IN WHICH I USE OPPORTUNITY
I squatted beside many camp fires in the next week. I sat in the
flattened cones of the Chippewas' tepees and smoked innumerable pipes
of rank tobacco with the old men. I traded some, but talked more, and
at the end of the week I started home. I waited for a pleasant day and
a westerly wind, for the small canoe was perilously laden with skins.
There was scarcely room for Labarthe and myself to crowd down on our
knees and use our paddles.
We slipped into Sturgeon Cove late in the afternoon, and swept with the
wind up the stretches of the bay to the camping ground. Summer was at
flood tide, and the air was pungent and the leaves shining. The sunset
shone through tattered ends of cloud, so that the west was hung with
crimson banners. It was my first homecoming.
Before we reached the camp I saw the woman. She had strayed down the
shore to the west,--too far for safety, I thought,--and was standing
alone on the sand, looking toward the sunset. Her head was back, and
her arms flung out to the woods and the shining sky. I have sometimes
found myself stretching my own arms in just that fashion when I have
been alone and have felt something pressing within me that was too
large for speech. I motioned Labarthe to ship his paddle that I might
look. The western glow was full upon the woman, and her lips were
parted. The open sleeves of her skin blouse fell away from her arms,
which had grown gently rounded since I saw her first. I could not see
her eyes, but she looked somewhere off into the untraveled west,--the
west that was the portal of my enterprise. What was her thought? I
must not let myself trap it unaware. I gave a long, low call; the call
of the loon as he skirts the marshes in the twilight.
She turned instantly and saw us. I bent forward. The drabbled plume
of my hat swept the water, and I heard Labarthe curse under his breath,
and beg me remember that the canoe was laden. But just then I had no
caution in me.
The woman's arms dropped. She had a moment of indecision, and she
stood looking at me with the sunset in her face and eyes. Then she
suddenly thrust out both hands towards me across the stretch of water.
I could see her smooth-skinned brown fingers, and one wore my ring.
She bade me welcome. I bent to my paddle, and would have crashed the
canoe up to the shore.
But she forestalled me. She was already on her way back to the camp,
and if she knew that I had started toward her she did not let me see.
So I had, perforce, to follow. She walked with the free, gliding step
of a woman whose foot had been trained on polished surfaces. I watched
her, and let Labarthe paddle our way through the reeds.
We reached the camp, deafened by Pierre's bellow of greeting. The
woman had kept pace with us, and stood waiting for us to disembark.
She was breathing quickly and the blood was in her brown cheeks; her
great eyes were frankly opened and shining. I pushed by the men and
bent to kiss her hand.
"Madame, thank you for my welcome home."
She bowed, and I caught the perfume of a rose on her breast.
"Monsieur, we are all rejoiced to see you safe." Her tone took,
half-whimsically, the note of court and compliment. The fingers that I
still held were berry stained. She showed them to me with a laugh and
a light word, and so made excuse to draw them away. Her hair had grown
long enough to blow into her eyes, and she smoothed a soft loose wave
of it as she questioned me about my voyage.
I was new to the wonder of seeing her there, so answered her stupidly.
For all my day-dreams of the week that I had been away I was not
prepared for her. And indeed she had altered. The strain of fear and
incessant watchfulness was removed, and with the lessening of that
tension had come a pliancy of look and gesture, a richness of tone that
found me unprepared. I made but a poor figure. It was as well that
work clamored at me, and that I had to turn away and direct the men.
We ate our supper at the time of the last daylight, and the
whippoorwills were calling and the water singing in the reeds. It was
a silent meal, but I sat beside the woman, and when it was over I drew
her with me to the shore. It was very still. Fireflies danced in the
grasses, and the stars pricked out mistily through a gauze of cloud. I
wrapped the woman in her fur coat, and bade her sit, while I stretched
myself at her feet. Then I turned to her.
"Madame, have you questions for me that you did not wish the men to
hear?"
She sat very quietly, but I knew that her hand, which was within touch
of mine, grew suddenly rigid.
"Monsieur, you heard nothing of Lord Starling?"
I touched her hand lightly. "Nothing, madame. I have no news."
"Then matters stand just as they did a week ago?"
I hesitated. "As concerns Lord Starling, yes. As concerns
ourselves---- Madame, I carry a lighter heart than I did. All this
week I have feared that you were fretting at the loneliness and the
rough surroundings. But I find you serene and the surface of life
smooth. It is a gallant spirit that you bring to this situation. I
thank you, madame."
She did not speak for a moment, so that I wondered if I had vexed her.
