume our march then. There is a Cree village not far from here, and the braves are everywhere abroad. I do not think that travelling by day would be safe; for all the Indians must have read the proclamation."

About midnight a dusky yellow appeared in the south-east, and then the luminous, greenish-yellow rim of the moon appeared and began to flood the illimitable prairie with its wizard light.

"So this miscreant has been hunting you, Annette?" said Stephens, for both had unconsciously dropped in rear. "I suppose, ma pet.i.te, if I had the right to keep you from the fans of the water-mill, that I also hold the right of endeavouring to preserve you from a man whose arms would be worse than the rending wheel?" She said nothing, but there was grat.i.tude enough in her eye to reward one for the most daring risk that man ever ran.

"You do not love this sooty persecutor, do you, ma chere?"--and then, seeing that such a question filled her with pain and shame, he said, "Hush now, pet.i.te; I shall not tease you any more." The confusion pa.s.sed away, and her olive face brightened, as does the moon when the cloud drifts off its disc.

"I am very glad. Oh, if you only knew how I shudder at the sound of his name!"

"There now, let us forget about him," and reining his horse closer to hers, he leaned tenderly towards the girl. She said nothing, for she was very much confused. But the confusion was less embarra.s.sment than a bewildered feeling of delight. Save for the dull thud, thud of the hoofs upon the sod, her companion might plainly have heard the riotous beating of the maiden's heart.

"And now, about that flower which I gave you this morning. What did you do with it?"

"Ah, Monsieur, where were your eyes? I have worn it in my hair all day. It is there now."

"Oh, I see. I am concerned with your head,--not with your heart. Is that it, ma pet.i.te bright eye? You know our white girls wear the flowers we give them under their throats--upon their bosom. This they do as a sign that the donor occupies a place in their heart."

He did not perceive in the dusky light that he was covering her with confusion. Upon no point was this maiden so sensitive, as the revelation that a habit or act of hers differed from that of the civilized girl. Her dear heart was almost bursting with shame, and this thought was running through her mind.

"What a savage I must seem in his eyes." Her own outspoken words seemed to burn through her body. "But how could I know where to wear my rose? I have read in English books that gentle ladies wear them there." And these lines of Tennyson [Footnote: I must say here for the benefit of the drivelling, cantankerous critic, with a squint in his eye, who never looks for anything good in a piece of writing, but is always in the search for a flaw, that I send pa.s.sages from Tennyson floating through Annette's brain with good justification.

She had received a very fair education at a convent in Red River. She could speak and write both French and English with tolerable accuracy; and she could with her tawny little fingers, produce a true sketch of a prairie tree-clump, upon a sheet of cartridge paper, or a piece of birch rind. I am constrained to make this explanation because the pa.s.sage appeared in another book of mine and evoked censure from one or two dismal wiseacres.--E.C.] came running through her head:

"She went by dale, and she went by down, With a single rose _in her hair_."

These gave her some relief, for she thought, after all, that he might be only jesting. When the blood had gone from her forehead, she turned towards her lover, who had been looking at her since speaking, with a tender expression in his mischievous eyes.

"Do white girls never wear roses in their hair? I thought they did.

Can it be wrong for me to wear mine in the same place?"

"Ah, my little barbarian, you do not understand me. If an ancient bachelor, whose head shone like the moon there in the sky, were to give to some blithe young belle a rose or a lily, she would, most likely, twist it in her hair; but if some other person had presented the flower, one whose eye was brighter, whose step was quicker, whose laugh was cheerier, whose years were fewer; in short, ma chere Annette, if some one for whom she cared just a little more than for any other man that walked over the face of creation, had presented it to her, she would not put it in her hair. No, my unsophisticated one, she would feel about with her unerring fingers, for the spot nearest her heart, and there she would fasten the gift. Now, ma Marie, suppose you had possessed all this information when I gave you the flower, where would you have pinned it?"

"n.o.body has ever done so much for me as Monsieur. He leaped into the flood, risking his life to save mine. I would be an ungrateful girl, then, if I did not think more of him than of any other man; therefore, I would have pinned your flower on the spot nearest my heart."

Then, deftly, and before he could determine what her supple arms and nimble brown fingers were about, she had disengaged the lily from her hair, and pinned it upon her bosom.

"There now, Monsieur, is it in the right place?" and she looked at him with a glance exhibiting the most curious commingling of naivete and coquetry.

"I cannot answer. I do not think that you understand me yet. If the act of saving you from drowning were to determine the place you should wear the rose, then the head, as you first chose, was the proper spot. Do you know what the word Love means?"

"O, I could guess, perhaps, if I don't know. I have heard a good deal about it, and Violette, who is fond of a young Frenchman, has explained it so fully to me, that I think I know. Yes, Monsieur, I _do_ know."

