CHAPTER IX.
ON THE WAY TO THE CAPITAL.
From early summer to late autumn, from assurance of bloom to certaintyof frost, is but a step--the step between life and death. Themurmuring leaves and waters on the shores of Kempenfeldt Bay hadlearned a louder and harsher melody--the wild wind-prophecy of winter.For a brief season Indian summer came to re-illumine the despairingdays, and the larches, set aflame by her hand, flashed like lights.Then through the softly tinted wood broke the Autumn brightness upondelicate shimmering birch trees, red sumachs, purple tinged sassafras,golden rod and asters; but now the oaks and beeches had changed theirvelvet green raiment to dull brown, and all the wild woods, after thepitiless and well-nigh perpetual rains of Fall, were stricken anddiscoloured. Madame and Mademoiselle DeBerczy had flown with thebirds, and were now domiciled in their winter home at the Oak Ridges,whither Rose Macleod, in response to an urgent invitation from Helene,had accompanied them, and whence she wrote letters of entreaty to herfather, urging him to take a house in York for the winter.
"Not that it is so particularly lively," she wrote, "but it is notquite so deathly as at Pine Towers. Edward will be willing to come, Iknow, desperate lover of nature that he is, for there is nothing inthe woods now but eternal requiem over lost and buried beauty, ofwhich, in the natural vanity of youth, he may be tempted to considerhimself a part. As for the children they will build snow-houses, andsit down in them, thus ensuring permanent bad colds, and the othermember of your family, if she returns home, will 'look before andafter, and sigh for what is not.' Is not that a sufficientlydepressing picture? Dear papa, you know that, like the bad little boysin a certain class of Sunday School literature, I can't be ruledexcept by kindness. Now see what an immense opportunity I have givenyou to govern me according to approved Sunday School ethics!"
She paused a moment, considering not what could be said, but whatcould be omitted from a missive which was to be convincing as well ascaressing in its nature, when Helene entered the room.
"Love letter, Rose?" she inquired carelessly.
"Certainly," responded her friend, "all my letters are love letters.Would you have me write to a person I didn't love?"
"Why, I couldn't help it, that is supposing the letter you are writingis addressed to Allan Dunlop. Of course he is a person you don't love."
"There is no reason why I should."
"No reason? O ingratitude! After he dived under the heels of a fieryhorse, carried you nearly lifeless into the house, and took off hisboots every time he entered it for six weeks thereafter. How muchfurther could a man's devotion go?"
"I am beginning to find out," said Rose, with a slight return of aninvalid's irritation, "how far a _woman's_ devotion can go."
Helene arched her delicate brows. "Are you offended?" she asked,anxiously. "Ah, don't be! I'll take back every word. He _didn't_ takeoff his boots, nor carry you in, nor pick you up, and, let me see--whatother assertion did I make? Oh, yes. Of course he is a person you _do_love. But oh, Rose, Rose, what are you blushing about? This isn't thetime of year for roses to blush."
"Upon my word, Helene, you are enough to make a stone wall blush."
"Ah, you are thinking of the stone walls of a certain farm cottage. Ican imagine you sitting propped up in bed, with a volume of hymnsmarking the line, 'Stone walls do not a prison make,' with a bigexclamation-point, and a 'So true!'"
Rose leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
"Are you very tired, dear?" inquired her friend, with real tenderness.
"Very tired," was the languid reply, that was not without a satiricalintonation. "It seems as though my rest was a good deal broken."
"Broken bone! broken heart! broken rest! dear me! Well, I suppose theyfollow each other in natural sequence."
"Helene," said her mother, "you are chattering like a magpie. What isit all about?"
"Broken utterances, mamma. Not worth piecing together and repeating."
