That he had actually passed through the experience of the last few
minutes, that it was a reality and not some beautiful phantasm of
the red and gold world which again lay quiet and lifeless about
him, Philip could scarcely convince himself as he made his way
back to the canoe and the fire. The discovery of this girl, buried
six hundred miles in a wilderness that was almost a terra
incognita to the white man, was sufficient to bewilder him. And
only now, as he kicked the burning embers from under the pails,
and looked at his watch to time himself, did he begin to realize
that he had not sensed a hundredth part of the miracle of it.
Now that he was alone, question after question leapt unanswered
through his mind, and every vein in his body throbbed with strange
excitement. Not for an instant did he doubt what she had said.
This world--the forests about him, the lakes, the blue skies
above, were her home. And yet, struggling vainly for a solution of
the mystery, he told himself in the next breath that this could
not be possible. Her voice had revealed nothing of the wilderness
--except in its sweetness. Not a break had marred the purity of
her speech. She had risen before him like the queen of some
wonderful kingdom, and not like a forest girl. And in her face he
had seen the soul of one who had looked upon the world as the
world lived outside of its forest walls. Yet he believed her. This
was her home. Her hair, her eyes, the flowerlike lithesomeness of
her beautiful body--and something more, something that he could
not see but which he could FEEL in her presence, told him that
this was so. This wonder-world about him was her home. But why--
how?
He seated himself on a rock, holding the open watch in his hand.
Of one thing he was sure. She was oppressed by a strange fear. It
was not the fear of being alone, of being lost, of some happen-
chance peril that she might fancy was threatening her. It was a
deeper, bigger thing than that. And she had confessed to him--not
wholly, but enough to make him know--that this fear was of man. He
felt at this thought a little thrill of joy, of undefinable
exultation. He sprang from the rock and went down to the shore of
the lake, scanning its surface with eager, challenging eyes. In
these moments he forgot that civilization was waiting for him,
that for eighteen months he had been struggling between life and
death at the naked and barbarous end of the earth. All at once, in
the space of a few minutes, his world had shrunken until it held
but two things for him--the autumn-tinted forests, and the girl.
Beyond these he thought of nothing except the minutes that were
dragging like thirty weights of lead.
As the hand of his watch marked off the twenty-fifth of the
prescribed thirty he turned his steps in the direction of the
pool. He half expected that she would be there when he came over
the ridge of rock. But she had not returned. He looked up the
coulee, end then at the firm white sand close to the water. The
imprints of her feet were there--small, narrow imprints of a
heeled shoe. Unconsciously he smiled, for no other reason than
that each surprise he encountered was a new delight to him. A
forest girl as he had known them would have worn moccasins--six
hundred miles from civilization.
As he was about to leap across the narrow neck of the pool he
noticed a white object almost buried in the dry sand, and picked
it up. It was a handkerchief; and this, too, was a surprise. He
had not particularly noticed her dress, except that it was soft
and clinging blue. The handkerchief he looked at more closely. It
was of fine linen with a border of lace, and so soft that he could
have hidden it in the palm of his hand. From it rose a faint,
sweet scent of the wild rock violet. He knew that it was rock
violet, because more than once he had crushed the blossoms between
his hands. He thrust the bit of fabric in the breast of his
flannel shirt, and walked swiftly up the coulee.
A hundred yards above him the stream turned abruptly, and here a
strip of forest meadow grew to the water's edge. He sprang up the
low bank, and stood face to face with the girl.
She had heard his approach, and was waiting for him, a little
smile of welcome on her lips. She had completed her toilet. She
had braided her wonderful hair, and it was gathered in a heavy,
shimmering coronet about her head. There was a flutter of lace at
her throat, and little fluffs of it at her wrists. She was more
beautiful, more than ever like the queen of a kingdom as she stood
before him now. And she was alone. He saw that in his first swift
glance.
"You didn't eat the prunes?" she asked, and for the first time he
saw a bit of laughter in her eyes.
"No--I--I kicked the fire from under them," he said.
He caught the significance of her words, and her sudden sidewise
gesture. A short distance from them was a small tent, and on the
grass in front of the tent was spread a white cloth, on which was
a meal such as he had not looked upon for two years.
