CHAPTER XVIII
FACING THE END
Below the hill on one side flickered the moving torches of the hostiles. On the other side, where the cliff fell sheer away, lay the red-dyed snows with misty shapes moving through the frosty valley.
A wind of sighs swept across the white wastes. Short, sharp barkings rose from the shadowy depth of the ravine. Then the silence of desolation … then the moaning night-wind … then the shivering cry of the wolf-pack scouring on nightly hunt.
For a moment neither Godefroy nor I spoke. Then the sinews, cutting deep, wakened consciousness.
"Are they gone?" asked Godefroy hoarsely.
"Yes," said I, glancing to the valley.
"Can't you break through the thongs and get a hand free?"
"My back is to the tree. We'll have to face it, Godefroy—don't break down, man! We must face it!"
"Face what?" he shuddered out. "Is anything there? Face what?" he half screamed.
"The end!"
He strained at the thongs till he had strength to strain no more. Then he broke out in a volley of maledictions at Jack Battle and me for interfering with the massacre, to which I could answer never a word; for the motives that merit greatest applause when they succeed, win bitterest curses when they fail.
The northern lights swung low. Once those lights seemed censers of flame to an invisible God. Now they shot across the steel sky like fiery serpents, and the rustling of their fire was as the hiss when a fang strikes. A shooting star blazed into light against the blue, then dropped into the eternal darkness.
"Godefroy," I asked, "how long will this last?"
"Till the wolves come," said he huskily.
"A man must die some time," I called back; but my voice belied the bravery of the words, for something gray loomed from the ravine and stood stealthily motionless in the dusk behind the trader. Involuntarily a quick "Hist!" went from my lips.
"What's that?" shouted Godefroy. "Is anything there?"
"I am cold," said I.
And on top of that lie I prayed—prayed with wide-staring eyes on the thing whose head had turned towards us—prayed as I have never prayed before or since!
"Are you sure there's nothing?" cried the trader. "Look on both sides! I'm sure I feel something!"
Another crouching form emerged from the gloom—then another and another—silent and still as spectres. With a sidling motion they prowled nearer, sniffing the air, shifting watchful look from Godefroy to me, from me to Godefroy. A green eye gleamed nearer through the mist. Then I knew.
The wolves had come.
Godefroy screamed out that he heard something, and again bade me look on both sides of the hill.
"Keep quiet till I see," said I; but I never took my gaze from the green eyes of a great brute to the fore of the gathering pack.
"But I feel them—but I hear them!" shouted Godefroy, in an agony of terror.
What gain to keep up pretence longer? Still holding the beast back with no other power than the power of the man's eye over the brute, I called out the truth to the trader.
"Don't move! Don't speak! Don't cry out! Perhaps we can stare them back till daylight comes!"
Godefroy held quiet as death. Some subtle power of the man over the brute puzzled the leader of the pack. He shook his great head with angry snarls and slunk from side to side to evade the human eye, every hair of his fur bristling. Then he threw up his jaws and uttered a long howl, answered by the far cry of the coming pack. Sniffing the ground, he began circling—closing in—closing in——
Then there was a shout—a groan, a struggle—a rip as of teeth—from Godefroy's place!
Then with naught but a blazing of comets dropping into an everlasting dark, with naught but a ship of fire billowing away to the flame of the northern lights, with naught but the rush of a sea, blinding, deafening, bearing me to the engulfment of the eternal—I lost knowledge of this life!
CHAPTER XIX
AFTERWARD
A long shudder, and I had awakened in stifling darkness. Was I dreaming, or were there voices, English voices, talking about me?
"It was too late! He will die!"
"Draw back the curtain! Give him plenty of air!"
In the daze of a misty dream, M. Picot was there with the foils in his hands; and Hortense had cried out as she did that night when the button touched home. A sweet, fresh gust blew across my face with a faint odour of the pungent flames that used to flicker under the crucibles of the dispensary. How came I to be lying in Boston Town? Was M. Radisson a myth? Was the northland a dream?
I tried to rise, but whelming shadows pushed me down; and through the dark shifted phantom faces.
Now it was M. Radisson quelling mutiny, tossed on plunging ice-drift, scouring before the hurricane, leaping through red flame over the fort wall, while wind and sea crooned a chorus like the hum of soldiers singing and marching to battle. "Storm and cold, man and beast, powers of darkness and devil—he must fight them all," sang the gale. "Who?" asked a voice. In the dark was a lone figure clinging to the spars of a wreck. "The victor," shrieked the wind. Then the waves washed over the cast-away, leaving naught but the screaming gale and the pounding seas and the eternal dark.
Or it was M. Picot, fencing in mid-room. Of a sudden, foils turn to swords, M. Picot to a masked man, and Boston to the northland forest. I fall, and when I awaken M. Picot is standing, candle in hand, tincturing my wounds.
Or the dark is filled with a multitude—men and beasts; and the beasts wear a crown of victory and the men are drunk with the blood of the slain.
