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

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