"It is the Leaf Bud singing."
"A love song?"
"Yes, in Cree."
She raised her head, so that her eyes were wide open, and looking at him.
"Since we came up here all this wonderful world has been promising song for me, Roger. And since you came back to me it has been singing--singing--singing--every hour of night and day. Have you ever dreamed of leaving it, Roger--of going down into that world of towns and cities of which Father John has told me so much?"
"Would you like to go there, Nada?"
"Only to look upon it, and come away. I want to live in the forests, where I found you. Always and always, Roger."
She raised herself on tip-toe, and kissed him.
"I want to live near Yellow Bird and Sun Cloud--please--Mister Jolly Roger--I do. And Father John will go with us. And we"ll be so happy there all together, Yellow Bird and Sun Cloud and Giselle and I--oh!"
His arms had tightened so suddenly that the little cry came from her.
"And yet--I may have to leave you for a little time, Nada. But it will not be for long. What are five years, when all life reaches out a paradise before us? They are nothing--nothing--and will pa.s.s swiftly--"
"Yes, they will pa.s.s swiftly," she said, so gently that scarce did he hear.
But on his breast she gave a little sob which would not choke itself back, a sob which bravely she smiled through a moment later, and which he--knowing that it was best--made as if he had not heard.
And so, this night, while Father John and Peter waited and watched in the cabin, did they plan their future in the company of the stars.
CHAPTER XX
The Sabbath was a day of glory and peace in the Burntwood country. The sun rose warm and golden, the birds were singing, and never had the air seemed sweeter to Father John when he came out quietly from the cabin and breathed it in the early break of dawn. Best of all he loved this very beginning of day, before darkness was quite gone, when the world seemed to be awakening mid sleepy whisperings and sounds came clearly from a long distance.
This morning he heard the barking of a dog, a mile away it must have been, and Peter, who followed close beside him, p.r.i.c.ked up his ears at the sound of it. Father John had noted Peter"s vigilance, the cautious expectancy with which he was always sniffing the air, and the keen alertness of his eyes and ears. McKay had explained the reason for it.
And this morning, as they made their way down to the pool at the creekside, Peter"s ceaseless watching for danger held a deeper significance for Father John. All through the night, in spite of his faith and his words of consolation, he was thinking of the menace which was following McKay, and which eventually must catch up with him.
And yet, how short a time was five years! Looking backward, each five years of his life seemed but a yesterday. It was eight times five years ago that a sweet-faced girl had first filled his life, as Nada filled Jolly Roger"s now, and through the thirty years since he had lost her he could still hear her voice as clearly as though he had held her in his arms only a few hours ago, so swift had been the pa.s.sing of time.
But looking ahead, and not backward, five years seemed an eternity of time, and the dread of it was in Father John"s heart as he stood at the side of the pool, with the first pink glow of sunrise coming to him over the forest-tops.
Five years, and he was an old man now. A long and dreary wait it would be for him. But for youth, the glorious youth of Roger and Nada, it would seem very short when in later years they looked back upon it. And for a time as he contemplated the long span of life that lay behind him, and the briefness of that which lay ahead, a yearning selfishness possessed the soul of Father John, an almost savage desire to hold those five years away from the violation of the law--not alone for Nada"s sake and Roger McKay"s--but for his own. In this twilight of a tragic life a great happiness had come to him in the love of these two, and thought of its menace, its desecration by a pitiless and mistaken justice, roused in him something that was more like the soul of a fighting man than the spirit of a missioner of G.o.d.
Vainly he tried to stamp out the evil of this resentment, for evil he believed it to be. And shame possessed him when he saw the sweet glory in Nada"s face later that morning, and the happiness that was in Roger McKay"s. Yet was that aching place in his heart, and the hidden fear which he could not vanquish.
And that day, it seemed to him, his lips gave voice to lies. For, being Sunday, the wilderness folk gathered from miles about, and he preached to them in the little mission house which they had helped him to build of logs in the clearing. Partly he spoke in Cree, and partly in English, and his message was one of hope and inspiration, pointing out the silver linings that always lay beyond the darkness of clouds. To McKay, holding Nada"s hand in his own as they listened, Father John"s words brought a great and comforting faith. And in Nada"s eyes and voice as she led in Cree the song, "Nearer, My G.o.d, to Thee," he heard and saw the living fire of that faith, and had Breault come in through the open doorway then he would have accepted him calmly as the beginning of that sacrifice which he had made up his mind to make.
In the afternoon, when the wilderness people had gone, Father John heard again the story of Yellow Bird, for Nada was ever full of questions about her, and for the first time the Missioner learned of the inspiration which the Indian woman"s sorcery had been to Jolly Roger.
"It was foolish," McKay apologized, in spite of the certainty and faith which he saw shining in Nada"s eyes. "But--it helped me."
"It wasn"t foolish," replied Nada quickly. "Yellow Bird _did_ come to me.
