Part 11 (1/2)

”They are what brought me over seas,” he said quietly, ”what sent me to De Seviere, what hold me to the tribes that come each year to my doors.”

Maren's lips were parted, the fire of her pa.s.sion in her flaming face.

”Then you know why I come to the woods, why I grieve that the spring is pa.s.sing, why I can scarcely hold my soul in patience through this delay!”

With the suddenness of her words her breath had leaped to a heaving tumult, the wide eyes, so calm, so cool, had filled first with fire and then with a mist. That clouded them like tears.

”Oh, M'sieu!” she cried tensely; ”know you of that country which lies far to the west and which the Indians call the Land of the Whispering Hills?”

”Aye. It lies circling a great lake, blue as the summer skies, its waters forever rippled by the winds of the west which sing in the gra.s.sy vales and over the rounded knolls that stud the region,--a land of waving trees, of high coolness, or rich valleys thick with rank gra.s.ses and abounding with the pelt animals. It is the country of the Athabasca and from it came last year a band of the Chippewas heavily laden with furs. They told fine tales of its beauty. It is for that land you are bound?”

”For that land, M'sieu,” said Maren Le Moyne, and her lips trembled; ”for that virgin G.o.ddess of the dreams of years! I have seen its hills, its waving gra.s.s, wind-blown, its leaping streams,--I have breathed the sweet air of its forests and gazed on its beauties since my early childhood, in dreams, always in dreams, M'sieu, until I could bear the strain no longer. And now, when it beckons almost within my reach, when its very breath seems in my nostrils, I must stop for a year's s.p.a.ce!

You know, M'sieu,--you comprehend?”

She leaned forward looking earnestly into McElroy's eyes, and a surge of painful ecstasy shot to the man's heart, so near she seemed in the suddenly created sympathy of the moment, so near and gracious, so strong in her pure pa.s.sion, so infinitely sweet.

”I know,” he said, and his voice sounded strange in his ears; ”I know every pulse of your heart, Ma'amselle, every longing of your spirit, every pure thought of your mind,--for these many days I have trembled to every vibration that has touched or thrilled you. Oh, Ma'amselle!”

With the surge of that overwhelming thing within him the young man had forgot all things,--that this girl was near a stranger, that he had quaked at his temerity of the gift, forgot all but that she leaned toward him with the mist in her wide eyes, and he strode forward the step between them, his arms reaching out instinctively to enfold her.

With the swiftness of the impulse he swept her into them until the eager face lay on his breast, the smooth black braids pressing his lips with their satiny folds.

For one intoxicating moment he held her, as the primal man takes and holds his woman, tightly against his beating heart as though he would defy the world, lost in a sea of strange new emotions that rolled in golden billows high above his head.

Then from the depths there came a cry that cleared his whirling brain, a very embodiment of startled amaze, of indefinable horror, of mixed intonations.

”M'sieu!”

Maren Le Moyne wrenched herself free and lifted her face to look at him.

It was a warring field.

Upon it lay a great astonishment, a wonder, and a newness. Behind these there came, creeping swiftly with each moment of her startled gaze, an odd excitement that mounted with each panting breath that left his lips, for it was from him that it took its life. Her red mouth dropped apart, showing the gleam of the white teeth between. She looked like a child rudely shaken from its sleep, startled, perhaps vaguely frightened at the strange shapes of familiar things distorted by the vision not yet adjusted.

”M'sieu!” she stammered; ”M'sieu!”

And with her voice McElroy felt the arrested blood rush back to his heart again, for it held no anger. Instead it was full of that startled wonder, and it was as gold to him.

”Maren,” he said, the emotion choking him; ”Maren--” and with that new courage he put both hands on her shoulders and drew her near, looking down into the eyes so near on a level with his own.

Deliberately, slowly, that she might fully catch the meaning of what he was about to do, he drooped his lips until they rested square on the red mouth.

This was the thing he had left the factory for, this was what had drawn him, unconsciously perhaps, to the path along the river's bank, that had made him follow deliberately the light trail of the girl into the woods.

”Maren,” he said, so thrilled that his words shook, ”from this day forth you are mine. Mine only and against the whole world. I have taken you and you are mine.”

He was full of his glory, dominating the dark eyes that had never left his own, and his soul was big within him. He was still very much a boy, this young factor, and the crowning moment of life had him in his grip.

He knew no fear, no thought of her next word or action touched him until she, as deliberately as he had acted, reached up and took both his hands from her shoulders.