God's Country-And the Woman Part 8

In the rubber sack was the last of his tobacco. He was fumbling for it when his heart gave a great jump. A voice had spoken softly behind him:

"Philip."

Slowly, unbelieving, he turned. It was Josephine. For the first time she had called him by his name. And yet the speaking of it seemed to put a distance between them, for her voice was calm and without emotion, as she might have spoken to Jean.

"I lay awake nearly all of the night, thinking," she said. "It was a terrible thing that we did, and I am sorry--sorry--"

In the quickening of her breath he saw how heroically she was fighting to speak steadily to him.

"You can't understand," she resumed, facing him with the steadiness of despair. "You cannot understand--until you reach Adare House. And that is what I dread, the hour when you will know what I am, and how terrible it was for me to do what I did last night. If you were like most other men, I wouldn't care so much. But you have been different."

He replied in words which he would not dare to have uttered a few hours before.

"And yet, back there when you first asked me to go with you as your husband, you knew what I would find at Adare House?" he asked, his voice low and tense. "You knew?"

"Yes."

"Then what has produced the change that makes you fear to have me go on? Is it because"--he leaned toward her, and his face was bloodless--"Is it because you care a little for me?"

"Because I respect you, yes," she said in a voice that disappointed him. "I don't want to hurt you. I don't want you to go back into the world thinking of me as you will. You have been honest with me. I do not blame you for what happened last night. The fault was mine. And I have come to you now, so that you will understand that, no matter how I may appear and act, I have faith and trust in you. I would give anything that last night might be wiped out of our memories. That is impossible, but you must not think of it and you must not talk to me any more as you have, until we reach Adare House. And then--"

Her white face was pathetic as she turned away from him.

"You will not want to," she finished. "After that you will fight for me simply because you are a knight among men, and because you have promised. There will not even be the promise to bind you, for I release you from that."

Philip stood silent as she left him. He knew that to follow her and to force further conversation upon her after what she had said would be little less than brutal. She had given him to understand that from now on he was to hold himself toward her with greater restraint, and the blood flushed hot and uncomfortable into his face as he realized for the first time how he had overstepped the bounds.

All his life womanhood had been the most beautiful thing in the world to him. And now there was forced upon him the dread conviction that he had insulted it. He did not stop to argue that the overwhelming completeness of his love had excused him. What he thought of now was that he had found Josephine alone, had declared that love for her before he knew her name, and had followed it up by act and word which he now felt to be dishonourable. And yet, after all, would he have recalled what had happened if he could? He asked himself that question as he returned to help Jean. And he found no answer to it until they were in their canoes again and headed up the lake, Josephine sitting with her back to him, her thick silken braid falling in a sinuous and sunlit rope of red gold over her shoulders. Then he knew that he would not.

Jean gave little rest that day, and by noon they had covered twenty miles of the lake-way. An hour for dinner, and they went on. At times Josephine used her paddle, and not once during the day did she sit with her face to Philip. Late in the afternoon they camped on a portage fifty miles from Adare House.

There were no stars or moon in the sky this night. The wind had changed, and came from the north. In it was the biting chill of the Arctic, and overhead was a gray-dun ma.s.s of racing cloud. A dozen times Jean turned his face anxiously from the fire into the north, and held wet fingers high over his head to see if in the air was that peculiar sting by which the forest man forecasts the approach of snow.

At last he said to Philip: "The wind will grow, M'sieur," and picked up his axe.

Philip followed with his own, and they piled about Josephine's tent a thick protection of spruce and cedar boughs. Then together they brought three or four big logs to the fire. After that Philip went into their own tent, stripped off his outer garments, and buried himself in his sleeping bag. For a long time he lay awake and listened to the increasing wail of the wind in the tall spruce tops. It was not new to him. For months he had fallen asleep with the thunderous crash of ice and the screaming fury of storm in his ears. But to-night there was something in the sound which sunk him still deeper into the gloom which he had found it impossible to throw off. At last he fell asleep.

When he awoke he struck a match and looked at his watch. It was four o'clock, and he dressed and went outside. The wind had died down. Jean was already busy over the cook-fire, and in Josephine's tent he saw the light of a candle. She appeared a little later, wrapped close in a thick red Hudson's Bay coat, and with a marten-skin cap on her head.

Something in her first appearance, the picturesqueness of her dress, the jauntiness of the little cap, and the first flush of the fire in her face filled him with the hope that sleep had given her better spirit. A closer glance dashed this hope. Without questioning her he knew that she had spent another night of mental torture. And Jean's face looked thinner, and the hollows under his eyes were deeper.

All that day the sky hung heavy and dark with cloud, and the water was rough. Early in the afternoon the wind rose again, and Croisset ran alongside them to suggest that they go ash.o.r.e. He spoke to Philip, but Josephine interrupted quickly:

"We must go on, Jean," she demanded. "If it is not impossible we must reach Adare House to-night."

