Part 21

Natalie insisted on camping early; for it had been a gruelling afternoon on Garth. They chose a little promontory running into the water; and once he had started a fire, and put up her tent, she made him lie at length in the grass, where he stretched his limbs in delicious weariness, and watched her settling the camp for the night and cooking the supper. She was proud in the acquisition of a new accomplishment, that of baking bannock before a fire in the open, learned that morning from Mrs. Toma. The sight of her, bustling and cheerful, working for him, had a strange and painful pleasure for him. They two, alone together in the wilderness, cut off from all their kind!--the thought squeezed his heartstrings; she was so much his own there--and so little!

With the sinking of the sun, the awful stillness came stealing to envelope them; and with insistent fingers seemed to press upon the very drums of their ears. The little river flowed as stilly and darkly as the water of Lethe at their feet; and the gaunt pines over the way stood transfixed like souls that had drunk of it. Under the spell of the silence they instinctively lowered their voices; and they broke sticks for the fire with reluctance; so painful was the crash and reverberation up and down. But there is always one sound that accompanies this stillness; hardly breaks it, so smoothly it comes stealing on the suspended evening air--the quavering howl of the coyote. They heard it throb miles off; and it was answered from immeasurable distances side to side. Little by little, attracted by the smell of cooking food, the animals drew closer, and at last stationed themselves in a kind of wide-drawn circle about their camp on both sides of the river, wailing back and forth like souls inconceivably tormented. Natalie shuddered.

"They are cowardly beasts," Garth said reassuringly. "They won't come any closer."

They spoke but little to each other. Night, solitude and that spirit of woe abroad, filled them with a mighty longing for each other's arms. At last she crept away to her tent.

As the darkness deepened; and the clear-eyed Northern constellations looked out, one by one, there were other sounds; a peevish growling and whining at the top of the bank above them; a frantic scurry when Garth heaved a stone. The better to ensure Natalie's peace of mind, he weighted the tent all around with rocks; and heaped wood on the fire.

Natalie stuck her head out of her cosy refuge. "I can't bear to have you sleeping unprotected outside," she said anxiously.

Garth's heart paused breathlessly at the thought of the alternative. He sprang up and thrust the thought aside. "Nonsense! I'll be all right!" he cried. "To please you I'll keep the fire going all night."

Later, he rolled himself in his blankets across the door of her tent, as before; and lay there smoking, gazing at the fire, picturing Natalie asleep within; and assuaging his hungry heart as best he might with the sound of her child-like breathing.

The day broke gloriously; and shortly after sunrise they were on their way again, under a sky as tenderly blue as palest turquoise, over which were flung bright, silken, cloudy scarves. As they ascended, the character of the river changed; the trees disappeared, giving place to wide, flat meadows of blue grass as high as a man's waist; the current slackened, and its course became more circuitous. Along the shores, steep cut-banks alternated with muddy shoals; and a new set of problems faced Garth.

These chiefly took the form of stout willow bushes overhanging the cut-banks--diabolically malicious, sentient beings, they became to Garth. He tried crawling underneath with his tow-line, whereupon the earth gave way, precipitating him in water up to his middle; he tried crashing bodily through, and the line would invariably knot itself around the most inaccessible twig. The Flat-iron, too, seemed to rejoice in his discomfiture; and at every interruption of her progress took the occasion, in spite of Natalie's paddle, to turn about and stick her nose stupidly into the mud of the bank. Every bush in turn offered a different and more complicated obstacle than the last; in three hours they made perhaps twice three hundred yards. Natalie, alarmed by the spectacle of Garth's set lips, and the swollen veins of his temples, besought him for goodness' sake to swear and not mind her.

He finally decided to change his mode of going; and contriving a second little paddle, he embarked with Natalie. They progressed but slowly against the current; for the short paddles had about the same effectiveness as two of those little instruments for making butter pats, which they strongly resembled. Garth figured they would be making a mile an hour--but this way was easier on his temper.

To-day, the little river, placidly flowing between its grassy banks, had an oddly pastoral look. With the familiar shapes of the overhanging willows, and the brilliant marsh marigolds on the shallows, all drenched in the opulent sunshine, they found themselves looking for cows on the bank; and it seemed incredible that no church spire rose above any of the distant clumps of trees. They could not rid themselves of the feeling that this was no more than a day's picnic, with a house awaiting them just ahead, and company and good cheer. But instead of that, silently rounding a bend, they were unexpectedly introduced to the true genius of the country. In the mud of one of the flats at the edge of the water, sat a large brown bear on his haunches, soberly licking his paws. He was no more than twenty feet from them--a room's length. At Natalie's slight gasp of astonishment, he turned his head; and stared at them agape, with hanging paws, like a great baby. He looked so homely and comical Natalie burst out laughing. At the sound, Bruin promptly fell to all fours; and with a great "woof!" of astonishment and indignation, bundled over the bank out of sight.

