Throughout the week that followed Fort de Seviere was gay with the
bustle of trading. Packs of furs went up the main way and loads of
merchandise went down, carried on the backs of the braves, guns and
blankets and many a foot of Spencer's Twist at one beaver a foot, powder
and balls in buckskin bags, and all the things of heart's desire that
had brought the Assiniboines from the forks of the Saskatchewan.
Kept close to the factory by the bartering, McElroy and Ridgar and the
two clerks hardly saw the blue spring sky, nor caught a breath of the
scented air of the spring. Within the forest the Saskatoon was blooming
and the blueberry bushes were tossing soft heads of foam, while many a
tree of the big woods gave forth a breath of spice. It came in at the
door and the young factor raised his head many times a day to drink
its sweetness in a sort of wistfulness. At dusk he stood on the sill,
released from the trade, and looked over his settlement as was his
habit, and ever his eyes strayed to that new cabin at the far end, of
the northern row.
What was she thinking, that dark-browed girl with the deep eyes that
changed as the waters of a lake with each breath of wind, of him and the
blundering gift he had carried to her door? What had she done with it,
and would he ever see it clinging to those splendid shoulders, falling
over the rounded breast?
A feeling of warmth grew at his heart each day with thought of her, and
when he saw her swinging down toward the well he felt the blood leap in
his veins. The very shine of the sun was different when it struck the
tight black braids wrapped round her head.
Verily the little kingdom had brought forth its Princess.
And with her coming there was one heart that burned hot with passion,
that fashioned itself after the form of hatred, for little Francette had
seen, first a glow in a man's eyes and then a gift in his hand, and she
fingered a small, flat blade that hung in her sash with one hand, the
while the other strayed on the head of Loup. Dark was the fire that
played in her pretty eyes, heavy the anguish that rode her breast.
She hated the memory of that white garment spread out on Maren Le
Moyne's bed.
“Tessa,” she said one day, sidling up to that Tessa Bibye who had cast a
taunt in her teeth, “know you the charm which that doctress of the Crees
gave to Marci Varendree when she sickened for love of that half-breed,
Tohi Stannard?”
“Oho!” cried Tessa gleefully, “a man again! Who lacks one now,
Francette?”
“Nay,” said Francette, “but I know of one who sickens inwardly and I
would give her the charm.”
“Go into the flats of the Beaver House after Marci and her Indian,
whither they went,” Tessa laughed. “I know not the charm. But it was
good, for she got him, and went to the wilds with him. Follow and learn,
Francette.”
But Francette, with a gesture of disgust, turned away.
The warm spring days passed in a riot of song from the depths outside
the post, the Assiniboine rippled and whispered along its shores and
over the illimitable stretches of the wilderness there hung the very
spirit of the mating-time.
Within the stockade, mothers sat in the doors crooning to the babes that
clutched at the sunbeams, dogs slept in the cool shadows of the cabins,
and here and there a youth sang a snatch of a love song.
“Verily, Marie, it is good to be here,” sighed Micene Bordoux, sitting
on her sill with her capable arms folded on her knees, and her eyes,
cool and sane and tolerant, roving over the settlement lolling so
quietly in the sun. “After the trail the rest is good, and yet I will
be eager long before the year has passed to follow Maren,--may Mary give
her grace!--into that wilderness which so draws at her heartstrings.”
“Oh, Micene!” cried Marie, a trifle vexed, “if only she might forget her
dreams! What is it like, the heart of a maid, that turns from thought of
love to that of these wild lands, to the mystery of the Whispering Hills
that lie, the good God knows where, in that dim and untracked West! I
would that Maren might love! Then would we have peace and stop forever
at this pleasant place.”
Good Micene, with her brave heart and her whole-souled sense, smiled at
Marie.
“Love,” she said,--“and think you THAT could turn that exalted spirit
from its quest? Still the stir of conquest within her bosom, hush the
call of that glorious country which we know from rumor, and plain
hearsay lies at the heart of the Athabasca?
“Little do you know Maren, Marie, though the same mother gave you birth.
There is naught that could turn the maid, and I love her for it. It is
that undaunted faith, that steadfast purpose, that white fire in her
face which holds at her heels the whole of us, that turns to her the
faces of our men, as those legions of France turned to the Holy Maid.
Love? She would turn not for it if she could not take it with her.”
Micene looked off across the cabins, and there was a warm light in her
eyes.
“Nay, Marie,” she said, “make ready for the trail the coming spring, for
we will surely go.”
