I MEET VARIOUS WELCOMES
It was Father Carheil who first sighted us. He sounded the cry of our
arrival, and came skurrying like a sandpiper, his scant gown tripping
him, his cap askew.
I leaped from the canoe and hurried to him. The man must hate me, but
he could not refuse me news. I stretched out my hand.
"Is all well here, father? Is all well?"
He disdained my hand, and held his arms wide. "All is well with us.
But you---- We feared the Iroquois wolf had devoured you."
And I had thought the man capable of petty spite. I dropped on my
knees to him. "Father Carheil, I grieve for what I did, yet I could
not have done otherwise."
He drew back a little and rumpled his thin hair with a bloodless hand.
His face was frowning, but his restless, brilliant eyes were full of
amusement.
"So your conscience is not at ease? My son, you are as strong as a
Flemish work horse. I limped to mass for the next fortnight, and my
gown was in fiddle-strings,--you may send me another. As for the rest,
we need new altar hangings. Now, come, come, come. Tell us what has
happened."
And there it ended. One makes enemies in strange ways in this world
and friends in stranger. I should not have said that the way to win a
man's heart was to bind him like a Christmas fowl and then leave him
with his back on the sand.
The priest's cry had waked the garrison, and the officers came running.
Cadillac, stout as he was, was in the lead. I knew, from the press of
his arms about me, that he had thought me dead.
"Is Madame de Montlivet safe? Are the Senecas here?" I clamored at him.
A babel of affirmatives arose. Yes, madame was there. The Senecas
were there. So the English prisoner had proved to be a woman. Had I
known it at the time? I was a sly dog. All tongues talked at once,
while I fought for a hearing. We turned toward the commandant's. The
door of the nearest cabin opened and Starling came out. He did not
look toward us, and he walked the other way. The woman walked beside
him.
A hush clapped down on us as if our very breathing were strangled. A
lane opened in front of me. I took one step in it, then stopped.
There was the woman. I had followed her through wounds and hardship.
Through the long nights I had watched the stars and planned for our
meeting. But when I would have gone to her my feet were manacled, for
this was not the woman of my dreams. This woman wore trailing silk,
and her hair was coifed. And she was walking away from me; no instinct
told her that I was near. She was walking away, and Starling walked
beside her. I did not remember that I was wounded and a sorry figure;
I did not remember that I was dressed in skins. I remembered that I
had married this woman by force, and that she had once wished of her
own accord to marry Starling. And now she walked with him; she wore a
gown he must have brought; she had forgiven him. A hot spark ran from
my heart to my brain. I turned and started toward the beach.
I heard a breath from the throats around me and a stretching of cramped
limbs. Cadillac's arm dropped round my shoulders, and I felt the
pressure of his fingers.
"Come to my quarters," he said. "You have mail waiting. And we will
find you something to wear. Dubisson is near your size."
And so I let him lead me away. I pressed him for news of the Indian
situation, but he only shrugged and said, "Wait. Matters are quiescent
enough on the surface. We will talk later."
It was strange. I bathed and dressed quite as I had done many times
before, when I had come in from months in camp; quite as if there were
no woman, and as if massacre were not knocking at the window. But I
carried a black weight that made my tongue leaden, and I excused myself
from table on the plea of going through my mail.
The news the letters brought was good but unimportant. In the Montreal
packet was a sealed line in a woman's hand.
"I have tracked my miniature," it read. "I mourned its disappearance;
I should welcome its return. Can you find excuses for the man who took
it from me? If you can, I beg that you let me hear them. He was once
my friend, and I am loath to think of him hardly." The note bore no
signature. It was dated at the governor's house at Montreal, and
directed to me at Michillimackinac.
I was alone with Dubisson and I turned to him. "Madame Bertheau is at
Montreal?"
He shrugged. "So I hear."
"She has come to see her brother?"
Now he grinned. "Ostensibly, monsieur."
There was no need to hide my feeling from Dubisson, so I sat with my
chin sunk low and thought it over. I was ill pleased. I had been long
and openly in Madame Bertheau's train, and this was a land of gossips.
I turned to the lieutenant.
"Madame de Montlivet, where is she housed?"
He looked relieved. "She has a room next door. Starling we have taken
in with us. I would rather have a tethered elk. He is so big he fills
the whole place."
Now, square issues please me. "Dubisson, why has no one offered to
take me to my wife?"
The man laughed rather helplessly. "'T is from no lack of respect for
either of you, monsieur. But you said nothing, and Starling"----
"Yes, it is from Starling that I wish to hear."
"Well, Starling has said---- Monsieur, why repeat the man's gossip?"
"Go on, Dubisson."
