War Drums (Sass)/Chapter 21
THEY made camp that night in a murmurous pine grove close to the edge of a small cypress swamp. It was dim dusk when they halted. Only the pallid radiance of the moon and the flickering glare of the cook-fires lit the grove while the little tents were being pitched. Jolie stood apart from the others, watching the men at their work, dulling her ears as best she could to the oaths with which Jock Pearson larded his orders to the pack-horse drivers upon whom fell all the heavy labour of the camp.
The anger in her swelled higher. Lachlan, she thought, might have bade Pearson control his language out of respect for her. But Lachlan seemed to have forgotten her existence. He was busy with the horses. Almayne was sitting cross-legged on the grass, tinkering with his rifle. Mr. O'Sullivan stood talking with Meg Pearson beside a fire where a haunch of venison was already roasting. Presently, sickened by Jock's blasphemies, the like of which she had never imagined, Jolie wandered away along a moonlit glade sloping down towards the swamp.
At the end of this glade, scarcely fifty yards from the nearest of the cook-fires, the moss-bannered cypresses of the swamp soared straight and tall into the blackness of the night; and here a long narrow cove of a lagoon lay still and deep under the shadowy trees. The moonlight, streaming down between the pine tops, illumined the water and the sloping bank where Jolie stood. Beside her a huge grapevine hung from a pine, making a loop like a child's swing, and in this loop she seated herself ten feet from the water's edge.
She was weary of body, but her mind was wide awake. Her small hands clenched as she thought of Lachlan's impertinence—for so she deemed it. It was an age in England when beauty carried with it regal prerogatives. No young man had ever used such a tone to her before, had ever frowned at her, had ever presumed to scold her. It had remained for a young barbarian of the American wilderness to flout her authority, to reprimand her like a schoolgirl.
Her thoughts passed quickly to Gilbert Barradell—to certain facts that she had learned that morning from Almayne. Lachlan, mindful of his promise to Falcon, had made known to her only part of what had happened on the Good Fortune. What he had omitted seemed to her more important than what he had told.
Most important of all, in her mind, was Falcon's reference to Chief Concha's daughter. Almayne had merely touched upon this incident, which he seemed to regard as of slight importance, in telling her the story of Lachlan's first visit to the brig; but she had questioned him closely regarding it, and she had planned to get from Lachlan a report of Falcon's exact words concerning Concha's daughter, as precisely as Lachlan could recall them. The thing had to be gone about delicately—for none must guess what was in her mind—and before she could accomplish her purpose Lachlan had dared scold her and she had shown him his place.
She must wait now for another opportunity; and meanwhile her better nature cried shame upon her, and she seemed to see the proud, handsome face of Gilbert Barradell gazing at her out of sad, reproachful eyes.
If he were really gazing at her, she mused, what would he think of her beauty now—that beauty which he had worshipped?
She had suffered during these past months, and she wondered uneasily whether it had had any effect upon her face. She knew that it had not, that she was as lovely as she had ever been. She smiled disdainfully as she recalled Lachlan's description of the Indian maidens—"they are slim and straight and some are tall and very beautiful." Perhaps this daughter of Chief Concha was such an one, such an one as would appear beautiful to Lachlan McDonald! She made a little contemptuous sound with her lips; and she thought of the look in Gilbert Barradell's eyes one evening in London when she had come soundlessly into the room where he was awaiting her, and he had looked up to see her standing before him in a filmy gown of white silk and snowy lace.
She laughed aloud—a small, happy, confident laugh; and her lips framed the words, "Forgive me, Gilbert," and she sat for many minutes contrite and repentant because of the hateful, unworthy thing that had been in her mind but was there no longer.
She must have fallen asleep sitting in her grapevine swing; but only a few moments passed before she opened her eyes and saw the orbs that watched her. They were pale yellow-green and they were set wide apart, so that she knew at once that they were the eyes of some great beast. Across the glade near the swamp edge a short, squat live-oak stood amid the pines, and under it all was dark. It was from the edge of this blackness that the yellow-green orbs stared palely at Jolie.
She could see nothing except the eyes; but imagination filled out the crouching shape behind them and made it even more terrible than it really was. She sat as though turned to stone, and she felt her body grow cold as clay. Her breath came fast and her heart pounded within her. She tried to cry out, but no sound came from her lips, and somehow she did not try again.
She knew that the camp was not fifty yards' distant behind her. She could hear the voices of the men there, and she knew that by turning her head she could see them in the glare of the camp fires. But she could not turn her head, could not move her eyes from the terrible eyes that held her helpless, and it seemed to her that the camp was miles away.
How long she sat silent, rigid, numb with terror, she did not know. For a time her mind, as well as her body, seemed benumbed. But suddenly she realized that her lips were moving and she found herself whispering, speaking coolly to herself under her breath: "I must not be afraid. This is the wilderness. This is what I must face." So, little by little, she fought her terror down, her eyes never straying from those other eyes there in the blackness.
