Part 22 (1/2)
”Dear Wanda, forgive me; I am expecting too much of you. It is exceedingly cruel of me to make you suffer so.”
”Wanda!” called one of a group of children, ”come and swing us, please.”
”Don't go,” whispered Edward decisively. He himself strode over to them, lifted one chubby youngster after another into the huge swing, and sent them flying into the tree-tops. It was a form of pastime that he detested; but he was not going to have Wanda at the beck and call of ”those little ruffians.” At last, with the sympathetic a.s.surance that if they wanted any more swinging they were at liberty to get it from each other, he left them, and rejoined the Indian girl.
”Wanda!” said Helene, as she spread a shawl on the ground, ”just step across to our carriage, will you, and bring me a cus.h.i.+on you will find there.”
”You must not!” declared Edward, in a low savage whisper, preparing to go himself; but the girl was off like a swallow before the wind. He met her on the way back, took the cus.h.i.+on from her, and presented it to its owner with a bow of exaggerated deference. Helene's black brows expressed the utmost astonishment; but as she confronted Edward's wrathful gaze her own eyes caught fire, and the two who once had been so nearly lovers now manifested no other emotion toward each other save repressed and concentrated hate.
”I wish you to understand,” said the exasperated young man to Wanda, as he accompanied her to dinner, ”that you are not a servant, and you mustn't obey anyone's commands.”
”No,” was the slow reply, ”I shall obey no one's commands, not even yours;” and with these words she turned and fled into the woods. The ever-present desire to escape had conquered at last.
”How kind you are to that unfortunate girl!” observed the lady next him at dinner. ”She must try your patience so much.”
Edward admitted that his patience had been tried; but he was in no mood to expatiate upon the subject. He had a very slight idea of what he was eating and drinking, or of what all the talking was about. The suns.h.i.+ne flecking the open clearing gave him a feeling that he would soon have a dreadful headache. After it was over he lay down, and tried to forget his troubles in a noontide nap. Gradually the voices about him softened and died away. For a moment he was floating upon the still waters of sleep, and then he drifted back to sh.o.r.e. Opening his eyes he found himself alone with Helene, who was asleep among her wrappings at a little distance. The rest had strayed away in pairs and groups, out of hearing if not out of sight. The unconscious figure seemed clothed in an atmosphere of ethereal sweetness, and Edward caught himself wondering whether the root of an affection, whose life is years long, is ever removed from the heart, unless the heart is removed with it. He began seriously to doubt, not his constancy to Wanda, but his inconstancy to Helene. Suddenly she opened her eyes and caught his glance. He withdrew it at once, and in the embarra.s.sment of the moment made some inane remark upon the beauty of the day. Helene rose with deliberation, put one white hand to the well-brushed head, trim and s.h.i.+ning as a raven's wing, and with the utmost tranquillity answered ”yes.” Certainly she had the most irritating way in the world of p.r.o.nouncing the words which usually sound sweetest from a woman's lips. He did not wait to continue a conversation so unpropitiously begun, but went off on a lonely exploring tramp along the sh.o.r.e.
Late in the afternoon as he was returning, he noticed a nondescript figure sitting solitary on the bank, which, as he approached resolved itself into the superb outline of his Indian love. Unconscious of observation she threw herself backward, in an att.i.tude as remarkable for its beauty as for its unconventionality. She seemed to be luxuriating with a sort of animal content in the brightness of the suns.h.i.+ne, the softness of the odorous breeze, and the warmth of the water in which her slim bare feet were dabbling; she dug her brown fingers in the earth, as though the very touch of the soil was intense delight. The hated dress was reduced to ruinous pink rags, which became her untamed beauty as the habiliments of civilization never could have done. Her slowly approaching lover viewed her with mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and horror, while deep in his heart flowed the dark; current of a great despair. Hearing his footsteps she nerved herself for the expected reproaches, which he knew were worse than useless; but seeing in his face nothing but undisguised admiration, she sprang lightly to her feet and threw herself upon his neck. Edward kissed her, but it was with a thrill of ineffable self-contempt, and a sharp consciousness that the only charm this girl possessed for him was that she allowed him to kiss her. Then he drew away and brushed with fastidious glove the dust his coat retained from contact with her shoulder.
