The Pathfinder, James Fenimore Cooper [top reads .TXT] 📗

“Mabel,” our hero at length resumed, “we must talk plainly to each other afore we join your uncle in the cutter, where the Saltwater has slept every night since the last rally, for he says it’s the only place in which a man can be sure of keeping the hair on his head, he does. Ah’s me! What have I to do with these follies and sayings now? I try to be pleasant, and to feel light-hearted, but the power of man can’t make water run up stream. Mabel, you know that the Sergeant, afore he left us, had settled it ‘atween us two that we were to become man and wife, and that we were to live together and to love one another as long as the Lord was pleased to keep us both on ‘arth; yes, and afterwards too?”

Mabel’s cheeks had regained a little of their ancient bloom in the fresh air of the morning; but at this unlooked-for address they blanched again, nearly to the pallid hue which grief had imprinted there. Still, she looked kindly, though seriously, at Pathfinder and even endeavored to force a smile.

“Very true, my excellent friend,” she answered; “this was my poor father’s wish, and I feel certain that a whole life devoted to your welfare and comforts could scarcely repay you for all you have done for us.”

“I fear me, Mabel, that man and wife needs be bound together by a stronger tie than such feelings, I do. You have done nothing for me, or nothing of any account, and yet my very heart yearns towards you, it does; and therefore it seems likely that these feelings come from something besides saving scalps and guiding through woods.”

Mabel’s cheek had begun to glow again; and though she struggled hard to smile, her voice trembled a little as she answered.

“Had we not better postpone this conversation, Pathfinder?” she said; “we are not alone; and nothing is so unpleasant to a listener, they say, as family matters in which he feels no interest.”

“It’s because we are not alone, Mabel, or rather because Jasper is with us, that I wish to talk of this matter. The Sergeant believed I might make a suitable companion for you, and, though I had misgivings about it, — yes, I had many misgivings, — he finally persuaded me into the idee, and things came round ‘atween us, as you know. But, when you promised your father to marry me, Mabel, and gave me your hand so modestly, but so prettily, there was one circumstance, as your uncle called it, that you didn’t know; and I’ve thought it right to tell you what it is, before matters are finally settled. I’ve often taken a poor deer for my dinner when good venison was not to be found; but it’s as nat’ral not to take up with the worst when the best may be had.”

“You speak in a way, Pathfinder, that is difficult to be understood. If this conversation is really necessary, I trust you will be more plain.”

“Well then, Mabel, I’ve been thinking it was quite likely, when you gave in to the Sergeant’s wishes, that you did not know the natur’ of Jasper Western’s feelings towards you?”

“Pathfinder!” and Mabel’s cheek now paled to the livid hue of death; then it flushed to the tint of crimson; and her whole frame shuddered. Pathfinder, however, was too intent on his own object to notice this agitation; and Eau-douce had hidden his face in his hands in time to shut out its view.

“I’ve been talking with the lad; and, on comparing his dreams with my dreams, his feelings with my feelings, and his wishes with my wishes, I fear we think too much alike consarning you for both of us to be very happy.”

“Pathfinder, you forget; you should remember that we are betrothed!” said Mabel hastily, and in a voice so low that it required acute attention in the listeners to catch the syllables. Indeed the last word was not quite intelligible to the guide, and he confessed his ignorance by the usual, —

“Anan?”

“You forget that we are to be married; and such allusions are improper as well as painful.”

“Everything is proper that is right, Mabel; and everything is right that leads to justice and fair dealing; though it is painful enough, as you say, as I find on trial, I do. Now, Mabel, had you known that Eau-douce thinks of you in this way, maybe you never would have consented to be married to one as old and as uncomely as I am.”

“Why this cruel trial, Pathfinder? To what can all this lead? Jasper Western thinks no such thing: he says nothing, he feels nothing.”

“Mabel!” burst from out of the young man’s lips, in a way to betray the uncontrollable nature of his emotions, though he uttered not another syllable.

Mabel buried her face in both her hands; and the two sat like a pair of guilty beings, suddenly detected in the commission of some crime which involved the happiness of a common patron. At that instant, perhaps, Jasper himself was inclined to deny his passion, through an extreme unwillingness to grieve his friend; while Mabel, on whom this positive announcement of a fact that she had rather unconsciously hoped than believed, came so unexpectedly, felt her mind momentarily bewildered; and she scarcely knew whether to weep or to rejoice. Still she was the first to speak; since Eau-douce could utter naught that would be disingenuous, or that would pain his friend.

“Pathfinder,” said she, “you talk wildly. Why mention this at all?”

