He was an old man. Beard and hair were white. He was as tall as Philip;
his shoulders were broader; his chest massive; and as he stood under
the light of one of the hanging lamps, his face shining with a pale
glow, one hand upon his breast, the other extended, it seemed to Philip
that all of the greatness and past glory of Fort o' God, whatever they
may have been, were personified in the man he beheld. He was dressed in
soft buckskin, like Pierre. His hair and beard grew in wild disorder,
and from under shaggy eyebrows there burned a pair of deep-set eyes of
the color of blue steel. He was a man to inspire awe; old, and yet
young; white-haired, gray-faced, and yet a giant. One might have
expected from between his bearded lips a voice as thrilling as his
appearance; a rumbling voice, deep-chested, sonorous--and it would have
caused no surprise. It was the voice that surprised Philip more than
the man. It was low, and trembling with an agitation which even
strength and pride could not control.
"Philip Whittemore, I am Henry d'Arcambal. May God bless you for what
you have done!"
A hand of iron gripped his own. And then, before Philip had found words
to say, the master of Fort o' God suddenly placed his arms about his
shoulders and embraced him. Their shoulders touched. Their faces were
close. The two men who loved Jeanne d'Arcambal above all else on earth
gazed for a silent moment into each other's eyes.
"They have told me," said D'Arcambal, softly. "You have brought my
Jeanne home through death. Accept a father's blessing, and with
it--this!"
He stepped back, and swept his arms about the great room.
"Everything--everything--would have gone with her," he said. "If you
had let her die, I should have died. My God, what peril she was in! In
saving her you saved me. So you are welcome here, as a son. For the
first time since my Jeanne was a babe Fort o' God offers itself to a
man who is a stranger and its hospitality is yours so long as its walls
hang together. And as they have done this for upward of two hundred
years, M'sieur Philip, we may conclude that our friendship is to be
without end."
He clasped Philip's hands again, and two tears coursed down his gray
cheeks. It was difficult for Philip to restrain the joy his words
produced, which, coming from the lips of Jeanne's father, lifted him
suddenly into a paradise of hope. For many reasons he had come to
expect a none too warm reception at Fort o' God; he had looked ahead to
the place with a grim sort of fear, scarcely definable; and here
Jeanne's father was opening his arms to him. Pierre was unapproachable;
Jeanne herself was a mystery, filling him alternately with hope and
despair; D'Arcambal had accepted him as a son. He could find no words
adequate to his emotion; none that could describe his own happiness,
unless it was in a bold avowal of his love for the girl he had saved.
And this his good sense told him not to make, at the present moment.
"Any man would have done as much for your daughter," he said at last,
"and I am happy that I was the fortunate one to render her assistance."
"You are wrong," said D'Arcambal, taking him by the arm. "You are one
out of a thousand. It takes a MAN to go through the Big Thunder and
come out at the other end alive. I know of only one other who has done
that in the last twenty years, and that other is Henry d'Arcambal
himself. We three, you, Jeanne, and I, have alone triumphed over those
monsters of death. All others have died. It seems like a strange
pointing of the hand of God."
Philip trembled.
"We three!" he exclaimed.
"We three," said the old man, "and for that reason you are a part of
Fort o' God."
He led Philip deeper into the great room, and Philip saw that almost
all the space along the walls of the huge room was occupied by shelves
upon shelves of books, masses of papers, piles of magazines
shoulder-high, scores of maps and paintings. The massive table was
covered with books; there were piles on smaller tables; chairs, and the
floor itself, covered with the skins of a score of wild beasts, were
littered with them. At the far end of the room he saw deeper and darker
shelves, where gleamed faintly in the lamplight row upon row of vials
and bottles and strange instruments of steel and glass. A scientist in
the wilderness--a student exiled in a desolation! These were the
thoughts that leaped into his mind, and he knew that in this room
Jeanne had been created; that here, between these centuries-old walls,
amid an environment of strange silence, of whispering age, her visions
of the world had come. Here, separated from all her kind, God, Nature,
and a father had made her of their handiwork.
The old man pointed Philip to a chair near the large table, and sat
down close to him. At his feet was a stool covered with silvery
lynx-skin, and D'Arcambal looked at this, his strong, grim face
relaxing into a gentle smile of happiness.
"There is where Jeanne sits--at my feet," he said. "It has been her
place for many years. When she is not there I am lost. Life ceases.
This room has been our world. To-night you are in Fort o' God;
to-morrow you will see D'Arcambal House. You have heard of that,
perhaps, but never of Fort o' God. That belongs to Jeanne and me, to
Pierre--and you. Fort o' God is the heart, the soul, the life's blood
of D'Arcambal House. It is this room and two or three others.
