FullReads

“Is she mad?”

“Mad? Holy Mother! it is not good to have one thing in the head all the time! What do you think? So much all at once! And then–“

“Hush, Pierre! There she is!” said Lawless, pointing to a ledge of rock not far away.

The girl stood looking out across the valley, a weird, rapt look in her face, her hair falling loose, a staff like a shepherd’s crook in one hand, the other hand over her eyes as she slowly looked from point to point of the horizon.

The two watched her without speaking. Presently she saw them. She gazed at them for a minute, then descended to them. Lawless and Pierre rose, doffing their hats. She looked at both a moment, and her eyes settled on Pierre. Presently she held out her hand to him. “I knew you–yesterday,” she said.

Pierre returned the intensity of her gaze with one kind and strong.

“So–so, Cynthie,” he said; “sit down and eat.”

He dropped on a knee and drew a scone and some fish from the ashes. She sat facing them, and, taking from a bag at her side some wild fruits, ate slowly, saying nothing. Lawless noticed that her hair had become grey at her temples, though she was but one-and-twenty years old. Her face, brown as it was, shone with a white kind of light, which may, or may not, have come from the crucible of her eyes, where the tragedy of her life was fusing. Lawless could not bear to look long, for the fire that consumes a body and sets free a soul is not for the sight of the quick. At last she rose, her body steady, but her hands having that tremulous activity of her eyes.

“Will you not stay, Cynthie?” asked Lawless very kindly.

She came close to him, and, after searching his eyes, said with a smile that almost hurt him, “When I have found him, I will bring him to your camp-fire. Last night the Voice said that he waits for me where the mist rises from the river at daybreak, close to the home of the White Swan. Do you know where is the home of the White Swan? Before the frost comes and the red wolf cries, I must find him. Winter is the time of sleep.

“I will give him honey and dried meat. I know where we shall live together. You never saw such roses! Hush! I have a place where we can hide.”

Suddenly her gaze became fixed and dream-like, and she said slowly: “In all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and in the Day of Judgment, Good Lord, deliver us!”

“Good Lord, deliver us!” repeated Lawless in a low voice. Without looking at them, she slowly turned away and passed up the hill-side, her eyes scanning the valley as before.

“Good Lord, deliver us!” again said Lawless. “Where did she get it?”

“From a book which Fingall left behind.”

They watched her till she rounded a cliff, and was gone; then they shouldered their kits and passed up the river on the trail of the wapiti.

One month later, when a fine white surf of frost lay on the ground, and the sky was darkened often by the flight of the wild geese southward, they came upon a hut perched on a bluff, at the edge of a clump of pines. It was morning, and Whitefaced Mountain shone clear and high, without a touch of cloud or mist from its haunches to its crown.

They knocked at the hut door, and, in answer to a voice, entered. The sunlight streamed in over a woman, lying upon a heap of dried flowers in a corner. A man was kneeling beside her. They came near, and saw that the woman was Cynthie.

“Fingall!” broke out Pierre, and caught the kneeling man by the shoulder. At the sound of his voice the woman’s eyes opened.

“Fingall!–Oh, Fingall!” she said, and reached up a hand.

Fingall stooped and caught her to his breast: “Cynthie! poor girl! Oh, my poor Cynthie!” he said. In his eyes, as in hers, was a sane light, and his voice, as hers, said indescribable things.

Her head sank upon his shoulder, her eyes closed; she slept. Fingall laid her down with a sob in his throat; then he sat up and clutched Pierre’s hand.

“In the East, where the doctors cured me, I heard all,” he said, pointing to her, “and I came to find her. I was just in time; I found her yesterday.”

“She knew you?” whispered Pierre.

“Yes, but this fever came on.” He turned and looked at her, and, kneeling, smoothed away the hair from the quiet face. “Poor girl!” he said; “poor girl!”

“She will get well?” asked Pierre.

“God grant it!” Fingall replied. “She is better–better.”

Lawless and Pierre softly turned and stole away, leaving the man alone with the woman he loved.

The two stood in silence, looking upon the river beneath. Presently a voice crept through the stillness. “Fingall! Oh, Fingall!–Fingall!”

It was the voice of a woman returning from the dead.