By the time he reached Lake Marigold he had shaken off all those
hovering fancies of the woods, which, after all, might only have been
the whisperings of those friendly and far-seeing spirits who liked
the lad as he journeyed through their lonely pleasure-grounds. John
Malbrouck greeted him with quiet cordiality, and Mrs. Malbrouck smiled
upon him with a different smile from that with which she had speeded him
a month before; there was in it a new light of knowledge, and Gregory
could not understand it. It struck him as singular that the lady should
be dressed in finer garments than she wore when he last saw her; though
certainly her purple became her. She wore it as if born to it; and with
an air more sedately courteous than he had ever seen, save at one house
in Park Lane. Had this rustle of fine trappings been made for him? No;
the woman had a mind above such snobbishness, he thought. He suffered
for a moment the pang of a cynical idea; but the eyes of Mrs. Malbrouck
were on him and he knew that he was as nothing before her. Her eyes--how
they were fixed upon him! Only two women had looked so truthfully at him
before: his dead mother and--Margaret. And Margaret--why, how strangely
now at this instant came the thought that she was like his Margaret!
Wonder sprang to his eyes. At that moment a door opened and a girl
entered the room--a girl lissome, sweet-faced, well-bred of manner, who
came slowly towards them.
“My daughter, Mr. Thorne,” the mother briefly remarked. There was no
surprise in the girl’s face, only an even reserve of pleasure, as she
held out her hand and said: “Mr. Gregory Thorne and I are old enemies.”
Gregory Thorne’s nerve forsook him for an instant. He knew now the
reason of his vague presentiments in the woods; he understood why, one
night, when he had been more childlike than usual in his memory of the
one woman who could make life joyous for him, the voice of a voyageur,
not Jacques’s nor that of any one in camp, sang:
“My dear love, she waits for me,
None other my world is adorning;
My true love I come to thee,
My dear, the white star of the morning.
Eagles spread out your wings,
Behold where the red dawn is breaking!
Hark, ‘tis my darling sings,
The flowers, the song-birds awaking;
See, where she comes to me,
My love, ah, my dear love!”
And here she was. He raised her hand to his lips, and said: “Miss
Carley, you have your enemy at an advantage.”
“Miss Carley in Park Lane, Margaret Malbrouck here in my old home,” she
replied.
There ran swiftly through the young man’s brain the brief story that
Pretty Pierre had told him. This, then, was the child who had been
carried away, and who, years after, had made captive his heart in London
town! Well, one thing was clear, the girl’s mother here seemed inclined
to be kinder to him than was the guardian grandmother--if she was the
grandmother--because they had their first talk undisturbed, it may be
encouraged; amiable mothers do such deeds at times.
“And now pray, Mr. Thorne,” she continued, “may I ask how came you
here in my father’s house after having treated me so cavalierly
in London?--not even sending a P.P.C. when you vanished from your
worshippers in Vanity Fair.”
“As for my being here, it is simply a case of blind fate; as for my
friends, the only one I wanted to be sorry for my going was behind
earthworks which I could not scale in order to leave my card, or--or
anything else of more importance; and being left as it were to the
inclemency of a winter world, I fled from--”
She interrupted him. “What! the conqueror, you, flying from your
Moscow?”
He felt rather helpless under her gay raillery; but he said:
“Well, I didn’t burn my kremlin behind me.”
“Your kremlin?”
“My ships, then: they--they are just the same,” he earnestly pleaded.
Foolish youth, to attempt to take such a heart by surprise and storm!
“That is very interesting,” she said, “but hardly wise. To make
fortunes and be happy in new countries, one should forget the old ones.
Meditation is the enemy of action.”
“There’s one meditation could make me conquer the North Pole, if I could
but grasp it definitely.”
“Grasp the North Pole? That would be awkward for your friends and
gratifying to your enemies, if one may believe science and history. But,
perhaps, you are in earnest after all, poor fellow! for my father tells
me you are going over the hills and far away to the moose-yards.
How valiant you are, and how quickly you grasp the essentials of
fortune-making!”
“Miss Malbrouck, I am in earnest, and I’ve always been in earnest in one
thing at least. I came out here to make money, and I’ve made some, and
shall make more; but just now the moose are as brands for the burning,
and I have a gun sulky for want of exercise.”
“What an eloquent warrior-temper! And to whom are your deeds of valour
to be dedicated? Before whom do you intend to lay your trophies of the
chase?”
“Before the most provoking but worshipful lady that I know.”
“Who is the sylvan maid? What princess of the glade has now the homage
of your impressionable heart, Mr. Thorne?”
And Gregory Thorne, his native insolence standing him in no stead, said
very humbly:
“You are that sylvan maid, that princess--ah, is this fair to me, is it
fair, I ask you?”
“You really mean that about the trophies”? she replied. “And shall you
return like the mighty khans, with captive tigers and lions, led by
stalwart slaves, in your train, or shall they be captive moose or
grizzlies?”
“Grizzlies are not possible here,” he said, with cheerful seriousness,
“but the moose is possible, and more, if you would be kinder--Margaret.”
“Your supper, see, is ready,” she said. “I venture to hope your appetite
has not suffered because of long absence from your friends.”
He could only dumbly answer by a protesting motion of the hand, and his
smile was not remarkably buoyant.
