Philip sat where Jeanne had left him. He was powerless to move or to
say a word that might have recalled her. Her own grief, quivering in
that one piteous sob, overwhelmed him. It held him mute and listening,
with the hope that each instant the tent-flap might open and Jeanne
reappear. And yet if she came he had no words to say. Unwittingly he
had probed deep into one of those wounds that never heal, and he
realized that to ask forgiveness would be but another blunder. He
almost groaned as he thought of what he had done. In his desire to
understand, to know more about Jeanne, he had driven her into a corner.
What he had forced from her he might have learned a little later from
Pierre or from the father at Fort o' God. He thought that Jeanne must
despise him now, for he had taken advantage of her helplessness and his
own position. He had saved her from her enemies; and in return she had
opened her heart, naked and bleeding, to his eyes. What she had told
him was not a voluntary confidence; it was a confession wrung from her
by the rack of his questionings--the confession that she was a
waif-child, that Pierre was not her brother, and that the man at Fort
o' God was not her father. He had gone to the very depths of that which
was sacred to herself and those whom she loved.
He rose and stirred the fire, and stray ends of birch leaped into
flame, lighting his pale face. He wanted to go to the tent, kneel there
where Jeanne could hear him, and tell her that it was all a mistake.
Yet he knew that this could not be, neither the next day nor the next,
for to plead extenuation for himself would be to reveal his love. Two
or three times he had been on the point of revealing that love. Only
now, after what had happened, did it occur to him that to disclose his
heart to Jeanne would be the greatest crime he could commit. She was
alone with him in the heart of a wilderness, dependent upon him, upon
his honor. He shivered when he thought how narrow had been his escape,
how short a time he had known her, and how in that brief spell he had
given himself up to an almost insane hope. To him Jeanne was not a
stranger. She was the embodiment, in flesh and blood, of the spirit
which had been his companion for so long. He loved her more than ever
now, for Jeanne the lost child of the snows was more the earthly
revelation of his beloved spirit than Jeanne the sister of Pierre.
But--what was he to Jeanne?
He left the fire and went to the pile of balsam which he had spread out
between two rocks for his bed. He lay down and pulled Pierre's blanket
over him, but his fatigue and his desire for sleep seemed to have left
him, and it was a long time before slumber finally drove from him the
thought of what he had done. After that he did not move. He heard none
of the sounds of the night. A little owl, the devil-witch, screamed
horribly overhead and awakened Jeanne, who sat up for a few moments in
her balsam bed, white-faced and shivering. But Philip slept. Long
afterward something warm awakened him, and he opened his eyes, thinking
that it was the glow of the fire in his face. It was the sun. He heard
a sound which brought him quickly into consciousness of day. It was
Jeanne singing softly over beyond the rocks.
He had dreaded the coming of morning, when he would have to face
Jeanne. His guilt hung heavily upon him. But the sound of her voice,
low and sweet, filled with the carroling happiness of a bird, brought a
glad smile to his lips. After all, Jeanne had understood him. She had
forgiven him, if she had not forgotten.
For the first time he noticed the height of the sun, and he sat bolt
upright. Jeanne saw his head and shoulders pop over the top of the
rocks, and she laughed at him from their stone table.
"I've been keeping breakfast for over an hour, M'sieur Philip," she
cried. "Hurry down to the creek and wash yourself, or I shall eat all
alone!"
Philip rose stupidly and looked at his watch.
"Eight o'clock!" he gasped. "We should have been ten miles on the way
by this time!"
Jeanne was still laughing at him. Like sunlight she dispelled his gloom
of the night before. A glance around the camp showed him that she must
have been awake for at least two hours. The packs were filled and
strapped. The silken tent was down and folded. She had gathered wood,
built the fire, and cooked breakfast while he slept. And now she stood
a dozen paces from him, blushing a little at his amazed stare, waiting
for him.
"It's deuced good of you, Miss Jeanne!" he exclaimed. "I don't deserve
such kindness from you."
"Oh!" said Jeanne, and that was all. She bent over the fire, and Philip
went to the creek.
He was determined now to maintain a more certain hold upon himself. As
he doused his face in the cold water his resolutions formed themselves.
For the next few days he would forget everything but the one fact that
Jeanne was in his care; he would not hurt her again or compel her
confidence.
It was after nine o'clock before they were upon the river. They paddled
without a rest until twelve. After lunch Philip confiscated Jeanne's
paddle and made her sit facing him in the canoe.
