Blazed Trail — 14 - Part 4, Chapters 40, 41, 42, & 43
Chapter XL
The vision was over, but the beauty remained.
The spoken words of protest made her a woman.
Never again would she, nor any other creature of the earth, appear to Thorpe as she had in the silver glade or the cloistered pines.
He had had his moment of insight.
The deeps had twice opened to permit him to look within.
Now they had closed again.
But out of them had fluttered a great love and the priestess of it.
Always, so long as life should be with him, Thorpe was destined to see in this tall graceful girl with the red lips and the white skin and the corn-silk hair, more beauty, more of the great mysterious spiritual beauty which is eternal, than her father or her mother or her dearest and best.
For to them the vision had not been vouchsafed, while he had seen her as the highest symbol of God's splendor.
Now she stood before him, her head turned half away, a faint flush still tingeing the chalk-white of her skin, watching him with a dim, half-pleading smile in expectation of his reply.
“Ah, moon of my soul!
light of my life!
” he cried, but he cried it within him, though it almost escaped his vigilance to his lips.
What he really said sounded almost harsh in consequence.
“How did you know my name?
” he asked.
She planted both elbows on the Norway and framed her little face deliciously with her long pointed hands.
“If Mr. Harry Thorpe can ask that question,” she replied, “he is not quite so impolite as I had thought him.
” “If you don't stop pouting your lips, I shall kiss them!
” cried Harry--to himself.
“How is that?
” he inquired breathlessly.
“Don't you know who I am?
” she asked in return.
“A goddess, a beautiful woman!
” he answered ridiculously enough.
She looked straight at him.
This time his gaze dropped.
“I am a friend of Elizabeth Carpenter, who is Wallace Carpenter's sister, who I believe is Mr. Harry Thorpe's partner.
” She paused as though for comment.
The young man opposite was occupied in many other more important directions.
Some moments later the words trickled into his brain, and some moments after that he realized their meaning.
“We wrote Mr. Harry Thorpe that we were about to descend on his district with wagons and tents and Indians and things, and asked him to come and see us.
” “Ah, heart o' mine, what clear, pure eyes she has!
How they look at a man to drown his soul!
” Which, even had it been spoken, was hardly the comment one would have expected.
The girl looked at him for a moment steadily, then smiled.
The change of countenance brought Thorpe to himself, and at the same moment the words she had spoken reached his comprehension.
“But I never received the letter.
I'm so sorry,” said he.
“It must be at the mill.
You see, I've been up in the woods for nearly a month.
” “Then we'll have to forgive you.
” “But I should think they would have done something for you at the mill--” “Oh, we didn't come by way of your mill.
We drove from Marquette.
” “I see,” cried Thorpe, enlightened.
“But I'm sorry I didn't know.
I'm sorry you didn't let me know.
I suppose you thought I was still at the mill.
How did you get along?
Is Wallace with you?
” “No,” she replied, dropping her hands and straightening her erect figure.
“It's horrid.
He was coming, and then some business came up and he couldn't get away.
We are having the loveliest time though.
I do adore the woods.
Come,” she cried impatiently, sweeping aside to leave a way clear, “you shall meet my friends.
” Thorpe imagined she referred to the rest of the tenting party.
He hesitated.
“I am hardly in fit condition,” he objected.
She laughed, parting her red lips.
“You are extremely picturesque just as you are,” she said with rather embarrassing directness.
“I wouldn't have you any different for the world.
But my friends don't mind.
They are used to it.
” She laughed again.
Thorpe crossed the pole trail, and for the first time found himself by her side.
The warm summer odors were in the air, a dozen lively little birds sang in the brush along the rail, the sunlight danced and flickered through the openings.
Then suddenly they were among the pines, and the air was cool, the vista dim, and the bird songs inconceivably far away.
The girl walked directly to the foot of a pine three feet through, and soaring up an inconceivable distance through the still twilight.
“This is Jimmy,” said she gravely.
“He is a dear good old rough bear when you don't know him, but he likes me.
If you put your ear close against him,” she confided, suiting the action to the word, “you can hear him talking to himself.
This little fellow is Tommy.
I don't care so much for Tommy because he's sticky.
Still, I like him pretty well, and here's Dick, and that's Bob, and the one just beyond is Jack.
” “Where is Harry?
” asked Thorpe.
“I thought one in a woods was quite sufficient,” she replied with the least little air of impertinence.
“Why do you name them such common, everyday names?
” he inquired.
“I'll tell you.
It's because they are so big and grand themselves, that it did not seem to me they needed high-sounding names.
What do you think?
” she begged with an appearance of the utmost anxiety.
Thorpe expressed himself as in agreement.
As the half-quizzical conversation progressed, he found their relations adjusting themselves with increasing rapidity.
He had been successively the mystic devotee before his vision, the worshipper before his goddess; now he was unconsciously assuming the attitude of the lover before his mistress.
