The Wilderness Trail Part 19

Pleading exhaustion, he had refused to tell his story in reply to eager questions. Where had he found her? How? When? The thought of even sketching to these plain-minded fellows the ground-work on which had been reared such a structure of poetry seemed sacrilege.

No, he would keep silent.

At the door, a loafing trapper, smoking a pipe, greeted him by name. The factor, even in this wilderness, maintained some show of his rank, and demanded a guard to his dwelling. No doubt the diplomatic and silent Tee-ka-mee was inside. McTavish waited until the sentry had announced his presence, and had returned with the word for him to enter.

The interior scarcely offered fitting surroundings for the lord of a domain as big as England. Unsoftened, squared logs formed the walls, and the roof consisted of slabs and branches which, with the sifted and frozen snow, formed an impenetrable covering. In the corner away from the wind, a bunk, made soft with blankets and spruce-boughs, supported the factor.

Donald was struck by the autocrat's appearance. The old buffalo-head, with its s.h.a.ggy white hair and beard, did not seem to have the poise of former times; the cheeks were hollow, and the whole body thinner. But the eyes, burning as of old, looked fiercely out from under their beetling white brows. Evidently, the grief over Jean's disappearance had eaten away the body, although the spirit burned like a flame, proud, strong, invincible.

Tee-ka-mee, who had just turned away from his master, greeted McTavish with his pleasant smile, and then went outside, closing the rough door. The two men were face to face.

For a little while, there was silence, as the older one pierced the younger with his glance.

"I have so much to say to you, Captain McTavish, that I hardly know where to begin," he said finally, speaking in a calm, but strong, voice. "I see you here under most peculiar circ.u.mstances."

"Yes, sir, you do, and, because of their nature, I am both glad and sorry."

"I am only sorry," came back the stern reply. "However, I have been busy thanking heaven all night that you were deserted in the right spot to drag my little girl from the water, and save her life. It was a brave act, McTavish, and I appreciate it."

"Thank you, sir. I thought I was saving Charley Seguis until afterward."

"You would have been a fool not to throw him back in the water, if it had been he." The factor's tones dripped venom like a snake's mouth at the mention of the half-breed. "But will you kindly explain to me why you broke out of Fort Severn?

"Because I considered my imprisonment there an injustice. But that is only my feeling in the matter. There was, also, a duty side to the question. I could not remain there longer, and feel that I was a man."

"And what was this duty, pray?" The voice was sarcastic.

"The finding of J--your daughter."

"What right have you to consider yourself so duty-bound in that direction that you overturn discipline, disregard my commands, and make a laughing-stock of me?"

"Only the right of a lover, Mr. Fitzpatrick. To that right, I set no limits."

"You are very quick to find an imagined right, young man,"

Fitzpatrick said, grimly. "How about myself, the girl's father, the one who, most of all, should give up everything to such a search? Did I leave the Company's business to take care of itself?"

"No, but it is well I did, or else you would never have seen Jean again. I don't think, Mr. Fitzpatrick, that there is anything gained arguing in this circle. What else have you to say to me?"

"My daughter has told me everything," went on the factor painfully, shifting on his rough bed. "In fact, she got quite excited over your chivalrous treatment of her, while you were together. Of course I believe my daughter, and, when she tells me that you acted merely as friends, I take her word. At the same time, Captain McTavish, there does not come to my mind the slightest reason why you should have forced yourself into the same cabin with her."

Donald briefly explained the situation, outlining the treachery of Maria and her Indian son, Tom, who should, by this time, be safe in Fort Severn.

"If I had not done as I did, I should have frozen to death," he concluded.

"Better you should," cried the factor pa.s.sionately, "than that my little girl should be ruined for life before the whole world."

"How will she be ruined?" demanded the young man, crisply. "No one knows the story except Braithwaite and his two men, and I think we can keep their mouths closed easily enough."

"It is impossible!" said the other. "You know yourself that Napoleon Sky's tongue is swiveled two ways, and is the only successful perpetual-motion machine ever invented. If we bribed them, we could be held up regularly for blackmail, and even that would fail; the news would leak out somewhere. I know these wild places; I know what rumor can do. Perhaps, the wind whispers it; perhaps, the birds carry it, or the streams call it out at night. Whatever is done, I know this: that rumor will leap across a practically uninhabited country like wild-fire, and, by the time the _brigades_ come down in the spring, I could not hold my head up among the curious eyes, jerked thumbs, and tongues in cheek. What I want to know, Captain McTavish, is, what can you do about it?"

"Is the Reverend Mr. Gates in the camp?"

"Yes."

"I'll marry Jean this afternoon, providing she will have me?"

"You shall not!" cried the factor suddenly, with great fierceness, turning his fiery eyes upon the younger man in an expression of hate. "You shall not--ever!"