Or stealthy, crouching, wolfish forms steal through the frost mist, closer and closer till there comes a shout—a groan—a rip as of teeth—then I am up, struggling with Le Borgne, the one-eyed, who pushes me back to a couch in the dark.
Like the faces that hover above battle in soldiers' dreams was a white face framed in curls with lustrous eyes full of lights. Always when the darkness thickened and I began slipping—slipping into the folds of bottomless deeps—always the face came from the gloom, like a star of hope; and the hope drew me back.
"There is nothing—nothing—nothing at all to fear," says the face.
And I laugh at the absurdity of the dream.
"To think of dreaming that Hortense would be here—would be in the northland—Hortense, the little queen, who never would let me tell her——"
"Tell her what?" asks the face.
"Hah! What a question! There is only one thing in all this world to tell her!"
And I laughed again till I thought there must be some elf scrambling among the rafters of that smothery ceiling. It seemed so absurd to be thrilled with love of Hortense with the breath of the wolves yet hot in one's face!
"The wolves got Godefroy," I would reason, "how didn't they get me? How did I get away? What was that smell of fur—"
Then some one was throwing fur robes from the couch. The phantom Hortense kneeled at the pillow.
"There are no wolves—it was only the robe," she says.
"And I suppose you will be telling me there are no Indians up there among the rafters?"
"Give me the candle. Go away, Le Borgne! Leave me alone with him," says the face in the gloom. "Look," says the shadow, "I am Hortense!"
A torch was in her hand and the light fell on her face. I was as certain that she knelt beside me as I was that I lay helpless to rise. But the trouble was, I was equally certain there were wolves skulking through the dark and Indians skipping among the rafters.
"Ghosts haven't hands," says Hortense, touching mine lightly; and the touch brought the memory of those old mocking airs from the spinet.
Was it flood of memory or a sick man's dream? The presence seemed so real that mustering all strength, I turned—turned to see Le Borgne, the one-eyed, sitting on a log-end with a stolid, watchful, unreadable look on his crafty face.
Bluish shafts of light struck athwart the dark. A fire burned against the far wall. The smoke had the pungent bark smell of the flame that used to burn in M. Picot's dispensary. This, then, had brought the dreams of Hortense, now so far away. Skins hung everywhere; but in places the earth showed through. Like a gleam of sunlight through dark came the thought—this was a cave, the cave of the pirates whose voices I had heard from the ground that night in the forest, one pleading to save me, the other sending Le Borgne to trap me.
Leaning on my elbow, I looked from the Indian to a bearskin partition hiding another apartment. Le Borgne had carried the stolen pelts of the massacred tribe to the inland pirates. The pirates had sent him back for me.
And Hortense was a dream. Ah, well, men in their senses might have done worse than dream of a Hortense!
But the voice and the hand were real.
"Le Borgne," I ask, "was any one here?"
Le Borgne's cheeks corrugate in wrinkles of bronze that leer an evil laugh, and he pretends not to understand.
"Le Borgne, was any one here with you?"
Le Borgne shifts his spread feet, mutters a guttural grunt, and puffs out his torch; but the shafted flame reveals his shadow. I can still hear him beside me in the dark.
"Le Borgne is the great white chief's friend," I say; "and the white-man is the great white chief's friend. Where are we, Le Borgne?"
Le Borgne grunts out a low huff-huff of a laugh.
"Here; white-man is here," says Le Borgne; and he shuffles away to the bearskin partition hiding another apartment.
Ah well as I said, one might do worse than dream of Hortense. But in spite of all your philosophers say about there being no world but the world we spin in our brains, I could not woo my lady back to it. Like the wind that bloweth where it listeth was my love. Try as I might to call up that pretty deceit of a Hortense about me in spirit, my perverse lady came not to the call.
Then, thoughts would race back to the mutiny on the stormy sea, to the roar of the breakers crashing over decks, to M. Radisson leaping up from dripping wreckage, muttering between his teeth—"Blind god o' chance, they may crush, but they shall not conquer; they may kill, but I snap my fingers in their faces to the death!"
Then, uncalled, through the darkness comes her face.
"God is love," says she.
If I lie there like a log, never moving, she seems to stay; but if I feel out through the darkness for the grip of a living hand, for the substance of a reality on which souls anchor, like the shadow of a dream she is gone.
I mind once in the misty region between delirium and consciousness, when the face slipped from me like a fading light, I called out eagerly that love was a phantom; for her God of love had left me to the blind gods that crush, to the storm and the dark and the ravening wolves.
Like a light flaming from dark, the face shone through the gloom.
"Love, a phantom," laughs the mocking voice of the imperious Hortense I knew long ago; and the thrill of her laugh proves love the realest phantom life can know.
Then the child Hortense becomes of a sudden the grown woman, grave and sweet, with eyes in the dark like stars, and strange, broken thoughts I had not dared to hope shining unspoken on her face.
