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The Maid of the Whispering Hills

V >> Vingie E. Roe >> The Maid of the Whispering Hills




But for that one hour at the factory steps what time she lay in
McElroy's arms and saw Maren Le Moyne pause at the corner, all would be
well.

Young Marc, Dupre would be singing his gay French songs with his red
cap tilted on his curls, that handsome Nor'wester of the Saskatchewan
would be going his merry way, loving here and there,--instead of
bleaching their bones in some distant forest, as the whispers said;
and, last of all, this man she loved with all the intensity of her soul
would be brown and strong with life, not the weary wreck of a man who
gazed into the fire and would not get well.

So the long nights took toll of the little Francette and a purpose grew
in her chastened heart, a purpose far too big for it.

At last the purpose blossomed into full maturity, hastened by the dark
shadows that were beginning to spread beneath McElroy's hopeless eyes,
as if the spirit, so little in the body, were already leaving it to its
earthly end, and one day at dusk, trembling and afraid, she went to the
factory for the last time.

"Rette," she said plaintively, "will you leave me alone with M'sieu the
factor for an hour? Think what you will," she added fiercely, as she
saw the woman's look; "tell all the populace! I care not! Only give me
one hour! Mon Dieu! A little space to pay the debt of life! Leave me,
Rette, as you hope for Heaven!"

And Rette, wondering and vaguely touched, complied.

McElroy was looking, after his habit, at the leaping flames and his
thin hands played absently and constantly with the covering of the bed,
when the door opened and closed and the little maid stood shrinking
against it.

He did not look up for long, thinking, if his dull mind could form a
thought through his melancholy dreams, that Ridgar had come in.

At last a sigh that was like a gasp pierced his lethargy and he raised
his eyes.

She stood with one small hand over her beating heart and her cheeks
white in the firelight.

"Ah! little one!" he said gently. "Why did you come through such a
night? 'Tis wild as--as--Sit in the big chair," he added kindly.

But Francette, in whose face was an unbearable anguish, came swiftly
and fell on her knees beside the bed, raising her eyes to his.

"M'sieu!" she cried, with great labouring breaths. "Oh! M'sieu, I have
come to confess! If there is in your good heart pity for one who has
sinned beyond pardon, give it me, I pray, for love of the good God!"
McElroy stared down at her in wonder.

"Confess? Sinned?" he said. "Why, little one, what can a child like you
know of sin? 'Tis only some blunderer like myself who should speak its
damnable name."

"Nay, nay! Oh, no! No! No! Not on you is there one lightest touch,
M'sieu, but on me,--me--me--does rest the weight of all!"

Her eyes were wide and full of tears, and McElroy laid a weak hand on
her head.

"Hush, child!" he said, with some of his old sternness, when
condemning wrong; "there is a fever at your brain. You have come too
long to this dull room--"

"No! No! Take away your hand! Touch me not, M'sieu, for I am as dust
beneath your feet! I alone am at bottom of all that has happened in
Fort de Seviere this year past! Through me alone have come death and
sorrow and misunderstanding! I caused it all, M'sieu, because I--loved
you! For love of you and hope to gain your heart I set you apart from
that woman of Grand Portage!"

She buried her face on the covering of the bed and her voice came
muffled and choking.

"That night at the factory steps,--you recall, M'sieu,--she came to
you,--I saw her in the dusk as she turned at the corner, a rod away,
saw her and knew with some touch of deviltry the sudden way of keeping
you from her, your arms from about her, your lips from hers! Oh, that I
could not bear, M'sieu! Not though I died for it! So I threw my own
arms about your throat--you remember, M'sieu--and whispered that for
one kiss I would go and forget. In the gentleness of your heart you
kissed me--and--she saw that kiss. Saw me lying in your arms as if you
held me there from love,--saw and turned away. She made no sound in the
soft dust, and when I loosed your face from my clasp she was gone! So I
broke your faith, M'sieu,--so I dragged forth one by one all the sorry
happenings that have followed that evil night."

The muffled voice fell silent, save for the sobs that would no longer
be withheld, and there was an awful stillness in the room, broken by a
stick falling on the hearth and the added roar in the chimney.

When Francette raised her weeping eyes she saw McElroy's face above her
like a mask.

Its lips were open as if breath had suddenly been denied them, its
wasted cheeks were blue, and its eyes stared down upon her in horror:

"Oh! O God! Rette!"

She screamed and sprang up, to run back and crouch against the empty
chair beside the hearth.

