The Silent Battle

“Have what?”

“It was Nellie. I might have guessed it.”

“Guessed–?”

“It was her plan—coming up here—to the woods. Before we left New York she and John Kenyon were as thick as thieves—and–”

“Oh!”

“Good old Uncle John! He did it. I remember now—a hundred things.”

It was Jane’s turn to be surprised.

“Yes—yes. It’s true, Phil. Oh, how cleverly they managed! But how could Nellie have known that I would come here? I only told Johnny Challón.”

Phil laughed.

“Nellie Pennington is a remarkable woman. She knew. She knows everything.”

“Yes, I think she does,” said Jane. “We’ve been in camp a week. I started with Challón four days ago. He said he had lost the trail, and I gave it up. This morning—I can see it all now. Father—and Nellie started me off themselves at sunrise. They knew I’d come here and–”

She stopped and took him abruptly by the arm. “Phil! Those wicked people had even fixed the day and hour of our meeting.”

He nodded.

“Of course! I wanted to come yesterday, but they wouldn’t let me. If I had—I should have missed you.”

“Oh—how terrible!”

Her accents were so genuine, her face so distressed at this possibility, that he laughed and caught her in his arms again.

“But I didn’t miss you, Jane. That’s the point. Even if I had, Nellie would have managed somehow. She’s an extraordinary woman.”

“She is, Phil. She chaperoned me until Coley was at the point of exasperation.”

“Quite right of her, too.”

“But why has she taken such an interest in you—in us?”

“Because she’s an angel, because she has the wisdom of the centuries, because she is a born matchmaker, because she always does what she makes up her mind to do, and, lastly—and most important, Jane, she has a proper sense of the eternal fitness of things.”

“That’s true. Nothing else was possible, was it, Phil?”

“No. It was written—a thousand years ago.”

She turned in his arms.

“Have you thought that—always?” she asked.

“I never gave up hoping.”

“Nor I.”

She was silent a moment.

“Phil.”

“What, Jane?”

“Would you have come here to Arcadia, alone, even if–”

“Yes. I would have come here—alone. I was planning it all spring. This place is redolent of you. Your spirit has haunted it for a year. I wanted to be here to share it with Kee-way-din, if I couldn’t have—yourself.”

“What would you have done if I had not been here?”

“I don’t know—waited for you, I think.”

“But it was I—who waited–”

“You didn’t wait long. What were you thinking of, there by the fire?”

“Of my dream.”

“You dreamed of me?”

“Yes. The night we came into camp I dreamed of you. I saw you poling a canoe upstream. I followed you across a portage. There was a heavy pack upon your back, but you did not mind the weight, for your step was light and your face happy. There was a shadow in your eyes, the same shadow, but your lips were smiling. Night fell and still you toiled in the moonlight, and I knew that you were coming here. There were voices, too, and you were singing with them; but I wasn’t afraid, because you seemed so joyful.”

“I was joyful.”

“I saw the shack—and the ashes of the fire and I saw you coming through the bushes toward it. But when you came to the fire I was not there. You called me, but I couldn’t answer. I tried to, but I seemed to be dumb—and then—and that was all.”

“A dream. It was all true—except the last.”

“That’s why I came. I wanted to be here, so that if you did come, you might not be disappointed. I had failed you before. I did not want it to happen again. I brought Challón to show me the way. I was coming here again—and again—until you found me.”

He raised her chin and looked into her eyes.

“Dream again, dear.”

“I’m dreaming now,” she sighed. “It is so sweet. Don’t let me wake, Phil. It—it mightn’t be true.”

“Yes, it’s true, all true. You’ll marry me, Jane?”

“Whenever you ask me to.”

He looked away from her down the stream where the sunlight danced in the open.

“I told you once that I would come for you some day—when I had conquered myself,” he said slowly, “when I had made a place among the useful men of the world, when I could look my Enemy in the eye—for a long while and not be defeated—to stare him down until he stole away—far off where I wouldn’t ever find him.”