A Daughter of the Forest by Evelyn Raymond (best classic novels txt) 📖

exams. For my own part, I ran away just because I did not want this famous ‘education’ you value. That is, I didn’t of a certain sort. I wasn’t fair with you awhile ago, you said. I’d like to tell you my story now.”

“I’d like to hear it, of course. But, look yonder! Did you ever see anything like that?”

Margot was proud of the surprises she was able to offer this stranger in her woods, and pointed outward over the lake. They had just come to an open place on the shore and the water spread before them sparkling in the sunlight. Something was crossing the smooth surface, heading straight for their island, and of a nature to make Adrian cry out:

“Oh! for a gun!”

CHAPTER VIII KING MADOC

“If you had one you should not use it! Are you a dreadful hunter?”

Margot had turned upon her guest with a defiant fear. As near as she had ever come to hating anything she hated the men, of whom she had heard, who used this wonderful northland as a murder ground. That was what she named it, in her uncompromising judgment of those who killed for the sake of killing, for the lust of blood that was in them.

“Yes. I reckon I am a ‘dreadful’ hunter, for I am a mighty poor shot. But I’d like a try at that fellow. What horns! What a head! And how can that fellow in the canoe keep so close to him, yet not finish him!”

Adrian was so excited he could not stand still. His eyes gleamed, his hands clenched, and his whole appearance was changed. Greatly for the worse, the girl thought, regarding him with disgust.

“Finish him? That’s King Madoc, Pierre’s trained bull-moose. You’d be finished yourself, I fear, if you harmed that splendid creature. Pierre’s a lazy fellow, mostly, but he spent a long time teaching Madoc, and with his temper—I’m thankful you lost your gun.”

“Do you never shoot things up here? I saw you giving the fox and herons what looked like meat. You had a stew for supper, and fish for breakfast. I don’t mean to be impertinent, but the sight of that big game—— Whew!”

“Yes. We do kill things, or have them killed, when it is necessary for food. Never in sport. Man is almost the only animal who does that. It’s all terrible, seems to me. Everything preys upon something else, weaker than itself. Sometimes when I think of it my dinner chokes me. It’s so easy to take life, and only God can create it. But uncle says it is also God’s law to take what is provided, and that there is no mistake, even if it seems such to me.”

But there Margot perceived that Adrian was not listening. Instead, he was watching, with the intensest interest, the closer approach of the canoe, in which sat idle Pierre, holding the reins of a harness attached to his aquatic steed. The moose swam easily, with powerful strokes, and Pierre was singing a gay melody, richer in his unique possession than any king.

When he touched the shore and the great animal stood shaking his wet hide, Adrian’s astonishment found vent in a whirlwind of questions that Pierre answered at his leisure and after his kind. But he walked first toward Margot and offered a great bunch of trailing arbutus flowers, saying:

“I saw these just as I pushed off and went back after them. What’s the matter here, that the flag is up? It was the biggest storm I ever saw. Yes. A deal of beasties are killed back on the mainland. Any dead over here?”

“No, I am glad to say, none that we know of. But Snowfoot’s shed is down and uncle is going to build a new one. I hope you’ve come to work.”

Pierre laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh! yes.”

But his interest in work was far less than in the stranger whom he now answered, and whose presence on Peace Island was a mystery to him. Heretofore, the only visitors there had been laborers or traders, but this young fellow so near his own age, despite his worn clothing, was of another sort. He recognized this, at once, as Margot had done, and his curiosity made him ask:

“Where’d you come from? Hurricane blow you out the sky?”

“About the same. I was lost in the woods and Margot found me and saved my life. What’ll you take for that moose?”

“There isn’t money enough in the state of Maine to buy him!”

“Nonsense. Well, if there was I haven’t it. But you could get a good price for it anywhere.”

Pierre looked Adrian over. From his appearance the lad was not likely to be possessed of much cash, but the moose-trainer was eager for capital, and never missed an opportunity of seeking it.

“I want to go into the show business. What do you say? would you furnish the tents and fixings? And share the profits. I’m no scholar, but maybe you’d know enough to get out the hand-bills and so on. What do you say?”

“I—say—— What you mean, Pierre Ricord, keepin’ the master waitin’, your foolishness, and him half sick? What kept you twice as long as you ought? Hurry up, now, and put that moose in the cow-yard and get to work.”

The interruption was caused by Angelique, and it was curious to see the fear with which she inspired the great fellow, her son. He forgot the stranger, the show business, and all his own immediate interests, and with the docility of a little child obeyed. Unhitching his odd steed, he turned the canoe bottom upward on the beach and hastily led the animal toward that part of the island clearing, where Snowfoot stood in a little fenced-in lot behind her ruined shed.