The figure upon the bed, half-risen, worked its lips and then fell
back, and the little maid raised her voice and screamed again and again
in mortal terror.

It brought Rette running from where she had waited in the trading-room.

She raised him, and her face was red with rage.

"What have you done! You evil cat! What have you done to the man?"

But McElroy's breast had heaved with a great breath, sweet as the wind
over a harvest field to a tired man, and he looked up at Rette with
eyes that seemed to be suddenly flooded with life.

"Done?" he whispered; "done, Rette? The child has given me salvation!"
And then he held out a shaking, thin hand.

"Come here," he said softly; "come here."

Fearful, trembling, tear-stained Francette crept back, and the factor
took both her small hands in a tender clasp:

"I thank you, little one," he said, "from my heart I thank you,--there
is nothing to forgive. We are all sinners through the only bit of
Heaven we possess,--love. Go, little one, and cease this crying. Know
that I shall sleep this night in a mighty peace. You have given me--
life!"



CHAPTER XXX THE LAND OF THE WHISPERING HILLS

Springtime once more kissed all the wilderness into tender green. From
the depths of the forest, lacing its myriad branches in finest fluff of
young leaves, came the old-new sound of birds at the mating, rivers and
tiny streams rushed and tumbled to the lakes, and overhead a sky as
blue and sweet as the eyes of loved rocked its baby clouds in cradles
of fresh winds.

They blew over vast reaches of forest and plain, these winds, wimpling
the new grass with playful fingers, and whispering in the ear of bird
and bee and flower that spring was come once more.

They came from the west, sweeping over sweet high meadows, over rushing
streams, and down from fair plateaus, and their breath was fresh and
cool with promise to one who faced them, eager in his hope, for they
brought the virgin sweetness of the Land of the Whispering Hills. By
streams, clear as crystal, he passed with a swinging stride, this lean
young man in the buckskins of the forest traveller, over meadows soft
in their green carpets, through woodlands whose flecked sunshine
quivered and shook on the young moss beneath, and ever his face was
lifted to the west with undying hope, with calmness of faith, and that
great joy which is humble in its splendour.

Thus he swung forward all through the pleasant hours of that last day.
Before him, raised against the sky, there loomed the magic Hills
themselves, fair to the eye of man, clothed in the green of blowing
grass and girdled about below with the encroaching forest.

At dusk he set foot upon their swelling slopes, and knew himself to be
near the goal of his heart's desire.

Over among them somewhere lay the blue lake. He could already hear the
murmur of its whispering shores, the roar of its circling forests, for
the trees followed on and over through some low defile as if loath to
lose the hills themselves, rising to heaven in virgin smoothness of
cloud-shadowed verdure.

The sun had gone behind them in splendid panoply of fire when he came
down into the sheltered woods, and through them to a wondrous meadow,
beautiful as the fields of Paradise, sloping, to the shore beyond where
waters blue as the sky above sent back the pageantry of light.

Here were the signs of tillage and cultivation, and even now a long
dark strip attested the spring's new work, sending forth on the evening
air the sweet scent of fresh-turned earth.

Beyond, across the field, in the edge of the farther woods, thin blue
smoke curled peacefully up from the pointed tops of some forty native
lodges, while nearer the lake there stood two cabins, one old and solid
with a look of having faced the elements for years, the other staring
in its newness. Indian ponies grazed at the clearing's edge or drank of
the rippling waters on the pebbly beach, and a plough lay in the last
furrow.

The stranger stood in amaze and gazed on the scene before him.

While he looked women came from the cabins and passed blithely about at
evening tasks, and one went to the lake with a vessel for water. He
could see its gleam in the reflection of the gorgeous light.

Thin and high came the sound of a voice singing, the ring of an axe
somewhere in the wood beyond the cabins, and peace ineffable seemed to
lie upon this blessed place. Here truly was Arcadia.

Long he stood in the fringe of the forest and looked eagerly among the
distant figures for one, taller than all the rest, clad in plain dark
garments, whose regal head should catch the dying glow, but strain as
he might, he saw no familiar form, could not detect the free and
swinging step.

Now that the goal of his hope was so near, within the very grasp of his
hand, a strange timidity fell upon him, and he shrank from crossing the
open field.

Rather would he follow the circling wood and come out at the upper end
by the lake, going down along the shore to the cabins.

Keeping well within the trees, giants of the wild nursed in this cradle
of sun and water, he bore to the north and ever his eager eyes peered
between the bolls at the distant habitat.

He had gone but short space when, suddenly, he stopped, drawn up by
sight of what lay in his path.