I looked up straight into her great eyes that were full on me, and
there was something disquietingly alight in her glance, a flicker of
that lightning that had played between us on the day of the storm.
"Monsieur!" she cried, with a little sobbing laugh. "I beg you never
to thank me--for anything. The stream of gratitude must always run
from me to you. I have not been serene because of any will of mine.
It has been instinctive. I can sometimes carry out a fixed purpose,
but I do it stiffly, inflexibly, not as you do, with a laugh and a
shrug, monsieur. No, no! My serenity has not been calculated. I have
been--I have been almost happy. It is strange, but it is true."
I drew my hand away from her finger tips, for my own were shaking.
"Madame, what makes you happy?"
She looked down at me with frank seriousness, but her eyes still kept
their sweet, strange brightness; she pressed her palms together as she
always did when much in earnest.
"Monsieur, is it so strange after all? Think of the wonder of what I
see about me! The great stars, the dawns, and the strange waters that
go no one knows where. I have lived all my life in courts and have not
felt trammeled by them, but now---- Monsieur, there is a freedom, yes,
and a happiness stirring in me that I have not known. I wonder if you
understand?"
I watched the starlight draw elfin lines across her face, and my heart
suddenly cried through my tongue words that my brain would have
forbidden.
"I understand this at least. Madame, you talk of happiness. I am
finding happiness at this moment that I never felt at court,--no, nor
in the wilderness till now."
She did not draw back nor protest, but she looked at me with wistful
gravity.
"Monsieur---- Monsieur"----
"I am your servant, madame."
She halted. "This is a masque, a comedy," she stumbled. "This--this
life in the greenwood. Does it not seem a fantasy?"
"You seem very real to me, madame."
"Monsieur, I tell you, it is a masque. Will you not help me play it as
such?"
"You treat it as a masque in your own heart, madame?"
She turned her face into the shadow. "I eat, I sleep, I laugh with the
birds, and I play with Singing Arrow. I do not look ahead." She rose.
"Play with me. Play it is a dream, monsieur."
I rose and stepped beside her toward her cabin. "I am a man," I said,
with a short laugh of my own. "I cannot spin words nor cheat myself.
But I shall not distress you. Do not fear me, madame."
But her step lingered. "You leave us soon?"
"At dawn to-morrow."
"Monsieur! And you go"----
"To the Winnebagoes. I shall return in a week."
She clasped her hands behind her as if her white cloak bound her. "To
the Winnebagoes,--to another tribe of Indians! Are you sure that they
are friendly? I forget that there are Indians in the forest, since I
see none here. Ah, you must sleep now if you are to rise so early.
Good-night, and--thank you, monsieur. Good-night." I had hardly bowed
to her in turn before her long light step had brought her to her door.
And then I went back to work. The furs had been sorted, labeled, and
cached; the canoe had been dried, and its splints examined and new
bales of merchandise had been made up for the trip on the morrow. But
there remained much writing and figuring to be gone over. It seemed as
if I had but closed my eyes when Labarthe touched me on the shoulder
and told me it was dawn.
And out in the dawn I found the woman. She had seen to it that the
whole camp was astir, and the fire was crackling and the kettle already
puffing steam. The morning was austere and gray-veiled, so that the
red blaze was like the cheer of home. We ate with laughter, and sleepy
birds scolded in the thickets. The woman sparkled with dainty
merriment that held my thanks at bay. It was only when she waved her
adieus at the beach that she dropped her foils.
"I shall pray for fair winds, monsieur," she called.
I looked back at her across the widening water. "Madame, can you hear
me? The wind I pray for will blow me back to you."
Metaphor aside, it was a favorable day and the breeze was with us. We
pushed up a tarpaulin on our paddles for a square sail, and covered the
distance to the west shore of La Baye in a few hours. Before night we
were lifting the rush mats that hung before the reed-thatched lodges of
the Winnebagoes.
And here for seven days I plied my trade. A man has many coats and all
may fit him. The one that I wore in those days showed the bells and
ribands of the harlequin, but there was chain armor underneath. I
counted my results as satisfactory when I started home.
We did not reach the camp on this second homecoming till after the
stars were out. That left me too few hours for a large labor, and I
had but hurried greetings from the woman while all the camp looked on.
The men were sleek from idleness, and I had need to goad them with word
and eye. It was late before I could linger at the woman's cabin and
beg a word. She sat with Singing Arrow, watching the soft night, and
again her first question was of her cousin.
"You have heard nothing of Lord Starling?"
