THE WAY OF A WOMAN
I
VIEWED from the deck of a great lakes steamer travelling the commercial
lane that runs less than two miles south of it, Amethyst Island is but a
black speck among a hundred other foam-rimmed islets that dot Superior’s
rugged north shore, an infinitesimal bit of rock and dry land before a
frowning background of deep-riven hills, where range upon range breasts
out from Nannabijou Point and disappears into the purple of the northern
horizon. Time and evolution work few changes on those hills of
desolation which rear their black, fantastic peaks above hostile,
spruce-bearded flanks like age-chained monsters scorning in lofty nudity
the might of man to efface or reclaim their barrenness. Everywhere they
whisper of dark potentialities; of secret places where awful stillness
reigns, of skulking grey wolves and gleaming white bones.
To the right of the clifflike point and seemingly rising just back of the
skirting woods opposite Amethyst Island is the Cup of Nannabijou, a
castlelike circle of black cliffs, whose base is really a stiff walk from
the shoreline. It is territory to this day shunned by wandering Indian
tribes, believed to be the prison in which Nannabijou, the Indian
demi-god, attempted to wall up Animikee, the Thunder Devil; and this
belief is strengthened in poor Lo’s mind by the magnetic flashes which
play up from the hills on nights preceding electrical storms. Along a
depression at the base of the cliffs flows Solomon Creek on its way to
join the mighty, amber-coloured Nannabijou River before the latter
empties into the bay. Solomon Creek tumbles out in a foaming white
cascade from a great fissure in the cliffs, being the outlet for a limpid
mountain lake confined by the walls of the Cup, a gleaming pool of gold
by day and a mystic black mirror of the stars by night. In the rocks the
Indians see the images of the men and beasts of their pagan worship; from
a distance out on the lake the whole resembles the form of a recumbent
giant lying on his back on the face of the waters.
But Amethyst Island itself, on closer inspection, proves of happier mien
than its forbidding surroundings and of dimensions somewhat more
significant than one would guess from the steamboat routes. Its area
would equal half a city block and its shoreline is groved by patches of
picturesque birch gleaming white among the mountain ash and spruce, while
here and there a lofty, isolated white pine rears its whispering crest
above the lower foliage with an air of patriarchal guardianship. A half
dozen log cabins of substantial size and dove-tailed construction stand
in the cleared centre, relics of a bygone silver mining boom, later
renovated by wealthy city families into summer resort cottages.
In the most easterly of these cottages, Josephine Stone, of Calgary, had
taken up her temporary residence. On this particular morning, which had
broken in crisp autumnal loveliness, she had been astir from an early
hour, and with her Indian maid and her companion, Mrs. Johnson, had set
in order the appointments of the little front room with exacting care.
No detail had been overlooked to make the best of such furnishings as the
building boasted; even the blinds Miss Stone had herself accurately
adjusted so that the softest light illumined the room. In the broad
fireplace, built of native amethyst-encrusted boulders, a birch fire
crackled in subdued cheeriness. On the table which centred the room
stood a vase of fresh-gathered ferns, a bit of dull green colour that
toned with the dignified quiet all about.
But Josephine Stone needed no artificial setting. A dream of fresh young
womanly loveliness she was; a gentle presence that would brighten and
glorify the most monotonous surroundings. Men wherever she had appeared
had been swayed by this girl’s rare beauty, by the charm of her voice and
her every gesture.
She had long since learned her power over men; this morning she was
minded to test it impelled as she was by that resistless motive that has
been called a woman’s curiosity—the motive that first brought mortal man
to grief.
She moved about the room as one who is suppressing by will the tensest
inward anxiety. Her Indian woman dismissed, she had tried to interest
herself in a book, but her gaze most of the time was centred through the
eastern window on a jutting point of the lake’s shoreline.
Josephine Stone dropped the book and caught at her breath. Round the
point there suddenly flashed the slender red hull of a racing motor boat,
bow reared in air above a creamy wavelet that widened V-like in its wake.
