But Mr. Sutherland did not hear. He was deep in polemics, rolling out stout threats, that used Scriptural texts as a cudgel, with a zest that testified enjoyment. "The wicked bend their bow," began the rasping voice; but when he cleared his throat, preparatory to the main argument, my thoughts went wandering far from the reader on the steps. As one whose dream is jarred by outward sound, I heard his tones quaver.
"Aye, Frances, "tis you," he said, and away he went, pounding at the sophistries of some straw enemy.
A shadow was on the threshold, and before I had recalled my listless fancy, in tripped Frances Sutherland, herself, feigning not to see me.
The gray eyes were veiled in the misty fashion of those fluffy things women wear, which let through all beauty, but bar out intrusion. I do not mean she wore a veil: veils and frills were not seen among the colonists in those days. But the heavy lashes hung low in the slumbrous, dreamy way that sees all and reveals nothing. Instinctively I started up, with wild thoughts thronging to my lips. At the same moment Mr.
Sutherland did the most chivalrous thing I have seen in homespun or broadcloth.
"Hoots wi" y"r giddy claver," said he, before I had spoken a word; and walking off, he sat down at some distance.
Thereupon his daughter laughed merrily with a whole quiver of dangerous archery about her lips.
"That is the nearest to an untruth I have ever heard him tell," she said, which mightily relieved my embarra.s.sment.
"Why did he say that?" I asked, with my usual stupidity.
"I am sure I cannot say," and looking straight at me, she let go the barbed shaft, that lies hidden in fair eyes for unwary mortals.
"Sit down," she commanded, sinking into the chair I had vacated. "Sit down, Rufus, please!" This with an after-shot of alarm from the heavy lashes; for if a woman"s eyes may speak, so may a man"s, and their language is sometimes bolder.
"Thanks," and I sat down on the arm of that same chair.
For once in my life I had sense to keep my tongue still; for, if I had spoken, I must have let bolt some impetuous thing better left unsaid.
"Rufus," she began, in the low, thrilling tones that had enthralled me from the first, "do you know I was your sole nurse all the time you were delirious?"
"No wonder I was delirious! Dolt, that I was, to have been delirious!"
thought I to myself; but I choked down the foolish rejoinder and endeavored to look as wise as if my head had been ballasted with the weight of a patriarch"s wisdom instead of ballooning about like a kite run wild.
"I think I know all your secrets."
"Oh!" A man usually has some secrets he would rather not share; and though I had not swung the full tether of wild west freedom--thanks solely to her, not to me--I trembled at recollection of the pa.s.ses that come to every man"s life when he has been near enough the precipice to know the sensation of falling without going over.
"You talked incessantly of Miriam and Mr. Hamilton and Father Holland."
"And what did I say about Frances?"
"You said things about Frances that made her tremble."
"Tremble? What a brute, and you waiting on me day and----"
"Hush," she broke in. "Tremble because I am just a woman and not an angel, just a woman and not a star. We women are mortals just as you men are. Sometimes we"re fools as well as mortals, just as you men are; but I don"t think we"re knaves quite so often, because we"re denied the opportunity and hedged about and not tempted."
As she gently stripped away the pretty hypocrisies with which lovers delude themselves and lay up store for disappointment, I began to discount that old belief about truth and knowledge rendering a woman mannish and arrogant and a.s.sertive.
"You men marry women, expecting them to be angels, and very often the angel"s highest ambition is to be considered a doll. Then your hope goes out and your faith----"
"But, Frances," I cried, "if any sensible man had his choice of an angel and a fair, good woman----"
"Be sure to say fair, or he"d grumble because he hadn"t a doll," she laughed.
"No levity! If he had choice of angels and stars and a good woman, he"d choose the woman. The star is mighty far away and cold and steely. The angel"s a deal too perfect to know sympathy with faults and blunders. I tell you, Little Statue, life is only moil and toil, unless love trans.m.u.tes the base metal of hard duty into the pure gold of unalloyed delight."
"That"s why I tremble. I must do more than angel or star! Oh, Rufus, if I can only live up to what you think I am--and you can live up to what I think you are, life will be worth living."
"That"s love"s leverage," said I.
Then there was silence; for the sun had set and the father was no longer reading. Shadows deepened into twilight, and twilight into gloaming. And it was the hour when the brooding spirit of the vast prairie solitudes fills the stillness of night with voiceless eloquence. Why should I attempt to transcribe the silent music of the prairie at twilight, which every plain-dweller knows and none but a plain-dweller may understand?
