Kitabı oku: «The Shadow of Victory: A Romance of Fort Dearborn», sayfa 17
CHAPTER XXIV
THE REPRIEVE
Beatrice looked around the cabin curiously, though its aspect was very little changed from her memory of it. The rude, narrow bed at the farther end was still covered with the blue-and-white patchwork quilt which Mrs. Mackenzie had so strangely lost. The furniture, as before, consisted of rough chairs and tables made from boxes and barrels by an inexperienced hand. New shelves had been added, and these were filled with provisions in the familiar guise of the trading station.
A bolt of calico, some warm winter clothing, and countless articles of necessity and comfort were all neatly put away. Chandonnais had evidently pilfered from his employer constantly and systematically. Whatever he saw that seemed desirable for his mother's use, he had plainly taken at the first opportunity. Even the children's playthings had been brought there to amuse Mad Margaret.
Beatrice pulled aside a cotton curtain that had been fastened across one corner, and was not a little surprised to find her own pink calico gown, which she had made early in the summer. Robert was as interested as she was, though the light was rapidly failing. He had found a tallow dip and kept it within easy reach, though he had his doubts as to the wisdom of a light.
With an exclamation of astonishment, he stooped and picked up a pair of moccasins – small, dainty, and heavily beaded – the very pair he had lost.
"See, dearest," he said, "these are the moccasins I had for your birthday. I told you they had been stolen, don't you remember?"
The girl turned her sweet face to his. "I'm going to thank you for them now."
"I don't deserve it, sweetheart, and I'll tell you why. I wanted to tell you then, but, someway, I didn't have the courage. I didn't know it was your birthday – I'd had the moccasins a long time, but I didn't want George to get the better of me, and so I let you think I knew."
The mention of Ronald's name brought tears to her eyes. "I have a confession to make," she said. "Come here." She put her arm around his neck and drew his head down, then whispered to him.
"My darling!" he replied, brokenly, "did you think me beast enough to grudge him that? I'm glad you did it and I always will be. Poor lad, he couldn't have you, and you are mine for always."
"I know," she sighed; "but I like to think that I made him happy – that he was happy when he died."
"He loved you, Bee – almost as much as I do."
"He couldn't," she said softly, "for nobody ever loved anybody else as much as you love me"; and he was quite willing to have it so.
Shortly afterward he came to an active realisation of the fact that neither of them had eaten anything since morning. He lighted the tallow dip and searched the cabin until he found a generous supply of the plain fare to which they were accustomed. He wanted to build a fire and make some tea for Beatrice, but she refused, and asked for water instead. He went down the bluff and brought her some, but it was so warm as to be almost insipid.
After they had eaten, the inevitable reaction came to Beatrice. The high nervous tension of the past week suddenly snapped and left her as helpless as a child. "Oh!" she moaned, "the heat is unbearable – why doesn't it get cool!"
She threw herself upon the narrow bed, utterly exhausted. With a clumsy, but gentle touch, he took the pins out of her hair and unfastened her shoes. Beatrice suddenly sat up and threw her shoes into the farthest corner of the cabin. Then a small, soft, indistinct bundle was pushed to the floor.
Robert laughed and brought the moccasins. "Will you let me put them on?" he asked. Without waiting for an answer he slipped them on her bare feet, not at all surprised to find that they fitted perfectly. "The little feet," he said, tenderly; "the bare, soft, dimpled things!"
"The moccasins are softer," she answered, in a matter-of-fact tone, "and I think I'm going to sleep now."
For a long time he sat beside her, holding her hand in his. They talked of the thousand things which had suddenly become important – their first meeting, their individual impressions of it, and of everything that had happened since. With some trepidation he told her that he was mainly responsible for the poem which accompanied the Indian basket.
"It was a very bad poem," she observed.
"Yes," answered Robert, with a new note of happy laughter in his voice; "it was an unspeakable poem."
Then he described the arrangement which he and Ronald had made "to lessen the friction," as he said, and she smiled in the midst of her tears. "Poor lad!" she sighed.
"Poor lad!" he repeated; and then, after a long silence, "true lover and true friend."
