CHAPTER VI
Silent, his head bowed a little, John Aldous stood before her after thoselast words. A slight noise outside gave him the pretext to turn to thedoor. She was going to Tete Jaune--to find her husband! He had not expectedthat. For a breath, as he looked out toward the bush, his mind was in astrange daze. A dozen times she had given him to understand there was nohusband, father, or brother waiting for her at the rail-end. She had toldhim that she was alone--without friends. And now, like a confession, thosewords had come strangely from her lips.
What he had heard was one of Otto's pack-horses coming down to drink. Heturned toward her again.
Joanne stood with her back still to the table. She had slipped a hand intothe front of her dress and had drawn forth a long thick envelope. As sheopened it, Aldous saw that it contained banknotes. From among these shepicked out a bit of paper and offered it to him.
"That will explain--partly," she said.
It was a newspaper clipping, worn and faded, with a date two years old. Ithad apparently been cut from an English paper, and told briefly of thetragic death of Mortimer FitzHugh, son of a prominent Devonshire family,who had lost his life while on a hunting trip in the British ColumbiaWilds.
"He was my husband," said Joanne, as Aldous finished. "Until six months agoI had no reason to believe that the statement in the paper was not true.Then--an acquaintance came out here hunting. He returned with a strangestory. He declared that he had seen Mr. FitzHugh alive. Now you know why Iam here. I had not meant to tell you. It places me in a light which I donot think that I can explain away--just now. I have come to prove ordisprove his death. If he is alive----"
For the first time she betrayed the struggle she was making against somepowerful emotion which she was fighting to repress. Her face had paled. Shestopped herself with a quick breath, as if knowing that she had alreadygone too far.
"I guess I understand," said Aldous. "For some reason your anxiety is notthat you will find him dead, Ladygray, but that you may find him alive."
"Yes--yes, that is it. But you must not urge me farther. It is a terriblething to say. You will think I am not a woman, but a fiend. And I am yourguest. You have invited me to supper. And--the potatoes are ready, andthere is no fire!"
She had forced a smile back to her lips. John Aldous whirled toward thedoor.
"I will have the partridges in two seconds!" he cried. "I dropped them whenthe horses went through the rapids."
The oppressive and crushing effect of Joanne's first mention of a husbandwas gone. He made no effort to explain or analyze the two sudden changesthat swept over him. He accepted them as facts, and that was all. Where afew moments before there had been the leaden grip of something that seemedto be physically choking him, there was now again the strange buoyancy withwhich he had gone to the Otto tent. He began to whistle as he went to theriver's edge. He was whistling when he returned, the two birds in his hand.Joanne was waiting for him in the door. Again her face was a faintly tintedvision of tranquil loveliness; her eyes were again like the wonderful bluepools over the sunlit mountains. She smiled as he came up. He wasamazed--not that she had recovered so completely from the emotionalexcitement that had racked her, but because she betrayed in no way a signof grief--of suspense or of anxiety. A few minutes ago he had heard hersinging. He could almost believe that her lips might break into song againas she stood there.
From that moment until the sun sank behind the mountains and gray shadowsbegan to creep in where the light had been, there was no other reference tothe things that had happened or the things that had been said sinceJoanne's arrival. For the first time in years John Aldous completely forgothis work. He was lost in Joanne. With the tremendous reaction that wasworking out in him she became more and more wonderful to him with eachbreath that he drew. He made no effort to control the change that wassweeping through him. His one effort was to keep it from being too apparentto her.
The way in which Joanne had taken his invitation was as delightful as itwas new to him. She had become both guest and hostess. With her lovely armsbared halfway to the shoulders she rolled out a batch of biscuits. "Hotbiscuits go so well with marmalade," she told him. He built a fire. Beyondthat, and bringing in the water, she gave him to understand that his dutieswere at an end, and that he could smoke while she prepared the supper. Withthe beginning of dusk he closed the cabin door that he might have an excusefor lighting the big hanging lamp a little earlier. He had imagined how itswarm glow would flood down upon the thick soft coils of her shining hair.
Every fibre in him throbbed with a keen and exquisite satisfaction as hesat down opposite her. During the meal he looked into the quiet, velvetyblue of her eyes a hundred times. He found it a delightful sensation totalk to her and look into those eyes at the same time. He told her moreabout himself than he had ever told another soul. It was she who spokefirst of the manuscript upon which he was working. He had spoken of certainadventures that had led up to the writing of one of his books.
