He often sent Maballa, the Indian woman who cared for Melisse, to gossip with Williams' wife, so that he was alone a great deal with the baby. At these times, when the door was safely barred against the outside world, it was a different Jan Thoreau who crouched upon his knees beside the cot. His face was aflame with a great, absorbing passion which at other times he concealed. His beautiful eyes glowed with hidden fires, and he whispered soothing, singsong things to the child, and played softly upon his violin, leaning his black head far down so that the baby Melisse could clutch her appreciative fingers in his hair.
"Ah, ze sweet leetle white angel!" he would cry, as she tugged and kicked. "I luf you so—I luf you, an' will stay always, ah' play ze violon! Ah, mon Dieu, you will be ze gr-r-r-eat bea-utiful white angel lak—HER!"
He would laugh and coo like a mother, and talk, for at these times Jan Thoreau's tongue was as voluble as his violin.
Sometimes Melisse listened as if she understood the wonderful things he was telling her. She would lie upon her back with her eyes fixed upon him, her little red fists doubled over his bow, or a thumb thrust into her mouth. And the longer she lay like this, gazing at him blankly, the more convinced Jan became that she was understanding him; and his voice grew soft and low, and his eyes shone with a soft mist as he told her those things which John Cummins would have given much to know.
"Some day you shall understand why it happened, sweet Melisse," he whispered, bringing his eyes so near that she reached up an inquiring finger to them. "Then you will luf Jan Thoreau!"
There were other times when Jan did not talk, but when the baby Melisse talked to him; and these were moments of even greater joy.
With the baby wriggling and kicking, and making queer noises in her tiny cot, he would sit silently upon his heels, watching her with the pride and happiness of a mother lynx in the first tumbling frolics of her kittens.
Once, when Melisse straightened herself for an instant, and half reached up her tiny arms to him, laughing and cooing into his face, he gave a glad cry, crushed his face down to hers, and did what he had not dared to do before—kissed her. There was something about it that frightened the little Melisse, and she set up a wailing that sent Jan, in a panic of dismay, for Maballa. It was a long time before he ventured to kiss her again.
It was during this fortnight of desolation at the post that Jan discovered the big problem for himself and John Cummins. In the last days of the second week, he spent much of his time skirting the edge of the barrens in search of caribou, that there might be meat in plenty when the dogs and men returned a little later. One afternoon, he returned early, while the pale sun was still in the sky, laden with the meat of a musk-ox. As he came from the edge of the forest, his slender body doubled over under the weight of his pack, a terrifying sight greeted him in the little clearing at the post.
Upon her knees in front of their cabin was Maballa, industriously rolling the half-naked little Melisse about in a soft pile of snow, and doing her work, as she firmly believed, in a most faithful and thorough manner. With a shriek, Jan threw off his pack and darted toward her like a wild thing.
"Sacre bleu—you keel—keel ze leetle Melisse!" he cried shrilly, snatching up the half-frozen child, "Mon Dieu, she ees not papoose!
She ees ceevilize—ceevilize!" and he ran swiftly with her into the cabin, flinging back a torrent of Cree anathema at the dumbly bewildered Maballa.
Jan left the rest of his musk-ox to the wolves and foxes. He went out into the snow, and found half a dozen other snow-wallows in which the helpless Melisse had taken her chilling baths. He watched Maballa with a new growing terror, and fifty times a day he said to her:
"Melisse ees not papoose! She ees ceevilize—lak HER!" And he would point to the lonely grave under the guardian spruce.
At last Maballa went into an ecstasy of understanding. Melisse was not to be taken out and rolled in the snow; so she brought in the snow and rolled it over Melisse!
When Jan discovered this, his tongue twisted itself into sounds so terrible, and his face writhed so fiercely, that Maballa began to comprehend that thereafter no snow at all, either out doors or in, was to be used in the physical development of the little Melisse.
This was the beginning of the problem, and it grew and burst forth in all its significance on the day before Cummins came in from the wilderness.
For a week Maballa had been dropping sly hints of a wonderful thing which she and the factor's half-breed wife were making for the baby.
Jan had visions of a gorgeous garment covered with beads and gaudy braid, which would give the little Melisse unending delight. On the day before Cummins' arrival, Jan came in from chopping wood, and went to the cot. It was empty. Maballa was gone. A sudden fear thrilled him to the marrow, and he sprang back to the cabin door, ready to shriek out the Indian woman's name.
A sound stopped him—the softest, sweetest sound in all the world to Jan Thoreau—and he whirled around like a cat. Melisse was smiling and making queer, friendly little signals to him from the table. She was standing upright, wedged in a coffin-shaped thing from which only her tiny white face peered out at him; and Jan knew that this was Maballa's surprise, Melisse was in a papoose-sling!
"Melisse, I say you shall be no papoose!" he cried, running to the table. "You ees ceevilize! You shall be no papoose—not if twen' t'ous'nd devil come tak Jan Thoreau!"
And he snatched her from her prison, flung Maballa's handiwork out into the snow, and waited impatiently for the return of John Cummins.
CHAPTER V
LOVE PATCHES
Cummins returned the next day—not that his work among the wild trappers to the south was finished, but because he had suffered a hurt in falling from a slippery ledge. When Jan, from his wood-chopping in the edge of the forest, saw the team race up to the little cabin and a strange Cree half carry the wounded man through the door, he sped swiftly across the open with visions of new misfortune before him.
What he saw when he reached the door was reassuring. Cummins was upon his knees beside the cot, his big shoulders hunched over, and Melisse was welcoming him with her whole vocabulary of sound. The injury to Cummins' leg was not serious; and not being serious, it was accepted as a special incident of Providence by Jan, for the new thoughts that had come into his head were causing him great uneasiness.
He lost no time in revealing his fears, after Maballa had been sent to the factor's wife. With graphic gesture he told of what had happened.
Cummins hobbled to the door to look upon the wallows in the snow, and hobbled back to the table when Jan ran there in excited imitation of the way in which he had found the little Melisse in Maballa's sling.
"She ees ceevilize!" finished Jan hotly. "She ees not papoose! She mus' be lak—HER!" His great eyes shone, and Cummins felt a thickening in his throat as he looked into them and saw what the boy meant.
"Maballa mak papoose out of Melisse. She grow—know not'ing, lak papoose, talk lak papoose—"
Jan's feelings overwhelmed his tongue. His shining hair rumpled thickly about his face as he leaned anxiously toward Cummins; and Cummins, in turn, stared down in dumb perplexity upon the joyful kickings and wrigglings of the growing problem.
"Ees she not ceevilize?" demanded Jan ecstatically, bending his black head over her. "Ah, ze sweet Melisse!"
"Yes, she must be like HER, Jan—just as good and just as sweet and just as beautiful," interrupted Cummins gently.
There was a quick intaking of his breath as he hobbled back to his own cot, leaving Jan at play with the baby.
That night,