FROM early summer to late autumn, from assurance of
bloom to certainty of frost, is but a step—the
step between life and death. The murmuring leaves
and waters on the shores of Kempenfeldt Bay had learned
a louder and harsher melody—the wild wind-prophecy
of winter. For a brief season Indian summer came
to re-illumine the despairing days, and the larches,
set aflame by her hand, flashed like lights. Then
through the softly tinted wood broke the Autumn brightness
upon delicate shimmering birch trees, red sumachs, purple
tinged sassafras, golden rod and asters; but now the
oaks and beeches had changed their velvet green raiment
to dull brown, and all the wild woods, after the pitiless
and well-nigh perpetual rains of Fall, were stricken
and discoloured. Madame and Mademoiselle DeBerczy
had flown with the birds, and were now domiciled in
their winter home at the Oak Ridges, whither Rose Macleod,
in response to an urgent invitation from Hélène,
had accompanied them, and whence she wrote letters of
entreaty to her father, urging him to take a house in
York for the winter.
“Not that it is
so particularly lively,” she wrote, “but
it is not quite so deathly as at Pine Towers.
Edward will be willing to come, I know, desperate lover
of nature that he is, for there is nothing in the woods
now but eternal requiem over lost and buried beauty,
of which, in the natural vanity of youth, he may be
tempted to consider himself a part. As for the
children they will build snow-houses, and sit down in
them, thus ensuring permanent bad colds, and the other
member of your family, if she returns home, will ‘look
before and after, and sigh for what is not.’
Is not that a sufficiently depressing picture?
Dear papa, you know that, like the bad little boys in
a certain class of Sunday School [Page 99] literature,
I can’t be ruled except by kindness. Now
see what an immense opportunity I have given you to
govern me according to approved Sunday School ethics!”
She paused a moment, considering
not what could be said, but what could be omitted from
a missive which was to be convincing as well as caressing
in its nature, when Hélène entered the
room.
“Love letter, Rose?”
she inquired carelessly.
“Certainly,”
responded her friend, “all my letters are love
letters. Would you have me write to a person I
didn’t love?”
“Why, I couldn’t
help it, that is supposing the letter you are writing
is addressed to Allan Dunlop. Of course he is
a person you don’t love.”
“There is no reason
why I should.”
“No reason?
O ingratitude! After he dived under the heels
of a fiery horse, carried you nearly lifeless into the
house, and took off his boots every time he entered
it for six weeks thereafter. How much further
could a man’s devotion go?”
“I am beginning
to find out,” said Rose, with a slight return
of an invalid’s irritation, “how far a woman’s
devotion can go.”
Hélène arched
her delicate brows. “Are you offended?”
she asked, anxiously. “Ah, don’t be!
I’ll take back every word. He didn’t
take off his boots, nor carry you in, nor pick you up,
and, let me see—what other assertion did I make?
Oh, yes. Of course he is a person you do
love. But oh, Rose, Rose, what are you blushing
about? This isn’t the time of year for roses
to blush.”
“Upon my word, Hélène,
you are enough to make a stone wall blush.”
“Ah, you are thinking
of the stone walls of a certain farm cottage.
I can imagine you sitting propped up in bed, with a
volume of hymns marking the line, ‘Stone walls
do not [Page 100] a prison make,’
with a big exclamation-point, and a ‘So true!’”
Rose leaned back in her
chair and closed her eyes.
“Are you very tired,
dear?” inquired her friend, with real tenderness.
“Very tired,”
was the languid reply, that was not without a satirical
intonation. “It seems as though my rest
was a good deal broken.”
“Broken bone! broken
heart! broken rest! dear me! Well, I suppose
they follow each other in natural sequence.”
“Hélène,”
said her mother, “you are chattering like a magpie.
What is it all about?”
“Broken utterances,
mamma.” Not worth piecing together and repeating.”
Madame DeBerczy, seated
alone at the other end of the apartment, turned upon
her daughter a face of such majestic severity as effectually
to quell that young lady’s recklessly merry mood.
But it was not for long. The irrepressible joyousness
of her nature was not permanently subdued until two
weeks later, when the family were surprised by the unlooked-for
appearance of Edward Macleod. This young man was
the bearer of good-tidings. His father and the
rest of the family were even now domiciled at an hotel
in York waiting for Rose to arrive in order to consult
her preferences before selecting a house. The
announcement made both girls happy, but when it was
discovered that Edward was to take his sister away in
a few hours their joy was changed to lamentation.