"Life, a phantom-substance, the shadow—love, the all," the dream-face seems to be saying. "Events are God's thoughts—storms and darkness and prey are his puppets, the blind gods, his slaves-God is love; for you are here!… You are here!… You are here with me!"
When I feel through the dark this time is the grip of a living hand.
Then we lock arms and sweep through space, the northern lights curtaining overhead, the stars for torches, and the blazing comets heralding a way.
"The very stars in their courses fight for us," says Hortense.
And I, with an earthy intellect groping behind the winged love of the woman, think that she refers to some of M. Picot's mystic astrologies.
"No—no," says the dream-face, with the love that divines without speech, "do you not understand? The stars fight for us—because—because——"
"Because God is love," catching the gleam of the thought; and the stars that fight in their courses for mortals sweep to a noonday splendour.
And all the while I was but a crazy dreamer lying captive, wounded and weak in a pirate cave. Oh, yes, I know very well what my fine gentlemen dabblers in the new sciences will say—the fellow was daft and delirious—he had lost grip on reality and his fevered wits mixed a mumble-jumble of ancient symbolism with his own adventures. But before you reduce all this great universe to the dimensions of a chemist's crucible, I pray you to think twice whether the mind that fashioned the crucible be not greater than the crucible; whether the Master-mind that shaped the laws of the universe be not greater than the universe; whether when man's mind loses grip—as you call it—of the little, nagging, insistent realities it may not leap free like the jagged lightnings from peak to peak of a consciousness that overtowers life's commoner levels! Spite of our boastings, each knows neither more nor less than life hath taught him. For me, I know what the dream-voice spoke proved true: life, the shadow of a great reality; love, the all; the blind gods of storm and dark and prey, the puppets of the God of gods, working his will; and the God of gods a God of love, realest when love is near.
Once, I mind, the dark seemed alive with wolfish shades, sniffing, prowling, circling, creeping nearer like that monster wolf of fable set on by the powers of evil to hunt Man to his doom. A nightmare of fear bound me down. The death-frosts settled and tightened and closed—but suddenly, Hortense took cold hands in her palms, calling and calling and calling me back to life and hope and her. Then I waked.
Though I peopled the mist with many shadows, Le Borgne alone stood there.
CHAPTER XX
WHO THE PIRATES WERE
How long I lay in the pirates' cave I could not tell; for day and night were alike with the pale-blue flame quivering against the earth-wall, gusts of cold air sweeping through the door, low-whispered talks from the inner cave.
At last I surprised Le Borgne mightily by sitting bolt upright and bidding him bring me a meal of buffalo-tongue or teal. With the stolid repartee of the Indian he grunted back that I had tongue enough; but he brought the stuff with no ill grace. After that he had much ado to keep me off my feet. Finally, I promised by the soul of his grandfather neither to spy nor listen about the doors of the inner cave, and he let me up for an hour at a time to practise walking with the aid of a lance-pole. As he found that I kept my word, he trusted me alone in the cave, sitting crouched on the log-end with a buckskin sling round my shattered sword-arm, which the wolves had not helped that night at the stake.
In the food Le Borgne brought was always a flavour of simples or drugs. One night—at least I supposed it was night from the chill of the air blowing past the bearskin—just as Le Borgne stooped to serve me, his torch flickered out. Before he could relight, I had poured the broth out and handed back an empty bowl.
Then I lay with eyes tight shut and senses wide awake. The Indian sat on the log-end watching. I did not stir. Neither did I fall asleep as usual. The Indian cautiously passed a candle across my face. I lay motionless as I had been drugged. At that he stalked off. Voices began in the other apartment. Two or three forms went tip-toeing about the cave. Shadows passed athwart the flame. A gust of cold; and with half-closed eyes I saw three men vanish through the outer doorway over fields no longer snow-clad.
Had spring come? How long had I lain in the cave? Before I gained strength to escape, would M. Radisson have left for Quebec? Then came a black wave of memory—thought of Jack Battle, the sailor lad, awaiting our return to rescue him. From the first Jack and I had held together as aliens in Boston Town. Should I lie like a stranded hull while he perished? Risking spies on the watch, I struggled up and staggered across the cave to that blue flame quivering so mysteriously. As I neared, the mystery vanished, for it was nothing more than one of those northern beds of combustibles—gas, tar, or coal—set burning by the ingenious pirates. [1]
The spirit was willing enough to help Jack, but the flesh was weak. Presently I sank on the heaped pelts all atremble. I had promised not to spy nor eavesdrop, but that did not prohibit escape. But how could one forage for food with a right arm in bands and a left unsteady as aim of a girl? Le Borgne had befriended me twice—once in the storm, again on the hill. Perhaps he might know of Jack. I would wait the Indian's return. Meanwhile I could practise my strength by walking up and down the cave.