"I am glad," she said, and again her eyes met his with their glow
of friendly humour. "They might have spoiled your appetite, and I
have made up my mind that I want you to have dinner with me. I
can't offer you pie or doughnuts. But I have a home-made fruit
cake, and a pot of jam that I made myself. Will you join me?"
They sat down, with the feast between them, and the girl leaned
over to turn him a cup of tea from a pot that was already made and
waiting. Her lovely head was near him, and he stared with hungry
adoration at the thick, shining braids, and the soft white contour
of her cheek and neck. She leaned back suddenly, and caught him.
The words that were on her lips remained unspoken. The laughter
went from her eyes. In a hot wave the blood flushed his own face.
"Forgive me if I do anything you don't understand," he begged.
"For weeks past I have been wondering how I would act when I met
white people again. Perhaps you can't understand. But eighteen
months up there--eighteen months without the sound of a white
woman's voice, without a glimpse of her face, with only dreams to
live on--will make me queer for a time. Can't you understand--a
little?"
"A great deal," she replied so quickly that she put him at ease
again. "Back there I couldn't quite believe you. I am beginning to
now. You are honest. But let us not talk of ourselves until after
dinner. Do you like the cake?"
She had given him a piece as large as his fist, and he bit off the
end of it.
"Delicious!" he cried instantly. "Think of it--nothing but
bannock, bannock, bannock for two years, and only six ounces of
that a day for the last six months! Do you care if I eat the whole
of it--the cake, I mean?"
Seriously she began cutting the remainder of the cake into
quarters.
"It would be one of the biggest compliments you could pay me," she
said. "But won't you have some boiled tongue with it, a little
canned lobster, a pickle--"
"Pickles!" he interrupted. "Just cake and pickles--please! I've
dreamed of pickles up there. I've had 'em come to me at night as
big as mountains, and one night I dreamed of chasing a pickle with
legs for hours, and when at last I caught up with the thing it had
turned into an iceberg. Please let me have just pickles and cake!"
Behind the lightness of his words she saw the truth--the craving
of famine. Ashamed, he tried to hide it from her. He refused the
third huge piece of cake, but she reached over and placed it in
his hand. She insisted that he eat the last piece, and the last
pickle in the bottle she had opened.
When he finished, she said:
"Now--I know."
"What?"
"That you have spoken the truth, that you have come from a long
time in the North, and that I need not fear--what I did fear."
"And that fear? Tell me--"
She answered calmly, and in her eyes and the lines of her face
came a look of despair which she had almost hidden from him until
now.
"I was thinking during those thirty minutes you away," she said.
"And I realized what folly it was in me to tell you as much as I
have. Back there, for just one insane moment, I thought that you
might help me in a situation which is as terrible as any you may
have faced in your months of Arctic night. But it is impossible.
All that I can ask of you now--all that I can demand of you to
prove that you are the man you said you were--is that you leave
me, and never whisper a word into another ear of our meeting. Will
you promise that?"
"To promise that--would be lying," he said slowly, and his hand
unclenched and lay listlessly on his knee. "If there is a reason--
some good reason why I should leave you--then I will go."
"Then--you demand a reason?"
"To demand a reason would be--"
He hesitated, and she added:
"Unchivalrous."
"Yes--more than that," he replied softly. He bowed his head, and
for a moment she saw the tinge of gray in his blond hair, the
droop of his clean, strong shoulders, the SOMETHING of
hopelessness in his gesture. A new light flashed into her own
face. She raised a hand, as if to reach out to him, and dropped it
as he looked up.
"Will you let me help you?" he asked.
She was not looking at him, but beyond him. In her face he saw
again the strange light of hope that had illumined it at the pool.
"If I could believe," she whispered, still looking beyond him. "If
I could trust you, as I have read that the maidens of old trusted
their knights. But--it seems impossible. In those days, centuries
and centuries ago, I guess, womanhood was next to--God. Men fought
for it, and died for it, to keep it pure and holy. If you had come
to me then you would have levelled your lance and fought for me
without asking a question, without demanding a reward, without
reasoning whether I was right or wrong--and all because I was a
woman. Now it is different. You are a part of civilization, and if
you should do all that I might ask of you it would be because you
have a price in view. I know. I have looked into you. I
understand. That price would be--ME!"