"Really, Mr. Fitzpatrick," replied Donald, gently, "I cannot agree to that, and I might as well tell you now that I intend to marry Jean somewhere, some time, if human effort can bring it about, and the sooner the better."

"You wouldn't dare say that to me, if I weren't laid up," hissed Fitzpatrick, his hands clenching and unclenching.

"Yes, sir, I would! I have never said it before, because I hadn't the right. Jean loves me, and will marry me; that is all I want to know."

"And you leave me, her father, out of it? You don't even ask my permission?"

"Why should I? You said I should never marry her. If that is your att.i.tude, I don't care to consult you; I shall go ahead with this matter in my own way."

"Look here, McTavish!" The voice was suddenly calm, but its _timbre_ held a note that drew Donald's immediate attention. "Do you realize, when you say that, that you are deliberately, and to my face, riding over all authority, not only from the Company's standpoint, but from a father's? I am talking to you now in coolness, and I ask well-considered replies. Do you realize that you are d.a.m.ning yourself forever in my sight by your words and your att.i.tude?"

"I am sorry, sir," replied the other, with genuine regret; "but, in matters of this kind, I can only consult my own feelings and determinations. You ask what is impossible of me; I ask what is impossible of you. I think we had better separate while outwardly calm to avoid any more useless and bitter words."

"I am glad to know your att.i.tude," retorted the factor, dryly.

"Now, let me put to you one more question. I beseech you, for your own good and happiness, to answer it as I wish. You may have a week, if you like to think it over. I ask you, for the last time: Will you give up all hope or thought of ever marrying Jean? Will you promise never to see her or communicate with her again? Will you retire to your post, and stay there until I can get you shifted to the West?"

With the lover, there could be but one answer, but, for some almost occult reason, he hesitated. The tone, grave, portentous, almost menacing, the paternal, kindly att.i.tude, the pleading that unconsciously crept through the other's words; all these gave Donald to know that some crisis was at hand. For an instant, he thought of the silent, heavy moment before the breaking of a summer thunder-storm; and, mentally, he prepared himself for some sort of a shock--what, he did not know. Then, finally, he answered the factor's questions.

"I do not need a week, a day, or an hour, to think these matters over," he said. "All I can give is a final and inclusive, 'No!' to all of them."

The factor stirred in his place, as much as his wounded shoulder would permit. All the paternal was gone from him now, and all the pleading. The eye that regarded the young man glittered balefully, and the lips were parted in a cruel smile.

"Well, sir," he cried, almost triumphantly, "I shall have to tell you then that it is impossible for you to marry Jean under any circ.u.mstances."

"Why?"

"Because, sir, you are not the legitimate son of Donald McTavish, chief commissioner of this company. You have no standing, and can inherit no money. If you are lucky, you may marry the daughter of a half-breed some time; but a white girl, even a poor white trapper's daughter, wouldn't have you." He stopped, and watched cunningly the effect of his words... This was the sweetest moment of his life.

Donald, for his part, smiled easily. This was merely the fabrication of a feverish brain, he told himself.

"Will you kindly explain your a.s.sertion, sir?" he asked. "You haven't yet made yourself quite clear."

"I mean," said Fitzpatrick bluntly, "that, before your father married your mother in Montreal, he had contracted a previous marriage in the hunting-ground; a marriage amply attested, of which the certificate still exists. That, of course, makes his second marriage in Montreal illegal, makes him a bigamist, and you illegitimate. Moreover (and this is the best joke of all), unknown to him a son was born, to his first marriage, and that son, according to law, should inherit the family wealth and position. Now--"

"Stop! Stop! You fiend!" shouted Donald, his hands to his ears, and a look of fury on his face. "Oh, G.o.d! If you weren't lying there, if your white hairs didn't protect you, I swear to heaven I'd kill you, if I swung for it. What you have made of my mother!

What you have made of her!" It was characteristic of his nature that he thought of some one else in a crisis. So it had been in his boyhood; so it was now when the structure of his life came tumbling about his ears, just when it had seemed for a little while most beautiful.

The triumph died out of Fitzpatrick's face, and was supplanted by an expression of fear. But few times had he ever felt fear, bodily fear. This was one of them. Yet, since there was nothing to say, he kept silent. Donald walked up and down aimlessly, until he had won some measure of control over himself, his body shuddering with the struggle. Then, he faced his persecutor.

"How do you know this?" he asked, in a thin voice he scarcely recognized as his own. "What proof have you? Where did you learn it? If you can't show indisputable proofs for every word you say, I'll have you bounded out of the Company like a dog. I'll hound you over the face of the earth. I'll never let you rest, until you drop into your grave, and then I'll keep your stinking memory green as long as I live."