Was this fear of him or a covert wish to meet him? "Nothing, madame,"
I replied. "But I have been to the south far out of your cousin's way.
I go next to the Malhominis. I think I shall certainly hear tidings of
him there."
"You go to-morrow?"
"I must, madame. Madame, I have been anxious about you. Will you
promise me not to stray alone from the camp?"
She left the cabin and came and stood beside me in the quiet and
starshine. She looked off at the forest.
"Is there danger around us, monsieur?"
I followed her look back into the dark timber. We both hushed our
breathing till we heard the moan of the water and the lament of some
strange night bird. The woman was so small, and yet I left her in the
wilderness without me!
"Keep close to the camp," I said hoarsely. "No, I know of no danger.
But keep close to the camp."
Her glance came back to me. "Ah, you do think there is danger! But,
monsieur, of yourself---- If there is peril for me there must be more
for you."
She looked at me fully, with no fear in her eyes, but with quick,
intelligent concern. She stood beside me in the dusk, as wife should
stand with husband, and feared for my safety and forgot her own. Yet I
dared not touch her hand. I lifted my sword and slammed it in its
scabbard.
"There is no danger," I said, with stupid brusqueness. "I am
over-anxious. I bid you good-night, madame."
I went to the Malhominis with haste pushing me, for I hoped for news of
Starling. I pressed forward, yet I recoiled. There would be
cross-threads to untangle when I met my wife's cousin.
It was wonderful voyaging to the Malhominis. Their village was near
the mouth of a river, and they were close bound with great rice swamps
that gave them their name. Our low canoe burrowed through a tunnel of
green as we nosed our way up to their camp. Birds fluttered in the
tangle, and fish bubbled to the surface under our paddles. I did not
wonder that I found the tribe as well fed as summer beavers. But I
learned nothing from them. They were a good-natured people, as running
over with talk as idle women, and they assured me that I was the first
white man they had seen since the moon of worms. We talked of the
Huron situation at Michillimackinac, but they said nothing of having
seen a warrior of that tribe, so I made sure that Pemaou had not been
with them. I swallowed relief and disappointment. They said that a
small company of Sacs was encamped to the north, and that Father Nouvel
was with them. So after a few days I went on.
A waft of fetid air on a hot day will bring the smell of that Sac camp
to me even now. The Sacs were a migratory, brutish people, who
snatched at life red-handed and growling, and as I squatted in their
dirty hovels, I lost, like a dropped garment, all sense of the wonder
and freedom of my wilderness life. Suddenly all the forest seemed
squalid, and a longing for the soft ease and cleanliness of
civilization came on me like a wave. But I hid the feeling, and
lingered, though my welcome was but slight. Even my small cask of
brandy failed to buy their smiles, and it was only when I talked of war
that they listened. They were a useless people on the water, for they
could not handle canoes, but land warfare was their meat. So I talked
long.
I found Father Nouvel among them, his delicate old face shining white
and serene amid their grime. I fell upon him eagerly, but he could
tell me nothing. He had left the Pottawatamies the day after the
wedding, and had heard no rumors of any Englishman. I did not take him
into my confidence. He had outlived the time when the abstract terms
"ambition" and "patriotism" had meaning to him. The story of my hopes
would have tinkled in his ears like the blarings of a child's trumpet.
But in one matter he questioned me.
"Your wife,--should you not have brought her with you, monsieur?"
I felt piqued. "But her comfort, Father Nouvel!"
He looked me over. "I think somehow that she would prefer your company
to her own comfort," he said, and when I did not answer he looked
troubled. When he bade me good-by, he spoke again.
"Your wife came strangely near my heart. You are giving her a hard
life. You will be patient with her, monsieur?"
I bowed, for I did not wish to answer. Mine was a real marriage to
Father Nouvel. I thought of the look in the priest's eyes as he made
us man and wife, and of the voices of the Indian women as they chanted
of life and marriage, and I shut my teeth on a sudden feeling of
bitterness. A man may be counted rich yet know himself to be a pauper.
I never saw Father Nouvel again. If he were living now I would go far
to meet him.
It was a long day's travel back to Sturgeon Cove, and night had fallen
before we wound our passage around the curves of the bay and saw the
clear eye of the evening fire burning steadily on the shore. Our
double trip had taken eleven days, and for me the time had lagged. I
had carried an unreasoning weight of oppression, and the shout that I
gave at sight of the black figures around the blaze was an outburst of
relief.
My company flung themselves at the shore, and all talked at once.
"For three days we have watched," Singing Arrow scolded.
