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Honor of the Big Snows

<h2 id="id00938" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXI</h2> <h5 id="id00939">A BROKEN HEART</h5> The day following the fight in the forest, Dixon found Jean de Gravois alone, and came up to him. "Gravois, will you shake hands with me?" he said. "I want to thank you for what you did to me yesterday. I deserved it. I have asked Miss Mélisse to forgive me—and I want to shake hands with you." Jean was thunderstruck. He had never met this kind of man. "Que diantre!" he ejaculated, when he had come to his senses. "Yes, I will shake hands!" For several days after this Jean could see that Mélisse made an effort to evade him. She did not visit Iowaka when he was in the cabin. Neither did she and Dixon go again into the forest. The young Englishman spent more of his time at the store; and just before the trappers began coming in, he went on a three-days' sledge-trip with Croisset. The change delighted Jean. The first time he met Mélisse after the fight, his eyes flashed pleasure. "Jan will surely be coming home soon," he greeted her. "What if the birds tell him what happened out there on the trail?" She flushed scarlet. "Perhaps the same birds will tell us what has happened down on the Nelson House trail, Jean," she retorted. "Pouf! Jan Thoreau doesn't give the snap of his small finger for the MacVeigh girl!" Jean replied, warm in defense of his friend. "She is pretty," laughed Mélisse, "and I have just learned that is why men like to—like them, I mean." Jean strutted before her like a peacock. "Am I pretty, Mélisse?" "No-o-o-o." "Then why"—he shrugged his shoulders suggestively—"in the cabin—" "Because you were brave, Jean. I love brave men!" "You were glad that I pummeled the stranger, then?" Mélisse did not answer, but he caught a laughing sparkle in the corner of her eye as she left him. "Come home, Jan Thoreau," he hummed softly, as he went to the store. "Come home, come home, come home, for the little Mélisse has grown into a woman, and is learning to use her eyes!" Among the first of the trappers to come in with his furs was MacVeigh. He brought word that Jan had gone south, to spend the annual holiday at Nelson House, and Cummings told Mélisse whence the message came. He did not observe the slight change that came into her face, and went on: "I don't understand this in Jan. He is needed here for the carnival. Did you know that he was going to Nelson House?" Mélisse shook her head. "MacVeigh says they have made him an offer to go down there as chief man," continued the factor. "It is strange that he has sent no explanation to me!" It was a week after the big caribou roast before Jan returned to Lac Bain. Mélisse saw him drive in from the Churchill trail; but while her heart fluttered excitedly, she steeled herself to meet him with at least an equal show of the calm indifference with which he had left her six weeks before. The coolness of his leave-taking still rankled bitterly in her bosom. He had not kissed her; he had not even passed his last evening with her. But she was not prepared for the changed Jan Thoreau who came slowly through the cabin door. His hair and beard had grown, covering the smooth cheeks which he had always kept closely shaven. His eyes glowed with dull pleasure as she stood waiting for him, but there was none of the old flash and fire in them. There was a strangeness in his manner, an uneasiness in the shifting of his eyes, which caused the half-defiant flush to fade slowly from her cheeks before either had spoken. She had never known this Jan before, and her fortitude left her as she approached him, wonderingly, silent, her hands reaching out to him. "Jan!" she said. Her voice trembled; her lips quivered. There was the old glorious pleading in her eyes, and before it Jan bowed his unkempt head, and crushed her hands tightly in his own. For a half-minute there was silence, and in that half-minute there came a century between them. At last Jan spoke. "I'm glad to see you again, Mélisse. It has seemed like a very long time!" He lifted his eyes. Before them the girl involuntarily shrank back, and Jan freed her hands. In them she saw none of the old love-glow, nothing of their old comradeship. Inscrutable, reflecting no visible emotion, they passed from her to the violin hanging on the wall. "I have not played in so long," he said, turning from her, "that I believe I have forgotten." He took down the instrument, and his fingers traveled clumsily over the strings. His teeth gleamed at her from out his half-inch growth of beard, as he said: "Ah, you must play for me now, Mélisse! It has surely gone from Jan Thoreau." He held out the violin to her. "Not now, Jan," she said tremulously. "I will play for you to-night." She went to the door of her room, hesitating for a moment, with her back to him. "You will come to supper, Jan?" "Surely, Mélisse, if you are prepared." He hung up the violin as she closed the door, and went from