The intervals between question and answer lengthened insensibly, and at last Beatrice slept. He stole away from her on tiptoe and went out in front of the cabin, where there was only a narrow ledge upon the bluff. He sat down in the doorway, where he could hear the slightest sound, and deliberately set himself to watch out the night.
He was physically exhausted, but his mind was strangely active. For the first time he was in a position to review the events of his stay at Fort Dearborn, from the night of his arrival, when Mad Margaret had appeared at the trading station, to the present hour, when he sat in her pathetic little cabin, with the girl he loved so near him that he could hear her deep breathing as she slept.
"What has it done for me?" he thought – "what has it brought me?" The answer was "Beatrice," which came with a passionate uplifting of soul. With a certain boyish idea of knight-errantry, he had kept his hands and his heart clean, and, in consequence, love brought to him at last an exquisite fineness of joy. In that hour of close self-communion, his deepest satisfaction was this – that in all the years, in spite of frequent temptation, there was nothing of which he need to be ashamed – nothing to remember with a pang of bitterness, when Beatrice lifted her innocent eyes to his.
"Sir Galahad," some of his friends had called him, jeeringly, and, before, it had never failed to bring the colour to his face; but now the words rang through his consciousness like a trumpet-blast of victory. He was spared that inner knowledge of shame and unworthiness which lies, like bitter lees, in the wine of man's love.
"Beatrice! Beatrice!" Like another of her name she had led him through hell, and he saw now a certain sweet slavery in prospect. Wherever his thoughts might wander, she would always be with him, like the golden thread which runs through a dull tapestry, in and out of the design, sometimes hidden for an instant, but never lost.
Aunt Eleanor and Uncle John – they had been like father and mother to him, and he loved the children as though they were his own. The plaintive lisps of the little girl came back to his memory with remorseful tenderness, and he smiled as he wondered, dreamily, what Beatrice might have been at four or five. Swiftly upon the thought came another, which set the blood to singing in his veins, and which he put from him quickly, as one retreats before something too beautiful and too delicate to touch.
Captain Wells and Doctor Norton – they were dead. And Ronald – a lump came into his throat which he could not keep down, for, of all the men in the world, the blue-eyed soldier was best fitted to be his friend. They supplemented one another perfectly, each having what the other lacked, and enough in common to make firm neutral ground whereupon friendship might safely stand. Of his other friends at the Fort he thought idly, since he had not known them so well, but he was genuinely glad that they had survived the horrors of the day.
As night wore on, the battle assumed indistinct and indefinite phases. Here and there some incident stood out vividly; unrelated and detached. He had spoken truly when he told Beatrice that "a mere handful" had been lost. What, indeed, did such things matter in the face of history?
It was but the price of a new country, which courageous souls had been paying for two centuries and more, and which some must continue to pay until —
Like a lightning flash came sudden breadth of view. What if a thousand had died instead of fifty; how could it change the meaning? Broad and beautiful, from the Atlantic to the unknown shore unmeasured leagues away, stretched a new country, vast beyond the dreams of empire, which belonged to his race for the asking.
Something stirred in his pulses, uncertain but vital; so strangely elemental that it seemed one with the reaches of water that lay just beyond him. Here, at the head of Lake Michigan, some day there must be – what?
There was a rustle beside him, but it was only a leaf. In the stillness it seemed as if it must wake Beatrice. Another near it fluttered idly, and a white birch trembled. A sudden coolness came into the air, then out of the lake rose the blessed north-east wind, with life and healing upon its grey wings.
He went into the cabin to put a blanket over Beatrice. Her face was turned toward the door, that her wounded arm might be uppermost, and something in her attitude of childish helplessness brought the mist to his eyes. The white, soft arm, with the bandage upon it, had its own irresistible appeal. Half fearing to wake her, he stooped to kiss it softly, thrilled with a tenderness so great that his love was almost pain.
He went back to the cabin door, where the wind was rioting amid the saplings, and sat down again. Already there was a hushed murmur upon the shore, and when the late moon rose, full and golden, from the mysterious vault beyond the horizon, the lake was white with tossing plumes – the manes of the plunging steeds that lead the legions of the sea.
