BIRTHDAYS
The big room was empty when Jan came quietly through the open door. He
stopped to listen, and caught a faint laugh from the other room, and
then another; and to give warning of his presence, he coughed loudly
and scraped a chair along the floor. A moment's silence followed. The
farther door opened a little, and then it opened wide, and Mélisse came
out.
"Now what do you think of me, brother Jan?" She stood in the light of
the window through which came the afternoon sun, her hair piled in
glistening coils upon the crown of her head, as they had seen them in
the pictures, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glowing questioningly at Jan.
"Do I look--as you thought--I would, Jan?" she persisted, a little
doubtful at his silence. She turned, so that he saw the cluster of soft
curls that fell upon her shoulder, with sprigs of bakneesh half
smothered in them. "Do I?"
"You are prettier than I have ever seen you, Mélisse," he replied
softly.
There was a seriousness in his voice that made her come to him in her
old impulsive, half-childish way. She lifted her hands and rested them
on his shoulders, as she had always done when inviting him to toss her
above his head.
"If I am prettier--and you like me this way--why don't you--"
She finished with a sweet, upturned pouting of her mouth, and, with a
sudden, laughing cry, Jan caught her in his arms and kissed the lips
she held up to him. It was but an instant, and he freed her, a hot
blush burning in his brown cheeks.
"My dear brother!" she laughed at him, gathering up the bakneesh on the
table. "I love to have you kiss me, and now I have to make you do it.
Father kisses me every morning when he goes to the store. I remember
when you used to kiss me every time you came home, but now you forget
to do it at all. Do brothers love their sisters less as they grow
older?"
"Sometimes they love the SISTER less and the OTHER GIRL more, ma belle
Mélisse," came a quick voice from the door, and Jean de Gravois bounded
in like a playful cat, scraping and bowing before Mélisse until his
head nearly touched the floor. "Lovely saints, Jan Thoreau, but she IS
a woman, just as my Iowaka told me! And the cakes--the bread--the pies!
You must delay the supper my lady, for the good Lord deliver me if I
haven't spilled all the dough on the floor! Swas-s-s-s-h--such a mess!
And my Iowaka did nothing but laugh and call me a clumsy dear!"
"You're terribly in love, Jean," cried Mélisse, laughing until her eyes
were wet; "just like some of the people in the books which Jan and I
read."
"And I always shall be, my dear, so long as the daughter of a princess
and the great-granddaughter of a chef de bataillon allows me to mix her
dough!"
Mélisse flung the red shawl over her head, still laughing.
"I will go and help her, Jean."
"Mon Dieu!" gasped Gravois, looking searchingly at Jan, when she had
left. "Shall I give you my best wishes, Jan Thoreau? Does it signify?"
"Signify--what?"
The little Frenchman's eyes snapped.
"Why, when our pretty Cree maiden becomes engaged, she puts up her hair
for the first time, that is all, my dear Jan. When I asked my blessed
Iowaka to be my wife, she answered by running away from me, taunting me
until I thought my heart had shriveled into a bit of salt blubber; but
she came back to me before I had completely died, with her braids done
up on the top of her head!"
He stopped suddenly, startled into silence by the strange look that had
come into the other's face. For a full minute Jan stood as if the power
of movement had gone from him. He was staring over the Frenchman's
head, a ghastly pallor growing in his cheeks.
"No--it--means--nothing," he said finally, speaking as if the words
were forced from him one by one.
He dropped into a chair beside the table like one whose senses had been
dulled by an unexpected blow. With a great sighing breath that was
almost a sob, he bowed his head upon his arms.
"Jan Thoreau," whispered Jean softly, "have you forgotten that it was I
who killed the missioner for you, and that through all of these years
Jean de Gravois has never questioned you about the fight on the
mountain top?" There was in his voice, as gentle as a woman's, the
vibrant note of a comradeship which is next to love--the comradeship of
man for man in a world where friendship is neither bought nor sold.
