_ PART II. EIGHT YEARS LATER
CHAPTER XXVI. THE MESSAGE
It was a woman of desperately fortified resolve who turned the handle of the office door in response to Bull Sternford's peremptory summons. The thought of the coming interview terrified Nancy, and her terror had nothing whatever to do with the sending of her message.
Bull failed to look up from the mass of papers that littered his desk. His sharp "Well," as Nancy approached him, was utterly impatient at the interruption. And its effect was crushing upon the girl in her present dispirited mood. She felt like headlong flight. She stood her ground, however, and the sound of her little nervous clearing of the throat came to the man at the table.
Bull looked up. In an instant his whole attitude underwent a complete change. His eyes lit, and he sprang from his seat behind the desk. He came towards the shrinking girl, eager and smiling with the welcome his love inspired.
"Why, say, Nancy," he cried. "I just hadn't a notion it was you. I was up to my neck in all this stuff," he said, indicating the litter on his desk, "and I hadn't a thought but it was the darn Chink come to worry with food." He laughed. "You certainly have handed me some scare since you got a grip on our crazy household. I've got a nightmare all the time I've got to eat. And the trouble is I'd hate to miss any of it. Will you come right over to the window and sit? There's daylight enough still. We don't need to use Skert's electric juice till we have to. I'm real glad you came along."
The man's delight was transparent. Nancy remained unresponsive, however. She was blind to everything but the thing she had come to do, and the hopelessness that weighed so heavily upon her.
"I'm sorry," she said simply, accepting the chair he set for her. "I didn't think you'd--you see, I waited till I guessed you'd be through. But I won't keep you. It's just a small favour, that's all."
Bull observed her closely. She was so amazingly and completely charming. She was no longer clad in the rough, warm garments of the trail. Even the cotton overall she used in the work of the house had been removed. Now a dainty frock, that had no relation to the rigours of Labrador, displayed the delicate beauty of her figure, and perfectly harmonised with the colouring of her wonderful hair. Somehow it seemed to the man her beauty had intensified in its appeal since the day of her supreme confidence in the cause for which she had so devotedly fought.
"A favour?" he laughed. "Why, I'm just glad."
Even while he spoke Bull remembered his talk with Bat Harker when he had listened to a wealth of pitying comment upon the feelings and opinions he had then laid bare. The girl's unsmiling eyes troubled him.
"What's the favour?" he asked simply, as Nancy remained silent.
The girl started. She had turned to the evening light pouring in through the window. Her thought had wandered to that grim, dark future when the twilit forests would close about her, and the strong tones of this man's voice would never again be able to reach her.
She drew a folded paper from the bosom of her frock.
"Would you let them send it for me--wireless?" she asked timidly. "It's--it's to Mr. Peterman."
All Bull's desire to smile had passed. He nodded.
"Yes," he said. "If you wish it. It shall be sent right off."
His tone had suddenly lost its warmth. It seemed as if the mention of Peterman's name had destroyed his goodwill.
Nancy searched his face anxiously. The man's brows had depressed and his strong jaws had become set. She knew that expression. Usually it was the prelude to uncompromising action.
She drew a deep breath.
"Oh, I know," she cried. "I know the thing you're thinking. You're reminding yourself of all I've done, and of the injury I've striven to inflict on you. You're wondering at my temerity in asking you to help me communicate with your enemies. But please, please don't think worse of me than you can help. I'm not just trying to use you. It's not that. Will you read the message? Maybe it'll tell you better than any words of mine."
The paper was held out to him in an unsteady hand. Bull ignored it. He shook his head.
"No," he said.
Nancy sprang to her feet.
"But you must read it," she cried. "If you don't I--oh, I won't send it. I couldn't. Don't make me sorry I asked this favour. It is so little to you, and--and it means so much to me."
She stood waiting, but Bull showed no sign of yielding. He was thinking of the man, Peterman. He remembered his good-looking Teutonic face, and the favour with which Nancy had seemed to regard him. A smouldering jealousy had suddenly blazed up within him.
Nancy turned away in desperation. She moved to depart.
"I'm sorry," she said. And even in her trouble there was a coldness in her tone no less than his.
Bull choked down his feelings.
"Please don't go," he cried, urgently. "It would please me very much to have that message sent. Say, I wasn't thinking the way you reckoned. I wasn't thinking of the message at all."
"Then you will read it?" The girl came back readily.
"Why should I?" Bull asked smilingly. "Say, a friend asking me to send a message for him, a message no concern of mine, what would you think, what would he feel, if I demanded to read its contents?"
