Castle Nowhere Part 13

'It is Beranger,--'The Prisoner of War,' said Rodney Prescott. 'But you omitted the last verse, mademoiselle; may I ask why?'

'More sad so,' answered Jeannette. 'Marie she die now.'

'You wish her to die?'

'Mais oui: she die for love; c'est beau!'

And there flashed a glance from the girl's eyes that thrilled through me, I scarcely knew why. I looked towards Rodney, but he was back in the shadow again.

The hours pa.s.sed. 'I must go,' said Jeannette, drawing aside the curtain. Clouds were still driving across the sky, but the snow had ceased falling, and at intervals the moon shone out over the cold white scene; the March wind continued on its wild career toward the south.

'I will send for Antoine,' I said, rising, as Jeannette took up her fur mantle.

'The old man is sick, to-day,' said Rodney. 'It would not be safe for him to leave the fire, to-night. I will accompany mademoiselle.'

Pretty Jeannette shrugged her shoulders. 'Mais, monsieur,' she answered, 'I go over the hill.'

'No, child; not tonight,' I said decidedly. 'The wind is violent, and the cliff doubly slippery after this ice-storm. Go round through the village.'

'Of course we shall go through the village,' said our surgeon, in his calm authoritative way. They started. But in another minute I saw Jeannette fly by the west window, over the wall and across the snowy road, like a spirit, disappearing down the steep bank, now slippery with glare ice. Another minute, and Rodney Prescott followed in her track.

With bated breath I watched for the reappearance of the two figures on the white plain, one hundred and fifty feet below; the cliff was difficult at any time, and now in this ice! The moments seemed very long, and, alarmed, I was on the point of arousing the garrison, when I spied the two dark figures on the snowy plain below, now clear in the moonlight, now lost in the shadow. I watched them for some distance; then a cloud came, and I lost them entirely.

Rodney did not return, although I sat late before the dying fire.

Thinking over the evening, the idea came to me that perhaps, after all, he did admire my protegee, and, being a romantic old woman, I did not repel the fancy; it might go a certain distance without harm, and an idyl is always charming, doubly so to people cast away on a desert island. One falls into the habit of studying persons very closely in the limited circle of garrison life.

But, the next morning, the major's wife gave me an account of the sociable. 'It was very pleasant,' she said. 'Toward the last Dr.

Prescott came in, quite unexpectedly. I had no idea he could be so agreeable. Augusta can tell you how charming he was!'

Augusta, a young lady cousin, of pale blond complexion, neutral opinions, and irreproachable manners, smiled primly. My idyl was crushed!

The days pa.s.sed. The winds, the snows, and the high-up fort remained the same. Jeannette came and went, and the hour lengthened into two or three; not that we read much, but we talked more. Our surgeon did not again pa.s.s through the parlor; he had ordered a rickety stairway on the outside wall to be repaired, and we could hear him going up and down its icy steps as we sat by the hearth-fire. One day I said to him, 'My protegee is improving wonderfully. If she could have a complete education, she might take her place with the best in the land.'

'Do not deceive yourself, Mrs. Corlyne,' he answered. 'It is only the shallow French quickness.'

'Why do you always judge the child so harshly, Doctor?'

'Do you take her part, Aunt Sarah?' (For sometimes he used the t.i.tle which Archie had made so familiar.)

'Of course I do, Rodney. A poor, unfriended girl living in this remote place, against a United States surgeon with the best of Boston behind him.'

'I wish you would tell me that every day, Aunt Sarah,' was the reply I received. It set me musing, but I could make nothing of it. Troubled without knowing why, I suggested to Archie that he should endeavor to interest our surgeon in the fort gayety; there was something for every night in the merry little circle,--games, suppers, tableaux, music, theatricals, readings, and the like.

'Why, he's in the thick of it already, Aunt Sarah,' said my nephew.

'He's devoting himself to Miss Augusta; she sings "The Harp that once--" to him every night.'

('The Harp that once through Tara's Halls', was Miss Augusta's dress-parade song. The Major's quarters not being as large as the halls aforesaid, the melody was somewhat overpowering.)

'O, does she?' I thought, not without a shade of vexation. But the vague anxiety vanished.

The real spring came at last,--the rapid, vivid spring of Mackinac.

Almost in a day the ice moved out, the snows melted, and the northern wild-flowers appeared in the sheltered glens. Lessons were at an end, for my scholar was away in the green woods. Sometimes she brought me a bunch of flowers, but I seldom saw her; my wild bird had flown back to the forest. When the ground was dry and the pine droppings warmed by the sun, I, too, ventured abroad. One day, wandering as far as the Arched Rock, I found the surgeon there, and together we sat down to rest under the trees, looking off over the blue water flecked with white caps. The Arch is a natural bridge over a chasm one hundred and fifty feet above the lake,--a fissure in the cliff which has fallen away in a hollow, leaving the bridge by itself far out over the water.

