Part 7

There was no wood left in the house. Before she did anything else, she wrapped herself and went to the wood-pile.

The wood-pile was heaped against the back of the cabin: it was roofed and sheeted with snow. She pulled at the butt of a log, and the wood came down with a run, mixed with much snow—such dry snow that the wood was not moistened until she held it in her warm hand. The bitter work was a relief to her. She thrust the soft, dark hair out of her eyes and piled herself such a load that she swayed under it. “But it’s something to do for Derek,” she said, wistfully. “It’s all I can do.”

She took in enough for the day. But there was the night.

“Garth will be back by then,” she muttered, with cold lips, staring at the stove.

“Garth _must_ be back by then.” The stove sent a screaming rush of flame up the pipe, as if in mockery. She felt an unreasoning hatred for it, as she went wearily out again to gather enough wood for the night too.

Kneeling beside the wood-pile, she groped with numbed hands. She felt nothing but snow.

She thrust in her arm to the shoulder. She met no resistance but that of the snow.

Her heart beat in shuddering throbs. She brought a long pole and prodded the pile, then swung the pole and levelled it. She found nothing but snow.

“How did it happen?” She heard herself asking this over and over. Easily enough. She or Garth or Derek had been drawing supplies from the other side of the pile, and the snow had slipped from the roof and filled the spaces; hardening, it had stretched a roof over emptiness. The pile, which had been taken for good, hardwood logs, fodder for that roaring hungry heat within, was no more than a heap of snow.

Dorette turned slowly, and went into the cabin.

She stood by Derek’s bunk, staring at the wood on the floor. It was enough for the day, but what of the night?

Would Garth return before the night?

She looked about the cabin. There were things there, things that would burn. Her sleepy brown eyes widened. There was war in them as she leaned and kissed Derek’s cheek. He did not stir from that deepening sleep of his.

“Sleep on, Derry,” she whispered, scarcely knowing what she said, “sleep well, Derry. I’ll take care of you, I’ll fight for you!”

She took Garth’s heavy axe, and began on the chairs.

They were heavy and clumsy things, Garth’s pride, since he had made them himself. They would feed the stove well; but they were hard for a girl’s arm to chop, even though she struck true as a woodman, and Dorette’s hands were scorched from the door of the stove. As she toiled, her eyes ranged the cabin, calculating on this box, that shelf, the table. Her heart beat to every sound. As the wind rose higher, the bitter day was full of sounds. A dozen times she ran to the door, crying, “Garth!” A dozen times she saw nothing but the forest and a driven mist of snow, as fine and dry as dust.

By the earliest dusk she had chopped up everything in the cabin. Each stroke sent a jar of pain to her shoulder from her burned and bruised hands, but she did not feel it. And still the stove roared, insatiable. The dried wood of their furnishings, pine for the most part, burned like straw. The great iron horror must be fed, and she had nothing to feed it.

She took the axe and went out.

The grey forest fronted her in a rustling drive of snow and shadow. There must be a hundred fallen boughs within range of the cabin. She found one, dragged it from the snow, and toiled with it into the house. She twisted it apart, desperately, and there was blood on the rough, broken stuff she thrust into the stove.

She went out again. She was growing more desperate as her strength failed. There was a great branch trailing from a spruce, and she tore and wrenched at it, but it would not yield—it was frozen. She swung her weight upon it, sobbing. She struck with all the force remaining in her, but the axe-blade turned in her weary hands. She felt as though the will in her, passionately strong, should sever the bough as by steel. She did not know she was beaten, until she slipped weakly and fell in the snow and lay there, wailing helplessly and softly as a child.

The bitter snow stung her face like heat—like the heat of the stove. If she stayed there, the stove would be out. She lifted herself to her knees, and saw in the growing dark a man, who stood with a rifle on his arm, looking down at her.

“_Garth!_ Oh, Garth!”

But even as the cry left her lips, she knew it was not Garth.

A figure, lithe even under the heavy furs, a face hidden in the cowl he had drawn forward above his fur cap, a certain strange immobility that vaguely chilled her, but surely—help? So swift is thought, that in the transitory seconds before she spoke again her brain had shown her a picture, a memory of a wild-cat which she and Garth had vainly tried to corner in the yard—of the creature’s utter immobility until it launched itself and struck.