"Have you forgotten, Jan Thoreau? If there is anything Jean de Gravois
can do?"
He sat down opposite Jan, his thin, eager face propped in his hands,
and watched silently until the other lifted his head. Their eyes met,
steady, unflinching, and in that look there were the oath and the seal
of all that the honor of the big snows held for those two.
Still without words, Jan reached within his breast and drew forth the
little roll which he had taken from his violin. One by one he handed
the pages over to Jean de Gravois.
"Mon Dieu!" said Jean, when he had finished reading. He spoke no other
words. White-faced, the two men stared, Jan's throat twitching,
Gravois' brown fingers crushing the rolls he held.
"That was why I tried to kill the missioner," said Jan at last. He
pointed to the more coarsely written pages under Jean's hand. "And
that--that--is why it could not signify that Mélisse has done up her
hair." He rose to his feet, straining to keep his voice even, and
gathered up the papers so that they shot back into the little
cylinder-shaped roll again. "Now do you understand?"
"I understand," replied Jean in a low voice, but his eyes glittered
like dancing dragon-flies as he raised his elbows slowly from the table
and stretched his arms above his head. "I understand, Jan Thoreau, and
I praise the blessed Virgin that it was Jean de Gravois who killed the
missioner out upon the ice of Lac Bain!"
"But the other," persisted Jan, "the other, which says that I--"
"Stop!" cried Jean sharply. He came around the table and seized Jan's
hands in the iron grip of his lithe, brown fingers. "That is something
for you to forget. It means nothing--nothing at all, Jan Thoreau! Does
any one know but you and me?"
"No one. I intended that some day Mélisse and her father should know;
but I waited too long. I waited until I was afraid, until the horror of
telling her frightened me. I made myself forget, burying it deeper each
year, until to-day--on the mountain--"
"And to-day, in this cabin, you will forget again, and you will bury it
so deep that it will never come back. I am proud of you, Jan Thoreau. I
love you, and it is the first time that Jean de Gravois has ever said
this to a man. Ah, I hear them coming!"
With an absurd bow in the direction of the laughing voices which they
now heard, the melodramatic little Frenchman pulled Jan to the door.
Half-way across the open were Mélisse and Iowaka, carrying a large
Indian basket between them, and making merry over the task. When they
saw Gravois and Jan, they set down their burden and waved an invitation
for the two men to come to their assistance.
"You should be the second happiest man in the world, Jan Thoreau,"
exclaimed Jean. "The first is Jean de Gravois!"
He set off like a bolt from a spring-gun in the direction of the two
who were waiting for them. He had hoisted the basket upon his shoulder
by the time Jan arrived.
"Are you growing old, too, Jan?" bantered Mélisse, as she dropped a few
steps behind Jean and his wife. "You come so slowly!"
"I think I'm twenty-nine."
"You think!" Her dancing eyes shot up to his, bubbling over with the
mischief which she had been unable to suppress that day. "Why, Jan--"
He had never spoken to Mélisse as he did now.
"I was born some time in the winter, Mélisse--like you. Perhaps it was
yesterday, perhaps it is to-morrow. That is all I know."
He looked at her steadily, the grief which he was fighting to keep back
tightening the muscles about his mouth.
Like the quick passing of sunshine, the fun swept from her face,
leaving her blue eyes staring up at him, filled with a pain which he
had never seen in them before. In a moment he knew that she had
understood him, and he could have cut out his tongue. Her hand reached
his arm, and she stopped him, her face lifted pleadingly, the tears
slowly gathering in her eyes.
"Forgive me!" she whispered, her voice breaking into a sob. "Dear, dear
Jan, forgive me!" She caught one of his hands in both her own, and for
an instant held it so that he could feel the throbbing of her heart.
"To-day is your birthday, Jan--yours and mine, mine and yours--and we
will always have it that way--always--won't we, Jan?"