THAT night Launa could not sleep. She was so angry with Paul Harvey and
with herself; she loathed herself. Her ideas of men and their passions
were those of a young girl, to whom passion is unknown, to whom men
appear as gods. She considered a man must love a woman by whom he has a
child. Love, love! Paul was the father of a squaw’s child—of a squaw’s
child; it reiterated in her brain until she almost writhed with anguish.
She had thought of him as always her own. The shame of it! And worse
than shame, the pain, because she would have to give him up. Oh, to get
home! To be able to wander about alone! Away on the big barrens where
she could move as she liked, and tire herself out. Their wind-laden
sweetness would revive her, their vastness would bring peace; she was so
tired of the life away from “Solitude.” She forgot how much joy hope had
always given to her. She had hoped. The past tense is easily conjugated
once, but to live in the past for ever, to regret for ever is torment,
death-like torment. She resolved not to regret, not to suffer, and so
she read Carlyle until daylight.
Next day Mrs. Montmorency’s party drove to Paradise. There were
wonderful beech woods in which to walk. Paul met them there. His first
look was for Launa; she was standing talking to two men, and he joined
them and waited with patience, until at last he asked her to go for a
walk.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I am too tired to walk.”
“I want to show you the trees. Come into the wood and sit down, you can
rest there.”
“Well, I will walk,” she answered.
She looked at him with an involuntary air of appeal. She was not afraid
of him, she assured herself, only afraid of herself. Some day he might
tell her things, ask her questions, and she, through weakmindedness,
might answer. They started to walk, and she still meditated. Why should
she think he cared for her? Ah yes, and why did she want him to care?
These questions opened an endless vista of ideas and feelings before
her. She felt indifferent for the moment, as no doubt he did.
“The view is lovely,” she exclaimed at last. “Let us go to the village.”
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, coming nearer and looking at
her.
“Of many things. I think in heaven I should miss the sweetness of the
air which is here.”
“So should I.”
They walked down the road past a cluster of Indian cottages. A young
squaw with a baby in her arms sat in front of one of them. Launa looked
at her and at the child; its hair was more curly, and not quite so black
as the long, straight locks of Indian children.
“What a queer baby!” she exclaimed.
She looked at her companion. He was digging with his stick in the red
clay of the road; his eyes were hidden; a red flush mounted to his
forehead, and he was singularly embarrassed. She turned away and walked
slowly on, followed by him in silence.
“What is that noise?” she said.
They heard a sound like a moan quite near them, and it grew louder;
something—some animal—was suffering intensely.
“Look!” she cried.
In a ditch by the roadside lay a horse, thin, so thin that his bones
seemed as if they would come through his skin. A few children clustered
round, throwing stones at it at intervals and poking it with sticks.
Blood slowly oozed from a wound in its head, and its poor body was
covered with sores.
“Do something,” she said, and her voice quivered with the horror of it.
“Can’t we put it out of its misery? Whose horse is it?”
Paul had driven away the children, and gone close to it.
“Someone has half shot it; it must be in torture.”
“Go and borrow a rifle,” she said. “I will stay here and keep away those
little fiends. Do go.”
“You are not afraid?”
“Afraid? No, only so sorry. What horrible, unavailing suffering! Go, and
be quick.”
He walked briskly away, and she strolled up and down. The children came
near to stare at her, but they ceased to torment the horse. She could
not bear its eyes; they seemed to beg of her to kill it, and she could
do nothing. She clasped her hands together with such force that they
hurt her as she longed and longed for Paul’s return. It began to grow
dusk. She had forgotten tea, and the rest of the party—would they be
looking for her, and imagining all sorts of things? Meanwhile the
horse’s moans grew louder; the young squaw with the baby came slowly
down the road—the baby was crying.
Launa asked if she knew who owned the horse.
“A man named Morris, who lives down the road four miles away. He turned
him out to die; he is too old to work or eat.”
The baby wailed.
“Your child is ill,” said Launa.
“Yes,” grunted the girl, who was so young and almost pretty; “my
grandmother cursed him.”
“Cursed him?”
“Because of his father, he—”
“Oh,” interrupted the other, “will Paul never come? If he would only be
quick.”
She could not bear these revelations. The moans of the horse and the
shrill misery of the child were torturing her.
Someone suddenly threw a stone from behind the shelter of a spruce tree;
it struck the horse, which gave a sharp scream. In the distance Launa
heard footsteps. She ran down the road. It was Paul.
“I am so glad you have come,” she said breathlessly, quickly. “Hurry.
Did you get a rifle?”
“Are you _glad_?” his voice changed. “Yes, I have it.”
“The horse is suffering so terribly.”
He looked at her with a certain wistfulness which was unusual.
He is going to tell me he is sorry for _that_, she thought, remembering
the squaw and the child who had come near them.
“Go, go and put him out of his misery,” she said, with quick anger and
excitement. “There is so much torture, so much suffering for animals,
women, and children. Oh, God! it is awful!”
He turned and saw the Indian girl.
“You,” he said merely, but with bitterness, almost hatred, in his tone.
“Go away.”
“You are a brute,” said Launa, “to talk to her in that way. What has she
done? Go and kill the horse.”
“Not until you are further away,” he said, with gentleness. “He may, and
probably will, scream. That woman is not fit for you to talk to or to
touch.”
For one moment Launa felt afraid, and she wanted to ask him to come with
her down the road out of earshot, away from it all. The twilight was
growing dense. The horse would scream; ugh! how horrible the suffering!
There were witches abroad in the night—witches of selfishness, of pain,
of terror. She wanted Paul to put his arms round her, to kiss her, even
with the girl near with his child in her arms. She felt degraded, and
yet loath to let him leave her, until she remembered the horse.