It was this day, golden and sweet with little winds that wafted from
the blossom-laden woods, that Maren Le Moyne, drawn by the dusky depths,
passed, out the stockade gate, traversed slowly the length of the
Indian camp, stopping here and there to hold out a hand to a frightened
pappoose peeking from behind its mother's fringed leggings, to watch
a moment at the cooking fires, to smile at a slim young boy brave in a
checkered shirt, and entered the forest.
From the door of the factory McElroy saw her go and the call of the
spring suddenly became unbearable.
With a word to Ridgar he stepped off the long log step and deliberately
followed.
The Irish blood within him lifted his head and sent his heart
a-bounding, while the half-holy mysticism that came from the Scottish
hills drew his glance upward to the blue sky arching above.
A tumult surged in his breast and every pulse in his body leaped at
thought of speech with her, and yet again a diffidence fell upon him
that set him trembling.
As the conqueror he went, pushing toward victory, yet humble in his
ambition.
He felt a mist in his eyes as he entered the high arched aisles, cool
beneath their canopy of young green, and he looked eagerly here and
there for sight of a tall form, upright, easy, plain in its dark garb.
Along the river bank he went where he saw a footprint in the soft loam,
and presently it turned deeper into the great woods and he swung forward
into those depths whose sweetness had called him subtly for these many
days.
She was a strong traveller, that straight young creature of the open
ways, and a full hour went swiftly before he caught the sight he wanted.
At sight of her he halted and stood a moment in hushed joy, looking with
eyes that knew their glory, for with every passing second Anders McElroy
was learning that nowhere in all the world, as had said that flaming
youth Marc Dupre, was there another woman like this Maren Le Moyne.
She stood in a little glade, cool, high-canopied, where the sunlight
came in little spots to play over the soft carpet of the pale forest
grass thick-starred with frail white flowers, and her back was to a tree
that towered to heaven in its height. At her sides her brown arms hung,
palms out in an utter abandon of pleasure, while her lifted face, with
its closed eyes, communed with the very Spirit of the Wild. Like some
priestess she was, and McElroy felt an odd sensation of unworthiness
sweep over him as he stood silent, his sober blue eyes on the beauty of
her face. He cast swiftly back across his life. Was there anything there
which might forbid him now, when he would go forward to so pure a thing
as this maid, dreaming her dreams of prowess in the wilderness?
Nay, he saw no unworthy deed, nothing to spoil the page of a commonplace
life spent at his old father's side across the sea, nothing of the so
common evils of the settlement. Within him there was that which thanked
its Maker unashamed that he had kept himself from one or two temptations
which had beset him in these stirring years of service on the fringes of
the great country spreading from the bay.
With that thought he went forward, and Maren did not hear his step on
the soft grass, so far was she on her well-worn trail of dreams, until
he stood near and the feeling of a presence finally brought back the
wandering soul.
Then she opened her eyes and they fell full upon the factor, his light
head bared to the dancing sun-spots, his blue eyes sober and touched
again with that anxiety which had compelled her to take his gift.
There was no sudden start of fear, no little startled breath, for this
woman was calm as the dreaming woods and as serene.
“Bon jour, M'sieu,” she said, and at sound of her voice, so deep and
full of those sliding minors, McElroy felt her power sweep over him in a
tumultuous flood.
“Ma'amselle,” he said, “Ma'amselle!”
And in the next moment stopped, for the words of love were on his tongue
and the wide dark eyes were looking at him wonderingly.
“No longer could I withstand the call of the springtime and the woods,”
he finished falteringly; “the trading-room and the bargain were grown
hateful to me in these warm days with the scent of flower and leaf and
heated mould coming in at the door and bidding me come. I left my post,
a traitor, Ma'amselle, betrayed by the forest. Too weak am I for courage
when the big woods call.”
Maren looked at him and the light grew up in her eyes, that little flame
that flickered and leaped and gave so baffling a charm to her beauty.
“Ah!” she said softly; “you love it too, the great wilderness?”
“Aye, most truly.”
“And you can hear the whisper of the far countries, the ripple of
distant streams, the wind in the pines that have never sheltered a white
man? You know these things, M'sieu?”
She leaned forward from the great smooth-barked tree and looked at him
eagerly.
“They are what brought me over seas,” he said quietly, “what sent me to
De Seviere, what hold me to the tribes that come each year to my doors.”
Maren's lips were parted, the fire of her passion in her flaming face.
“Then you know why I come to the woods, why I grieve that the spring
is passing, why I can scarcely hold my soul in patience through this
delay!”