The walls were hung with pelts. Where the dry clay crumbled, the roof had been timbered. A rivulet of spring water bubbled in one dark corner. At the same end an archway led to inner recesses. Behind the skin doorway sounded heavy breathing, as of sleepers. I had promised not to spy. Turning, I retraced the way to the outer door. Here another pelt swayed heavily in the wind. Dank, earthy smells of spring, odours of leaves water-soaked by melting snows, the faint perfume of flowers pushing up through mats of verdure, blew in on the night breeze.
Pushing aside the flap, I looked out. The spur of a steep declivity cut athwart the cave. Now I could guess where I was. This was the hill down which I had stumbled that night the voices had come from the ground. Here the masked man had sprung from the thicket. Not far off M. Radisson had first met the Indians. To reach the French Habitation I had but to follow the river.
That hope set me pacing again for exercise; and the faster I walked the faster raced thoughts over the events of the crowded years. Again the Prince Rupert careened seaward, bearing little Hortense to England. Once more Ben Gillam swaggered on the water-front of Boston Town, boasting all that he would do when he had ship of his own. Then Jack Battle, building his castles of fortune for love of Hortense, and all unconsciously letting slip the secret of good Boston men deep involved in pirate schemes. The scene shifted to the far north, and a masked man had leaped from the forest dark only to throw down his weapon when the firelight shone on my face. Again the white darkness of the storm, the three shadowy figures and Le Borgne sent to guide us back to the fort. Again, to beat of drum and shriek of fife, M. Radisson was holding his own against the swarming savages that assailed the New Englanders' fort. Then I was living over the unspeakable horror of the Indian massacre ending in that awful wait on the crest of the hill.
The memory brought a chill as of winter cold. With my back to both doors I stood shuddering over the blue fire. Whatever logicians may say, we do not reason life's conclusions out. Clouds blacken the heavens till there comes the lightning-flash. So do our intuitions leap unwarned from the dark. 'Twas thus I seemed to fathom the mystery of those interlopers. Ben Gillam had been chosen to bring the pirate ship north because his father, of the Hudson's Bay Company, could screen him from English spies. Mr. Stocking, of Boston, was another partner to the venture, who could shield Ben from punishment in New England. But the third partner was hiding inland to defraud the others of the furs. That was the meaning of Ben's drunken threats. Who was the third partner? Had not Eli Kirke planned trading in the north with Mr. Stocking? Were the pirates some agents of my uncle? Did that explain why my life had been three times spared? One code of morals for the church and another for the trade is the way of many a man; but would the agents of a Puritan deacon murder a rival in the dark of a forest, or lead Indians to massacre the crew of partners, or take furs gotten at the price of a tribe's extermination?
Turning that question over, I heard the inner door-flap lift. There was no time to regain the couch, but a quick swerve took me out of the firelight in the shadow of a great wolfskin against the wall. You will laugh at the old idea of honour, but I had promised not to spy, and I never raised my eyes from the floor. There was no sound but the gurgling of the spring in the dark and the sharp crackle of the flame.
Thinking the wind had blown the flap, I stepped from hiding. Something vague as mist held back in shadow. The lines of a white-clad figure etched themselves against the cave wall. It floated out, paused, moved forward.
Then I remember clutching at the wolfskin like one clinching a death-grip of reality, praying God not to let go a soul's anchor-hold of reason.
For when the figure glided into the slant blue rays of the shafted flame it was Hortense—the Hortense of the dreams, sweet as the child, grave as the grown woman-Hortense with closed eyes and moving lips and hands feeling out in the dark as if playing invisible keys.
She was asleep.
Then came the flash that lighted the clouds of the past.
The interloper, the pirate, the leader of Indian marauders, the defrauder of his partners, was M. Picot, the French doctor, whom Boston had outlawed, and who was now outlawing their outlawry. We do not reason out our conclusions, as I said before. At our supremest moments we do not think. Consciousness leaps from summit to summit like the forked lightnings across the mountain-peaks; and the mysteries of life are illumined as a spread-out scroll. In that moment of joy and fear and horror, as I crouched back to the wall, I did not think. I knew—knew the meaning of all M. Picot's questionings on the fur trade; of that murderous attack in the dark when an antagonist flung down his weapon; of the spying through the frosted woods; of the figures in the white darkness; of the attempt to destroy Ben Gillam's fort; of the rescue from the crest of the hill; and of all those strange delirious dreams.
It was as if the past focused itself to one flaming point, and the flash of that point illumined life, as deity must feel to whom past and present and future are one.
And all the while, with temples pounding like surf on rock and the roar of the sea in my ears, I was not thinking, only knowing that Hortense was standing in the blue-shafted light with tremulous lips and white face and a radiance on her brow not of this life.
Her hands ran lightly over imaginary keys. The blue flame darted and quivered through the gloom. The hushed purr of the spring broke the stillness in metallic tinklings. A smile flitted across the sleeper's face. Her lips parted. The crackle of the flame seemed loud as tick of clock in death-room.