"Well, you little rogue, it takes one a long time to find out whether you do or not. In fact I am not quite satisfied on the point.

However, let me suppose that you do know what love is; the all-consuming sort; the kind that sighs like the furnace. Well, supposing that a flower is worn over the heart only to express love of this sort, where would you, with full knowledge of this fact, have pinned the blossom that I plucked for you this morning?"

"Since I do not understand the meaning of the word love with very great clearness,--I think Monsieur has expressed the doubt that I do understand it--I would not have known where to pin the flower. I would not have worn it at all. I would, Monsieur, if home, have set it in a goblet, and taking my st.i.tching, would have gazed upon it all the day, and prayed my guardian angel to give me some hint as to where I ought to put it on."

"You little savage, you have eluded me again. Do you remember me telling you that some day, if you found out for me a couple of good flocks of turkeys, I would bring you some coppers?"

"I do."

"Well, if you discovered a hundred flocks now I would not give you one." And then he leaned towards her again as if his lips yearned for hers. For her part, she took him exactly as she should have done. She never pouted;--If she had done so, I fancy that there would have been soon an end of the boyish, sunny raillery.

"Hallo! Pet.i.te, we are away, away in the rear. Set your horse going, for we must keep up with our escort." Away they went over the level plain, through flowers of every name and dye, the fresh, exquisite breeze bearing the scent of the myriad petals. After a sharp gallop over about three miles of plain, they overtook the main body of the escort, and all rode together through the glorious night, under the calm, bountiful moon.

"When this journey is ended we shall rest for a few days at my uncle's, my brave Cree," Stephens said. "Running through the grounds is a little brook swarming with fish. Will you come fis.h.i.+ng with me there, pet.i.te?"

"Oui, avec grand plaisir, Monsieur."

"Of course, you shall fish with a pin-hook. I am not going to see you catch yourself with a barbed hook, like that which I shall use"

"Oh, Monsieur! Why will you always treat me as a baby!" and there was the most delicate, yet an utterly indescribable, sort of reproach in her voice and att.i.tude, as she spoke these words.

"Then it is not a baby by any means," and he looked with undisguised admiration upon the maiden, with all the mystic grace and the perfect development of her young womanhood. "It is a woman, a perfect little woman, a fairer, a sweeter, my own mignonnette, than any girl ever seen in these plains in all their history."

"Oh, Monsieur is now gone to the other extreme. He is talking dangerously; for he will make me vain."

"Does the ceaseless wooing of the sweet wild rose by soft winds, make that blossom vain? or is the moon spoilt because all the summer night ten thousand streams running under it sing its praises? As easy, Annette, to make vain the rose or the moon as to turn your head by telling your perfections."

"Monsieur covers me with confusion!" and the little sweet told the truth. But it was a confusion very exquisite to her. It was like entrancing music in her veins; and gave her a delightful delirium about the temples. How fair all the glorious great round of the night, and the broad earth lit by the moon, seemed to her now, with the music of his words absorbing her body and soul. Everything was transfigured by a holy beauty, for Love had sanctified it, and clothed it in his own mystic and beautiful garments. It was with poor Marie, then, as it has some time or other been with us all: when every bird that sang, every leaf that whispered, had in its tone a cadence caught from the one loved voice. I have seen the steeple strain, and rock, and heard the bells peal out in all their clangorous melody, and I have fancied that this delirious ecstacy of sound that bathed the earth and went up to heaven was the voice of one sweet girl with dimples and sea-green eyes.

The mischievous young Stephens had grown more serious than Annette had ever seen him before.

"But, my little girl, what is to become of you during this period of tumult. It may continue long, and it is hard to say what the chances of war may have in store for your father."

"I know not; though my heart is with the cause of my father and of his people, yet, I do not desire to see them triumph over your people. A government under the hateful chief would be intolerable; and whenever I can warn the white soldiers of danger, I shall do it."

"What a hero you are Annette! How different from what I supposed on that day when I saw you sitting in your canoe in the midst of the racing flood."

She was glad that Monsieur held what she had done in such high regard.

"Why dear girl, the story of your bravery will be told by the writers of books throughout all Christendom. Ah, Annette, I shall be so lonely when you go from me!"

Stephens was all the while growing more serious, and even becoming pathetic, which is a sign of something very delicious, and not uncommon, when you are travelling under a bewitching moon in company with a more bewitching maiden.

But there was so much mischief in his nature that he would rebound at any moment from a mood of pathos or seriousness to one of levity.

"Well, Annette," and he leaned yearningly towards her, "when you leave me to take the chances of this tumultuous time, the greatest light that I have known will have gone out of my life."

"When I am absent from Monsieur, perhaps he never thinks of me."

"What a little ingrate it is! Yesterday morning, while you were getting breakfast, I was upon the prairie, doing--what think you?"

How was Annette to know?