"After all, it is only what the Englishman has said. Madame, so far as
I know, has said nothing. But Starling has told us that yours was a
marriage of form only,--that the woman consented under stress, and
now"----
"And now regretted it?"
"I am only quoting Starling. Monsieur, would you like to see your
wife?"
I rose. "Yes. Will you send word and see if I may?"
Dubisson bowed and left me with a speed that gave me a wry smile. The
laughter-loving lieutenant hated embarrassment as he did fast-days, and
I had given him a bad hour.
He was back before I thought it possible.
"She will see you at once in the commandant's waiting-room." He looked
at me oddly.
"Your wife is a queenly woman, monsieur."
The lights shone uncertainly in the commandant's waiting-room. It was
the room where I had met the English captive. From a defiant boy to a
court lady! It was a long road, and I was conscious of all the steps
that had gone to make it. I went to the woman in silk who waited by
the door. She stood erect and silent, but her eyes shone softly
through a haze, and when I bent to kiss her hand I found that she was
quivering from feet to hair.
"Monsieur!" she whispered unsteadily, "monsieur!" Then I felt her
light touch. "God is good. I have prayed for your safety night and
day. Ah--but your shoulder! They did not tell me. Are you wounded,
monsieur?"
I was cold as a clod. She had forgiven Starling. She had walked with
him. I answered the usual thing mechanically. "My shoulder,--it is a
scratch, madame." I kept my lips on her hand, and with the feeling her
touch brought me I could not contain my bitterness. "Madame, you wear
rich raiment. Does that mean that you and Lord Starling are again
friends?"
She drew away. "Monsieur, should we not be friends?"
"Have you forgiven Lord Starling, madame?"
She looked at me with wistful quiet. In her strange gown she seemed
saddened, matured. And she answered me gravely. "Monsieur, please
understand. My cousin and I---- Why, we traveled side by side in the
Iroquois canoes. He served me, was careful of me; he--he has suffered
for me, monsieur. I was hard to him for a long time,--a longer time
than I like to remember. But I could not but listen to his
explanation. And, whatever he did, he is, after all, my cousin, and he
regrets deeply all that happened. As to this gown,--it is one I wore
in Boston. My cousin brought it in his canoe and left it here at the
garrison when he went west. Monsieur"----
"Yes, madame."
"Monsieur, I was wrong when I suspected my cousin. I have an unkind
nature in many ways. He came here to find me,--for that alone. He
honors you greatly for all you have done for me. I hope that you will
give him opportunity to thank you as he wishes."
I thought of Starling's great voice, his air of power. "I hope to meet
your cousin," I replied.
It was a churlish return, and she had been gentle. The chill that fell
between us was of my making. I knew that with every second of silence
I was putting myself more deeply in the wrong. But I had to ask one
thing more.
"Madame, they tell me here that you say that you regret our
marriage,--that I forced you to bear my name. Have you said that?"
I could not be blind to the hurt in her face. "Monsieur, how can you
ask?"
And then I was shamed. I knelt again to her hand. "Only to prove in
open words that Lord Starling lied. Did you think I doubted? No,
madame, no woman of our house has ever had finer pride or a truer
instinct. Believe me, I see that. But so the story flies. Madame,
all eyes are on us. We must define the situation in some manner as
regards the world. May I talk to you of this?"
The hand under my lips grew warm. "Monsieur, we are to wait. When we
reach Montreal"----
"But, madame! These intervening months! It will be late autumn before
we return to Montreal."
She drew in her breath. "Late autumn! Monsieur, what are your plans?
You forget that I know nothing. And tell me of your escape."
I rose and looked down at her. "We have both escaped," I said, and
because emotion was smiting me my voice was hard. "Let us not talk of
it. I see that you are here, and I thank God. But I cannot yet bring
myself to ask what you have been through. I cannot face the horror of
it for you. I beg you to understand."
But it was I who did not understand when she drew away. "As you will,"
she agreed, and there was pride in her great eyes, but there was a
wound as well. "Yet why," she went on, "should a knowledge of human
tragedy harden a woman? It strengthens a man. But enough. Monsieur,
have you heard--the lady of the miniature is at Montreal?"
I was slow, for I was wondering how I had vexed her. "You never saw
the miniature," I parried. "How can you connect a name with it,
madame?"
She looked at me calmly. I hated her silk gown that shone like a
breastplate between us. She brushed away my evasion.
"It is well known that you carried Madame Bertheau's miniature. You
were an ardent suitor, monsieur."
Yes, I had been an ardent suitor. I remembered it with amaze. My
tongue had not been clogged and middle-aged, in those blithe days, and
yet those days were only two years gone. With this woman even Pierre
had better speech at his command.