Madame DeBerczy, seated alone at the other end of the apartment,turned upon her daughter a face of such majestic severity aseffectually to quell that young lady's recklessly merry mood. But itwas not for long. The irrepressible joyousness of her nature was notpermanently subdued until two weeks later, when the family weresurprised by the unlooked-for appearance of Edward Macleod. This youngman was the bearer of good-tidings. His father and the rest of thefamily were even now domiciled at an hotel in York waiting for Rose toarrive in order to consult her preferences before selecting a house.The announcement made both girls happy, but when it was discoveredthat Edward was to take his sister away in a few hours their joy waschanged to lamentation. To be separated, hateful thought! How could itbe endured? They withdrew for a brief space to consider this weightyproblem, leaving Edward in dignified conversation with MadameDeBerczy. He was strangely reminded of his first visit to her afterhis return from England. Alike, and yet how different. Then theprophecy of summer's golden perfection was in the air. But his hopeswith it had too-quickly ripened and died. The coolness that had sprangup between Helene and himself had grown and strengthened into thepermanent winter of discontent. He was recalled from the chillingreflections into which this thought had plunged him by the concludingwords of a remark by Madame DeBerczy: "I approve of a certain amountof life and animation," she said, "but they are inclined to be toofrisky."
"What on earth is she talking about?" queried Edward inaudibly. Hecould form no idea, but he was suddenly extricated from his dilemma byobserving the antics of two pet kittens on the hearth-rug.
"Altogether too frisky," he acquiesced, "but charming little pets."
"It appears to me," said the lady, with a good deal of frigidity inher manner, "that they should be something better than that."
"Oh, you could scarcely expect such young things to be stately anddignified, Madame DeBerczy. They seem to me very pretty and graceful."
"In my day prettiness and grace were not considered so essential foryoung ladies as dignity and stateliness."
"Young ladies! Really, I beg your pardon, dear Madame, for myinattention. I imagined you were talking of kittens." He blushed sovividly over his mistake that a more circumspect old lady even thanthe one he was addressing would have found it hard not to forgive him.
But now the girls re-entered the room with looks of deep dejection."We have decided that we can't part," said Helene. "United we stand,divided we fall."
"And so," said Rose boldly, addressing Madame DeBerczy, "we have cometo ask if Helene cannot go back with us for a few days." She paused amoment, for in asking a favour of so lofty a personage as MadameDeBerczy, she was never certain whether she ought to prostrate herselfon the floor in oriental fashion, or merely bend the knee. In thiscase she did neither. But her sweet pleading eyes spoke "libraries,"so Helene told her afterwards. The imaginative objections alreadyforming in the mother's mind vanished away, and she was prevailed uponto give her consent.
"Though it leaves me rather at the mercy of Sophia," she said, as shewent out to lunch.
Edward lifted an inquiring pair of eyes.
"Sophia is my new maid," explained his hostess. "Her ideas on thesubject of liberty and equality are extreme. Sometimes," she addedmournfully, "I am in doubt as to whether I have hired Sophia, orSophia has hired me."
The young people longed to exchange covert glances of amusement, butthis relief was denied them. It was no laughing matter to the statelysufferer at the head of the table. Rose spoke in the decent accents ofsympathy and condolence, but her brother and friend were not profuseof speech. The latter was thinking of possible explanations andreconciliations that might arise through the frequent opportunities ofmeeting with Edward, which a temporary residence under the same roofwould entail, and the former was feasting his beauty-loving eyes upona strikingly lovely picture on the other side of the table--thepicture of two heads, golden-yellow and raven-black, against the richbackground of a peacock-tinted tapestry screen.
They were much less picturesque in their winter wraps, as t
hey whirledaway under the leafless trees, but they made up for it in merriment.Edward and Helene were secretly glad of the presence of Rose. It wasimpossible to be frigidly formal with that sunny face beaming up nowat one, then at the other. This deep young person had made up her mindthat she would spare no pains to bring about a better state of feelingbetween the two. When conversation lagged or threatened to becomeformally precise, she gave utterance to some amazing piece ofnonsense, which compelled a laugh from the others, or else indulged inprettily assumed alarm, lest their horse should prove untrustworthy.
"When you see a horse's ears move," she declared, "it is a sign thathe is vicious. Flip's ears were never still."
"Why, Rose," cried her brother, "this horse is no more like Flip thanan old cow is like a wild cat. Besides his ears don't move."
