A Daughter of the Forest - Evelyn Raymond (iphone ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Evelyn Raymond
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“What is this mystery? How am I concerned in it? For I am, and mystery there is. It is like that mist over the island, which I can see and feel but cannot touch. Pshaw! I’m getting sentimental, when I ought to be turning detective. Yet I couldn’t do that—pry into the private affairs of a man who’s treated me so generously. What shall I do? How can I go back there? But where else can I go?”
At thought that he might never return to the roof he had quitted, a curious homesickness seized him.
“Who’ll hunt what game they need? Who’ll catch their fish? Who’ll keep the garden growing? Where can I study the forest and its furry people, at first hand, as in the Hollow? And I was doing well. Not as I hope to do, but getting on. Margot was a merciless critic, but even she admitted that my last picture had the look, the spirit of the woods. That’s what I want to do, what Mr. Dutton, also, approved; to bring glimpses of these solitudes back to the cities and the thousands who can never see them in any other way. Well—let it go. I can’t stay and be a torment to anybody, and some time, in some other place, maybe—— Ah!”
What he had mistaken for the laughter of a loon was Pierre’s halloo. He was coming back, then, from the mainland where he had been absent these past days. Adrian was thankful. There was nothing mysterious or perplexing about Pierre, whose rule of life was extremely simple.
“Pierre first, second, and forever. After Pierre, if there was anything left, then—anybody, the nearest at hand;” would have expressed the situation; but his honest, unblushing selfishness was sometimes a relief.
“One always knows just where to find Pierre,” Margot had said.
So Adrian’s answering halloo was prompt, and turning about he watched the birch leaving the shadow of the forest and heading for himself. It was soon alongside and Ricord’s excited voice was shouting his good news:
“Run him up to seven hundred and fifty!”
“But I thought there wasn’t money enough anywhere to buy him!”
Pierre cocked his dark head on one side and winked.
“Madoc sick and Madoc well are different.”
“Oh! you wretch. Would you sell a sick moose and cheat the buyer?”
“Would I lose such a pile of money for foolishness? I guess not.”
“But suppose, after you parted with him, he got well?”
Again the woodlander grinned and winked.
“Could you drive the king?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s all right. I buy him back, what you call trade. One do that many times, good enough. If——”
Pierre was silent for some moments, during which Adrian had steadily paddled backward to the island, keeping time with the other boat, and without thinking what he was doing. But when he did remember, he turned to Pierre and asked:
“Will you take me across the lake again?”
“What for?”
“No matter. I’ll just leave Margot’s canoe and you do it. There’s time enough.”
“What’ll you give me?”
“Pshaw! What can I give you? Nothing.”
“That’s all right. My mother, she wants the salt,” and he kicked the sack of that valuable article, lying at his feet. “There. She’s on the bank now and it’s not she will let me out of sight again, this long time.”
“You’d go fast enough, for money.”
“Maybe not. When one has Angelique Ricord for mére—— Umm.”
But it was less for Pierre than for Adrian that Angelique was waiting, and her expression was kinder than common.
“Carry that salt to my kitchen cupboard, son, and get to bed. No. You’ve no call to tarry. What the master’s word is for his guest is nothin’ to you.”
Pierre’s curiosity was roused. Why had Adrian wanted to leave the island at nightfall, since there was neither hunting nor fishing to be done? Sport for sport’s sake, that was forbidden. And what could be the message he was not to hear? He meant to learn, and lingered, busying himself uselessly in beaching the canoes afresh, after he had once carefully turned them bottom side upward; in brushing out imaginary dirt, readjusting his own clothing—a task he did not often bother with—and in general making himself a nuisance to his impatient parent.
But, so long as he remained, she kept silence, till unable to hold back her rising anger she stole up behind him, unperceived, and administered a sounding box upon his sizable ears.
“Would you? To the cupboard, miserable!” and Adrian could not repress a smile at the meekness with which the great woodlander submitted to the little woman’s authority.
“Xanthippé and Socrates!” he murmured, and Pierre heard him. So, grimacing at him from under the heavy sack, called back: “Fifty dollar. Tell her fifty dollar.”
“What he mean by fifty dollar?” demanded Angelique.
“I suppose something about that ‘show’ business of his. It is his ambition, you know, and I must admit I believe he’d be a success at it.”
“Pouf! There is more better business than the ‘showin’’ one, of takin’ God’s beasties into the towns and lettin’ the foolish people stare. The money comes that way is not good money.”
“Oh! yes. It’s all right, fair Angelique. But what is the word for me?”
“It is: that you come with me, at once, to the master. He will speak with you before he sleeps. Yes. And Adrian, lad!”
“Well, Angelique?”
“This is the truth. Remember. When the heart is sore tried the tongue is often sharp. There is death. That is a sorrow. God sends it. There are sorrows God does not send but the evil one. Death is but joy to them. What the master says, answer; and luck light upon your lips.”
