Chapter 8

It was strange that her pain should fill him with a wonderful joy. He knew that she was suffering, that she could not walk or stand alone. And yet, back at the camp, she had risen in her torture and had come to his rescue. She could not bear her own weight now, but then she had run to him and had fought for him. The knowledge that she had done this, and for him, filled him with an exquisite sensation.

"I must carry you," he said, speaking to her with the calm decision that he might have voiced to a little child. His tone reassured her, and she made no remonstrance when he lifted her in his arms. For a brief moment she lay against him again, and when he lowered her upon the bank his hand accidentally touched the soft warmth of her face.

"My specialty is sprains," he said, speaking a little lightly to raise her spirits for the instant's ordeal through which she must pass. "I have doctored half a dozen during the last three months. You must take off your moccasin and your stocking, and I will make a bandage."

He drew a big handkerchief from his pocket and dipped it in the water. Then he searched along the shore for a dozen paces, until he found an Indian willow. With his knife he scraped off a handful of bark, soaked it in water, crushed it between his hands, and returned to her. Jeanne's little foot lay naked in the starlight.

"It will hurt just a moment," he said, gently. "But it is the only cure. To-morrow it will be strong enough for you to stand upon. Can you bear a little hurt?"

He knelt before her and looked up, scarce daring to touch her foot before she spoke.

"I may cry," she said.

Her voice fluttered, but it gave him permission. He folded the wet handkerchief in the form of a bandage, with the willow bark spread over it. Then, very gently, he seized her foot in one hand and her ankle in the other.

"It will hurt just a little," he soothed. "Only a moment."

His fingers tightened. He put into them the whole strength of his grip, pulling downward on the foot and upward on the ankle until, with a low cry, Jeanne flung her hands over his.

"There, it is done," he laughed, nervously. He wrapped the bandage around so tightly that Jeanne could not move her foot, and tied it with strips of cloth. Then he turned to the canoe while she drew on her stocking and moccasin.

He was trembling. A maddening joy pounded in his brain. Jeanne's voice came to him sweetly, with a shyness in it that made him feel like a boy. He was glad that the night concealed his face. He would have given worlds to have seen Jeanne's.

"I am ready," she said.

He carried her to the bow of the canoe and fixed her among the robes, arranging a place for her head so that she might sleep if she wished. For the first time the light was so that he could see her plainly as she nestled back in the place made for her. Their eyes met for a moment.

"You must sleep," he urged. "I shall paddle all night."

"You are sure that Pierre is not badly hurt?" she asked, tremulously. "You--you would not--keep the truth from me?"

"He was not more than stunned," assured Philip. "It is impossible that his wound should prove serious. Only there was no time to lose, and I came without him. He will follow us soon."

He took his position in the stern, and Jeanne lay back among the bearskins. For a long time after that Philip paddled in silence. He had hoped that Jeanne would give him an opportunity to continue their conversation, in spite of his advice to her to secure what rest she could. But there came no promise from the bow of the canoe. After half an hour he guessed that Jeanne had taken him at his word, and was asleep.

It was disappointing, and yet there came a pleasurable throb with his disappointment. Jeanne trusted him. She was sleeping under his protection as sweetly as a child. Fear of her enemies no longer kept her awake or filled her with terror. This night, under these stars, with the wilderness all about them, she had given herself into his keeping. His cheeks burned. He dipped his paddle noiselessly, so that he might not interrupt her slumber. Each moment added to the fullness of his joy, and he wished that he might only see her face, hidden in the darkness of her hair and the bear-robes.

The silence no longer seemed a silence to him. It was filled with the beating of his heart, the singing of his love, a gentle sigh now and then that came like a deeper breath between Jeanne's sweet lips. It was a silence that pulsated with a voiceless and intoxicating life for him, and he was happy. In these moments, when even their voices were stilled, Jeanne belonged to him, and to him alone. He could feel the warmth of her presence. He felt still the thrill of her breast against his own, the touch of her hair upon his lips, the gentle clinging of her arms. The spirit of her moved, and sat awake, and talked with him, just as the old spirit of his dreams had communed with him a thousand times in his loneliness. Dreams were at an end. Now had come reality.

He looked up into the sky. The moon had dropped below the southwestern forests, and there were only the stars above him, filling a gray-blue vault in which there was not even the lingering mist of a cloud. It was a beautifully clear night, and he wondered how the light fell so that it did not reveal Jeanne in her nest. The thought that came to him then set his heart tingling and made his face radiant. Even the stars were guarding Jeanne, and refused to disclose the mystery of her slumber. He laughed within himself. His being throbbed, and suddenly a voice seemed to cry softly, trembling in its joy:

"Jeanne! Jeanne! My beloved Jeanne!"