“Come with me,” said Paul, and he took her hand and led her down the
road. “There is a big rock here. You will wait for me? Sit down and I
will wrap your cloak round you; you are cold.”
Her teeth chattered with apprehension as he walked firmly back. She
listened with her fingers in her ears, hearing only the thump of her
heart beating. One, two sharp reports and a sort of checked scream told
her it was over before he came back.
They walked quickly to the hotel, where the rest of the party were
waiting dinner. They were curious as well as hungry, and anxious to hear
the result of all this wood walking. They discovered nothing; neither
Launa nor Paul appeared happy, or at ease. He ate his dinner with
indifference; she ate nothing, and felt as if all her body, beginning
with her teeth, was beyond her control.
Before they left to drive home he said:—
“You misunderstood me to-night. I want to tell you about that squaw.”
“I know it. Do not tell me.”
“You are angry with me because of her. I could not help it.”
“I despise a man who could not help it,” she answered. “I am sorry for
her and for you. You could shoot the horse.”
“You are angry about her?” he asked again.
“I am outraged, not merely angry. Why,” she continued suddenly, “should
there be one law for me and one for her? I could not bear anyone who
treated her claim as nothing. She will belong to you, be one of you—”
she paused.
“I would never treat her claim as of no value,” he said quickly, “but—”
“You will never come again to me,” she said.
Had she said too much? Would he understand? She continued:
“Do not explain. Be careful—they may think of revenge.”
“That is enough. And so it is good-bye? Good-bye, then.”
Mrs. Montmorency took Launa home with her in the brougham. They talked
about clothes, while Launa remembered the queer dark evening, the
half-pretty Indian girl, and heard the wailing sobs of her baby, and
then she saw Paul’s face full of anger. Love was there, hatred as well,
as he said, “Go away,” to the girl. She shuddered, and he thought her
angry—simply angry—good that he could think she felt so slight an
emotion. Women are angry every day with their maids, and their
dressmakers, and their rivals, and it leaves no impression, not even a
wrinkle; there remains no ache whatever, unless it be weariness.
“I _love_ crepon,” she said to Mrs. Montmorency. “It is so soft and
graceful.”
* * * * *
Paul Harvey did not go again to “Solitude.” Miss Black lamented his
absence loudly. From inquiries she made she learned that he had gone
away to the Restigouche with some Englishmen to fish.
Launa took up shorthand as a sedative, and worked with great diligence.
But she learned nothing. However, as neither her father nor Miss Black
was aware of this, because of their utter ignorance of shorthand, its
failure as an attainable subject caused no surprise to them.
Mr. Archer went to New York, and then Launa frequently took long
wandering walks—over stretches of rocky country with narrow, gloomy,
cuttings full of granite boulders, where there were caves.
One day she went, in her canoe, up a stream, until she reached a chain
of lakes where she could paddle on and on—far away into space—where
the stillness was maddening yet restful.
The peace of autumn, of approaching death, lay on the woods. The maples,
with their gorgeous colouring, shone and flamed in the bright sun; the
birches were yellow, almost gold, in the brilliant light; occasionally a
leaf fell slowly, it reminded Launa of a ghost of the end; there was
dread in the creeping slowness, as of the invincible, powerful march of
a quiet enemy. The breeze sprung up gently, it rippled the water, and
stirred the tall pine trees slowly with a rhythmic movement, and the sun
began to sink. She gazed again and again at the warm rapturous
colouring, the triumph of the trees at the end of their summer life, for
the leaves have a glorious finish, and then she turned her canoe round
and paddled swiftly back to “Solitude.”
Everything there was in confusion; Miss Black had been taken suddenly
ill. She was still unconscious, and they had sent for the doctor, who
arrived only to tell them she was dead.
Launa did not know her father’s address. Miss Black’s relations were
merely cousins, to whom her death and funeral were matters of
indifference.
So Launa stayed alone with the dead woman weeping tears of sorrow—some
tears were for the loss of companionship, some for the love and never
ceasing care. The idea of a funeral was terrible to her; death meant
earth and creepy things. At last Mr. Archer got his telegram, and came
home.
Launa felt as if the end had come to her. Death, the intruder, had
entered into her life; he was a powerful enemy, and hitherto she had
only regarded him as a sleeping brother.
Mr. Archer’s grief was not perfunctory, he grieved honestly and really.
Miss Black was his friend—if any longing for a nearer and perhaps
dearer connection (the dearness thereof is wont to depart when the
nearness is an accomplished fact) had ever crossed his mind, it had
crossed only and never taken root. The constancy of man is more
frequently attributable to circumstances than to everlasting love.
Mr. Archer observed that Launa had grown different—older, more absorbed
in something, more sympathetic. Always a child of deep emotions, she had
developed into a woman. But because her heart was not navigable to
floundering old women, the world near “Solitude” called her cold,
unfeeling, and indifferent.
Her father regretted this alteration. She had been a child, but
apparently death had stepped in and changed her.
He studied her gravely and with attention. “Solitude” was dreary.
Launa’s admirers grew weary of vain visits, of fruitless attempts to see
her, and they ceased to come. They said she was in love with an unknown
man; they had to account for her refusal to see them, and pique and
vanity suggested this solution.
After a long, cold winter, spring was beginning. All life was breaking
out again. The world was glad, triumphant, new, and Mr. George Archer’s
mind turned to England. Launa must go there for change of scene and air,
so they left Canada on the first of May.
Launa and Paul had never met since the memorable day he had shot the
horse. Mr. Archer casually mentioned that Paul was in Montreal. Launa
had a burning desire to hear tidings of him, but she repressed it; she
pushed it back, back, back in her mind, far away into those cupboards
everyone has, and keeps locked and sealed always, by sheer force of
will.