God's Country - And the Woman - James Oliver Curwood (best classic romance novels .txt) 📗

his grizzled face bowed in Josephine's hair he said:
"I guess I'm not sorry--but glad, Mignonne." He looked at Philip again. "Paul, my son, you are welcome to Adare House!"
"Philip, Mon Pere," corrected Josephine. "I like that better than Paul."
"And you?" said Philip, smiling straight into Adare's eyes. "I am almost afraid to keep my promise to Josephine. It was that I should call you mon pere, too."
"There was one other promise, Philip," replied Adare quickly. "There must have been one other promise, that you would never take my girl away from me. If you did not swear to that, I am your enemy!"
"That promise was unnecessary," said Philip. "Outside of my Josephine's world there is nothing for me. If there is room for me in Adare House--"
"Room!" interrupted Adare, beginning to throw off his great fur coat. "Why, I've dreamed of the day when there'd be half a dozen babies under my feet. I--" His huge frame suddenly stiffened. He looked at Josephine, and his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper: "Where's the kid?" he asked.
Philip saw Josephine turn at the question. Silently she pointed to the curtained bed. As her father moved toward it she went to the door, but not before Philip had taken a step to intercept her. He felt her shuddering.
"I must go to my mother," she whispered for him alone. "I will return soon. If he asks--tell him that we named the baby after him." With a swift glance in her father's direction she whispered still lower: "He knows nothing about you, so you may tell him the truth about yourself--except that you met me in Montreal eighteen months ago, and married me there."
With this warning she was gone. From the curtains Philip heard a deep breath. When he came to the other's side John Adare stood staring down upon the sleeping baby.
"I came in like a monster and didn't wake 'im," he was whispering to himself. "The little beggar!"
He reached out a great hand behind him, gropingly, and it touched a chair. He drew it to him, still keeping his eyes on the baby, and sat down, his huge, bent shoulders doubled over the edge of the bed, his hands hovering hesitatingly over the counterpane. In wonderment Philip watched him, and he heard him whisper again:
"You blessed little beggar!"
Then he looked up suddenly. In his face was the transformation that might have come into a woman's. There was something awesome in its animal strength and its tenderness. He seized one of Philip's hands and held it for a moment in a grip that made the other's fingers ache.
"You're sure it's a boy?" he asked anxiously.
"Quite sure," replied Philip. "We've named him John."
The master of the Adare House leaned over the bed again. Philip heard him mumbling softly in his thick beard, and very cautiously he touched the end of a big forefinger to one of the baby's tiny fists. The little fingers opened, and then they closed tightly about John Adare's thumb. The older man looked again at Philip, and from him his eyes sought Josephine. His voice trembled with ecstasy.
"Where is Josephine?"
"Gone to her mother," replied Philip.
"Bring her--quick!" commanded Adare. "Tell her to bring her mother and wake the kid or I'll yell. I've got to hear the little beggar talk." As Philip turned toward the door he flung after him in a sibilant whisper: "Wait! Maybe you know how to do it--"
"We'd better have Josephine," advised Philip quickly, and before Adare could argue his suggestion he hurried into the hall.
Where he would find her he had no idea, and as he went down the hall he listened at each of the several doors he passed. The door into the big living-room was partly ajar, and he looked in. The room was empty. For a few moments he stood silent. From the size and shape of the building whose outside walls he had followed in his hunt for Jean he knew there must be many other rooms, and probably other shorter corridors leading to some of them.
Just now his greatest desire was to come face to face with Croisset--and alone. He had already determined upon a course of action if such a meeting occurred. Next to that he wanted to see Josephine's mother. It had struck him as singular that she had not accompanied her husband to Josephine's room, and his curiosity was still further aroused by the girl's apparent indifference to this fact. Jean Croisset and the mistress of Adare House had hung behind when the older man came into the room where they were standing. For an instant Jean had revealed himself, and he was sure that Adare's wife was not far behind him, concealed in the deeper gloom.
Suddenly the sound of a falling object came to his ears, as if a book had dropped from a table, or a chair had overturned. It was from the end of the hall--almost opposite his room. At his own door he stopped again and listened. This time he could hear voices, a low and unintelligible murmur. It was quite easy for him to locate the sound. He moved across to the other door, and hesitated. He had already disobeyed Josephine's injunction to remain with her father. Should he take a further advantage by obeying John Adare's command to bring his wife and daughter? A strange and subdued excitement was stirring him. Since the appearance of the threatening face at his window--the knowledge that in another moment he would have invited death from out of the night--he felt that he was no longer utterly in the hands of the woman he loved. And something stronger than he could resist impelled him to announce his presence at the door.
