The Hidden Children Part 23

"Well?" she asked, still scrubbing, and her hair was fallen in curls about her brow--hair thicker and brighter, though scarce longer, than my own. But Lord! The wild-rose beauty that flushed her cheeks as she laboured there! And when she at last looked up at me her eyes seemed like two grey stars, full of reflections from the golden pool.

"I have come," said I, "to speak most seriously."

"What is it you wish?"

"A comrade's privilege."

"And what may that be, sir?"

"The right to be heard; the right to be answered--and a comrade's privilege to offer aid."

"I need no aid."

"None living can truthfully say that," said I pleasantly.

"Oh! Do you then require charity from this pleasant world we live in?"

"I did not offer charity to you."

"You spoke of aid," she said coldly.

"Lois--is there in our brief companions.h.i.+p no memory that may warrant my speaking as honestly as I speak to you?"

"I know of none, Do you?"

I had been looking at her chilled pink fingers. My ring was gone.

"A ring for a rose is my only warrant," I said.

She continued to soap the linen and to scrub in silence. After she had finished the garment and wrung it dry, she straightened her supple figure where she was kneeling, and, turning toward me, searched in her bosom with one little, wet hand, drawing from it a faded ribbon on which my ring hung.

"Do you desire to have it of me again?" she asked, without any expression on her sun-freckled face.

"What? The ring?"

"Aye! Desire it!" I repeated, turning red. "No more than you desire the withered bud you left beside me while I slept."

"What bud, sir?"

"Did you not leave me a rose-bud?"

"I?"

"And a bit of silver birch-bark scratched with a knife point?"

"Now that I think of it, perhaps I may have done so--or some such thing--scarce knowing what I was about--and being sleepy. What was it that I wrote? I can not now remember--being so sleepy when I did it."

"And that is all you thought about it, Lois?"

"How can one think when half asleep"

"Here is your rose," I said angrily. "I will take my ring again."

She opened her grey eyes at that.

"Lord!" she murmured in an innocent and leisurely surprise. "You have it still, my rose? Are roses scarce where you inhabit, sir? For if you find the flower so rare and curious I would not rob you of it--no!"

And, bending, soaked and soaped another s.h.i.+rt.

"Why do you mock me, Lois?"

"I! Mock you! La! Sir, you surely jest."

"You do so! You have done so ever since we met. I ask you why?" I repeated, curbing my temper.

"Lord!" she murmured, shaking her head. "The young man is surely going stark! A girl in my condition--such a girl as I mock at an officer and a gentleman? No, it is beyond all bounds; and this young man is suffering from the sun."

"Were it not," said I angrily, "that common humanity brought me here and bids me remain for the moment, I would not endure this."

"Heaven save us all!" she sighed. "How very young is this young man who comes complaining here that he is mocked--when all I ventured was to marvel that he had found a wild rose-bud so rare and precious!"

I said to myself: "d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n!" in fierce vexation, yet knew not how to take her nor how to save my dignity. And she, with head averted, was laughing silently; I could see that, too; and never in my life had I been so flouted to my face.

"Listen to me!" I broke out bluntly. "I know not who or what you are, why you are here, whither you are bound. But this I do know, that beyond our pickets there is peril in these woods, and it is madness for man or maid to go alone as you do."

The laughter had died out in her face. After a moment it became grave.

"Was it to tell me this that you spoke to me in the fort, Mr. Loskiel?"

she asked.

"Yes, Two days ago our pickets were fired on by Indians. Last night two riflemen of our corps took as many Seneca scalps. Do you suppose that when I heard of these affairs I did not think of you--remembering what was done but yesterday at Cherry Valley?"

"Did you--remember--me?"

"Good G.o.d, yes!" I exclaimed, my nerves on edge again at the mere memory of her rashness. "I came here as a comrade--wis.h.i.+ng to be of service, and--you have used me----"

"Vilely," she said, looking serenely at me.

"I did not say that, Lois----"

"I say it, Mr. Loskiel. And yet--I told you where to find me. That is much for me to tell to any man. Let that count a little to my damaged credit with you.... And--I still wear the ring you gave.... And left a rose for you, Let these things count a little in my favour. For you can scarcely guess how much of courage it had cost me." She knelt there, her bared arms hanging by her side, the sun bright on her curls, staring at me out of those strange, grey eyes.

"Since I have been alone," she said in a low voice, "no man--unless by a miracle it be you--has offered me a service or a kindness except that he awaited his reward. Soon or late their various songs became the same familiar air. It is the only song I've heard from men--with endless variations, truly, often and cunningly disguised--yet ever the same and sorry theme.... Men are what G.o.d made them; G.o.d has seemed to fas.h.i.+on me to their liking--I scarce know how--seeing I walk in rags, unkempt, and stained with wind and rain, and leaf and earth and sun."

She made a childish gesture, sweeping the curls aside with both her hands:

"I sheared my hair! Look at me, sir--a wild thing in a ragged s.h.i.+ft and tattered gown--all burnt and roughened with the sun and wind--not even clean to look on--yet that I am!--and with no friend to speak to save an Indian.... I ask you, sir, what it is in me--and what lack of pride must lie in men that I can not trust myself to the company of one among them--not one! Be he officer, or common soldier--all are the same."

She dropped her head, and, thoughtfully, her hands again crept up and wandered over her cheeks and hair, the while her grey eyes, fixed and remote, seemed lost in speculation. Then she looked up again: