CHAPTER EIGHT
Not without a slight twinge of trepidation did Philip step from his canoe to her. He had not heard Croisset go ashore, and for a moment he felt as if he were deliberately placing himself at the mercy of a wolf-pack. Josephine may have guessed the effect of the savage spectacle he had beheld from the canoe, for she was close to the water's edge to meet him. She spoke, and in the pitch darkness he reached out. Her hand was groping for him, and her fingers closed firmly about his own.
"They are my bodyguard, and I have trained them all from puppies," she explained. "They don't like strangers, but will fight for anything that I touch. So I will lead you." She turned with him toward the pack, and cried in her clear, commanding voice: "Marche, boys!—Tyr, Captain, Thor, Marche! Hoosh, hoosh, Marche!"
It seemed as if a hundred eyes gleamed out of the blackness; then there was a movement, a whining, snarling, snapping movement, and as they walked up the bar and into a narrow trail Philip could hear the pack falling out to the side and behind them. Also he knew that Jean was ahead of them now. He did not speak, nor did Josephine offer to break the silence again. Still letting her hand rest in his she followed close behind the half-breed. Her hand was so cold that Philip involuntarily held it tighter in his own, as if to give it warmth. He could feel her shivering, and yet something told him that what he sensed in the darkness was not caused by chill alone. Several times her fingers closed shudderingly about his.
They had not walked more than a couple of hundred yards when a turn brought them out of the forest trail, and the blackness ahead was broken by a solitary light, a dimly lighted window in a pit of gloom.
"Marja is not expecting us to-night," apologized the girl nervously. "That is Adare House."
The loneliness of the spot, its apparent emptiness of life, the silence save for the snuffling and whining of the unseen beasts about them, stirred Philip with a curious sensation of awe. He had at least expected light and life at Adare House. Here were only the mystery of darkness and a deathlike quiet. Even the one light seemed turned low. As they advanced toward it a great shadow grew out of the gloom; and then, all at once, it seemed as if a curtain of the forest had been drawn aside, and away beyond the looming shadow Philip saw the glow of a camp-fire. From that distant fire there came the challenging howl of a dog, and instantly it was taken up by a score of fierce tongues about them. As Josephine's voice rose to quell the disturbance the light in the window grew suddenly brighter, and then a door opened and in it stood the figures of a man and woman. The man was standing behind the woman, looking over her shoulder, and for one moment Philip caught the flash of the lamp-glow on the barrel of a rifle.
Josephine paused.
"You will forgive me if I ask you to let me go on alone, and you follow with Jean?" she whispered. "I will try and see you again to-night, when I have dressed myself, and I am in better condition to show you hospitality."
Jean was so close that he overheard her. "We will follow," he said softly. "Go ahead, ma cheri."
His voice was filled with an infinite gentleness, almost of pity; and as Josephine drew her hand from Philip's and went on ahead of them he dropped back close to the other's side.
"Something will happen soon which may turn your heart to stone and ice, M'sieur," he said, and his voice was scarce above a whisper. "I wanted her to tell you back there, two days ago, but she shrank from the ordeal then. It is coming to-night. And, however it may effect you, M'sieur, I ask you not to show the horror of it, but to have pity. You have perhaps known many women, but you have never known one like our Josephine. In her soul is the purity of the blue skies, the sweetness of the wild flowers, the goodness of our Blessed Lady, the Mother of Christ. You may disbelieve, and what is to come may eat at the core of your heart as it has devoured life and happiness from mine. But you will love L'Ange—our Josephine—just the same."
Even as he felt himself trembling strangely at Jean Croisset's words, Philip replied:
"Always, Jean, I swear that."
In the open door Josephine had paused for a moment, and was looking back. Then she disappeared.
"Come," said Jean. "And may God have pity on you if you fail to keep your word in all you have promised, M'sieur Philip Darcambal. For from this hour on you are Philip Darcambal, of Montreal, the husband of Josephine Adare, our beloved lady of the forests. Come, M'sieur!"
CHAPTER NINE
Without another word Jean led the way to the door, which had partly closed after Josephine. For a moment he paused with his hand upon it, and then entered. Philip was close behind him. His first glance swept the room in search of the girl. She had disappeared with her two companions. For a moment he heard voices beyond a second door in front of him. Then there was silence.
In wonder he stared about him, and Jean did not interrupt his gaze. He stood in a great room whose walls were of logs and axe-hewn timbers. It was a room forty feet long by twenty in width, massive in its build, with walls and ceiling stained a deep brown. In one end was a fireplace large enough to hold a pile of logs six feet in length, and in this a small fire was smouldering. In the centre of the room was a long, massive table, its timber carved by the axe, and on this a lamp was burning. The floor was strewn with fur rugs, and on the walls hung the mounted heads of beasts. These things impressed themselves upon Philip first. It was as if he had stepped suddenly out of the world in which he was living into the ancient hall of a wild and half-savage thane whose bones had turned to dust centuries ago.