With horror Philip caught himself too late. He had spoken the words aloud. For an instant reality had transformed itself into the old dream, and his dream-spirit had called to its mate for the first time in words. Appalled at what he had said, Philip bent over and listened. He heard Jeanne's breathing. It was deeper than before. She was surely asleep!

He straightened himself and resumed his paddling. He was glad now that he had spoken. Jeanne seemed nearer to him after those words.

Before this night he never realized how beautiful the wilderness was, how complete it could be. It had offered him visions of new life, but these visions had never quite shut out the memories of old pain. He watched and listened. The water rippled behind his canoe; it trickled in a soothing cadence after each dip of his paddle; he heard the gentle murmur of it among the reeds and grasses, and now and then the gurgling laughter of it, like the faintest tinkling of dainty bells. He had never understood it before; he had never joined in its happiness. The night sounds came to him with a different meaning, filled him with different sensations. As he slipped quietly around a bend in the river he heard a splashing ahead of him, and knew that a moose was feeding, belly-deep, in the water. At other times the sound would have set his fingers itching for a rifle, but now it was a part of the music of the night. Later he heard the crashing of a heavy body along the shore and in the distance the lonely howl of a wolf. He listened to the sounds with a quiet pleasure instead of creeping thrills which they once sent through him. Every sound spoke of Jeanne--of Jeanne and her world, into which each stroke of his paddle carried them a little deeper.

And yet the truth could not but come to him that Jeanne was but a stranger. She was a creature of mystery, as she lay there asleep in the bow of the canoe; he loved her, and yet he did not know her. He confessed to himself, as the night lengthened, that he would be glad when morning came. Jeanne would clear up a half of his perplexities then, perhaps all of them. He would at least learn more about herself and the reason for the attack at Fort Churchill.

He paddled for another hour, and then looked at his watch by the light of a match. It was three o'clock.

Jeanne had not moved, but as the match burned out between his fingers she startled him by speaking.

"Is it nearly morning, M'sieur?"

"An hour until dawn," said Philip. "You have been sleeping a long time--" Her name was on his lips, but he found it a little more difficult to speak now. And yet there was a gentleness in Jeanne's "M'SIEUR" which encouraged him. "Are you getting hungry?" he asked.

"Pierre and my father always ask me that when THEY are starving," replied Jeanne, sitting erect in her nest so that Philip saw her face and the shimmer of her hair. "There is everything to eat in the pack, M'sieur Philip, even to a bottle of olives."

"Good!" cried Philip, delighted, "But won't you please cut out that 'm'sieur?' My greatest weakness is a desire to be called by my first name. Will you?"

"If it pleases you," said Jeanne. "There is everything there to eat, and I will make you a cup of coffee, M'sieur--"

"What?"

"Philip."

There was a ripple of laughter in the girl's voice. Philip fairly trembled.

"You were prepared for this journey," he said. "You were going to leave after you saw me on the rock. I have been wondering why--why you took enough interest in me--"

He knew that he was blundering, and in the darkness his face turned red. Jeanne's tact was delightful.

"We were curious about you," she said, with bewitching candor. "Pierre is the most inquisitive creature in the world, and I wanted to thank you for returning my handkerchief. I'm sorry you didn't find a bit of lace which I lost at the same time!"

"I did!" exclaimed Philip.

He bit his tongue, and cursed himself at this fresh break. Jeanne was silent. After a moment she said:

"Shall I make you some coffee?"

"Will you be able to do it? Your foot--"

"I had forgotten that," she said. "It doesn't hurt any more. But I can show you how."

Her unaffected ingenuousness, the sweetness of her voice, the simplicity and ease of her manner delighted Philip, and at the same time filled him with amazement. He had never met a forest girl like Jeanne. Her beauty, her queen-like bearing, when she had stood with Pierre on the rock, had puzzled him and filled him with admiration. But now her voice, the music of her words, her quickness of perception added tenfold to those impressions. It might have been Miss Brokaw who was sitting there in the bow talking to him, only Jeanne's voice was sweeter than Miss Brokaw's; and even in the lightest of the words she had spoken there was a tone of sincerity and truth. It flashed upon Philip that Jeanne might have stepped from a convent school, where gentle voices had taught her and language was formed in the ripe fullness of music. In a moment he believed that something like this had happened.

"We will go ashore," he said, searching for an open space. "This must be tedious to you, if you are not accustomed to it."

"Accustomed to it, M'sieur--Philip!" exclaimed Jeanne, catching herself. "I was born here!"

"In the wilderness?"

"At Fort o' God."

"You have not always lived there?"

For a brief space Jeanne was silent.

"Yes, always, M'sieur. I am eighteen years old, and this is the first time that I have ever seen what you people call civilization. It is my first visit to Fort Churchill. It is the first time I have ever been away from Fort o' God."