The next morning they started on their moose-hunt. Gregory Thorne was
cast down when he crossed the threshold into the winter morning without
hand-clasp or god-speed from Margaret Malbrouck; but Mrs. Malbrouck was
there, and Gregory, looking into her eyes, thought how good a thing it
would be for him, if some such face looked benignly out on him every
morning, before he ventured forth into the deceitful day. But what was
the use of wishing! Margaret evidently did not care. And though the air
was clear and the sun shone brightly, he felt there was a cheerless
wind blowing on him; a wind that chilled him; and he hummed to himself
bitterly a song of the voyageurs:
“O, O, the winter wind, the North wind,
My snow-bird, where art thou gone?
O, O, the wailing wind the night wind,
The cold nest; I am alone.
O, O, my snow-bird!
“O, O, the waving sky, the white sky,
My snow-bird thou fliest far;
O, O, the eagle’s cry, the wild cry,
My lost love, my lonely star.
O, O, my snow-bird!”
He was about to start briskly forward to join Malbrouck and his Indians,
who were already on their way, when he heard his name called, and,
turning, he saw Margaret in the doorway, her fingers held to the tips
of her ears, as yet unused to the frost. He ran back to where she
stood, and held out his hand. “I was afraid,” he bluntly said, “that you
wouldn’t forsake your morning sleep to say good-bye to me.”
“It isn’t always the custom, is it,” she replied, “for ladies to send
the very early hunter away with a tally-ho? But since you have the grace
to be afraid of anything, I can excuse myself to myself for fleeing the
pleasantest dreams to speed you on your warlike path.”
At this he brightened very much, but she, as if repenting she had given
him so much pleasure, added: “I wanted to say good-bye to my father, you
know; and--” she paused.
“And”? he added.
“And to tell him that you have fond relatives in the old land who would
mourn your early taking off; and, therefore, to beg him, for their
sakes, to keep you safe from any outrageous moose that mightn’t know how
the world needed you.”
“But there you are mistaken,” he said; “I haven’t anyone who would
really care, worse luck! except the dowager; and she, perhaps, would be
consoled to know that I had died in battle,--even with a moose,--and
was clear of the possibility of hanging another lost reputation on the
family tree, to say nothing of suspension from any other kind of tree.
But, if it should be the other way; if I should see your father in the
path of an outrageous moose--what then?”
“My father is a hunter born,” she responded; “he is a great man,” she
proudly added.
“Of course, of course,” he replied. “Good-bye. I’ll take him your
love.--Good-bye!” and he turned away.
“Good-bye,” she gaily replied; and yet, one looking closely would have
seen that this stalwart fellow was pleasant to her eyes, and as she
closed the door to his hand waving farewell to her from the pines, she
said, reflecting on his words:
“You’ll take him my love, will you? But, Master Gregory, you carry a
freight of which you do not know the measure; and, perhaps, you never
shall, though you are very brave and honest, and not so impudent as you
used to be,--and I’m not so sure that I like you so much better for that
either, Monsieur Gregory.”
Then she went and laid her cheek against her mother’s, and said:
“They’ve gone away for big game, mother dear; what shall be our quarry?”
“My child,” the mother replied, “the story of our lives since last you
were with me is my only quarry. I want to know from your own lips all
that you have been in that life which once was mine also, but far away
from me now, even though you come from it, bringing its memories without
its messages.”
“Dear, do you think that life there was so sweet to me? It meant as
little to your daughter as to you. She was always a child of the wild
woods. What rustle of pretty gowns is pleasant as the silken shiver of
the maple leaves in summer at this door? The happiest time in that life
was when we got away to Holwood or Marchurst, with the balls and calls
all over.”
Mrs. Malbrouck smoothed her daughter’s hand gently and smiled
approvingly.
“But that old life of yours, mother; what was it? You said that you
would tell me some day. Tell me now. Grandmother was fond of me--poor
grandmother! But she would never tell me anything. How I longed to be
back with you!... Sometimes you came to me in my sleep, and called to
me to come with you; and then again, when I was gay in the sunshine, you
came, and only smiled but never beckoned; though your eyes seemed to
me very sad, and I wondered if mine would not also become sad through
looking in them so--are they sad, mother?” And she laughed up brightly
into her mother’s face.
“No, dear; they are like the stars. You ask me for my part in that life.
I will tell you soon, but not now. Be patient. Do you not tire of this
lonely life? Are you truly not anxious to return to--”
“‘To the husks that the swine did eat?’ No, no, no; for, see: I was born
for a free, strong life; the prairie or the wild wood, or else to live
in some far castle in Welsh mountains, where I should never hear the
voice of the social Thou must!--oh, what a must! never to be quite free
or natural. To be the slave of the code. I was born--I know not how! but
so longing for the sky, and space, and endless woods. I think I never
saw an animal but I loved it, nor ever lounged the mornings out at
Holwood but I wished it were a hut on the mountain side, and you and
father with me.” Here she whispered, in a kind of awe: “And yet to think
that Holwood is now mine, and that I am mistress there, and that I must
go back to it--if only you would go back with me.... ah, dear, isn’t it
your duty to go back with me”? she added, hesitatingly.
Audrey Malbrouck drew her daughter hungrily to her bosom, and said:
“Yes, dear, I will go back, if it chances that you need me; but your
father and I have lived the best days of our lives here, and we are
content. But, my Margaret, there is another to be thought of too, is
there not? And in that case is my duty then so clear?”
The girl’s hand closed on her mother’s, and she knew her heart had been
truly read.