"To get the memory of it," she said.
And there stole out of the past mocking memories of that last night in the hunting-room, filling the cave with tuneless melodies like thoughts creeping into thoughts or odour of flowers in dark.
But what was she saying in her sleep?
"Blind gods of chance"—the words that had haunted my delirium, then quick-spoken snatches too low for me to hear—"no-no"—then more that was incoherent, and she was gliding back to the cave.
She had lifted the curtain door—she was whispering—she paused as if for answer-then with face alight, "The stars fight for us—" she said; and she had disappeared.
The flame set the shadows flickering. The rivulet gurgled loud in the dark. And I came from concealment as from a spirit world.
Then Hortense was no dream, and love was no phantom, and God—was what?
There I halted. The powers of darkness yet pressed too close for me to see through to the God that was love. I only knew that He who throned the universe was neither the fool that ignorant bigots painted, nor the blind power, making wanton war of storm and dark and cold. For had not the blind forces brought Hortense to me, and me to Hortense?
Consciousness was leaping from summit to summit like the forked lightnings, and the light that burned was the light that transfigures life for each soul.
The spell of a presence was there.
Then it came home to me what a desperate game the French doctor had played. That sword-thrust in the dark meant death; so did the attack on Ben Gillam's fort; and was it not Le Borgne, M. Picot's Indian ally, who had counselled the massacre of the sleeping tribe? You must not think that M. Picot was worse than other traders of those days! The north is a desolate land, and though blood cry aloud from stones, there is no man to hear.
I easily guessed that M. Picot would try to keep me with him till M. Radisson had sailed. Then I must needs lock hands with piracy.
Hortense and I were pawns in the game.
At one moment I upbraided him for bringing Hortense to this wilderness of murder and pillage. At another I considered that a banished gentleman could not choose his goings. How could I stay with M. Picot and desert M. de Radisson? How could I go to M. de Radisson and abandon Hortense?
"Straight is the narrow way," Eli Kirke oft cried out as he expounded Holy Writ.
Ah, well, if the narrow way is straight, it has a trick of becoming tangled in a most terrible snarl!
Wheeling the log-end right about, I sat down to await M. Picot. There was stirring in the next apartment. An ebon head poked past the door curtain, looked about, and withdrew without detecting me. The face I remembered at once. It was the wife of M. Picot's blackamoor. Only three men had passed from the cave. If the blackamoor were one, M. Picot and Le Borgne must be the others.
Footsteps grated on the pebbles outside. I rose with beating heart to meet M. Picot, who held my fate in his hands. Then a ringing pistol-shot set my pulse jumping.
I ran to the door. Something plunged heavily against the curtain. The robe ripped from the hangings. In the flood of moonlight a man pitched face forward to the cave floor. He reeled up with a cry of rage, caught blindly at the air, uttered a groan, fell back.
"M. Picot!"
Blanched and faint, the French doctor lay with a crimsoning pool wet under his head. "I am shot! What will become of her?" he groaned. "I am shot! It was Gillam! It was Gillam!"
Hortense and the negress came running from the inner cave. Le Borgne and the blackamoor dashed from the open with staring horror.
"Lift me up! For God's sake, air!" cried M. Picot.
We laid him on the pelts in the doorway, Le Borgne standing guard outside.
Hortense stooped to stanch the wound, but the doctor motioned her off with a fierce impatience, and bade the negress lead her away. Then he lay with closed eyes, hands clutched to the pelts, and shuddering breath.
The blackamoor had rushed to the inner cave for liquor, when M. Picot opened his eyes with a strange far look fastened upon me.
"Swear it," he commanded.
And I thought his mind wandering.
He groaned heavily. "Don't you understand? It's Hortense. Swear you'll restore her—" and his breath came with a hard metallic rattle that warned the end.
"Doctor Picot," said I, "if you have anything to say, say it quickly and make your peace with God!"
"Swear you'll take her back to her people and treat her as a sister," he cried.
"I swear before God that I shall take Hortense back to her people, and that I shall treat her like a sister," I repeated, raising my right hand.
That seemed to quiet him. He closed his eyes.
"Sir," said I, "have you nothing more to say? Who are her people?"
"Is~.~.~. is~.~.~. any one listening?" he asked in short, hard breaths.
I motioned the others back.
"Listen"—the words came in quick, rasping breaths. "She is not mine~.~.~. it was at night~.~.~. they brought her~.~.~. ward o' the court~.~.~. lands~.~.~. they wanted me." There was a sharp pause, a shivering whisper. "I didn't poison her"—the dying man caught convulsively at my hands—"I swear I had no thought of harming her.~.~.~. They~.~.~. paid.~.~.~. I fled.~.~.~."
"Who paid you to poison Hortense? Who is Hortense?" I demanded; for his life was ebbing and the words portended deep wrong.
But his mind was wandering again, for he began talking so fast that I could catch only a few words. "Blood! Blood! Colonel Blood!" Then "Swear it," he cried.