The afternoon passed like a dream to Philip, He did not refer again to
Fort o' God or the people there; he did not speak again of Eileen
Brokaw, of Lord Fitzhugh, or of Pierre. He talked of himself and of
those things which had once been his life. He told of his mother and
his father, who had died, and of the little sister, whom he had
worshiped, but who had gone with the others. He bared his loneliness to
her as he would have told them to the sister, had she lived; and
Jeanne's soft blue eyes were filled with tenderness and sympathy. And
then he talked of Gregson's world. Within himself he called it no
longer his own.
It was Jeanne who questioned now. She asked about cities and great
people, about books and WOMEN. Her knowledge amazed Philip. She might
have visited the Louvre. One would have guessed that she had walked in
the streets of Paris, Berlin, and London. She spoke of Johnson, of
Dickens, and of Balzac as though they had died but yesterday. She was
like one who had been everywhere and yet saw everything through a veil
that bewildered her. In her simplicity she unfolded herself to Philip,
leaf by leaf, petal by petal, like the morning apios that surrenders
its mysteries to the sun. She knew the world which he had come from,
its people, its cities, its greatness; and yet her knowledge was like
that of the blind. She knew, but she had never seen; and in her
wistfulness to see as HE could see there was a sweetness and a pathos
which made every fiber in his body sing with a quiet and thrilling joy.
He knew, now, that the man who was at Fort o' God must, indeed, be the
most wonderful man in the world. For out of a child of the snows, of
the forest, of a savage desolation, he had made Jeanne. And Jeanne was
glorious!
The afternoon passed, and they made thirty miles before they camped for
the night. They traveled the next day, and the one that followed. On
the afternoon of the fourth they were approaching Big Thunder Rapids,
close to the influx of the Little Churchill, sixty miles from Fort o'
God.
These days, too, passed for Philip with joyous swiftness; swiftly
because they were too short for him. His life, now, was Jeanne. Each
day she became a more vital part of him. She crept into his soul until
there was no longer left room for any other thought than of her. And
yet his happiness was tampered by a thing which, if not grief,
depressed and saddened him at times. Two days more and they would be at
Fort o' God, and there Jeanne would be no longer his own, as she was
now. Even the wilderness has its conventionality, and at Fort o' God
their comradeship would end. A day of rest, two at the most, and he
would leave for the camp on Blind Indian Lake. As the time drew nearer
when they would be but friends and no longer comrades, Philip could not
always hide the signs of gloom which weighed upon him. He revealed
nothing in words; but now and then Jeanne had caught him when the fears
at his heart betrayed themselves in his face. Jeanne became happier as
their journey approached its end. She was alive every moment, joyous,
expectant, looking ahead to Fort o' God; and this in itself was a
bitterness to Philip, though he knew that he was a fool for allowing it
to be so. He reasoned, with dull, masculine wit, that if Jeanne cared
for him at all she would not be so anxious for their comradeship to
end. But these moods, when they came, passed quickly. And on this
afternoon of the fourth day they passed away entirely, for in an
instant there came a solution to it all. They had known each other but
four days, yet that brief time had encompassed what might not have been
in as many years. Life, smooth, uneventful, develops friendship slowly;
an hour of the unusual may lay bare a soul. Philip thought of Eileen
Brokaw, whose heart was still a closed mystery to him; who was a
stranger, in spite of the years he had known her. In four days he had
known Jeanne a lifetime; in those four days Jeanne had learned more of
him than Eileen Brokaw could ever know. So he arrived at the resolution
which made him, too, look eagerly ahead to the end of the journey. At
Fort o' God he would tell Jeanne of his love.
Jeanne was looking at him when the determination came. She saw the
gloom pass, a flush mount into his face; and when he saw her eyes upon
him he laughed, without knowing why.
"If it is so funny," she said, "please tell me."
It was a temptation, but he resisted it.
"It is a secret," he said, "which I shall keep until we reach Fort o'
God."
Jeanne turned her face up-stream to listen. A dozen times she had done
this during the last half-hour, and Philip had listened with her. At
first they had heard a distant murmur, rising as they advanced, like an
autumn wind that grows stronger each moment in the tree-tops. The
murmur was steady now, without the variations of a wind. It was the
distant roaring of the rocks and rushing floods of Big Thunder Rapids.
It grew steadily from a murmur to a moan, from a moan to rumbling
thunder. The current became so swift that Philip was compelled to use
all his strength to force the canoe ahead. A few moments later he
turned into shore.