The boat swept down the shoreline and the muffled staccato of its engines
ceased abruptly as it dived from view under the shrubbery that fringed
the island.
II
The girl watched with bated breath. From an opening in the shrubbery
there almost immediately burst into view the figure of a man who seemed
the incarnation of this wild place. Spare was he, but of height, build
and movement that bespoke physical strength of lightninglike
potentialities. The exotic pallor of his masterful face accentuated the
blackness of his alert, flashing eyes.
The Indian man-of-all-work, splitting firewood to the side of the
cottage, looked up, gasped and scuttled from view. His wolf-dog sank
back on his haunches, tilted his grey snout in air and sent forth a long,
dolorous howl that brought mocking echoes from the cliffs of the
mainland.
The visitor, quite unconcerned by the seeming panic his appearance
provoked, strode easily to the front door.
Josephine Stone rose all a-tremble. A fear unaccountable had suddenly
swept over her, but when she opened the door for him there was no longer
outward trace of it.
“Oh, Mr. Smith,” she voiced, “I know I have put you to a lot of trouble
to come over here this morning. It is really too good of you simply to
accommodate a stranger.”
“I will not have you mention it, Miss Stone,” he waived with a courtly
smile. “It is I rather who should offer apologies.”
“You?”
“I’m late. Delayed by the discovery of a defective boom on my way here.
Had to go back and notify one of the boom-tenders.”
“You have heavy responsibilities.”
There was the faintest of inflections on the last word. It brought a
momentary gleam of hard alertness to the face of Acey Smith. But he as
quickly hid it in a light laugh. “It all came about through my weakness
for travelling by water,” he went on. “You see, there is a shorter cut
by the land trail here, though I would have had to signal for one of your
boats to get over to the island.”
“Won’t you be seated?” She indicated the easy chair by the window and
herself sank gracefully to the nearby couch.
“Mr. Smith,” she opened in a nervous confusion that brought the faintest
of pink to her delicate throat and cheeks, “I fear I am asking of you too
great a favour—that I am about to request too much.”
“If you had not asked me to come here and offer what little service I
may,” he replied, “I would consider I had been robbed of one of the most
wonderful opportunities of my lifetime.”
“But have you considered the full nature of my request?”
The spell of those wonder eyes under the high-arched brows was upon him.
“Name it,” he urged. “I must obey.”
“You must not compromise yourself before you know it all.”
“I have already compromised myself. I have promised to do anything
within my power.”
She stirred on the couch, came ever so little nearer to him. “I have
feared my request might be an impossible one.”
“An impossible one?”
“Yes—yet—I had hoped almost that you might—”
“Please,” he encouraged. “Tell me what it is.”
“I want to meet the _man you call J.C.X._”
Had she plunged ice-cold water upon him the effect on Acey Smith could
not have been more startling. His face went ashen at the name, his long
hands gripping convulsively at the arms of the chair. He glanced
apprehensively about the room, even behind him, then sprang bolt upright.
“_J.C.X._” He breathed it hoarsely. “There are no others within
hearing?”
“Not a soul.” It was she who was calmer now. She too had risen, was
standing with a thrilling nearness to him, so close as to be within the
province of his arms had he obeyed an almost irresistible impulse that
was upon him to sweep her to him. She looked up at him, a steadiness in
the appeal of her eyes.
Under the sway of those eyes decision within him wavered. When he spoke
it was in a tone of solemn pronouncement: “Miss Stone, you _have_ asked
of me what _should be_ impossible.”
“But _you_ can make it a possibility?”
“The ultimate decision lies with—J.C.X.” Again that furtive glance about
the room as he pronounced the name in a whispered undertone. “It were
better—perhaps—that you should not meet J.C.X.”
“Is he so terrible?”
“No, it is not that. If I could in some way act as intermediary, for
instance?”
But the girl was in no wise willing to let slip by her hard-won
concession. “It would not do,” she negatived. “I am sorry, for I know I
could trust you as such, but I feel it is imperative that I should meet
J.C.X. personally if that which I was sent for is to be properly
explained.”
