Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/117

 opened the gate and let the creatures through, then recrossed the forest. As she passed the spot where two hours before Marie and Antoine had stood, and caught sight of the river with its melancholy mists rising over it, she broke into loud sobs and cried out:

"Marie, Marie, where art thou?"

But her voice only died away among the trees, and no welcome answer came. When she reached home little Jacques was still sleeping, and the father and tired boys were standing about the door, with that bewildered look which takes possession of the men of a family when they come home and find the mother gone. She rushed to them, breathless and frantic.

"Marie is gone!" was all she could say as she sank upon the step. But they soon gathered what little there was to tell. Each had his suggestion to make, which neither satisfied himself nor another, and, leaving the supper untasted and the cows unmilked, they started toward the woods.

The mountains ceased to glow as the clouds above them grew dull, and from softest blue vanished into darkest purple; banks of misty clouds settled into the valleys about their summits; the light wind died away; the river lay a silent roadway; the vast forests took on a denser shade, and the whole world of nature slept as the mother watched.

CHAPTER II.

THE summer days dragged through their long hours at the little cottage. Every morning and every night, the mother looked toward the forest as she opened or shut the door. But the girl for whom she looked did not come. The summer ended; the vine on the wall turned scarlet, and the gaudy bean fainted to the ground under a cruel frost, the fields were bronzed and the woods all aflame for a few glorious days, then the winter was with the cottagers.

In the forest the summer had passed like a happy dream to the two wanderers. Marie's fears that her mother would have no clue to her whereabouts, were quieted by the promise of the priest, to whom she and Antoine had gone, that he would send a messenger to the curé of her parish, and thus clear away the mystery of her absence. And, not knowing that the message never reached her home, she, after her first hours of remorse and self-reproach, gave herself up to the happiness of wandering alone with the lover from whom she had been separated—save for a few stolen meetings—so long. And the days passed far more swiftly with them than in the saddened home.

After leaving the Indian camp to which Antoine had first directed their steps, it seemed to Marie that they wandered aimlessly on. But the spell of the forest was upon her, and she did not care how long they lingered under the rustling trees, or darted in their bark canoe down flashing streams, whose rocky walls echoed the sound of the foaming rapids, and the wild forest songs of Antoine. They two, it seemed to her, were alone in an uninhabited world—a world into which they had come as from another life. So totally were they separated from the past, that the silence and distance of death seemed to spread between them and the home she had left. But the short summer burned itself out in the forest as well as in the fields. The rich, sweet fragrance of the dying leaves, and the melody of the busy departing birds filled the air; their happy, dreamy summer was over, and it was time to prepare for winter.

There was a trading-post not far away, Antoine had said one autumn afternoon, as they sat talking of the coming winter, and to it he argued they had better go. There he could sell his furs to the traders, and there Marie would be secure from at least a part of the suffering the winter must bring her with its many hardships. But with the thought of the companions awaiting her there, came the fear that she would lose him if he once more felt the wild lawless influence that had drawn him from his early home.

"Do not go, Antoine. Let us live here in this happy loneliness where we have each other."

"My poor little Marie, thou dost not know what the winter will be here," he answered.

"But I do know what it will be there. Oh, do not take me. I would rather freeze or starve here with thee, than have thee go with those men," and she clung to him, weeping. It was in vain that he reasoned, and at last she prevailed. Further up the stream was a hunting-lodge, comfortable for its rude build, but deserted by the trappers in consequence of a rumor that it was haunted by the spirit of a murdered Indian. To that they had better go, since Marie obstinately preferred cold, hunger, and disembodied spirits, to the company of the reckless band to which her husband had once belonged.