"Madame, who told you this?"
"Monsieur, the tale is common property in Paris."
"May I ask who told you, madame?"
"My cousin, monsieur."
"I thought so."
She looked at me fairly, almost sadly, as if she begged to read my
mind. "Monsieur, why should you regret my knowing? It is to your
credit that you admire Madame Bertheau. They tell me that she is a
woman formed for love, beautiful, childlike, untouched by knowledge of
crime or hardship. Monsieur, forgive me. Are you willing---- May I
see the miniature?"
The transition in my thought was so abrupt that I clapped my hand to my
pocket as if it were still there.
"It--I am not carrying the miniature."
"Did--did the Indians take it from you?"
I stepped nearer. "Madame de Montlivet, what right have I to be
carrying another woman's miniature? I shall write the fact of my
marriage to Madame Bertheau, and the matter will be closed. No, the
Indians did not take the miniature. I buried it in the woods."
"Monsieur, that was not necessary!"
"I thought that it was, madame."
She stood with a chair between us. "Monsieur," she said, with her eyes
down, "I wish that I had known. It was not necessary. Did you bury
the miniature when you married me?"
I put the chair aside and stood over her. "No, madame, I did not bury
the miniature the day we were married. Do you remember the night of
the storm, the night when you asked me if I could save you from your
cousin? I rose early the next morning and digged a grave for the
picture. It is buried deep,--with all that I once thought that it
implied. If I confess now that it implied little you must find excuses
for me. I--my heart was in the camp in those days. The rest was
pastime. I have left pastimes behind, madame."
She would not look at me, yet I felt her change. The flitting,
indescribable air of elation that marked her from all women in the
world came back. She was again the woman of the forest, the woman who
had waked with a song and looked with unhurried pulse into the face of
danger. I breathed hard and bent to her, but she kept her eyes away.
"The fair little French face," she murmured. "You should not have put
it in the cold earth. You were needlessly cruel, monsieur."
I bent lower. "I was not cruel. I gave her a giant sepulchre. That
is over. But I--I shall have another miniature. I know a skilled man
in Paris. Some time--some time I mean to have your portrait in your
Indian blouse; in your skin blouse with the sun in your hair." My free
hand suddenly crept to her shoulder, "May I have it? May I have it,
madame?"
I cannot remember. Often as I have tried, I can never quite remember.
I am not sure that I heard her whisper. But I think that I did. She
quivered under my touch, but she did not draw away, and so we stood for
a moment, while my hand wandered where it had gone in dreams and rested
on her hair. "Mary!" I whispered, and once more we let the silence lie
like a pledge between us.
But in the moment of silence I heard again what I had forgotten,--the
roar of the camp outside. It seemed louder than it had been, and it
claimed my thought. I checked my breath to listen, holding the woman's
hand in mine. And while we listened, Cadillac's loud step and cheerful
voice came down the passage. The woman drew her hand away, and I let
her go. I let her go as if I were ashamed. I have cursed myself for
that ever since.
Cadillac stopped. "Are you there, Montlivet?" he called. "When you
are at leisure, come to my room." I heard his step retreat.
And then I turned to the woman. But with Cadillac's voice a change had
come. My mind was again heavy with anxiety. I remembered the
thronging Indians without, the pressing responsibilities within. I
remembered the volcano under us. For the moment I could not think of
my personal claims on the woman. I could think only of my anxiety for
her. Yet I went to her and took her hand.
"Mary,--I am weary of madame and monsieur between us,--you are my wife.
May I talk of our future?"
I spoke in the very words I had used the night I asked her to marry
me,--to marry me for my convenience. I remembered it as I heard my
tongue form the phrase, and it recalled my argument of that time,--that
she must marry me because my plans were more to me than her wishes.
She withdrew from me. "Monsieur Cadillac is waiting for you. You
wield great power."
Something new had come to her tone. I would have none of it. "Mary,
may I talk to you?"
But still she drew away. "Monsieur, I am confused, and you are needed
elsewhere. Not to-night, I beg you, not to-night."
I could not protest. In truth, I knew that Cadillac needed me. I went
with her to the door.
"To-morrow, then?" I begged. "Will you listen to-morrow, madame?"
But she had grown very white. "You are important here. There is work
for you. Be careful of your safety. Please be careful."
I took her hand. "Thank you, madame."
There was much in my tone that I kept out of my words, but she was not
conscious of it. She was not thinking of herself, and her eyes, that
were on mine, were full of trouble. All the restraint that the last
weeks had taught her had come back to her look.
"You wield great power," she repeated. "You are to be the leader of
the west. I see that. But oh, be careful! Good-night, monsieur."