The Maid of the Whispering Hills Part 4

The momentary flicker of uneasiness that had gripped the factor with the stranger's speech died at his words.

So, of a surety, why not?

Had not he himself, born in the smoke of a London street, accepted with the ingenious adaptability of the Irish blood within him the very speech he now wondered at in the other?

As the young man sprang lightly to land he held out his hand, and it was gripped with a force that showed the spirit behind the beauty of this new guest.

"Welcome, M'sieu," said the factor, "to Fort de Seviere and all it contains."

"Bien!" laughed the other with a show of fine white teeth, "but it is good to behold neighbours in so deadly a wilderness as we have pa.s.sed through for these many days. Naught but G.o.d-forgotten loneliness and never-ending forest. Yet it is for these that we barter the comforts of civilisation, eh, M'sieu, and waste ourselves on solitude and the savage?" He turned and waved his gloved hand over the five canoes, now curving one by one in to the landing, and shouted a few terse orders and commands.

"But I had nigh forgot, so unused am I to society and the usages thereof,"--he said, turning back with an engaging smile, "Alfred de Courtenay, known in that world across the water; and which my taste, or that of itself, more properly speaking, has caused me to forswear for some length of time, as Mad Alfred, I am, M'sieu--?"

"Anders McElroy," supplied the other, "and factor of Fort de Seviere."

"Monsieur le facteur, your servant, of French lineage, English nativity, and adventurous spirit."

With a motion indescribably graceful he swept off his wide hat and executed a bow which in itself was proof of his gentleness.

"And now, M'sieu, lead on to those delights of rest and converse which your hospitality hath so graciously promised."

Leaving his company to beach and store for the night the canoes with their loads of merchandise, under the direction of his aide or lieutenant whom he introduced to the factor as John Ivrey, a young man of fine presence, Alfred de Courtenay walked beside McElroy up the gentle slope of the river bank, entered the great eastern gate of the post, not without an appreciative glance at its ma.s.sive strength and at the well-nigh impregnable thickness of the stockade, the well-placed surveillance of the towering bastions, and thus up the way between the cabins to the door of the factory, open and inviting.

"Mother of G.o.d, M'sieu!" he said with a copious sigh; "what it is to meet with white faces! For weeks I have beheld along the sh.o.r.es peering brown countenances that lifted my gorge, and I have well-nigh been tempted to turn back."

"It has been a long journey, then, to you?"

McElroy smiled, thinking of the first impressions and effect of the wilderness on such a man fresh from the ways of civilisation.

"Long? Though it is my initial journey, yet am I veteran frontiersman."

He turned upon the factor the brilliance of his smile, a combination of dazzling teeth and eyes that fairly danced with spirit, like bubbling wine, blue and swift in their changes from laughter to an exaggerated dolorousness, as when he spoke of these terrible hardships.

And if they were quick after this fashion they were no less so in roaming keenly over every corner of the enclosed s.p.a.ce within the stockade.

Before they had reached the factory the stranger knew that there were three rows of cabins in the post, that the factory was a mighty fortress in its low solidity, and that the small log structure to the right of it with the barred window was the pot au beurre.

As they neared the factory the figure of a tall woman, young by the straightness of the back, the gracious yet taut beauty of line and curve, came from behind the cabin of the Savilles, and on her shoulder was perched a three-year-old child which laughed and gurgled with delight, holding tight to her widespread hands. The woman's face was hidden by the child's body, but her voice, deep-throated and rich with sliding minor tones, mingled with the high shrillness of the little one's shrieks.

"Hold fast, ma cherie," came its laughing caution, smothered by the flying folds of the baby's little cotton shift. "See! The ship dips so, in the ocean,--and so,--and so!"

The strong arms, bare and brown and muscular, swayed backward, throwing up the milky whiteness of the little throat, the tiny feet flew heavenward and the baby's wee heart choked it, as witness the screams of irrepressible joy. As the child swayed back there came into view the face of Maren Le Moyne, flushed all over its rare darkness, glowing with tenderness, its great beauty transfigured divinely. The black braids, wrapped smoothly round her head, shone in the evening sun, and the faded garment, plain and uncompromising, but served to heighten the effect of her physical perfection.

Alfred de Courtenay stopped in his tracks, the smile fixed on his face, and drank in the pretty scene like one starved.

So long he looked that McElroy turned toward him and only then did he shift his glance, remembering himself, while a blush suffused his rather delicate features.

