“Good afternoon, Mr. Mcpherson,” she greeted him. It was highly unlikely that any word of his sighting of her would drift elsewhere. He was a close-mouthed individual who preferred his own company and took no interest in other people’s affairs.
“Hi, ma’am,” he replied dourly, glancing askance at the automobile. He did not consider anything but a horse suitable for transport. Not that he owned one. God had given him two good feet and he used them.
She reached the deserted spot where all vehicles, horse-drawn or otherwise, had to be left for reasons of terrain, and continued on foot. It was much cooler by the lake, where a breeze of increasing strength passed across the expanse of cerulean blue water and rustled away fiercely through the tree-tops. She took off her hat as she walked along and swung it in her hand, following the trail that kept close to the lakeside, the old hoof-prints of passing horses hard-baked into the ground. As she progressed, her pace increased and if anything she was stimulated and not tired by the exercise. It was as if she was being borne along by love and when at last she broke away from the lake to go deeper amongst the trees again, she began to run. She ran until she came to the great rocks and boulders that hid the cabin from anyone passing along the trail. Then she stopped, for Peter was sitting high on one of them where he had been watching for her.
“You’re here!”
He clambered down swiftly, lightly clad in dungaree trousers and a blue cotton shirt open at his sun-browned throat. She rushed forward again and reached him as he jumped the last stretch and landed in front of her. Then she was in his arms and they were lost in a madness of kissing as he sought her mouth again and again. He hurried her, still locked in kisses, between the rocks into the clearing where the cabin stood. When it seemed to him that she would have halted, even drawn back from the threshold in spite of being held fast in his embrace, he simply swept her up in his arms, kicked open the door and bore her into the shadowed interior where he set her on her feet.
She gasped when her mouth was freed, her hands flying to her hair in a vain attempt to stop it swirling down about her shoulders as he released it from its pins. Then she clutched at the front of her dress, but with his unique skill that she remembered from the past, he appeared to have loosened the buttons at the back of it with a single sweep of his hand, so that it was already slipping from her shoulders. A tug and it was around her ankles, her waist petticoat with it. She stood there in her chemise and lace-trimmed bloomers and white stockings with pink ribbon garters.
“No, no, no!” She thrust out her hands in a vain attempt to keep him at bay. He merely caught her by the wrists and pulled her close to recapture her mouth with his own until her will melted. She was floating in love. There was no other explanation for finding herself seated on the side of the bed while he knelt to roll down her stockings, not with haste now, but with care as if to reveal her legs was an unveiling. Somehow she managed to find her voice.
“I came to talk.” Her voice sounded weak and shaky to her own ears.
“Of love.” It was a statement made categorically by him on her behalf. Her left foot was free of its stocking and he raised it to kiss her toes.
“Of love and going away,” she ventured.
“Our going away.” Again a statement.
“No.” She felt as if her heart was in her throat. He was kissing her right toes now and her whole foot was quivering. Her fingers dug into the bedclothes on either side of where she was sitting, and again the sensual waves passed through her as she struggled to utter what she had to say. “Alan is returning to England. I have to go with him. I can’t let little Harry be taken from me.”
Her words seemed to hang in the air almost as if taking shape and becoming tangible. Their effect on him was terrible to see. White-faced and appalled he became motionless, a kneeling statue with his lips still bent over her foot cupped in his hand. Outside the hot summer wind whirled with gathering strength in the tree-tops and around the cabin. Abruptly his head jerked up, fury and pain and disbelief in his eyes. He exclaimed harshly: “You came here to tell me that!”
“It’s an unexpected complication, but it’s not insoluble,” she cried in a rush.
He returned her feet to the floor and sat back on his heels, still staring at her. “What do you have in mind?” he questioned bitterly, setting his hands across his thighs with elbows jutting. “Am I to accompany you to England and become an English gentleman? Am I to leave the freedom I have found to scrape a living in a land where my knowledge and experience would be superfluous? Nobody knows more about horses than the English. Do you think Alan would let his son come to a back-street tenement or a stable-hand’s quarters? I think not. So what is your solution to this new turn of events?”
She sat numb. Without realising it, he had closed irretrievably the one loophole that she had felt remained open to them. He had not seriously believed that she expected him to surrender the new life in a new land that he had made for himself. What he had said had been an outlet for anger and disappointment that once again some barrier had arisen between them, something that he saw as being solely of her creation this time. How could she have considered even briefly that she had any right to crush his pride in his present achievements, the success he was making of his chosen trade, and even his whole individuality by persuading him to go to England where most likely conditions for him would be just as he had predicted. She was only thankful that she had not voiced it. It left her with the alternative suggestion that she had hoped would never be needed.
Her soft whisper came brokenly. “I’m asking you to wait a while longer for me to be free to share your life.”
He rose slowly to his feet and stood looking down at her. “How long?” His tone was hard and uncompromising.