And--_she knew_."
"No true faith is folly," said Father John, in his soft, low voice.
"The great fact is that Yellow Bird believed. She was inspired by a great confidence, and confidence and faith give to the mind a power which it is utterly incapable of possessing without them. I believe in the mind, children. I believe that in some day to come it will reach those heights where it will unlock the mystery of life itself to us. I have seen many strange things in my forty-odd years in the wilderness, and not the least of these have been the achievements of the primitive mind. And it seems to me, Roger, that Yellow Bird told you much that has come true. And has it occurred to you--"
He stopped, knowing that the cloud of unrest which was almost fear in his heart was driving him to say these things.
"What, father," questioned Nada, bending toward him.
"I was about to express a thought which suggests an almost childish curiosity, and you will laugh at me, my dear. I am wondering if it has occurred to Roger the mysterious "Country Beyond" of which Yellow Bird dreamed might be the great country down there--south--_beyond the border_--the United States?"
Something which he could not control seemed to drive the words from his lips, and in an instant he saw that Nada had seized upon their significance. Her eyes widened. The blue in them grew darker, and Roger observed her fingers grip suddenly in the softness of her dress as she turned from Father John to look at him.
"Or--it might be China, or Africa, or the South Seas," he tried to laugh, remembering his old visions. "It might be--anywhere."
Nada"s lips trembled, as if she were about to speak; and then very quietly she sat, with her hands tightly clasped in her lap, and Father John knew she was not expressing the thought in her heart when she said,
"Someday I want to tell Yellow Bird how much I love her."
Now in these hours since he and his master had come to the Burntwood it seemed to Peter that he had lost something very great, for in his happiness McKay had taken but scant notice of him, and Nada seemed to have found a greater joy than that which a long time ago she had found in his comradeship. So now, as she saw him lying in his loneliness a short distance away, Nada suddenly ran to him, and together they went into the thick screen of the balsams, Peter yipping joyously, and Nada without so much as turning her head in the direction of Roger and Father John. But even in that bird-like swiftness with which she had left them, Father John had caught the look in her eyes.
"I have made a mistake," he confessed humbly. "I have sinned, because in her I have roused the temptation to urge you to fly away with her--down there--south. She is a woman, and being a woman she has infinite faith in Yellow Bird, for Yellow Bird helped to give you to her. She believes--"
"And I--I--also believe," said McKay, staring at the green balsams.
"And yet--it is better for you to remain. G.o.d means that judgment and happiness should come in their turn."
Jolly Roger rose to his feet, facing the south.
"It is a temptation, father. It would be hard to give her up--now. If Breault would only wait a little while. But if he comes--_now_--"
He walked away slowly, following through the balsams where Nada and Peter had gone. Father John watched him go, and a trembling smile came to his lips when he was alone. In his heart he knew he was a coward, and that these young people had been stronger than he. For in their happiness and the faith which he had falsely built up in them they had resigned themselves to the inevitable, while he, in these moments of cowardice, had shown them the way to temptation. And yet as he stood there, looking in the direction they had gone, he felt no remorse because of what he had done, and a weight seemed to have lifted itself from his shoulders.
For a time the more selfish instincts of the man rose in him, fighting down the sacrificial humility of the great faith of which he was a messenger. The new sensation thrilled him, and in its thrill he felt his heart beating a little faster, and hope rising in him. Five years were a long time--_for him_. That was the thought which kept repeating itself over and over in his brain, and with it came that other thought, that self-preservation was the first law of existence, and therefore could not be a sin. Thus did Father John turn traitor to his spoken words, though his calm and smiling face gave no betrayal of it when Nada and Roger returned to the cabin an hour later, their arms filled with red bakneesh vines and early wildflowers.
Nada"s cheeks were as pink as the bakneesh, and her eyes as blue as the rock-violets she wore on her breast.
And Father John knew that Jolly Roger was no longer oppressed by the fear of a menace which he was helpless to oppose, for there was something very confident in the look of his eyes and the manner in which they rested upon Nada.
Peter alone saw the mysterious thing which happened in the early evening. He was with Nada in her room. And she was the old Nada again, hugging his s.h.a.ggy head in her arms, and whispering to him in the old, excited way. And strange memory of a bundle came back to Peter, for very quietly, as if unseen ears might be listening to her, Nada gathered many things in a pile on the table, and made another bundle.
This bundle she thrust under her bed, just as a long time ago she had thrust a similar bundle under a banksian clump in the meadowland below Cragg"s Ridge.
Father John went to his bed very early, and he was thinking of Breault.
The Hudson"s Bay Company post was only twelve miles away, and Breault would surely go there before questing from cabin to cabin for his victim.
So it happened that a little after midnight he rose without making a sound, and by the light of a candle wrote a note for Nada, saying he had business at the post that day, and without wakening them had made an early start. This note Nada read to McKay when they sat at breakfast.