His eyes searched her face. “What do you know of J.C.X.?” he asked.
“Nothing—positively nothing. Oh, I wish I could explain. I hate being
mysterious, but for the present I must ask you to accept my statement
that it appeals to me as vital to meet him. Can you accept such a
statement?”
Under stress of her anxiety she had unconsciously placed an ivory-white
little hand upon his sleeve. He thrilled at the pressure.
“I can and do accept it,” he returned. “What is more, when the time is
opportune, you shall meet the one you desire to. But you must be
patient; for a little while there will be obstacles which are
insurmountable.”
“Oh, how can I thank you, Mr. Smith?” Impulsively she seized his hand in
both her own, artlessly as a child might do it.
Not even saint might have resisted that delicate, desirable presence so
near. Acey Smith was far from saint. His long, powerful hands closed
over hers, a devil of gleaming black triumph leaping to the eyes that
feasted on her face.
But even as she drew away, trembling like a captured bird, he released
her abruptly. His head shot forward and he whirled with his back toward
her, his hands cupping at his face in the convulsive fashion of one who
is strangling.
She was standing mute in stupefied fright when he faced her again, quite
his former self, a trace of a shamed smile on his lips. “I am sorry,” he
offered in a contrite tone.
“It was perhaps my fault—” She started to say that before its
significance struck her.
“It was not!” he declared. “I had forgotten for the moment that—that I
am merely a means to an end. It will not happen again.”
The girl did her best to hide her mystification. Before he left Acey
Smith informed her the tugs plying daily between the pulp camp and the
city were at her service. He had made arrangements not only for her
passage back and forth, but for the carrying of such supplies out as she
needed from time to time. This would be much more satisfactory than
depending on the motor-boat, he told her, as from now on the weather on
the northern reaches of Superior was not dependable.
As for the unexplained purpose for which she had been brought to the
island, he hoped she would be tolerant of a delay in bringing things
about that would not only take time but patience and foresight on the
part of others. He did not mention J.C.X. again nor the meeting he had
promised to arrange for Miss Stone. But intuitively the latter knew two
things; the one was that he would be as good as his word and the other
that he almost dreaded mention of J.C.X.
Besides, Josephine Stone was but two generations removed from Canadian
pioneer stock, and, like the women of her race, was not prone to question
the moods and whimsicalities of men of the forests.
III
When Acey Smith left Amethyst Island he did not immediately head back for
the pulp camp, but crossed over to the mainland opposite, where he
beached the bow of his long, slender racer at the foot of a narrow trail
that wound up into the densely wooded hills. Snubbing the boat to the
shrubbery, he struck off up the trail and was gone for almost an hour.
Shortly after his form had been swallowed up in the bush, there appeared
at the foot of the trail a tall, dark-bearded man in the garb of a
preacher. He peered at the island from the screen of the bush, and
there, concealed from view, squatted in the foliage with eyes upon the
cottage, silent, immovable as a statue.
Josephine Stone came out upon the cottage steps and opened a book in her
lap. If the figure in the woods noticed her he gave no sign.
After a long interval there came from out of the depths of the forest,
far away, a low reverberating intonation as of some deep soft gong being
struck. A few moments elapsed and the mellow note again swooned
mystically over the wastes.
The faintest traces of a smile broke over the face of the man hidden in
the bushes as the girl on the steps started to her feet and looked about
her in bewilderment. She picked up her book and disappeared into the
cottage.
Twice again with a short interval between there came a gonglike alarm
from far up in the silent wastes. The black-bearded man rose at the
sound of the last stroke of the gong. With patient caution he drew from
the shrubbery a cached canoe, launched it and with silent strokes skimmed
westward along the shoreline.
Twenty minutes later Acey Smith came striding down the trail, carrying on
his back a partially filled woodsman’s packsack. At the foot of the
trail he paused as though reading some sign in the sands of the beach.
He swung the packsack from his shoulders into the cockpit of the boat,
pushed off the craft and headed it toward the pulp camp docks.
There was a scowl on his face as black as a thunder cloud.