Montlivet Part 52

TO US AND TO OUR CHILDREN

Hours pa.s.sed and the flap of Cadillac's tent was not lifted. Outside in the camp the drum beat for sunset. The woman heard it. She pushed back her soft waves of hair, and a shadow fell across the light that had been in her eyes.

"I had forgotten," she cried, with a soft tremble of wonder in her voice. "We have both forgotten. We promised the commandant that we would talk about your duty to the tribes."

I kissed her for her forgetfulness. "Talk is unnecessary," I whispered. "I have made up my mind."

But the drum's note had recalled her to what lay outside the tent walls. She sighed a little and bent to me as I sat at her feet.

"Do not make up your mind yet," she begged with a curious, tender reluctance. "Let me tell you something first."

I pressed her hand between my own. "I cannot listen. I can only feel.

Tell me, when did you love me first?"

She raised her hand to hide a tide of color. "Monsieur, it is my shame," she cried, with a little half sob of exultance. "It is my shame, but I will tell you. The night--the night that we were married, I lay awake for hours beset by jealousy of the woman of the miniature.

Oh, I am indeed shamed! But how could I help it? Your walk, your laugh, your way of carrying your head! How could I keep from loving you? But I fought it. I fought it. I knew we had to part. I went to sleep every night with that thought uppermost."

I took the hand I held, and quieted its trembling against my lips.

"You are my wife," I said. "We shall never part. We shall live together till we are very old." The marvel of my own words awed me.

But she begged me to hear her out. "I must speak of the past," she went on. "It leads to what I would have you say to the commandant.

Will you listen?"

"I will try."

"Then--then let me speak of the day we parted. I saw that I had to leave you. I knew--I thought I knew--that country was more sacred than individual happiness. But I was weaker than I thought. When I saw Michillimackinac fade, when I knew that I should never see you again, my life seemed to stop. I begged my cousin to take me back. I--I begged till I fainted."

I could not keep my hands from clenching. "And he refused you?" I asked with my lips dry, and I knew that my voice showed hate of a man who was dead.

She did not answer my question, and when she did not defend him I knew that he had been hard to her. "I must have remained unconscious a long time," she hurried on, "for when I came to myself again the country was different and the sun was low. I was exhausted, and I could not think as I had done. You had said that patriotism was a man-made feeling, and I repeated your words over and over. It was all I could seem to remember. I could not see why our parting had been necessary. I wonder if you can understand. It was as if I had been reborn into a new set of beliefs. All that had seemed inevitable and great had grown trivial. I could not see distinctions as I had. G.o.d made us--English, French, Indians. I could not understand what patriotism stood for, after all. I did not know what had come upon my mind, but I saw that words that I had thought worth sacrificing life for had lost their meaning. And so--and so---- You see what I would say. I have changed. If you wish to lead the tribes you are not to think of me."

I rose and drew her to me. "But, Mary, I no longer wish to lead the tribes."

She could not understand me, as indeed I could not wholly understand myself. She looked at me gravely and long, and she tried to find the truth in me,--the truth that was out of sight; the truth about myself that even I did not know.

"Was the commandant right?" she queried. "Is it anxiety about me that has changed your plans?"

I could only shake my head at her. "I am not sure." Then I sat beside her and tried to explain. "Simon is dead, Pierre died saving me.

Leclerc and Labarthe died under torture. I sacrificed them to enforce a belief. And now the belief is a phantom. It is very strange. Mary, we have traveled by different roads, but we have reached the same goal.

My ambition for conquest is put away."

She drew a long breath, and I saw splendid understanding of me in the look she gave. Yet she was unconvinced.

"Perhaps this feeling may pa.s.s," she argued. "It may be temporary.

Then you will regret your lost hold with the tribes."

I smiled at her. "I love you," I murmured. "I love you. I love you.

I am tired of talk of blood and war. Mary, you accepted me as I was, accept me, if you can, as I am now. I cannot a.n.a.lyze myself. I cannot promise what I will believe as time goes on. But this I know. I was born with a sword in my hand, but now I cannot use it--for aggression.

I do not mean that I think it is wrong. I do not know what I believe.

Time will tell."

The strange light that made her seem all spirit flamed in the glance that thanked me.

"Yet think well," she cautioned. "I--I am proud of you." Her voice sank to a whisper. "Sometimes even my love seems swallowed in my pride in you. I live on my pride in your power. Think of your unfinished work. No, no, you must go on."

I took her by the shoulders. "You strange, double woman!" I cried, with my voice unsteady. "You command me to do something, the while you are trembling from head to foot for fear I will obey. Will you always play the martyr to your spirit? Mary, I shall not lead the tribes."

"But your unfinished work!"

"What was worth doing has been done. This crisis is past. The west will be safe from the Iroquois for some time. There is other work for me. We will go to France. I have business there. Then I would show the world my wife."

Yet she held me away a moment longer. "You can do this without regret?"

I folded her to me. "It is the only path I see before me," I answered her.

And then, for the first time, she sobbed as she lay in my arms.

A little later we stood together in the tent door. The sunset was lost in the woods behind and the shadows were long and cool. The camp was gay. All memory of death and conquest was put aside, and the men were living in the moment. French and Indians were feasting, and there were song and talk and the movement of lithe bodies, gayly clad. The water babbled strange songs upon the sh.o.r.e, and the forest was full of quiet and mystery. The wilderness, the calm, unfathomed wilderness, had forgotten sorrow and carnage. We forgot, too.

I suddenly laughed as of old, and the sound did not jar. The woman on my arm laughed with me. A thrush was singing. Life was before me, and the woman of my love loved me. My blood tingled and I breathed deep.

The wood smoke--the smoke of the pathfinder's fire--p.r.i.c.ked keen in my nostrils.

I pointed the woman to the forest. "We shall come back to it," I cried. "We leave it now, but we shall come back to it, some time, somehow. Perhaps we shall be settlers, explorers. I do not know. But we shall come back. This land belongs to us; to us and to our children and our children's children. French or English, what will it matter then? It will be a new race."

The woman turned. I heard her quick breath and saw the red flood her from chin to brow. "A new race!" she repeated, and her eyes grew dark with the splendor of the thought. She clasped her hands, and looked to the west over the unmapped forest, and I knew that for the moment her blood was pulsing, not for me, but for that unborn race which was to hold this land. I had married a woman, yes, but also I had married a poet and a dreamer and a will incarnate. It was such spirit as hers that would shape the destinies of nations yet to come.

I laughed again, and the joy of life ran through me like delirium.

"Come!" I cried to her. "Come, we will tell Cadillac that to-morrow we start for Montreal. The sooner we leave, the sooner we return,--return to smell the wood smoke, and try the wilderness together. Come, Mary, come."

And wrapping my wife in the cloak that the savage king had given her, I led her out and stood beside her while I sent the tribes upon their way.