The Red City Part 44

Beyond Seventh there was as yet open country, with few houses. It was two years since, a stranger, he had fallen among friends in the Red City, made for himself a sufficient income and an honorable name and won the esteem of men. Schmidt, Margaret, the Wynnes; his encounters with Carteaux, the yellow plague, pa.s.sed through his mind. G.o.d had indeed dealt kindly with the exiles. As he came near to the river and rode into the thinned forest known as the Governor's Woods, he saw Nanny seated at the roadside.

"What are you doing here, Nanny?" he asked.

"The missus sent me with Miss Margaret to carry a basket of stuff to help some no-account colored people lives up that road. I has to wait."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, and, dismounting, tied his horse. "At last," he said, and went away up the wood road. Far in the open forest he saw her coming, her Quaker bonnet swinging on her arm.

"Oh, Miss Margaret!" he cried. "I am glad to have found you. You know I am going away to-morrow for two months at least. It is a hard journey, not without some risk, and I cannot go without a word with you. Why have you avoided me as you have done?"

"Have I?" she replied.

"Yes; and you know it."

"I thought--I thought--oh, let me go home!"

"No; not till you hear me. Can you let me leave in this way without a word? I do not mean that it shall be. Sit down here on this log and listen to me." He caught her hand.

"Please, I must go."

"No; not yet. Sit down here. I shall not keep you long--a woman who wants none of me. But I have much to say--explanations, ah, much to say." She sat down.

"I will hear thee, but--"

"Oh, you will hear me? Yes, because you must? Go, if you will. It will be my answer."

"I think the time and the place ill chosen,"--she spoke with simple dignity,--"but I will hear thee."

"I have had no chance but this. You must pardon me." She looked down and listened. "It is a simple matter. I have loved you long. No other love has ever troubled my life. Save my mother, I have no one. What might have been the loves for brothers and sisters are all yours, a love beyond all other loves, the love of a lonely man. Whether or not you permit me to be something more, I shall still owe you a debt the years can never make me forget--the remembrance of what my life beside you in your home has given me."

The intent face, the hands clasped in her lap, might have shown him how deeply she was moved; for now at last that she had heard him she knew surely that she loved him. The long discipline of Friends in controlling at least the outward expression of emotion came to her aid as often before. She felt how easy it would have been to give him the answer he longed for; but there were others to think about, and from her childhood she had been taught the lesson of consideration for her elders. She set herself to reply to him with stern repression of feeling not very readily governed.

"How can I answer thee? What would thy mother say?" He knew then what her answer might have been. She, too, had her pride, and he liked her the more for that.

"Thou art a French n.o.ble. I am a plain Quaker girl without means. There would be reason in the opposition thy mother would make."

"A French n.o.ble!" he laughed. "A banished exile, landless and poor--a pretty match I am. But, Pearl, the future is mine. I have succeeded here, where my countrymen starve. I have won honor, respect, and trust.

I would add love."

"I know, I know; but--"

"It is vain to put me off with talk of others. I think you do care for me. My mother will summon all her prejudices and in the end will yield.

It is very simple, Pearl. I ask only a word. If you say yes, whatever may then come, we will meet with courage and respect. Do you love me, Pearl?"

She said faintly, "Yes."

He sat silent a moment, and then said, "I thank G.o.d!" and, lifting her hand, kissed it.

"Oh, Rene," she cried, "what have I done?" and she burst into tears. "I did not mean to."

"Is it so hard, dear Pearl? I have made you cry."

"No, it is not hard; but it is that I am ashamed to think that I loved thee long--long before thou didst care for me. Love thee, Rene! Thou dost not dream how--how I love thee."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I know, I know, but--'"]

Her reticence, her trained reserve, were lost in this pa.s.sion of long-restrained love. Ah, here was Schmidt's Quaker Juliet!

He drew her to him and kissed her wet cheek. "You will never, never regret," he said. "All else is of no moment. We love each other. That is all now. I have so far never failed in anything, and I shall not now."

He had waited long, he said, and for good reasons. Some day, but not now in an hour of joy, he would tell her the story of his life, a sad one, and of why he had been what men call brutal to Carteaux and why their friend Schmidt, who knew of his love, had urged him to wait. She must trust him yet a little while longer.

"And have I not trusted thee?"

"Yes, Pearl."

"We knew, mother and I, knowing thee as we did, that there must be more cause for that dreadful duel than we could see."

"More? Yes, dear, and more beyond it; but it is all over now. The man I would have killed is going to France."

"Oh, Rene--killed!"

"Yes, and gladly. The man goes back to France and my skies are clear for love to grow."

He would kill! A strange sense of surprise arose in her mind, and the thought of how little even now she knew of the man she loved and trusted. "I can wait, Rene," she said, "and oh, I am so glad; but mother--I have never had a secret from her, never."

"Tell her," he said; "but then let it rest between us until I come back."

"That would be best, and now I must go."

"Yes, but a moment, Pearl. Long ago, the day after we landed, a sad and friendless man, I walked out to the river and washed away my cares in the blessed waters. On my return, I sat on this very log, and talked to some woodmen, and asked the name of a modest flower. They said, 'We call it the Quaker lady.' And to think that just here I should find again, my Quaker lady."

"But I am not a Quaker lady. I am a naughty 'Separatist,' as Friends call it. Come, I must go, Rene. I shall say good-by to thee to-night.

Thou wilt be off early, I do suppose. And oh, it will be a weary time while thou art away!"

"I shall be gone by six in the morning."

"And I sound asleep," she returned, smiling. He left her at the roadside with Nanny, and, mounting, rode away.

XXIV

The widow allowed no one to care for Schmidt's library except her daughter or herself. It contained little of value except books, but even those Indian arrow-heads he found on Tinic.u.m Island and the strange bones from near Valley Forge were dusted with care and regarded with the more curiosity because, even to the German, they spoke no language the world as yet could read.

As she turned from her task and Margaret entered, she saw in her face the signal of something to be told. It needed not the words, "Oh, mother," as she closed the door behind her--"oh, mother, I am afraid I have done a wrong thing; but I met Rene de Courval,--I mean, he met me,--and--and he asked me to marry him--and I will; no one shall stop me." There was a note of antic.i.p.ative defiance in the young voice as she spoke.