It needs always this humanizing touch to render the greatest of all passions livable.
And as the human element developed, he proved at the same time greater and greater difficulty in repressing himself and greater and greater fear of the results in case he should not do so.
He trembled with the desire to touch her long slender hand, and as soon as his imagination had permitted him that much he had already crushed her to him and had kissed passionately her starry face.
Words hovered on his lips longing for flight.
He withheld them by an effort that left him almost incoherent, for he feared with a deadly fear lest he lose forever what the vision had seemed to offer to his hand.
So he said little, and that lamely, for he dreaded to say too much.
To her playful sallies he had no riposte.
And in consequence he fell more silent with another boding--that he was losing his cause outright for lack of a ready word.
He need not have been alarmed.
A woman in such a case hits as surely as a man misses.
Her very daintiness and preciosity of speech indicated it.
For where a man becomes stupid and silent, a woman covers her emotions with words and a clever speech.
Not in vain is a proud-spirited girl stared down in such a contest of looks; brave deeds simply told by a friend are potent to win interest in advance; a straight, muscular figure, a brown skin, a clear, direct eye, a carriage of power and acknowledged authority, strike hard at a young imagination; a mighty passion sweeps aside the barriers of the heart.
Such a victory, such a friend, such a passion had Thorpe.
And so the last spoken exchange between them meant nothing; but if each could have read the unsaid words that quivered on the other's heart, Thorpe would have returned to the Fighting Forty more tranquilly, while she would probably not have returned to the camping party at all for a number of hours.
“I do not think you had better come with me,” she said.
“Make your call and be forgiven on your own account.
I don't want to drag you in at my chariot wheels.
” “All right.
I'll come this afternoon,” Thorpe had replied.
“I love her, I must have her.
I must go--at once,” his soul had cried, “quick--now--before I kiss her!
” “How strong he is,” she said to herself, “how brave-looking; how honest!
He is different from the other men.
He is magnificent.
” Chapter XLI
That afternoon Thorpe met the other members of the party, offered his apologies and explanations, and was graciously forgiven.
He found the personnel to consist of, first of all, Mrs. Cary, the chaperone, a very young married woman of twenty-two or thereabouts; her husband, a youth of three years older, clean-shaven, light-haired, quiet-mannered; Miss Elizabeth Carpenter, who resembled her brother in the characteristics of good-looks, vivacious disposition and curly hair; an attendant satellite of the masculine persuasion called Morton; and last of all the girl whom Thorpe had already so variously encountered and whom he now met as Miss Hilda Farrand.
Besides these were Ginger, a squab negro built to fit the galley of a yacht; and three Indian guides.
They inhabited tents, which made quite a little encampment.
Thorpe was received with enthusiasm.
Wallace Carpenter's stories of his woods partner, while never doing more than justice to the truth, had been of a warm color tone.
One and all owned a lively curiosity to see what a real woodsman might be like.
When he proved to be handsome and well mannered, as well as picturesque, his reception was no longer in doubt.
Nothing could exceed his solicitude as to their comfort and amusement.
He inspected personally the arrangement of the tents, and suggested one or two changes conducive to the littler comforts.
This was not much like ordinary woods-camping.
The largest wall-tent contained three folding cots for the women, over which, in the daytime, were flung bright-colored Navajo blankets.
Another was spread on the ground.
Thorpe later, however, sent over two bear skins, which were acknowledgedly an improvement.
To the tent pole a mirror of size was nailed, and below it stood a portable washstand.
The second tent, devoted to the two men, was not quite so luxurious; but still boasted of little conveniences the true woodsman would never consider worth the bother of transporting.
The third, equally large, was the dining tent.
The other three, smaller, and on the A tent order, served respectively as sleeping rooms for Ginger and the Indians, and as a general store-house for provisions and impedimenta.
Thorpe sent an Indian to Camp One for the bearskins, put the rest to digging a trench around the sleeping tents in order that a rain storm might not cause a flood, and ordered Ginger to excavate a square hole some feet deep which he intended to utilize as a larder.
Then he gave Morton and Cary hints as to the deer they wished to capture, pointed out the best trout pools, and issued advice as to the compassing of certain blackberries, not far distant.
Simple things enough they were to do--it was as though a city man were to direct a newcomer to Central Park, or impart to him a test for the destinations of trolley lines--yet Thorpe's new friends were profoundly impressed with his knowledge of occult things.
The forest was to them, as to most, more or less of a mystery, unfathomable except to the favored of genius.
A man who could interpret it, even a little, into the speech of everyday comfort and expediency possessed a strong claim to their imaginations.
When he had finished these practical affairs, they wanted him to sit down and tell them more things, to dine with them, to smoke about their camp fire in the evening.
But here they encountered a decided check.
Thorpe became silent, almost morose.
