Part 32 (1/2)
I saw all this; but ere I had finished my first hurried glance I had accepted her, as always one must, just as she was; had accepted her surroundings, preposterously impossible as they all were from any logical point of view, as fitting to herself and to her humor. It was not for me to ask how or why she did these things. She had done them; because, here they were; and here was she. We had found England's woman on the Columbia!
”Yes,” said she at length, slowly, ”yes, I now believe it to be fate.”
She had not yet smiled. I took her hand and held it long. I felt glad to see her, and to take her hand; it seemed pledge of friends.h.i.+p; and as things now were shaping, I surely needed a friend.
At last, her face flus.h.i.+ng slightly, she disengaged her hand and motioned me to a seat. But still we stood silent for a few moments.
”Have you _no_ curiosity?” said she at length.
”I am too happy to have curiosity, my dear Madam.”
”You will not even ask me why I am here?” she insisted.
”I know. I have known all along. You are in the pay of England. When I missed you at Montreal, I knew you had sailed on the _Modeste_ for Oregon We knew all this, and planned for it. I have come across by land to meet you. I have waited. I greet you now!”
She looked me now clearly in the face. ”I am not sure,” said she at length, slowly.
”Not sure of what, Madam? When you travel on England's wars.h.i.+p,” I smiled, ”you travel as the guest of England herself. If, then, you are not for England, in G.o.d's name, _whose friend are you?”_
”Whose friend am I?” she answered slowly. ”I say to you that I do not know. Nor do I know who is my friend. A friend--what is that? I never knew one!”
”Then be mine. Let me be your friend. You know my history. You know about me and my work. I throw my secret into your hands. You will not betray me? You warned me once, at Montreal. Will you not s.h.i.+eld me once again?”
She nodded, smiling now in an amused way. ”Monsieur always takes the most extraordinary times to visit me! Monsieur asks always the most extraordinary things! Monsieur does always the most extraordinary acts!
He takes me to call upon a gentleman in a night robe! He calls upon me himself, of an evening, in dinner dress of hides and beads--”
”'Tis the best I have, Madam!” I colored, but her eye had not criticism, though her speech had mockery.
”This is the costume of your American savages,” she said. ”I find it among the most beautiful I have ever seen. Only a man can wear it. You wear it like a man. I like you in it--I have never liked you so well.
Betray you, Monsieur? Why should I? How could I?”
”That is true. Why should you? You are Helena von Ritz. One of her breeding does not betray men or women. Neither does she make any journeys of this sort without a purpose.”
”I had a purpose, when I started. I changed it in mid-ocean. Now, I was on my way to the Orient.”
”And had forgotten your report to Mr. Pakenham?” I shook my head.
”Madam, you are the guest of England.”
”I never denied that,” she said. ”I was that in Was.h.i.+ngton. I was so in Montreal. But I have never given pledge which left me other than free to go as I liked. I have studied, that is true--but I have _not_ reported.”
”Have we not been fair with you, Baroness? Has my chief not proved himself fair with you?”
”Yes,” she nodded. ”You have played the game fairly, that is true.”
”Then you will play it fair with us? Come, I say you have still that chance to win the grat.i.tude of a people.”
”I begin to understand you better, you Americans,” she said irrelevantly, as was sometimes her fancy. ”See my bed yonder. It is that couch of husks of which Monsieur told me! Here is the cabin of logs.
There is the fireplace. Here is Helena von Ritz--even as you told me once before she sometime might be. And here on my wrists are the imprints of your fingers! What does it mean, Monsieur? Am I not an apt student? See, I made up that little bed with my own hands! I--Why, see, I can cook! What you once said to me lingered in my mind. At first, it was matter only of curiosity. Presently I began to see what was beneath your words, what fullness of life there might be even in poverty. I said to myself, 'My G.o.d! were it not, after all, enough, this, if one be loved?' So then, in spite of myself, without planning, I say, I began to understand. I have seen about me here these savages--savages who have walked thousands of miles in a pilgrimage--for what?”
”For what, Madam?” I demanded. ”For what? For a cabin! For a bed of husks! Was it then for the sake of ease, for the sake of selfishness?