That speech sapped his strength. He sank back with shut eyes and faint breathings.
We forced a potion between his lips.
"Don't let Gillam," he mumbled, "don't let Gillam~.~.~. have the furs."
A tremor ran through his stiffening frame. A little shuddering breath—and M. Picot had staked his last pawn in life's game.
[1] In confirmation of Mr. Stanhope's record it may be stated that on the western side of the northland in the Mackenzie River region are gas and tar veins that are known to have been burning continuously for nearly two centuries.
CHAPTER XXI
HOW THE PIRATES CAME
Inside our Habitation all was the confusion of preparation for leaving the bay. Outside, the Indians held high carnival; for Allemand, the gin-soaked pilot, was busy passing drink through the loopholes to a pandemonium of savages raving outside the stockades. 'Tis not a pretty picture, that memory of white-men besotting the Indian; but I must even set down the facts as they are, bidding you to remember that the white trader who besotted the Indian was the same white trader who befriended all tribes alike when the hunt failed and the famine came. La Chesnaye, the merchant prince, it was, who managed this low trafficking. Indeed, for the rubbing together of more doubloons in his money-bags I think that La Chesnaye's servile nature would have bargained to send souls in job lots blindfold over the gangplank. But, as La Chesnaye said when Pierre Radisson remonstrated against the knavery, the gin was nine parts rain-water.
"The more cheat, you, to lay such unction to your conscience," says M. de Radisson. "Be an honest knave, La Chesnaye!"
Forêt, the marquis, stalked up and down before the gate with two guards at his heels. All day long birch canoes and log dugouts and tubby pirogues and crazy rafts of loose-lashed pine logs drifted to our water-front with bands of squalid Indians bringing their pelts. Skin tepees rose outside our palisades like an army of mushrooms. Naked brats with wisps of hair coarse as a horse's mane crawled over our mounted cannon, or scudded between our feet like pups, or felt our European clothes with impudent wonder. Young girls having hair plastered flat with bear's grease stood peeping shyly from tent flaps. Old squaws with skin withered to a parchment hung over the campfires, cooking. And at the loopholes pressed the braves and the bucks and the chief men exchanging beaver-skins for old iron, or a silver fox for a drink of gin, or ermine enough to make His Majesty's coronation robe for some flashy trinket to trick out a vain squaw. From dawn to dusk ran the patter of moccasined feet, man after man toiling up from river-front to fort gate with bundles of peltries on his back and a carrying strap across his brow.
Unarmed, among the savages, pacifying drunken hostiles at the water-front, bidding Jean and me look after the carriers, in the gateway, helping Sieur de Groseillers to sort the furs—Pierre Radisson was everywhere. In the guard-house were more English prisoners than we had crews of French; and in the mess-room sat Governor Brigdar of the Hudson's Bay Company, who took his captivity mighty ill and grew prodigious pot-valiant over his cups. Here, too, lolled Ben Gillam, the young New Englander, rumbling out a drunken vengeance against those inland pirates, who had deprived him of the season's furs.
Once, I mind, when M. Radisson came suddenly on these two worthies, their fuddled heads were close together above the table.
"Look you," Ben was saying in a big, rasping whisper, "I shot him—I shot him with a brass button. The black arts are powerless agen brass. Devil sink my soul if I didn't shoot him! The red—spattered over the brush——"
M. Radisson raised a hand to silence my coming.
Ben's nose poked across the table, closer to Governor Brigdar's ear.
"But look you, Mister What's-y-er-name," says he.
"Don't you Mister me, you young cub!" interrupts the governor with a pompous show of drunken dignity.
"A fig for Your Excellency," cries the young blackguard. "Who's who when he's drunk? As I was a-telling, look you, though the red spattered the bushes, when I run up he'd vanished into air with a flash o' powder from my musket! 'Twas by the black arts that nigh hanged him in Boston Town——"
At that, Governor Brigdar claps his hand to the table and swears that he cares nothing for black arts if only the furs can be found.
"The furs—aye," husks Ben, "if we can only find the furs! An our men hold together, we're two to one agen the Frenchies——"
"Ha," says M. Radisson. "Give you good-morning, gentlemen, and I hope you find yourselves in health."
The two heads flew apart like the halves of a burst cannon-shell. Thereafter, Radisson kept Ben and Governor Brigdar apart.
Of Godefroy and Jack Battle we could learn naught. Le Borgne would never tell what he and M. Picot had seen that night they rescued me from the hill. Whether Le Borgne and the hostiles of the massacre lied or no, they both told the same story of Jack. While the tribe was still engaged in the scalp-dance, some one had untied Jack's bands. When the braves went to torture their captive, he had escaped. But whither had he gone that he had not come back to us? Like the sea is the northland, full of nameless graves; and after sending scouts far and wide, we gave up all hope of finding the sailor lad.