From where they landed, a worn trail led up to one of the precipitous
walls of rock and shut in the Big Thunder Rapids. Everything about them
was rock. The trail was over rock, worn smooth by the countless feet of
centuries--clawed feet, naked feet, moccasined feet, the feet of white
men. It was the Great Portage, for animal as well as man. Philip went
up with the pack, and Jeanne followed behind him. The thunder
increased. It roared in their ears until they could no longer hear
their own voices. Directly above the rapids the trail was narrow,
scarcely eight feet in width, shut in on the land side by a mountain
wall, on the other by the precipice. Philip looked behind, and saw
Jeanne hugging close to the wall. Her face was white, her eyes shone
with terror and awe. He spoke to her, but she saw only the movement of
his lips. Then he put down his pack and went close to the edge of the
precipice.
Sixty feet below him was the Big Thunder, a chaos of lashing foam, of
slippery, black-capped rocks bobbing and grimacing amid the rushing
torrents like monsters playing at hide-and-seek. Now one rose high, as
though thrust up out of chaos by giant hands; then it sank back, and
milk-white foam swirled softly over the place where it had been. There
seemed to be life in the chaos--a grim, terrible life whose voice was a
thunder that never died. For a few moments Philip stood fascinated by
the scene below him. Then he felt a touch upon his arm. It was Jeanne.
She stood beside him quivering, dead-white, Almost daring to take the
final step. Philip caught her hands firmly in his own, and Jeanne
looked over. Then she darted back and hovered, shuddering, near the
wall.
The portage was a short one, scarce two hundred yards in length, and at
the upper end was a small green meadow in which river voyagers camped.
It still lacked two hours of dusk when Philip carried over the last of
the luggage.
"We will not camp here," he said to Jeanne pointing to the remains of
numerous fires and remembering Pierre's exhortation. "It is too public,
as you might say. Besides, that noise makes me deaf."
Jeanne shuddered.
"Let us hurry," she said. "I'm--I'm afraid of THAT!"
Philip carried the canoe down to the river, and Jeanne followed with
the bearskins. The current was soft and sluggish, with tiny maelstroms
gurgling up here and there, like air-bubbles in boiling syrup. He only
half launched the canoe, and Jeanne remained while he went for another
load. The dip, kept green by the water of a spring, was a pistol-shot
from the river. Philip looked back from the crest and saw Jeanne
leaning over the canoe. Then he descended into the meadow, whistling.
He had reached the packs when to his ears there seemed to come a sound
that rose faintly above the roar of the water in the chasm. He
straightened himself and listened.
"Philip! Philip!"
The cry came twice--his own name, piercing, agonizing, rising above the
thunder of the floods. He heard no more, but raced up the slope of the
dip. From the crest he stared down to where Jeanne had been. She was
gone. The canoe was gone. A terrible fear swept upon him, and for an
instant he turned faint. Jeanne's cry came to him again.
"Philip! Philip!"
Like a madman he dashed up the rocky trail to the chasm, calling to
Jeanne, shrieking to her, telling her that he was coming. He reached
the edge of the precipice and looked down. Below him was the canoe and
Jeanne. She was fighting futilely against the resistless flood; he saw
her paddle wrenched suddenly from her hands, and as it went swirling
beyond her reach she cried out his name again. Philip shouted, and the
girl's white face was turned up to him. Fifty yards ahead of her were
the first of the rocks. In another minute, even less, Jeanne would be
dashed to pieces before his eyes. Thoughts, swifter than light, flashed
through his mind. He could do nothing for her, for it seemed impossible
that any living creature could exist amid the maelstroms and rocks
ahead. And yet she was calling to him. She was reaching up her arms to
him. She had faith in him, even in the face of death.
"Philip! Philip!"
There was no M'SIEUR to that cry now, only a moaning, sobbing prayer
filled with his name.
"I'm coming, Jeanne!" he shouted. "I'm coming! Hold fast to the canoe!"
He ran ahead, stripping off his coat. A little below the first rocks a
stunted banskian grew out of an earthy fissure in the cliff, with its
lower branches dipping within a dozen feet of the stream. He climbed
out on this with the quickness of a squirrel, and hung to a limb with
both hands, ready to drop alongside the canoe. There was one chance,
and only one, of saving Jeanne. It was a chance out of a thousand--ten
thousand. If he could drop at the right moment, seize the stern of the
canoe, and make a rudder of himself, he could keep the craft from
turning broadside and might possibly guide it between the rocks below.