Not until Jean spoke to him, and led the way through the room, was this first impression swept back by his swift and closer observation of detail. About him extreme age was curiously blended with the modern. His breath stopped short when he saw in the shadow of the farther wall a piano, with a bronze lamp suspended from the ceiling above it. His eyes caught the shadowy outline of cases filled with books; he saw close to the fireplace wide, low-built divans covered with cushions; and over the door through which they passed hung a framed copy of da Vinci's masterpiece, "La Joconde," the Smiling Woman.
Into a dimly lighted hall he followed Jean, who paused a moment later before another door, which he opened. Philip waited while he struck a match and lighted a lamp. He knew at a glance that this was to be his sleeping apartment, and as he took in its ample comfort, the broad low bed behind its old-fashioned curtains, the easy chairs, the small table covered with books and magazines, and the richly furred rugs on the floor, he experienced a new and strange feeling of restfulness and pleasure which for the moment overshadowed his more excited sensations. Jean was already on his knees before a fireplace touching a match to a pile of birch, and as the inflammable bark spurted into flame and the small logs began to crackle he rose to his feet and faced Philip. Both were soaked to the skin. Jean's hair hung lank and wet about his face, and his hollow cheeks were cadaverous. In spite of the hour and the place, Philip could not restrain a laugh.
"I'm glad Josephine was thoughtful enough to come in ahead of us, Jean," he chuckled. "We look like a couple of drowned water-rats!"
"I will bring up your sack, M'sieur," responded Jean. "If you haven't dry clothes of your own you will find garments behind the curtains. I think some of them will fit you. After we are warmed and dried we will have supper."
A few moments after Jean left him an Indian woman brought him a pail of hot water. He was half stripped and enjoying a steaming sponge bath when Croisset returned with his dunnage sack. The Arctic had not left him much to choose from, but behind the curtains which Jean had pointed out to him he found a good-sized wardrobe. He glowed with warmth and comfort when he had finished dressing. The chill was gone from his blood. He no longer felt the ache in his arms and back. He lighted his pipe, and for a few moments stood with his back to the crackling fire, listening and waiting. Through the thick walls no sound came to him. Once he thought that he heard the closing of a distant door. Even the night was strangely silent, and he walked to the one large window in his room and stared out into the darkness. On this side the edge of the forest was not far away, for he could hear the soughing of the wind in the treetops.
For an hour he waited with growing impatience for Jean's return or some word from Josephine. At last there came another knock at the door. He opened it eagerly. To his disappointment neither Jean nor the girl stood there, but the Indian woman who had brought him the hot water, carrying in her hands a metal server covered with steaming dishes. She moved silently past him, placed the server on the table, and was turning to go when he spoke to her.
"Tan'se a itumuche hooyun?" he asked in Cree.
She went out as if she had not heard him, and the door closed behind her. With growing perplexity, Philip directed his attention to the food. This manner of serving his supper partly convinced him that he would not see Josephine again that night. He was hungry, and began to do justice to the contents of the dishes. In one dish he found a piece of fruit cake and half a dozen pickles, and he knew that at least Josephine had helped to prepare his supper. Half an hour later the Indian woman returned as silently as before and carried away the dishes. He followed her to the door and stood for a few moments looking down the hall. He looked at his watch. It was after ten o'clock. Where was Jean? he wondered. Why had Josephine not sent some word to him—at least an explanation telling him why she could not see him as she had promised? Why had Croisset spoken in that strange way just before they entered the door of Adare House? Nothing had happened, and he was becoming more and more convinced that nothing would happen—that night.
He turned suddenly from the door, facing the window in his room. The next instant he stood tense and staring. A face was glued against the pane: dark, sinister, with eyes that shone with the menacing glare of a beast. In a flash it was gone. But in that brief space Philip had seen enough to hold him like one turned to stone, still staring where the face had been, his heart beating like a hammer. As the face disappeared he had seen a hand pass swiftly through the light, and in the hand was a pistol. It was not this fact, nor the suddenness of the apparition, that drew the gasping breath from his lips. It was the face, filled with a hatred that was almost madness—the face of Jean Jacques Croisset!
Scarcely was it gone when Philip sprang to the table, snatched up his automatic, and ran out into the hall. The end of the hall he believed opened outdoors, and he ran swiftly in that direction, his moccasined feet making no sound. He found a door locked with an iron bar. It took him but a moment to throw this up, open the door, and leap out into the night. The wind had died away, and it was snowing. In the silence he stood and listened, his eyes trying to find some moving shadow in the gloom. His fighting blood was up. His one impulse now was to come face to face with Jean Croisset and demand an explanation. He knew that if he had stood another moment with his back to the window Jean would have killed him. Murder was in the half-breed's eyes. His pistol was ready. Only Philip's quick turning from the door had saved him. It was evident that Jean had fled from the window as quickly as Philip had run out into the hall. Or, if he had not fled, he was hiding in the gloom of the building. At the thought that Jean might be crouching in the shadows Philip turned suddenly and moved swiftly and silently along the log wall of Adare House. He half expected a shot out of the darkness, and with his thumb he pressed down the safety lever of his automatic. He had almost reached his own window when a sound just beyond the pale filter of light that came out of it drew him more cautiously into the pitch darkness of the deep shadow next the wall. In another moment he was sure. Some other person was moving through the gloom beyond the streak of light.