This bridge springs upward in the shape of an arch; it is fifty feet long, and its width is in some places two feet, in others only a few inches,--a narrow, dizzy pathway hanging between sky and water.

'People have crossed it,' I said.

'Only fools,' answered oar surgeon, who despised foolhardiness. 'Has a man nothing better to do with his life than risk it for the sake of a silly feat like that! I would not so much as raise my eyes to see any one cross.'

'O yes, you would, Monsieur Rodenai,' cried a voice behind us. We both turned and caught a glimpse of Jeannette as she bounded through the bushes and out to the very centre of the Arch, where she stood balancing herself and laughing gayly. Her form was outlined against the sky; the breeze, swayed her skirt; she seemed hovering over the chasm. I watched her, mute with fear; a word might cause her to lose her balance; but I could not turn my eyes away, I was fascinated with the sight. I was not aware that Rodney had left me until he, too, appeared on the Arch, slowly finding a foothold for himself and advancing toward the centre. A fragment of the rock broke off under his foot and fell in the abyss below.

'Go back, Monsieur Rodenai,' cried Jeannette, seeing his danger.

'Will you came back too, Jeannette?'

'Moi? C'est aut'chose,' answered the girl, gayly tossing her pretty head.

'Then I shall come out and carry you back, wilful child,' said the surgeon.

A peal of laughter broke from Jeannette as he spoke and then she began to dance on her point of rock, swinging herself from side to side, marking the time with a song. I held my breath; her dance seemed unearthly; it was as though she belonged to the Prince of the Powers of the Air.

At length the surgeon reached the centre and caught the mocking creature in his arms: neither spoke, but I could see the flash of their eyes as they stood for an instant motionless. Then they struggled on the narrow foothold and swayed over so far that I buried my face in my trembling hands, unable to look at the dreadful end.

When I opened my eyes again all was still; the Arch was tenantless, and no sound came from below. Were they, then, so soon dead? Without a cry? I forced myself to the brink to look down, over the precipice; but while I stood there, fearing to look, I heard a sound behind me in the woods. It was Jeannette singing a gay French song. I called to her to stop. 'How could you!' I said severely, for I was still trembling with agitation.

'Ce n'est rien, madame. I cross l'Arche when I had five year.

Mais, Monsieur Rodenai le Grand, he raise his eye to look this time, I think,' said Jeannette, laughing triumphantly.

'Where is he?'

'On the far side, gone on to Scott's Pic [Peak]. Feroce, O feroce, comme un loupgarou! Ah! c'est joli, ca!' And over-flowing with the wildest glee the girl danced along through the woods in front of me, now pausing to look at something in her hand, now laughing, now shouting like a wild creature, until I lost sight of her. I went back to the fort alone.

For several days I saw nothing of Rodney. When at last we met, I said, 'That was a wild freak of Jeannette's at the Arch.'

'Planned, to get a few shilling out of us.'

'O Doctor! I do not think she had any such motive,' I replied, looking up deprecatingly into his cold scornful eyes.

'Are you not a little sentimental over that ignorant, half-wild creature, Aunt Sarah?'

'Well,' I said to myself, 'perhaps I am!'

The summer came, sails whitened the blue straits again, steamers stopped for an hour or two at the island docks, and the summer travellers rushed ash.o.r.e to buy 'Indian curiosities,' made by the nuns in Montreal, or to climb breathlessly up the steep fort-hill to see the pride and panoply of war. Proud was the little white fort in those summer days; the sentinels held themselves stiffly erect, the officers gave up lying on the parapet half asleep, the best flag was hoisted daily, and there was much bugle-playing and ceremony connected with the evening gun, fired from the ramparts at sunset; the hotels were full, the boarding-house keepers were in their annual state of wonder over the singular taste of these people from 'below,' who actually preferred a miserable white-fish to the best of beef brought up on ice all the way from Buffalo! There were picnics and walks, and much confusion of historical dates respecting Father Marquette and the irrepressible, omnipresent Pontiac. The officers did much escort duty; their b.u.t.tons gilded every scene. Our quiet surgeon was foremost in everything.

'I am surprised! I had no idea Dr. Prescott was so gay,' said the major's wife.

'I should not think of calling him gay,' I answered.

'Why, my dear Mrs. Corlyne! He is going all the time. Just ask Augusta.'

Augusta thereupon remarked that society, to a certain extent, was beneficial; that she considered Dr. Prescott much improved; really, he was now very 'nice.'