An Algonquin Maiden Part 17

But Helene could sleep no more. A few days later she heard that Edward Macleod, with a party of friends, had gone on a shooting expedition to the Muskoka country.

CHAPTER XIII.

RIVAL ATTRACTIONS.

The current of a strong human affection, when it is thrown back upon itself, must find vent in another direction. The weakest stream of pa.s.sion, when its chosen course is impeded by an immovable obstacle, does not sink by gentle degrees into the earth, and thus, lost to sight, become merely a thing of memory. There is disturbance and disorder; banks are overflowed; and fields, once made fruitful and beautiful by the softly-flowing river, lie sodden and unwholesome, flooded by the dangerous waves. For days and nights Edward's brain was surging with the sound of rushing waters. The tumultuous feelings so strongly excited, so completely overthrown that evening in the conservatory with Helene, would not subside. They beat upon his desolate heart in great waves of rage, remorse, despair, and love, like the beating of lonely waters upon a shipwrecked sh.o.r.e.

Hence it was that he welcomed the idea conveyed in a letter from a friend in Barrie that they, with another boon companion, should go hunting in Muskoka. Edward wrote an immediate agreement to the proposition, mentioning Pine Towers as the place most convenient for them to meet and lay plans for future action. He at once made preparations to depart, for the idea of delay was intolerable to him.

The very atmosphere of the town was poisonous--the demands of society not to be tolerated. He told his family that his old longing for the wilds had come upon him, the sort of _ennui_ that nothing but the odour of the woods could cure. The close of the day following found him on the frozen sh.o.r.es of Kempenfeldt Bay, now clasped in the icy arms of winter. The wind was wild among the leafless trees along the avenue, but the desolation of his home was a visible response to the sorer desolation of his heart.

The two or three old servants remaining in the lonely house were delighted to see the young master home again. Olympia, the coloured cook, whose high-sounding cognomen was usually reduced to Olly, gave him a welcome equal to what might be expected from a whole plantation of darkies. Her eyes and teeth shone in perpetual smiles, her gaily turbaned head and dusky hands gesticulated in perfect time to the exclamations poured out upon him.

"Well, my soul!" she cried; "well, my soul! Ma.r.s.e Ed., its good to see you home again. Come in, chile, come right in! How mis'able you do look to be sure. Just like a ghost, so cold and white. Shan't I mix you a little something warm?"

"Oh, no, Olly, I'm all right; just a little tired after my long journey, that's all."

She recognized the lifelessness in his tone, the jaded look and air of one who is fighting a hard battle in the face of sure defeat. "You's sick, honey," she exclaimed, with the ready sympathy of her race, "and you's come back to old Olly to take care ob you. Dat's right, chile, I'll just mix you a little warm--"

"Oh, dear, no, Olly, thank you; its comfort enough just to be quiet and to be at home."

She left him in the parlour, but he pushed on after her into the great fire-lit kitchen, partly because he detested the society of his own thoughts, partly because it suited his present mood to be made much of by the kindly old woman, to whom his mother all her life had been a "chile." It was almost like being a boy again to sit in the chimney corner and tell old Olly the story of his journey in all its details.

But before the recital was half-finished, something stirred in the semi-darkness, on the other side of the fire-place.

"Why, bress my heart," said Olly, "I t'ought you was a dog, Wanda, you sat dat quiet. What's de matter wid you, gal? Whar's your manners?"

The graceful shrinking figure would gladly have escaped out of sight, but at the sound of her name Edward came forward to greet the Indian girl. Olly, with many muttered protestations against the rudeness shown to her young mahs'r, lifted the trap-door, and vanished down cellar. The pale life-weary young man was alone with the sweet womanly savage.

He held the little hand she offered him very closely and kindly.

"Are you glad to see me, Wanda?" he asked.

