The Hunted Woman - James Oliver Curwood (books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

possess him that was in singular contrast to the perturbed condition of his mind a few minutes before. From this hour Joanne was his to fight for, to win if he could; and, knowing this, his soul rose in triumph above his first physical exultation, and he fought back the almost irresistible impulse to follow her into the tent and tell her what this day had meant for him. Following this came swiftly a realization of what it had meant for her--the suspense, the terrific strain, the final shock and gruesome horror of it. He was sure, without seeing, that she was huddled down on the blankets in the tent. She had passed through an ordeal under which a strong man might have broken, and the picture he had of her struggle in there alone turned him from the tent filled with a determination to make her believe that the events of the morning, both with him and MacDonald, were easily forgotten.
He began to whistle as he threw back the wet canvas from over the camp outfit that had been taken from Pinto's back. In one of the two cow-hide panniers he saw that thoughtful old Donald had packed materials for their dinner, as well as utensils necessary for its preparation. That dinner they would have in the valley, well beyond the red mountain. He began to repack, whistling cheerily. He was still whistling when MacDonald returned. He broke off sharply when he saw the other's face.
"What's the matter, Mac?" he asked. "You sick?"
"It weren't pleasant, Johnny."
Aldous nodded toward the tent.
"It was--beastly," he whispered. "But we can't let her feel that way about it, Mac. Cheer up--and let's get out of this place. We'll have dinner somewhere over in the valley."
They continued packing until only the tent remained to be placed on Pinto's back. Aldous resumed his loud whistling as he tightened up the saddle-girths, and killed time in half a dozen other ways. A quarter of an hour passed. Still Joanne did not appear. Aldous scratched his head dubiously, and looked at the tent.
"I don't want to disturb her, Mac," he said in a low voice. "Let's keep up the bluff of being busy. We can put out the fire."
Ten minutes later, sweating and considerably smokegrimed, Aldous again looked toward the tent.
"We might cut down a few trees," suggested MacDonald.
"Or play leap-frog," added Aldous.
"The trees'd sound more natcherel," said MacDonald. "We could tell her----"
A stick snapped behind them. Both turned at the same instant. Joanne stood facing them not ten feet away.
"Great Scott!" gasped Aldous. "Joanne, I thought you were in the tent!"
The beautiful calmness in Joanne's face amazed him. He stared at her as he spoke, forgetting altogether the manner in which he had intended to greet her when she came from the tent.
"I went out the back way--lifted the canvas and crawled under just like a boy," she explained. "And I've walked until my feet are wet."
"And the fire is out!"
"I don't mind wet feet," she hurried to assure him.
Old Donald was already at work pulling the tent-pegs. Joanne came close to Aldous, and he saw again that deep and wonderful light in her eyes. This time he knew that she meant he should see it, and words which he had determined not to speak fell softly from his lips.
"You are no longer afraid, Ladygray? That which you dreaded----"
"Is dead," she said. "And you, John Aldous? Without knowing, seeing me only as you have seen me, do you think that I am terrible?"
"No, could not think that."
Her hand touched his arm.
"Will you go out there with me, in the sunlight, where we can look down upon the little lake?" she asked. "Until to-day I had made up my mind that no one but myself would ever know the truth. But you have been good to me, and I must tell you--about myself--about him."
He found no answer. He left no word with MacDonald. Until they stood on the grassy knoll, with the lakelet shimmering in the sunlight below them, Joanne herself did not speak again. Then, with a little gesture, she said:
"Perhaps you think what is down there is dreadful to me. It isn't. I shall always remember that little lake, almost as Donald remembers the cavern--not because it watches over something I love, but because it guards a thing that in life would have destroyed me! I know how you must feel, John Aldous--that deep down in your heart you must wonder at a woman who can rejoice in the death of another human creature. Yet death, and death alone, has been the key from bondage of millions of souls that have lived before mine; and there are men--men, too--whose lives have been warped and destroyed because death did not come to save them. One was my father. If death had come for him, if it had taken my mother, that down there would never have happened--for me!"
She spoke the terrible words so quietly, so calmly, that it was impossible for him entirely to conceal their effect upon him. There was a bit of pathos in her smile.
"My mother drove my father mad," she went on, with a simple directness that was the most wonderful thing he had ever heard come from human lips. "The world did not know that he was mad. It called him eccentric. But he was mad--in just one way. I was nine years old when it happened, and I can remember our home most vividly. It was a beautiful home. And my father! Need I tell you that I worshipped him--that to me he was king of all men? And as deeply as I loved him, so, in another way, he worshipped my mother. She was beautiful. In a curious sort of way I used to wonder, as a child, how it was possible for a woman to be so beautiful. It was a dark beauty--a recurrence of French strain in her English blood.
