Having sat buried in thought for a full five minutes after the
traders of the winter posts had left him, Galen Albret thrust back
his chair and walked into a room, long, low, and heavily raftered,
strikingly unlike the Council Room. Its floor was overlaid with
dark rugs; a piano of ancient model filled one corner; pictures and
books broke the wall; the lamps and the windows were shaded, a
woman's work-basket and a tea-set occupied a large table. Only a
certain barbaric profusion of furs, the huge fireplace, and the
rough rafters of the ceiling differentiated the place from the
drawing-room of a well-to-do family anywhere.
Galen Albret sank heavily into a chair and struck a bell. A tall,
slightly stooped English servant, with correct side whiskers and
incompetent, watery blue eyes, answered. To him said the Factor:
"I wish to see Miss Albret."
A moment later Virginia entered the room.
"Let us have some tea, O-mi-mi," requested her father.
The girl moved gently about, preparing and lighting the lamp,
measuring the tea, her fair head bowed gracefully over her task,
her dark eyes pensive and but half following what she did. Finally
with a certain air of decision she seated herself on the arm of a
chair.
"Father," said she.
"Yes."
"A stranger came to-day with Louis Placide of Kettle Portage."
"Well?"
"He was treated strangely by our people, and he treated them
strangely in return. Why is that?"
"Who can tell?"
"What is his station? Is he a common trader? He does not look it."
"He is a man of intelligence and daring."
"Then why is he not our guest?"
Galen Albret did not answer. After a moment's pause he asked again
for his tea. The girl turned away impatiently. Here was a puzzle,
neither the _voyageurs_, nor Wishkobun her nurse, nor her father
would explain to her. The first had grinned stupidly; the second
had drawn her shawl across her face, the third asked for tea!
She handed her father the cup, hesitated, then ventured to inquire
whether she was forbidden to greet the stranger should the occasion
arise.
"He is a gentleman," replied her father.
She sipped her tea thoughtfully, her imagination stirring. Again
her recollection lingered over the clear bronze lines of the
stranger's face. Something vaguely familiar seemed to touch her
consciousness with ghostly fingers. She closed her eyes and tried
to clutch them. At once they were withdrawn. And then again, when
her attention wandered, they stole back, plucking appealingly at
the hem of her recollections.
The room was heavy-curtained, deep embrasured, for the house,
beneath its clap-boards, was of logs. Although out of doors the
clear spring sunshine still flooded the valley of the Moose;
within, the shadows had begun with velvet fingers to extinguish the
brighter lights. Virginia threw herself back on a chair in the
corner.
"Virginia," said Galen Albret, suddenly,
"Yes, father."
"You are no longer a child, but a woman. Would you like to go to
Quebec?"
She did not answer him at once, but pondered beneath close-knit
brows.
"Do you wish me to go, father?" she asked at length.
"You are eighteen. It is time you saw the world, time you learned
the ways of other people. But the journey is hard. I may not see
you again for some years. You go among strangers."
He fell silent again. Motionless he had been, except for the
mumbling of his lips beneath his beard.
"It shall be just as you wish," he added a moment later.
At once a conflict arose in the girl's mind between her restless
dreams and her affections. But beneath all the glitter of the
question there was really nothing to take her out. Here was her
father, here were the things she loved; yonder was novelty--and
loneliness.
Her existence at Conjuror's House was perhaps a little complex, but
it was familiar. She knew the people, and she took a daily and
unwearying delight in the kindness and simplicity of their bearing
toward herself. Each detail of life came to her in the round of
habit, wearing the garment of accustomed use. But of the world she
knew nothing except what she had been able to body forth from her
reading, and that had merely given her imagination something
tangible with which to feed her self-distrust.
"Must I decide at once?" she asked.
"If you go this year, it must be with the Abitibi _brigade_. You
have until then."
"Thank you, father." said the girl, sweetly.
The shadows stole their surroundings one by one, until only the
bright silver of the tea-service, and the glitter of polished wood,
and the square of the open door remained. Galen Albret became an
inert dark mass. Virginia's gray was lost in that of the twilight.
Time passed. The clock ticked on. Faintly sounds penetrated from
the kitchen, and still more faintly from out of doors. Then the
rectangle of the door-way was darkened by a man peering
uncertainly. The man wore his hat, from which slanted a slender
heron's plume; his shoulders were square; his thighs slim and
graceful.