With his pistol in readiness, Philip darted through the illuminated path. A startled cry broke out of the night, and with that cry his hand gripped fiercely in the deep fur of a coat. In the same breath an exclamation of astonishment came from his own lips as he looked into the white, staring face of Josephine. His pistol arm had dropped to his side. He believed that she had not seen the weapon, and he thrust it in his trousers pocket.
"You, Josephine!" he gasped. "What are you doing here?"
"And you?" she counter demanded. "You have no coat, no hat ..." Her hands gripped his arm. "I saw you run through the light. You had a pistol."
An impulse which he could not explain prompted him to tell her a falsehood.
"I came out—to see what the night looked like," he said. "When I heard you in the darkness it startled me for a moment, and I drew my pistol."
It seemed to him that her fingers clutched deeper and more convulsively into his arm.
"You have seen no one else?" she asked.
Again he was prompted to keep his secret.
"Is it possible that any one else is awake and roaming about at this hour?" he laughed. "I was just returning to my room to go to bed, Josephine. I thought that you had forgotten me. And Jean—where is he?"
"We hadn't forgotten you," shivered Josephine. "But unexpected things have happened since we came to Adare House to-night. I was on my way to you. And Jean is back in the forest. Listen!"
From perhaps half a mile away there came the howl of a dog, and scarcely had that sound died away when there followed it the full-throated voice of the pack whose silence Philip had wondered at. A strange cry broke from Josephine.
"They are coming!" she almost sobbed. "Quick, Philip! My last hope of saving you is gone, and now you must be good to me—if you care at all!" She seized him by the hand and half ran with him to the door through which they had entered a short time before. In the great room she threw off her hood and the long fur cape that covered her, and then Philip saw that she had not dressed for the night and the storm. She had on a thin, shimmering dress of white, and her hair was coiled in loose golden masses about her head. On her breast, just below her white, bare throat, she wore a single red rose. It did not seem remarkable that she should be wearing a rose. To him the wonderful thing was that the rose, the clinging beauty of her dress, the glowing softness of her hair had been for him, and that something unexpected had taken her out into the night. Before he could speak she led him swiftly through the hall beyond, and did not pause until they had entered through another door and stood in the room which he knew was her room. In a glance he took in its exquisite femininity. Here, too, the bed was set behind curtains, and the curtains were closely drawn.
She had faced him now, standing a few steps away. She was deathly white, but her eyes had never met his more unflinchingly or more beautiful. Something in her attitude restrained him from approaching nearer. He looked at her, and waited. When she spoke her voice was low and calm. He knew that at last she had come to the hour of her greatest fight, and in that moment he was more unnerved than she.
"In a few minutes my mother and father will be here, Philip," she said. "The letter Jean brought me back there, where we first saw each other, came up by way of Wollaston House, and told me I need not expect them for a number of weeks. That was what made me happy for a little while. They were in Montreal, and I didn't want them to return. You will understand why—very soon. But my father changed his mind, and almost with the mailing of the letter he and my mother started home by way of Fond du Lac. Only an hour ago an Indian ran to us with the news that they were coming down the river. They are out there now—less than half a mile away—with Jean and the dogs!"
She turned a little from him, facing the bed.
"You remember—I told you that I had spent a year in Montreal," she went on. "I was there—alone—when it happened. See—"
She moved to the bed and gently drew the curtains aside. Scarcely breathing, Philip followed her.
"It's my baby," she whispered, "My little boy."
He could not see her face. She bowed her head and continued softly, as if fearing to awaken the baby asleep on the bed:
"No one knows—but Jean. My mother came first, and then my father. I lied to them. I told them that I was married, and that my husband had gone into the North. I came home with the baby—to meet this man I called Paul Darcambal, and whom they thought was my husband. I didn't want it to happen down there, but I planned on telling them the truth when we all got back in our forests. But after I returned I found that—I couldn't. Perhaps you may understand. Up here—among the forest people—the mother of a baby—like that—is looked upon as the most terrible thing in the world. She is called La bete noir—the black beast. Day by day I came to realize that I couldn't tell the truth, that I must live a great lie to save other hearts from being crushed as life has been crushed out of mine. I thought of telling them that my husband had died up here—in the North. And I was fearing suspicion ... the chance that my father might learn the untruth of it, when you came. That is all, Philip. You understand now. You know why—some day—you must go away and never come back. It is to save the boy, my father, my mother, and me!"
Not once in her terrible recital had the girl's voice broke. And now, as if bowing herself in silent prayer, she kneeled beside the bed and laid her head close to the baby's. Philip stood motionless, his unseeing eyes staring straight through the log walls and the black night to a city a thousand miles away. He understood now. Josephine's story was not the strangest thing in the world after all. It was perhaps the oldest of all stories. He had heard it a hundred times before, but never had it left him quite so cold and pulseless as he was now. And yet, even as the palace of the wonderful ideal he had builded crumbled about him in ruin, there rose up out of the dust of it a thing new-born and tangible for him. Slowly his eyes turned to the beautiful head bowed in its attitude of prayer. The blood began to surge back into his heart. His hands unclenched. She had told him that he would hate her, that he would want to leave her when he heard the story of her despair. And instead of that he wanted to kneel beside her now and take her close in his arms, and whisper to her that the sun had not set for them, but that it had only begun to rise.