He talked in monosyllables, and soon went away.
They did not know what to make of him, and so were, of course, the more profoundly interested.
The truth was, his habitual reticence would not have permitted a great degree of expansion in any case, but now the presence of Hilda made any but an attitude of hushed waiting for her words utterly impossible to him.
He wished well to them all.
If there was anything he could do for them, he would gladly undertake it.
But he would not act the lion nor tell of his, to them, interesting adventures.
However, when he discovered that Hilda had ceased visiting the clump of pines near the pole trail, his desire forced him back among these people.
He used to walk in swiftly at almost any time of day, casting quick glances here and there in search of his divinity.
“How do, Mrs. Cary,” he would say.
“Nice weather.
Enjoying yourself?
” On receiving the reply he would answer heartily, “That's good!
” and lapse into silence.
When Hilda was about he followed every movement of hers with his eyes, so that his strange conduct lacked no explanation nor interpretation, in the minds of the women at least.
Thrice he redeemed his reputation for being an interesting character by conducting the party on little expeditions here and there about the country.
Then his woodcraft and resourcefulness spoke for him.
They asked him about the lumbering operations, but he seemed indifferent.
“Nothing to interest you,” he affirmed.
“We're just cutting roads now.
You ought to be here for the drive.
” To him there was really nothing interesting in the cutting of roads nor the clearing of streams.
It was all in a day's work.
Once he took them over to see Camp One.
They were immensely pleased, and were correspondingly loud in exclamations.
Thorpe's comments were brief and dry.
After the noon dinner he had the unfortunate idea of commending the singing of one of the men.
“Oh, I'd like to hear him,” cried Elizabeth Carpenter.
“Can't you get him to sing for us, Mr. Thorpe?
” Thorpe went to the men's camp, where he singled out the unfortunate lumber-jack in question.
“Come on, Archie,” he said.
“The ladies want to hear you sing.
” The man objected, refused, pleaded, and finally obeyed what amounted to a command.
Thorpe reentered the office with triumph, his victim in tow.
“This is Archie Harris,” he announced heartily.
“He's our best singer just now.
Take a chair, Archie.
” The man perched on the edge of the chair and looked straight out before him.
“Do sing for us, won't you, Mr. Harris?
” requested Mrs. Cary in her sweetest tones.
The man said nothing, nor moved a muscle, but turned a brick-red.
An embarrassed silence of expectation ensued.
“Hit her up, Archie,” encouraged Thorpe.
“I ain't much in practice no how,” objected the man in a little voice, without moving.
“I'm sure you'll find us very appreciative,” said Elizabeth Carpenter.
“Give us a song, Archie, let her go,” urged Thorpe impatiently.
“All right,” replied the man very meekly.
Another silence fell.
It got to be a little awful.
The poor woodsman, pilloried before the regards of this polite circle, out of his element, suffering cruelly, nevertheless made no sign nor movement one way or the other.
At last when the situation had almost reached the breaking point of hysteria, he began.
His voice ordinarily was rather a good tenor.
Now he pitched it too high; and went on straining at the high notes to the very end.
Instead of offering one of the typical woods chanteys, he conceived that before so grand an audience he should give something fancy.
He therefore struck into a sentimental song of the cheap music-hall type.
There were nine verses, and he drawled through them all, hanging whiningly on the nasal notes in the fashion of the untrained singer.
Instead of being a performance typical of the strange woods genius, it was merely an atrocious bit of cheap sentimentalism, badly rendered.
The audience listened politely.
When the song was finished it murmured faint thanks.
“Oh, give us 'Jack Haggerty,' Archie,” urged Thorpe.
But the woodsman rose, nodded his head awkwardly, and made his escape.
He entered the men's camp, swearing, and for the remainder of the day made none but blasphemous remarks.
The beagles, however, were a complete success.
They tumbled about, and lolled their tongues, and laughed up out of a tangle of themselves in a fascinating manner.
Altogether the visit to Camp One was a success, the more so in that on the way back, for the first time, Thorpe found that chance--and Mrs. Cary--had allotted Hilda to his care.
A hundred yards down the trail they encountered Phil.
The dwarf stopped short, looked attentively at the girl, and then softly approached.
When quite near to her he again stopped, gazing at her with his soul in his liquid eyes.
“You are more beautiful than the sea at night,” he said directly.
The others laughed.
“There's sincerity for you, Miss Hilda,” said young Mr. Morton.
“Who is he?
” asked the girl after they had moved “Our chore-boy,” answered Thorpe with great brevity, for he was thinking of something much more important.
After the rest of the party had gone ahead, leaving them sauntering more slowly down the trail, he gave it voice.
“Why don't you come to the pine grove any more?
” he asked bluntly.
“Why?
” countered Hilda in the manner of women.
“I want to see you there.
I want to talk with you.
I can't talk with all that crowd around.