“The stove! Oh, the stove!”

She thought, as her hands went out to that motionless figure in the shadows, that she had spoken all the desperate appeal that was in her heart. But she only repeated: “Oh, the stove, the stove!”

“What stove?”

“The stove. The stove in our cabin. There’s—no more wood for it!”

She waited. Surely he understood. But he remained as he was, motionless, staring down at her.

She looked up at him with a burning appeal. She had forgotten to rise from her knees. She kneeled at his feet in the snow. Her breath came in gasps. “There,” she repeated, helplessly, “there—in the cabin—the stove! It’s going out!”

Still he waited.

“There’s a sick man there—my brother! Oh!” she finished, as he did not stir, “help me, if you’re a man!”

“Oh, b’gosh, yes, I’m a man!” She fancied that he was laughing in the shadow of the cowl. “But why should I help you?”

She had no more words. Silently she lifted and held out to him her bleeding hands.

After a long minute he stirred slowly. Without a word he laid his gun crosswise on two fir branches that grew above her reach, easily within his own. He lifted the axe from the snow. She watched him. Four sharp cross-cuts, and the trailing branch fell. He set his foot on it, chopped it quickly into four or five pieces. As each piece rolled free, Dorette snatched it as a starving woman might snatch bread.

“That enough?”

Staggering under her load, she stared at him. “No, no!” she stammered. “It’s not enough for the night. For the pity of Heaven, cut me some more!”

She turned away and hurried towards the cabin. Halfway there he overtook her. Without a word he lifted the logs from her arms into his own. She was too spent to thank him. Dumbly she moved at his side, conscious only that strength was here, help was here, that she might yet save Derek.

Entering the cabin, there was no glow, no light at all. With a low sound, Dorette swung open the door of the stove. Nothing was there but a handful of red ash ringed with grey.

With trembling hands she gathered a few splinters and thrust them in; she crouched before the gaunt, iron thing, as though she would hold it in her arms and warm it in her bosom. But the man, who had followed her, thrust her aside curtly enough. She watched him as he shaved a stick into delicate ribbons of wood—watched him as he coaxed them into flame. He tickled the appetite of the sullen, devouring thing in the stove with scraps of resinous bark and little twigs. Presently the fire laid hold on the larger logs, and fed upon them, hissing. He shut the door then, and turned to her.

She had lighted a lamp, and in the light stood looking at him, softly bright. Her eyes were stars of gratitude. She said at once: “My brother’s still living.”

She gestured towards the bunk. His eyes did not follow the gesture, or move from her pale face, as he said, abruptly: “You stay here with him. I’m goin’ to get you in some more wood.”

Her eyes flashed suddenly with tears. She said, brokenly: “You’re _good_. Oh, you’re a good man! While you’re—cuttin’ the wood, I’ll—thank God you came!”

He went out into the night without answering her.

He returned in half an hour, loaded mightily. Sitting on the end of her cot, she smiled at him, falteringly. She had been weeping.

He did not speak to her. Light-footed as a cat, he busied himself about the humming stove, then went forth again.

When he came back the second time, she was asleep.

Her face—very pale, very pure, fragile for one of her life and race—was rosed in the glow of the stove. Her hurt hands were curled within one another, like the hands of a child. Moving in his noiseless way, the man went again, and looked down at her.

His furred cowl had fallen back. His face also caught the light of the stove. Dark, keen, predatory, it was the face less of a man than of some embodied passion of hate or revenge, the face of an Ishmael, the face of Cain. It looked strange now, so little was it shaped or accustomed to the gentleness of expression it momentarily wore, as a breath blurs the gleam of steel. Light and silent as all his movements were, they showed no gentleness. But he seemed gentle when he lifted the end of one of Dorette’s dark plaits, which had fallen to the soiled floor, and laid it on the cot beside her just because he hesitated and was clumsy.

The plait of dark, silken hair was warm; his hand lingered over it. He leaned above her, and her breath was warm. That strangely unmoving regard of his was on her face. As if it had called her from her dreams, she woke, and lifted to him the clear eyes of a child. “I—did thank God—you came,” she whispered, with a child’s simplicity. Sleep held her again, almost before she had finished speaking.

The young man drew back, noiselessly lifted the axe, and once more went out.