Adrian went with him, and asked:

“Won’t those two animals fight?”

“Won’t get a chance. When one goes in the other goes out. Here, bossy, you can take the range of the island. Get out!”

She was more willing to go than Madoc to enter the cramped place, but the transfer was made and Adrian lingered by the osier paling, to observe at close range this subjugated monarch of the forest.

“Oh! for a palette and brush!” he exclaimed, while Pierre walked away.

“What would you do with them?”

Margot had followed the lads and was beside him, though he had not heard her footsteps. Now he wheeled about, eager, enthusiastic.

“Paint—as I have never painted before!”

“Oh!—are you an—artist?”

“I want to be one. That’s why I’m here.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I told you I was a runaway. I didn’t say ‘why,’ before. It’s truth. My people, my—father—forced me to college. I hated it. He was forcing me to business. I liked art. All my friends were artists. When I should have been at the books I was in their studios. They were a gay crowd, spent money like water when they had it, merrily starved and pinched when they hadn’t. A few were worse than spendthrifts, and with my usual want of sense I made that particular set my intimates. I never had any money, though, after it was suspected what my tastes were. Except a little that my mother gave me.”

Margot was listening breathlessly and watching intently. At the mention of his mother a shadow crossed Adrian’s face, softening and bettering it, and his whole mood seemed to change.

Their talk drifted from vexing subjects to merry anecdotes of Adrian’s childhood, in the home where he had been the petted only brother of a half-dozen elder sisters. But while they laughed and Margot listened, her fingers were busy weaving a great garland of wild laurel, and when it was finished she rose and said:

“It’s getting late. There’ll be just time to take this to the grave. Will you go with me?”

“Yes.”

But this was another of the puzzling things he found at Peace Island. In its very loveliest nook was the last resting-place of Cecily Romeyn, and the sacred spot was always beautiful with flowers, or in the winter, with brilliant berries. Both the master and the girl spoke of their dead as if she were still present with them; or at least lived as if she were only removed from sight but not from their lives.

When Margot had laid the fresh wreath upon the mound, she carefully removed the faded flowers of the day before, and a thought of his own mother stirred Adrian’s heart.

“I wish I could send a bunch of such blossoms to my mother!”

“How can you live without her, since she is still alive?”

His face hardened again.

“You forget. I told you that she, too, turned against me at the last. It was a case of husband or son, and she made her choice.”

“Oh! no. She was unhappy. One may do strange things, then, I suppose. But I tell you one thing, if I had either father or mother, anywhere in this world, nothing should ever, ever make me leave them. Nothing. I would bear anything, do anything, suffer anything—but I would be true to them. I could not forget that I was their child, and if I had done wrong to them my whole life would be too short to make atonement.”

She spoke strongly, as she felt. So early orphaned, she had come to think of parents as the most wonderful blessing in the power of God to leave one. She loved her Uncle Hugh like a second father, but her tenderest dreams were over the pictured faces of her dead.

“Where is your father buried?”

It was the simplest, most natural question.

“I—don’t—know.”

They stared at one another. It was proof of her childlike acceptance of her life that she had never asked. Had never thought to do so, even. She had been told that he had “passed out of sight” before they came to Peace Island and the forest, and had asked no further concerning him. Of his character and habits she had heard much. Her uncle was never weary in extolling his virtues; but of his death he had said only what has been written.

“But—I must know right away!”

In her eagerness she ran, and Adrian followed as swiftly. He was sorry for his thoughtless inquiry, but regret came too late. He tried to call Margot back, but she would not wait.

“I must know. I must know right away. Why have I never known before?”

Hugh Dutton was resting after a day of study and mental labor, and his head leaned easily upon his cushioned chair. Yet as his dear child entered his room he held out his arms to draw her to his knee.

“In a minute, uncle. But Adrian has asked me something and it is the strangest thing that I cannot answer him. Where is my father buried?”

If she had dealt him a mortal blow he could not have turned more white. With a groan that pierced her very heart, he stared at Margot with wide, unseeing eyes; then sprang to his feet and fixed upon poor Adrian a look that scorched.

“You! You?” he gasped, and sinking back covered his face with his hands.

CHAPTER IX PERPLEXITIES

What had he done?

Ignorant why his simple question should have had such strange results, that piercing look made Adrian feel the veriest culprit, and he hastened to leave the room and the cabin. Hurrying to the beach he appropriated Margot’s little canvas canoe and pushed out upon the lake. From her and Pierre he had learned to handle the light craft with considerable skill and he now worked off his excitement by swift paddling, so that there was soon a wide distance between him and the island.

Then he paused and looked around him, upon as