Under the trapper's guidance the party left the burned camp behind
them. They pushed on in silence, following mechanically the tall,
lank figure of the old man ahead of their single file. He led them up
timbered ridges and along their spines; he swerved down into swampy
hollows choked with wind-slash, around which they were obliged to make
tedious detours. The fine drizzle had turned into a steady soft rain
that pattered on the broad moose-hopple leaves. Often they plunged
into swamp mud nearly to their knees. The fallen logs over which they
climbed were as slippery as wet glass--the branch spikes on these logs
as dangerous under slipping feet as upturned pitchforks. The men were
top-heavy under their packs; the women uncomplaining and soaked to
their skins. The moist air was still impregnated with the scent of
smoke--a sinister odour which kept in their minds the events of the
morning.
During such a forced march in the wilderness conversation is
difficult; one is content with one's own thoughts. Under the
mental and physical strain they were enduring their bodies moved
automatically. During this unconscious process of locomotion one
can dream over one's thoughts and still go on. Legs and arms move
themselves; sore muscles become reconciled to their burden--they
become numb; the mind is thus left alone in peace.
Alice Thayor's thought was occupied with the incidents leading to her
last evening with Sperry. Every feature stood out in bold relief. Even
the tones of the doctor's voice rang clear. As these thoughts crowded
in, one after another, her brain reeled, her eyes became dim. Missing
her footing she sank back in the mud, steadied herself against a tree,
brushing the damp hair out of her eyes and staggered on, her gaze
fixed upon the swaying pack ahead of her fastened to the Clown's
shoulders.
The old dog now fell out of file; she felt his steaming muzzle bump
under the palm of her hand. Since they started from their refuge
across Big Shanty Brook the old dog had gone thus from one to the
other. Twice she had patted him; she wanted him near her now in her
weariness, but he left her the next moment to join Margaret. Her
husband trudged on under his heavy pack in front of the Clown; he
spoke encouragingly to those in front and behind him--and to her.
Once in a while, when they came to a halt in a difficult place, he
supported her with his arm and a cheery word. She would have marvelled
at his grit had she not overheard his talk to Dollard. Now and then
she could see Margaret, her ankles incased in rough woollen socks
showing above the tops of the Clown's brogans. Margaret followed
Holcomb when it was possible, and the two often walked abreast talking
low and earnestly. Twice Alice was about to call her maid. The fatigue
was telling terribly on this woman accustomed to luxury. Then she
remembered her husband's words: "Whatever is in store for us we must
share in common." Farther on Blakeman noticed his mistress turn her
white face over her shoulder and look at him appealingly. He came
toward her lurching under his load.
"What is it, madam?" he asked.
"Oh, Blakeman, I'm so tired! Stand here with me a minute--and you--do
the straps cut your shoulders?"
A curious expression--one of intense surprise, followed instantly by
one of tenderness and pity--crossed his countenance. Never before, in
all their intercourse, had she spoken to him one word of kindness--one
personal to himself.
"No, madam," he answered quietly, "I'm all right, thank you."
When he overtook Holcomb later on he related the incident, at which
Holcomb's eyes filled. "It is the Margaret in her," Billy had said
to himself. Perhaps, after all, he had misjudged her. The butler said
nothing of what he had seen and heard behind the pantry door. She had
confirmed his diagnosis made to Holcomb that day in the woods--"She's
a fool but I don't think she's crooked." Better let well enough alone.
Night began to settle. The monotonous forest of trees became
indistinct; for half an hour the rain fell in sheets--ghostly white
in the dusk. It became difficult now to evade the roots and holes. It
grew colder, yet there was no breeze. Still the gaunt figure of
the trapper ahead of them led on without pity. They followed him
blindly--now stumbling in the shadows--some of these proved to be
mud--others water--still others the soaked underbrush. Whatever they
stumbled into now the sensation was the same.
"Sam!" called Alice feebly.
"Yes, dear," came his voice ahead. He fell out of line and waited for
her, bent and dripping under his pack. She looked at him, her
mouth trembling and he patted her cheek with a numb hand. "A little
more--only a little more courage, dear," he said kindly; "Holt tells
me we are near Bear Pond. You have been so plucky."
"And so have you--Sam," she faltered. He smiled wearily, turned away
from her and regained his place in the line.
The rain ceased--the trees grew shorter; hemlock and spruce resolved
themselves into a stunted horizon of tamarack; then came a glimmering
light through an open space and a sheet of water, glistening like
steel, appeared ahead of them and they emerged suddenly upon a hard,
smooth point of sand.
"Bear Pond!" the trapper announced cheerily as he halted. "Here we be,
by whimey! I was afeared some of ye'd give out, but I dassent stop
a minute. You folks'll begin to feel better soon's we git a fire
started."
Already Holcomb's and the Clown's axes were being swung with a will.