That was the keynote of his mental state. He was not glad to see anyone or anything, but he was still interested to know that someone cared for him. In his present mood it was certainly more pleasant to feel that others were kindly disposed towards him than that they were indifferent. The Algonquin maiden, on her side, was filled with a soft delicious emotion. In the summer, when this daring young man pursued her, she repulsed him; but in the winter, when he left her, she thought of him. The natural result of her meditations upon so fascinating a subject it is not difficult to conjecture. She began to believe in the reality of his regard for her, and to fancy that he had left her because of her harshness, of which he had frequently complained. Now, could it be possible that his coming had anything to do with the thought of her? Yes, she replied, she was glad to see him; her blushing beautiful face gave eloquent testimony to the fact. He released her then, and followed Olly into the dining-room, where a small but sumptuous repast was laid, for nothing in the house above nor in the cellar beneath was considered too good for young mahs'r.

"You'd be sprised, Ma.r.s.e Ed.," confided the old woman, "de improvement made by dat chile since I took her in han'. It jus' went agin my stomach to see her runnin' wild, widout a frien' in de worl', cept dose heathen Injuns. She t'ought a heap ob yer mudder, an' I could'nt tell her 'nough about her. Dat gave me a holt on her, you see, and dars no denyin' she's changed a lot since las' summer."

"Tell her to come in here," said Edward, "and I'll judge for myself."

So in a few moments she came in, though with obvious reluctance, and took the chair that Edward placed for her at the table. It was a novel experience to the young man to find his wishes so implicitly obeyed by this. .h.i.therto almost unapproachable girl. He felt disposed to exercise this wonderful newly-acquired authority. "You must eat something, Wanda," he observed; "I dislike to eat alone."

This was the sharpest test that could have been applied to the improvement he wished to discover, but the girl's incomparable native grace never failed her. It was impossible that she should either lounge in her chair or sit stiffly erect in it. Her use of knife and fork was marked, not by awkwardness but by extreme deliberation, and careful observation of the manner in which Edward wielded his own. She wore a dark grey dress, which he dimly remembered to have seen on his sister Rose, and which that young lady had altered to fit the Algonquin girl. The entire absence of colour in the dress intensified by contrast the rich hues of cheek and lip, and the deep blackness of eyes and hair. The only detail of her appearance which displeased his taste was the strings of cheap gla.s.s beads wound about neck and waist.

Was there a vein of cheapness and vulgarity in her character to correspond with this outward manifestation? He believed not. It was so easy to believe everything that was good of this shy sweet personage.

He examined her narrowly and critically in the new and remarkable _role_ she was compelled to play as the guest and equal of himself.

There was a surprising almost ludicrous similarity between the native unconsciousness and dignity of the Indian and that of certain high-bred dames whereof he knew, and yet there was about her the unmistakable something that proved her wholly unversed in the ways of society. Her dainty hands were very brown; her manner without being constrained was certainly not easy; and her expression was that of a bird, one moment resigned to imprisonment, the next panting for liberty. In one word she was untamed. But was she untamable? His heart beat faster at the thought. When the tea things were removed he threw himself upon the couch; while the girl, sitting before the blazing hearth, took between her hands and drew upon her knees the slender head of his favourite hound. They made a striking picture, and the blue, beauty-loving eyes of the spectator looked longingly upon it.

The dark lovely face bent forward seemed more childish in its soft curves since the capacity to love and suffer had wakened in her breast. Her sweet lips trembled with repressed feeling.

"Wanda," said Edward, "don't waste caresses on that unthankful brute.

He doesn't need them."

She looked at him with wide startled eyes. "Come to _me_," he breathed in resistless accents. "Ah, Wanda, you pitied me once when I had a scratch on my hand. Can not you pity me now when I have a sword in my heart?"

It was not love that called her; it was the despairing cry of one who was perishing to be loved. She rose after a moment, steadying herself by a hand on the chair-back, for her beautiful frame was swayed by irresolution, love, shame and pride. Slowly, very slowly, with the sweet uncertain footsteps of a baby that fears to tread the little distance between itself and the waiting irresistible arms of love, she came towards him. It seemed at every moment that she must break away and fly, as she had flown from him in the woods of summer. When she reached his side her proud head fell, then the drooping shoulders bent lower and lower till the uncertain knees at last failed her, and she sank trembling on the cushion at his side with her arms about his face. It was the att.i.tude of protection, not that of a weak craving for it. The fierce pain for which he asked her pity could arise from nothing else but his love for her. This was the reasoning of the simple savage--a reasoning that reached the hitherto unsounded depths of pa.s.sion and pathos in her nature. The young man, who bore in his heart a bitter recollection of the scornful repulse offered by one beautiful girl, could not resist the matchless tenderness so freely given by another. He laid his face wearily against her arm, and she bent over him murmuring words of uncontrollable love and pity.

