The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights Part 2

The next Sat.u.r.day Emeline refused to go to the Tabernacle. She gave no reason and the family asked for none. Her caprices were as the gambols of the paschal lamb, to be indulged and overlooked. Roxy offered to stay with her, but she rejected companions.h.i.+p, promising her uncle and aunts to lock herself within the cabin and hide if she saw men approaching from any direction. The day was sultry for that climate, and of a vivid clearness, and the sky dazzled. Emeline had never met any terrifying Gentiles during her stay on the island, and she felt quite secure in crossing the pasture and taking to the farm woods beyond. Her uncle's cows had worn a path which descended to a run with partially gra.s.s-lined channel. Beaver Island was full of brooks and springs. The children had placed stepping-stones across this one. She was vaguely happy, seeing the water swirl below her feet, hearing the cattle breathe at their grazing; though in the path or on the log which she found at the edge of the woods her face kept turning towards the town of St. James, as the faces of the faithful turn towards Mecca. It was childish to think of escaping the King of Beaver by merely staying away from his exhortations. Emeline knew she was only parleying.

The green silence should have helped her to think, but she found herself waiting--and doing nothing but waiting--for what might happen next. She likened herself to a hunted rabbit palpitating in cover, unable to reach any place of safety yet grateful for a moment's breathing. Wheels rolled southward along the Galilee road. Meeting was out. She had the caprice to remain where she was when the family wagon arrived, for it had been too warm to walk to the Tabernacle. Roxy's voice called her, and as she answered, Roxy skipped across the brook and ran to her.

"Cousin Emeline," the breathless girl announced, "here comes Mary French to see you!"

Emeline stiffened upon the log.

"Where?"

Roxy glanced behind at a figure following her across the meadow.

"What does she want of me?" inquired Emeline. "If she came home with the family, it was not necessary to call me."

"She drove by herself. She says Brother Strang sent her to you."

Emeline stood up as the Prophet's youngest wife entered that leafy silence. Roxy, forgetting that these two had never met before, slipped away and left them. They looked at each other.

"How do you do, Mrs. Strang?" spoke Emeline.

"How do you do, Miss Cheeseman?" spoke Mary French.

"Will you sit down on this log?"

"Thank you."

Mary French had more flesh and blood than Emeline. She was larger and of a warmer and browner tint--that type of brunette with startling black hair which breaks into a floss of little curls, and with unexpected blue eyes. Her full lips made a bud, and it only half bloomed when she smiled. From crown to slipper she was a ripe and supple woman. Though clad, like Emeline, in black, her garment was a transparent texture over white, and she held a parasol with crimson lining behind her head. She had left her bonnet in her conveyance.

"My husband," said Mary French, quiet and smiling, "sent me to tell you that you will be welcomed into our family."

Emeline looked her in the eyes. The Prophet's wife had the most unblenching smiling gaze she had ever encountered.

"I do not wish to enter your family. I am not a Mormon."

"He will make you wish it. I was not a Mormon."

They sat silent, the trees stirring around them.

"I do not understand it," said Emeline. "How can you come to me with such a message?"

"I can do it as you can do it when your turn comes."

Emeline looked at Mary French as if she had been stabbed.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" said Mary French. "But wait till he seems to you a great strong archangel--an archangel with only the weakness of dabbling his wings in the dirt--and you will withhold from him nothing, no one, that may be of use to him. If he wants to put me by for a while, it is his will. You cannot take my place. I cannot fill yours."

"Oh, don't!" gasped Emeline. "I am not that sort of woman--I should kill!"

"That is because you have not lived with him. I would rather have him make me suffer than not have him at all."

"Oh, don't! I can't bear it! Help me!" prayed Emeline, stretching her hands to the wife.

Mary French met her with one hand and the unflinching smile. Her flesh was firm and warm, while Emeline's was cold and quivering.

"You have never loved anybody, have you?"

"No."

"But you have thought you did?"

"I was engaged before I came here."

"And the engagement is broken?"

"We quarrelled."

Mary French breathed deeply.

"You will forget it here. He can draw the very soul out of your body."

"He cannot!" flashed Emeline.

"Some one will kill him yet. He is not understood at his best, and he cannot endure defeat of any kind. When you come into the family you must guard him from his enemies as I have constantly guarded him. If you ever let a hair of his head be harmed--then I shall hate you!"

"Mrs. Strang, do you come here to push me too! My uncle's family, everything, all are closing around me! Why don't you help me? I loathe--I loathe; your husband!"

Mary French rose, her smile changing only to express deep tenderness.

"You are a good girl dear. I can myself feel your charm. I was not so self-denying. In my fierce young girlhood I would have removed a rival.

But since you ask me, I will do all I can for you in the way you desire.

My errand is done. Good-by."

"Good-by," said Emeline, restraining herself.

She sat watching the elastic shape under the parasol move with its shadow across the field. She had not a doubt until Mary French was gone; then the deep skill of the Prophet's wife with rivals sprung out like a distortion of nature.

Emeline had nearly three weeks in which to intrench herself with doubts and defences. She felt at first surprised and relieved. When her second absence from the Tabernacle was pa.s.sed over in silence she found in her nature an unaccountable pique, which steadily grew to unrest. She ventured and turned back on the woods path leading to St. James many times, each time daring farther. The impulse to go to St. James came on her at waking, and she resisted through busy hours of the day. But the family often had tasks from which Emeline was free, and when the desire grew unendurable she knelt at her secluded bedside in the loft, trying to bring order out of her confused thoughts. She reviewed her quarrel with her lover, and took blame for his desertion. The grievance which had seemed so great to her before she came to Beaver Island dwindled, and his personality with it. In self-defence she coaxed her fancy, pretending that James Arnold was too good for her. It was well he had found it out. But because he was too good for her she ought to go on being fond of him at a safe distance, undetected by him, and discreetly cheris.h.i.+ng his large blond image as her ideal of manhood. If she had not been bred in horror of Catholics, the cloister at this time would have occurred to her as her only safe refuge.

These secret rites in her bedroom being ended, and Roxy diverted from her movements, she slipped off into the woods path, sometimes running breathlessly towards St. James.

The impetus which carried Emeline increased with each journey. At first she was able to check it in the woods depths, but it finally drove her until the village houses were in sight.

When this at last happened, and she stood gazing, fascinated, down the tunnel of forest path, the King of Beaver spoke behind her.

Emeline screamed in terror and took hold of a bush, to make it a support and a veil.

"Have I been a patient man?" he inquired, standing between her and her uncle's house. "I waited for you to come to me."

"I am obliged to go somewhere," said Emeline, plucking the leaves and unsteadily s.h.i.+fting her eyes about his feet. "I cannot stay on the farm all the time." Through numbness she felt the p.r.i.c.king of a sharp rapture.