And then, as he took a step toward her, there flashed through his brain like a disturbing warning the words with which she had told him that he would never know the real cause of her grief. "YOU MAY GUESS, BUT YOU WOULD NOT GUESS THE TRUTH IF YOU LIVED A THOUSAND YEARS." And could this that he had heard, and this that he looked upon be anything but the truth? Another step and he was at her side. For a moment all barriers were swept from between them. She did not resist him as he clasped her close to his breast. He kissed her upturned face again and again, and his voice kept whispering: "I love you, my Josephine—I love you—I love you—"
Suddenly there came to them sounds from out of the night. A door opened, and through the hall there came the great, rumbling voice of a man, half laughter, half shout; and then there were other voices, the slamming of the door, and THE voice again, this time in a roar that reached to the farthest walls of Adare House.
"Ho, Mignonne—Ma Josephine!"
And Philip held Josephine still closer and whispered:
"I love you!"
CHAPTER TEN
Not until the sound of approaching steps grew near did Josephine make an effort to free herself from Philip's arms. Unresisting she had given him her lips to kiss; for one rapturous moment he had felt the pressure of her arms about his shoulders; in the blue depths of her eyes he had caught the flash of wonderment and disbelief, and then the deeper, tenderer glow of her surrender to him. In this moment he forgot everything except that she had bared her secret to him, and in baring it had given herself to him. Even as her hands pressed now against his breast he kissed her lips again, and his arms tightened about her.
"They are coming to the door, Philip," she panted, straining against him. "We must not be found like this!"
The voice was booming in the hall again, calling her name, and in a moment Philip was on his feet raising Josephine to him. Her face still was white. Her eyes were still on the verge of fear, and as the steps came nearer he brushed back the warm masses of her hair and whispered for the twentieth time, as if the words must convince her: "I love you!" He slipped an arm about her waist, and Josephine's fingers nervously caught his hand.
Then the door was flung open. Philip knew that it was the master of Adare House who stood on the threshold—a great, fur-capped giant of a man who seemed to stoop to enter, and in whose eyes as they met Philip's there was a wild and half-savage inquiry. Such a man Philip had not expected to see; awesome in his bulk, a Thorlike god of the forests, gray-bearded, deep-chested, with shaggy hair falling out from under his cap, and in whose eyes there was the glare which Philip understood and which he met unflinchingly.
For a moment he felt Josephine's fingers grip tighter about his own; then with a low cry she broke from him, and John Adare opened his arms to her and crushed his bearded face down to hers as her arms encircled his neck. In the gloom of the hall beyond them there appeared for an instant the thin, dark face of Jean Jacques Croisset. In a flash it had come and gone. In that flash the half-breed's eyes had met Philip's, and in them was a look that made the latter take a quick step forward. His impulse was to pass John Adare and confront Jean in the hall. He held himself back, and looked at Josephine and her father. She had pushed the cap from the giant's head and had taken his bearded face between her two hands, and John Adare was smiling down into her white, pleading face with the gentleness and worship of a woman. In a moment he broke forth into a great rumbling laugh, and looked over her head at Philip.
"God bless my soul, if I don't almost believe my little girl thought I was coming home to murder her!" he cried. "I guess she thought I'd hate you for stealing her away from me the way you did. I have contemplated disliking you, quite seriously, too. But you're not the sort of looking chap I thought you'd be with that oily French name. You've shown good judgment. There isn't a man in the world good enough for my Jo. And if you'll excuse my frankness, I like your looks!"
As he spoke he held out a hand, and Josephine eagerly faced Philip. A flush grew in her cheeks as the two men shook hands. Her eyes were on Philip, and her heart beat a little quicker. She had not hoped that he would rise to the situation so completely. She had feared that there would be some betrayal in voice or action. But he was completely master of himself, and the colour in her face deepened beautifully. Before this moment she had not wholly perceived how splendidly clear and fearless were his eyes. His long blond hair, touched with its premature gray, was still windblown from his rush out into the night, giving to his head a touch of leonine strength as he faced her father.
Quietly she slipped aside and looked at them, and neither saw the strange, proud glow that came like a flash of fire into her eyes. They were wonderful, these two strong men who were hers. And in this moment they WERE her own. Neither spoke for a space, as they stood, hand clasping hand, and in that space, brief as it was, she saw that they measured each other as completely as man ever measured man; and that it was not satisfaction alone, but something deeper and more wonderful to her, that began to show in their faces. It was as if they had forgotten her presence in this meeting, and for a moment she, too, forgot that everything was not real. Moved by an impulse that made her breath quicken, she darted to them and caught their two clasped hands in both her own. Her face was glorious as she looked up at them.
