Thomas Jeffersen Brown by James Oliver Curwood (top 5 books to read .txt) 📖

first sight of Lady Isobel's lovely face. Lord Meton wanted a man--one who could handle a canoe and shoulder two hundred pounds of duff; and "Tom" became the man, working like a slave for a month; but always with the pride and bearing of a king.
It wasn't difficult to see what was happening. Lord Meton saw, and understood; but he knew that the proud blood in Lady Isobel was an invulnerable armor that would protect her from indiscretion. And as for Thomas Jefferson Brown--
"Bobby," he said, standing up straight and tall, "if she can only love a gentleman, and not a man, what's the use of playing cards?"
One day, when he had to carry Lady Isobel ashore from a big York boat, something inside him got the best of his arms, and he held her tight--so tight that her eyes came down to his with a frightened look, and he heard a breath come from her that was almost a sob. They gazed at each other for a moment, and it was then that Thomas Jefferson Brown told her that he loved her--not in words, but in a way that she understood.
When he set her down on shore she was as white as death. From that day she treated him a little coolly--up to the last moment, out on the bay.
It was a bright, sunshiny day when the three--Lord Meton, Lady Isobel, and Thomas Jefferson Brown--set off in a big birchbark canoe, bound for Harrison's Island, a dozen miles out from the mainland. But you can't tell much about sunshine and calm on Hudson Bay. They're like a jealous woman's smile, masking something hidden. Four miles out, the wind came up; midway between the island and the mainland, it was a small gale. Even at that, Thomas Jefferson Brown would have made it all right if the beat of the sea hadn't broken a rotten thread under the bow, letting the birch seam part with a suddenness that sent a little spurt of water up into Lady Isobel's face.
What? No, this isn't going to have the regulation hero-act end, in which Thomas Jefferson Brown saves the life of the lady he loves. It's something different--something that Thomas Jefferson Brown never guessed at when the water spurted in, and Lady Isobel turned to him with a little scream, her beautiful blue eyes wide and filled with horror.
"Don't be afraid," he said. "Here, take this jacket and hold it down tight over the seam. We'll reach the island, all right."
Lady Isobel held the jacket over the hole, and Thomas Jefferson Brown put a strength into his paddle that threatened to crack off the handle. After a minute or two, he saw a little trickle of water, beginning to ooze in about the edges of the jacket. He leaned back for an instant, and signaled Lord Meton to bend over toward him.
"Take off your clothes," he said, so low that Lady Isobel couldn't hear. "Can you swim?"
"Not a stroke," said Lord Meton, and his face went as white as chalk; but it was no whiter than Thomas Jefferson Brown's.
When a birchbark seam begins to part there's no power on earth that will hold it when the canoe is heavily loaded. A few minutes later, the water was gushing in by the quart about Lady Isobel's feet. She fought hard to hold it back. When at last she saw that it was hopeless, she turned again, to see Lord Meton in his underwear, and Thomas Jefferson Brown stripped of everything but his shirt and his buckskin trousers, which don't water-sog. He laughed straight into her face, as if it was all an amusing joke; and then, suddenly, he began playing that banjo thing with his mouth.
It was all so strange, with the beat of the sea, the wail of the wind, and Thomas Jefferson Brown sitting there as if nothing were happening, that Lady Isobel just stared in astonishment, while the water gushed in about her. At last he put down his paddle, and stretched out both hands; and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that her two hands should come out to meet his.
"Listen," he said, and his eyes were telling her again what they told her on the day when he brought her in from the York boat. "You'll do as I tell you, won't you? And you won't be afraid?"
For an instant Lady Isobel looked at Lord Meton, shrinking and shivering in the stern of the canoe; and then she looked back to the other man's face, and blue fires seemed to leap into her eyes.
"With _you_--no, I'm not afraid," she said.
She leaned toward him, nearer and nearer, as the water rose about them, looking straight into his eyes. They both knew in that moment that it was the man and the woman who had triumphed, and that for them the lady and the gentleman were dead.
"I'm not afraid--with you," she said again.
Her lips trembled, and her golden hair swept over his breast, and Thomas Jefferson Brown bent down and kissed her once upon the mouth. Then he said, as if he were speaking to a little girl:
"Do not be afraid, and hold to the edge of the canoe when it fills. The wind will carry us to Harrison's Island."
He turned to Lord Meton, and repeated the words; and just then the birchbark began to settle under them. With one hand gripping the side, Thomas Jefferson Brown leaped over the sea. Lower and lower settled the canoe with almost a scream, Lord Meton cried above the wind:
"Good Lord, it won't hold us up!"
For a few moments Thomas Jefferson relieved the canoe of his weight, and the bark rose again, slowly. Then, with a gasp, he clutched at the side again, and into Lady Isobel's drenched face, half hid the wet veil of her shining hair.