Against the light, one caught the outline of the sash's tassel and
the fringe of his leggings.
"Are you there, Galen Albret?" he challenged.
The spell of twilight mystery broke. It seemed as if suddenly the
air had become surcharged with the vitality of opposition.
"What then?" countered the Factor's heavy, deliberate tones.
"True, I see you now," rejoined the visitor carelessly, as he flung
himself across the arm of a chair and swung one foot. "I do not
doubt you are convinced by this time of my intention."
"My recollection does not tell me what messenger I sent to ask this
interview."
"Correct," laughed the young man a little hardly. "You _didn't_
ask it. I attended to that myself. What you want doesn't concern
me in the least. What do you suppose I care what, or what not, any
of this crew wants? I'm master of my own ideas, anyway, thank God.
If you don't like what I do, you can always stop me." In the tone
of his voice was a distinct challenge. Galen Albret, it seemed,
chose to pass it by.
"True," he replied sombrely, after a barely perceptible pause to
mark his tacit displeasure. "It is your hour. Say on."
"I should like to know the date at which I take _la Longue
Traverse_."
"You persist in that nonsense?"
"Call my departure whatever you want to--I have the name for it.
When do I leave?"
"I have not decided."
"And in the meantime?"
"Do as you please."
"Ah, thanks for this generosity," cried the young man, in a tone of
declamatory sarcasm so artificial as fairly to scent the
elocutionary. "To do as I please--here--now there's a blessed
privilege! I may walk around where I want to, talk to such as have
a good word for me, punish those who have not! But do I err in
concluding that the state of your game law is such that it would be
useless to reclaim my rifle from the engaging Placide?"
"You have a fine instinct," approved the Factor.
"It is one of my valued possessions," rejoined the young man,
insolently. He struck a match, and by its light selected a
cigarette.
"I do not myself use tobacco in this room," suggested the older
speaker.
"I am curious to learn the limits of your forbearance," replied the
younger, proceeding to smoke.
He threw back his head and regarded his opponent with an open
challenge, daring him to become angry. The match went out.
Virginia, who had listened in growing anger and astonishment,
unable longer to refrain from defending the dignity of her usually
autocratic father, although he seemed little disposed to defend
himself, now intervened from her dark corner on the divan.
"Is the journey then so long, sir," she asked composedly, "that it
at once inspires such anticipations--and such bitterness?"
In an instant the man was on his feet, hat in hand, and the
cigarette had described a fiery curve into the empty hearth.
"I beg your pardon, sincerely," he cried, "I did not know you were
here!"
"You might better apologize to my father," replied Virginia.
The young man stepped forward and without asking permission,
lighted one of the tall lamps.
"The lady of the guns!" he marvelled softly to himself.
He moved across the room, looking down on her inscrutably, while
she looked up at him in composed expectation of an apology--and
Galen Albret sat motionless, in the shadow of his great arm-chair.
But after a moment her calm attention broke down. Something there
was about this man that stirred her emotions--whether of curiosity,
pity, indignation, or a slight defensive fear she was not
introspective enough to care to inquire. And yet the sensation was
not altogether unpleasant, and, as at the guns that afternoon, a
certain portion of her consciousness remained in sympathy with
whatever it was of mysterious attraction he represented to her. In
him she felt the dominant, as a wild creature of the woods
instinctively senses the master and drops its eyes. Resentment did
not leave her, but over it spread a film of confusion that robbed
it of its potency. In him, in his mood, in his words, in his
manner, was something that called out in direct appeal the more
primitive instincts hitherto dormant beneath her sense of
maidenhood, so that even at this vexed moment of conscious
opposition, her heart was ranging itself on his side.
Overpoweringly the feeling swept her that she was not acting in
accordance with her sense of fitness. She knew she should strike,
but was unable to give due force to the blow. In the confusion of
such a discovery, her eyelids fluttered and fell. And he saw, and,
understanding his power, dropped swiftly beside her on the broad
divan.
"You must pardon me, mademoiselle," he begun, his voice sinking to
a depth of rich music singularly caressing. "To you I may seem to
have small excuses, but when a man is vouchsafed a glimpse of
heaven only to be cast out the next instant into hell, he is not
always particular in the choice of words."
