A Girl of the North. Susan Morrow Jones
“What time shall we go?”
“At three,” he answered.
Launa rushed off to order tea to take with them, as well as some tea and sugar for presents to the Indians.
They drove about six miles to the Reserve. It was a desolate piece of country, and lay along the side of a large lake, from which ran a little trout stream. The Indians lived in cottages, poorly built shanties, and they welcomed the Archers with joy. There was an old grandmother, a terrible old person in a red flannel bed-jacket, a very short skirt, and a short pipe, which she smoked with fervour. Her grey hair hung down on both sides of her brown face, and she waved her long thin fingers as she related tales of her magic cures, for she was a doctor and made herb decoctions for anyone who was ailing. She talked in a low mysterious voice.
“I give him little medicine, yer know,” she said, with a leer and a drawl, nodding her funny old head with an air of confidence in her listener’s understanding and belief.
Miss Black was afraid of her, and always felt sure that Mrs. Andrew would not be too good to omit mixing poison with her medicine, if she considered it desirable the sick person should not recover.
Launa listened to the old grandmother’s stories with rapt attention, until Andrew, the witch’s husband, came to say he had lighted a fire by the lake, and that Abram had launched his canoe to take Launa in it after tea.
Andrew and Launa caught some trout, which they cooked at the wood fire, and Launa made tea. She presented Mrs. Andrew with a large parcel of it to that lady’s joy, though she merely grunted her thanks, and then offered Launa a cup out of her own tea-pot. But as the Indians seldom or never empty the tea-pot (they consider it a waste to throw away the old leaves, and keep on adding a few new ones, which they let boil to get their full flavour), Launa knew better than to drink it. It was, in truth, a deadly concoction.
Abram pushed his canoe into the water, and taking a paddle in one hand started with a little run and then jumped into the end of the canoe, which shot out into the middle of the lake. It was a wonderful jump, and Launa never tired of seeing it.
“There is no one who can do that as Abram does,” she said with admiration. “He is splendid, isn’t he, Andrew? Abram, Abram!” called Launa. “Take me up to the end of the lake!”
He brought the canoe in again, and she took her paddle and knelt in the bow. They went off together, her firm figure, with its graceful arm movement, erect, muscular, and supple. Oh! the joy of those days! The joy of living and of doing! The rapid, firm strokes, and the movement!
Launa paid her visit to the opera house in New York, whither her father took her with Miss Black for a winter, and then her dreams were realised. She heard the “Nibelungenlied,” “The Meistersinger,” “Tannhauser,” besides selections from “Parsifal”; she also attended numerous concerts. Music took the place of her out-of-door life, and she became so absorbed in it that she only occasionally missed and regretted her former wanderings. It was as if she had experienced its wonderful power for the first time, and drank from a cup of intoxicating sweetness.
She went to dances, and discovered that men found her attractive, and naturally she soon learned how to make herself agreeable. At the same time she realised that most men love a woman for her bodily charm.
“Men are very animalish, Whitey,” said Launa one day, after having made a successful appearance at an evening reception.
Miss Black gasped. She had ignored the existence of men as lovers, except in history and in books, while teaching Launa.
“All men are not alike,” she said vaguely.
“No, of course not. Father is perfect. Few men are like him.”
When they returned to “Solitude,” Launa worked with renewed ardour, and practised with joy—she wanted to play well. She read all sorts of books, and after a course of lectures on Greek literature, she turned with avidity to Plato, to Epictetus. Of German books she read many; to Miss Black’s regret she had outgrown Marlitt. For a woman who could do things, who did not fear storm or rain, Miss Black was singularly afraid of the knowledge of good and evil. Evil belonged especially to the poor and low, and to men, who gave it up when they put on dress-clothes, and were in the society of ladies—the humanising influence of ladies! A dress suit was the veneer that completely covered the brute-beast in a man.
About this time Launa turned affectionately to her father. She found him sympathetic, for he understood her, and he never gasped.
“You remind me of your mother,” he said one day to her.
“Tell me about her,” she said, flushing with pleasure.
“She was very sweet—how can I tell you? I loved her; half of me, the best, the happy half died with her; it was as if I were killed. … And we were so happy.”
“It was terrible,” said Launa. “Life, father, seems sometimes to be horribly, terribly sad.” She said this with the air of one who has made a new discovery, and it amused her father.
“Why is it?” she asked.
“I do not know.”
“And what is the good?”
He did not answer.
It dawned upon the small world round “Solitude” that Launa was attractive, and so the inhabitants came to visit and to criticise. They all went to Quebec, and they stayed several nights at different houses, where she enjoyed herself, and where she was admired—especially at one of the balls she attended.
Among all the men she met, English as well as Canadian, for there was a garrison in Halifax, a man named Paul Harvey interested her most. He was a Canadian, who possessed a place about twenty miles from “Solitude.” He was tall and dark. His skin was tanned from the out-of-door life he led; he had a peculiarly high forehead, and high cheek bones, and his body had the lithe look common to men who spend their lives in doing, and who are never troubled with superfluous flesh. His keen eyes glanced into one’s inner consciousness, and seemed hard, until he smiled. He walked with the Indian stride, which is quick and quiet. Of course he could ride, and he had the strong capable hands of a man who has been brought up to do things, and who could do them well. Paul Harvey and Launa soon became firm friends, for they understood each other. They loved the same things; the witchery of the woods, of the canoe, and of the sea was real and tangible to them both, and he loved music, as did she. In the long spring days they often met, and he was full of admiration for this girl, who was so strong and so fearless.
George Archer frequently invited Paul to “Solitude,” without the least idea of encouraging any feeling on Paul’s part for Launa, who in her father’s eyes was still a child; that any man should think of her as a possible wife never occurred to him, but then Archer’s idea of a wife (the other man’s wife) was a submissive woman, and Launa was not that.
One day in May Mr. Archer had gone to Chezettcook to fish, and Launa was anxious to pay him a visit. Paul expressed himself desirous of driving her down to the river which her father owned.
So the two left “Solitude” at two o’clock on a still day, very sultry and hot; a haze lay thick over the land, and the sun shone red with a lurid glare, for the haze was the smoke of fires in the woods.
They drove along very rapidly, not talking much, though occasionally Paul would look at her and she at him, and they smiled with a sense of well-being and mutual bliss.
“I think,” said Paul at last, “that the Bible makes a mistake when it says, ‘Godliness with contentment is great gain’; it should be love.”
“Oh, Paul,” she exclaimed. “The smoke! it is getting so thick.”
Paul was holding his head down.
“Shall we turn back? The fire is crossing the road in front of us. I am afraid we can’t get through it.”
He turned his horse quickly.