Sinewy, silent, untiring, he toiled for her all night. And all night she slept.

She had slipped into unconsciousness as a child does, worn out with anxiety and fatigue. She woke a woman, and flushed to her hair, as she realized what she had done.

The man who had helped and guarded her all night, was standing in the doorway. The door was open; there was a frosty freshness in the air, which the roaring stove raised to the warmth of summer. The world outside was a dazzle of sun; silver drops rattled from the eaves; a crow called in the forest. It was the first sun of spring, the year’s change. In Dorette’s heart was a change also, a quickening, a birth of something new and unknown, that almost brought tears to her eyes. For the first time in her hard life she had rested on another’s strength; unconsciously she had found it sweet. That simple heart was in her look as she went to the stranger. She said, softly, “I did not mean to sleep. Why did you let me?”

He said, almost roughly; “You were all tired out.”

The tears brimmed over. She did not know if pain or happiness moved her. She went on: “I said—I knew—you were a good man.”

“Well,” he answered, but not as if he was answering her, “for one night.”

His furred hood hid his face. The wakening blush dyed her clear face again, as she said: “Let me see you. Let me see your face.”

“Why?”

On the word she faltered, confused. She did not know why. She stammered: “Because of what you have done—of what we owe you.”

“We?”

“My brothers and I. Derek’s still alive. I almost think he’s sleeping better—more natural. When—when Garth comes home, he’ll thank you as I’d like to.”

She looked up into the shadowed face, wistfully. He had turned from her again, and was gazing down the trail. After a moment, he said: “There’s coffee on the back of the stove, and some cornbread. You’d better eat it. I’ve had some.”

She went meekly, shamed that she had slept while her saviour served himself. She would have liked to serve him. Something strange and stormy was shaking her; she had no name for it. The food choked her, hungry as she was, but she ate it obediently.

She had scarcely finished, when he called her. She ran and joined him at the door. Something in his voice thrilled her; she saw in him again that strange and threatening immobility of the night before.

He said, swiftly: “You’re lookin’ for your brother to come back?”

“Yes, yes. Any time.”

“With another man?”

“With the doctor. Why?”

He raised his arm and pointed. In the blinding dazzle of sun on snow, she saw two small, dark figures, just rounding the curve of the trail.

Her heart rose and flooded her with a passion of thankfulness. She said, quietly, after a minute: “Yes, yes, it’s him and the doctor. Now—now, you’ll let him thank you, as you—won’t let me.”

Her words ended almost in a question, for she saw that, while she had been eating, he had taken his rifle on his arm and put on his snowshoes. Suddenly, she began to tremble a little, aware of something in his silence, his stillness, which vaguely threatened.

He swung upon her suddenly—one would have said, savagely, but that he was laughing. Those two black figures down the trail were sweeping rapidly nearer. All the latent fierceness of the man had flamed into being, at their approach. He laid a hard, slim hand on Dorette’s shoulder and turned her, so that, at less than arm’s length, she faced him. He said, softly, in the midst of his almost noiseless laughter: “I’ll show you how you can thank me.”

She looked up at him, her face colourless, her lips parted. In the shadow of the hood his eyes gleamed at her, his face bent nearer. The world fell away from her; there was nothing left in life for a minute but that face, that voice.

She just breathed: “Who are you?”

“You’ll know in a minute!” He looked swiftly from her to the two men down the trail. They were coming on fast. He seemed to be measuring his distance from them.

When they were so near that their faces were all but discernible, he caught the girl to him. She was slack in his hold; all her life seemed to be in her dazed eyes; she would have fallen, but that he held her with an arm like a steel bar. And twice and three times he kissed her.

“That’s how you can thank me!” He released her laughing still.

She staggered, her hands over her red mouth. With the movement of release he thrust her, rough and swift, within the door of the cabin. A bullet sent a spray of dusty snow over him. She saw, in one reeling instant, Garth on his knee down the trail, rifle levelled for another shot; the other, a laughing shadow, slipping from her hands, from her life, into the shadow of the forest from which he had come.

Another shot, wide of the mark; Garth leaping to his feet again and tearing towards her, followed by the doctor who was to save Derek, and whom he had found at last, thirty miles beyond Mandore. But she had no eyes for them—for a moment, no heart.