Jeanne's voice was low and subdued. It rang with truth. In it there was something that was almost tragedy. For a breath or two Philip's heart seemed to stop its beating, and he leaned far over, looking straight and questioningly into the beautiful face that met his own. In that moment the world had opened and engulfed him in a wonder which at first his mind could not comprehend.

XII

The canoe ran among the reeds, with its bow to the shore. Philip's astonishment still held him motionless.

"A little while ago you asked me if I would tell you anything but--but--the truth," he stammered, trying to find words to express himself, "and this--"

"Is the truth," interrupted Jeanne, a little coolly. "Why should I tell you an untruth, M'sieur?"

Philip had asked himself that same question shortly after their first meeting on the cliff. And now in the girl's question there was sounded a warning for him to be more discreet.

"I did not mean that," he cried, quickly. "Please forgive me. Only--it is so wonderful, so almost IMPOSSIBLE to believe. Do you know what I thought of for three-quarters of the night after I left you and Pierre on the rock? It was of years--centuries ago. I put you and Pierre back there. It seemed as though you had come to me from out of another world, that you had strayed from the chivalry and beauty of some royal court, that a queen's painter might have known and made a picture of you, as I saw you there, but that to me you were only the vision of a dream. And now you say that you have always lived here!"

He saw Jeanne's eyes glowing. She had lifted herself from among the bearskins and was leaning toward him. Her face was quivering with emotion; her whole being seemed concentrated on his words.

"M'sieur--Philip--did we seem--like that?" she asked, tremulously.

"Yes, or I would not have written the letter," replied Philip. He leaned forward over the pack, and his face was close to Jeanne's. "I had just passed over the place where men and women of a century or two ago were buried, and when I saw you and Pierre I thought of them; of Mademoiselle D'Arcon, who left a prince to follow her lover to a grave back there at Churchill, and I wondered if Grosellier--"

"Grosellier!" cried the girl.

She was breathing quickly, excitedly. Suddenly she drew back with a little, nervous laugh.

"I am glad you thought of us like THAT," she added. "It was Grosellier, le grand chevalier, who first lived at Fort o' God!"

Philip could no longer restrain himself. He forgot that the canoe was lying motionless among the reeds and that they were to go ashore. In a voice that trembled with his eagerness to be understood, to win her confidence, he told her fully of what had happened that night on the cliff. He repeated Pierre's instructions to him, described his terrible fear for her, and in it all withheld but one thing--the name of Lord Fitzhugh Lee. Jeanne listened to him without a word. She sat as erect as one of the slender reeds among which the canoe was hidden. Her dark eyes never left his face. They seemed to have grown darker when he finished.

"May the great God reward you for what you have done," she said, in a low voice, quivering with a suppressed passion. "You are brave, M'sieur Philip--as brave as I have dreamed of men being."

Philip's heart throbbed with delight, and yet he said quickly:

"It isn't THAT. I have done nothing--nothing more than Pierre would have done for me. But don't you understand? If there is to be a reward for the little I have given--I could ask for nothing greater than your confidence and Pierre's. There are reasons, and perhaps if I told you those you would understand."

"I do understand, without further explanation," answered Jeanne, in the same low, strained voice. "You fought for Pierre on the cliff, and you have saved--me. We owe you everything, even our lives. I understand, M'sieur Philip," she said, more softly, leaning still nearer to him; "but I can tell you nothing."

"You prefer to leave that to Pierre," he said a little hurt. "I beg your pardon."

"No, no! I don't mean that!" she cried, quickly. "You misunderstand me. I mean that you know as much of this whole affair as I do, that you know what I know, and perhaps more."

The emotion which she had suppressed burst forth now in a choking sob. She recovered herself in an instant, her eyes still upon Philip.

"It was only a whim of mine that took us to Churchill," she went on, before he could find words to say. "It is Pierre's secret why we lived in our own camp and went down into Churchill but once--when the ship came in. I do not know the reason for the attack. I can only guess--"

"And your guess--"

Jeanne drew back. For a moment she did not speak. Then she said, without a note of harshness in her voice, but with the finality of a queen:

"Father may tell you that when we reach Fort o' God!"

And then she suddenly leaned toward him again and held out both her hands.

"If you only could know how I thank you!" she exclaimed, impulsively.

For a moment Philip held her hands. He felt them trembling. In Jeanne's eyes he saw the glisten of tears.

"Circumstances have come about so strangely," he said, his heart palpitating at the warm pressure of her fingers, "that I half believed you and Pierre could help me in--in an affair of my own. I would give a great deal to find a certain person, and after the attack on the cliff, and what Pierre said, I thought--"

He hesitated, and Jeanne gently drew her hands from him.

