Isobel | Page 8

She wrote to me for a long time, and I thought she'd keep
her word. Pelly-- that's Pelliter-- thinks we've just had a

misunderstanding, and that she'll write again. I haven't told him that she
turned me down to marry another fellow. I didn't want to make him
think any unpleasant things about his own girl. You're apt to do that
when you're almost dying of loneliness."
The woman's eyes were shining. She leaned a little toward him.
"You should be glad," she said. "If she turned you down she wouldn't
have been worthy of you-- afterward. She wasn't a true woman. If she
had been, her love wouldn't have grown cold because you were away. It
mustn't spoil your faith-- because that is-- beautiful."
He had put a hand into his pocket again, and drew out now a thin
package wrapped in buckskin. His face was like a boy's.
"I might have-- if I hadn't met you," he said. "I'd like to let you know--
some way-- what you've done for me. You and this."
He had unfolded the buckskin, and gave it to her. In it were the big blue
petals and dried, stem of a blue flower.
"A blue flower!" she said.
"Yes. You know what it means. The Indians call it i-o-waka, or
something like that, because they believe that it is the flower spirit of
the purest and most beautiful thing in the world. I have called it
woman."
He laughed, and there was a joyous sort of note in the laugh.
"You may think me a little mad," he said, "but do you care if I tell you
about that blue flower?"
The woman nodded. There was a little quiver at her throat which Billy
did not see.
"I was away up on the Great Bear," he said, "and for ten days and ten
nights I was in camp-- alone-- laid up with a sprained ankle. It was a
wild and gloomy place, shut in by barren ridge mountains, with stunted
black spruce all about, and those spruce were haunted by owls that
made my blood run cold nights. The second day I found company. It
was a blue flower. It grew close to my tent, as high as my knee, and
during the day I used to spread out my blanket close to it and lie there
and smoke. And the blue flower would wave on its slender stem, an'
bob at me, an' talk in sign language that I imagined I understood.
Sometimes it was so funny and vivacious that I laughed, and then it
seemed to be inviting me to a dance. And at other times it was just
beautiful and still, and seemed listening to what the forest was saying--

and once or twice, I thought, it might be praying. Loneliness makes a
fellow foolish, you know. With the going of the sun my blue flower
would always fold its petals and go to sleep, like a little child tired out
by the day's play, and after that I would feel terribly lonely. But it was
always awake again when I rolled out in the morning. At last the time
came when I was well enough to leave. On the ninth night I watched
my blue flower go to sleep for the last time. Then I packed. The sun
was up when I went away the next morning, and from a little distance I
turned and looked back. I suppose I was foolish, and weak for a man,
but I felt like crying. Blue flower had taught me many things I had not
known before. It had made me think. And when I looked back it was in
a pool of sunlight, and it was waving at me! It seemed to me that it was
calling-- calling me back-- and I ran to it and picked it from the stem,
and it has been with me ever since that hour. It has been my Bible an'
my comrade, an' I've known it was the spirit of the purest and the most
beautiful thing in the world-- woman. I--" His voice broke a little. "I-- I
may be foolish, but I'd like to have you take it, an' keep it-- always-- for
me."
He could see now the quiver of her lips as she looked across at him.
"Yes, I will take it," she said. "I will take it and keep it-- always."
"I've been keeping it for a woman-- somewhere," he said. "Foolish idea,
wasn't it? And I've been telling you all this, when I want to hear what
happened back there, and what you are going to do when you reach
your people. Do you mind-- telling me?"
"He died-- that's all," she replied, fighting to speak calmly. "I promised
to