At his knock there fell a sudden silence beyond the thick panels. For several moments he waited, holding his breath. Then he heard quick steps, the door swung slowly open, and he faced Josephine.
"Pardon me for interrupting you," he apologized in a low voice. "Your father sent me for you and your mother. He says that you must come and wake the baby."
Slowly Josephine held out a hand to him. He was startled by its coldness.
"Come in, Philip," she said. "I want you to meet my mother."
He entered into the warm glow of the room. Slightly bending over a table stood the slender form of a woman, her back toward him. Without seeing her face he was astonished at her striking resemblance to Josephine--the same slim, beautiful figure, the same thick, glowing coils of hair crowning her head--but darker. She turned toward him, and he was still more amazed by this resemblance. And yet it was a resemblance which he could not at first define. Her eyes were very dark instead of blue. Her heavy hair, drawn smoothly back from her forehead, was of the deep brown that is almost black in the shadow. Slimness had given her the appearance of Josephine's height. She was still beautiful. Hair, eyes, and figure gave her at first glance an appearance of almost girlish loveliness.
And then, all at once, the difference swept upon him. She was like Josephine as he had seen her in that hour of calm despair when she had come to him at the canoe. Home-coming had not brought her happiness. Her face was colourless, her cheeks slightly hollowed, in her eyes he saw now the lustreless glow which frequently comes with a fatal sickness. He was smiling and holding out his hand to her even as he saw these things, and at his side he heard Josephine say:
"Mother, this is Philip."
The hand she gave him was small and cold. Her voice, too, was wonderfully like Josephine's.
"I was not expecting to see you to-night, Philip," she said. "I am almost ill. But I am glad now that you joined us. Did I hear you say that my husband sent you?"
"The baby is holding his thumb," laughed Philip. "He says that you must come and wake him. I doubt if you can get him out of the baby's room to-night."
The voice of Adare himself answered from the door: "Was holding it," he corrected. "He's squirming like an eel now and making grimaces that frightened me. Better hurry to him, Josephine!" He went directly to his wife, and his voice was filled with an infinite tenderness as he slipped an arm about her and caressed her smooth hair with one of his big hands. "You're tired, aren't you?" he asked gently. "The jaunt was almost too much for my little girl, wasn't it? It will do you good to see the baby before you go to bed. Won't you come, Miriam?"
Josephine alone saw the look in Philip's face. And for one moment Philip forgot himself as he stared at John Adare and his wife. Beside this flowerlike slip of a woman Adare was more than ever a giant, and his eyes glowed with the tenderness that was in his voice. Miriam's lips trembled in a smile as she gazed up at her husband. In her eyes shone a responsive gentleness; and then Philip turned to find Josephine looking at him from the door, her lips drawn in a straight, tense line, her face as white as the bit of lace at her throat. He hurried to her. Behind him rumbled the deep, joyous voice of the master of Adare House, and passing through the door he glanced behind and saw them following, Adare's arm about his wife's waist. Josephine caught Philip's arm, and whispered in a low voice:
"They are always like that, always lovers. They are like two wonderful children, and sometimes I think it is too beautiful to be true. And now that you have met them I am going to ask you to go to your room. You have been my true knight--more than I dared to hope, and to-morrow--"
She interrupted herself as Adare and his wife appeared at the door.
"To-morrow?" he persisted.
"I will try and thank you," she replied. Then she said, and Philip saw she spoke directly to her father: "You will excuse Philip, won't you, Mon Pere? I will go with you, for I have taken the care of baby from Moanne to-night. Her husband is sick."
Adare shook hands with Philip.
"I'm up mornings before the owls have gone to sleep," he said. "Will you breakfast with me? I'm afraid that if you wait for Miriam and Mignonne you will go hungry. They will sleep until noon to make up for to-night."
"Nothing would suit me better," declared Philip. "Will you knock at my door if I fail to show up?"
Adare was about to answer, but caught himself suddenly as he looked from Philip to Josephine.
"What! this soon, Mignonne?" he demanded, chuckling in his beard. "Your rooms at the two ends of the house already! That was never the way with Miriam and me. Can you remember such a thing, Ma Cheri?"
"It--it is the baby," gasped Josephine, backing from the light to hide the wild rush of blood to her face. "Philip cannot sleep," she finished desperately.
"Then I disapprove of his nerves," rejoined her father. "Good-night, Philip, my boy!"
"Good-night!" said Philip.
He was looking at Adare's wife as they moved away. In the dim light of the hall a strange look had come into her face at her husband's jesting words. Was it the effect of the shadows, or had he seen her start--almost as if for an instant she had been threatened by a blow? Was it imagination, or had he in that same instant caught a sudden look of alarm, of terror, in her eyes? Josephine had told him that her mother knew nothing of the tragedy of the child's birth. If this were so, why had