To be separated, hateful thought! How could it
be endured? They withdrew for a brief space to
consider this weighty problem, leaving Edward in dignified
conversation with Madame DeBerczy. He was strangely
reminded of his first visit to her after his return
from England. Alike, and yet how different.
Then the prophecy of summer’s golden perfection
was in the air. But his hopes with it had too-quickly
ripened and died. [Page 101] The
coolness that had sprung up between Hélène
and himself had grown and strengthened into the permanent
winter of discontent. He was recalled from the
chilling reflections into which this thought had plunged
him by the concluding words of a remark by Madame DeBerczy:
“I approve of a certain amount of life and animation,”
she said, “but they are inclined to be too frisky.”
“What on earth is
she talking about?” queried Edward inaudibly.
He could form no idea, but he was suddenly extricated
from his dilemma by observing the antics of two pet
kittens on the hearth-rug.
“Altogether too
frisky,” he acquiesced, “but charming little
pets.”
“It appears to me,”
said the lady, with a good deal of frigidity in her
manner, “that they should be something better
than that.”
“Oh, you could scarcely
expect such young things to be stately and dignified,
Madame DeBerczy. They seem to me very pretty and
graceful.”
“In my day prettiness
and grace were not considered so essential for young
ladies as dignity and stateliness.”
“Young ladies!
Really, I beg your pardon, dear Madame, for my inattention.
I imagined you were talking of kittens.”
He blushed so vividly over his mistake that a more circumspect
old lady even than the one he was addressing would have
found it hard not to forgive him.
But now the girls re-entered
the room with looks of deep dejection. “We
have decided that we can’t part.” said
Hélène. “United we stand,
divided we fall!”
“And so,”
said Rose boldly, addressing Madame DeBerczy, “we
have come to ask if Hélène cannot go back
with us for a few days.” She paused a moment,
for in asking a favour of so lofty a personage as Madame
DeBerczy, she was never certain whether she ought to
prostrate herself on the floor in oriental fashion,
or merely bend the knee. [Page 102]
In this case she did neither. But her sweet pleading
eyes spoke “libraries,” so Hélène
told her afterwards. The imaginative objections
already forming in the mother’s mind vanished
away, and she was prevailed upon to give her consent.
“Though it leaves
me rather at the mercy of Sophia,” she said, as
she went out to lunch.
Edward lifted an inquiring
pair of eyes.
“Sophia is my new
maid,” explained his hostess. “Her
ideas on the subject of liberty and equality are extreme.
Sometimes,” she added mournfully, “I am
in doubt as to whether I have hired Sophia, or Sophia
has hired me.”
The young people longed
to exchange covert glances of amusement, but this relief
was denied them. It was no laughing matter to
the stately sufferer at the head of the table.
Rose spoke in the decent accents of sympathy and condolence,
but her brother and friend were not profuse of speech.
The latter was thinking of possible explanations and
reconciliations that might arise through the frequent
opportunities of meeting with Edward, which a temporary
residence under the same roof would entail, and the
former was feasting his beauty-loving eyes upon a strikingly
lovely picture on the other side of the table—the
picture of two heads, golden-yellow and raven-black,
against the rich background of a peacock-tinted tapestry
screen.
They were much less picturesque
in their winter wraps, as they whirled away under the
leafless trees, but they made up for it in merriment.
Edward and Hélène were secretly glad of
the presence of Rose. It was impossible to be
frigidly formal with that sunny face beaming up now
at one, then at the other. This deep young person
had made up her mind that she would spare no pains to
bring about a better state of feeling between the two.
When conversation lagged or threatened to become formally
precise, she gave utterance to some amazing piece of
nonsense, which compelled a [Page 103] laugh
from the others, or else indulged in prettily assumed
alarm, lest their horse should prove untrustworthy.
“When you see a
horse’s ears move,” she declared, “it
is a sign that he is vicious. Flip’s ears
were never still.”
“Why, Rose,”
cried her brother, “this horse is no more like
Flip than an old cow is like a wild cat. Besides
his ears don’t move.”