“Well, Mabel, if I talk wildly, I am half wild, you know, by natur’, I fear, as well as by habit.” As he said this, he endeavored to laugh in his usual noiseless way, but the effect produced a strange and discordant sound; and it appeared nearly to choke him. “Yes, I must be wild; I’ll not attempt to deny it.”

“Dearest Pathfinder! my best, almost my only friend! You cannot, do not think I intended to say that!” interrupted Mabel, almost breathless in her haste to relieve his mortification. “If courage, truth, nobleness of soul and conduct, unyielding principles, and a hundred other excellent qualities can render any man respectable, esteemed, or beloved, your claims are inferior to those of no other human being.”

“What tender and bewitching voices they have, Jasper!” resumed the guide, now laughing freely and naturally. “Yes, natur’ seems to have made them on purpose to sing in our ears, when the music of the woods is silent. But we must come to a right understanding, we must. I ask you again, Mabel, if you had known that Jasper Western loves you as well as I do, or better perhaps, though that is scarcely possible; that in his dreams he sees your face in the water of the lake; that he talks to you, and of you, in his sleep; fancies all that is beautiful like Mabel Dunham, and all that is good and virtuous; believes he never knowed happiness until he knowed you; could kiss the ground on which you have trod, and forgets all the joys of his calling to think of you and the delight of gazing at your beauty and in listening to your voice, would you then have consented to marry me?”

Mabel could not have answered this question if she would; but, though her face was buried in her hands, the tint of the rushing blood was visible between the openings, and the suffusion seemed to impart itself to her very fingers. Still nature asserted her power, for there was a single instant when the astonished, almost terrified girl stole a glance at Jasper, as if distrusting Pathfinder’s history of his feelings, read the truth of all he said in that furtive look, and instantly concealed her face again, as if she would hide it from observation for ever.

“Take time to think, Mabel,” the guide continued, “for it is a solemn thing to accept one man for a husband while the thoughts and wishes lead to another. Jasper and I have talked this matter over, freely and like old friends, and, though I always knowed that we viewed most things pretty much alike, I couldn’t have thought that we regarded any particular object with the very same eyes, as it might be, until we opened our minds to each other about you. Now Jasper owns that the very first time he beheld you, he thought you the sweetest and winningestest creatur’ he had ever met; that your voice sounded like murmuring water in his ears; that he fancied his sails were your garments fluttering in the wind; that your laugh haunted him in his sleep; and that ag’in and ag’in has he started up affrighted, because he has fancied some one wanted to force you out of the Scud, where he imagined you had taken up your abode. Nay, the lad has even acknowledged that he often weeps at the thought that you are likely to spend your days with another, and not with him.”

“Jasper!”

“It’s solemn truth, Mabel, and it’s right you should know it. Now stand up, and choose ‘atween us. I do believe Eau-douce loves you as well as I do myself; he has tried to persuade me that he loves you better, but that I will not allow, for I do not think it possible; but I will own the boy loves you, heart and soul, and he has a good right to be heard. The Sergeant left me your protector, and not your tyrant. I told him that I would be a father to you as well as a husband, and it seems to me no feeling father would deny his child this small privilege. Stand up, Mabel, therefore, and speak your thoughts as freely as if I were the Sergeant himself, seeking your good, and nothing else.”

Mabel dropped her hands, arose, and stood face to face with her two suitors, though the flush that was on her cheeks was feverish, the evidence of excitement rather than of shame.

“What would you have, Pathfinder?” she asked; “Have I not already promised my poor father to do all you desire?”

“Then I desire this. Here I stand, a man of the forest and of little larning, though I fear with an ambition beyond my desarts, and I’ll do my endivors to do justice to both sides. In the first place, it is allowed that, so far as feelings in your behalf are consarned, we love you just the same; Jasper thinks his feelings must be the strongest, but this I cannot say in honesty, for it doesn’t seem to me that it can be true, else I would frankly and freely confess it, I would. So in this particular, Mabel, we are here before you on equal tarms. As for myself, being the oldest, I’ll first say what little can be produced in my favor, as well as ag’in it. As a hunter, I do think there is no man near the lines that can outdo me. If venison, or bear’s meat, or even birds and fish, should ever be scarce in our cabin, it would be more likely to be owing to natur’ and Providence than to any fault of mine. In short, it does seem to me that the woman who depended on me would never be likely to want for food. But I’m fearful ignorant! It’s true I speak several tongues, such as they be, while I’m very far from being expart at my own. Then, my years are greater than your own, Mabel; and the circumstance that I was so long the Sergeant’s comrade can be no great merit in your eyes. I wish, too, I was more comely, I