This one hope was destroyed as quickly as it was born. The canoe
crashed against the first rock. A smother of foam rose about it and he
saw Jeanne suddenly engulfed and lost. Then she reappeared, almost
under him, and he launched himself downward, clutching at her dress
with his hands. By a supreme effort he caught her around the waist with
his left arm, so that his right was free.
Ahead of them was a boiling sea of white, even more terrible than when
they had looked down upon it from above. The rocks were hidden by mist
and foam; their roar was deafening. Between Philip and the awful
maelstrom of death there was a quieter space of water, black, sullen,
and swift--the power itself, rushing on to whip itself into ribbons
among the taunting rocks that barred its way to the sea. In that space
Philip looked at Jeanne. Her face was against his breast. Her eyes met
his own, and In that last moment, face to face with death, love leaped
above all fear. They were about to die, and Jeanne would die in his
arms. She was his now--forever. His hold tightened. Her face came
nearer. He wanted to shout, to let her know what he had meant to say at
Fort o' God. But his voice would have been like a whisper in a
hurricane. Could Jeanne understand? The wall of foam was almost in
their faces. Suddenly he bent down, crushed his face to hers, and
kissed her again and again. Then, as the maelstrom engulfed them, he
swung his own body to take the brunt of the shock.
He no longer reasoned beyond one thing. He must keep his body between
Jeanne and the rocks. He would be crushed, beaten to pieces, made
unrecognizable, but Jeanne would be only drowned. He fought to keep
himself half under her, with his head and shoulders in advance. When he
felt the floods sucking him under, he thrust her upward. He fought, and
did not know what happened. Only there was the crashing of a thousand
cannon in his ears, and he seemed to live through an eternity. They
thundered about him, against him, ahead of him, and then more and more
behind. He felt no pain, no shock. It was the SOUND that he seemed to
be fighting; in the buffeting of his body against the rocks there was
the painlessness of a knife-thrust delivered amid the roar of battle.
And the sound receded. It was thundering in retreat, and a curious
thought came to him. Providence had delivered him through the
maelstrom. He had not struck the rocks. He was saved. And in his arms
he held Jeanne.
It was day when he began the fight, broad day. And now it was night. He
felt earth, under his feet, and he knew that he had brought Jeanne
ashore. He heard her voice speaking his name; and he was so glad that
he laughed and sobbed like a babbling idiot. It was dark, and he was
tired. He sank down, and he could feel Jeanne's arms striving to hold
him up, and he could still hear her voice. But nothing could keep him
from sleeping. And during that sleep he had visions. Now it was day,
and he saw Jeanne's face over him; again it was night, and he heard
only the roaring of the flood. Again he heard voices, Jeanne's voice
and a man's, and he wondered who the man could be. It was a strange
sleep filled with strange dreams. But at last the dreams seemed to go.
He lost himself. He awoke, and the night had turned into day. He was in
a tent, and the sun was gleaming on the outside. It had been a curious
dream, and he sat up astonished.
There was a man sitting beside him. It was Pierre.
"Thank God, M'sieur!" he heard. "We have been waiting for this. You are
saved!"
"Pierre!" he gasped.
Memory returned to him. He was awake. He felt weak, but he knew that
what he saw was not the vision of a dream.
"I came the day after you went through the rapids," explained Pierre,
seeing his amazement. "You saved Jeanne. She was not hurt. But you were
badly bruised, M'sieur, and you have been in a fever."
"Jeanne--was not--hurt?"
"No. She cared for you until I came. She is sleeping now."
"I have not been this way--very long, have I, Pierre?"
"I came yesterday," said Pierre. He bent over Philip, and added: "You
must remain quiet for a little longer, M'sieur. I have brought you a
letter from M'sieur Gregson, and when you read that I will have some
broth made for you."
Philip took the letter and opened it as Pierre went quietly out of the
tent. Gregson had written him but a few lines. He wrote:
MY DEAR PHIL,--I hope you'll forgive me. But I'm tired of this mess. I
was never cut out for the woods, and so I'm going to dismiss myself,
leaving all best wishes behind for you. Go in and fight. You're a devil
for fighting, and will surely win. I'll only be in the way. So I'm
going back with the ship, which leaves in three or four days. Was going
to tell you this on the night you disappeared. Am sorry I couldn't
shake hands with you before I left. Write and let me know how things
come out. As ever,