Montlivet Part 42

I looked down. "Madame de Montlivet may wish to go at the same time.

You must arrange for her also if she wishes."

Cadillac shrugged. "You leave the decision with her?"

"Absolutely, monsieur."

Cadillac rapped his knuckles together. "Don't run romanticism into the ground, Montlivet."

But my inflammable temper did not rise. "A woman certainly has some right of selection. Starling says that I forced her to marry me. That is substantially true. What time do you plan to have Starling leave?"

"As early as possible. I shall not tell him tonight. It will take a little time to get the canoes in readiness."

"Then I shall see Madame de Montlivet in the morning, as early as possible. I shall let you know her decision at once, monsieur."

"Montlivet, she will need time to consider."

I shook my head. "She has thought the matter out. I think her answer will be ready." And then we said good-night.

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHILDREN OF OPPORTUNITY

It was but little after dawn the next morning when I met Madame de Montlivet in the waiting-room of the commandant.

It was a crisp, clear morning, blue of water and sky. I stood at the window and looked at the water-way that led to the east, and waited for my wife. I had several speeches prepared for her, but when she came I said none of them. I took her hand and led her to the window.

"Look at the path of the sun, madame. It was just such a morning when you came to me first."

Her hand lingered a moment in mine. "I came to the most gallant gentleman that I have ever known."

With all the kindness of her words there was something in them that spoke of parting. "Then will you stay with him?" I cried. "Mary, I know no gallant gentleman. To me he seems much a fool and a dreamer.

But such as he is he is loyally yours. Will you stay with him? Or will you start for Montreal this morning with your cousin?"

"This morning?"

"Yes, as soon as the canoes can be made ready. I did not know this till after midnight. I wish I might have warned you."

"This is warning enough. I was sure that this was what you had to tell me when you asked for me so early. There is but one thing for me to do. I must go with my cousin."

I heard the words, but I felt incredulous, stupid. I was prepared to meet this decision after argument, not to have it fall on me in this leaden way. I dropped her hand and walked to and fro. It was useless to ask if she had thought out her decision carefully. Her tone disposed of that. I went back and stood before her.

"The question is yours to decide. Yet I should be a strange man if I let you go without being sure I understood your motives. If you go because you wish to be free from me,--that is all that need be said.

But if I have failed to woo you as a man should---- You sealed my lips. Will you let me open them now?"

Perhaps my hand went out to her. At all events she drew away, and I thought her look frightened, as if something urged her to me that she must resist.

"No, no, you must not woo me, you must not. I beg you, monsieur."

I looked at her panic and shook my head.

"Why do you fear to love me, to yield to me? You are my wife."

"I told you. I told you the day--the last day that we were together in the woods. It would be a tragedy if we loved, monsieur."

"But you are my wife."

She looked at me. The light from the window fell full in her great eyes, and they were the eyes of the boy who had looked up at me in that very room; the boy who had captured me, against my reason, by his spirit and will, I felt the same challenge now.

"I am your wife, yes," she was saying slowly. "That is, the priest said some words over us that we both denied in our hearts. I cannot look at marriage in that way, monsieur. No priest, no ritual can make a marriage if the right thing is not there. The fact that you gave me your name to s.h.i.+eld me does not give me a claim on you in my mind.

Wait. Let me say more. You have great plans, great opportunity. You will make a great leader, monsieur."

Her words sounded mockery. "Thank you, madame." I knew my tone was bitter.

She looked at me reproachfully. "Monsieur, you are unkind. I meant what I said. I heard you in the council yesterday. I asked to go in that I might hear you. I know something of what you have done this summer. I know how you fended away ma.s.sacre the other night. This is a crucial time, and you are the only man who can handle the situation; the only man who has influence to lead the united tribes. Your opportunity is wonderful. You are making history. You may be changing the map of nations, you--alone here--working with a few Indians.

Believe me, I see it all. It is wonderful, monsieur."

"But what has this to do with you and me?"

"Just this, monsieur. I cannot forget my blood. I am an Englishwoman.

I come of a family that has chosen exile rather than yield a point of honor that involved the crown. I have been bred to that idea of country, nurtured on it. Could I stay with you and see you work against my people? If I were a different sort of woman; if I were the gentle girl that you should marry,--one who knew no life but flattery and courts, like the lady of the miniature,--why, then it might be possible for me to think of you only in relation to myself, and to forget all that you stood for. But I am--what I am. I have known tragedy and suffering. I cannot blind myself with dreams as a girl might, and I understand fully the significance of what you are doing.

We should have a divided hearth, monsieur."

She had made her long speech with breaks, but I had not interrupted her. And now that she had finished I did not speak till she looked at me in wonder.

"I am thinking. I see that it comes to this, madame. I must renounce either my work or my wife."

She suddenly stretched out her hand. "Oh, I would not have you renounce your work, monsieur!"

A chair stood in front of her, and I brushed it away and let it clatter on the floor.

"Mary! Mary, you love me!"

"No, no!" she cried. "No, monsieur, it need not mean I love you,--it need not." She fled from me and placed a table between us. "Surely a woman can understand a man's power, and glory in it--yes, glory in it, monsieur--without loving the man!"

"But if you did love me,--if you did love me, what then?"

"Oh, monsieur, the misery of it for us if we loved! I have seen it from the beginning, though at times I forgot. For there is nothing for us but to part."

"Many women have forgotten country for their husbands. The world has called them wise."

She put out her hand. "Not in my family, monsieur."

And then the face of Lord Starling came before me. "You have changed from the woman of the wilderness. You changed when you put on this gown. You were different even three days ago. Some influence has worked on you here."

She understood me. "Yes, my cousin has talked to me. Yet I think that I am not echoing him, monsieur. If I have hardened in the last few days, it is because I have come to see the inevitableness of what I am saying now. I have grasped the terrible significance of what is happening. May I ask you some questions?"