Far out upon the water was a path of beaten gold – that fairy path which the little Beatrice had thought to take when she went to visit the moon people. The memory of that night came back with rapturous pain – when he had found the words to tell her what she was and what she meant to him, as far as words could express the sacred emotion that was kindled upon the altars of his inmost soul.
The moonlight shone into the cabin and full upon the girl's face. The childish sweetness, the womanly softness of her as she lay there came to him like the breath of a rose. A thread of light went higher and touched the silver cross to lambent flame. Beyond it, over the cabin, was —
He sprang to his feet and ran up the little incline to the bluff. In spite of the thick woods he could see the ominous glare upon the clouds in the south-west, and knew only too well what it portended. "Cowards! Dogs!" he muttered. "They are burning the Fort!"
His hands shut and opened nervously, and the nails cut deep into the flesh. A savage impulse to wrest every foot of soil from the Indians shook him from head to foot. Here, at the head of Lake Michigan – then the dream came upon him with the claim of mastery. "The baseless fabric of this vision… The cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces…" His thought swiftly framed the words, then he laughed shortly, and turned away.
But, all at once, he knew what he must do. He saw himself clearly in the van of that humble army, which has no trappings of soldiery or state, but only the weapons of peace, by which, from the beginning, all men have ultimately conquered. The plough and the harrow, the spade and the pruning knife, the steady toil with hand and brain – here and now.
Step by step he saw the savages forced backward, their arrows met with muskets and the ring of steel – back to the farthest limits of the civilisation which at last should sweep them from the face of the earth. It was the dominant race beating back the opposition; the conquest of the wilderness by those fitted to rule.
Fired with purpose and ambition, he stood there until the lurid light in the south-west began to fade. Not one life, but the many – not the reaping, but the planting – he did not know it, but strong upon him had come the spirit of the pioneer.
The moon rose high in the heavens and from the zenith sent stray lines of light to touch the cross, where the figure of the Christ, wondrously moulded, was eloquent with voiceless appeal. The stars faded, as if blown out by the wind, and then there was a soft voice at his side: "Have I been asleep, dear?"
"You sweet girl," he laughed, taking her into his arms; "you've slept all night – it's nearly time for sunrise, now."
"I didn't know. You'll go to sleep now, won't you?"
"No, dearest – I'm not sleepy."
"Neither am I, so I'm going to stay with you."
In the doorway of the cabin, with their arms around each other, they sat while the darkness waned. The wind lifted her magnificent hair in long, slender strands, and now and then, when a heavy tress touched his face caressingly, Beatrice laughed and pulled it away.
"Don't!" he said.
"You dear, silly boy, you don't want my hair in your face."
"Yes, I do."
"Why?"
"Because I love you, from the crown of your head to your dimpled foot, with all the strength of my soul."
There was a long silence, then the girl sighed contentedly. "I never thought love was anything like this, did you?"
"No, dear – I didn't know what it was."
"I didn't, either, but, of course, I wondered. From all I had heard and read I was afraid of it, and I thought it would make me unhappy, but it doesn't. I can't tell you how it makes me feel. It seems as if God made us for each other in the beginning, but kept us apart, and even after we met it wasn't much better until all at once there was a light, and then we knew. It seems as if I never could be miserable or out of sorts again; as if everything was right and always would be; that whatever came to me you'd help me bear it, and always you'd be my shield."
"Sweetheart," he answered, deeply touched, "I trust I may be. It would be my greatest happiness to bear your pain for you."
Far in the east there was a faint colour upon the clouds. "See," she said, "it is day." He drew her closer, and she went on, – "Think what it means to go away forever from all this horror – to go back to the hills!"
Robert swallowed hard, then said thickly, "Heart of Mine, I would die to shield you, but Destiny calls us here."
With a cry the girl started to her feet. "Here!" she gasped. "Robert, what do you mean!"
In an instant he was beside her, with her cold hand in his. "What do you mean!" she cried.
"Listen, dear; I am asking nothing of you – it is for you to say. To-morrow we will be taken to Detroit as British prisoners – for how long we do not know. The Indians have burned the Fort, but some day, when the war is over, we must come here to live, for to go back is to acknowledge defeat."
