Montlivet Part 43

"Yes, Mary."

"Oh, you must not---- The Seneca messengers, you will let them go back and rejoin their camp?"

"We can do nothing else."

"And you will follow them, and attack them at La Baye?"

"So we plan."

"But the Senecas trust you."

"Not for a moment. They think we fear their power over the Hurons,--as we do,--so they are reckless. They are undoubtedly carrying peace belts from our Hurons to the Iroquois and the English. We must intercept them."

She tried to ward my words, and all that they stood for, away. "You see! You see!" she cried, "we must part. We must part while we can.

Monsieur, say no more. I beg you, monsieur." And she dropped in a chair by the table and laid her head in her arms.

I could say nothing. I stood helpless and dizzy. I had asked her to forget her country. Yet not once had she asked me to forget mine. If I gave up my plans I could go to her now and draw her to my breast. I gripped the table, and I did not see clearly. To save her life I had jeopardized my plans; to follow her here I had jeopardized them again.

But now that I knew her to be safe---- No, I could not turn back; I must walk the path I had laid for myself.

"What will you do with yourself, with your life?" I asked with stiff lips.

She did not raise her head. "We are both children of opportunity.

What is left either of us but ambition, monsieur?"

"You will help your cousin in his plans?"

"If he will work for the state."

"But you will not marry him?"

"Monsieur, I bear your name! That--that troubles me sorely. To bear your name yet work against France! Yet what can I do?"

I touched her hair. "Carry my name and do what you will. I shall understand. As to what the world thinks,--we are past caring for that, madame."

And then for a time we sat silent. I thought, with stupid iteration, of how like a jest this had sounded when the woman said it to me in the forest: a matter for coquetry, a furnis.h.i.+ng of foils for the game. If I had realized then---- But no, what could I have done?

One thing my thought cried incessantly,--women were not made for patriotism. Yet even as accompaniment to the thought, a long line of women who had given up life and family for country pa.s.sed before my memory. Could I say that this woman beside me had not equal spirit?

It seemed long that we sat there, though I think that it was not. I laid my hand on hers, and she turned her palm that she might clasp my fingers.

"You have never failed me, never, never," she whispered. "You are not failing me now." And then I heard Starling's voice at the door calling my name.

I opened to him mechanically, and accepted his pleasant phrases with a face like wood, though my manner was apt enough, I think. I had no feeling as regarded him; all my thought was with the woman by the table.

He went to her with his news, but she interrupted him. "I know." Her face was as expressionless as my own. "I am going with you," she said to him. "When do we leave?"

"In a few minutes." He looked from one to the other of us, and if he could not probe the situation it was perhaps no wonder. We had forgotten him, and we sat like dead people. For once his tremendous, compelling presence was ignored, yet my tongue replied to him courteously, and I could not but admit the perfection of his att.i.tude.

He deplored the necessity that took his cousin from me; he, and all of his people, labored under great indebtedness to me. He was dignified, direct of thought and speech. The man whom I had seen by the dead ashes of the camp fire; the man who had held my wife's miniature, and taunted me with what it meant,--that man was gone. This was an elder brother, a grave elder brother, chastened by suffering.

The woman closed the scene. "I am prepared to go with you," she told him. "I shall wait here till the canoes are ready. Will you leave me with my husband?"

She had never before said "husband" in my hearing. As soon as the door clicked behind Starling I went to her. I knelt and laid my cheek on her hand.

"You are going to stay with me, Mary. You are my wife. You cannot escape that. It is fundamental. Patriotism is a man-made feeling.

You are going to stay with me. I am going now to tell Cadillac."

But I could feel her tremble. "If you say more, I must leave you. You cannot alter my mind. What has come must come. Can we not sit together in silence till I go?"

And so I sat beside her. "You are a strange woman," I said at length.

She looked at me as if to plead her own cause. "Strange events have made me. I cannot marvel if you are bitter, for I have brought you unhappiness. Yet it was in this room that I asked you to remember that I went with you against my will."

"I remember."

"And will you remember what--what I have seen? Is it strange that I understand; that I know we must part?"

I shook my head. "It is your cousin's mind impressed on yours that tells you that we must part,--that and your unfathomable spirit,--the spirit that carried you in man's dress through those weeks as a captive. It is that same spirit that will bring you back to me some day."

"Monsieur!"

"That will bring you back."

"Monsieur, no. I cannot change myself."

"Would I have you change? Mary, Mary! I took you as a boy with me to the wilderness because you had an unbreakable will and a fanatic's courage. Yet this is not the end. It is not the end."

She did not answer, and again she laid her head on the table. We had but a few minutes left now. I saw her look up at me twice before I heard her whisper, "Monsieur, you said that I loved you. But you never said that you"----

"Would it change your decision if I said it now?"

"No, no! It could not."

I slipped to my knees and laid my lips on her clasped hands. "You are part of me. You go with me whether you will or no. You are in the red sunsets that we saw together, and in the white dawns when we ate our meal and meat side by side. You are fettered to me. I cannot rid myself of your presence for a moment. I shall tell you more of this when you come to me again."

She bent to me with the color driven from her lips. "Don't! Don't!

We will learn to forget. We are both rulers of our wills. We will learn to forget. Wait---- Are they calling me?"

We listened. Cadillac was at the door. We both rose.

"In a moment," I called to him. Then I turned. "Whatever happens, keep to the eastward. Don't let your Indians turn. Refuse, and make Starling refuse, to listen to any change of plan."

She was trembling. She seemed not to hear me, and I said the words again. "You must promise. You are not to go to the west."

And then she put out her hands to me. "Yes, yes, I understand. I promise. I shall not go west. But, monsieur, do not--do not go with me to the sh.o.r.e. Let me go alone. Let us part here."

I could have envied her the power to tremble. I felt like stone. I had but one arm, but I drew her to me till I felt her heart on mine.

"This is not the end. This is not the end. But till you come to me again"---- And I would have laid my lips on hers.