The Long Portage Part 52

"Where are the rest?" she asked in a strained voice. "Something has happened--what is it?"

"Three of them are some miles down the river."

"Three!" cried Millicent, in dismay. "Haven't you found Clarence yet?"

Nasmyth hesitated, regarding her compa.s.sionately, but she made a sign of protest.

"Go on! Don't keep me in suspense!"

"Clarence," said Nasmyth quietly, "is dead. Lisle is rather badly damaged."

Millicent left the canoe and sat down, very white in face, upon a neighboring stone. In the meanwhile the other canoes had grounded and her companions gathered about her. She did not speak to them and some time pa.s.sed before she turned to Nasmyth.

"Tell me all," she begged.

He briefly related what had happened, and there was an impressive silence when he finished. Then Millicent slowly rose.

"And Lisle's badly hurt," she said. "We must go on!"

They relaunched the canoes and Nasmyth had no further speech with her, for as they floated down-river she sat, still and silent, in another canoe. She was conscious chiefly of an unnerving horror and a sense of contrition. Clarence was dead, and she had been coldly hypercritical; hardly treating him as a lover, thinking of his failings. She blamed herself bitterly in a half-dazed fas.h.i.+on, but it was only afterward she realized that she had not been troubled by any very poignant sense of loss.

After a while Nasmyth said they would land, but Millicent roused herself to countermand his instructions and eventually they reached Batley's camp. Lisle had got up during the day and he now walked painfully down to the water's edge to meet her. When she landed he gravely pressed her hand.

"I'm sorry," he said simply. "We did what we could to save him."

"Oh, I know," she responded. "n.o.body could doubt that."

Then Nasmyth landed with provisions and while the men ate two Indians strode into the camp and addressed Lisle angrily. They were curing salmon, they said, and had left a canoe on the s.h.i.+ngle, in order to avoid a portage when returning, and they had gone in another craft to set some fish-traps in a lower rapid. To their surprise they had afterward seen their canoe drifting down-stream full of water and badly damaged, and they had set off at once to discover who was responsible.

Lisle offered them some silver currency, and after a little chaffering they departed satisfied.

"Now we know how the canoe came to be lying where Gladwyne found her," he said to Nasmyth.

Then he sought Millicent.

"I think," he told her gently, "we had better go on--to stay here would be painful." He hesitated. "I'll leave Crestwick and an experienced river-Jack packer to investigate. If you would rather, I'll stay with them, though I'm afraid I can't get about much."

"Thank you," she replied in a voice which had a break in it. "You must come with us; you don't look fit to stand."

Running the rapid, they slid away down-river, and once more Millicent sat very still, thinking confused thoughts, until at last they made camp for the night and she crept away to the shelter of her tent. A day or two later Crestwick and the packer overtook them, having discovered nothing; and then the party was animated by a strong desire to escape from the river and reach the trail to the settlements as soon as possible. Further search for Gladwyne was useless; the flood had swept him away and no one would ever know where his bones lay. He had set out on his longest and most mysterious journey, leaving only two women to mourn him, and of these one, who had tried to love him out of duty, would by and by forget.

On the evening before they left the river, Lisle stood with Millicent looking back up the long reach they had descended. They had reached the taller timber, and on one bank black firs, climbing the hillside, stood out against the fading light with a gauzy mist-curtain drawn across their higher ranks. The flood slid by, glimmering dimly, smooth and green, and from out of the distance came the throbbing clamor of a rapid.

"It's your last look," said Lisle. "We'll be in the bush to-morrow and I expect to hire a wagon, or at least a horse or two, in a few days. Now I'm sorry I ever brought you here. You'll be glad to get away."

"You mustn't blame yourself," she told him. "We have only grat.i.tude for you. You have no part in the painful memories."

She glanced once more up the valley; and then moved back into the shadow of the firs.

"It's all wildly beautiful, but it's so pitiless--I shall never think of it without a s.h.i.+ver."

"You have made plenty of notes and sketches for the book," suggested Lisle, seeing her distress.

"The book? I don't know that I shall ever finish it. I feel cut adrift, as if there were no use in working and I hadn't a purpose left. First George went, and then Clarence--so far, there was always some one to think of--and now I'm all alone."

She broke out into open sobbing and Lisle, feeling very sympathetic and half dismayed, awkwardly tried to soothe her.

"I'm better," she said at last. "It was very foolish, but I couldn't help it. I think we'll go back to the others."

He gave her his arm, for the way was rough, but as they approached the camp she stopped a moment amid the shadow and stillness of the great fir trunks.

"I have done with the river--I think I am afraid of it," she confessed.

"Can't we get away early to-morrow?"

Lisle said it should be arranged and she turned to him gratefully.

"One can always rely on you! You're just like George was in many ways.

It's curious that whenever I'm in trouble I think of him--"

She seemed on the verge of another breakdown, and she laid her hand in his for a moment before she went from him hurriedly with a low, "Good night!"

Lisle strolled back to the river and lighted his pipe. He had noticed and thought it significant that she spoke more of the brother whom she had lost several years ago than of the lover who had perished recently; but, from whatever cause it sprung, her distress troubled him.

His thoughts were presently interrupted by Nasmyth.

"There's a thing I'd better tell you, Vernon," he said, sitting down near by. "The night you were half drowned I emptied the cache and, without making any note of what was in it, pitched everything into the river."

"So I discovered. At least, when I managed with some trouble to reach the place, I knew it was either you or Gladwyne, and I blamed you."

"Well?"

"I've decided," Lisle said gravely, "that you did quite right. It's the end of that story."

"Then you have abandoned the purpose you had in view?"

"I've been thinking hard, and it seems to me that if Vernon were with me now, the last thing that would please him would be to see the two women suffer; he was a big man in every way. There's another thing--he left no relations to consider."

Nasmyth laid a hand on his shoulder in a very expressive way.

"I felt all along that you'd come to look at it like that!"

"But there's Batley; he has some suspicions."

"I can silence him," promised Nasmyth. "The man has his good points, after all."

"That's so," Lisle agreed. "Still, I'll come straight across to England and tackle him if you fail. If it's a question of money, you can count me in--I've been prospering lately." He rose and knocked out his pipe.

"That's the last word on the matter."

They went back to camp, and starting soon after sunrise the next morning they reached a settlement on the railroad after a comparatively easy journey; and that evening Lisle stood with a heavy heart beside the track while the big cars moved away, his eyes fixed on a woman's figure that leaned out from a vestibule platform, waving a hand to him.