D'Arcambal House is our barrier. When strangers come, they see
D'Arcambal House; plain rooms, of rough wood; quarters such as you have
seen at posts and stations; the mask which gives no hint of what is
hidden within. It is there that we live to the world; it is here that
we live to ourselves. Jeanne has my permission to tell you whatever she
wishes, a little later. But I am curious, and being an old man must be
humored first. I am still trembling. You must tell me what happened to
Jeanne."
For an hour they talked, and Philip went over one by one the events as
they had occurred since the fight on the cliff, omitting only such
things as he thought that Jeanne and Pierre might wish to keep secret
to themselves. At the end of that hour he was certain that D'Arcambal
was unaware of the dark cloud that had suddenly come into Jeanne's
life. The old man's brow was knitted with deep lines, and his powerful
jaws were set hard, as Philip told of the ambush, of the wounding of
Pierre, and the flight of his assailants with his daughter. It was to
get money, the old man thought. The half-breed had suggested that, and
Jeanne herself had given it as her opinion. Why else should they have
been attacked at Churchill? Such things had occurred before, he told
Philip. The little daughter of the factor at Nelson House had been
stolen, and held for ransom. With a hundred questions he wrung from
Philip every detail of the second fight and of the struggle for life in
the rapids. He betrayed no physical excitement, even in those moments
of Philip's description when Jeanne hung between life and death; but in
his eyes there was the glow of red-hot fires. At last there came to
interrupt them the low, musical tinkling of a bell under the table.
D'Arcambal's face lighted up suddenly.
"Ah, I had forgotten," he exclaimed. "Pardon me, Philip. Dinner has
been awaiting us this last half-hour; and besides--"
He reached out and touched a tiny button, which Philip had not observed
before.
"I am selfish."
He had hardly ceased speaking when footsteps sounded in the hall, and
in spite of every resolution he had made to guard himself against any
betrayal of the emotions burning in his breast, Philip sprang to his
feet. Jeanne had come in under the glow of the lamps and stood now a
dozen feet from him, a vision so exquisitely lovely that he saw nothing
of those who entered behind her, nor heard D'Arcambal's low, happy
laugh at his side. It seemed to him for a moment as if there had
suddenly appeared before him the face of the picture that was turned
against the wall, only more beautiful now, radiant with the glow of
living flesh and blood. But there was something even more startling
than this resemblance. In this moment Jeanne was the fulfilment of his
dream; she had come to him from out of another world. She was dressed
in an old-fashioned gown of pure white, a fabric so delicate that it
seemed to float about her slender form, responsive to every breath she
drew. Her white shoulders revealed themselves above masses of filmy
lace that fell upon her bosom; her slender arms, girlish rather than
womanly in their beauty, were bare. Her hair was bound up in shining
coils about her head, with a single flower nestling amid a little
cluster of curls that fell upon her neck. After his first movement,
Philip recovered himself by a strong effort. He bowed low to conceal
the flush in his face. Jeanne swept him a little courtesy, and then ran
past him, with the eagerness of any modern child, into the outstretched
arms of her father.
Laughter and joy rumbled in the beard of the master of Fort o' God as
he looked over Jeanne's head at Philip.
"And this is what you have saved for me," he said.
Then he looked beyond, and for the first time Philip realized there
were others in the room. One was Pierre; the other a pretty, dark-faced
girl, with hair that glistened like a raven's wing in the lamp-glow.
Jeanne left her father's arms and gave her hand to Philip.
"M'sieur Philip, this is my sister, Mademoiselle Couchee," she cried.
Pierre's sister gave Philip her hand, and behind them D'Arcambal
laughed softly in his beard again, and said:
"To-morrow, in D'Arcambal House, you may call her Otille, Philip. But
to-night we are in Fort o' God. Oh, Jeanne, Jeanne, what a witch you
are!"
"An angel!" breathed Philip, but no one heard him.
"And this witch," added the old man, "you are to take in to supper,
M'sieur Philip. To night I suppose that I must call you m'sieur, but
to-morrow, when I have on my leather leggings and my skin cap, I will
call you Phil, or Tom, Dick, or Harry, just as I please. This is the
first time, sir, that my Jeanne has ever gone in to dinner on another
arm than mine or Pierre's. And so I may be a little jealous. Proceed."
As Jeanne's hand rested in his arm, and they went into the hall, Philip
could not restrain himself from whispering:
"I am glad--of that."
"And the dress, M'sieur Philip!" exclaimed D'Arcambal behind them, in
the voice of a happy boy. "It is an honor to escort that, to say
nothing of the silly girl that's in it. That dress, sir, belonged to a
beautiful lady who was called Camille, and who died over a century ago."
"Father, please do be good!" protested Jeanne. "Remember!"
"Ah, so I will," said her father. "I had forgotten that you were to
tell M'sieur Philip these things."