She tried to answer him but tears were springing to her eyes and constricting her vocal cords. All that came from her was a sudden deep cry of desolation as she dropped her face into her hands, head bowed and her knees drawn up with her feet on tiptoe as if huddling into a private misery that he could not share. Her noisy sobbing was beyond any control. She, who tried always to dispense with the uselessness of tears, was now unable to hold back a gushing flow. With her gleaming fair hair hanging loose and in her half-clad state, she looked unprotected and vulnerable, making him feel he had never loved her more. He gave a groan of despair that she should suffer and sat down on the bed beside her to draw her close.
“Don’t cry, Lisa!” he appealed urgently, kissing her brow and temple and whatever part of her face was not hidden by her hands. “I’m not angry with you. I’m just mad at every damn thing that’s contriving to keep us apart. How long do you want me to wait? Three months while you sort things out in England? Or is it six months that’s needed for a divorce over there? Don’t say a year. I wouldn’t know how to get through another year without you.”
She took her hands away from her face and flung her arms about his neck, pressing her tear-wet cheek against his. Her sob-choked words tumbled forth. “More than a year. Long enough for my child to grow to an age when he could cross the ocean from England to visit me. Wherever we were living in the States I could go to New York to meet him from the ship and see him off again.”
He broke her limpet-hold about him and shook her by the shoulders as he glared furiously at her. “Are you asking me to wait another six or seven years for you?”
“I’ll not stay with Alan during that time,” she assured him frantically. “My marriage to him will be ended.” Her eyes were so aswim with tears that she could barely focus and she took his face between her violently trembling hands. “I’ll work and save somehow to see you at least once or twice until we can be together for always.”
“I’m through with waiting! I want you now! You’re letting another woman’s child keep us apart. What of our children? Are they never to be born?”
She shrank into herself again, doubling forward distractedly. “Try to understand, I beg you.”
He sprang to his feet and began to pace b
ack and forth, running his fingers through his hair. “I can’t bring myself to believe you would do this to us. We were given a second chance to be together and you are prepared to throw it away.”
“No! That’s not how it is!” She thrust herself up from the side of the bed and took a step towards him. “I’m twenty-two and you are twenty-six. We’re young. We’ll still be in our prime when I can come to you. You mustn’t speak as if decades are going to divide us!”
He half turned to make some maddened reply and his glance chanced to take in the window. His whole expression changed from one of frustration and rage to sheer dismay. “Herne Gud!” he exclaimed forcibly in his own tongue. Then he threw himself forward to pull the door open and rushed outside.
She saw the billowing smoke without grasping immediately in her state of distress what it portended. It came to her in the next instant when she comprehended the meaning of the ominous crackling in the distance which the stout walls of the cabin and their own tempestuous discourse had kept at bay.
“A forest fire!” she exclaimed in alarm as he came darting back in again.
“Gather up all the blankets,” he instructed, grabbing a small axe from the shelf of tools to thrust it through his belt. “Move fast! I’ll fetch my horse. We must get out of here and to the lake at once!”
She tossed on her dress, not taking any precious time to fasten its back buttons, and thrust her bare feet into her shoes. Then she ripped the blankets from the bed and two heavy Indian ones of rich pattern ornamenting the walls. Last of all she snatched up her petticoat and stockings from the floor where they lay, adding them to the roughly folded bundle of blankets that filled her arms. In her haste she forgot she had accidentally dropped her hat onto the grass when Peter had picked her up in his arms on her arrival. With her range of vision hampered by the large bundle she carried, she stepped on the straw crown and crushed it as she ran to meet him coming around the corner of the cabin, leading his frightened horse by the bridle. It was wide-eyed and snorting, tossing its head at the billowing smoke and the unmistakable stench of the wind-borne fire filling the air. Peter needed all his strength to keep the animal in check.
“Keep close to me,” he told her, hastening his charge between the boulders in the direction of the trail.
She obeyed, running in the wake of the horse and him. The blankets were heavier than she could have imagined possible, the weight seeming to threaten her arms in their sockets, but there was no chance for Peter to give her aid, for the horse was struggling to get its head and bolt. Behind them the fire was getting closer. It was as if the iron door of a giant furnace had been swung wide to release its roar and scorching power upon them. The sweat ran from every pore of her body with exertion and heat; the shoulders of her unfastened dress had slipped to cut painfully across the top of her arms; but she did not dare stop to adjust them.
The lake came in sight amid the foliage ahead. Peter, reaching the water’s edge ahead of her, splashed into it with the horse and gave it a mighty whack on its rump that sent it leaping forward into the deeper water where it began to swim away. He waded back swiftly to where she stood stunned with horror at the sight of the blazing trees that bordered the lake to the east and to the west, and had completely cut off the track that she had taken earlier. Behind her, to the north, the fire was leaping forward to join up in a dreadful semicircle of flame. Only the south shore of the lake was as yet untouched.
“Will the fire reach the sawmill and the settlement?” she cried out in terror.
“No. The wind’s blowing in the opposite direction.” He did not pull her into the water as she had expected, but rushed past her to push amongst the undergrowth where he began to haul forth a rowboat. She dropped the blankets to give him a helping hand. They were both coughing from the smoke.
“Does this boat belong to the cabin?” she asked breathlessly, her lungs hurting.
“Yes. Thank God we were in time to reach it ahead of the flames.”
