Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/119

 "Oh, Antoine, thou dost not love me any longer," she cried, as she interpreted the look his face wore.

The impatience of disappointment and the galling sense of restraint were upon him, and he felt the jeering mood of his companions as he listened to her reproach.

"Marie!" he exclaimed angrily, "thou art a foolish child!"

"Come, come, Antoine," laughed his friend. "Thou art much too tender with this baby wife; thou shouldst never have married, to be held a prisoner. What has become of thy brave spirit, which thou once didst boast could be controlled by no will but thine own?" and he took up his gun and led the way to the door, looking back at the two as they stood together—Marie tearful, and Antoine flushed and baffled.

"Antoine, do not let us part in anger, even if it is but for a day."

It irritated him that she should feel so sure of his return at night, and he replied:

"How dost thou know it will be but for a day? Thou demandest much of me."

"Do I require more of thee than thou hast required of me, Antoine?" she asked, turning away from him.

"But thou art unreasonable, Marie," he said more softly, as he remembered her sacrifice. "Thou art childish, to weep when I talk of leaving thee for a few weeks. Thou wouldst make a fool of me before my friends."

"Forgive me, Antoine, and go. I will trust thee," she replied, brushing away her tears and throwing her arms about him.

He kissed her in silence, and, catching up his load of furs, hurried after the others.

"Which has conquered, Antoine, thee or thy wife?" was the question as he joined them.

"Never mind which," he answered sharply, "and I want no more of thy ridicule, Jules."

When they reached the camp Antoine found a crowd of his old companions gathered there. They greeted him uproariously, and questioned him closely as to his long desertion of them. They listened to the story of his tyrannical wife as told by his late guests with many embellishments, and all joined their entreaties that he would bring his wife to the camp, and go with them upon a long expedition they were now planning. The temptation to yield was great, but when he looked around upon the drunken, reckless, half-savage band, and the women who found them agreeable companions, and thought of leaving his pure, helpless Marie with them, even the fascination of the long, dangerous hunt failed.

The day was almost done before he had disposed of his furs, and shaken off the last friend who followed to persuade him. And, when at last he lifted his purchases to his shoulders and slipped on his snow-shoes and turned homeward, the sun was sinking into its early bed of wintry clouds.

He struck briskly out through the forest, caring not for the darkness, and breathing more freely as the last sound from the camp died away in the distance. His heart grew warmer as each step took him nearer to his wife, and he forgot the darkness and cold, as he pictured her joy when he would take her in his arms, and tell her that she had reclaimed him.

At home Marie had spent a wretched day of fear and doubt. It was in vain that she assured herself that he loved her, that he had always been true to her; she was forced to remember that he had never been so tried before. And, further, she knew that his vanity had been sorely wounded, that she had subjected him to the ridicule of his friends. Why had she not exercised more tact and shielded him from this? Why had she, in short, shown herself to be a child, making him perhaps indeed feel her to be a burden? She tormented herself with these self-reproaching queries throughout the day. But, when evening came, the hope that he might soon be with her, cheered her, and she brightened the fire, and tried to give the little cabin an air of welcome against the time of his return. But the dusk turned to darkness, and the darkness was in its turn dispelled by the late rising moon, and yet he did not come. Again and again she wrapped a blanket about her, and ran up the river bank in the direction he had gone, in the hope of meeting him. And, not daring to lose sight of the light in her cabin, she would stand and listen, until, benumbed with cold and fear, she would fly back to her shelter, only to be driven remorselessly out again.

During the early part of the night, the knowledge that his heavy burden would make his progress slow sustained her. But when time, and far more than time for his return had elapsed, and he did not come, the horrible fear that he had deserted her, and the dread that he was kept away by some terrible accident, by turns took possession of her mind.

Midnight was passed, and the moon slid slowly along the sky, muffled in the heavy