Chapter 74
Whereat I sprang to my feet and marched to the parapet, and she after me, laying her hand on my arm.
"Dear lad--I do not mean unkindness.... But it is all so new to me--and you are so tall a man to pull such funny faces--as though love was a stomach pain----" She swayed, helpless again with laughter, still clinging to my arm.
"If you truly find my features ridiculous----" I began, but her hand instantly closed my lips. I kissed it, however, with angry satisfaction, and she took it away hurriedly.
"Are you ashamed--you great, sulky and hulking boy--to take my harmless pleasantry so uncouthly? And how is this?" says she, stamping her foot.
"May I not laugh a little at my lover if I choose? I will have you know, Euan, that I do what pleases me with mine own, and am not to sit in dread of your displeasure if I have a mind to laugh."
"It hurt me that you should make a mockery----"
"I made no mockery! I laughed. And you shall know that one day, please G.o.d, I shall laugh at you, plague you, torment you, and----" She looked at me smilingly, hesitating; then in a low voice: "All my caprices you shall endure as in duty bound.... Because your reward shall be--the adoration of one who is at heart--your slave already.... And your desires will ever be her own--are hers already, Euan.... Have I made amends?"
"More fully than----"
"Then be content," she said hastily, "and pull me no more lugubrious faces to fright me. Lord! What a vexing paradox is this young man who sits and glowers and gnaws his lips in the very moment of his victory, while I, his victim, tranquil and happy in defeat, sit calmly telling my thoughts like holy beads to salve my new-born soul. Ai-me! There are many things yet to be learned in this mad world of men."
We leaned over the parapet, shoulder to shoulder, looking down upon the river. The rain had ceased, but the sun gleamed only at intervals, and briefly.
After a moment she turned and looked at me with her beautiful and candid eyes--the most honest eyes I ever looked upon.
"Euan," she said in a quiet voice, "I know how hard it is for us to remain silent in the first flush of what has so sweetly happened to us both. I know how natural it is for you to speak of it and for me to listen. But if I were to listen, now, and when one dear word of yours had followed another, and the next another still; and when our hands had met, and then our lips--alas, dear lad, I had become so wholly yours, and you had so wholly filled my mind and heart that--I do not know, but I deeply fear--something of my virgin resolution might relax.
The inflexible will--the undeviating obstinacy with which I have pursued my quest as far as this forest place, might falter, be swerved, perhaps, by this new and other pa.s.sion--for I am as yet ignorant of its force and possibilities. I would not have it master me until I am free to yield. And that freedom can come happily and honourably
"Yes."
"Then--we will not speak of love. Or even let the language of our eyes trouble each other with all we may not say and venture.... You will not kiss me, will you? Before I ask it of you?"
"No."
"Under no provocation? Will you--even if I should ask it?"
"No."
"I will tell you why, Euan. I have promised myself--it is odd, too, for I first thought of it the day I first laid eyes on you. I said to myself that, as G.o.d had kept me pure in spite of all--I should wish that the first one ever to touch my lips should be my mother. And I made that vow--having no doubt of keeping it--until I saw you again----"
"When?"
"When you came to me in Westchester before the storm."
"Then!" I exclaimed, amazed.
"Is it not strange, Euan? I know not how it was with me or why, all suddenly, I seemed to know--seemed to catch a sudden glimmer of my destiny--a brief, confusing gleam. And only seemed to fear and hate you--yet, it was not hate or fear, either.... And when I came to you in the rain--there at the stable shed--and when you followed, and gave your ring--such h.e.l.l and heaven as awakened in my heart you could not fathom--nor could I--nor can I yet understand.... Do you think I loved you even then? Not knowing that I loved you?"
"How could you love me then?"
"G.o.d knows.... And afterward, on the rock in the moonlight--as you lay there asleep--oh, I knew not what so moved me to leave you my message and a wild-rose lying there.... It was my destiny--my destiny! I seemed to fathom it.... For when you spoke to me on the parade at the Middle Fort, such a thrill of happiness possessed me----"
"You rebuked and rebuked me, sweeting!"
"Because all my solicitude was for you, and how it might disgrace you."
"I could have knelt there at your ragged feet, in sight of all the fort!"
"Could you truly, Euan?"
"As willingly as I kneel at prayer!"
"How dear and gallant and sweet you are to me----" She broke off in dismay. "Ai-me! Heaven pity us both, for we are saying what should wait to be said, and have talked of love only while vowing not to do so!...
Let loose my hand, Euan--that somehow has stolen into yours. Ai-me!
This is a very maze I seem to travel in, with every pitfall hiding all I would avoid, and everywhere ambush laid for me.... Listen, dear lad, I am more pitifully at your mercy than I dreamed of. Be faithful to my faithless self that falters. Point out the path from your own strength and compa.s.sion.... I--I must find my way to Catharines-town before I can give myself to thoughts of you--to dreams of all that you inspire in me."
"Listen, Lois. This fort is as far as you may go."
"What!"
"Truly, dear maid. It is not alone the perils of an unknown country that must check you here. There is a danger that you know not of--that you never even heard of."
"A danger?"
"Worse. A threat of terrors h.e.l.lish, inconceivable, terrible beyond words."
"What do you mean? The hatchet? The stake? Dear lad, may I not then venture what you soldiers brave so lightly?"
"It is not what we brave that threatens you!"
"What then?" she asked, startled.
"Dear did you ever learn that you are a 'Hidden Child'?"
"What is that, Euan?"
"Then you do not know?"
She shook her head.
And so I told her; told her also all that we had guessed concerning her; how that her captive mother, terrified by Amochol and his red acolytes, had concealed her, consecrated her, and, somehow, had found a runner to carry her beyond the doors of the Long House to safety.
This runner must have written the Iroquois message which I had read amid the corn-husks of her garret. It was all utterly plain and horrible now, to her and to myself.
As for the moccasins, the same faithful runner must have carried them to her, year after year, and taken back with him to the desolate mother the a.s.surance that her child was living and still undiscovered and unharmed by Amochol.
All this I made plain to her; and I also told her that I, too, was of the Hidden Ones; and made it most clear to her who I really was. And I told her of the Cat-People, and of the Erie, and how the Sorcerer had defied us and boasted that the Hidden Child should yet die strangled upon the altar of Red Amochol.
She was quiet and very pale while I was speaking, and at moments her grey eyes widened with the unearthly horror of the thing; but never a tremour touched her, nor did lid or lips quiver or her gaze falter.
And when I had done she remained silent, looking out over the river at our feet, which was now all crinkling with the sun's bright network through the tracery of leaves.
"There is a danger to you," I said, "which will not cease until this army has left the Red Priest dead amid the sacrilegious ashes of his own vile altar. My Indians have made a vow to leave no Erie, no blasphemous and perverted priest alive. Amochol, the Wyoming Witch, the Toad-Woman--all that accursed sp.a.w.n of Frontenac must die.