But in the fort was another whose presence our rough fellows likened to a star flower on the stained ground of some hard-fought battle. After M. Radisson had quieted turbulent spirits by a reading of holy lessons, Mistress Hortense queened it over our table of a Sunday at noon. Waiting upon her at either hand were the blackamoor and the negress. A soldier in red stood guard behind; and every man, officer, and commoner down the long mess-table tuned his manners to the pure grace of her fair face.
What a hushing of voices and cleansing of wits and disusing of oaths was there after my little lady came to our rough Habitation!
I mind the first Sunday M. Radisson led her out like a queen to the mess-room table. When our voyageurs went upstream for M. Picot's hidden furs, her story had got noised about the fort. Officers, soldiers, and sailors had seated themselves at the long benches on either side the table; but M. Radisson's place was empty and a sort of throne chair had been extemporized at the head of the table. An angry question went from group to group to know if M. Radisson designed such place of honour for the two leaders of our prisoners—under lock in the guard-room. M. de Groseillers only laughed and bade the fellows contain their souls and stomachs in patience. A moment later, the door to the quarters where Hortense lived was thrown open by a red-coated soldier, and out stepped M. Radisson leading Hortense by the tips of her dainty fingers, the ebon faces of the two blackamoors grinning delight behind.
You could have heard a pin fall among our fellows. Then there was a noise of armour clanking to the floor. Every man unconsciously took to throwing his pistol under the table, flinging sword-belt down and hiding daggers below benches. Of a sudden, the surprise went to their heads.
"Gentlemen," began M. Radisson.
But the fellows would have none of his grand speeches. With a cheer that set the rafters ringing, they were on their feet; and to Mistress Hortense's face came a look that does more for the making of men than all New England's laws or my uncle's blasphemy boxes or King Charles's dragoons. You ask what that look was? Go to, with your teasings! A lover is not to be asked his whys! I ask you in return why you like the spire of a cathedral pointing up instead of down; or why the muses lift souls heavenward? Indeed, of all the fine arts granted the human race to lead men's thoughts above the sordid brutalities of living, methinks woman is the finest; for God's own hand fashioned her, and she was the last crowning piece of all His week's doings. The finest arts are the easiest spoiled, as you know very well; and if you demand how Mistress Hortense could escape harm amid all the wickedness of that wilderness, I answer it is a thing that your townsfolk cannot know.
It is of the wilderness.
The wilderness is a foster-mother that teacheth hard, strange paradoxes. The first is the sin of being weak; and the second is that death is the least of life's harms.
Wrapped in those furs for which he had staked his life like many a gamester of the wilderness, M. Picot lay buried in that sandy stretch outside the cave door. Turning to lead Hortense away before Le Borgne and the blackamoor began filling the grave, I found her stonily silent and tearless.
But it was she who led me.
Scrambling up the hillside like a chamois of the mountains, she flitted lightly through the greening to a small open where campers had built night fires. Her quick glance ran from tree to tree. Some wood-runner had blazed a trail by notching the bark. Pausing, she turned with the frank, fearless look of the wilderness woman. She was no longer the elusive Hortense of secluded life. A change had come—the change of the hothouse plant set out to the bufferings of the four winds of heaven to perish from weakness or gather strength from hardship. Your woman of older lands must hood fair eyes, perforce, lest evil masking under other eyes give wrong intent to candour; but in the wilderness each life stands stripped of pretence, honestly good or evil, bare at what it is; and purity clear as the noonday sun needs no trick of custom to make it plainer.
"Is not this the place?" she asked.
Looking closer, from shrub to open, I recognised the ground of that night attack in the woods.
"Hortense, then it was you that I saw at the fire with the others?"
She nodded assent. She had not uttered one word to explain how she came to that wild land; nor had I asked.
"It was you who pleaded for my life in the cave below my feet?"
"I did not know you had heard! I only sent Le Borgne to bring you back!"
"I hid as he passed."
"But I sent a message to the fort——"
"Not to be bitten by the same dog twice—I thought that meant to keep away?"
"What?" asked Hortense, passing her hand over her eyes. "Was that the message he gave you? Then monsieur had bribed him! I sent for you to come to us. Oh, that is the reason you never came——"
"And that is the reason you have hidden from me all the year and never sent me word?"
"I thought—I thought—" She turned away. "Ben Gillam told monsieur you had left Boston on our account——"
"And you thought I wanted to avoid you——"
"I did not blame you," she said. "Indeed, indeed, I was very weak—monsieur must have bribed Le Borgne—I sent word again and again—but you never answered!"
"How could you misunderstand—O Hortense, after that night in the hunting-room, how could you believe so poorly of me!"
She gave a low laugh. "That's what your good angel used to plead," she said.
"Good angel, indeed!" said I, memory of the vows to that miscreant adventurer fading. "That good angel was a lazy baggage! She should have compelled you to believe!"
"Oh—she did," says Hortense quickly. "The poor thing kept telling me and telling me to trust you till I—"
"Till you what, Hortense?"