"It will be late--midnight," replied Jean. "And if it grows rougher--"

A dash of spray swept over the bow into the girl's face.

"I don't care for that," she cried. "Wet and cold won't hurt us." She turned to Philip, as if needing his argument against Jean's. "Is it not possible to get me home to-night?" she asked.

"It is two o'clock," said Philip. "How far have we to go, Jean?"

"It is not the distance, M'sieur--it is that," replied Jean, as a wave sent another dash of water over Josephine. "We are twenty miles from Adare House."

Philip looked at Josephine.

"It is best for you to go ash.o.r.e and wait until to-morrow, Josephine.

Look at that stretch of water ahead--a ma.s.s of whitecaps."

"Please, please take me home," she pleaded, and now she spoke to Philip alone. "I'm not afraid. And I cannot live through another night like last night. Why, if anything should happen to us"--she flung back her head and smiled bravely at him through the mist of her wet hair and the drenching spray--"if anything should happen I know you'd meet it gloriously. So I'm not afraid. And I want to go home."

Philip turned to the half-breed, who had drifted a canoe length away.

"We'll go on, Jean," he called. "We can make it by keeping close insh.o.r.e. Can you swim?"

"Oui, M'sieur; but Josephine--"

"I can swim with her," replied Philip, and Josephine saw the old life and strength in his face again as she turned to the white-capped seas ahead of them.

Hour after hour they fought their way on after that, the wind rising stronger in their faces, the seas burying them deeper; and each time that Josephine looked back she marvelled at the man behind her, bare-headed, his hair drenched, his arms naked to the elbows, and his clear gray eyes always smiling confidence at her through the gloom of mist. Not until darkness was falling about them did Jean drop near enough to speak again. Then he shouted:

"Another hour and we reach s...o...b..rd River, M'sieur. That is four miles from Adare House. But ahead of us the wind rushes across a wide sweep of the lake. Shall we hazard it?"

"Yes, yes," cried the girl, answering for Philip. "We must go on!"

Without another word Croisset led the way. The wind grew stronger with each minute's progress. Shouting for Jean to hold his canoe for a s.p.a.ce, Philip steadied his own canoe while he spoke to the girl.

"Come back to me as quietly as you can, Josephine," he said. "Pa.s.s the dunnage ahead of you to take the place of your weight. If anything happens, I want you near me."

Cautiously Josephine did as he bade her, and as she added slowly to the ballast in the bow she drew little by little nearer to Philip, Her hand touched an object in the bottom of the canoe as she came close to him.

It was one of his moccasins. She saw now his naked throat and chest. He had stripped off his heavy woollen shirt as well as his footwear. He reached out, and his hand touched her lightly as she huddled down in front of him.

"Splendid!" he laughed. "You're a little brick, Josephine, and the best comrade in a canoe that I ever saw. Now if we go over all I've got to do is to swim ash.o.r.e with you. Is it good walking to Adare House?"

He did not hear her reply; but a fresh burst of the wind sent a loose strand of her hair back into his face, and he was happy. Happy in spite of a peril which neither he nor Jean would have thought of facing alone. In the darkness he could no longer see Croisset or his canoe.

But Jean's shout came back to him every minute on the wind, and over Josephine's head he answered. He was glad that it was so dark the girl could not see what was ahead of them now. Once or twice his own breath stopped short, when it seemed that the canoe had taken the fatal plunge which he was dreading. Every minute he figured the distance from the sh.o.r.e, and his chances of swimming it if they were overturned. And then, after a long time, there came a sudden lull in the wind, and the seas grew less rough. Jean's voice came from near them, filled with a thrill of relief.

"We are behind the point," he shouted. "Another mile and we will enter the s...o...b..rd, M'sieur!"

Philip leaned forward in the gloom. Josephine's cap had fallen off, and for a moment his hand rested on her wet and wind-blown hair.

"Did you hear that?" he cried. "We're almost home."

"Yes," she shivered. "And I'm glad--glad--"

Was it an illusion of his own, or did she seem to shiver and draw away from him AT THE TOUCH OF HIS HAND? Even in the blackness he could FEEL that she was huddled forward, her face in her hands. She did not speak to him again. When they entered the smooth water of the s...o...b..rd, Jean's canoe drew close in beside them, but not a word fell from Croisset. Like shadows they moved up the stream between two black walls of forest. A steadily increasing excitement, a feeling that he was upon the eve of strange events, grew stronger in Philip. His arms and back ached, his legs were cramped, the last of his splendid strength had been called upon in the fight with wind and seas, but he forgot this exhaustion in antic.i.p.ation of the hour that was drawing near. He knew that Adare House would reveal to him things which Josephine had not told him. She had said that it would, and that he would hate her then.

That they were burying themselves deeper into the forest he guessed by the lessening of the wind.

Half an hour pa.s.sed, and in that time his companion did not move or speak. He heard faintly a distant wailing cry. He recognized the sound.