Part 33 (2/2)
”What is it?” she repeated slowly. Yet I seemed to feel in her very voice a faint, cool current of contempt. ”Why, it is what always urges men to speak, I fancy--their natural fire--their easily provoked emotions.... I had believed you different.”
”Did you not desire my friends.h.i.+p?” I asked in hot chagrin.
”Not if it be of this kind, Euan.”
”You would not have me love you?”
”Love!” And the fine edge of her contempt cut clean. ”Love!” she repeated coolly. ”And we scarcely know each other; have never pa.s.sed a day together; have never broken bread; know nothing, nothing of each other's minds and finer qualities; have awakened nothing in each other yet except emotions. Friends.h.i.+ps have their deeps and shallows, but are deathless only while they endure. Love hath no shallows, Euan, and endures often when friends.h.i.+p dies.... I speak, having no knowledge.
But I believe it. And, believing n.o.bly of true love--in ignorance of it, but still in awe--and having been a.s.sailed by clamours of a shameful pa.s.sion calling itself love--and having builded in my heart and mind a very lofty altar for the truth, how can I feel otherwise than sorry that you spoke--hotly, unthinkingly, as you did to me?”
I was silent.
She rose, lifted the lantern, laid open the trap-door.
”Come,” she whispered, beckoning.
I followed her as she descended, took the lantern from her hand, glanced at the shadowy heap, asleep perhaps, on the corner settle, then walked to the door and opened it. A thousand, thousand stars were sparkling overhead.
On the sill she whispered:
”When will you come again?”
”Do you want me?” I said sullenly.
She made no answer for a moment; suddenly she caught my hand and pressed it, crus.h.i.+ng it between both of hers; and turning I saw her almost helpless with her laughter.
”Oh, what an infant have I found in this tall gentleman of Morgan's corps!” said she. ”A boy one moment and a man the next--silly and wise in the same breath--headlong, headstrong, tender, and generous, petty and childish, grave and kind--the sacred and wondrous being, in point of fact, known to the world as man! And now he asks, with solemn mien and sadly ruffled and reproachful dignity whether a poor, friendless, homeless, nameless girl desires his company again!”
She dropped my hand, caught at her skirt's edge, and made me a mocking reverence.
”Dear sir,” she said, ”I pray you come again to visit me tomorrow, while I am mending regimental s.h.i.+rts at tuppence each----”
”Lois!” I said sadly. ”How can you use me so!”
She began to laugh again.
”Oh, Euan, I can not endure it if you're solemn and sorry for yourself----”
”That is too much!” I exclaimed, furious, and marched out, boiling, under the high stars. And every star o' them, I think, was laughing at the sorriest a.s.s who ever fell in love.
Nevertheless, that night I wrote her name in my letter to Mr. Hake; and the ink on it was scarce sanded when an Oneida runner had it and was driving his canoe down the Mohawk River at a speed that promised to win for him the bonus in hard money which I had promised for a swift journey and a swift return.
And far into the July morning I talked with the Sagamore of Amochol and of Catharines-town; and he listened while he sat tirelessly polis.h.i.+ng his scalping-knife and hatchet.
CHAPTER VIII
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