She did not answer at once.
"Monsieur and the blackamoor and I had gone to the upper river watching for the expected boats——"
"Hortense, were you the white figure behind the bush that night we were spying on the Prince Rupert!"
"Yes," she said, "and you pointed your gun at me!"
I was too dumfounded for words. Then a suspicion flashed to my mind. "Who sent Le Borgne for us in the storm, Hortense?"
"Oh," says Hortense, "that was nothing! Monsieur pretended that he thought you were caribou. He wanted to shoot. Oh," she said, "oh, how I have hated him! To think—to think that he would shoot when you helped us in Boston!"
"Hortense, who sent Le Borgne and M. Picot to save me from the wolves?"
"Oh," says Hortense bravely, with a shudder between the words, "that was—that was nothing—I mean—one would do as much for anybody—for—for—for a poor little stoat, or—or—a caribou if the wolves were after it!"
And we laughed with the tears in our eyes. And all the while that vow to the dying adventurer was ringing like a faint death toll to hope. I remember trying to speak a gratitude too deep for words.
"Can—I ever—ever repay you—Hortense?" I was asking.
"Repay!" she said with a little bitter laugh. "Oh! I hate that word repay! I hate all give-and-take and so-much-given-for-so-much-got!" Then turning to me with her face aflame: "I am—I am—oh—why can't you understand?" she asked.
And then—and then—there was a wordless cry—her arms reached out in mute appeal—there was no need of speech.
The forest shone green and gold in the sunlight. The wind rustled past like a springtime presence, a presence that set all the pines swaying and the aspens aquiver with music of flower legend and new birth and the joy of life. There was a long silence; and in that silence the pulsing of the mighty forces that lift mortals to immortality.
Then a voice which only speaks when love speaks through the voice was saying, "Do you remember your dreams?"
"What?" stooping to cull some violets that had looked well against the green of her hunting-suit.
"'Blind gods of chance—blind gods of chance'—you used to say that over and over!"
"Ah, M. Radisson taught me that! God bless the blind gods of chance—Hortense teaches me that; for"—giving her back her own words—"you are here—you are here—you are here with me! God bless the gods of chance!"
"Oh," she cried, "were you not asleep? Monsieur let me watch after you had taken the sleeping drug."
"The stars fight for us in their courses," said I, handing up the violets.
"Ramsay," she asked with a sudden look straight through my eyes, "what did he make you promise when—when—he was dying?"
The question brought me up like a sail hauled short. And when I told her, she uttered strange reproaches.
"Why—why did you promise that?" she asked. "It has always been his mad dream. And when I told him I did not want to be restored, that I wanted to be like Rebecca and Jack and you and the rest, he called me a little fool and bade me understand that he had not poisoned me as he was paid to do because it was to his advantage to keep me alive. Courtiers would not assassinate a stray waif, he said; there was wealth for the court's ward somewhere; and when I was restored, I was to remember who had slaved for me. Indeed, indeed, I think that he would have married me, but that he feared it would bar him from any property as a king's ward——"
"Is that all you know?"
"That is all. Why—why—did you promise?"
"What else was there to do, Hortense? You can't stay in this wilderness."
"Oh, yes," says Hortense wearily, and she let the violets fall. "What—what else was there to do?"
She led the way back to the cave.
"You have not asked me how we came here," she began with visible effort.
"Tell me no more than you wish me to know!"
"Perhaps you remember a New Amsterdam gentleman and a page boy leaving Boston on the Prince Rupert?"
"Perhaps," said I.
"Captain Gillam of the Prince Rupert signalled to his son outside the harbour. Monsieur had been bargaining with Ben all winter. Ben took us to the north with Le Borgne for interpreter——"
"Does Ben know you are here?"
"Not as Hortense! I was dressed as a page. Then Le Borgne told us of this cave and monsieur plotted to lead the Indians against Ben, capture the fort and ship, and sail away with all the furs for himself. Oh, how I have hated him!" she exclaimed with a sudden impetuous stamp.
Leaving her with the slaves, I took Le Borgne with me to the Habitation. Here, I told all to M. Radisson. And his quick mind seized this, too, for advantage.
"Precious pearls," he exclaims, "but 'tis a gift of the gods!"
"Sir?"
"Pardieu, Chouart; listen to this," and he tells his kinsman, Groseillers.
"Why not?" asks Groseillers. "You mean to send her to Mary Kirke?"
Mary Kirke was Pierre Radisson's wife, who would not leave the English to go to him when he had deserted England for France.
"Sir John Kirke is director of the English Company now. He hath been knighted by King Charles. Mary and Sir John will present this little maid at the English court. An she be not a nine days' wonder there, my name is not Pierre Radisson. If she's a court ward, some of the crew must take care of her."
Groseillers smiled. "An the French reward us not well for this winter's work, that little maid may open a door back to England; eh, kinsman?"