"I'm glad, glad that you like each other," she cried softly. "I knew that it would be so, because—"
The master of Adare House had drawn her to him again. She put out a hand, and it rested on Philip's shoulder. Her eyes turned directly to him, and he alone saw the swift ebbing of the joyous light from them. John Adare's voice rumbled happily, and with his grizzled face bowed in Josephine's hair he said:
"I guess I'm not sorry—but glad, Mignonne." He looked at Philip again. "Paul, my son, you are welcome to Adare House!"
"Philip, Mon Pere," corrected Josephine. "I like that better than Paul."
"And you?" said Philip, smiling straight into Adare's eyes. "I am almost afraid to keep my promise to Josephine. It was that I should call you mon pere, too."
"There was one other promise, Philip," replied Adare quickly. "There must have been one other promise, that you would never take my girl away from me. If you did not swear to that, I am your enemy!"
"That promise was unnecessary," said Philip. "Outside of my Josephine's world there is nothing for me. If there is room for me in Adare House—"
"Room!" interrupted Adare, beginning to throw off his great fur coat. "Why, I've dreamed of the day when there'd be half a dozen babies under my feet. I—" His huge frame suddenly stiffened. He looked at Josephine, and his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper: "Where's the kid?" he asked.
Philip saw Josephine turn at the question. Silently she pointed to the curtained bed. As her father moved toward it she went to the door, but not before Philip had taken a step to intercept her. He felt her shuddering.
"I must go to my mother," she whispered for him alone. "I will return soon. If he asks—tell him that we named the baby after him." With a swift glance in her father's direction she whispered still lower: "He knows nothing about you, so you may tell him the truth about yourself—except that you met me in Montreal eighteen months ago, and married me there."
With this warning she was gone. From the curtains Philip heard a deep breath. When he came to the other's side John Adare stood staring down upon the sleeping baby.
"I came in like a monster and didn't wake 'im," he was whispering to himself. "The little beggar!"
He reached out a great hand behind him, gropingly, and it touched a chair. He drew it to him, still keeping his eyes on the baby, and sat down, his huge, bent shoulders doubled over the edge of the bed, his hands hovering hesitatingly over the counterpane. In wonderment Philip watched him, and he heard him whisper again:
"You blessed little beggar!"
Then he looked up suddenly. In his face was the transformation that might have come into a woman's. There was something awesome in its animal strength and its tenderness. He seized one of Philip's hands and held it for a moment in a grip that made the other's fingers ache.
"You're sure it's a boy?" he asked anxiously.
"Quite sure," replied Philip. "We've named him John."
The master of the Adare House leaned over the bed again. Philip heard him mumbling softly in his thick beard, and very cautiously he touched the end of a big forefinger to one of the baby's tiny fists. The little fingers opened, and then they closed tightly about John Adare's thumb. The older man looked again at Philip, and from him his eyes sought Josephine. His voice trembled with ecstasy.
"Where is Josephine?"
"Gone to her mother," replied Philip.
"Bring her—quick!" commanded Adare. "Tell her to bring her mother and wake the kid or I'll yell. I've got to hear the little beggar talk." As Philip turned toward the door he flung after him in a sibilant whisper: "Wait! Maybe you know how to do it—"
"We'd better have Josephine," advised Philip quickly, and before Adare could argue his suggestion he hurried into the hall.
Where he would find her he had no idea, and as he went down the hall he listened at each of the several doors he passed. The door into the big living-room was partly ajar, and he looked in. The room was empty. For a few moments he stood silent. From the size and shape of the building whose outside walls he had followed in his hunt for Jean he knew there must be many other rooms, and probably other shorter corridors leading to some of them.
Just now his greatest desire was to come face to face with Croisset—and alone. He had already determined upon a course of action if such a meeting occurred. Next to that he wanted to see Josephine's mother. It had struck him as singular that she had not accompanied her husband to Josephine's room, and his curiosity was still further aroused by the girl's apparent indifference to this fact. Jean Croisset and the mistress of Adare House had hung behind when the older man came into the room where they were standing. For an instant Jean had revealed himself, and he was sure that Adare's wife was not far behind him, concealed in the deeper gloom.
Suddenly the sound of a falling object came to his ears, as if a book had dropped from a table, or a chair had overturned. It was from the end of the hall—almost opposite his room. At his own door he stopped again and listened. This time he could hear voices, a low and unintelligible murmur. It was quite easy for him to locate the sound. He moved across to the other door, and hesitated. He had already disobeyed Josephine's injunction to remain with her father. Should he take a further advantage by obeying John Adare's command to bring his wife and daughter? A strange and subdued excitement was stirring him. Since the appearance of the threatening face at his window—the knowledge that in another moment he would have invited death from out of the night—he felt that he was no longer utterly in the hands of the woman he loved. And something stronger than he could resist impelled him to announce his presence at the door.
At his knock there fell a sudden silence beyond the thick panels. For several moments he waited, holding his breath. Then he heard quick steps, the door swung slowly open, and he faced Josephine.
"Pardon me for interrupting you," he apologized in a low voice. "Your father sent me for you and your mother. He says that you must come and wake the baby."
Slowly Josephine held out a hand to him. He was startled by its coldness.
"Come in, Philip," she said. "I want you to meet my mother."
