For perhaps a minute Carrigan made no sound that could have been heard
three feet away from him. It was not fear that held him quiet. It was
something which he could not explain afterward, the sensation, perhaps,
of one who feels himself confronted for a moment by a presence more
potent than that of flesh and blood. BLACK ROGER AUDEMARD! Three times,
twice in his sickness, some one had cried out that name in his ears
since the hour when St. Pierre's wife had ambushed him on the white
carpet of sand. And the voice was now in his room!
Was it Bateese, inspired by some sort of malformed humor? Carrigan
listened. Another minute passed. He reached out a hand and groped about
him, very careful not to make a sound, urged by the feeling that some
one was almost within reach of him. He flung back his blanket and stood
out in the middle of the floor.
Still he heard no movement, no soft footfalls of retreat or advance. He
lighted a match and held it high above his head. In its yellow
illumination he could see nothing alive. He lighted a lamp. The cabin
was empty. He drew a deep breath and went to the window. It was still
open. The voice had undoubtedly come to him through that window, and he
fancied he could see where the screen netting was crushed a bit inward,
as though a face had pressed heavily against it. Outside the night was
beautifully calm. The sky, washed by storm, was bright with stars. But
there was not a ripple of movement that he could hear.
After that he looked at his watch. He must have been sleeping for some
time when the voice roused him, for it was nearly three o'clock. In
spite of the stars, dawn was close at hand. When he looked out of the
window again they were paler and more distant. He had no intention of
going back to bed. He was restless and felt himself surrendering more
and more to the grip of presentiment.
It was still early, not later than six o'clock, when Bateese came in
with his breakfast. He was surprised, as he had heard no movement or
sound of voices to give evidence of life anywhere near the bateau.
Instantly he made up his mind that it was not Bateese who had uttered
the mysterious words of a few hours ago, for the half-breed had
evidently experienced a most uncomfortable night. He was like a rat
recently pulled out of water. His clothes hung upon him sodden and
heavy, his head kerchief dripped, and his lank hair was wet. He slammed
the breakfast things down on the table and went out again without so
much as nodding at his prisoner.
Again a sense of discomfort and shame swept over David, as he sat down
to breakfast. Here he was comfortably, even luxuriously, housed, while
out there somewhere St. Pierre's lovely wife was drenched and even more
miserable than Bateese. And the breakfast amazed him. It was not so
much the caribou tenderloin, rich in its own red juice, or the potato,
or the pot of coffee that was filling the cabin with its aroma, that
roused his wonder, but the hot, brown muffins that accompanied the
other things. Muffins! And after a deluge that had drowned every square
inch of the earth! How had Bateese turned the trick?
Bateese did not return immediately for the dishes, and for half an hour
after he had finished breakfast Carrigan smoked his pipe and watched
the blue haze of fires on the far side of the river. The world was a
blaze of sunlit glory. His imagination carried him across the river.
Somewhere over there, in an open spot where the sun was blazing, Jeanne
Marie-Anne was probably drying herself after the night of storm. There
was but little doubt in his mind that she was already heaping the
ignominy of blame upon him. That was the woman of it.
A knock at his door drew him about. It was a light, quick TAP, TAP,
TAP--not like the fist of either Bateese or Nepapinas. In another
moment the door swung open, and in the flood of sunlight that poured
into the cabin stood St. Pierre's wife!
It was not her presence, but the beauty of her, that held him
spellbound. It was a sort of shock after the vivid imaginings of his
mind in which he had seen her beaten and tortured by storm. Her hair,
glowing in the sun and piled up in shining coils on the crown of her
head, was not wet. She was not the rain-beaten little partridge that
had passed in tragic bedragglement through his mind. Storm had not
touched her. Her cheeks were soft with the warm flush of long hours of
sleep. When she came in, her lips greeting him with a little smile, all
that he had built up for himself in the hours of the night crumbled
away in dust. Again he forgot for a moment that she was St. Pierre's
wife. She was woman, and as he looked upon her now, the most adorable
woman in all the world.