All the time his eyes sought hers, which avoided the challenge, and
the strong masculine charm of magnetism which he possessed in such
vital abundance overwhelmed her unaccustomed consciousness. Galen
Albret shifted uneasily, and shot a glance in their direction. The
stranger, perceiving this, lowered his voice in register and tone,
and went on with almost exaggerated earnestness.
"Surely you can forgive me, a desperate man, almost anything?"
"I do not understand," said Virginia, with a palpable effort.
Ned Trent leaned forward until his eager face was almost at her
shoulder.
"Perhaps not," he urged; "I cannot ask you to try. But suppose,
mademoiselle, you were in my case. Suppose your eyes--like
mine--have rested on nothing but a howling wilderness for dear
heaven knows how long; you come at last in sight of real houses,
real grass, real door-yard gardens just ready to blossom in the
spring, real food, real beds, real books, real men with whom to
exchange the sensible word, and something more, mademoiselle--a
woman such as one dreams of in the long forest nights under the
stars. And you know that while others, the lucky ones, may stay to
enjoy it all, you, the unfortunate, are condemned to leave it at
any moment for _la Longue Traverse_. Would not you, too, be
bitter, mademoiselle? Would not you too mock and sneer? Think,
mademoiselle, I have not even the little satisfaction of rousing
men's anger. I can insult them as I will, but they turn aside in
pity, saying one to another: 'Let us pleasure him in this, poor
fellow, for he is about to take _la Longue Traverse_.' That is why
your father accepts calmly from me what he would not from another."
Virginia sat bolt upright on the divan, her hands clasped in her
lap, her wonderful black eyes looking straight out before her,
trying to avoid her companion's insistent gaze. His attention was
fixed on her mobile and changing countenance, but he marked with
evident satisfaction Galen Albret's growing uneasiness. This was
evidenced only by a shifting of the feet, a tapping of the fingers,
a turning of the shaggy head--in such a man slight tokens are
significant. The silence deepened with the shadows drawing about
the single lamp, while Virginia attempted to maintain a breathing
advantage above the flood of strange emotions which the personality
of this man had swept down upon her.
"It does not seem--" objected the girl in bewilderment, "I do not
know--men are often out in this country for years at a time. Long
journeys are not unknown among us, We are used to undertaking them."
"But not _la Longue Traverse_," insisted the young man, sombrely.
"_La Longue Traverse_." she repeated in sweet perplexity.
"Sometimes called the Journey of Death," he explained.
She turned to look him in the eyes, a vague expression of puzzled
fear on her face.
"She has never heard of it," said Ned Trent to himself, and aloud:
"Men who undertake it leave comfort behind. They embrace hunger
and weariness, cold and disease. At the last they embrace death,
and are glad of his coming."
Something in his tone compelled belief; something in his face told
her that he was a man by whom the inevitable hardships of winter
and summer travel, fearful as they are, would be lightly endured.
She shuddered.
"This dreadful thing is necessary?" she asked.
"Alas, yes."
"I do not understand----"
"In the North few of us understand," agreed the young man with a
hint of bitterness seeping through his voice. "The mighty order,
and so we obey. But that is beside the point. I have not told you
these things to harrow you; I have tried to excuse myself for my
actions. Does it touch you a little? Am I forgiven?"
"I do not understand how such things can be," she objected in some
confusion, "why such journeys must exist. My mind cannot
comprehend your explanations."
The stranger leaned forward abruptly, his eyes blazing with the
magnetic personality of the man.
"But your heart?" he breathed.
It was the moment. "My heart--" she repeated, as though bewildered
by the intensity of his eyes, "my heart--ah--yes!"
Immediately the blood rushed over her face and throat in a torrent.
She snatched her eyes away, and cowered back in the corner, going
red and white by turns, now angry, now frightened, now bewildered,
until his gaze, half masterful, half pleading, again conquered
hers. Galen Albret had ceased tapping his chair. In the dim light
he sat, staring straight before him, massive, inert, grim.
"I believe you--" she murmured hurriedly at last. "I pity you!"
She rose. Quick as light he barred her passage.
"Don't! don't!" she pleaded. "I must go--you have shaken me--I--I
do not understand myself----"
"I must see you again," he whispered eagerly. "To-night--by the
guns."
"No, no!"
"To-night," he insisted.
She raised her eyes to his, this time naked of defence, so that the
man saw down through their depths into her very soul.
"Oh," she begged, quivering, "let me pass. Don't you see--I'm
going to cry!"