He entered into the warm glow of the room. Slightly bending over a table stood the slender form of a woman, her back toward him. Without seeing her face he was astonished at her striking resemblance to Josephine—the same slim, beautiful figure, the same thick, glowing coils of hair crowning her head—but darker. She turned toward him, and he was still more amazed by this resemblance. And yet it was a resemblance which he could not at first define. Her eyes were very dark instead of blue. Her heavy hair, drawn smoothly back from her forehead, was of the deep brown that is almost black in the shadow. Slimness had given her the appearance of Josephine's height. She was still beautiful. Hair, eyes, and figure gave her at first glance an appearance of almost girlish loveliness.
And then, all at once, the difference swept upon him. She was like Josephine as he had seen her in that hour of calm despair when she had come to him at the canoe. Home-coming had not brought her happiness. Her face was colourless, her cheeks slightly hollowed, in her eyes he saw now the lustreless glow which frequently comes with a fatal sickness. He was smiling and holding out his hand to her even as he saw these things, and at his side he heard Josephine say:
"Mother, this is Philip."
The hand she gave him was small and cold. Her voice, too, was wonderfully like Josephine's.
"I was not expecting to see you to-night, Philip," she said. "I am almost ill. But I am glad now that you joined us. Did I hear you say that my husband sent you?"
"The baby is holding his thumb," laughed Philip. "He says that you must come and wake him. I doubt if you can get him out of the baby's room to-night."
The voice of Adare himself answered from the door: "Was holding it," he corrected. "He's squirming like an eel now and making grimaces that frightened me. Better hurry to him, Josephine!" He went directly to his wife, and his voice was filled with an infinite tenderness as he slipped an arm about her and caressed her smooth hair with one of his big hands. "You're tired, aren't you?" he asked gently. "The jaunt was almost too much for my little girl, wasn't it? It will do you good to see the baby before you go to bed. Won't you come, Miriam?"
Josephine alone saw the look in Philip's face. And for one moment Philip forgot himself as he stared at John Adare and his wife. Beside this flowerlike slip of a woman Adare was more than ever a giant, and his eyes glowed with the tenderness that was in his voice. Miriam's lips trembled in a smile as she gazed up at her husband. In her eyes shone a responsive gentleness; and then Philip turned to find Josephine looking at him from the door, her lips drawn in a straight, tense line, her face as white as the bit of lace at her throat. He hurried to her. Behind him rumbled the deep, joyous voice of the master of Adare House, and passing through the door he glanced behind and saw them following, Adare's arm about his wife's waist. Josephine caught Philip's arm, and whispered in a low voice:
"They are always like that, always lovers. They are like two wonderful children, and sometimes I think it is too beautiful to be true. And now that you have met them I am going to ask you to go to your room. You have been my true knight—more than I dared to hope, and to-morrow—"
She interrupted herself as Adare and his wife appeared at the door.
"To-morrow?" he persisted.
"I will try and thank you," she replied. Then she said, and Philip saw she spoke directly to her father: "You will excuse Philip, won't you, Mon Pere? I will go with you, for I have taken the care of baby from Moanne to-night. Her husband is sick."
Adare shook hands with Philip.
"I'm up mornings before the owls have gone to sleep," he said. "Will you breakfast with me? I'm afraid that if you wait for Miriam and Mignonne you will go hungry. They will sleep until noon to make up for to-night."
"Nothing would suit me better," declared Philip. "Will you knock at my door if I fail to show up?"
Adare was about to answer, but caught himself suddenly as he looked from Philip to Josephine.
"What! this soon, Mignonne?" he demanded, chuckling in his beard. "Your rooms at the two ends of the house already! That was never the way with Miriam and me. Can you remember such a thing, Ma Cheri?"
"It—it is the baby," gasped Josephine, backing from the light to hide the wild rush of blood to her face. "Philip cannot sleep," she finished desperately.
"Then I disapprove of his nerves," rejoined her father. "Good-night, Philip, my boy!"
"Good-night!" said Philip.
He was looking at Adare's wife as they moved away. In the dim light of the hall a strange look had come into her face at her husband's jesting words. Was it the effect of the shadows, or had he seen her start—almost as if for an instant she had been threatened by a blow? Was it imagination, or had he in that same instant caught a sudden look of alarm, of terror, in her eyes? Josephine had told him that her mother knew nothing of the tragedy of the child's birth. If this were so, why had she betrayed the emotions which Philip was sure he had seen?
A chaotic tangle of questions and of doubts rushed through his mind. John Adare alone had acted a natural and unrestrained part in the brief space that had intervened since his home-coming. Philip had looked upon the big man's love and happiness, his worship of the woman who was his wife, his ecstasy over the baby, his affection for Josephine, and it seemed to him that he KNEW this man now. The few moments he had stood in the room with mother and daughter had puzzled him most. In their faces he had seen no sign of gladness at their reunion, and he asked himself if Josephine had told him all the truth—if her mother were not, after all, a partner to her secret.