"Oh, yes, they do," remarked Helene, with the calmness of scientificconviction. "When a horse moves his ears have got to move too. Theyare not detachable. It is the same with other animals."
"Where is my note-book?" inquired Edward, after a fruitless search inhis various pockets, while Rose observed "Well, you may say what youplease, but I feel sure he is not safe."
"Indeed, he isn't," echoed the driver. "He's liable to turn around anymoment and bite you. It's a good thing the livery stable man hitchedhim up head first, else we might all have been devoured by theferocious beast."
Such pleasantries might have been indefinitely extended had notunusual sounds of mirth and minstrelsy coming from behind arrestedtheir attention.
"Why, it is the Elmsleys," softly exclaimed Rose. "Dear me! I haven'tseen Grace and Eleanor for months."
These young ladies hailed her with every expression of delight as thecarriages came to a stand-still together. They had a prodigious amountto say. At last, as the horses were growing restive, Mrs. Elmsleyinvited Miss Macleod to join their family party, as they also were ontheir way to York.
"_Do_!" echoed the daughters, and Rose accepted with alacrity. "Thehorse we have isn't at all safe," she explained, "and I am quitenervous on the subject since my accident last summer."
"Rose," demanded Helene, in a low aside, but with a tragic countenance,"you surely are not going to leave me?"
The girl laughed as she accepted Mr. Elmsley's proffered assistancefrom one vehicle into the other. "Why, you are quite a grown woman,"observed that gentleman, apparently much impressed by her matureproportions, "and it seems like only the other day that you were sevenyears old, and used to kiss me when we met."
"Well, I'll kiss you again," replied the saucy Rose, adding after amoment's pause,--"when I am seven years old."
"I warn you, Mrs. Elmsley," said Edward, shaking his head with dolefulforeboding, "that girl knows how to look like the innocent flower sheis named after, and be the serpent under it."
"Did you know," said his slandered sister, addressing the same lady,and indicating the pair she had basely forsaken, "those are the verytwo that were with me when I was so badly hurt last summer. Do youwonder that I am glad to escape from them?"
The party drove off amid jests and laughter, while the young ladies,applying their lips once more to a leaf of grass-ribbon each had inher hand, produced such sounds as, according to their father, might,Orpheus-like, have drawn stones and brickbats after them, but from amurderous rather than a magnetic motive.
"I wonder if Rose is really nervous," said Edward, breaking thesilence that bound them after the departure of the others.
"I think she is really nonsensical," said Rose's friend, not veryblandly.
"Are you then so sorry to be left alone with me?"
The young lady evaded the question, but became extremely loquacious.She intimated that almost any companionship, or none at all, could beendured on this beautifully melancholy autumn day, and called hisattention to the leaves underfoot, which had grown brown and ragged,like the pages of a very old book on which the centuries had laidtheir slow relentless fingers. In a burst of girlish confidence shetold him that always, after the wild winds had stripped from theshuddering woodland its last leaves, and the pitiless rains had washedit clean, the spectacle of bare-branched trees, standing against thegentle gloom of a pale November sky, reminded her of a company ofworldings, from whom every vestige of earthly ambition, pride andprosperity had fallen away. "Anything," she said to herself,"_anything_ to keep the talk from becoming personal."
"I can understand that," said Edward, "but the influences ofunworldliness--I was almost saying other-worldliness--are nowhere feltas in the woods. Sometimes they exert a strange spell upon me. Thepetty pride and shallow subterfuges of fashionable life are impossiblein nature's solitudes. Don't you think so?"
"Yes;" assented Helene, not seeing whither her unthinking acquiescencemight lead her.
"That is why I dare to ask you why you have been so cold and formaltowards me, so unlike your old self, for the last three months?"
No petty pride could help her now, no shallow subterfuges come to heraid. She had declared that they were impossible here. She could notturn her face away from his truth-compelling gaze. Why had Rose lefther alone to be tortured in this dreadful way? How could she confessto him that jealousy and wounded vanity had caused the change in herdemeanour? "I cannot tell you," she said at last. She had turned palereven than usual, but her eyes burned.