The lad had never seen the old housekeeper so impressive nor so gentle. At the moment it seemed as if she almost liked him, though, despite the faithfulness with which she had obeyed her master’s wishes and served him, he had never before suspected it.
“Thank you, Angelique. I am troubled, too, and I will take care that I neither say nor resent anything harsh. More than that, I will go away. I have stayed too long, already, though I had hoped I was making myself useful. Is he in his own study?”
“Yes, and the little maid is with him. No. There she comes, but she is not laughin’, no. Oh! the broken glass. Scat, Meroude! Why leap upon one to scare the breath out, that way? Pst! ’Tis here that tame creatures grow wild and wild ones tame. Scat! I say.”
Margot was coming through the rooms, holding Reynard by the collar she made him wear whenever he was in the neighborhood of the hen-house, and Tom limped listlessly along upon her other side. There was trouble and perplexity in the girl’s face, and Angelique made a great pretense of being angry with the cat, to hide that in her own.
But Margot noticed neither her nor Adrian, and sitting down upon the threshold dropped her chin in her hands and fixed her eyes upon the darkening lake.
“Why, mistress! The beast here at the cabin, and it nightfall? My poor fowls!”
“He’s leashed, you see, Angelique. And I’ll lock the poultry up, if you like,” observed Adrian. Anything to delay a little an interview from which he shrank with something very like that cowardice of which the girl had once accused him.
The housekeeper’s ready temper flamed, and she laid an ungentle touch upon the stranger’s shoulder.
“Go, boy. When Master Hugh commands, ’tis not for such as we to disobey.”
“All right. I’m going. And I’ll remember.”
At the inner doorway he turned and looked back. Margot was still sitting, thoughtful and motionless, the firelight from the great hearth making a Rembrandt-like silhouette of her slight figure against the outer darkness and touching her wonderful hair to a flood of silver. Reynard and the eagle, the wild foresters her love had tamed, stood guard on either side. It was a picture that appealed to Adrian’s artistic sense and he lingered a little, regarding its “effects,” even considering what pigments would best convey them.
“Adrian!”
“Yes, Angelique. Yes.”
When the door shut behind him Angelique touched her darling’s shining head, and the toil-stiffened fingers had for it almost a mother’s tenderness.
“Sweetheart, the bedtime.”
“I know. I’m going. Angelique, my uncle sent me from him to-night. It was the first time in all my life that I remember.”
“Maybe, little stupid, because you’ve never waited for that, before, but were quick enough to see whenever you were not wanted.”
“He—— There’s something wrong and Adrian is the cause of it. I—Angelique, you tell me. Uncle did not hear, or reply, anyway. Where is my father buried?”
Angelique was prepared and had her answer ready.
“’Tis not for a servant to reveal what her master hides. No. All will come to you in good time. Tarry the master’s will. But, that silly Pierre! What think you? Is it fifty dollar would be the price of the tame blue herons? Hey?”
“No. Nor fifty times fifty. Pierre knows that. Love is more than money.”
“Sometimes, to some folks. Well, what would you? That son will be havin’ even me, his old mother, in his ‘show,’ why not? As a cur’osity—the only livin’ human bein’ can make that ingrate mind. Yes. To bed, my child.”
Margot rose and housed her pets. This threat of Pierre’s, that he would eventually carry off the “foresters” and exhibit their helplessness to staring crowds, always roused her fiercest indignation; and this result was just what Angelique wanted, at present, and she murmured her satisfaction:
“Good. That bee will buzz in her ear till she sleeps, and so sound she’ll hear no dip of the paddle, by and by. Here, Pierre, my son, you’re wanted.”
“What for now? Do leave me be. I’m going to bed. I’m just wore out, trot-trottin’ from Pontius to Pilate, lugging salt, and——” he finished by yawning most prodigiously.
“Firs’-rate sign, that gapin’. Yes. Sign you’re healthy and able to do all’s needed. There’s no bed for you this night. Come. Here. Take this basket to the beach. If your canoe needs pitchin’, pitch it. There’s the lantern. If one goes into the show business he learns right now to work and travel o’ nights. Yes. Start. I’ll follow and explain.”
CHAPTER X DEPARTUREBut Adrian need not have dreaded the interview to which his host had summoned him. Mr. Dutton’s face was a little graver than usual but his manner was even more kind. He was a man to whom justice seemed the highest good, who had himself suffered most bitterly from injustice. He was forcing himself to be perfectly fair with the lad and it was even with a smile that he motioned toward an easy-chair opposite himself. The chair stood in the direct light of the lamp, but Adrian did not notice that.
“Do not fear me, Adrian, though for a moment I forgot myself. For you personally—personally—I have only great good will. But—— Will you answer my questions, believing that it is a painful necessity which compels them?”
“Certainly.”
“One word more. Beyond the fact, which you confided to Margot, that you were a runaway I know no details of your past life. I have wished not to know and have refrained from any inquiries. I must now break that silence. What—is your father’s name?”
As he spoke the man’s hands gripped the arms of his chair more tightly, like
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