And then there swept upon him in all its overwhelming cloud of mystery that other question which until now he had not dared to ask himself: HAD JOSEPHINE HERSELF TOLD HIM ALL THE TRUTH? He did not dare to tell himself that it was possible that she was NOT the mother of the child which she had told him was her own. And yet he could not kill the whispering doubt deep back in his brain. It had come to him in the room, quick as a flashlight, when she had made her confession; it was insistent now as he stood looking at the closed door through which they had disappeared.
For him to believe wholly and unquestioned Josephine's confession was like asking him to believe that da Vinci's masterpiece hanging in the big room had been painted by a blind man. In her he had embodied all that he had ever dreamed of as pure and beautiful in a woman, and the thought came now. Had Josephine, for some tremendous reason known only to herself and Jean, tried to destroy his great love for her by revealing herself in a light that was untrue?
Instantly he told himself that this could not be so. If he believed in Josephine at all, he must believe that she had told him the truth. And he did believe, in spite of the whispering doubt. He felt that he could not sleep until he had seen Josephine alone. In her room John Adare had interrupted them a minute too soon. In spite of the mysterious and unsettling events of the night his heart still beat with the wild and joyous hope that had come with Josephine's surrender to his arms and lips.
Instead of accepting the confession of her misfortune as the final barrier between them, he had taken it as the key that had unlocked the chains of her bondage. If she had told him the truth—if this were what separated them—she belonged to him; and he wanted to tell her this again before he slept, and hear from her lips the words that would give her to him forever.
Despairing of this, he opened the door to his room.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Scarcely had he crossed the threshold when an exclamation of surprise rose to Philip's lips. A few minutes before he had left his room even uncomfortably warm. A cold draught of air struck his face now, and the light was out. He remembered that he had left the lamp burning. He groped his way through the darkness to the table before he lighted a match.
As he touched the flame to the wick he glanced toward the window. It was open. A film of snow had driven through and settled upon the rug under it. Replacing the chimney, he took a step or two toward the window. Then he stopped, and stared at the floor. Some one had entered his room through the open window and had gone to the door opening into the hall. At each step had fallen a bit of snow, and close to the door was a space of the bare floor soppy and stained. At that point the intruder had stood for some moments without moving.
For several seconds Philip stared at the evidences of a prowling visitor without making a move himself. It was not without a certain thrill of uneasiness that he went to the window and closed it. It did not take him long to assure himself that nothing in the room had been touched. He could find no other marks of feet except those which led directly from the window to the door, and this fact was sufficient proof that whoever had visited his room had come as a listener and a spy and not as a thief.
It occurred to Philip now that he had found his door unlatched and slightly ajar when he entered. That the eavesdropper had seen them in the hall and had possibly overheard a part of their conversation he was quite certain from the fact that the window had been left open in a hurried flight.
For some time the impulse was strong in him to acquaint both Josephine and her father with what had happened, and with Jean Croisset's apparent treachery. He did not need to ask himself if it was the half-breed who had stolen into his room. He was as certain of that as he was of the identity of the face he had seen at the window some time before. And yet something held him from communicating these events of the night to the master of Adare House and the girl. He was becoming more and more convinced that there existed an unaccountable and mysterious undercurrent of tragic possibilities at Adare House of which Josephine was almost ignorant, and her father entirely so. Josephine's motherhood and the secret she was guarding were not the only things that were clouding his mental horizon now. There was something else. And he believed that Jean was the key to the situation.
He felt a clammy chill creep over him as he asked himself how closely Jean Jacques Croisset himself was associated with the girl he loved. It was a thought that almost made him curse himself for giving it birth. And yet it clung to him like a grim and haunting spectre that he would have crushed if he could. Josephine's confession of motherhood had not made him love her less. In those terrible moments when she had bared her soul to him, his own soul had suffered none of the revulsion with which he might have sympathized in others. It was as if she had fallen at his feet, fluttering in the agony of a terrible wound, a thing as pure as the heavens, hurt for him to cherish in his greater strength—such was his love. And the thought that Jean loved her, and that a jealousy darker than night was burning all that was human out of his breast, was a possibility which he found unpleasant to admit to himself.
So deeply was he absorbed in these thoughts that he forgot any immediate danger that might be threatening himself. He passed and repassed the window, smoking his pipe, and fighting with himself to hit upon some other tangible reason for Jean's unexpected change of heart. He could not forget his first impression of the dark-faced half-breed, nor the grip in which they had pledged their fealty. He had accepted Jean as one of ten thousand—a man he would have trusted to the ends of the earth, and yet he recalled moments now when he had seen strange fires smouldering far back in the forest man's eyes. The change in Jean alone he felt that he might have diagnosed, but almost simultaneously with his discovery of this change he had met Adare's wife—and she had puzzled him even more than the half-breed.
Restlessly he moved to his door again, opened it, and looked down the hall. The door of Josephine's room was closed, and he reentered his room. For a moment he stood facing the window. In the same instant there came the report of a rifle and the crashing of glass. A shower of shot-like particles struck his face. He heard a dull smash behind him, and then a stinging, red-hot pain shot across his arm, as if a whiplash had seared his naked flesh. He heard the shot, the crashing glass, the strike of the bullet behind him before he felt the pain—before he reeled back toward the wall. His heel caught in a rug and he fell. He knew that he was not badly hurt, but he crouched low, and with his right hand drew his automatic and levelled it at the window.