"You are better this morning," she said. Real pleasure shone in her
eyes. She had left the door open, so that the sun filled the room. "I
think the storm helped you. Wasn't it splendid?"
David swallowed hard. "Quite splendid," he managed to say. "Have you
seen Bateese this morning?"
A little note of laughter came into her throat. "Yes. I don't think he
liked it. He doesn't understand why I love storms. Did you sleep well,
M'sieu Carrigan?"
"An hour or two, I think. I was worrying about you. I didn't like the
thought that I had turned you out into the storm. But it doesn't seem
to have touched you."
"No. I was there--quite comfortable." She nodded to the forward
bulkhead of the cabin, beyond the wardrobe closets and the piano.
"There is a little dining-room and kitchenette ahead," she explained.
"Didn't Bateese tell you that?"
"No, he didn't. I asked him where you were, and I think he told me to
shut up."
"Bateese is very odd," said St. Pierre's wife. "He is exceedingly
jealous of me, M'sieu David. Even when I was a baby and he carried me
about in his arms, he was just that way. Bateese, you know, is older
than he appears. He is fifty-one."
She was moving about, quite as if his presence was in no way going to
disturb her usual duties of the day. She rearranged the damask curtains
which he had crumpled with his hands, placed two or three chairs in
their usual places, and moved from this to that with the air of a
housewife who is in the habit of brushing up a bit in the morning.
She seemed not at all embarrassed because he was her prisoner, nor
uncomfortably restrained because of the message she had sent to him by
Bateese. She was warmly and gloriously human. In her apparent unconcern
at his presence he found himself sweating inwardly. A bit nervously he
struck a match to light his pipe, then extinguished it.
She noticed what he had done. "You may smoke," she said, with that
little note in her throat which he loved to hear, like the faintest
melody of laughter that did not quite reach her lips. "St. Pierre
smokes a great deal, and I like it."
She opened a drawer in the dressing-table and came to him with a box
half filled with cigars.
"St. Pierre prefers these--on occasions," she said, "Do you?"
His fingers seemed all thumbs as he took a cigar from the proffered
box. He cursed himself because his tongue felt thick. Perhaps it was
his silence, betraying something of his mental clumsiness, that brought
a faint flush of color into her cheeks. He noted that; and also that
the top of her shining head came just about to his chin, and that her
mouth and throat, looking down on them, were bewitchingly soft and
sweet.
And what she said, when her eyes opened wide and beautiful on him
again, was like a knife cutting suddenly into the heart of his thoughts.
"In the evening I love to sit at St. Pierre's feet and watch him
smoke," she said. "I am glad it doesn't annoy you, because--I like to
smoke," he replied lamely.
She placed the box on the little reading table and looked at his
breakfast things. "You like muffins, too. I was up early this morning,
making them for you!"
"You made them?" he demanded, as if her words were a most amazing
revelation to him.
"Surely, M'sieu David. I make them every morning for St. Pierre. He is
very fond of them. He says the third nicest thing about me is my
muffins!"
"And the other two?" asked David.
"Are St. Pierre's little secrets, m'sieu," she laughed softly, the
color deepening in her cheeks. "It wouldn't be fair to tell you, would
it?"
"Perhaps it wouldn't," he said slowly. "But there are one or two other
things, Mrs.--Mrs. Boulain--"
"You may call me Jeanne, or Marie-Anne, if you care to," she
interrupted him. "It will be quite all right."
She was picking up the breakfast dishes, not at all perturbed by the
fact that she was offering him a privilege which had the effect of
quickening his pulse for a moment or two.
"Thank you," he said. "I don't mind telling you it is going to be
difficult for me to do that--because--well, this is a most unusual
situation, isn't it? In spite of all your kindness, including what was
probably your good-intentioned endeavor to put an end to my earthly
miseries behind the rock, I believe it is necessary for you to give me
some kind of explanation. Don't you?"
"Didn't Bateese explain to you last night?" she asked, facing him.
"He brought a message from you to the effect that I was a prisoner,
that I must make no attempt to escape, and that if I did try to escape,
you had given your men instructions to kill me."