They entered another room illuminated by a single huge lamp suspended
above a table spread with silver and fine linen. The room was as great
a surprise as the other two had been. It contained no chairs. What
Philip mentally designated as benches, with deep cushion seats of
greenish leather, were arranged about the table. These same curious
seats furnished other parts of the room. From the pictures on the walls
to the ancient helmet and cuirass that stood up like a legless sentinel
in one corner, this room, like the others, breathed of extreme age.
Over a big open fireplace, in which half a dozen birch logs were
burning, hung a number of old-fashioned weapons; a flintlock, a pair of
obsolete French dueling pistols, a short rapier similar to that which
Pierre wore, and two long swords. Philip noticed that about each of the
dueling pistols was tied a bow of ribbon, dull and faded, as though the
passing of generations had robbed them of beauty and color, to be
replaced by the somberness of age.
During the meal Philip could not but observe that Jeanne was laboring
under some mysterious strain. Her cheeks were brilliantly flushed, and
her eyes were filled with a lustrous brightness that he had never seen
in them before. Their beauty was almost feverish. Several times he
caught a strange little tremor of her white shoulders, as though a
sudden chill had passed through her. He discovered, too, that Pierre
was observing these things, and that there was something forced in the
half-breed's cheerfulness. But D'Arcambal and Otille seemed completely
oblivious of any change. Their happiness overflowed. Philip thought of
his last supper at Churchill, with Eileen Brokaw and her father. Miss
Brokaw had acted strangely then, and had struggled to hide some secret
grief or excitement, as Jeanne was struggling now.
He was glad when the meal was finished, and the master of Fort o' God
rose from his seat. At D'Arcambal's movement his eyes caught Jeanne's,
and then he saw that Pierre was looking sharply at him.
"Jeanne owes you an apology--and an explanation, M'sieur Philip," said
D'Arcambal, resting a hand upon Jeanne's head. "We are going to retire,
and she will initiate you into the fold of Fort o' God."
Pierre and Otille followed him from the room. For the first time in an
hour Jeanne laughed frankly at Philip.
"There isn't much to explain, M'sieur Philip," she said, rising from
her seat. "You know pretty nearly all there is to know about Fort o'
God now. Only I am sure that I did not appear to value your confidence
very much--a little while ago. It must have seemed ungrateful in me,
indeed, to have told you so little about myself and my home, after what
you did for Pierre and me. But I have father's permission now. It is
the second time that he has ever given it to me."
"And I don't want to hear," exclaimed Philip, bluntly. "I have been
more or less of a brute, Miss Jeanne. I know enough about Fort o' God.
It is a glorious place. You owe me nothing, and for that reason--"
"But I insist," interrupted the girl. "Do you mean to say that you do
not care to listen, when this is the second time in my life that I have
had the opportunity of talking about my home? And the first--didn't
give me any pleasure. This will."
A shadow came into Jeanne's eyes. She motioned him to a seat beside her
in front of the fire. Her nearness, the touch of her dress, the sweet
perfume of her presence, thrilled him. He felt that the moment was near
when the whole world as he knew it was to slip away from him, leaving
him in a paradise, or a chaos of despair. Jeanne looked up at the
dueling pistols. The firelight trembled in the soft folds of lace over
her bosom; it glistened in her hair, and lighted her face with a gentle
glow.
"There isn't much to explain," she said again, in a voice so low that
it was hardly more than a whisper. "But what little there is I want you
to know, so that when you go away you will understand. More than two
hundred years ago a band of gentlemen adventurers were sent over into
this country by Prince Rupert to form the Hudson's Bay Company. That is
history, and you know more of it, probably, than I. One of these men
was Le Chevalier Grosellier. One summer he came up the Churchill, and
stopped at the great rock on which we saw the sun setting to-night, and
which was called the Sun Rock by the Indians. He was struck by the
beauty of the place, and when he went back to France it was with the
plan of returning to build himself a chateau in the wilderness. Two or
three years later he did this, and called the place Fort o' God. For
more than a century, M'sieur, Fort o' God was a place of revel and
pleasure in the heart of this desolation. Early in the nineteenth
century it passed into the hands of a man by the name of D'Arcy, and it
is said that at one time it housed twenty gentlemen and as many ladies
of France for one whole season. Its history is obscure, and mostly
lost. But for a long time after D'Arcy came it was a place of
adventure, of pleasure, and of mystery, very little of which remains
to-day. Those are his pistols above the fire. He was killed by one of
them out there beside the big rock, in a quarrel with one of his guests
over a woman. We think--here--from letters that we have found, that her
name was Camille. There is a chest in my room filled with linen that
bears her name. This dress came from that chest. I have to be careful
of them, as they tear very easily. After D'Arcy the place was almost
forgotten and remained so until nearly forty years ago when my father
came into possession of it. That, M'sieur, is the very simple story of
Fort o' God. Its old name is forgotten. It lives only with us. Others
know it as D'Arcambal House."
