MARY STARLING
I do not know how long I walked, nor where, but the sun dropped some
space. When I returned to the camp, I found the men before me. They
had returned early, empty-handed, and were in an ill humor because the
Englishman was away, and there was nothing done. I commanded Pierre to
build a larger fire than usual, and keep it piled high till I returned.
Then I began a search for footprints.
They were easily found. The young grass crushed at a touch, and it was
child's work to pick out the moccasin track across the meadow. When
the steps reached the beach they were harder to follow. I lost them
for a while, though there were scattered pebbles that would have led me
straight as a homing pigeon, had I been cool enough in mind to have my
eyes and wits as sharp as usual. As it was, I doubled, and squandered
time, until the sun began to loom red near the horizon. And all the
time I was saying to myself, "It is not true. It is not true."
The windings of the track puzzled me. It would go straight into the
forest for a space, then double sharply, and come back to the beach.
It came to me at last that the wish to hide pulled the steps into the
timber, and that the fear and solitude of the great woods speedily
drove them out again. Then I determined to pay no attention to these
detours, but push along the beach. And doing this, I speedily came
upon the red blanket flung down in the shelter of a rock, and its owner
resting upon it.
When I saw that all was well, I became suddenly exhausted, and went
forward slowly. I reached the red blanket, and looked down. Yes, all
was well. A hunting knife lay in an open bundle. I stooped and seized
it, and hurled it far into the water, and then I asked, rather huskily,
a question that had not been in my mind at all:--
"What is your name?"
"Mary Starling." The woman had risen, and stood with her hands pressed
tight against her throat; the look she gave me was the saddest I had
ever seen. "Monsieur, you wrong me. The knife that you threw away was
for my protection,--for my food."
I stood over her. "You swear this?" I said, breathing hard.
She held her head high. "Monsieur, I am a coward in many ways, but not
in this. Life is bitter, but I will live it as long as the Powers
please. I will take what comes. Even among the Indians I was not
tempted to--to that."
"You would have died. Starved here in the wilderness, if I had not
found you."
"Perhaps, monsieur. Yet I gave myself what chance I could. I took
some food, a fishing line, and that knife."
"Why did you leave me?"
"Monsieur!"
"I say, why did you leave me?"
"Monsieur, what else could I do? I would have discredited you. Those
were your words. 'A woman would discredit our canoes.'"
"Yet you were--you were a woman all the time."
"Not in your eyes, monsieur."
I gripped her hand. "Did the Indians suspect?"
"Never for a moment."
"Yet when they captured you"--
"I was in man's dress. I--I was trying to defend the blockhouse. The
men had--had--had"--
I seized her in my arm, and made her drink from my brandy flask. In a
moment the color came back to her lips, and she drew away.
"I have never done this before," she explained unsteadily. "Never
since my capture. I suppose it is because--because you know. And so I
cannot play the man. Monsieur, believe me. I would never have come
with you, never, if I had not felt sure of myself. Sure that I could
play my part, and that you would not know. I--I--tried, a little, to
make you understand there at the commandant's, and when I saw that you
were really blind I thought that I was safe. Believe me, monsieur."
I handed her my flask. "Drink more," I commanded. I took the blanket
and wrapped it around her though the air was still warm. "You must not
let yourself have chills in this fashion if you would save your
strength. Madame, I believe nothing about you that is not brave and
admirable. Are you Madame Starling, and is Benjamin your husband that
you took his name to shield you, and even repeated the name in your
dreams?"
She looked at me, and I felt rebuked for something that had been in my
tone. "I am unmarried," she said steadily. "Benjamin Starling is a
cousin. Monsieur, there is nothing left either of us but to let me go.
Oh, if I could live this day over and be more careful! How was it, how
was it that I let you know?"
I walked away. A frightened mink ran across my feet, and I cursed at
it. Then I walked back.
"You did not let me know," I said, and I stooped to pick up her bundle.
"I know nothing. I was always the blindest of men. Come, Monsieur
Starling, let us go back to camp."
Again she put her hands to her throat. "You mean that?"
I took the bundle in my arm. "It is the only way. Come, monsieur."
"I cannot."
"I think that you must."
"And can we go on as before?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "We can try. Come, Monsieur Starling, the
men are growling, for you should have made the fire. Remember, you
strayed into the woods and lost your way. Come, come, you must do your
part."
She looked at me, and a sudden dry sob shook her. "Forgive me,
monsieur!" she cried. "Yes, I will come." She tried to square her
shoulders. "I must get my spirit back before I can meet the men in
camp. Why am I such a coward!"
I dropped the bundle that I might take both her hands. "Mademoiselle,"
I said, "look at me. We are puppets in this matter. You have been
thrown into my hands against my will and your own, and I swear to you
that I will deal with you as fairly as I have strength. But you must
play your part. So long as I treat you as a woman you will be a
coward. Therefore I must be harsh with you. You have great will and
can endure loneliness of soul. I must thrust you back upon yourself.
There must be no woman in the camp. Come, monsieur, let us not talk of
this longer. Are you ready?" And not waiting for assent, I led the
way back to camp without word or look; I even kept myself from putting
out a helping hand when I heard the steps behind me falter and almost
fall.
