Flower of the North Part 12

It was disappointing, and yet there came a pleasurable throb with his disappointment. Jeanne trusted him. She was sleeping under his protection as sweetly as a child. Fear of her enemies no longer kept her awake or filled her with terror. This night, under these stars, with the wilderness all about them, she had given herself into his keeping. His cheeks burned. He dipped his paddle noiselessly, so that he might not interrupt her slumber. Each moment added to the fullness of his joy, and he wished that he might only see her face, hidden in the darkness of her hair and the bear-robes.

The silence no longer seemed a silence to him. It was filled with the beating of his heart, the singing of his love, a gentle sigh now and then that came like a deeper breath between Jeanne's sweet lips. It was a silence that pulsated with a voiceless and intoxicating life for him, and he was happy. In these moments, when even their voices were stilled, Jeanne belonged to him, and to him alone. He could feel the warmth of her presence. He felt still the thrill of her breast against his own, the touch of her hair upon his lips, the gentle clinging of her arms. The spirit of her moved, and sat awake, and talked with him, just as the old spirit of his dreams had communed with him a thousand times in his loneliness. Dreams were at an end. Now had come reality.

He looked up into the sky. The moon had dropped below the southwestern forests, and there were only the stars above him, filling a gray-blue vault in which there was not even the lingering mist of a cloud. It was a beautifully clear night, and he wondered how the light fell so that it did not reveal Jeanne in her nest. The thought that came to him then set his heart tingling and made his face radiant. Even the stars were guarding Jeanne, and refused to disclose the mystery of her slumber. He laughed within himself. His being throbbed, and suddenly a voice seemed to cry softly, trembling in its joy:

"Jeanne! Jeanne! My beloved Jeanne!"

With horror Philip caught himself too late. He had spoken the words aloud. For an instant reality had transformed itself into the old dream, and his dream-spirit had called to its mate for the first time in words. Appalled at what he had said, Philip bent over and listened.

He heard Jeanne's breathing. It was deeper than before. She was surely asleep!

He straightened himself and resumed his paddling. He was glad now that he had spoken. Jeanne seemed nearer to him after those words.

Before this night he never realized how beautiful the wilderness was, how complete it could be. It had offered him visions of new life, but these visions had never quite shut out the memories of old pain. He watched and listened. The water rippled behind his canoe; it trickled in a soothing cadence after each dip of his paddle; he heard the gentle murmur of it among the reeds and gra.s.ses, and now and then the gurgling laughter of it, like the faintest tinkling of dainty bells. He had never understood it before; he had never joined in its happiness. The night sounds came to him with a different meaning, filled him with different sensations. As he slipped quietly around a bend in the river he heard a splas.h.i.+ng ahead of him, and knew that a moose was feeding, belly-deep, in the water. At other times the sound would have set his fingers itching for a rifle, but now it was a part of the music of the night. Later he heard the cras.h.i.+ng of a heavy body along the sh.o.r.e and in the distance the lonely howl of a wolf. He listened to the sounds with a quiet pleasure instead of creeping thrills which they once sent through him. Every sound spoke of Jeanne--of Jeanne and her world, into which each stroke of his paddle carried them a little deeper.

And yet the truth could not but come to him that Jeanne was but a stranger. She was a creature of mystery, as she lay there asleep in the bow of the canoe; he loved her, and yet he did not know her. He confessed to himself, as the night lengthened, that he would be glad when morning came. Jeanne would clear up a half of his perplexities then, perhaps all of them. He would at least learn more about herself and the reason for the attack at Fort Churchill.

He paddled for another hour, and then looked at his watch by the light of a match. It was three o'clock.

Jeanne had not moved, but as the match burned out between his fingers she startled him by speaking.

"Is it nearly morning, M'sieur?"

"An hour until dawn," said Philip. "You have been sleeping a long time--" Her name was on his lips, but he found it a little more difficult to speak now. And yet there was a gentleness in Jeanne's "M'SIEUR" which encouraged him. "Are you getting hungry?" he asked.

"Pierre and my father always ask me that when THEY are starving,"

replied Jeanne, sitting erect in her nest so that Philip saw her face and the s.h.i.+mmer of her hair. "There is everything to eat in the pack, M'sieur Philip, even to a bottle of olives."

"Good!" cried Philip, delighted, "But won't you please cut out that 'm'sieur?' My greatest weakness is a desire to be called by my first name. Will you?"