"I thought that you might know him," he finished. "His name is Lord Fitzhugh Lee."

Jeanne gave no sign that she had heard the name before. The question in her eyes remained unchanged.

"We have never heard of him at Fort o' God," she said.

Philip shoved the canoe more firmly upon the shore and stepped over the side.

"This Fort o' God must be a wonderful place," he said, as he bent over to help her. "You have aroused something in me I never thought I possessed before--a tremendous curiosity."

"It is a wonderful place, M'sieur Philip," replied the girl, holding up her hands to him. "But why should you guess it?"

"Because of you," laughed Philip. "I am half convinced that you take a wicked delight in bewildering me."

He found Jeanne a comfortable spot on the bank, brought her one of the bearskins, and began collecting a pile of dry reeds and wood.

"I am sure of it," he went on. He struck a match, and the reeds flared into flame, lighting up his face.

Jeanne gave a startled cry.

"You are hurt!" she exclaimed. "Your face is red with blood."

Philip jumped back.

"I had forgotten that. I'll wash my face."

He waded into the edge of the water and began scrubbing himself. When he returned, Jeanne looked at him closely. The fire illumined her pale face. She had gathered her beautiful hair in a thick braid, which fell over her shoulder. She appeared lovelier to him now than when he had first seen her in the night-glow on the cliff. She was dressed the same. He observed that the filmy bit of lace about her slender throat was torn, and that one side of her short buckskin skirt was covered with half-dried splashes of mud. His blood rose at these signs of the rough treatment of those who had attacked her. It reached fever-heat when, coming nearer, he saw a livid bruise on her forehead close up under her hair.

"They struck you?" he demanded.

He stood with his hands clenched. She smiled up at him.

"It was my fault," she explained. "I'm afraid I gave them a good deal of trouble on the cliff."

She laughed outright at the fierceness in Philip's face, and so sweet was the sound of it to him that his hands relaxed and he laughed with her.

"So help me, you're a brick!" he cried.

"There are pots and kettles and coffee and things to eat in the pack, M'sieur Philip," reminded Jeanne, softly, as he still remained staring down upon her.

Philip turned to the canoe, with a laugh that was like a boy's. He threw the pack at Jeanne's feet and unstrapped it. Together they sorted out the things they wanted, and Philip cut crotched sticks on which he suspended two pots of water over the fire. He found himself whistling as he gathered an armful of wood along the shore. When he came back Jeanne had opened a bottle of olives and was nibbling at one, while she held out another to him on the end of a fork.

"I love olives," she said. "Won't you have one?"

He accepted the thing, and ate it joyously, though he hated olives.

"Where did you acquire the taste?" he asked. "I thought it took a course at college to make one like 'em."

"I've been to college," answered Jeanne, quietly. There was a glow in her cheeks now, a swift flash of tantalizing fun in her eyes, as she fished after another olive. "I have been a student--a TENERIS ANNIS," she added, and he stood stupefied.

"That's Latin!" he gasped.

"Oui, M'sieur. Wollen Sie noch eine Olive haben?"

Laughter rippled in her throat. She held out another olive to him, her face aglow. Firelight danced in her hair, flooding its darker shadows with lights of red and gold.

"I was sure of it," he exclaimed, convinced. "That's post-graduate Latin and senior German, or I'm as mad as a March hare! Where--where did you go to school?"

"At Fort o' God. Quick, M'sieur Philip, the water is boiling over!"

Philip sprang to the fire. Jeanne handed him coffee, and set out cold meat and bread. For the first time that night he pulled out his pipe and filled it with tobacco.

"You don't mind if I smoke, do you, Miss Jeanne?" he groaned. "Under some circumstances tobacco is the only thing that will hold me up. Do you know that you are shaking my confidence in you?"

"I have told you nothing but the truth," retorted Jeanne, innocently. She was still busying herself over the pack, but Philip caught the slightest gleam of her laughing teeth.

"You are making fun of me," he remonstrated. "Tell me--where is this Fort o' God, and what is it?"

"It is far up the Churchill, M'sieur Philip. It is a log chateau, built hundreds and hundreds of years ago, I guess. My father, Pierre, and I, with one other, live there alone among the savages. I have never been so far away from home before."

"I suppose," said Philip, "that the savages up your way converse in Latin, Greek, and German--"

"Latin, FRENCH, and German," corrected Jeanne. "We haven't added a Greek course yet."

"I know of a girl," mused Philip, as though speaking to himself, "who spent five years in a girls' college, and she can talk nothing but light English. Her name is Eileen Brokaw."

Jeanne looked up, but only to point to the coffee.

"It is done," she advised, "unless you like it bitter."

XIII