She wondered what the beast was. She knew that these eyes were not the eyes of a wolf and she did not think that they were the eyes of a bear. With a sudden tightening of the throat, she remembered that great beast which she had seen in the moonlight during their flight from Stanwicke Hall, that beast which was like a lioness and which Lachlan had called a panther; and she remembered how its eyes had glowed as it sat on its haunches watching them.
These eyes were paler, but she knew that it was a panther that she faced; and she recalled certain tales that she had heard, tales of panthers that followed women and children through the night. The terror mounted in her afresh; and suddenly she saw the yellow-green eyes move and was sure that they were drawing slowly nearer.
She cried out, but the sound that came from her dry throat could not have been heard a dozen yards away. For minutes more she sat rigid, staring; then the eyes vanished, to appear again almost instantly, a little farther to the left.
Somehow this seemed to renew her courage. Slowly she got hold of herself again; and again she fought down her terror, quelling it little by little, pushing it inch by inch out of her mind. Once more the eyes vanished, and once more they reappeared still farther to the left. Then, while she watched them, fascinated, they faded from view and she saw them no more.
A faintness came upon her. She held tightly to her grapevine swing to save herself from falling; and she was still sitting there, her eyes half-closed, when Lachlan's voice spoke close behind her.
"Mam'selle?"
She rose and stood on her feet, swaying a little.
"There were eyes," she told him. "Great pale eyes which watched me from the darkness yonder."
He glanced at her sharply, then strode across the glade in the direction that she had indicated, vanishing in the blackness under the live-oak where the eyes had been. In a moment he reappeared.
"It was a panther," he said quietly. "Its scent is strong on the still air. Were you afraid?"
She was herself again now—apparently as cool and contained as though her ordeal had been all a dream.
"Not I," she lied glibly, knowing that she lied, yet feeling that it was not all a lie. "Did I not tell you that I did not fear your wilderness? And did I not tell Almayne that I would teach him much that he does not know about women?"
Lachlan stood silent a moment.
"Mam'selle," he said, "I have come to ask your pardon for my rudeness to you this afternoon."
"I do not lightly forgive, Mr. McDonald," Jolie answered after a pause. "You have done me a great service, but that, as I conceive it, does not give you the privilege of scolding me when you choose."
"Nor do I so conceive it," he answered.
"And yet you hectored me shamefully."
"I was angry. I am sorry."
"And Almayne?" she asked quickly. "You have scolded him also because of what he told me?"
"I have said nothing to him yet," he replied.
"I forbid you to mention the matter to him." Her tone was a command.
"Mam'selle," he exclaimed, "you are arrogant!"
Her eyes flashed dangerously.
"And what if I am, Mr. Lachlan McDonald?" she said proudly.
He was silent, gazing at her in wonder.
"I know not how it is here in America," she continued, a biting sarcasm in her tone, "but in England the young men about me do not complain of what you are pleased to term my arrogance. They take me as I am, and they are proud to serve me."
She paused, expecting a reply, but none came. Deliberately she played her bold game to a finish.
"They said in London, Mr. Lachlan McDonald, that Jolie Stanwicke was the most lovely lady in all that great city, more lovely even than the great ladies of the Court. Because of her beauty many gentlemen of London were her servitors. It is your good fortune to be in her service here. I think you do not sufficiently value your privilege."
"You are mistaken, Mam'selle," Lachlan muttered. "You—I am aware" He hesitated, his mind awhirl in the face of a new experience.
"Come," she said quietly, "I am hungry. The venison should be ready by now."
She chattered lightly of small matters as they walked the short distance to the camp. Lachlan answered briefly, his thoughts still in a maze. As for Jolie's thoughts, they were clear enough, yet led to no conclusion. The sense of them was this:
"Either he hates me as a monument of vanity, in which case all is well, or else I have stretched him at my feet."
At supper she found her answer. The pack-horse men supped apart. The others sat on the grass around an elk hide laid upon the ground, serving them as a table; and Jolie was aware that from beginning to end of the meal Lachlan scarcely glanced in her direction.
Later she led Almayne aside.
"I have done it," she told him.
"Done what, Mistress?" the hunter inquired curtly.
"This afternoon," she said, "you made it very clear to me that you regarded me as a peril to your young Muskogee Prince. To speak plainly, you have been afraid that he would fall in love with me."
The hunter stared down at her, open-mouthed.
"By the Lord!" he exclaimed, "I said nothing of this to you!"
"You said it as plainly," she smiled, "as a man may say anything without putting it into words. You can now dismiss your fears. I have done that to your Indian Prince which puts me forever beyond the pale of his desires."
"In God's name, what have you done to him?" asked Almayne in some alarm.
"I have shown him Jolie Stanwicke as she really is," she answered solemnly. "And henceforward he will flee from her as from a plague."