What wonder that the race native to this boundless land hears the rustling of spirits in the night wind, the sigh of those who have lost their way to the happy hunting-ground, and the wail of little ones whose feet are bruised on the shadow trail? What wonder the gauzy northern lights are bands of marshaling warriors and the stars torches lighting those who ride the plains of heaven? Indeed, I defy a white man with all the discipline of science and reason to restrain the wanderings of mystic fancy during the hours of sunset on the prairie.
There is, I affirm, no such thing as time for lovers. If they have watches and clocks, the wretched things run too fast; and if the sun himself stood still in sympathy, time would not be long. So I confess I have no record of time that night Frances Sutherland returned to her home and Mr. Sutherland kept guard at the door. When he had pa.s.sed the threshold impatiently twice, I recollected with regret that it was impossible to read theology in the dark. The third time he thrust his head in.
"Mind y"rselves," he called. "I hear men coming frae the river, a pretty hour, indeed, for visitin". Frances, go ben and see yon back window"s open!"
"The soldiers from the fort," cried Frances with a little gasp.
"Don"t move," said I. "They can"t see me here. It"s dark. I want to hear what they say and the window is open. Indeed, Frances, I"m an expert at window-jumping," and I had begun to tell her of my sc.r.a.pe with Louis"
drunken comrades in Fort Douglas, when I heard Mr. Sutherland"s grating tones according the newcomers a curious welcome. "Ye swearin", blasphemin", rampag"us, carousin" infidel, ye"ll no darken my doorway this night. Y"r French gab may be foul wi" oaths for all I ken; but ye"ll no come into my hoose! An" you, Sir, a blind leader o" the blind, a disciple o" Beelzebub, wi" y"r Babylonish idolatries, wi" y"r incense that fair stinks in the nostrils o" decent folk, wi" y"r images and mummery and crossin" o" y"rsel", wi" y"r pagan, popish practises, wi"
y"r skirts and petticoats, I"ll no hae ye on my premises, no, not an" ye leave y"r religion outside! An" you, Meester Hamilton, a respectable Protestant, I"m fair surprised to see ye in sic" company."
""Tis Eric and Father Holland and Laplante," I shouted, springing to my feet and rushing to the doorway, but Frances put herself before me.
"Keep back," she whispered. "The priest and Mr. Hamilton have been here before; but father would not let them in. The other man may be a De Meuron. Be careful, Rufus! There"s a price on your head."
"Ho--ho--my _Ursus Major_, prime guardian of _Ursa Major_, first of the heavenly constellations in the north," insolently laughed Louis Laplante through the dusk.
"Let me pa.s.s, Frances," I begged, thrusting her gently aside, but her trembling hands still clung to my arm.
"Impertinent rascal," rasped the irate Scotchman. "I"d have ye understand my name"s Sutherland, not _Major Ursus_. I"ll no bide wi"
y"r impudence! Leave this place----"
"The Bruin growls," interrupted Louis with a laugh, and I heard Mr.
Sutherland"s gasp of amazed rage at the lengths of the Frenchman"s insolence.
"I must, dearest," I whispered, disengaging the slender hands from my arm; and I flung out into the dusk.
In the gloom, my approach was unnoticed; and when I came upon the group, Father Holland had laid his hand upon Mr. Sutherland"s shoulder and in a low, tense voice was uttering words, which--thank an all-bountiful Providence!--have no sectarian limits.
"And the King shall answer and say unto them, "I was a stranger and ye took me not in: naked and ye clothed me not: sick and in prison and ye visited me not. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me"----"
"Dinna con Holy Writ to me, Sir," interrupted Mr. Sutherland, throwing the priest"s hand off and jerking back.
Then Louis Laplante saw me. There was a long, low whistle.
"Ye daft gommerel," gasped Mr. Sutherland, facing me with unutterable disgust. "Ye daft gommerel! A" my care and fret, waste--gane clean to waste. I wash m" hands o" ye----"
But Louis had knocked the Scotchman aside and tumbled into my arms, half laughing, half crying and altogether as hysterical as was his wont.
"I pay you back at las", my comrade! Ha--old solemncholy! You thought the bird of pa.s.sage, he come not back at all! But the birds return! So does Louis! He decoy-duck the whole covey! You generous? No more not generous than the son of a seigneur, mine enemy! You give life? He give life! You give liberty! So does Louis! You help one able help himself?