Montlivet Part 21

I felt relieved. "And how did you happen to come this way?" I went on.

"What did they tell you at the Pottawatamie Islands?"

She stopped to laugh. "That you went the other way," she replied, and she swept her arm to the southwest.

I shrugged my shoulders. "And you thought I lied to them?"

She nodded her answer. "The bird who hides her nest cries and makes a great noise and runs away from it," she explained. "You told all the Pottawatamies who would listen that you were going southwest. So I went southeast."

I could afford to let her laugh at me. "We stopped at that island over there," I said, without comment. "Now we will follow this sh.o.r.e line for a distance south. You must go with us. Singing Arrow, did they tell you at the islands that the English prisoner was a woman, and that she is now my wife?"

The girl did not answer nor look in my direction. She pulled her blanket over her head, and sat as stiffly as a badger above his hole.

I could not determine whether the news of the marriage was a surprise or not. It did not matter. I lit my pipe and let her work it out.

"Are you coming?" I asked at last. "I must go back to the island now."

She rose and pulled her blanket around her. She was typically Indian at the moment, unreadable and cold. But she nodded in acquiescence and went to her canoe.

I found my own canoe and we paddled side by side. The sun was over the horizon now and fish were jumping. I saw a great ba.s.s that must have weighed five pounds spring his whole length out of the water for a fly.

A sportsman in France would have traveled leagues to have seen such a fish, and here it lay ready for my hand. Perhaps after all there was no need to search for reasons for the exultation that was possessing me.

A few moments brought us to the island, and we rounded the point and came into the cove. The little camp was awake and startled by my absence. Pierre was searching the horizon from under a red, hairy hand, and Labarthe was looking to the priming of his arquebus. Only the woman sat steadfast. All this I saw at a glance.

I rushed the canoes to the sh.o.r.e, and helped the Indian girl to alight as I would have helped any woman. I gave one look at the men, and said, "Be still," and then I led Singing Arrow to the woman.

"Madame," I said, "here is the Indian girl who befriended you when you were a prisoner. It was she who pa.s.sed us last night. She comes to me with doc.u.ments from Cadillac, and I have great reason to be grateful to her. I commend her to you, madame."

I doubt that the woman heard much of my speech, though I made it earnestly. She was looking at the Indian girl, and the Indian girl at her. I should have liked cordiality between them, but I did not expect it. The woman would do her best, but she would not know how. I had come to think her gracious by nature, and she would treat this girl with courtesy, but she was a great lady while Singing Arrow was a squaw, and she would remember it. Yet Singing Arrow, even though she might admit her inferiority to a white man, would think herself the equal of any woman of whatever rank or race. I could not see how the gulf could be bridged.

But bridged it was, and that oddly. The woman stood for a moment half smiling, and then suddenly tears gathered in her eyes. She put out her hand to Singing Arrow, and the Indian took it, and they walked together back into the trees. They could not understand each other, and I wondered what they would do. But later I heard them laughing.

Well, the woman was destined to surprise me, and she had done it again.

I had thought her too finely woven and strong of fibre to be easily emotional. It was some hours before it came to me that she had not been with another woman since the night the savages had found her in the Connecticut farmhouse. All the world had been a foe to be feared and parried except myself, and I had been a despot. Perhaps she did not know herself. Perhaps she would welcome Benjamin Starling after all. No matter what her horror of him, she could at least be natural with him, if only to show her scorn.

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 sh.o.r.e, 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sed?"

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 sh.o.r.e.

"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 sh.o.r.e. "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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 enc.u.mbrance. Let her act with whatever bravery and wisdom she might, her s.e.x 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 compa.s.sion 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 enc.u.mbrance. 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 quant.i.ty," 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 sh.o.r.e 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 Onanguisse had given her, and wound her still further with blankets. "You will be cool enough in a few minutes," I a.s.sured 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.