Part 47 (2/2)
Else,” and her face paled, ”I do not know what I might become--I do not know, I tell you--having been all my life deprived of intimacy--never having known familiar kindness or its lightest caress--and half dead sometimes of the need of it!”
She straightened up, clenching her hands, then smiled her breathless little smile.
”Think of it, Euan! For twenty years I have wanted her caresses--or such harmless kindness of somebody--almost of anybody! My foster-mother never kissed me, never put her arm about me--or even laid her hand lightly upon my shoulder--as did that girl do to you on the stairs....
I tell you, to see her do it went through me like a Shawanese arrow----”
She forced a mirthless smile, and clasped her fingers across her knee:
”So bitterly have I missed affection all my life,” she added calmly.
”...And now you come into my life! Why, Euan--and my sentiments were truly pure and blameless when you were there that night with me on the rock under the cl.u.s.tered stars--and I left for you a rose--and my heart with it!--so dear and welcome was your sudden presence that I could have let you fold me in your arms, and so fallen asleep beside you, I was that deathly weary of my solitude and ragged isolation.”
She made a listless gesture:
”It is too late for us to yield to demonstration of your affection now, anyway--not until I find myself safe in the arms that bore me first.
G.o.d knows how deeply it would affect me if you conquered me, or what I would do for very grat.i.tude and happiness under the first close caress.... Stir not anything of that in me, Euan. Let me not even dream of it. It were not well for me--not well for me. For whether I love you as I do, or--otherwise and less purely--it would be all the same--and I should become--something--which I am not--wedded or otherwise--not my free self, but to my lesser self a slave, without ambition, pride--wavering in that fixed resolve which has brought me hither....
And I should live and die your lesser satellite, unhappy to the very end.”
After a silence, I said heavily:
”Then you have not renounced your purpose?”
”No.”
”You still desire to go to Catharines-town?”
”I must go.”
”That was the burden of your conversation with the Sagamore but now?”
”Yes.”
”He refused to aid you?”
”He refused.”
”Why, then, are you not content to wait here--or at Albany?”
She sat for a long while with head lowered, then, looking up quietly:
”Another pair of moccasins was left outside my door last night.”
”What! At Croghan's? Inside our line!” I exclaimed incredulously.
”Aye. But this time the message sewed within them differed from all the others. And on the shred of bark was written: 'Swift moccasins for little feet as swift. The long trail opens. Come!'”
”You think your mother wrote it?” I asked, astounded.
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