He ran the fingers of one hand through his mane of hair and stood smiling down into the girl's pretty eyes.
"You know this thing makes me want to talk. I've just got to talk. The position's sort of impossible as it stands. Maybe you don't guess the thing I'm feeling, and maybe I don't just know how it is with you. We've got to talk right out and show down our hands. If we don't--"
He turned away and glanced out of window. Then his eyes came back claimed by the magnetism which the girl exercised.
"You know, Nancy, our war is over. The war between you and me. We declared war, didn't we? We declared it in Quebec, and we both promised to do our best, or--worst. It was a sort of compact. We made it meaning it, and understanding the meaning of it. If you got the drop on me you were to use it. The same with me. It was one of those friendly things, between friends, which might easily mean life or death. We knew that, and were ready to stand just for whatever came along. Well, we fought our battle. It's over. It's done. Now for God's sake let's forget it. It's easy for me. You see, I'm a rough, hard sort of product of these forests that doesn't worry with scruples and things. I'm not a woman who's full of the notions belonging to her sex. I can wipe the whole thing out of my mind. I can feel glad for the scrap you put up. I can think one hell of a great piece of you for it. Maybe it's different with you, being a woman. I guess it's not going to be easy forgiving the way I had to handle you back out there on the trail. Or the way you were forced to live our camp life on the way down here. Or how I've had to hold you prisoner in a rough household of rougher men. I get all that. I know the thing it is to a woman. All it means. Still, it must have been plain to you the chances of that sort of thing before you started in. That is if I was worth my salt as a fighter. Well, can you kind of forgive it? Can't you try to forget? Can't you figger the whole darn thing's past and done with, and we're back at where we were in those days in Quebec, when you didn't hate me to death, and felt good taking dinner in my company? Say, do you remember the old
Myra you'll soon be boarding again? You remember our talk on the deck, when the howling gale hit us? We were talking of the sense of things in Nature, and how she mussed them up. And how we'd have done a heap better if the job had been ours. Well?" His smile deepened. "Here we are standing in the sort of fool position of--what'll I call it? Antagonism? Anyway we agreed to fight, and stand for all it meant to us, and we're both feeling all broken up at the way we had to act to hurt each other most." He shook his head. "Where's our boasted sense of things? We ought to be sitting right here talking it over, and laughing to beat the band, that I had to treat you like a dangerous bunch of goods li'ble to get me by the throat, and choke the life out of me, while you were chasing every old notion folks could stuff into your dandy head to set me broke and busted so I wouldn't know where to collect a square feed once a week. That's what we ought to be doing, if we had the sense we guess. Instead of that you're feeling badly at me for the things I had to do to you. And I'm worried to death I'll never get a laugh from you for the fool talk I don't know better than to make. You need me to send that message to Peterman. Why, sure I'll send it, even if it's to tell him how mighty glad you are to be quitting the prison I'd condemned you to, and the joy it's going to hand you to see his darnation Teuton face again. Sure I'll send it. It's the least I can do to make up to you for those things I've done to you. But--but for God's sake don't ask me to read it."
The man concluded with a gesture that betrayed his real feelings. He was in desperate earnest for all his attempt at lightness. His words came swiftly, in that headlong fashion so characteristic of his most earnest mood. And Nancy listening to him, caught something of that which lay behind them. The faintest shadow of a smile struggled into her eyes. She shook her head.
"I haven't a thought in my head about you--that way," she said. "It's not been that way with me. No." She averted her gaze from the eager eyes before her. "It's the thing I've done and been. It's the thing you, and every other honest creature, must feel about me. Oh, don't you see? The killing, the bloodshed and suffering--But I can't talk about it even now. It's all too dreadful still. I'm quitting when Father Adam goes, and--and--But believe me no judgment you can pass on me can begin to express the thing I feel about myself. Please don't think I bear one single hard thought against you."
The man laughed outright. The buoyancy of that moment was supreme. Bat Harker was again in his mind. Bat, with all his quaint, crude philosophy.
