Flower of the North - James Oliver Curwood (desktop ebook reader .txt) 📗

fluttered over the top of life like butterflies; that we couldn't understand life, or live it, until somewhere--at some time--we came into touch with nature. Do you remember? I was consumed with rage then --at your frankness, at what I considered your impertinence. I couldn't get what you said out of my mind. And I'm trying it."
"And you like it?" He put the question almost eagerly.
"Yes." She was looking at him steadily, her beautiful gray eyes meeting his own in a silence that stirred him deeply. He had never seen her more beautiful. Was it the firelight on her face, the crimson leapings of the flames, that gave her skin a richer hue? Was it the mingling of fire and shadow that darkened her cheeks? An impulse made him utter the words which passed through his mind.
"You have already tried it," he said. "I can see the effects of it in your face. It would take weeks in the forests to do that."
The gray eyes faltered; the flush deepened.
"Yes, I have tried it. I spent a half of the summer at our cottage on the lake."
"But it is not tan," he persisted, thrilled for a moment by the discoveries he was making. "It is the wind; it is the open; it is the smoke of camp-fires; it is the elixir of balsam and cedar and pine. That is what I see in your face--unless it is the fire."
"It is the fire, partly," she said. "And the rest is the wind and the open of the seas we have come across, and the sting of icebergs. Ugh: my face feels like nettles!"
She rubbed her cheeks with her two hands, and then held up one hand to Philip.
"Look," she said. "It's as rough as sand-paper. Isn't that a change? I didn't even wear gloves on the ship. I'm an enthusiast. I'm going down there with you, and I'm going to fight. Now have you got anything to say against me, Mr. Philip?"
There was a lightness in her words, and yet not in her voice. In her manner was an uneasiness, mingled with an almost childish eagerness for him to answer, which Philip could not understand. He fancied that once or twice he had caught the faintest sign of a break in her voice.
"You really mean to hazard this adventure?" he cried, softly, in his astonishment. "You, whom wild horses couldn't drag into the wilderness, as you once told me!"
"Yes," she affirmed, drawing her stool back out of the increasing heat of the fire. Her face was almost entirely in shadow now, and she did not look at Philip. "I am beginning to--to love adventure," she went on, in an even voice. "It was an adventure coming up. And when we landed down there something curious happened. Did you see a girl who thought that she knew me--"
She stopped, and a sudden flash of the fire lit up her eyes, fixed on him intently from between her shielding hands.
"I saw her run out and speak to you," said Philip, his heart beating at double-quick. He leaned over so that he was looking squarely into Miss Brokaw's face.
"Did you know her?" she asked.
"I have seen her only twice--once before she spoke to you."
"If I meet her again I shall apologize," said Eileen. "It was her mistake, and she startled me. When she ran out to me like that, and held out her hands I--I thought of beggars."
"Beggars!" almost shouted Philip. "A beggar!" He caught himself with a laugh, and to cover his sudden emotion turned to lay a fresh piece of birch on the fire. "We don't have beggars up here."
The door opened behind them and Brokaw entered. Philip's face was red when he greeted him. For half an hour after that he cursed himself for not being as clever as Gregson. He knew that there was a change in Eileen Brokaw, a change which nature had not worked alone, as she wished him to believe. Then, and at supper, he tried to fathom her. At times he detected the metallic ring of what was unreal and make-believe in what she said; at other times she seemed stirred by emotions which added immeasurably to the sweetness and truthfulness of her voice. She was nervous. He found her eyes frequently seeking her father's face, and more than once they were filled with a mysterious questioning, as if within Brokaw's brain there lurked hidden things which were new to her, and which she was struggling to understand. She no longer held the old fascination for Philip, and yet he conceded that she was more beautiful than ever. Until to-night he had never seen the shadow of sadness in her eyes; he had never seen them darken as they darkened now, when she listened with almost feverish interest to the words which passed between himself and Brokaw. He was certain that it was not a whim that had brought her into the north. It was impossible for him to believe that he had piqued at her vanity until she had leaped into action, as she had suggested to him while they were sitting before the fire. Could it be that she had accompanied her father because he--Philip Whittemore--was in the north?
The thought drew a slow flush into his face, and his uneasiness increased when he knew that she was looking at him. He was glad when it came time for cigars, and Eileen excused herself. He opened the door for her, and told her that he probably would not see her again until morning, as he had an important engagement for the evening. She gave him her hand, and for a moment he felt the clinging of her fingers about his own.
"Good night," she whispered.
"Good night."