the cabin. Jean de Gravois and Iowaka were watching for him, and Jean hurried across the open to meet him. "I am coming to offer you the loan of my razor," he cried gaily. "Iowaka says that you will be taken for a bear if the trappers see you." "A beard is good to keep off the black flies," replied Jan. "It is approaching summer, and the black flies love to feast upon me. Let us go down the trail, Jean. I want to speak with you." Where there had been wood-cutting in the deep spruce they sat down, facing each other. Jan spoke in French. "I have traveled far since leaving Lac Bain," he said. "I went first to Nelson House, and from here to the Wholdaia. I found them at Nelson House, but not on the Wholdaia." "What?" asked Jean, though he knew well what the other meant. "My brothers, Jean de Gravois," answered Jan, drawing his lips until his teeth gleamed in a sneering smile. "My brothers, les bêtes de charogne!" "Devil take Croisset for telling you where they were!" muttered Jean under his breath. "I saw the two at Nelson House," continued Jan. "One of them is a half-wit, and the other"—he hunched his shoulders—"is worse. Petraud, one of the two who were at Wholdaia, was killed by a Cree father last winter for dishonoring his daughter. The other disappeared." Jean was silent, his head leaning forward, his face resting in his hands. "So you see, Jean de Gravois, what sort of creature is your friend Jan Thoreau!" Jean raised his head until his eyes were on a level with those of his companion. "I see that you are a bigger fool than ever," he said quietly. "Jan Thoreau, what if I should break my oath—and tell Mélisse?" Unflinching the men's eyes met. A dull glare came into Jan's. Slowly he unsheathed his long knife, and placed it upon the snow between his feet, with the gleaming end of the blade pointing toward Gravois. With a low cry Jean sprang to his feet. "Do you mean that, Jan Thoreau? Do you mean to give the knife-challenge to one who has staked his life for you and who loves you as a brother?" "Yes," said Jan deliberately. "I love you, Jean more than any other man in the world; and yet I will kill you if you betray me to Mélisse!" He rose to his feet and stretched out his hands to the little Frenchman. "Jean, wouldn't you do as I am doing? Wouldn't you have done as much for Iowaka?" For a moment Gravois was silent. "I would not have taken her love without telling her," he said then. "That is not what you and I know as honor, Jan Thoreau. But I would have gone to her, as you should now go to Mélisse, and she would have opened her arms to me, as Mélisse would opens hers to you. That is what I would have done." "And that is what I shall never do," said Jan decisively, turning toward the post. "I could kill myself more easily. That is what I wanted to tell you, Jean. No one but you and I must ever know!" "I would like to choke that fool of a Croisset for sending you to hunt up those people at Nelson House and Wholdaia!" grumbled Jean. "It was best for me." They saw Mélisse leaving Iowaka's home when they came from the forest. Both waved their hands to her, and Jan cut across the open to the store. Jean went to the Cummins cabin as soon as he was sure that he was not observed. There was little of the old vivacity in his manner as he greeted Mélisse. He noted, too, that the girl was not her natural self. There was a redness under her eyes which told him that she had been crying. "Mélisse," he said at last, speaking to her with his eyes fixed on the cap he was twisting in his fingers, "there has come a great change over Jan." "A very great change, Jean. If I were to guess, I should say that his heart has been broken down on the Nelson trail." Gravois caught the sharp meaning in her voice, which trembled a little as she spoke. He was before her in an instant, his cap fallen to the floor, his eyes blazing as he caught her by the arms. "Yes, the heart of Jan Thoreau is broken!" he cried. "But it has been broken by nothing that lives on the Nelson House trail. It is broken because of—YOU!" "I!" Mélisse drew back from him with a breathless cry. "I—I have broken—" "I did not say that," interrupted Jean. "I say that it is broken because of you. Mon Dieu, if only I might tell you!" "Do-DO, Jean! Please tell me!" She put her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes implored him. "Tell me what I have done—what I can do, Jean!" "I can say that much to you, and no more," he said quietly. "Only know this, ma chère—that there is a great grief eating at the soul of Jan Thoreau, and that because of this grief he is changed. I know what this grief is, but I am pledged never to reveal it. It is for you to find out, and to do this, above all else—let him know that you love him!" The color had faded from her startled face, but now it came back again in a swift flood. "That I love him?" "Yes. Not as a sister any longer, Mélisse, but as a WOMAN!" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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