The woman stood near, and I went to her. "Have you watched for three
days?" I asked, with my lips on her hand.
"Yes," she said, and then I felt ashamed, for her eyes looked worn and
troubled.
"Forgive me, madame," I murmured, though I scarcely knew for what, and
I felt embarrassed and without words.
"I will stay here to-morrow," I said stupidly, and when she said that
she was glad, it did not seem to me that she meant it. I saw her no
more that night.
But with the fresh morning I forgot all chill. We lingered over a
breakfast of broiled bass, and the woman showed me a canoe that Simon
had made for her. Simon was the deft-fingered member of my crew, and
he had fashioned a fairy craft. I saw that it would carry two, and I
said to the woman that we would take it, and have a day of idleness
together. I feared she might demur, but she did not. Indeed, she
suddenly laughed out like a child without much reason, and there was
that in the sound that satisfied me, until I swore at the men and their
blundering to keep down my own joy.
We took materials for lunch and started before the dew was dry. The
woman showed me her new skill with the paddle, and I praised her
without care for my conscience. We went slowly and we talked much.
Yet we talked only of the birds and the woods and the paddling. Never
of ourselves.
At noon we landed in a pocket of an inlet on the south side of the cove
toward its mouth. There was a wonderful meadow there with tiger lilies
burning like blood and a giant sycamore leaning to the water. I cooked
a venison steak on hot stones, and we had maize cakes and wild berries
and water from a spring. We sat alone at meat as we had never done.
After lunch the woman sat under the sycamore and I lay at her feet. I
looked up at her till her eyes dropped.
"Madame," I whispered, "madame, you were vexed with me last night."
She forced her glance to mine. "Monsieur, I had been terribly anxious
for three days. When I saw you"----
A sun ray fell across her face, and I took my hat and held it between
her and the light. "You did not finish," I said. "I will help you.
When you saw that I was safe you were vexed that I had not come earlier
and so saved you anxiety? Is that what you were about to say, madame?"
She turned to smile and shake her head at my seriousness. She fought
down her rising color and held her head like a gallant boy.
"I was unreasonable," she said. "Please forget it. Did your trading
prosper, monsieur?"
But I would not shift my eyes. "I shall try not to vex you again in
that way. I did not think--except of my own anxiety. Let me tell you
what I have been doing. I have been trading, yes, but I have also"----
"Careful, monsieur!"
"I wish you to know. Madame, I am succeeding in my intriguing among
the tribes. I talk more than I trade. You would smile at my rhetoric
and call me a mountebank, but I am succeeding. I tell the tribes that
when more than one Englishman reaches here the whole race will follow
and will overflow the hunting grounds as a torrent does the lowlands.
I tell them the English will bring the Iroquois. I show them that the
French are their only protection. They listen, for what I say is not
new. It has been talked around their fires for a long time, but the
tribes are not powerful enough to act alone, and they have lacked a
leader who could unite them. I think that they will follow me if I
call them to war, madame!"
She looked at me steadily. "War upon whom, monsieur?"
"War upon the Iroquois. Upon the English if they venture near."
"And you tell me this because"----
"Because I wish sincerity between us."
My hat lay at her feet, and she pressed its sorry plume between her
fingers. "Monsieur, if you had heard news of Lord Starling during this
last week you would have told me at once."
"I should have told you at once, madame. I am glad you introduced this
matter. Does your mind still hold? Or do you now think that we should
seek your cousin?"
Again she lowered her eyes, but I did not miss the sudden flash in
them. "My cousin chose his path. Why need we interfere? Have
you--have you theories as to where he can be?"
I flicked my finger at a wandering robin. "I am as guiltless of
theories as that bird. It is passing strange. Your cousin and our
ghostly Huron seem to have gone up in vapor."
"Our ghostly Huron, monsieur?"
I planted my elbows on the grass that I might face her. "Listen,
madame. It is time you knew the story of Pemaou." And thereupon I
recited all that had happened between the Huron and myself from the day
when we had played at shuttlecock with spears till the night when he
had shadowed us at the Pottawatamie camp,--the night before our
wedding. I even told her of the profile in his pouch.
She winced at that. "Why did you not tell me before?"
"It seemed useless to alarm you."
"But you tell me now."
I smiled at her. "I know you better. It seems fitting to tell you
everything now, madame."
She looked at me with a frown of worry. "Monsieur, you are in danger
from that Huron. He hates you if you humbled him."
I laughed at her. "He would not dare harm a Frenchman, madame."
"Then why does he follow you?"