Afterwards he asked himself what in the name of all the powers of evil he meant by it; but this was some days afterwards. A long tramp through the frozen woods in search of game had brought him a single wild animal and a great many sober thoughts. In the rough log house in which he and his companions were camping for a week, there was neither room nor opportunity for private meditation; but the conviction came to him with the luminous abruptness of lightning that he had used this ignorant girl merely as a salve for his wounded vanity, and cruelly deceived her by so doing. Not that his early pa.s.sion for the Indian girl had died a natural death. On the contrary it had been fanned into fresh flame by the novel charm of her sweet approachableness. None the less, but rather all the more clearly, he saw the detestable selfishness of his own course. But, unfortunately, his tenderness for her kept pace with his self-contempt. His feelings toward Helene and Wanda at the present moment were just such as a man might entertain toward the enemy who had conquered him, and the woman who, in his greatest need, had succoured and saved him. For the one a bitterness that could not rise to the crowning revenge of forgiveness, for the other a pa.s.sion of grat.i.tude that would last a life-time.

"It appears to me," said Ridout, who was the most outspoken of the party, "that we have a precious dull time of it in the evenings.

Macleod, here, is about as talkative as the deer he has slain."

The trio had been smoking in silence before a huge fire, but this reference to Edward's great exploit of the day roused them to conversation.

"It is no unusual thing for Macleod to distinguish himself in that direction," said Boulton, the elder of the two. "He has long been known as the champion _dear_-killer."

This wretched attempt at a pun was loftily ignored by the subject of it.

"Alas, 'tis too true!" mourned the other. "Come, Ned, try to be entertaining for once; tell us about the pretty Indian girl you were mooning with."

"What did you say?" demanded Edward, freezingly.

"You heard perfectly well what I said."

"What do you mean by it?"

"Oh, I _mean_ the pretty squaw you were _spooning_ with, if that suits you better."

"Gently, Tom," interposed Boulton parenthetically, "don't mention _all_ the meanness you mean."

"I would like to inquire what right you have to mention any of it,"

exclaimed Edward wrathfully.

"Oh, none--none, whatever. Only it was town talk in Barrie last Fall that you had become infatuated with the sweet little squaw to such an extent that your charming sister, with commendable prudence and foresight, had you put out of harm's way as speedily as possible.

There's no accounting for such reports."

"I don't understand it at all," said Edward, with mingled anger and humiliation. "How can people be so silly?"

"Exactly what your slanderers inquired of each other. Impossible to tell what they meant." The young man laughed rather disagreeably as he went off to bed.

"Look here, Ned," said Boulton, bringing a sympathetic hand down upon his friend's shoulder, "don't you take any notice of what Tom Ridout or any of his set may say. Of course every young fellow makes a fool of himself _some time_, in _some_ direction; it's natural and proper, and just what is expected of him. All is he shouldn't make a complete fool of himself, and n.o.body believes that of you."

"Ugh!" said Edward, and relapsed into gloomy silence, from which he awoke to find himself alone, with the candle sputtering in its socket.

He took off his boots, and threw one of them viciously, but with unerring aim, at the expiring light, and so went despondently to bed.

"Our fair friend appears to be quite as susceptible to the remarks made upon his wild-wood acquaintance as to the wild-wood acquaintance herself." This was the observation of Ridout, as he and Boulton went the following morning to investigate the trap they had set.

"Don't be a fool, Tom," said Boulton, with a perfectly unruffled face and tone, "that is, any more of one than you can help. Of course every young cub like you is expected to be one to a certain extent, but what I mean is don't be a _big_ one."

It was impossible to be angry with words so placidly spoken. "I don't know what can make you so wondrous kind to Macleod," said Ridout, "unless it is a fellow-feeling, and I wouldn't have thought that of you, Boulton. But look here," surveying the empty trap with boyish disgust, "nothing taken in but ourselves! Well, we'll have to make it unpleasant for Tommy. That's the only comfort left us."