With the suddenness of her words her breath had leaped to a heaving
tumult, the wide eyes, so calm, so cool, had filled first with fire and
then with a mist. That clouded them like tears.
“Oh, M'sieu!” she cried tensely; “know you of that country which lies
far to the west and which the Indians call the Land of the Whispering
Hills?”
“Aye. It lies circling a great lake, blue as the summer skies, its
waters forever rippled by the winds of the west which sing in the grassy
vales and over the rounded knolls that stud the region,--a land of
waving trees, of high coolness, or rich valleys thick with rank grasses
and abounding with the pelt animals. It is the country of the Athabasca
and from it came last year a band of the Chippewas heavily laden with
furs. They told fine tales of its beauty. It is for that land you are
bound?”
“For that land, M'sieu,” said Maren Le Moyne, and her lips trembled;
“for that virgin goddess of the dreams of years! I have seen its hills,
its waving grass, wind-blown, its leaping streams,--I have breathed
the sweet air of its forests and gazed on its beauties since my early
childhood, in dreams, always in dreams, M'sieu, until I could bear the
strain no longer. And now, when it beckons almost within my reach, when
its very breath seems in my nostrils, I must stop for a year's space!
You know, M'sieu,--you comprehend?”
She leaned forward looking earnestly into McElroy's eyes, and a surge
of painful ecstasy shot to the man's heart, so near she seemed in the
suddenly created sympathy of the moment, so near and gracious, so strong
in her pure passion, so infinitely sweet.
“I know,” he said, and his voice sounded strange in his ears; “I know
every pulse of your heart, Ma'amselle, every longing of your spirit,
every pure thought of your mind,--for these many days I have trembled to
every vibration that has touched or thrilled you. Oh, Ma'amselle!”
With the surge of that overwhelming thing within him the young man had
forgot all things,--that this girl was near a stranger, that he had
quaked at his temerity of the gift, forgot all but that she leaned
toward him with the mist in her wide eyes, and he strode forward the
step between them, his arms reaching out instinctively to enfold her.
With the swiftness of the impulse he swept her into them until the eager
face lay on his breast, the smooth black braids pressing his lips with
their satiny folds.
For one intoxicating moment he held her, as the primal man takes and
holds his woman, tightly against his beating heart as though he would
defy the world, lost in a sea of strange new emotions that rolled in
golden billows high above his head.
Then from the depths there came a cry that cleared his whirling brain,
a very embodiment of startled amaze, of indefinable horror, of mixed
intonations.
“M'sieu!”
Maren Le Moyne wrenched herself free and lifted her face to look at him.
It was a warring field.
Upon it lay a great astonishment, a wonder, and a newness. Behind these
there came, creeping swiftly with each moment of her startled gaze, an
odd excitement that mounted with each panting breath that left his lips,
for it was from him that it took its life. Her red mouth dropped apart,
showing the gleam of the white teeth between. She looked like a child
rudely shaken from its sleep, startled, perhaps vaguely frightened at
the strange shapes of familiar things distorted by the vision not yet
adjusted.
“M'sieu!” she stammered; “M'sieu!”
And with her voice McElroy felt the arrested blood rush back to his
heart again, for it held no anger. Instead it was full of that startled
wonder, and it was as gold to him.
“Maren,” he said, the emotion choking him; “Maren--” and with that new
courage he put both hands on her shoulders and drew her near, looking
down into the eyes so near on a level with his own.
Deliberately, slowly, that she might fully catch the meaning of what he
was about to do, he drooped his lips until they rested square on the red
mouth.
This was the thing he had left the factory for, this was what had drawn
him, unconsciously perhaps, to the path along the river's bank, that had
made him follow deliberately the light trail of the girl into the woods.
“Maren,” he said, so thrilled that his words shook, “from this day forth
you are mine. Mine only and against the whole world. I have taken you
and you are mine.”
He was full of his glory, dominating the dark eyes that had never left
his own, and his soul was big within him. He was still very much a boy,
this young factor, and the crowning moment of life had him in his grip.
He knew no fear, no thought of her next word or action touched him until
she, as deliberately as he had acted, reached up and took both his hands
from her shoulders.
“Adieu, M'sieu,” said Maren Le Moyne quietly, the excitement of that
breathed “M'sieu! M'sieu!” quite lost in the calmness that was her usual
characteristic, and turning she walked away down the glen toward the
river bank, the little spots of sun dancing on her black head like a
leopard's gold as she passed in the checkered shade, and not once did
she turn her head to see the factor of De Seviere standing where she had
left him beside the forest giant.