"I am sorry to have given you pain," he said almost tenderly, and thenthe confession broke from her in a little storm of pent-up emotion.
"It was because I ceased to respect you! How could I respect a man whowould allow a wild ignorant creature to caress his hands and hang uponhis words?"
He turned a face of pure bewilderment upon her. "If you mean theAlgonquin girl, Wanda," he said, "she has never treated me otherwisethan with indifference, anger and contempt." He explained the scene ofwhich Helene had been an involuntary witness, and the proud girl felthumiliated and belittled. But he was too generous and perhaps tooclever to allow her to suppose that he attributed her coldness to weakjealousy. That would have placed her at a disadvantage which her pridewould never have forgiven.
"So you believed me to be a vain contemptible idiot," he said, "Thenyou did perfectly right to scorn me." He drove on furiously, withtense lips and contracted brow. She had misjudged him cruelly, but hewould not descend to harsh accusation. Helene was decidedlyuncomfortable. "I have never scorned you," she said. "It was becauseI believed you superior to the folly and weakness of ordinary men thatit grieved me to think you were otherwise."
"It grieved you," he repeated in a softer tone. "Hereafter I wish youwould confide all your griefs to me the moment you are aware of them."
"To tell the truth, I don't expect to have any more." She laughed herold joyous friendly laugh, and he stretched his arm across her lap toadjust the robe more closely to her form. Her attitude towards him hadcompletely changed, concretely as well as abstractly, for now she satcosily and contentedly by his side, instead of perching herself a yardaway, and allowing the winter winds to emphasize the coldness that hadexisted between them. This wonderful improvement in the mentalatmosphere made them oblivious to a change in the outer air untilHelene remarked upon the peculiar odour of smoke about them. Thisincreased until it became almost stifling. Evidently the blazing brushheap, lit by the hand of some thrifty settler, had extended furtherthan he was aware of. The smoke blew past them, and they were in themidst of that vividly picturesque spectacle--a fire in the forest. Theflames ran swiftly up the dry, dead limbs, turning trees into hugeblazing torches, and the light underbrush beneath them took onbeautiful and fantastic shapes of fire. The gray sky was illuminedwith fiery banners, while, like scarlet-clothed imps at a carnival,the flames leaped and danced among the twigs and smaller branches.
The hot breeze blowing on her cheek filled Helene with sudden alarm,and Edward urged the horse to a quicker pace. But the frightenedcreature needed no urging. With a great shuddering leap he sprangforward as though a thousand fire-fiends from the infernal regions hadbeen after him. Helene uttered a half-suppre
ssed shriek, and clungstrenuously to Edward's arm. Suddenly he gave a loud gasp of dismay.On the road directly before them a pile of brush had caught the blazeand stretched before their startled eyes like a burning bridge. Allattempts to stop or turn around were useless. The horse was whollybeyond control. For a moment they were enveloped in smoke and flame,shut into a fiery furnace, from which an instant later they emergedfrom danger, but with a badly singed steed and an unpleasant odour offire upon them. Edward had pushed Helene to the bottom of thecarriage, and flung the robe over her. Now he drew her trembling, andsobbing a little, back to his side. She was shaking excessively, andin order to restore her equanimity there was clearly nothing else tobe done but to hold her closely in his arms, let fall his face tohers, and breathe in her ear every word of sympathy and comfort thatcame to his mind. She lay weakly with closed eyes upon his breast,while the excitement in her pulses gradually died away. When sheopened her eyes the short November day was nearly at its close, andYork was in sight. She drew away to her own corner of the seat, notwith any visible blushes, for her complexion never lost its warmwhiteness, but her eyes glowed, and her lips were 'like a thread ofscarlet.'
"I am glad Rose was not with us," she said, feeling a pressing need tosay something, and in default of anything better to say, "as she iseven more nervous than I am."
"Yes, I am _very_ glad she was not with us," assented Edward, with anunusual amount of brotherly fervour, while he turned his horse in thedirection of the only available hotel in the Capital, where thewearied travellers were content to rest for a few days before settingout in search of a new home.
An Algonquin Maiden: A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada Page 9