To-day, the delicate, heady air of the Northern summer inspired their veins like wine. As Olympians, they lunched on the greensward carpeting the bank of a little inlet; while their shallop floated among tiny white lilies at their feet. All afternoon their spirits soared into the realms of incoherent enthusiasm; they filled the air with their full-throated laughter and foolish, glancing speech. Garth's old friends would have been astonished then to see how he could "let himself go"; but no one in the world ever really saw that besides Natalie.

They loved; their happy eyes confessed it freely, though their tongues were tied. Nothing needed to be explained, for they were perfectly attuned to each other; and everything was clear in an exchange of eyes. The tough old world, with all its tiresome, grimy businesses was thrust out of sight and out of mind, and they seemed to tread a brand-new sphere, created as they would have it, empty of all save their two selfish selves. On such a day, in such surroundings, crosses, hindrances, dangers, what were they? Life was a great joke: Nick Grylls and his minions were blithely whistled down the wind. Ascending between the flowery banks of the little river, their river, nothing mattered so they were not parted. In the more or less tarnished circlet of life it was their perfect golden day; and whenever afterward either remembered it, it was as if a delicate fragrance arose in his soul. All day they saw no sign of human habitation.

As long as the sun shone they maintained their light-hearted gaiety, neither remembering nor desiring anything more----

"I say, Nat!" it would be, "toss me over the hatchet like a good chap. Hey, there! not at my head!"

"What's for supper, Nat? I'm hungry as an ogre!"

"Bacon aux tomates à la Bland and bannock Musquasepi avec ashes!"

"Bully! If you taste it so much there won't be any left to go on the table!"

"Where's the bag of hard-tack, Garth?"

"Grub-box number two; port side by the rail."

"Idiot! You put them on the bottom of the box! The water's leaked through, and they're all mush underneath!"

"What's the diff? Stick the soft ones in the lobscouse!"

But after supper, when the sun had gone down, and the great stillness crept over them again, Natalie's arms dropped at her sides, Garth's pipe went out, and an unaccountable sadness fell on both. Then, their sporadic attempts to keep up the old, friendly rattle rang so false that both fell silent. Their camp of itself had a gloomy aspect. It was pitched in an elbow of the river, where a section of the cut-bank had sunk down, making a little terrace of grass a few feet above the water. Above, there had been a small grove of trees, through which a fire had some time swept, leaving only a few slender, charred trunks pointing askew against the slow, dusky crimson of the west. On the nearest and tallest of these wrecked monuments, immediately above their camp, as on a slender pedestal, sat a great owl, the only visible living thing in all the wide expanse, besides themselves. As long as there was light enough to see him, he crouched there, motionless.

Natalie sat huddled on a box, with Garth's coat thrown about her shoulders. Her chin was in her palm, and her lashes veiled rebellious, miserable eyes. There are moments when the most ærial spirits sink to earth; and just now Natalie could make no pretense at a flight. It was clear he loved her, as she loved him; what then were a few words five years old, to keep them apart? She tried honestly to arm her breast by thinking of the laws that separated them; but the insidious part of it was, they were worldly laws; and here the world was thrust out of sight. Why did he not take her in his arms, and let her heavy head fall on his shoulder? her heart reiterated; and that was the only voice she could hear then. Yet if Garth had betrayed any weakness on his part, Natalie would have been on the qui vive to repel him. The forces of her soul were thrown in a sad confusion; while her woman's instinct raged against him, that he could resist her, she loved him tenfold more for that very resistance.

And Garth--seeing her sitting there so small under his coat, and all relaxed and appealing, her mouth like an unhappy child's, and her eyes big with unshed tears--his arms ached to enfold her; his brain reeled with the intensity of his desire to take her as she trembled to be taken. But her helplessness, which tortured him, nerved him to endure the torture. In the turmoil of his blood he could not think coherently; but he could repeat to himself, dully, over and over: "I must take care of her! I must take care of her!" He busied himself with small unnecessary tasks; splicing the tracking line, chopping tent-pegs, cleaning the frying pan with sand.

Natalie disappeared within her tent--and cried herself to sleep. Garth, lying outside the door, though she attempted to smother the sound in her pillow, heard; and it was like little knives hacking in his breast. Sleep for him was out of the question; he was denied the relief of tears. He rose, when Natalie's quiet breathing told him she was asleep at last, and undressing, waded into the river, and swam back and forth until the cold water chilled him through. Brisk, silent exercise restored his circulation, and a pipe and communion with the stars quieted his nerves. In the end he toppled over all standing, and slept on the grass until daylight.

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