The Forge in the Forest Part 13

My Comrade

I could not sufficiently commend the ease and aptness with which my beautiful comrade wielded her paddle. But in a while the day grew hot, and I bade her lie back in her place and rest. At first she would not, till I was compelled to remind her in a tone of railing that I was the captain in this enterprise, and that good soldiers must obey.

Whereupon, though her back was toward me, I saw a flush creep around to her little ears, and she laid the paddle down something abruptly. I feared that I had vexed her, and I made haste to attempt an explanation, although it seemed to me that she should have understood a matter so obvious.

"I beg you to pardon me, Madame, if I seem to insist too much," said I, with hesitation. "But you must know that, if you exhaust yourself at the beginning of the journey, before you are hardened to the long continuance of such work, you will be unable to do anything to-morrow, and our quest will be much hindered."

"Forgive me!" she cried; "you are right, of course. Oh, I fear I have done wrong in hampering you! But I am strong, truly, and enduring as most men, Monsieur."

"Yes," I answered, "but to do one thing strenuously all day long, and for days thereafter, that is hard. I believe you can do it, or I should have been mad indeed to bring you. But you must let me advise you at the beginning. For this first day, rest often and save yourself as much as possible. By this means you will be able to do better to-morrow, and better still the day after. By the other means, you will be able to do little to-morrow most likely, and perhaps nothing the day after."

"Well," she said, turning her head partly around, so that I could see the gracious profile, "tell me, Monsieur, when to work and when to rest. I will obey. It is a lucky soldier, I know, who has the Seigneur de Briart to command him."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Turning her head partly around, so that I could see the gracious profile]

"But I fear, Madame," said I, "that discipline would sadly suffer if he had often such soldiers to command."

To this she made no reply. I saw that she leaned back in her place and changed her posture, so as to fulfil my wish and rest herself to the best advantage. I thought my words over. To me they seemed to have that savour of compliment which I would now avoid. I felt that here, under these strange circ.u.mstances, in an intimacy which might by and by be remembered by her with some little confusion, but which now, while she had no thought but for the rescue of the little one, contained no shadow of awkwardness for her clear and earnest soul,--I felt that here I must hold myself under bonds. The play of graceful compliment, such as I would have practised in her drawing-room to show her the courtliness of my breeding, must be forsworn. The admiration, the devotion, the worship, that burned in my eyes whensoever they dwelt upon her, must be strictly veiled. I must seem to forget that I am a man and my companion the fairest of women. Yes, I kept telling myself, I must regard her as a comrade only, and a follower, and a boy. I must be frank and careless in my manner toward her; kind, but blunt and positive. She will think nothing of it now, and will blush the less for it by and by, when the child is in her arms again, and she can once more give her mind to little matters.

And so I schooled myself; and as I watched her I began to realize more and more, with a delicious warming of my heart, what instant need I had of such schooling if I would not have her see how I was not at all her captain, but her bondsman.

At the mouth of the Piziquid stream there cl.u.s.tered a few cottages, not enough to call a village; and here we stopped about noon. A meal of milk and eggs and freshly baked rye cakes refreshed us, and eager as was our haste, I judged it wise to rest an hour stretched out in the shade of an apple tree. To this halt, Mizpah, after one glance of eager question at my face, made no demur, and I replied to the glance by whispering:--

"That is a good soldier! We will gain by this pause, now. We will travel late to-night."

The cottagers of whom we had our meal were folk unknown to me; and being informed that the Black Abbe had some followers in the neighbourhood, I durst give no hint of our purpose. By and by I asked carelessly if two canoes, with Indians of the Shubenacadie, had gone by this way. I thought that the man looked at me with some suspicion. He hesitated. But before he could reply his goodwife answered for him, with the freedom of a clear conscience.

"Yes, M'sieu," she chattered, "two canoes, and four Indians. They went by yesterday, toward sundown, stopping here for water from our well,--the finest water hereabouts, if I do say it!"

"They went up the river, I suppose," said I.

"Oh, but no, M'sieu," clattered on the worthy dame. "They went straight up the bay. Yes, goodman," she continued, changing her tone sharply, "whenever I open my mouth you glare at me as if I was talking nonsense. What have I said wrong now, I'd like to know. Yes, I'd like very much to know that, goodman. Why should not the gentleman know that they had--"

But here the man interrupted her roughly. "Will you never be done your prating?" he cried. "Can't you see that you worry the gentlemen? How should they care to know that the red rascals made a good catch of shad off the island? Now, do go and get some of your fresh b.u.t.termilk for the gentlemen to drink before they go. Don't you see they are starting?"

And, indeed, Mizpah's impatience to be gone was plainly evident, and we had rested long enough. I durst not look at her face, lest our host should perceive that I had heard what I wanted to hear. I spoke casually of the weather, and inquired how his apples and his flax were faring, and so filled the minutes safely until the goodwife came with the b.u.t.ter-milk. Having both drunk gratefully of the cool, delicately acid, nourishing liquor, we gave the man a piece of silver, and set out in good heart.

"We are on the right track, comrade," said I, lightly, steering my course along the sh.o.r.e toward Cobequid.

Her only answer was to fall a-paddling with such an eagerness that I had to check her.

"Now, now," I said, "more haste, less speed."