Eyes and heart were on that other figure at the edge of the trees, swift, terrible, laughing, calling to her with raised hand—

“Tell him you kissed Maxime Dufour!”

When Garth reached her side, she was on her knees, laughing and sobbing, striving, with her scarred small hands to obliterate his trail in the snow.

LA BLANCHISSEUSE DORÉE

As Père Barthélemy turned out of the gusty, dusty street, where the wind had been tugging rudely at his old soutane, and into Mère Bazane’s yard, he stepped into peace. Smiling, he flicked the dust off his sleeve with delicate fingers, looking at the tubs under the apple-trees, at the little gray shanty, and at the sign over the door. It seemed to him that the tarnished letters were full of little, gaping mouths, ready to snap at a possible customer. Some penniless student had painted the sign for her, long ago; “La Blanchisseuse Dorée,” in a fat flourish of gold. “Long ago,” said Père Barthélemy, with something of a sigh, “when she was not called the White-foot for nothing.”

But there she was, toiling at her tubs, and Père Barthélemy knew she needed smiles from him, not sighs.

“The peace of God be upon you, Mère Bazane.”

“And upon you, mon père.” The little woman looked up from her reverie with a quick smile, and her eyes, in her small, weather-beaten face, were still as blue as wild flax. “It is a beautiful day, mon père.”

“Dusty and gusty in the streets.”

“Ah, the streets, my father! I am out of them here, and glad to be so. Sometimes a bird comes to the apple-trees, and when they are in leaf I look up among their boughs and think I am in my old home again. We had an orchard there.”

“A beautiful one, my friend?” Père Barthélemy’s keen, brown eyes were very soft.

“An orchard is always beautiful, my father.”

“That is true. And how is your good husband to-day?”

The accustomed mist of grief dimmed the blue eyes of the Golden Washerwoman. “Ah, my father, he is no better; he will never be better. Ah, the poor child, how he suffers! All last night I was rubbing him with oils. But I mind nothing, if I can keep my strength and get him all he needs. He is much younger than I.” Her little, knotted hands shook upon the side of the tub. “I weep in the night when I think of it. What if I should die first, and leave him uncared for?”

Something, that might have been admiration, rippled over the priest’s calm, brown face. “I am not old, Mère Bezane. Will you trust me? While I live I will never forget him.”

“Ah, mon père!” Her hands shook still more. “That is good, that is of a heavenly kindness. But no one can understand him but I, no one does him justice, no one can guess his sufferings. And he speaks to me with such affection! Only this morning, he said, ‘Hola! my little, old cabbage,’ he said, ‘make me some good soup.’ The brave heart! Will you not see him?”

“I have no time, and I must not hinder you when you are so busy.”

“Yes, I am busy, thank the saints. It is a lady’s dress, my father, and the work upon it is wonderful.” Her fingers sought the fine lace, wistfully. “But before it came to me it received, not a washing, but a massacre.”

That evening, Monsieur le Curé went to see his friend, the doctor.

Le Docteur Simon was hard at work among his hollyhocks when Père Barthélemy leaned over the gate. “Ha!” said he, pointing a trowel at his visitor. “I can see where you have been! You have been with our Blanchisseuse Dorée.”

“Yes,” said the curé, quietly, “and I have come to ask you—is there anything the matter with that villainous husband of hers?”

“I do not know,” said Simon, gruffly, making the earth fly, like a digging terrier.

“There were bruises on her arm again,” said Père Barthélemy, slowly. “I have thought much of that matter, my friend.”

“So have I.” The doctor spoke from a shower of flying earth. “And I will tell you this. The brute will die, if he dies at all, from eating, and lying still. Unless by the judgment of God. But that is _your_ department.”

“Our poor little Golden Washerwoman! How long is she to endure?”

“Till her heart breaks. You have all influence. Why do you not have the brute removed?”

“I have thought much, Simon. And I have thought—I have guessed—that it would not be for her happiness.”

“Ha!” said the doctor, again, with a look at the curé. “Ha. This Love!”

“Just so, my friend. We cannot meddle with it.”

The doctor grunted among his hollyhocks. “Yes, this Love. I have seen many manifestations; many symptoms of it. The heroic symptom has never shown itself so plainly as in the case of our Blanchisseuse Dorée. Name of a name! If I were _you_, my dear, I should never be surprised to see a hale young angel or two helping her with the wringing, and half the powers of heaven on guard among her apple trees.”