"Say, that beats everything," Bull cried. "My judgment of you. And all this time I've been guessing--Oh, hell! Say, do you know, it gets me bad when I think of you going back to Peterman and his crew? It sets me well-nigh crazy. Oh, I know. I've no right. None at all. But it don't make me feel any better. Here, I'll tell you about it. I'm not going to take to myself virtues I don't possess, and have no right to anyway. I wanted to win out in the fight against the Skandinavia because I'm a bit of a fighting machine. I wanted to win out for the dollars I'm going to help myself to. But I also wanted to win out because of the great big purpose that lies behind these mills of Sachigo. I want you to get right inside my mind on that thing so you'll know one of the reasons why I hate that you're sending word to Peterman. You'll maybe understand then the thing that made me fight you, a woman, as well as the others, and treat you in a fashion that's made me hate myself ever since. I'm going to say it as bluntly as I know how. It'll be like beating you, a helpless victim, right over the head with a club. I've acted the brute right along to you, an' I s'pose I best finish up that way. You were doing your best to sell your birthright, my birthright, to the foreigner. You were helping the alien, Peterman, and his gang, to snatch the wealth of our forests. Why? You didn't think. You didn't know. There was no one to tell you. You simply didn't know the thing you were doing.
"This man Peterman was good to you. He held out prospects that glittered. It was good enough. And all the time he was looking to steal your birthright. The birthright of every Canadian. That makes you feel bad. Sure it does. I can see it. But I got to tell it that way, because--Here, I'm on the other side. It was chance, not virtue set me there. But once there the notion got me good. Sachigo was built to defend the great Canadian forests against the foreigner. That slogan got a grip on me. Yes, it got me good. I could scrap with every breath in my body for that. Well, now we've got the Skandinavia beat, and in a year or so they'll be on the scrap heap, ready to sell at scrap price. That's so. I know. Sachigo will be the biggest thing of its kind in the world next year, and there won't be any room for the Skandinavia. That's a reason I hate for you to go back to Peterman--one reason."
"But I'm not going back," Nancy cried vehemently.
Bull stared wide-eyed.
"You're not going back?" he echoed stupidly. Then of a sudden he held out his hand. "Say, pass that message right over. Why in--Guess I'm crazy to read it--now."
Nancy held the paper out to him. There was something so amazingly headlong in his manner. All the girl's apprehensions, all her depression, were swept away, and a rising excitement replaced them. A surge of thankfulness rose up in her. At least he would learn that she had no intention of further treachery to the land of her birth.
"Accept my resignation forthwith."
Bull read the brief message aloud. It was addressed to Peterman, and it was signed "Nancy McDonald." The force, the coldness of the words were implacable. He revelled in the phrasing. He revelled in the thing they conveyed. He looked up. The girl was smiling. She had forgotten everything but the approval she saw shining in his eyes.
Suddenly he reached out and his great hands came gently down upon her softly rounded shoulders. It was a wonderful caress. They held her firmly while he gazed into her eyes.
"Say, Nancy," he cried, in a voice that was deep with emotion. "You mean that? Those words? You've quit the Skandinavia? What--what are you going to do?"
"I--I'm going to the forests with Father Adam. I'm going to help the boys we've so often talked about. I'm--"
"Not on your life!"
The man's denial rang out with all the force of his virile nature.
"Say, listen right here. You've quit them. You've quit Peterman. And you reckon from one fool play you're going right over to another. No, sir, not on your life. It's my chance now, and by God I don't pass it. I'm kind of a rough citizen and don't know the way a feller should say this sort of stuff. But I'm crazy to marry you and have been that way ever since you came along, and sat right in this office, and invited me to take tea in the parlour of that darnation bug, Peterman. Do you know all that means, Nancy? It means I'm just daft with love for you, and have been ever since I set eyes on you, for all I had to treat you worse than a 'hold-up.' Say, my dear, will you give me the chance to show you? Can you forget it all? Can you? I'll raise every sort of hell to fix you good and happy. And you and me, together, we'll just send this great Sachigo of ours booming sky high, and in a year I promise to hand you the wreckage that was once the Skandinavia. Marry me, dear, and I'll show you the thing a man can be and do. And I'll make you forget the ruffian I've had to act towards you. Will you let me help you to forget? Will you--?"
Nancy's eyes were frankly raised to the passionate gaze which revealed the depths of the man's great heart.
"I have," she said in a low voice. "I've forgotten everything but--but--you."
She moved as she spoke. There was no hesitation. All her soul was shining in her eyes, and she yielded to the impulse she was powerless to deny. She came to him, releasing herself from the great hands that held her shoulders. She reached up and placed her soft arms about the neck that rose trunk-like above his shoulders. In a moment she was caught and crushed in his arms.
"Why--that's just fine!"
The exclamation broke from the man out of sheer delight and happiness. And the while he bent down and kissed the smiling upturned face, and permitted one hand to wander caressingly over the girl's wealth of beautiful hair. _