"And this last book you are writing, which you call 'Mothers,'" she said."Is it to be like 'Fair Play?'"
"It was to have been the last of the trilogy. But it won't be now,Ladygray. I've changed my mind."
"But it is so nearly finished, you say?"
"I would have completed it this week. I was rushing it to an end at feverheat when--you came."
He saw the troubled look in her eyes, and hastened to add:
"Let us not talk about that manuscript, Ladygray. Some day I will let youread it, and then you will understand why your coming has not hurt it. Atfirst I was unreasonably disturbed because I thought that I must finish itwithin a week from to-day. I start out on a new adventure then--a strangeadventure, into the North."
"That means--the wild country?" she asked. "Up there in the North--thereare no people?"
"An occasional Indian, perhaps a prospector now and then," he said. "Lastyear I travelled a hundred and twenty-seven days without seeing a humanface except that of my Cree companion."
She had leaned a little over the table, and was looking at him intently,her eyes shining.
"That is why I have understood you, and read between the printed lines inyour books," she said. "If I had been a man, I would have been a great deallike you. I love those things--loneliness, emptiness, the great spaceswhere you hear only the whisperings of the winds and the fall of no otherfeet but your own. Oh, I should have been a man! It was born in me. It wasa part of me. And I loved it--loved it."
A poignant grief had shot into her eyes. Her voice broke almost in a sob.Amazed, he looked at her in silence across the table.
"You have lived that life, Ladygray?" he said after a moment. "You haveseen it?"
"Yes," she nodded, clasping and unclasping her slim white hands. "For yearsand years, perhaps even more than you, John Aldous! I was born in it. Andit was my life for a long time--until my father died." She paused, and hesaw her struggling to subdue the quivering throb in her throat. "We wereinseparable," she went on, her voice becoming suddenly strange and quiet."He was father, mother--everything to me. It was too wonderful. Togetherwe hunted out the mysteries and the strange things in the out-of-the-wayplaces of the earth. It was his passion. He had given birth to it in me. Iwas always with him, everywhere. And then he died, soon after his discoveryof that wonderful buried city of Mindano, in the heart of Africa. Perhapsyou have read----"
"Good God," breathed Aldous, so low that his voice did not rise above awhisper. "Joanne--Ladygray--you are not speaking of Daniel Gray--Sir DanielGray, the Egyptologist, the antiquarian who uncovered the secrets of anancient and wonderful civilization in the heart of darkest Africa?"
"Yes."
"And you--are his daughter?"
She bowed her head.
Like one in a dream John Aldous rose from his chair and went to her. Heseized her hands and drew her up so that they stood face to face. Againthat strange and beautiful calmness filled her eyes.
"Our trails have strangely crossed, Lady Joanne,
" he said. "They have beencrossing--for years. While Sir Daniel was at Murja, on the eve of his greatdiscovery, I was at St. Louis on the Senegal coast. I slept in that littleCape Verde hotel, in the low whitewashed room overlooking the sea. Theproprietor told me that Sir Daniel had occupied it before me, and I found abroken fountain pen in the drawer of that sickly black teakwood desk, withthe carved serpent's head. And I was at Gampola at another time, headed forthe interior of Ceylon, when I learned that I was travelling again one ofSir Daniel's trails. And you were with him!"
"Always," said Joanne.
For a few tense moments they had looked steadily into each other's eyes.Swiftly, strangely, the world was bridging itself for them. Their mindsswept back swiftly as the fire in a thunder-sky. They were no longerstrangers. They were no longer friends of a day. The grip of Aldous' handstightened. A hundred things sprang to his lips. Before he could speak, hesaw a sudden, startled change leap into Joanne's face. She had turned herface a little, so that she was looking toward the window. A frightened crybroke from her lips. Aldous whirled about. There was nothing there. Helooked at Joanne again. She was white and trembling. Her hands wereclutched at her breast. Her eyes, big and dark and staring, were stillfixed on the window.
"That man!" she panted. "His face was there--against the glass--like adevil's!"
"Quade?"
"Yes."
She caught at his arm as he sprang toward the door.
"Stop!" she cried. "You mustn't go out----"
For a moment he turned at the door. He was as she had seen him in Quade'splace, terribly cool, a strange, quiet smile on his lips. His eyes weregray, smiling steel.
"Close the door after me and lock it until I return," he said. "You are thefirst woman guest I ever had, Ladygray. I cannot allow you to be insulted!"
As he went out she saw him slip something from his pocket. She caught theglitter of it in the lamp-glow.
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