“And there is no hope for her release?”

“Speaking as a doctor, no. As a man”—the doctor was small, and of a wicked, selfish humour—“as a man, I am so greatly tempted to tell the pig to drink his liniments someday—”

Père Barthélemy laughed. “He is of my flock, and I say that a long purgatory is his only chance. Well, well! What would she say if she heard us?”

“Those sort of creatures always live long. Perhaps you can tell me why. These slugs are manifold as my good intentions, and will have a like fate. Remember our Blanchisseuse in your prayers.”

But for once, the doctor was wrong. La Blanchisseuse’s husband died, quite suddenly, and she was a widow. Upon Père Barthélemy came the weight of her wild grief.

“O, mon père, he is gone, he is gone! Dead before me, and he so much younger! You should have seen him when he came courting me. Such a fine lad, and even then I was plain and hard-favoured. I cannot believe it. O Mother of Sorrows, give him back to me! I was weak, I was wicked. When he called me, sometimes I came slowly. My legs were stiff with rheumatism, but I should have hastened. And often I fell asleep when I was rubbing him. O, my father, how shall I live without him?”

“She will not live,” said the curé. But the doctor said: “Wait. That grief must find healing.”

The Golden Washerwoman awoke, at last, to a sense of other things than her loneliness. She need be the Golden Washerwoman no more. There was the insurance to meet the dues for which she had striven for years, urged and helped by Père Barthélemy. La Blanchisseuse Dorée was rich, mon Dieu, as rich as any lonely woman need be. My faith, she had money in the bank. Regardez la!

“I will buy mourning,” she said, “such mourning as will become my age.”

So she bought cheap, black materials, and made them up herself, after long-forgotten fashion-plates of twenty years before. A little monument in grief, veiled in crape, she attended mass and spoke long to the priest who loved her. “She begins to take an interest in her dresses,” said he to his friend the doctor. In the luxury of buying, Mère Bazane found a little comfort.

And presently, the crape upon her gown gave place to black lace, very deep, and of a heavy pattern, the like of which had never been seen in the parish. She bought a chain of large jet beads, linked with gold. A brooch of black enamel, roped with gold, bore a little blackish portrait of her husband. There was a dreadful mourning ring upon one of her little, knotted fingers. The flock of Père Barthélemy wondered and admired.

Upon the day when the old sign, “La Blanchisseuse Dorée” disappeared from above her door, and she herself appeared in penetrating purple ribbons, Monsieur le Curé went to see her.

“The peace of God be upon you, Mère Bazane.”

The Golden Washerwoman, smaller and more meagre than ever before, rustled her heavy, black draperies upon the floor, and wept upon Père Barthélemy’s hand.

“How is it with you, Mère Bazane?”

“Well, well, mon père. The emptiness of the heart is terrible, and the nights are full of a voice that does not call me, that will never call me again. Sometimes I look for my tubs under the trees, and for a little I am desolate that I need them no more. And then—”

“And then?”

“Then I go and buy things, my father.” She raised brave, blue eyes, like the eyes of a child. “It helps me to forget, it fills the emptiness, seest thou? I have never bought things before. When I washed the fine dresses of rich ladies, I used to lay the lace against my hands, because I loved it. It was beautiful. And I had never had anything that was beautiful.” She smoothed the deep, black flounce of her dress with a little hand that was always tremulous now. “This is beautiful, too, but it has no colour. Colour warms me like a fire, mon père; fills me like a food. Is it a sin?”

“It is no sin, my friend.”

“Come then, and I will show. At first I was afraid. That was a sin, to be afraid of thee.”

She went to a little wooden chest, and raised the lid. It was as if a rainbow had flashed suddenly into the dark, damp room. La Blanchisseuse Dorée laid her tremulous hands upon a silk web of pure colour within, and drew it out—pale blue, the colour of spring skies. Upon that she shook a length of rose-coloured satin, damasked in a pattern of butterflies. And then a glow of crimson silk, worked in tiny silver flowers.

“When my mourning is ended,” she explained, fondling the gorgeous fabrics, feverishly, “I can wear these. Meantime, I buy them, my father.”