”See what I have found!” she exclaimed, holding up a small trinket that glittered in the sunlight. ”It belongs to the Moon-in-a-black-cloud.”
It was a little gold locket, which he had often noticed on the neck of Helene. Shortly before Wanda's abrupt flight, she had pointed with childish curiosity to the slender bright chain clearly visible beneath the transparent folds of the black gown, and the young lady had obligingly drawn the locket from its secret place upon her heart, for the gratification of its admirer. Left for a time on the outside of her dress, one of the tiny links must have severed, and the pretty trinket slipped to the ground unnoticed by its owner. The young man in whose hand it now lay was tempted to a dishonourable action. He had often begged Helene to show him the contents of this locket--a favour which had uniformly been denied. Now the opportunity was his without the asking. Nothing rewarded his curiosity save a lock of yellow hair, probably cut from the head of Rose. Queer fancy, he thought, for one girl to cherish the tresses of another. Suddenly he was struck by an idea that sent the blood throbbing to his temples. He examined the tress a second time. The bright hair growing upon his sister's head he knew had a reddish tinge, and its silky length terminated in ring-like curls. This was short and straight, of a pale colour, and showed by its unevenness that it had been ”s.h.i.+ngled.” His heart beat as though it would burst. ”You must take this back to its owner,” he said imperatively.
Wanda slipped her hand in his. ”We will go together,” she said.
He glanced at her bare feet and ruined raiment, and realized with a burning flush that he was thoroughly ashamed of her. No, he could not take the hand of his future wife and face that crowd of curious worldlings. The mere touch of her soiled fingers was repugnant to him.
She seemed like some coa.r.s.e weed, whose vivid hues he might admire in pa.s.sing, but which he would shrink from wearing on his person.
”It will be better for you to go alone,” he replied. ”Don't tell the lady that anyone beside yourself has seen the locket. I will come presently.”
But he lingered a long time after she left him, drinking against his will the sharp waters of bitter-sweet reflection. There came back to him an afternoon a year ago, when his sister Eva, out of childish love of mischief, had stolen up behind him, and cut off the lock of hair which fell over his brow.
”Mere masculine vanity,” she had said, as the scissors snapped. He had sprung up instantly, and pursued her as she fled shrieking down the avenue. Helene, who was the only other occupant of the room had looked almost shocked at their conduct, and his pet lock of hair had mysteriously disappeared. Since then during how many days and nights had it been rising and falling upon the proud bosom, that he knew very well would be cold in death before it would give evidence of a quickened heart-beat in his presence. The knowledge he had gained by the discovery of the locket made Helene dangerously dear to him, and yet relieved him of not a particle of his duty towards Wanda. He saw neither of the girls again that day, but he carried home with him a stinging memory of both. Late that night he was pacing his room with sick heart and aching head, while in the next apartment Rose was a.s.suring herself that the picnic had been a great success. ”Really,”
she meditated, ”nothing could possibly be worse--or better--than the way in which Wanda behaved.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE COMMODORE SURRENDERS.
A few weeks later there was another excursion to the emerald glooms of the forest, but this was limited in number to the Macleods and DeBerczys, with a few of their intimate friends. Wanda was absent on one of her indefinite expeditions--indefinite in length as well as in object, though the wigwam of her foster-feather was one of the points of interest visited by the party. Conspicuous among the numerous Indians in the settlement in the neighbourhood of Orillia was the last of the Algonquins, partly because of the pathos which attaches to the sole survivor in any region of a nearly extinct race, partly because of the mantle of traditional glory that had fallen upon him from the shoulders of valorous ancestors. He declined to join the revellers at their midday feasting under the trees, but his unexpected appearance afterwards suggested a pleasant subst.i.tute for the noon-day siesta.
”Talk about the storied memories of the past, in the old world,” said Edward, leaning back on the mossy sward, and gazing up through green branches to the blue heaven, ”this country has had its share of them, and here is the man,” clapping a friendly hand on the Indian's shoulder, ”who can tell us about them.”
”Ah, do!” implored Herbert and Eva.
”Ah, don't!” entreated their father. ”If there's anything that spoils the sylvan shades for me, it is to learn that they were once the scene of battle axes and blood spilling, and such like gruesomeness.”
”But we _ought_ to know about it,” said Helene. ”It's history.”
”That makes it all the worse. If it were fiction I wouldn't care.”