He had pierced a thicket of hanging vines, too eager to go around, and
come abruptly upon some pagan shrine, some savage Holy of Holies.

And yet not wholly savage, for the signs of the red man and the white
were strangely blended.

In the centre of the open space within the hanging wall of the vines,--
perfect sylvan temple,--there lay a mounded grave, covered from head to
foot with articles he knew at once to be the gifts of Indians to some
great chief gone to the shadowy hunting-grounds. Rich they were, these
gifts, in workmanship and carving, though mean and poor in quality,
showing that great love had attended their giving, though the givers
themselves must be a meagre people.

At the head of the mound towered a gigantic totem pole, carved and
painted with scenes of a most minute history, while at the foot of a
smaller stake, alike carved and coloured, bore, one upon another,
twelve rings of bone, each one of which stood for the circle of a year.

Crossed and shielded with infinite care, in the centre there lay a set
of smith's tools, crudely fashioned and well worn, tongs and a heavy
hammer and a small anvil.

But beyond all this, a thing that held his wondering gaze and brought
the fur cap from his head, there stood an altar, rude as the rest, but
still an altar of God, with a black iron crucifix, whose pale ivory
Christ glimmered in the gathering evening, upright upon it. Before the
crucifix, and at either end, were the burnt-out evidences of tallow
candles, while flanking the holy Symbol there stood two wooden crosses,
their pieces held together by bindings of thread. Before one there lay
a heap of little withered flowers, frail things of the forest and the
spring, and every one was snowy white. Across the other hung a solitary
blossom, first of its kind to open its passionate eyes to the sun, and
it was blood-red, counterpart of that wee star which Alfred de
Courtenay had snatched from the stockade wall one day in another
spring.

The earnest blue eyes of the man were very grave, touched with a deep
tenderness.

"Maren!" he whispered reverently; "maid of the splendid heart!"

So deep was he in contemplation of the things before him and his own
holy thoughts that he did not hear a soft sound behind him, the fall of
a light step.

A breath that was half a gasp turned him on his heel.

Leaning through the parted curtain of the hanging vines, one hand at
her throat, the other holding three candles, and her dark eyes wide
above her thinned brown cheeks, she stood herself. At her knee there
hung the heavy head of the great dog, Loup.

She, as she had been when first he looked upon her, yet intangibly
changed, the same yet not the same.

They stood in silence and looked into each other's eyes as if void of
speech, of motion, held by the mighty yearning that must look and look
with insatiable intensity, the half unreal reality of the moment.

And then the stopped breath in the girl's throat caught itself with a
little sound that broke the spell.

The man sprang forward and took her in his arms, not passionately,
strongly, as he had done once before, but with a love so high, so
chastened, so humble that it gentled his touch to reverence.

"I have come, Maren," he said brokenly; "I have followed you to the
land you sought. Maid of my heart! My soul!"

Without words, without question, she yielded herself to his embrace,
lifted her face to him and gave into his keeping that which was his
from the beginning.

"Mother Mary! I thank Thee!" he heard her whisper, and when he loosed
her to look once more into her level eyes, they were dim with tears.


. . . . . . . . .


Night had fallen on the Athabasca when they passed out of the wood
across the field, and they walked together hand in hand.

A great round moon was rising over the eastern forest, silvering the
hills with shining crowns.

Peace brooded on the world.

"And here I found him, M'sieu," Maren Le Moyne was saying sadly, "in
that low mound, cared for and worshipped by these peaceful beings who
till the land and follow his teachings. They were his people. He taught
them purity and peace, the use of plough and tool, the creed of love
and kindness. Here was his dream of empire, his plan of progress. He of
the Good Heart they called him, these Indians who were his people, and
mourn him as a chief. That was his castle yonder, the older cabin to
the east. Here is the fruit of his labour." She motioned over the new-
ploughed land.

"Beyond the trees yonder are bigger fields, a wider holding. And yet
they are poor, these people of peace. The tribes despise them and scoff
at their worship...He taught them the prayers,--the rosary. I have come
after him...Who knows? This is my dream also, my fulfilment. Love,
M'sieu," she raised her face to him, and the deep eyes flickering with
the old elusive light, "Love shall be my crown!"

"Aye," said Anders McElroy, after the manner of a covenant, "together
we shall work and dream yet greater things, trusting in God,--live and
love and enter into our heritage.... I have left the Company forever.
Together we shall build the empire of your dreams.... Oh, Maid of my
Heart, the Long Trail has ended in the harbour of New Homes!"

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