"One day I overheard my father tell her that, if she died, he would kill himself. He was not of the passionate, over-sentimental kind; he was a philosopher, a scientist, calm and self-contained--and I remembered those words later, when I had outgrown childhood, as one of a hundred proofs of how devoutly he had loved her. It was more than love, I believe. It was adoration. I was nine, I say, when things happened. Another man, a divorce, and on the day of the divorce this woman, my mother, married her lover. Somewhere in my father's brain a single thread snapped, and from that day he was mad--mad on but one subject; and so deep and intense was his madness that it became a part of me as the years passed, and to-day I, too, am possessed of that madness. And it is the one greatest thing in the world that I am proud of, John Aldous!"
Not once had her voice betrayed excitement or emotion. Not once had it risen above its normal tone; and in her eyes, as they turned from the lake to him, there was the tranquillity of a child.
"And that madness," she resumed, "was the madness of a man whose brain and soul were overwrought in one colossal hatred--a hatred of divorce and the laws that made it possible. It was born in him in a day, and it lived until his death. It turned him from the paths of men, and we became wanderers upon the face of the earth. Two years after the ruin of our home my mother and the man she had married died in a ship that was lost at sea. This had no effect upon my father. Possibly you will not understand what grew up between us in the years and years that followed. To the end he was a scientist, a man seeking after the unknown, and my education came to be a composite of teachings gathered in all parts of the world. We were never apart. We were more than father and daughter; we were friends, comrades--he was my world, and I was his.
"I recall, as I became older, how his hatred of that thing that had broken our home developed more and more strongly in me. His mind was titanic. A thousand times I pleaded with him to employ it in the great fight I wanted him to make--a fight against the crime divorce. I know, now, why he did not. He was thinking of me. Only one thing he asked of me. It was more than a request. It was a command. And this command, and my promise, was that so long as I lived--no matter what might happen in my life--I would sacrifice myself body and soul sooner than allow that black monster of divorce to fasten its clutches on me. It is futile for me to tell you these things, John Aldous. It is impossible--you cannot understand!"
"I can," he replied, scarcely above a whisper. "Joanne, I begin--to understand!"
And still without emotion, her voice as calm as the unruffled lake at their feet, she continued:
"It grew in me. It is a part of me now. I hate divorce as I hate the worst sin that bars one from Heaven. It is the one thing I hate. And it is because of this hatred that I suffered myself to remain the wife of the man whose name is over that grave down there--Mortimer FitzHugh. It came about strangely--what I am going to tell you now. You will wonder. You will think I was insane. But remember, John Aldous--the world had come to hold but one friend and comrade for me, and he was my father. It was after Mindano. He caught the fever, and he was dying."
For the first time her breath choked her. It was only for an instant. She recovered herself, and went on:
"Out of the world my father had left he had kept one friend--Richard FitzHugh; and this man, with his son, was with us during those terrible days of fever. I met Mortimer as I had met a thousand other men. His father, I thought, was the soul of honour, and I accepted the son as such. We were much together during those two weeks of my despair, and he seemed to be attentive and kind. Then came the end. My father was dying. And I--I was ready to die. In his last moments his one thought was of me. He knew I was alone, and the fear of it terrified him. I believe he did not realize then what he was asking of me. He pleaded with me to marry the son of his old friend before he died. And I--John Aldous, I could not fight his last wish as he lay dying before my eyes. We were married there at his bedside. He joined our hands. And the words he whispered to me last of all were: 'Remember--Joanne--thy promise and thine honour!'"
For a moment Joanne stood facing the little lake, and when she spoke again there was a note of thankfulness, of subdued joy and triumph, in her voice.
"Before that day had ended I had displeased Mortimer FitzHugh," she said, and Aldous saw the fingers of her hands close tightly. "I told him that until a month had passed I would not live with him as a wife lives with her husband. And he was displeased. And my father was not yet buried! I was shocked. My soul revolted.
"We went to London and I was made welcome in the older FitzHugh's wifeless home, and the papers told of our wedding. And two days later there came from Devonshire a woman--a sweet-faced little woman with sick, haunted eyes; in her arms she brought a baby; and that baby _was Mortimer FitzHugh's!_