The Honor of the Big Snows Part 23

"Neither do I understand," exclaimed the factor, going to the stove to light his pipe. "He gave me his resignation as a paid servant of the company tonight!"

"He is not going--to leave--the post?" breathed Melisse.

"He is leaving the service," reiterated her father. "That means he can not long live at Lac Bain. He says he is going into the woods, perhaps into Jean's country of the Athabasca. Has he told you more?"

"Nothing," said Melisse.

She was upon her knees in front of the little bookcase. A blinding film burned in her eyes. She caught her breath, struggling hard to master herself before she faced her father again. For a moment the factor went into his room, and she took this opportunity of slipping into her own, calling "Good night" to him from the partly closed door.

The next day it was Croisset who went along the edge of the Barrens for meat. Gravois found Jan filling a new shoulder-pack with supplies. It was their first encounter since he had learned that Jan had given up the service.

"Diable!" he fairly hissed, standing over him as he packed his flour and salt in a rubber bag. "Diable, I say, M. Jan Th.o.r.eau!"

Jan looked up, smiling, to see the little Frenchman fairly quivering with rage.

"Bon jour, M. Jean de Gravois!" he laughed back. "You see I am going out among the foxes."

"The devils!" snapped Jean.

"No, the foxes, my dear Jean. I am tired of the post. I can make better wage for my time in the swamps to the west. Think of it, Jean! It has been many years since you have trapped there, and the foxes must be eating up the country!"

Jean's thin lips were almost snarling. "Blessed saints, and it was I who--"

He spun upon his heels without another word, and went straight to Melisse.

"Jan Th.o.r.eau is going to leave the post," he announced fiercely, throwing out his chest and glaring at her accusingly.

"So father has told me," said Melisse.

Her cheeks were colorless, and there were purplish lines under her eyes, but she spoke with exceeding calmness.

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Jean, whirling again, "you take it coolly!"

A little later Melisse saw Jan coming from the store. When he entered the cabin his dark face betrayed the strain under which he was laboring, but his voice was unnaturally calm.

"I have come to say good-by, Melisse," he said. "I am going to prospect for a good trap-line among the Barrens."

"I hope you will have good luck, Jan."

In her voice, too, was a firmness almost metallic.

For the first time in his life Jan held out his hand to her. She started, and for an instant the blood surged from her heart to her face. Then she gave him her own and looked him squarely and unflinchingly in the eyes.

"Will you wait a moment?" she asked.

She hurried into her room, and scarcely had she gone before she reappeared again, this time with a flush burning in her cheeks and her eyes shining brightly. She had unbraided her hair, and it lay coiled upon the crown of her head, glistening with crimson sprigs of bakneesh.

She came to him a second time, and once more gave him her hand.

"I don't suppose you care now," she said coldly, and yet laughing in his face. "I have not broken my promise. It was silly, wasn't it?"

He felt as if his blood had been suddenly chilled to water, and he fought to choke back the thick throbbing in his throat.

"You promised--" He could not go further.

"I promised that I would not do up my hair again until you had forgotten to love me," she finished for him. "I will do it up now."

He bowed his head, and she could see his shoulders quiver under their thick caribou coat. Her tense lips parted, and she raised her arms as if on the point of stretching them out to him; but his voice came evenly, without a quiver, yet filled with the dispa.s.sionate truth of what he spoke.

"I have not forgotten to love you, Melisse. I shall never cease to love my little sister. But you are older now, and it is time for you to do up your hair."

He turned, without looking at her again, leaving her standing with her arms still half stretched out to him, and went from the cabin.

"Good-by, Jan!"

The words fell in a sobbing whisper from her, but he had gone too far to hear. Through the window she saw him shake hands with c.u.mmins in front of the company's store. She watched him as he went to the cabin of Iowaka and Jean. Then she saw him shoulder his pack, and, with bowed head, disappear slowly into the depths of the black spruce forest.

CHAPTER XXIII

JAN RETURNS

All that spring and summer Jan spent in the thick caribou swamps and low ridge-mountains along the Barrens. It was two months before he appeared at the post again, and then he remained only long enough to patch himself up and secure fresh supplies.

Melisse had suffered quietly during these two months, a grief and loneliness filling her heart which none knew but herself. Even from Iowaka she kept her unhappiness a secret; and yet when the gloom had settled heaviest upon her, she was still buoyed up by a persistent hope. Until Jan's last visit to Lac Bain this hope never quite went out.

The first evening after his arrival from the swamps to the west, he came to the cabin. His beard had grown again. His hair was long and s.h.a.ggy, and fell in shining dishevelment upon his shoulders. The sensitive beauty of his great eyes, once responsive to every pa.s.sing humor in Melisse, flashing fun at her laughter, glowing softly in their devotion, was gone. His face was filled with the age-old silence of the forest man. Firmly and yet gently, it repelled whatever of the old things she might have said and done, holding her away from him as if by power of a strong hand.

This time Melisse knew that there was left not even the last comforting spark of hope within her bosom. Jan had gone out of her life for ever, leaving to her, as a haunting ghost of what they two had once been to each other, the old violin on the cabin wall.

After he went away again, the violin became more and more to her what it had once been to him. She played it as he had played it, sobbing her loneliness and her heart-break through its strings, in lone hours clasping it to her breast and speaking to it as Jan had talked to it in years gone by.

"If you could only tell me--if you only could!" she whispered to it one day, when the autumn was drawing near. "If you could tell me about him, and what I might do--dear old violin!"

Once during the autumn Jan came in for supplies and traps, and his dogs and sledge. He was planning to spend the winter two hundred miles to the west, in the country of the Athabasca. He was at Lac Bain for a week, and during this time a mail-runner came in from Fort Churchill.

The runner brought a new experience into the life of Melisse--her first letter. It was from young Dixon--twenty or more closely written pages of it, in which he informed her that he was going to spend a part of the approaching winter at Lac Bain.

She was reading the last page when Jan came into the cabin. Her cheeks were slightly flushed by this new excitement, which was reflected in her eyes as she looked at Jan.

"A letter!" she cried, holding out her two hands filled with the pages.

"A letter--to me, Jan, all the way from Fort Churchill!"

"Who in the world--" he began, smiling at her; and stopped.

"It's from Mr. Dixon," she said, the flush deepening in her cheeks.