She looked at him now, her breast throbbing, almost a sob in her
quivering voice, defying him to deny the truth of her words.
"You have struck home," he said, and his voice sounded strange to
himself. "And I am not sorry. I am glad that you have seen--and
understand. It seems almost indecent for me to tell you this, when
I have known you for such a short time. But I have known you for
years--in my hopes and dreams. For you I would go to the end of
the world. And I can do what other men have done, centuries ago.
They called them knights. You may call me a MAN!"
At his words she rose from where she had been sitting. She faced
the radiant walls of the forests that rolled billow upon billow in
the distance, and the sun lighted up her crown of hair in a glory.
One hand still clung to her breast. She was breathing even more
quickly, and the flush had deepened in her cheek until it was like
the tender stain of the crushed bakneesh. Philip rose and stood
beside her. His shoulders were back. He looked where she looked,
and as he gazed upon the red and gold billows of forest that
melted away against the distant sky he felt a new and glorious
fire throbbing in his veins. From the forests their eyes turned--
and met. He held out his hand. And slowly her own hand fluttered
at her breast, and was given to him.
"I am quite sure that I understand you now," he said, and his
voice was the low, steady, fighting voice of the man new-born. "I
will be your knight, as you have read of the knights of old. I
will urge no reward that is not freely given. Now--will you let me
help you?"
For a moment she allowed him to hold her hand. Then she gently
withdrew it and stepped back from him.
"You must first understand before you offer yourself," she said.
"I cannot tell you what my trouble is. You will never know. And
when it is over, when you have helped me across the abyss, then
will come the greatest trial of all for you. I believe--when I
tell you that last thing which you must do--that you will regard
me as a monster, and draw back. But it is necessary. If you fight
for me, it must be in the dark. You will not know why you are
doing the things I ask you to do. You may guess, but you would not
guess the truth if you lived a thousand years. Your one reward
will be the knowledge that you have fought for a woman, and that
you have saved her. Now, do you still want to help me?'
"I can't understand," he gasped. "But--yes--I would still accept
the inevitable. I have promised you that I will do as you have
dreamed that knights of old have done. To leave you now would be"
--he turned his head with a gesture of hopelessness--"an empty
world forever. I have told you now. But you could not understand
and believe unless I did. I love you."
He spoke as quietly and with as little passion in his voice as if
he were speaking the words from a book. But their very quietness
made them convincing. She started, and the colour left her face.
Then it returned, flooding her cheeks with a feverish glow.
"In that is the danger," she said quickly. "But you have spoken
the words as I would have had you speak them. It is this danger
that must be buried--deep--deep. And you will bury it. You will
urge no questions that I do not wish to answer. You will fight for
me, blindly, knowing only that what I ask you to do is not sinful
nor wrong. And in the end--"
She hesitated. Her face had grown as tense as his own.
"And in the end," she whispered, "your greatest reward can be only
the knowledge that in living this knighthood for me you have won
what I can never give to any man. The world can hold only one such
man for a woman. For your faith must be immeasurable, your love as
pure as the withered violets out there among the rocks if you live
up to the tests ahead of you. You will think me mad when I have
finished. But I am sane. Off there, in the Snowbird Lake country,
is my home. I am alone. No other white man or woman is with me. As
my knight, the one hope of salvation that I cling to now, you will
return with me to that place--as my husband. To all but ourselves
we shall be man and wife. I will bear your name--or the one by
which you must be known. And at the very end of all, in that hour
of triumph when you know that you have borne me safely over that
abyss at the brink of which I am hovering now, you will go off
into the forest, and--"
She approached him, and laid a hand on his arm. "You will not come
back," she finished, so gently that he scarcely heard her words.
"You will die--for me--for all who have known you."
"Good God!" he breathed, and he stared over her head to where the
red and gold billows of the forests seemed to melt away into the
skies.