Never in his life had his blood leaped more quickly through his body than it did now. It was not merely excitement—the knowledge that he had been close to death, and had escaped. From out of the darkness Jean Croisset had shot at him like a coward. He did not feel the burn of the scratch on his arm as he jumped to his feet. Once more he ran swiftly through the hall. At the end door he looked back. Apparently the shot had not alarmed the occupants of Josephine's room, to whom the report of a rifle—even at night—held no special significance.
Another moment and Philip was outside. It had stopped snowing, and the clouds were drifting away from under the moon. Crouched low, his pistol level at his side, he ran swiftly in the direction from which the shot must have come. The moon revealed the dark edge of the forest a hundred yards away, and he was sure that his attempted murderer had stood somewhere between Adare House and the timber when he fired. He was not afraid of a second shot. Even caution was lost in his mad desire to catch Jean red-handed and choke a confession of several things from his lips. If Jean had suddenly risen out of the snow he would not have used his pistol unless forced to do so. He wanted to be hand to hand with the treacherous half-breed, and his breath came in panting eagerness as he ran.
Suddenly he stopped short. He had struck the trail. Here Croisset had stood, fifty yards from his window, when he fired. The snow was beaten down, and from the spot his retreating footsteps led toward the forest. Like a dog Philip followed the trail. The first timber was thinned by the axe, and the moon lighted up the white spaces ahead of him. He was half across the darker wall of the spruce when his heart gave a sudden jump. He had heard the snarl of a dog, the lash of a whip, a man's low voice cursing the beast he was striking. The sounds came from the dense cover of the spruce, and told him that Jean was not looking for immediate pursuit. He slipped in among the shadows quietly, and a few steps brought him to a smaller open space where a few trees had been cut. In this little clearing a slim dark figure of a man was straightening out the tangled traces of a sledge-team.
Philip could not see his face, but he knew that it was Jean. It was Jean's figure, Jean's movement, his low, sharp voice as he spoke to the dogs. Man and huskies were not twenty steps from him. With a tense breath Philip replaced his pistol in its holster. He did not want to kill, and he possessed a proper respect for the hair-trigger mechanism of his automatic. In the fight he anticipated with Jean the weapon would be safer in its holster than in his hand. Jean was at present unarmed, except for his hunting-knife. His rifle leaned against a tree, and in another moment Philip was between the gun and the half-breed.
One of the sledge dogs betrayed him. At its low and snarling warning the half-breed whirled about with the alertness of a lynx, and he was half ready when Philip launched himself at his throat. They went down free of the dogs, the forest man under. One of Philip's hands had reached his enemy's throat, but with a swift movement of his arm the half-breed wrenched it off and slipped out from under his assailant with the agility of an eel. Both were on their feet in an instant, facing each other in the tiny moonlit arena a dozen feet from the silent and watchful dogs.
Even now Philip could not see the half-breed's features because of a hood drawn closely about his face. The "breed" had made no effort to draw a weapon, and Philip flung himself upon him again. Thus in open battle his greater physical strength and advantage of fifty pounds in weight would have won for Philip. But the forest man's fighting is filled with the elusive ermine's trickery and the lithe quickness of the big, fur-padded cat of the trap-lines.
The half-breed made no effort to evade Philip's assault. He met the shock of attack fairly, and went down with him. But this time his back was to the watchful semicircle of dogs, and with a sharp, piercing command he pitched back among them, dragging Philip with him. Too late Philip realized what the cry meant. He tried to fling himself out of reach of the threatening fangs, and freed one hand to reach for his pistol. This saved him from the dogs, but gave the half-breed his opportunity. Again he was on his feet, the butt of his dog whip in his hand. As the moonlight glinted on the barrel of the automatic, he brought the whip down with a crash on Philip's head—and then again and again, and Philip pitched backward into the snow.
He was not wholly unconscious. He knew that as soon as he had fallen the half-breed had turned again to the dogs. He could hear him as he straightened out the traces. In a subconscious sort of way, Philip wondered why he did not take advantage of his opportunity and finish what he had failed to do with the bullet through the window. Philip heard him run back for his gun, and tried to struggle to his knees. Instead of the shot he half expected there came the low "Hoosh—hoosh—marche!" of the forest man's voice. Dogs and sledge moved. He fought himself up and swayed on his knees, staring after the retreating shadows. He saw his automatic in the snow and crawled to it. It was another minute before he could stand on his feet, and then he was dizzy. He staggered to a tree and for a space leaned against it.
It was some minutes before he was steady enough to walk, and by that time he knew that it would be futile to pursue the half-breed and his swift-footed dogs, weakened and half dressed as he was. Slowly he returned to Adare House, cursing himself for not having used his pistol to compel Jean's surrender. He acknowledged that he had been a fool, and that he had deserved what he got. The hall was still empty when he reentered it. His adventure had roused no one, and with a feeling of relief he went to his room.
If the walls had fallen about his ears he could not have received a greater shock than when he entered through the door.
Seated in a chair close to the table, looking at him calmly as he entered, was Jean Jacques Croisset!