She drew her hand half away, and then, suddenly, raised her eyes straight to his own. They were calm, quiet, beautiful, and yet there came a quick little catch in her throat as she leaned so close to him that she touched his breast, and said:
"It will be best--best for everything--everybody--if you can influence father to stay at Fort Churchill."
She did not wait for him to reply, but hurried toward her room. For a moment Philip stared after her in amazement. Then he took a step as if to follow her, to call her back. The impulse left him as quickly as it came, and he rejoined Brokaw and the factor.
He looked at his watch. It was seven o'clock. At half-past seven he shook hands with the two men, lighted a fresh cigar, and passed out into the night. It was early for his meeting with Pierre and Jeanne, but he went down to the shore and walked slowly in the direction of the cliff. He was still an hour early when he arrived at the great rock, and sat down, with his face turned to the sea.
It was a white, radiant night, such as he had seen in the tropics. Only here, in the north, his vision reached to greater distances. Churchill lay lifeless in its pool of light; the ship hung like a black silhouette in the distance, with a cloud of jet-black smoke rising straight up from its funnels, and spreading out high up against the sky, a huge, ebon monster that cast its shadow for half a mile over the Bay. The shadow held Philip's eyes. Now it was like a gigantic face, now like a monster beast--now it reached out in the form of a great threatening hand, as though somewhere in the mystery of the north it sought a spirit-victim as potent as itself.
Then the spell of it was broken. From the end of the shadow, which reached almost to the base of the cliff on which Philip sat, there came a sound. It was a clear, metallic sound that left the vibration of steel in the air, and Philip leaned over the edge of the rock. Below him the shadow was broken into a pool of rippling starlight. He heard the faint dip of paddles, and suddenly a canoe shot from the shadow out into the clear light of the moon and stars.
It was a large canoe. In it he could make out four figures. Three of them were paddling; the fourth sat motionless in the bow. They passed under him swiftly, guiding their canoe so that it was soon hidden in the shelter of the cliff. By the faint reflections cast by the disturbed water, Philip saw that the occupants of the canoe had made an effort to conceal themselves by following the course of the dense shadow. Only the chance sound had led him to observe them.
Under ordinary circumstances the passing of a strange canoe at night would have had no significance for him. But at the present time it troubled him. The manner of its approach through the shadow, the strange quiet of its occupants, the stealth with which they had shot the canoe under the cliff, were all unusual. Could the incident have anything to do with Jeanne and Pierre?
He waited until he heard the tiny bell in his watch tinkle the half-hour, and then he set out slowly over the moonlit rocks to the north. Jeanne and Pierre would surely come from that direction. It was impossible to miss them. He walked without sound in his moccasins, keeping close to the edge of the cliff so that he could look out over the Bay. Two or three hundred yards beyond the big rock the sea-wall swung in sharply, disclosing the open water, like a still, silvery sheet, for a mile or more. Philip scanned it for the canoe, but as far as he could see there was not a shadow.
For a quarter of a mile he walked over the rocks, then returned. It was nine o'clock. The moment had arrived for the appearance of Jeanne and Pierre. He resumed his patrol of the cliff, and with each moment his nervousness increased. What if Jeanne failed him? What if she did not come to the rock? The mere thought made his heart sink with a sudden painful throb. Until now the fear that Jeanne might disappoint him, that she might not keep the tryst, had not entered his head. His faith in this girl, whom he had seen but twice, was supreme.
A second and a third time he patrolled the quarter mile of cliff. Again his watch tinkled the half-hour, and he knew that the last minutes of the appointed time had come.
The third and last time he went beyond the quarter-mile limit, searching in the white distances beyond. A low wind was rising from the Bay; it rustled in the spruce and balsam tops of the forest that reached up to the barren whiteness of the rock plateau on which he stood; under him he heard, growing more and more distinct, the moaning wash of the swelling tide. A moment of despair possessed him, and he felt that he had lost.
Suddenly the wind brought to him a different sound--a shout far down the cliff, a second cry, and then the scream of a woman, deadened by the wash of the sea and the increasing sweep of the wind among the trees.
He stood for a moment powerless, listening. The wind lulled, and the woman's cry now came to him again--a voice that was filled with terror rising in a wild appeal for help. With an answering shout he ran like a swift-footed animal along the cliff. It was Jeanne who was calling! Who else but Jeanne would be out there in the gray night--Jeanne and Pierre? He listened as he ran, but there came no other sound. At last he stopped, and drew in a great breath, to send out a shout that would reach