“Oh, yes, they do,”
remarked Hélène with the calmness of scientific
conviction. “When a horse moves his ears
have got to move too. They are not detachable.
It is the same with other animals.”
“Where is my note-book?”
inquired Edward, after a fruitless search in his various
pockets, while Rose observed “Well, you may say
what you please, but I feel sure he is not safe.”
“Indeed, he isn’t,”
echoed the driver. “He’s liable to
turn around any moment and bite you. It’s
a good thing the livery stable man hitched him up head
first, else we might all have been devoured by the ferocious
beast.”
Such pleasantries might
have been indefinitely extended had not unusual sounds
of mirth and minstrelsy coming from behind arrested
their attention.
“Why, it is the
Elmsleys,” softly exclaimed Rose. “Dear
me! I haven’t seen Grace and Eleanor for
months.”
These young ladies hailed
her with every expression of delight as the carriages
came to a stand-still together. They had a prodigious
amount to say. At last, as the horses were growing
restive, Mrs. Elmsley invited Miss Macleod to join their
family party, as they also were on their way to York.
“Do!”
echoed the daughters, and Rose accepted with alacrity.
“The horse we have isn’t at all safe,”
she explained, “and I am quite nervous on the
subject since my accident last summer.”
“Rose, demanded
Hélène, in a low aside, but with a [Page
104] tragic countenance, “you surely
are not going to leave me?”
The girl laughed as she
accepted Mr. Elmsley’s proffered assistance from
one vehicle into the other. “Why, you are
quite a grown woman,” observed that gentleman,
apparently much impressed by her mature proportions,
“and it seems like only the other day that you
were seven years old, and used to kiss me when we met.”
“Well, I’ll
kiss you again,” replied the saucy Rose, adding
after a moment’s pause,—“when I am
seven years old.”
“I warn you, Mrs.
Elmsley,” said Edward, shaking his head with doleful
foreboding, “that girl knows how to look like
the innocent flower she is named after, and be the serpent
under it.”
“Did you know,”
said his slandered sister, addressing the same lady,
and indicating the pair she had basely forsaken, “those
are the very two that were with me when I was so badly
hurt last summer. Do you wonder that I am glad
to escape from them?”
The party drove off amid
jests and laughter, while the young ladies, applying
their lips once more to a leaf of grass-ribbon each
had in her hand, produced such sounds as, according
to their father, might, Orpheus-like, have drawn stones
and brickbats after them, but from a murderous rather
than a magnetic motive.
“I wonder if Rose
is really nervous,” said Edward, breaking the
silence that bound them after the departure of the others.
“I think she is
really nonsensical,” said Rose’s friend,
not very blandly.
“Are you then so
sorry to be left alone with me?”
The young lady evaded
the question, but became extremely loquacious.
She intimated that almost any companionship, or none
at all, could be endured on this beautifully melancholy
autumn day, and called his attention to the [Page
105] leaves underfoot, which had grown brown
and ragged, like the pages of a very old book on which
the centuries had laid their slow relentless fingers.
In a burst of girlish confidence she told him that always,
after the wild winds had stripped from the shuddering
woodland its last leaves, and the pitiless rains had
washed it clean, the spectacle of bare-branched trees,
standing against the gentle gloom of a pale November
sky, reminded her of a company of worldings, from whom
every vestige of earthly ambition, pride and prosperity
had fallen away. “Anything,” she said
to herself, “anything to keep the talk
from becoming personal.”
“I can understand
that,” said Edward, “but the influences
of unworldliness—I was almost saying other-worldliness—are
nowhere felt as in the woods. Sometimes they exert
a strange spell upon me. The petty pride and shallow
subterfuges of fashionable life are impossible in nature’s
solitudes. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes;” assented
Hélène, not seeing whither her unthinking
acquiescence might lead her.
“That is why I dare
to ask you why you have been so cold and formal towards
me, so unlike your old self, for the last three months?”
No petty pride could help
her now, no shallow subterfuges come to her aid.
She had declared that they were impossible here.
She could not turn her face away from his truth-compelling
gaze. Why had Rose left her alone to be tortured
in this dreadful way? How could she confess to
him that jealousy and wounded vanity had caused the
change in her demeanour? “I cannot tell
you,” she said at last. She had turned paler
even than usual, but her eyes burned.