"Pardon!" he murmured; "truly do I forget myself, M'sieu; but not for a twelvemonth have I seen aught to match this moment. I pray you, of what station of life is the glorious young Madonna before you;--wife or widow or maid? By Saint Agnes, never have I beheld such beauty!"

"Maid," replied McElroy; "by name Maren Le Moyne, one of a party of venturers who came but a short while back from Rainy River, and who have cast in their lot with us for the matter of a year."

The woman and the child pa.s.sed on their way, disappearing again behind the next cabin, unconscious of observation, still lost in their play of the tossing ship at sea, and the two men entered the great trading-room of Fort de Seviere, where Edmonton Ridgar, chief trader and accountant, came forward to meet the stranger.

The young factor went in search of Jack de Lancy and word of the meal he had ordered, and for some reason there was within him a vague vexation which had to do with the look he had seen in the merry eyes of Alfred de Courtenay.

He found the great kettles boiling over the fires and a ten-gallon pot of coffee Venting the evening air.

As he gave word for the feast to be spread on strips of cloth laid on the hard-beaten ground before the factory that many might sit round at once and partake, there came from the direction of the gate the voices of De Courtenay's men. The stranger and himself, with young Ivrey and Ridgar should be served in the little room off to the west where were the small table, the chairs, and the row of books.

Not often did Fort de Seviere have so ill.u.s.trious a guest as must be this young adventurer.

CHAPTER V NOR'WESTERS

"Merci, my friend, what extravagance is this! The savour of that pot does fairly turn my head!"

Alfred de Courtenay settled himself gracefully in one of McElroy's chairs and smiled across at his host with a twinkle in his laughing eyes.

A dozen candles, lit in his honour, where three were wont to suffice, shone mellowly in the little room, and Rette de Lancy, still comely despite her forty years and a certain lavishness in the matter of avoirdupois, set down in the midst of the table a steaming dish with a cover. There were a white cloth of bleached linen and cups of blue ware that had come with her and Jack from across seas, also a silver coffee-urn that had been her great-grandmother's. When the factor gave word for a meal to these two he knew well that all dignity would be observed. As for himself, his living of every day was scant and plain as regarded the manner of its serving.

"What is it, M'sieu, that so a.s.sails the nostrils with delicious aroma, if I may so far forget politeness? 'Tis not beef, a.s.suredly,--there is too much of the scent of the wild about it."

"Moose," replied McElroy, and by this time the vague vexation had blown out of his heart as all ill-feelings were wont to do, "moose, killed in the snows and hung in the smoke of a little fire until the very heart of the wood is in the meat. And now, M'sieu, fall to. I would I had something better than Rette's strong coffee in which to pledge you, but, as you see, Fort de Seviere has no cantine salope. It is not the policy of the Great Company, as you doubtless know, to abet its trade with the Indians by the use of liquor."

De Courtenay looked quickly up.

"Why, I thought,--but then I have much to learn, in fact, all to learn, since I am but raw in the wilderness."

Like men hungry and athirst from the hardships of the trail and the stream, the camp and the portage, the guests did justice to the savoury viands, and at last leaned back in repletion, while Rette took off the plates and cups; the spoons and forks, and set in their stead a huge pot of crumbled tobacco with a tin box containing pipes.

"And now," said the factor, smiling, "let us have talk of that world of which I am hungering for news. You are of the fall ship's load of new arrivals, I take it?"

"No," said De Courtenay, "it was last spring, about this time, that I first saw the sh.o.r.es of the New World. Five of my men came with me from across seas and the rest I picked on starting into the wilderness. They are mostly Canadians of Scottish blood. I have a fancy that the strong blond peoples are best for the rigours of what one may find in this country. Though," he laughed as at some reminiscence, "I have found so far that my two swarthy guides are worth any three of the rest."

"You have found the way hard?"

"Mother of G.o.d! If the rest is like the first of it, I think you may find my bones bleaching beside some portage where I have given up the ghost. Truly do we pay for our whims of caprice, M'sieu."

"Whims?"

"Aye, what save a whim of the moment could have induced me to undertake so great a hardship as this winning to the Saskatchewan? What save the love of excitement sent me to be, like yourself, the head of a lost trading-post in this far north country?"

The merry blue eyes were full of gaiety and light.

"Truly,--and I pay."

A whim it might be, yet there was in the spirited face of Alfred de Courtenay that which told plainly that it would be followed to its end, be that what it might, as faithfully as though it were a deeper thing.