"The canoe won't hold us all up," he said trying to smile. "But it will hold two--you two and the wind is taking it to the island, four miles to the island, and I may be make it."
He knew that he never could make it; no man could swim so far in the chill waters of Hudson Bay; but he spoke as if his words were "I'm going to let go and try. Isobel, my love, will you kiss me?"
She threw one arm about his neck. Meton, clutching with frantic terror to the canoe saw nothing of what happened, nor did he hear the sobbing cry of Lady Isobel's heart as she kissed Thomas Jefferson Brown, once, and then three times, before he dropped back into the sea again.
"Good-by, sweetheart!" he said.
In the eyes that looked up at her, in his eyes in the one last look of love that he said, "Good-by." Lady Isobel saw the truth, and stretched out her arm to him.
"Stop! Come back! Take me with you!" she cried. "I want to go with you!"
And there, in the wildness of that sea, four miles from shore, Thomas Jefferson Brown seemed to heave himself up out of the water, as if the strength of a thousand swimmers had suddenly come to him. He let out a cry of triumph, of love, of joy; and he came back and gripped the canoe again, his gray eyes flashing, his face glowing with a strange flush.
"You want to go with me?" he said. "Come!"
He held up his arms, and with a cry that wasn't fear Lady Isobel went into them, while Thomas Jefferson Brown called to Lord Meton:
"Stick to the canoe! It will take you to the island!"


IV
The shore was a low, dark streak, four miles away--an appalling distance away; but as she clung lightly to his shoulders, as Thomas Jefferson Brown told her to do, the horror and the fear of the big sea went out of Lady Isobel's brave little heart. She put her face down against his neck, pulled back his wet hair, and kissed him. God bless all such true hearts, wherever they be!
"We'll make it, Tom--we'll make it!" she told him a hundred times.
He felt the warm caresses of her lips, the thrilling love of her voice, and he knew that she was ready to die with him.
He swam in a strange way--a wonderfully strange way--did Thomas Jefferson Brown. He stood almost erect in the water, his head and shoulders clear; and now and then he stopped to rest, and it seemed no test for him at all to float with the weight of the woman he loved, his face turned up to her in those moments, her glorious blue eyes devouring him, her sweet lips kissing him--still kissing him.
He was doing a thing that she knew no other man in the world could do. She kept telling him so, while the land drew nearer and nearer, until at last she cried out in joy that she could see the little bushes along the shore.
"Another mile, Tom!" she said. "Only another mile, and then--"
"And then--" he said.
"And then--life!" she cried. "Life for you and me!"
He went on, seeming to grow stronger as the shore drew nearer. It was wonderful; but at last, when they came to the beach, he dropped down like a dead man. Lady Isobel caught his head to her dripping breast, and rocked him back and forth, sobbing a paean of love and pride, while far out she saw the canoe and Lord Meton drifting shoreward.
A few minutes later, Thomas Jefferson Brown went out into the sea again, until he was not much more than a speck, and brought in the canoe and Lord Meton, while Lady Isobel stood to her knees in the water, praising her God that from riches and splendor she had come out into a wilderness to find such a man as this.
After that, at York Factory, there was nothing left for Thomas Jefferson Brown to do but to reveal himself, and when Lord Meton discovered that there ran as good blood through his rescuer's veins as through his own, he gripped hands with the man who had saved him, and gave his congratulations cm the spot. But it made no difference to Isobel. If anything, she was a little disappointed.
Thomas Jefferson Brown arranged to go back with them on their yacht. The wedding would take place in London, a quiet affair. One day Isobel and her lover came along hand in hand, and Thomas Jefferson Brown said to me:
"Bobby, you're going to be best man."
"Not best man," Lady Isobel added, "but second best, Bobby. There's only one best man in the world!"
But I haven't been able to come to the point of this story yet--the remarkable part of it. Two weeks later, when we were up the river and our canoe struck a snag, I discovered that Thomas Jefferson Brown "couldn't swim a stroke!"
"Good Lord!" I said, but waited.
Back at the post, Thomas Jefferson Brown took me into his little room, and said:
"Bobby, you've found that I can't swim, and I'm going to trust you with a great secret. Love can accomplish miracles; and love did--out there. For when I let go of the canoe, Bobby, I knew that I was going straight down to my death. But a wonderful thing happened." He brought a little map from a drawer. "Look at this map, Bobby. See all those little marks off Harrison's Island--figures--twos and threes and fives, and nothing above sixes? That's the depth of water for five miles out from Harrison's Island, at low tide; and it was low tide when I jumped from the canoe. That's all, Bobby. _I waded ashore_. But what would be the good of saying anything about it when it brought me