They soon emerged from the forest dragging out on the smooth sand
spit, where the line of tamaracks ended, enough dry timber for a fire
which the trapper soon roused into a welcome blaze. He used but one
match--often he travelled a week on seven. When they were wet he
rubbed them in his hair.
Again the sharp whack of the axes cut out a ridgepole and two forked
supports. Before it grew dark they had a snug lean-to built and
covered with boughs at the edge of the tamaracks--out of the wind.
Here, after a warm meal, they passed the first night of their flight.
The women shared one side of the lean-to, grateful for the dry
blankets; the men, tired from their heavy loads, crept in noiselessly
in their sock feet beside them and were soon asleep. The old dog
waited patiently until they were settled, then entered and lay down
in the only space left. Back of them, far away over the horizon of the
wilderness, the sky was pink.
Alice Thayor slept soundly until midnight, then she lay awake until
the first glimmer of dawn. She half rose upon her elbow and looked
calmly at the face of her husband asleep next to her. It seemed
strange to her to be sleeping next to him. His face was drawn and
haggard; he breathed heavily. Margaret was curled next to her on the
other side, the curve of her lovely mouth showing above the coarse
edge of the horse blanket.
Then an irresistible desire came over her to get away--away from this
misery--out of these rough clothes--away from these men. The fire in
front of her blazed up, illumining the thatched roof of the lean-to.
She looked at her hands--they were dirty, the nails black from
scrambling over logs. At that moment she would eagerly have exchanged
her jewels for a boudoir and a bath. Her jewels--they were gone in
the fire. Gone, too, before it began were a packet of letters and a
tell-tale photograph! This fact was the only one in her desolation
that comforted her.
Then came moments when her surroundings became exasperating; what
fresh misery would she be forced to endure--days worse, perhaps, than
the one she had just passed through might follow. If she could only
fly! But where? Out in that wilderness? She had sense enough left to
know that had she stolen out beyond sight of the lean-to she would
have been hopelessly lost. She did not know, however, all that it
meant; the terror that would await her--the suffering, stumbling
blindly in a circle--hungry, yet afraid to eat had she had
food--thirsty, yet not daring to stop even at a clear spring. Her
body beaten and bruised--her mind weak from fear--half naked--her
hair dishevelled, her scalp bleeding; reeling toward any quarter which
seemed like the way out. All this, had she but known it, had happened
to the three men sleeping in the lean-to: the trapper, when he was
eighteen, found barely breathing after twelve days of torture, the
dog chain which he had wrapped round his waist after starting a deer,
having deflected the needle of his compass; Holcomb, picking his way
out along the shores of a chain of lakes, with no matches and but a
handful of cartridges; and the Clown, blind drunk on Jamaica ginger
and peppermint essence, in a country whose unfamiliarity nearly caused
his death. A man without his stomach and physique would have died; by
some miracle he lived to reach Morrison's unaided--he wanted a drink.
And yet there was not a portion of this wilderness that could
lose these three men now, past masters as they were in the art of
wood-craft. Yes--it was just as well that The Lady of Big Shanty knew
none of these things. Miserable as she was, here, she was protected.
Her hand went out unconsciously and rested for a moment on her
husband. Again she fell asleep--a troubled sleep--in which she dreamed
she confronted a face with sinister eyes and hot cheeks from which she
fled in terror. When she awoke she looked out into a blanket of mist.
In the breaking dawn the surface of Bear Pond lay like a mirror. The
others were still asleep. The fire in front of the lean-to was a
bed of white ashes. A kingfisher screamed past, following the limpid
turquoise edge of the shore. Beyond the mist rose a great mountain,
the filmy, ragged edges of the fog blanket sweeping in curling rifts
beneath a precipice of black sides.
The sun presently turned the mist into rose vapour; the mirror became
a greenish black, shining like polished metal. She looked out upon
this scene with a sense of restful fascination. It was the first
sunrise of its kind this woman--to whom morning meant the perfunctory
drawing of her bedroom curtains--had seen for years. It was as if she
had been transported to a new world, shutting out the other world
she had known so well--the world in which she had fluttered so
successfully, spending lavishly the money of the man who at that
moment lay next to her, worn out by calamity and fatigue. He had been
patient through years of her unreasonable extravagance--through her
selfish domination--through her tyranny. He was patient now.
Alice Thayor thought of these things as she gazed out upon the
strange, silent pond. It was the first time in her later life she had
taken time to think. Mental anguish has its sudden changes. When we
have suffered enough we seek the pleasant; to suffer requires effort.
When at last we shirk the work of being unhappy we forget our sorrow.
Alice, little by little, was forgetting hers--even in the midst of
these trying circumstances.
Soon she noticed that Margaret's blanket had slipped from her
shoulders. She leaned forward and drew it tenderly back to its place;
then she bent over and kissed the cheek of the sleeping girl.
The grip of the primaeval had laid hold of her heart!
When she again gazed across the thin rose vapour, disappearing rapidly
under the first rays of the sun, hot, scalding tears were streaming
down her face.