“I am sorry to have
given you pain,” he said almost tenderly, and
then the confession broke from her in a little storm
of pent-up emotion.
“It was because
I ceased to respect you! How could I [Page
106] respect a man who would allow a wild ignorant
creature to caress his hands and hang upon his words?”
He turned a face of pure
bewilderment upon her. “If you mean the
Algonquin girl, Wanda,” he said, “she has
never treated me otherwise than with indifference, anger
and contempt.” He explained the scene of
which Hélène had been an involuntary witness,
and the proud girl felt humiliated and belittled.
But he was too generous and perhaps too clever to allow
her to suppose that he attributed her coldness to weak
jealousy. That would have placed her at a disadvantage
which her pride would never have forgiven.
“So you believed
me to be a vain contemptible idiot,” he said.
“Then you did perfectly right to scorn me.”
He drove on furiously, with tense lips and contracted
brow. She had misjudged him cruelly, but he would
not descend to harsh accusation. Hélène
was decidedly uncomfortable. “I have never
scorned you,” she said. “It was because
I believed you superior to the folly and weakness of
ordinary men that it grieved me to think you were otherwise.”
“It grieved you,”
he repeated in a softer tone. “Hereafter
I wish you would confide all your griefs to me the moment
you are aware of them.”
“To tell the truth,
I don’t expect to have any more.”
She laughed her old joyous friendly laugh, and he stretched
his arm across her lap to adjust the robe more closely
to her form. Her attitude towards him had completely
changed, concretely as well as abstractly, for now she
sat cosily and contentedly by his side, instead of perching
herself a yard away, and allowing the winter winds to
emphasize the coldness that had existed between them.
This wonderful improvement in the mental atmosphere
made them oblivious to a change in the outer air until
Hélène remarked upon the peculiar odour
of smoke about them. This increased until it became
almost stifling. Evidently the blazing brush heap,
[Page 107] lit by the hand of some
thrifty settler, had extended further than he was aware
of. The smoke blew past them, and they were in
the midst of that vividly picturesque spectacle—a
fire in the forest. The flames ran swiftly up
the dry, dead limbs, turning trees into huge blazing
torches, and the light underbrush beneath them took
on beautiful and fantastic shapes of fire. The
gray sky was illumined with fiery banners, while, like
scarlet-clothed imps at a carnival, the flames leaped
and danced among the twigs and smaller branches.
The hot breeze blowing
on her cheek filled Hélène with sudden
alarm, and Edward urged the horse to a quicker pace.
But the frightened creature needed no urging.
With a great shuddering leap he sprang forward as though
a thousand fire-fiends from the infernal regions had
been after him. Hélène uttered a
half-suppressed shriek, and clung strenuously to Edward’s
arm. Suddenly he gave a loud gasp of dismay.
On the road directly before them a pile of brush had
caught the blaze and stretched before their startled
eyes like a burning bridge. All attempts to stop
or turn around were useless. The horse was wholly
beyond control. For a moment they were enveloped
in smoke and flame, shut into a fiery furnace, from
which an instant later they emerged from danger, but
with a badly singed steed and an unpleasant odour of
fire upon them. Edward had pushed Hélène
to the bottom of the carriage, and flung the robe over
her. Now he drew her trembling, and sobbing a
little, back to his side. She was shaking excessively,
and in order to restore her equanimity there was clearly
nothing else to be done but to hold her closely in his
arms, let fall his face to hers, and breathe in her
ear every word of sympathy and comfort that came to
his mind. She lay weakly with closed eyes upon
his breast, while the excitement in her pulses gradually
died away. When she opened her eyes the short
November day was nearly at its close, and York [Page
108] was in sight. She drew away to her
own corner of the seat, not with any visible blushes,
for her complexion never lost its warm whiteness, but
her eyes glowed, and her lips were ‘like a thread
of scarlet.’
“I am glad Rose
was not with us,” she said, feeling a pressing
need to say something, and in default of anything better
to say, “as she is even more nervous than I am.”
“Yes, I am very
glad she was not with us,” assented Edward, with
an unusual amount of brotherly fervour, while he turned
his horse in the direction of the only available hotel
in the Capital, where the wearied travelers were content
to rest for a few days before setting out in search
of a new home. [Page 109]
[Chapter
X]
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