"If it pleases you," said Jeanne. "There is everything there to eat, and I will make you a cup of coffee, M'sieur--"

"What?"

"Philip."

There was a ripple of laughter in the girl's voice. Philip fairly trembled.

"You were prepared for this journey," he said. "You were going to leave after you saw me on the rock. I have been wondering why--why you took enough interest in me--"

He knew that he was blundering, and in the darkness his face turned red. Jeanne's tact was delightful.

"We were curious about you," she said, with bewitching candor. "Pierre is the most inquisitive creature in the world, and I wanted to thank you for returning my handkerchief. I'm sorry you didn't find a bit of lace which I lost at the same time!"

"I did!" exclaimed Philip.

He bit his tongue, and cursed himself at this fresh break. Jeanne was silent. After a moment she said:

"Shall I make you some coffee?"

"Will you be able to do it? Your foot--"

"I had forgotten that," she said. "It doesn't hurt any more. But I can show you how."

Her unaffected ingenuousness, the sweetness of her voice, the simplicity and ease of her manner delighted Philip, and at the same time filled him with amazement. He had never met a forest girl like Jeanne. Her beauty, her queen-like bearing, when she had stood with Pierre on the rock, had puzzled him and filled him with admiration. But now her voice, the music of her words, her quickness of perception added tenfold to those impressions. It might have been Miss Brokaw who was sitting there in the bow talking to him, only Jeanne's voice was sweeter than Miss Brokaw's; and even in the lightest of the words she had spoken there was a tone of sincerity and truth. It flashed upon Philip that Jeanne might have stepped from a convent school, where gentle voices had taught her and language was formed in the ripe fullness of music. In a moment he believed that something like this had happened.

"We will go ash.o.r.e," he said, searching for an open s.p.a.ce. "This must be tedious to you, if you are not accustomed to it."

"Accustomed to it, M'sieur--Philip!" exclaimed Jeanne, catching herself. "I was born here!"

"In the wilderness?"

"At Fort o' G.o.d."

"You have not always lived there?"

For a brief s.p.a.ce Jeanne was silent.

"Yes, always, M'sieur. I am eighteen years old, and this is the first time that I have ever seen what you people call civilization. It is my first visit to Fort Churchill. It is the first time I have ever been away from Fort o' G.o.d."

Jeanne's voice was low and subdued. It rang with truth. In it there was something that was almost tragedy. For a breath or two Philip's heart seemed to stop its beating, and he leaned far over, looking straight and questioningly into the beautiful face that met his own. In that moment the world had opened and engulfed him in a wonder which at first his mind could not comprehend.

XII

The canoe ran among the reeds, with its bow to the sh.o.r.e. Philip's astonishment still held him motionless.

"A little while ago you asked me if I would tell you anything but--but--the truth," he stammered, trying to find words to express himself, "and this--"

"Is the truth," interrupted Jeanne, a little coolly. "Why should I tell you an untruth, M'sieur?"

Philip had asked himself that same question shortly after their first meeting on the cliff. And now in the girl's question there was sounded a warning for him to be more discreet.

"I did not mean that," he cried, quickly. "Please forgive me. Only--it is so wonderful, so almost IMPOSSIBLE to believe. Do you know what I thought of for three-quarters of the night after I left you and Pierre on the rock? It was of years--centuries ago. I put you and Pierre back there. It seemed as though you had come to me from out of another world, that you had strayed from the chivalry and beauty of some royal court, that a queen's painter might have known and made a picture of you, as I saw you there, but that to me you were only the vision of a dream. And now you say that you have always lived here!"

He saw Jeanne's eyes glowing. She had lifted herself from among the bearskins and was leaning toward him. Her face was quivering with emotion; her whole being seemed concentrated on his words.

"M'sieur--Philip--did we seem--like that?" she asked, tremulously.

"Yes, or I would not have written the letter," replied Philip. He leaned forward over the pack, and his face was close to Jeanne's. "I had just pa.s.sed over the place where men and women of a century or two ago were buried, and when I saw you and Pierre I thought of them; of Mademoiselle D'Arcon, who left a prince to follow her lover to a grave back there at Churchill, and I wondered if Grosellier--"

"Grosellier!" cried the girl.

She was breathing quickly, excitedly. Suddenly she drew back with a little, nervous laugh.

"I am glad you thought of us like THAT," she added. "It was Grosellier, le grand chevalier, who first lived at Fort o' G.o.d!"