God's Country—And the Woman. James Oliver Curwood
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"That you have spoken the truth, that you have come from a long time in the North, and that I need not fear—what I did fear."
"And that fear? Tell me—"
She answered calmly, and in her eyes and the lines of her face came a look of despair which she had almost hidden from him until now.
"I was thinking during those thirty minutes you away," she said. "And I realized what folly it was in me to tell you as much as I have. Back there, for just one insane moment, I thought that you might help me in a situation which is as terrible as any you may have faced in your months of Arctic night. But it is impossible. All that I can ask of you now—all that I can demand of you to prove that you are the man you said you were—is that you leave me, and never whisper a word into another ear of our meeting. Will you promise that?"
"To promise that—would be lying," he said slowly, and his hand unclenched and lay listlessly on his knee. "If there is a reason—some good reason why I should leave you—then I will go."
"Then—you demand a reason?"
"To demand a reason would be—"
He hesitated, and she added:
"Unchivalrous."
"Yes—more than that," he replied softly. He bowed his head, and for a moment she saw the tinge of gray in his blond hair, the droop of his clean, strong shoulders, the SOMETHING of hopelessness in his gesture. A new light flashed into her own face. She raised a hand, as if to reach out to him, and dropped it as he looked up.
"Will you let me help you?" he asked.
She was not looking at him, but beyond him. In her face he saw again the strange light of hope that had illumined it at the pool.
"If I could believe," she whispered, still looking beyond him. "If I could trust you, as I have read that the maidens of old trusted their knights. But—it seems impossible. In those days, centuries and centuries ago, I guess, womanhood was next to—God. Men fought for it, and died for it, to keep it pure and holy. If you had come to me then you would have levelled your lance and fought for me without asking a question, without demanding a reward, without reasoning whether I was right or wrong—and all because I was a woman. Now it is different. You are a part of civilization, and if you should do all that I might ask of you it would be because you have a price in view. I know. I have looked into you. I understand. That price would be—ME!"
She looked at him now, her breast throbbing, almost a sob in her quivering voice, defying him to deny the truth of her words.
"You have struck home," he said, and his voice sounded strange to himself. "And I am not sorry. I am glad that you have seen—and understand. It seems almost indecent for me to tell you this, when I have known you for such a short time. But I have known you for years—in my hopes and dreams. For you I would go to the end of the world. And I can do what other men have done, centuries ago. They called them knights. You may call me a MAN!"
At his words she rose from where she had been sitting. She faced the radiant walls of the forests that rolled billow upon billow in the distance, and the sun lighted up her crown of hair in a glory. One hand still clung to her breast. She was breathing even more quickly, and the flush had deepened in her cheek until it was like the tender stain of the crushed bakneesh. Philip rose and stood beside her. His shoulders were back. He looked where she looked, and as he gazed upon the red and gold billows of forest that melted away against the distant sky he felt a new and glorious fire throbbing in his veins. From the forests their eyes turned—and met. He held out his hand. And slowly her own hand fluttered at her breast, and was given to him.
"I am quite sure that I understand you now," he said, and his voice was the low, steady, fighting voice of the man new-born. "I will be your knight, as you have read of the knights of old. I will urge no reward that is not freely given. Now—will you let me help you?"
For a moment she allowed him to hold her hand. Then she gently withdrew it and stepped back from him.
"You must first understand before you offer yourself," she said. "I cannot tell you what my trouble is. You will never know. And when it is over, when you have helped me across the abyss, then will come the greatest trial of all for you. I believe—when I tell you that last thing which you must do—that you will regard me as a monster, and draw back. But it is necessary. If you fight for me, it must be in the dark. You will not know why you are doing the things I ask you to do. You may guess, but you would not guess the truth if you lived a thousand years. Your one reward will be the knowledge that you have fought for a woman, and that you have saved her. Now, do you still want to help me?'
"I can't understand," he gasped. "But—yes—I would still accept the inevitable. I have promised you that I will do as you have dreamed that knights of old have done. To leave you now would be"—he turned his head with a gesture of hopelessness—"an empty world forever. I have told you now. But you could not understand and believe unless I did. I love you."
He spoke as quietly and with as little passion in his voice as if he were speaking the words from a book. But their very quietness made them convincing. She started, and the colour left her face. Then it returned, flooding her cheeks with a feverish glow.
"In that is the danger," she said quickly. "But you have spoken the words as I would have had you speak them. It is this danger that must be buried—deep—deep. And you will bury it. You will urge no questions that I do not wish to answer. You will fight for me, blindly, knowing only that what I ask you to do is not sinful nor wrong. And in the end—"
She hesitated. Her face had grown as tense as his own.
"And in the end," she whispered, "your greatest reward can be only the knowledge that in living this knighthood for me you have won what I can never give to any man. The world can hold only one such man for a woman. For your faith must be immeasurable, your love as pure as the withered violets out there among the rocks if you live up to the tests ahead of you. You will think me mad when I have finished. But I am sane. Off there, in the Snowbird Lake country, is my home. I am alone. No other white man or woman is with me. As my knight, the one hope of salvation that I cling to now, you will return with me to that place—as my husband. To all but ourselves we shall be man and wife. I will bear your name—or the one by which you must be known. And at the very end of all, in that hour of triumph when you know that you have borne me safely over that abyss at the brink of which I am hovering now, you will go off into the forest, and—"
She approached him, and laid a hand on his arm. "You will not come back," she finished, so gently that he scarcely heard her words. "You will die—for me—for all who have known you."
"Good God!" he breathed, and he stared over her head to where the red and gold billows of the forests seemed to melt away into the skies.
CHAPTER FOUR
Thus they stood for many seconds. Never for an instant did her eyes leave his face, and Philip looked straight over her head into that distant radiance of the forest mountains. It was she whose emotions revealed themselves now. The blood came and went in her cheeks. The soft lace at her throat rose and fell swiftly. In her eyes and face there was a thing which she had not dared to reveal to him before—a prayerful, pleading anxiety that was almost ready to break into tears.
At last she had come to see and believe in the strength and wonder of this man who had come to her from out of the North, and now he stared over her head with that strange white look, as if the things she had said had raised a mountain between them. She could feel the throb of his arm on which her hand rested. All at once her calm had deserted her. She had never known a man like this, had never expected to know one; and in her face there shone the gentle loveliness of a woman whose soul and not her voice was pleading a great cause. It was pleading for her self. And then he looked down.
"You want to go—now,"