"Yes, I have heard of that," said Philip.
He waited for Jeanne, and saw that her fingers were nervously twisting
a bit of ribbon in her lap.
"Of course, that is uninteresting," she continued. "You can almost
guess the rest. We have lived here--alone. Not one of us has ever felt
the desire to leave this little world of ours. It is curious--you may
scarcely believe what I say--but it is true that we look out upon your
big world and laugh at it and dislike it. I guess--that I have been
taught to hate it--since I can remember."
There was a little tremble in Jeanne's voice, an instant's quivering of
her chin. Philip looked from her face into the fire, and stared hard,
choking back words which were ready to burst from his lips. In place of
them he said, with a touch of bitterness in his voice:
"And I have grown to hate my world, Jeanne. It has compelled me to hate
it. That is why I spoke to you that night on the cliff at Churchill."
"I have sometimes thought that I have been very wrong," said the girl.
"I have never seen this other world. I know nothing of it, except as I
have been taught. I have no right to hate it, and yet I do. I have
never wanted to see it. I have never cared to know the people who lived
in it. I wish that I could understand, but I cannot; except that father
has made for us, for Pierre and Otille and me, this little world at
Fort o' God, and has taught us to fear the other. I know that there is
no other man in the whole world like my father, and that what he has
done must be best. It is his pride that we bring your world to our
doors, but that we never go to it; he says that we know more about that
world than the people who live there, which of course cannot be so. And
so we have grown up amid the old memories, the pictures, and the dead
romances of Fort o' God. We have taken pleasure in living as we do--in
making for ourselves our own little social codes, our childish
aristocracy, our make-believe world. It is the spirit of Fort o' God
that lives with us, and makes us content; the shadow-faces of men and
women who once filled these rooms with life and pleasure, and whose
memory seems to have passed into our keeping alone. I know them all;
many of their names, all of their faces. I have a daguerreotype of
Camille Poitiers, and she must have been very beautiful. There are the
tiniest slippers in the world in her chest, and ribbons like those
which are tied about the pistols. There is a painting of D'Arcy in your
room. It is the picture next to the one that has its face turned to the
wall."
She rose to her feet, and Philip stood beside her. There was a mist in
her eyes as she held out her hand to him.
"I--I--would like to have you--see that picture," she whispered.
Philip could not speak. He held the hand Jeanne had given him as they
passed through the long, dimly lighted halls. At the open door to his
room they stopped, and he could feel Jeanne trembling.
"You will tell me--the truth?" she begged, like a child. "You will tell
me what you think--of the picture?"
"Yes."
She went in ahead of him and turned the frame so that the face in the
picture smiled down upon them in all of its luring loveliness. There
was something pathetic in the girl's attitude now. She stood under the
picture, facing Philip, and there was a tense eagerness in her eyes, a
light that was almost supplication, a crying out of her soul to him in
a breathless moment that seemed hovering between pain and joy. It was
Jeanne, an older Jeanne, that looked from out of the picture, smiling,
inviting admiration, bewildering hi her beauty; it was Jeanne, the
child, waiting for him in flesh and blood to speak, her eyes big and
dark, her breath coming quickly, her hands buried in the deep lace on
her bosom. A low word came to Philip's lips, and then he laughed
softly. It was a laugh, almost under his breath, which sweeps up now
and then from a soul in a joy--an emotion--which is unutterable in
words. But to Jeanne it was different. Her dark eyes grew hurt and
wounded, two great tears ran down her paling cheeks, and suddenly she
buried her face in her hands and with a sobbing cry turned from him,
with her head bowed under the smiling face above.
"And you--you hate it, too!" she sobbed. "They all hate
it--Pierre--father--all--all hate it. It must--it must be bad. They
hate her--every one--but me. And--I love her so!"
Her slender form shook with sobs. For a moment Philip stood like one
struck dumb. Then he sprang to her and caught her close in his arms.
"Jeanne--Jeanne--listen," he cried. "To-night I looked at that picture
before I went to see your father, and I loved it because it is like
you. Jeanne, my darling, I love you--I love you--"
She was panting against his breast. He covered her face with kisses.
Her sweet lips were not turned from him, and there filled her eyes a
sudden light that made him almost sob in his happiness.
"I love you, I love you," he repeated, again and again, and he could
find no other words than those.
For an instant her arms clung about his shoulders, and then, suddenly,
they strained against him, and she tore herself free, and, with a cry
so pathetic that it seemed as though her heart had broken in that
moment, she fled from him, and out of the room.