His eyebrows went up incredulously. "For me?"
"No, not for you; for anybody. Ever since my guardian allowed me to build the studio--last year--I"ve imagined how easy it would be for some--some hunted person to stay hidden here, almost indefinitely. I"ve tried to fancy it, when I"ve had nothing better to do."
"You don"t seem to have had anything better to do very often," he observed, glancing about the cabin.
"If you mean that I haven"t painted much, that"s quite true. I thought I couldn"t do without a studio--till I got one. But when I"ve come here, I"m afraid it"s generally been to--to indulge in day-dreams."
"Day-dreams of helping prisoners to escape. It wouldn"t be every girl"s fancy, but it"s not for me to complain of that."
"My father would have wanted me to do it," she declared, as if in self-justification. "A woman once helped him to get out of prison."
"Good for her! Who was she?"
Having asked the question lightly, in a boyish impulse to talk, he was surprised to see her show signs of embarra.s.sment.
"She was my mother," she said, after an interval in which she seemed to be making up her mind to give the information.
In the manifest difficulty she had in speaking, Ford sprang to her aid.
"That"s like the old story of Gilbert a Becket--Thomas a Becket"s father, you know."
The historical reference was received in silence, as she bent over the small task she had in hand.
"He married the woman who helped him out of prison," Ford went on, for her enlightenment.
She raised her head and faced him.
"It wasn"t like the story of Gilbert a Becket," she said, quietly.
It took some seconds of Ford"s slow thinking to puzzle out the meaning of this. Even then he might have pondered in vain had it not been for the flush that gradually over-spread her features, and brought what he called the wild glint into her eyes. When he understood, he reddened in his own turn, making matters worse.
"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I never thought--"
"You needn"t beg my pardon," she interrupted, speaking with a catch in her breath. "I wanted you to know.... You"ve asked me so many questions that it seemed as if I was ashamed of my father and mother when I didn"t answer.... I"m not ashamed of them.... I"d rather you knew.... Every one does--who knows me."
Half unconsciously he glanced up at the framed sketches on the chimney-piece. Her eyes followed him, and she spoke instantly:
"You"re quite right. I meant that--for them."
They were standing in the studio, into which she had allowed him to come from the stifling darkness of the inner room, on the ground that the rain protected them against intrusion from outside. During their conversation she had been placing the easel and arranging the work which formed her pretext for being there, while Micmac, stretched on the floor, with his head between his paws, kept a half-sleepy eye on both of them.
"Your father was a Canadian, then?" he ventured to ask, as she seated herself with a palette in her hand.
"He was a Virginian. My mother was the wife of a French-Canadian voyageur.
I believe she had a strain of Indian blood. The voyageurs and their families generally have."
Having recovered her self-possession, she made her statements in the matter-of-fact tone she used to hide embarra.s.sment flicking a little color into the sketch before her as she spoke. Ford seated himself at a distance, gazing at her with a kind of fascination. Here, then, was the clew to that something untamed which persisted through all the effects of training and education, as a wild flavor will last in a carefully cultivated fruit. His curiosity about her was so intense that, notwithstanding the difficulty with which she stated her facts, it overcame his prompting to spare her.
"And yet," he said, after a long pause, in which he seemed to be a.s.similating the information she had given him--"and yet I don"t see how that explains _you_."
"I suppose it doesn"t--not any more than your situation explains you."
"My situation explains me perfectly, because I"m the victim of a wrong."
"Well, so am I--in another way. I"m made to suffer because I"m the daughter of my parents."
"That"s a rotten shame," he exclaimed, in boyish sympathy "It isn"t your fault."
"Of course it isn"t," she smiled, wistfully. "And yet I"d rather suffer with the parents I have than be happy with any others."
"I suppose that"s natural," he admitted, doubtfully.
"I wish I knew more about them," she went on, continuing to give light touches to the work before her, and now and then leaning back to get the effect. "I never understood why my father was in prison in Canada."
"Perhaps it was when he killed the man," Ford suggested.
"No; that was in Virginia--at least, the first one. His people didn"t like it. That was the reason for his leaving home. He hated a settled life; and so he wandered away into the northwest of Canada. It was in the days when they first began to build the railways there--when there were almost no people except the trappers and the voyageurs. I was born on the very sh.o.r.es of Hudson Bay."
"But you didn"t stay there?"
"No. I was only a very little child--not old enough to remember--when my father sent me down to Quebec, to the Ursuline nuns. He never saw me again. I lived with them till four years ago. I"m eighteen now."
"Why didn"t he send you to his people? Hadn"t he sisters?--or anything like that."
"He tried to, but they wouldn"t have anything to do with me."
It was clearly a relief to her to talk about herself. He guessed that she rarely had an opportunity of opening her heart to any one. Not till this morning had he seen her in the full light of day; and, though but an immature judge, he fancied her features had settled themselves into lines of reserve and pride from which in happier circ.u.mstances they might have been free. Her way of twisting her dark hair--which waved over the brows from a central parting--into the simplest kind of knot gave her an air of sedateness beyond her years. But what he noticed in her particularly was her eyes--not so much because they were wild, dark eyes, with the peculiar fleeing expression of startled forest things, as because of the pleading, apologetic look that comes into the eyes of forest things when they stand at bay. It was when--for seconds only--the pupils shone with a jet-like blaze that he caught what he called the non-Aryan effect; but that glow died out quickly, leaving something of the fugitive appeal which Hawthorne saw in the eyes of Beatrice Cenci.
"He offered his sisters a great deal of money," she sighed, "but they wouldn"t take me."
"Oh? So he had money?"
"He was one of the first Americans to make money in the Canadian northwest; but that was after my mother died. She died in the snow, on a journey--like that sketch above the fireplace. I"ve been told that it changed my father"s life. He had been what they call wild before that--but he wasn"t so any more. He grew very hard-working and serious. He was one of the pioneers of that country--one of the very first to see its possibilities. That was how he made his money; and when he died he left it to me. I believe it"s a good deal."
"Didn"t you hate being in the convent?" he asked, suddenly "I should."
"N-no; not exactly. I wasn"t unhappy. The Sisters were kind to me. Some of them spoiled me. It wasn"t until after my father died, and I began to realize--who I was, that I grew restless. I felt I should never be happy until I was among people of my own kind."
"And how did you get there?"
She smiled faintly to herself before answering.
"I never did. There are no people of my kind."
Embarra.s.sed by the stress she seemed inclined to lay on this circ.u.mstance, he grasped at the first thought that might divert her from it.
"So you live with a guardian! How do you like that?"