The word stung her pride. "Defeat!" she said; "and why? Why are we defeated if we choose to live in a safe place instead of in danger – in peace rather than in the fear of massacre? Yesterday, did you not see? Only by the merest chance I am not among them – and yet you ask me to go back!"
Her voice vibrated with feeling, and her breast heaved. Even in the dim, purple light of early morning he could see the suffering in her face, and it struck him like a blow.
"My darling, listen – let me tell you what I mean. We will go wherever you say. If it pleases you to live in France or England, we will go there – it is for you to decide, not for me. Do you understand?"
"Yes," she answered dully. "Go on."
Robert's dream was dim and the fire of his ambition had dwindled, but he went on bravely. "We are at the very edge of civilisation, dear, and it must go on beyond us. The tide is moving westward, and we must either go with it or against it. We must go forward or retreat, there is no standing still. Yesterday a battle was fought, which, in its essence, was for the possession of the frontier. We have surrendered, but we have not given up. If we retreat, it must be fought again. From shore to shore of this great country there must be one flag and one law. Here, where the ashes of the Fort now lie, some day a city must stand."
"So," said the girl, with a harsh laugh, "and you would build a city from dreams?"
The tone hurt him to the quick. "Yes," he answered steadfastly, "I would. Nothing in the world was ever built without a dream at the beginning."
"Well," she said, after a silence – "what then?"
"Sweetheart," he cried, "you make it hard!"
Upon the purple light in the east came gold and crimson, touched here and there with deep sapphire blue. Little by little a glorious fabric was woven upon the vast looms of dawn. Beatrice saw his face, strained and anxious, and knew in her heart that she would yield. What Katherine had said came back to her – "When you find your mate, you have to go – there is no other way."
"To-morrow we go," he was saying, "back to the hills, but that is not the end – it is only the reprieve. We must come back here to fight it out, to finish the task we have begun, to hold our place in the face of all odds. We must stand in the front rank of civilisation, make our footing steady and sure, carry the flag westward into the stronghold of the wilderness – make a city, if you will, from dreams.
"Beatrice, this is the last time – I shall never ask you again. We will do as you will – this is my only plea. I ask you now, with the horrors of yesterday still alive in your heart, with your wound still open and sore, to come back here with me, when the Fort is rebuilt, and fight it out by my side.
"It must be done – by others if not by us, and if we retreat we are shamed. God knows I love you, or I would not ask you this. God knows I would shield you, and yet I would not have you shamed. Wherever there is human life, there is also danger, but we must make a place where our children and our children's children may live without fear. Heart of Mine, so strong and brave, you are not the one to falter – my Life, my Queen," he cried, in a voice that rang, "are you not a mate for a man?"
Prismatic colours lay on the water and the sunrise stained her face. Far across the pearly reaches a new day was dawning, and she looked at him steadily, as if her eyes would search his inmost soul.
"Once more," he said huskily, "will you come and do your part? Will you fight it out with me?"
Love and pain were in his voice – his body was tense and eager, like one who pleads for his utmost joy. Beatrice felt his courage, his passionate uplifting, and it stirred her pulses sharply, like a bugle call. Caught on that wave of absolute surrender, seeking only for the ultimate good, the girl's soul rose superbly to meet his own.
The first ray of sun leaped across the water, to touch her face with transfiguring light, and there was a gleam from the cross above her, where the splendour of the morning was turned back toward the altars from whence it came. Her fear fell from her like a garment, the horrors of the past were forgotten, and she saw herself one with him, on whatever height he might choose to stand.
Her burnished hair was like an aureole about her, and in her eyes was the fire of victory. Mate for a man she was in that exalted moment, when she leaned toward him with her lips parted and her soul aflame with high resolve. The eastern heavens illumined with a flood of white light that seemed like a challenge.
"Once more, sweetheart – will you come?"
She smiled and her sweet lips trembled as if already she felt his kiss, then clear and strong as the note of a silver trumpet came the girl's triumphant answer. "Yes," she cried, "I will!"
