Montlivet Part 25

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 sh.o.r.e. It was very still. Fireflies danced in the gra.s.ses, and the stars p.r.i.c.ked 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 grat.i.tude 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 sh.o.r.e 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 stars.h.i.+ne. 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!