"But I feel so strong now, and so rested," she cried pa.s.sionately.

"Might we not overtake them to-night?"

"Hardly so soon as that, I fear, Madame," I answered. "This is a stern chase, and it is like to be a long one; you must make up your mind to that, if you would not have a fresh disappointment every hour."

"Oh," she broke out, "if it were your child you were trying to find and save, you would not be so cool about it."

"Believe me, Madame," said I, in a low voice, "I am not perhaps as cool as I appear."

"Oh, what a weak and silly creature I must seem to you!" she cried.

"But I will not be weak and silly when it comes to trial, Monsieur, I promise you. I _will_ prove worthy of your confidence. But make allowance for me now, and do not judge me harshly. Every moment I seem to hear him crying for me, Monsieur." And her head drooped forward in unspeakable grief.

I could think of nothing, absolutely nothing, to say. I could only mutter hoa.r.s.ely, "I do not think you either weak or silly, Madame."

This answer, feeble as it appeared to myself, seemed in a sense to relieve her. She put down her paddle, leaned forward upon the front bar, with her face in her hands, and sobbed gently for a few minutes.

Then, while I gazed upon her in rapt commiseration, she all at once resumed the paddle briskly.

For my own part, being just lately returned from a long expedition, my muscles were like steel; I felt that I should never weary. Steadily onward we pressed, past the mouths of several small streams whose names I did not know, past headland after headland of red clay or pallid plaster rock. As the tide fell, we were driven far out into the bay, till sometimes there was a mile of oozy red flats parting us from the edge of the green. But as the tide rose again, we accompanied its seething vanguard, till at last we were again close in sh.o.r.e. A breeze soon after mid-day springing up behind us, we made excellent progress.

But soon after sunset a mist arose, which made our journey too perilous to be continued. I turned into a narrow cove between high banks, where the brawling of a shallow brook promised us fresh water. And there, in a thicket of young fir trees growing at the foot of a steep bank, I set up the canoe on edge, laid some poles and branches against it, and had a secluded shelter for my lady. She looked at it with a gratified admiration and could never be done with thanking me.

Being now near the Shubenacadie mouth, I durst not light a fire, but we uncomplainingly ate our black bread; and then I said:

"We will start at first gray, comrade. You will need all the sleep you can win. Good night, and kindly dreams."

"Good night, Monsieur," she said softly, and disappeared. Then going down to the water's side, I threw off my clothes, and took a swift plunge which steadied and refreshed me mightily. Swimming in the misty and murmurous darkness, my venture and my strange fellowship seemed more like a dream to me than ever, and I could scarce believe myself awake. But I was awake enough to feel it when, in stumbling ash.o.r.e, I sc.r.a.ped my foot painfully on a jagged sh.e.l.l. However, that hurt was soon eased and staunched by holding it for a little under the chill gushing of the brook; after which I dressed myself, gathered a handful of ferns for a pillow, and laid myself down across the opening which led into the thicket.

Chapter XIV

My Comrade Shoots Excellently Well

From a medley of dreams, in which I saw Mizpah binding the Black Abbe with cords of her own hair--tight, tighter, till they ate into his flesh, and I trembled at the look of shaking horror in his face; in which then I saw the child chasing b.u.t.terflies before the door of the Forge in the Forest, and heard Babin's hammer beating musically on his anvil, till the sound became the chiming of the Angelus over the roofs and walls of Quebec, where Mizpah and I walked hand fast together on the topmost bastion,--from such a fleeting and blending confusion as this, I woke to feel a hand laid softly on my face in the dark. I needed no seeing to tell me whose was the hand, so slim, so cool, so softly firm; and I had much ado to keep my lips from reverently kissing it.

"Monsieur, Monsieur," came the whisper, "what is that noise, that voice?"

"Pardon me, comrade, for sleeping so soundly," I murmured, sitting up, and taking her hand in mine with a rough freedom of goodwill, as merely to rea.s.sure her. "What is it you hear?"

But before she could reply, I heard it myself, a strange, chanting cry, slow and plangent, from far out upon the water. Presently I caught the words, and knew the voice.

"Woe, woe to Acadie the fair," it came solemnly, "for the day of her desolation draws nigh!"

"It is Grul," said I, "pa.s.sing in his canoe, on some strange errand of his."

"Grul? Who is Grul?" she questioned, clinging a little to my hand, and then dropping it suddenly.

"A quaint madman of these parts," said I; "and yet I think his madness is in some degree a feigning. He has twice done me inestimable service--once warning us of an immediate peril, and again yesterday, in leading us to the spot where you were held captive. For some reason unknown to me, he has a marvellous kindness for me and mine. But the Black Abbe he hates in deadly fashion--for some ancient and ineffaceable wrong, if the tale tell true."

"And he brought you to us?" she murmured, with a sort of stillness in her voice, which caught me strangely.

"Yes, Grul did!" said I.

And then there was silence between us, and we heard the mysterious and solemn voice pa.s.sing, and dying away in the distance. My ears at last being released from the tension of listening, my eyes began to serve me, and through the branches I marked a grayness spreading in the sky.

"We must be stirring, Madame," said I, rising abruptly to my feet.

"Let us take our bread down to the brook and eat it there."