But there I could only shrug. "He was probably in Lord Starling's pay,
and was keeping track of us that he might direct your cousin to us.
But we have shaken him off."
She thought this over for some time without speaking, and I was content
to lie silent at her feet. Bees droned in the flowers and white drifts
of afternoon clouds floated over us. I was happy in the moment, and
more than that, I was drugged with my dreams of the future. There were
days and days and days before us. This was but the threshold. And
then, with my ear to the ground, I heard the sound of an axe. The
sound of an axe in an untraveled wilderness!
I crowded closer to the ground. My blood beat in my temples, and I was
awake with every muscle. But I learned nothing. The sound of an axe
and then silence.
The woman looked at me. "Monsieur, is something wrong? Your face has
changed."
I stretched out my hand to her. "You must not grow fanciful. But
come. It is time to go home, madame."
I pushed her into the canoe in haste, but when we had once rounded the
turn of the bluff we floated home slowly. The light of late afternoon
is warm and yellow. It cradled the woman in lapping waves, and she sat
glowing and fragrant, and her eyes were mirrors of the light. I
dropped my paddle.
"Tell me more about yourself. Talk to me. Tell me of your childhood,"
I breathed.
She put out her hand. "Monsieur! Our contract!"
I let the canoe drift. "Madame; tell me the truth. Why do you hold
yourself so detached from me? Is it---- Madame, is it because you
fear that we shall learn to love each other,--to love against our
wills?"
She looked down. "It would be a tragedy if we did, monsieur."
"You would think it a tragedy to learn to love me?"
"It could be nothing else, monsieur."
The breeze took us where it willed. The mother-of-pearl shimmer of
evening was turning the headlands to mist, and the air smelled of cedar
and pine. Tiny waves lapped complainingly on the sides of our rocking
canoe. I leaned forward.
"Listen, madame, you know life. You know how little is often given
under the bond of marriage. You know how men and women live long lives
together though completely sundered in heart, and how others though
separated in life walk side by side in the spirit. As this is so, why
do you fear to see or know too much of me? Propinquity does not create
love."
Still she looked down. "Men say that it does, monsieur."
"Then why are so many marriages unhappy? No, madame, you know better
than that. And you know that if love should grow between us it would
sweep away your toy barriers like paper. Nearness or absence would not
affect it. Madame, let me have your hand."
"No, no! Monsieur, I do not know you."
"You shall know me better. Come, what is a hand? There. Madame,
would you prefer, from now on, to travel in hardship with me rather
than be left in comfort here?"
"I should indeed, monsieur."
"Then you shall go with me."
"But your work, monsieur!"
I released her hand and picked up my paddle. "I see that Indian tribes
are not my only concern," I explained. "I have other matters to
conquer. We shall not be separated from now on."
She did not answer, and I paddled home in silence with my eyes on her
face. As we landed, she gave me her hand.
"I do not care for supper, and am going to my house. Good-night,
monsieur."
I bowed over her hand. "Are you glad that you are to travel with me
and know me better? Are you glad, madame?"
She smiled a little. "I--I think so, monsieur."
"You are not sure? Think of it to-night. Perhaps you will tell me
to-morrow. Will you tell me to-morrow, madame?"
She drew back into the dusk. "Perhaps--to-morrow. Good-night,
monsieur."
I walked through the meadow. I would not eat supper and I would not
work. Finally I called Simon. He was a strange, quiet man, not as
strong as the others of the crew, but of use to me for his knowledge of
woodcraft. As a boy he had been held captive by the Mohawks, and he
was almost as deft of hand and eye as they.
"Have you seen any sign or sound of Indian or white men in these three
weeks?" I asked him.
He looked at me rather sullenly. "Yes. A canoe went through here one
night about a week ago."
"Who was in it?"
"I do not know."
"You should have followed."
"I did."
"You should have reported to me."
He glowered at me with the eye of a rebellious panther. "I watched.
The master went away." Then he showed his teeth in open defiance. "I
watched every night on the beach. The master slept or went away."
I opened my mouth to order him under guard, but I did not form the
words. I thought of the way that he had spent his days working on the
delicately fashioned canoe and his nights in keeping guard. And all
for the woman. Women make mischief in the wilderness. I grew pitiful.
"Watch again to-night," I said kindly, "and you shall sleep to-morrow.
Simon, I thought that I heard the sound of an axe off the south shore
to-day. I shall take the small canoe at daybreak and see what I can
find. Tell the camp I have gone fishing. I shall return by noon.
And, Simon"----
"Yes, master."
"Madame de Montlivet is your special care till I return."