Breed of the Wolf/Chapter 25

During the tense days when the fever heightened and the life of Jean Marcel hung on the turn of a leaf, there had been no repetition of the visit of Fleur to the sick room. But so loudly did she wail her complaint at her enforced absence from the man battling for his life so near in the mission house, that it was necessary to confine her with her puppies at a distance.

Once again conscious of his surroundings and rapidly gaining strength, Marcel insisted on seeing his dog. So, daily, under watchful guard, Fleur was taken into the room, often with a clumsy puppy, round and fluffy, who alternately nibbled with needle-pointed milk teeth at Jean’s extended hand, making a great to-do of snarling in mock anger, or rolled squealing on its back on the floor, while Fleur sprawled contentedly by his cot, tail beating the floor and love in her slant eyes for the master who now had found his voice, whose face once more shone with the old smile which was her life.

August came. The post clearing and the beach at Whale River were again bare of tepee and lodge of the hunters of fur who had repaired to their summer camps where fish were plentiful, to wait for the great flights of snowy geese that the August frosts would drive south from arctic islands. Daily the vitality and youth of Marcel were giving him back his strength, and no remonstrance of the Bretons availed to keep him quiet once his legs had mastered the distance to the trade house.

By the middle of August, except for a slight pallor in the lean face and the loss of weight due to confinement, to his friends he was once more the Jean Marcel they had known. But for weeks, a sudden twisting of his firm mouth marking a twinge in the back, recalled only too vividly to them all the knife thrust of Lelac. When first rid of the fever and again conscious and strong enough to talk, Jean had repeatedly voiced his gratitude to Julie for her loyalty as nurse, but she had invariably covered his mouth with her hand, refusing to hear him. Grown stronger and sitting up, he had often repeated his thanks, raising his face to hers with a twinkle in his dark eyes, in the hope that her manner of suppressing him might be continued; but she had tantalizingly refused to humor the convalescent.

“I shall close your mouth no longer, monsieur,” she had said with a grimace. “You will soon be the big, strong Jean Marcel we have always known and must not expect to be a helpless baby forever. And now that you can use your right arm I shall no longer cut up your fish.”

“But it is with great pain that I move my arm, Julie,” he had protested in a feeble effort to enlist her sympathy and so prolong the personal ministrations he craved.

“Bah! When before has the great Jean Marcel feared pain? It is only a ruse, monsieur. I am too busy, now that you can help yourself, to treat you as a child.”

And so, reluctantly, Marcel had resigned himself to doing without the aid of the nimble fingers of Julie Breton. The fierce bitterness in his heart which before the fight on the beach with the Lelacs had made an endless torment of his days gave place on his recovery to a state of mind more sane. Deep and lasting as was his wound, the realization of the girl’s devoted care of him had, during his convalescence, numbed the old rawness. Gratitude and his innate manhood shamed Marcel into a suppression of his grief and the showing of a brave face to Julie Breton and the little world of Whale River. In his extremity she had stood stanchly by his side. She had been his friend, indeed. He deserved no more. And now in his prayers, for he was a devout believer in the teachings of Père Breton, he asked for her happiness.

One August evening found three friends, Julie, Jean Marcel, and Fleur, again walking on the shore of the Great Whale in the mellow sunset. Romping with puppy awkwardness, Fleur’s progeny roved near them. The hush of an August night was upon the land. Below, the young ebb ran silently without ripple. Not a leaf stirred in the scrub edging the trail. The dead sun, master artist, had limned the heavens with all the varied magic of his palette, and the gray bay, often sullenly restless under low-banked clouds or blanketed with mist, now reached out, a shimmering floor, to the rim of the world.

In silence the two watched the heightening splendor of the western skies. Disdaining the alluring scents of the neighboring scrub, which her puppies were exploring, Fleur kept to Marcel’s side where her nose might find his hand, for she had not forgotten the days of their recent separation.

Marcel broke the silence, his eyes on the White Bear Hills, sapphire blue on the southern horizon.

“What you did for me, Julie, I can never repay.”

The girl turned impatiently.

“Monsieur Jean Marcel, what I have done I would do for any friend. I am weary of hearing you speak of it. Have you no eyes for the sunset the good God has given us? Let us speak of that?”

He smiled as one smiles at a child.

“Very well! We shall speak no more of it then, Mamselle Breton. But this you shall hear. I am sorry that I have acted like a boy about M’sieu Wallace. You will forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive,” she answered. “I know you were hurt. It was natural for you to feel the way you did.”

“But I showed little of the man, Julie. I was hurt here”—and he placed his hand on his heart—“and I was a child.”

She smiled wistfully, slowly shaking her head. “I fear you were very like a man, Jean. But you are going away, and I may not be here in the spring—may not see you for a long time—so I want to tell you now how proud I have been of you this summer.”

He looked up quizzically.

“Yes, you have made a great name on the east coast this summer, Jean Marcel. When you were ill the Crees talked of little else—of your traveling where no Indian had dared to go until you found the caribou, your winning against those terrible Lelacs, and proving your innocence; your fighting them with bare hands, because you know no fear.”

The face of Marcel reddened as the girl continued:

“You are brave and you have a great heart and wise head, Jean Marcel; some day you will be a factor of the company. Wherever I may be, I shall think of you and always be proud that you are my friend.”

Inarticulate, numb with the torture of hopeless love, Marcel listened to Julie Breton’s farewell.