Isobel : A Romance of the Northern Trail Part 21

"I'll come back for you, Isobel. I'll come back."

At McTabb's cabin he had left his pack. He put the straps over his shoulder and started south again. There was but one move for him to make now. McTabb was known at Le Pas. He got his supplies and sold his furs there. Some one at Le Pas would know where he had gone with little Isobel.

Not until he was several miles distant from the scene of death and his own broken hopes did he spread out his blanket and lie down for the night. He was up and had breakfast at dawn. On the fourth day he came to the little wilderness outpost-- the end of rail-- on the Saskatchewan. Within an hour he discovered that Rookie McTabb had not been to Le Pas for nearly two years. No one had seen him with a child.

That same night a construction train was leaving for Etomami, down on the main line, and Billy lost no time in making up his mind what he would do. He would go to Montreal. If little Isobel was not there she was still somewhere in the wilderness with McTabb. Then he would return, and he would find her if it took him a lifetime.

Days and nights of travel followed, and during those days and nights Billy prayed that he would not find her in Montreal. If by some chance McTabb had discovered her relatives, if Isobel had revealed her secret to him before she died, his last hope in life was gone. He did not think of wasting time in the purchase of new clothes. That would have meant the missing of a train. He still wore his wilderness outfit, even to his fur cap. As he traveled farther eastward people began to regard him curiously. He got the porter to shave off his beard. But his hair was long. His moccasins and German socks were ragged and torn, and there were rents in his caribou-skin coat and his heavy Hudson's Bay sweater-shirt. The hardships he had gone through had left their lines in his face. There was something about him, outside of his strange attire, that made men look at him more than once. Women, more keenly observant than the men, saw the deep-seated grief in his eyes.

As he approached Montreal he kept himself more and more aloof from the others.

When at last the train came to a stop at the big station in the heart of the city he walked through the gates and strode up the hill toward Mount Royal. It was an hour or more past noon, and he had eaten nothing since morning. But he had no thought of hunger. Twenty minutes later he was at the foot of the street on which Isobel had told him that she had lived. One by one he pa.s.sed the old houses of brick and stone, sheltered behind their solid walls. There had been no change in the years since he had been there. Half-way up the hill to the base of the mountain he saw an old gardener tr.i.m.m.i.n.g ivy about an ancient cannon near a driveway. He stopped and asked:

"Can you tell me where Geoffrey Renaud lives?"

The old gardener looked at him curiously for a moment without speaking. Then he said:

"Renaud? Geoffrey Renaud? That is his house up there behind the red-sandstone wall. Is it the house you want to see-- or Renaud?"

"Both," said Billy.

"Geoffrey Renaud has been dead for three years," informed the gardener. "Are you a-- relative?"

"No, no," cried Billy, trying to keep his voice steady as he asked the next question. "There are others there. Who are they?"

The old man shook his head.

"I don't know."

"There is a little girl there-- four-- five years old, with golden hair--"

"She was playing in the garden when I came along a few moments ago,"

replied the gardener. "I heard her-- with the dog--"

Billy waited to hear no more. Thanking his informant, he walked swiftly up the hill to the red-sandstone wall. Before he came to the rusted iron gate he, too, heard a child's laughter, and it set his heart beating wildly. It was just over the wall. In his eagerness he thrust the toe of his moccasined foot into a break in the stone and drew himself up. He looked down into a great garden, and a dozen steps away, close to a thick clump of shrubbery, he saw a child playing with a little puppy. The sun gleamed in her golden hair. He heard her joyous laughter; and then, for an instant, her face was turned toward him.

In that moment he forgot everything, and with a great, glad cry he drew himself up and sprang to the ground on the other side.

"Isobel-- Isobel-- my little Isobel!"

He was beside her, on his knees, with her in his hungry arms, and for a brief s.p.a.ce the child was so frightened that she held her breath and stared at him without a sound.

"Don't you know me-- don't you know me--" he almost sobbed. "Little Mystery-- Isobel--"

He heard a sound, a strange, stifled cry, and he looked up. From behind the shrubbery there had come a woman, and she was staring at Billy MacVeigh with a face as white as chalk. He staggered to his feet, and he believed that at last he had gone mad. For it was the vision of Isobel Deane that he saw there, and her blue eyes were glowing at him as he had seen them for an instant that night a long time ago on the edge of the Barren. He could not speak. And then, as he staggered another step back toward the wall, he held out his ragged arms, without knowing what he was doing, and called her name as he had spoken it a hundred times at night beside his lonely campfires.

Starvation, his injury, weeks of illness, and his almost superhuman struggle to reach McTabb's cabin, and after that civilization, had consumed his last strength. For days he had lived on the reserve forces of a nervous energy that slipped away from him now, leaving him dizzy and swaying. He fought to overcome the weakness that seemed to have taken the last ounce of strength from his exhausted body, but in spite of his strongest efforts the sunlit garden suddenly darkened before his eyes. In that moment the vision became real, and as he turned toward the wall Isobel Deane called him by name; and in another moment she was at his side, clutching him almost fiercely by the arms and calling him by name over and over again. The weakness and dizziness pa.s.sed from him in a moment, but in that s.p.a.ce he seemed only to realize that he must get back-- over the wall.

"I wouldn't have come-- but-- I-- I-- thought you were-- dead," he said. "They told me-- you were dead. I'm glad-- glad-- but I wouldn't have come--"

She felt the weight of him for an instant on her arm. She knew the things that were in his face-- starvation, pain, the signs of ravage left behind by fever. In these moments Billy did not see the wonderful look that had come into her own face or the wonderful glow in her eyes.

"It was Indian Joe's mother who died," he heard her say. "And since then we have been waiting-- waiting-- waiting-- little Isobel and I. I went away north, to David's grave, and I saw what you had done, and what you had burned into the wood. Some day, I knew, you'd come back to me. We've been waiting-- for you--"

Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but Billy heard it; and all at once his dizziness was gone, and he saw the sunlight shining in Isobel's bright hair and the look in her face and eyes.

"I'm sorry-- sorry-- so sorry I said what I did-- about you-- killing him," she went on. "You remember-- I said that if I got well--"

"Yes--"

"And you thought I meant that if I got well you should go away-- and you promised-- and kept your promise. But I couldn't finish. It didn't seem right-- then. I wanted to tell you-- out there-- that I was sorry-- and that if I got well you could come to me again-- some day somewhere-- and then--"

"Isobel!"

"And now-- you may tell me again what you told me out on the Barren-- a long time ago."

"Isobel-- Isobel--"

"You understand"-- she spoke softly-- "you understand, it cannot happen now-- perhaps not for another year. But now"-- she drew a little nearer-- "you may kiss me," she said. "And then you must kiss little Isobel. And we don't want you to go very far away again. It's lonely-- terribly lonely all by ourselves in the city-- and we're glad you've come-- so glad--"

Her voice broke to a sobbing whisper, and as Billy opened his great, ragged arms and caught her to him he heard that whisper again, saying, "We're glad-- glad-- glad you've come back to us."

"And I-- may-- stay?"

She raised her face, glorious in its welcome.

"If you want me-- still."

At last he believed. But he could not speak. He bent his face to hers, and for a moment they stood thus, while from behind the shrubbery came the sound of little Isobel's joyous laughter.

THE END