As it slid into the water, he lifted her into it, picked up the blankets and tossed them in after her. One of her stockings was lost in the process, gliding away on the ripples. He took the oars and set them in the rollocks and pulled strongly away from the shore. At his instruction she spread a blanket in the bottom of the boat for some comfort and pulled another over her as protection; the folded petticoat made a little pillow for her head. All around them the water spat and hissed as sparks and burning debris plummeted down from the flaring tree-tops swaying in the wind.
He was making for the south end of the lake, hoping that it would escape the fire, but before he was a third of the distance he rested for a few moments on his oars and then pulled them in.
“It’s no use,” he said, “we’ll have to see the fire through from this boat.”
She raised her head and saw that the spread of lake shore where not so long ago she and Minnie and Harry had shared a picnic, was being devoured by the flames, the terrible circle of fire almost complete. The thankful thought flew through her mind that neither Alan nor Minnie would suppose her to be in the forest fire when her absence was discovered, and would be spared anxiety about her. She must hope that they would imagine her to have taken refuge with whomever they might deduce she was visiting.
There was a swish of air above the boat. She screamed out as she saw a blazing branch descending. It landed with a crash that rocked the boat in a firework display of thousands of vivid sparks. She screamed again as the sting of pain from some of them seared her cheek and she heard the frizzling sound of her hair burning.
Peter moved so fast that the branch was knocked out of the boat with barely a scorch mark, and his bare hands extinguished the flicker in her hair almost before she knew it. Taking the axe from his belt, he knocked out the thwart on which he had been seated for the rowing and tossed it overboard. His next move was to spread the blanket on which she had been curled up further along the boat, making more space for them both to lie full length. While she took advantage of the space he had made for her, he dipped the Indian blankets in turn into the lake, wringing out the excess water which was a strenuous task that made the muscles ride in his arms. Skilfully he spread them right across the boat as protective covers. He had to lie on his back beside her to tug the second one into place. They were encased in humid, dusk-like shadow and they turned on their sides to face each other, sharing her little makeshift pillow.
“We’re drifting towards the middle of the lake,” he told her reassuringly. “We’ll be safe.”
“How long before the fire burns itself out or is brought under control?” she questioned anxiously. “Hours and hours? A day and a night?”
“I hope so,” he whispered, moving his lips onto hers and beginning to caress her breasts with a delicious gentleness that was almost unbearable to her. The errant shoulders of her still unfastened dress were drawn down again, and his kisses, slow and subtle and warm with love, passed with it, bringing all her long yearning for him into full flood. She could no more have held back than she could have halted the flames consuming the forest. It was to her as if she had been snatched from death into this haven with the man she loved, a small capsule of time having been specially created for the two of them with all else shut out by the monstrous fire that had lost its power to terrify her.
They undressed each other with tender exploration, she becoming as familiar with his body as he with hers. Their ardent kisses and trailing fingertips and sweet fondling punctuated their love-whispers with sighs of pleasure. Blissful tears trickled from the corners of her eyes when he enfolded her thighs to press a kiss against her that held all the homage of an adoring man for his woman’s ultimate perfection. Quite simultaneously, a kind of wildness entered into their passion as if there was the fear that all they meant to each other could never be assuaged, but when the moment of their belonging came she saw in his eyes, as he saw in hers, a look of pure unbridled joy that nothing had ever surpassed this time in the whole of their lives. He thrust deeper into h
er and wave after wave of ecstasy broke over her, drawing her still further with him into the realms of lasting love.
Night fell but there was no darkness except for the wind-blown pall of smoke; the sky was filled with a red-gold glow as if a sunset had been permanently ensnared, and the lake all around them held the same liquid colour. They slept wrapped in each other’s arms, legs entwined, and then stirred to make love again, sometimes gently, at others with overwhelming passion, but always with some new caress, or touch, or movement to extend their growing experience of shared joys and pleasures that were entirely their own. The pattern of these secret happinesses continued throughout the ensuing hours. Neither had ever felt more loved.
Not long after dawn they became aware of a curious stillness. He folded back the blankets overhead and they raised themselves up to look out. The rising sun shone warm and beatifically upon their shoulders. The wind had dropped completely. The air was almost hushed, although the aroma of charred wood was still all pervading. The smoke was rising straight upwards from smouldering clumps and from the small pockets of flickering fire still in possession of the split stumps of fallen trees, which lay at angles everywhere like a scattered profusion of giant charcoal matches. She gazed around as if scarcely able to believe that this encircling scene of destruction had once been that of a beautiful forest. Peter’s horse stood forlornly on a sandy spit where doubtless the first retreat of the flames had begun some hours before.
“We have to wait awhile yet,” Peter said, drawing her down again. He possessed her for the last time in the boat that was now sun-filled, their limbs agleam in the radiance, her tumbled hair full of golden lights. The bitter-sweetness of their fading idyll gave a wondrous intensity to the final union of his flesh with hers. They remained in soft kissing, his lips on her mouth, her throat and her eyes, before reluctantly they drew apart, her arms loosening a loving hold about him.
What the Heart Keeps Page 27