” “I'll come to-morrow,” she said--then with a little mischievous laugh, “if that'll make you talk.
” “You must think I'm awfully stupid,” agreed Thorpe bitterly.
“Ah, no!
Ah, no!
” she protested softly.
“You must not say that.
” She was looking at him very tenderly, if he had only known it, but he did not, for his face was set in discontented lines straight before him.
“It is true,” he replied.
They walked on in silence, while gradually the dangerous fascination of the woods crept down on them.
Just before sunset a hush falls on nature.
The wind has died, the birds have not yet begun their evening songs, the light itself seems to have left off sparkling and to lie still across the landscape.
Such a hush now lay on their spirits.
Over the way a creeper was droning sleepily a little chant,--the only voice in the wilderness.
In the heart of the man, too, a little voice raised itself alone.
“Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart!
” it breathed over and over again.
After a while he said it gently in a half voice.
“No, no, hush!
” said the girl, and she laid the soft, warm fingers of one hand across his lips, and looked at him from a height of superior soft-eyed tenderness as a woman might look at a child.
“You must not.
It is not right.
” Then he kissed the fingers very gently before they were withdrawn, and she said nothing at all in rebuke, but looked straight before her with troubled eyes.
The voices of evening began to raise their jubilant notes.
From a tree nearby the olive thrush sang like clockwork; over beyond carolled eagerly a black-throat, a myrtle warbler, a dozen song sparrows, and a hundred vireos and creepers.
Down deep in the blackness of the ancient woods a hermit thrush uttered his solemn bell note, like the tolling of the spirit of peace.
And in Thorpe's heart a thousand tumultuous voices that had suddenly roused to clamor, died into nothingness at the music of her softly protesting voice.
Chapter XLII
Thorpe returned to Camp One shortly after dark.
He found there Scotty Parsons, who had come up to take charge of the crew engaged in clearing French Creek.
The man brought him a number of letters sent on by Collins, among which was one from Wallace Carpenter.
After commending the camping party to his companion's care, and giving minute directions as to how and where to meet it, the young fellow went on to say that affairs were going badly on the Board.
“Some interest that I haven't been able to make out yet has been hammering our stocks down day after day,” he wrote.
“I don't understand it, for the stocks are good--they rest on a solid foundation of value and intrinsically are worth more than is bid for them right now.
Some powerful concern is beating them down for a purpose of its own.
Sooner or later they will let up, and then we'll get things back in good shape.
I am amply protected now, thanks to you, and am not at all afraid of losing my holdings.
The only difficulty is that I am unable to predict exactly when the other fellows will decide that they have accomplished whatever they are about, and let up.
It may not be before next year.
In that case I couldn't help you out on those notes when they come due.
So put in your best licks, old man.
You may have to pony up for a little while, though of course sooner or later I can put it all back.
Then, you bet your life, I keep out of it.
Lumbering's good enough for yours truly.
“By the way, you might shine up to Hilda Farrand and join the rest of the fortune-hunters.
She's got it to throw to the birds, and in her own right.
Seriously, old fellow, don't put yourself into a false position through ignorance.
Not that there is any danger to a hardened old woodsman like you.
” Thorpe went to the group of pines by the pole trail the following afternoon because he had said he would, but with a new attitude of mind.
He had come into contact with the artificiality of conventional relations, and it stiffened him.
No wonder she had made him keep silence the afternoon before!
She had done it gently and nicely, to be sure, but that was part of her good-breeding.
Hilda found him formal, reserved, polite; and marvelled at it.
In her was no coquetry.
She was as straightforward and sincere as the look of her eyes.
They sat down on a log.
Hilda turned to him with her graceful air of confidence.
“Now talk to me,” said she.
“Certainly,” replied Thorpe in a practical tone of voice, “what do you want me to talk about?
” She shot a swift, troubled glance at him, concluded herself mistaken, and said: “Tell me about what you do up here--your life--all about it.
” “Well--” replied Thorpe formally, “we haven't much to interest a girl like you.
It is a question of saw logs with us”--and he went on in his dryest, most technical manner to detail the process of manufacture.
It might as well have been bricks.
The girl did not understand.
She was hurt.
As surely as the sun tangled in the distant pine frond, she had seen in his eyes a great passion.
Now it was coldly withdrawn.
“What has happened to you?
” she asked finally out of her great sincerity.
“Me?
Nothing,” replied Thorpe.
A forced silence fell upon him.
Hilda seemed gradually to lose herself in reverie.
After a time she said softly.
“Don't you love this woods?
” “It's an excellent bunch of pine,” replied Thorpe bluntly.
“It'll cut three million at least.
” “Oh!
” she cried drawing back, her hands pressed against the log either side of her, her eyes wide.
After a moment she caught her breath convulsively, and Thorpe became conscious that she was studying him furtively with a quickening doubt.