As we came to the fire and met the men, I found myself fingering my
sword. But it was a useless motion. The oafs saw nothing amiss,
though to me the very air was shouting the secret. We had a fat
larder, broiled whitefish and bear-steak from the kill of the day
before, and the men were thinking much of their stomachs and not at all
of the Englishman, save when they turned their backs upon him to show
that he was out of favor. So we sat down to meat. We sat a long time,
while the twilight faded and the stars pricked out clear, and there was
little talk between us. I was sitting at meat with a woman, a woman of
my own class, and I dared not offer her even the courtesy that one may
show a serving maid. Well, I would take what each day might bring and
not look ahead. I would think nothing about this person, as man or
woman, but would fill my thought with the purpose that had brought me
to the beaver lands. I told the men to be early astir that we might
make a longer day of travel on the morrow.
The morrow was gray. The wind was in the east, and the sunrise watery
and streaked with slate-colored bands. The water was clammy and
opaque, repellent to touch and sight. The way looked dreary, and the
woman carried her head high, as if in challenge to her courage. She
had risen early, and had gone through her trifling share in the
preparations, and though she had avoided me, I could see that she was
ready to play her part.
We paddled on our knees that morning, for the waves were choppy. By
ten o'clock the bands of cloud had merged into a dun canopy, and by
noon a slow, cold rain was drizzling. I dreaded a halt, but the
necessity pressed. I selected a small cove, well tree-grown, and we
turned our canoes inland.
Fortunately the rain, though persistent, had been gentle, and had not
penetrated far under the heavy foliaged pines. We selected a clump of
large trees, chopped the lower branches, and scraping away the surface
layer of moss and needles found dry ground. Here we piled the cargo in
two mounds, which we hooded with tarpaulins and with our overturned
canoes. Our provisions were snug enough; it was ourselves who were in
dreary estate.
It rained all the afternoon, stopped for a half hour at sunset, when
the sky, for a few moments, showed streaks of red, then closed in for a
night's drizzle. I had built what shelter I could for the woman out of
boughs covered with sheets of paper birch and elm. I had made a
similar shelter for myself that I might not seem to discriminate too
much in favor of the Englishman, and had told the men to do the same.
But they were indolent, and stopped at chopping a few hemlock boughs,
which they laid across crotched aspens. In truth, our shelters
accomplished little against the cold and wet. Do what we could, we had
great discomfort, and morning found the rain still dripping and the sky
still unbroken gray.
And so it went for three days. The north country has such storms in
the spring, and they chill all beauty out of the woods. We could do
nothing. We kept what fire we could, regummed the seams of the canoes,
and for the rest ate, sulked, and tried to sleep. The men gambled
among themselves, and I grew weary of the click, click of their balls
and the sound of their stupid boasts and low jesting. Yet I had no
ground for stopping them, for the woman understood almost nothing of
their uncouth speech. Indeed, she was little in sight or hearing. She
stayed in her bark shelter, and I could hear her moving about, trying
to keep it neat and herself in order. In those three days I learned
one secret of her spirit. She had a natural merriment that did not
seem a matter of will power nor even of wish. It was an instinctive,
inborn content, that was perhaps partly physical, in that it enabled
her to sleep well, and so to wake with zest and courage. By night her
eyes might be dark circled and her step slow, but each morning there
was interest in her looks to see what the strange day was about to
bring. I had seen this nature in men many times; I had not thought
that it belonged to women who are framed to follow rather than to look
ahead.
For twenty-four hours we held little more intercourse than dumb people,
but the second day she came to me.
"Monsieur, would you teach me?" she asked. "Would you explain to me
about the Indian dialects?"
I agreed. I threw her a blanket, which she wrapped around her, and we
cowered close to the bole of a pine. I took birch bark and a crayon
and turned schoolmaster, explaining that the Huron and Iroquois nations
came of the same stock, but that most of the western tribes were
Algonquin in blood, and that, though they had tribal differences in
speech, Algonquin was the basic language, as Latin is the root of all
our tongues at home. I took the damp bark, and wrote some phrases of
Algonquin, showing her the syntax as well as I had been able to reduce
it to rule myself. She had a quick ear and the power of attention, but
after an hour of it I tore the bark in pieces.
"We will not try this again," I told her roughly, and we scarcely met
or spoke for the next day.
The fourth morning came without rain, and the sun struggled out. We
built great fires, dried our clothing, repacked the canoes, and were
afloat by noon. By contrast it was pleasant, but it still was cold,
and we stood to our paddling. I wrapped the woman in extra blankets,
and made her swallow some brandy. I hoped that she would sleep, but
she did not, for it was she who called to us that there were three
canoes ahead.
It showed how clogged I was by sombre thought that I had not seen them,
for in a moment they swept in full sight. I crowded the woman down in
the canoe, and covered her with sailcloth. Then I hailed the canoes
with a long cry, "Tanipi endayenk?" which means, "Whence come you?" and
added "Peca," that they might know I called in peace.
The canoes wheeled and soon hung like water birds at our side. They
were filled with a hunting party of Pottawatamies, and the young braves
grunted and chaffered at me in high good humor. I gave them knives and
vermilion, and they talked freely. I saw them look at the draped shape
in the canoe, but I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Ouskouebi!" which
might mean either "drunken" or a "fool," and they grinned and seemed
satisfied. They promised to report to me at La Baye des Puants, and I
saw by their complaisance that the French star was at the zenith. I
should have stretched my legs in comfort as I went on my way.