[1] The old expression which the law compelled before throwing slops in mid-street.
The higher one's hopes mount the farther they have to fall; and I, who had mounted to stars with Hortense, was pushed to the gutter by the king's dragoons making way for the royal equipage. There was a crackling of whips among the king's postillions. A yeoman thrust the crowd back with his pike. The carriages rolled past. The flash of a linkman's torch revealed Hortense sitting languid and scornful between the foreign countess and that milliner's dummy of a lieutenant. Then the royal carriages were lost in the darkness, and the streets thronged by a rabble of singing, shouting, hilarious revellers.
Different generations have different ways of taking their pleasure, and the youth of King Charles's day were alternately bullies on the street and dandies at the feet of my lady disdainful. At the approach of the shouting, night-watchmen threw down their lanterns and took to their heels. Street-sweeps tossed their brooms in mid-road with cries of "The Scowerers! The Scowerers!" Hucksters fled into the dark of side lanes. Shopkeepers shot their door-bolts. Householders blew out lights. Fruit-venders made off without their baskets, and small urchins shrieked the alarm of "Baby-eaters! Baby-eaters!"
One sturdy watch, I mind, stood his guard, laying about with a stout pike in a way that broke our fine revellers' heads like soft pumpkins; but him they stood upon his crown in some goodwife's rain-barrel with his lantern tied to his heels. At the rush of the rabble for shelves of cakes and pies, one shopman levelled his blunderbuss. That brought shouts of "A sweat! A sweat!" In a twinkling the rascals were about him. A sword pricked from behind. The fellow jumped. Another prick, and yet another, till the good man was dancing such a jig the sweat rolled from his fat jowls and he roared out promise to feast the whole rout. A peddler of small images had lingered to see the sport, and enough of it he had, I promise you; for they dumped him into his wicker basket and trundled it through the gutter till the peddler and his little white saints were black as chimney-sweeps. Nor did our merry blades play their pranks on poor folk alone. At Will's Coffee House, where sat Dryden and other mighty quidnuncs spinning their poetry and politics over full cups, before mine host got his doors barred our fellows had charged in, seized one of the great wits and set him singing Gammer Gurton's Needle, till the gentlemen were glad to put down pennies for the company to drink healths.
By this I had enough of your gentleman bully's brawling, and I gave the fellows the slip to meet Pierre Radisson at the General Council of Hudson's Bay Adventurers to be held in John Horth's offices in Broad Street. Our gentlemen adventurers were mighty jealous of their secrets in those days. I think they imagined their great game-preserve a kind of Spanish gold-mine safer hidden from public ken, and they held their meetings with an air of mystery that pirates might have worn. For my part, I do not believe there were French spies hanging round Horth's office for knowledge of the Fur Company's doings, though the doorkeeper, who gave me a chair in the anteroom, reported that a strange-looking fellow with a wife as from foreign parts had been asking for me all that day, and refused to leave till he had learned the address of my lodgings.
"'Ave ye taken the hoath of hallegiance, sir?" asked the porter.
"I was born in England," said I dryly.
"Your renegade of a French savage is atakin' the hoath now," confided the porter, jerking his thumb towards the inner door. "They do say as 'ow it is for love of Mary Kirke and not the English—"
"Your renegade of a French—who?" I asked sharply, thinking it ill omen to hear a flunkey of the English Company speaking lightly of our leader.
But at the question the fellow went glum with a tipping and bowing and begging of pardon. Then the councillors began to come: Arlington and Ashley of the court, one of those Carterets, who had been on the Boston Commission long ago and first induced M. Radisson to go to England, and at last His Royal Highness the Duke of York, deep in conversation with my kinsman, Sir John Kirke.
"It can do no harm to employ him for one trip," Sir John was saying.
"He hath taken the oath?" asks His Royal Highness.
"He is taking it to-night; but," laughs Sir John, "we thought he was a good Englishman once before."
"Your company used him ill. You must keep him from going over to the French again."
"Till he undo the evil he has done—till he capture back all that he took from us—then," says Sir John cautiously, "then we must consider whether it be politic to keep a gamester in the company."
"Anyway," adds His Highness, "France will not take him back."
And the door closed on the councillors while I awaited Radisson in the anteroom. A moment later Pierre Radisson came out with eyes alight and face elate.
"I've signed to sail in three days," he announced. "Do you go with me or no?"
Two memories came back: one of a face between a westering sun and a golden sea, and I hesitated; the other, of a cold, pallid, disdainful look from the royal box.
"I go."
And entering the council chamber, I signed the papers without one glance at the terms. Gentlemen sat all about the long table, and at the head was the governor of the company—the Duke of York, talking freely with M. de Radisson.
My Lord Ashley would know if anything but furs grew in that wild New World.
"Furs?" says M. Radisson. "Sir, mark my words, 'tis a world that grows empires—also men," with an emphasis which those court dandies could not understand.
But the wise gentlemen only smiled at M. Radisson's warmth.
"If it grew good soldiers for our wars—" begins one military gentleman.
"Aye," flashes back M. Radisson ironically, "if it grows men for your wars and your butchery and your shambles! Mark my words: it is a land that grows men good for more than killing," and he smiles half in bitterness.
"'Tis a prodigious expensive land in diplomacy when men like you are let loose in it," remarks Arlington.
His Royal Highness rose to take his leave.
"You will present a full report to His Majesty at Oxford," he orders M. Radisson in parting.
Then the council dispersed.
"Oxford," says M. Radisson, as we picked our way home through the dark streets; "an I go to meet the king at Oxford, you will see a hornets' nest of jealousy about my ears."
I did not tell him of the double work implied in Sir John's words with the prince, for Sir John Kirke was Pierre Radisson's father-in-law. At the door of the Star and Garter mine host calls out that a strange-looking fellow wearing a grizzled beard and with a wife as from foreign parts had been waiting all afternoon for me in my rooms.
"From foreign parts!" repeats M. Radisson, getting into a chair to go to Sir John's house in Drury Lane. "If they're French spies, send them right about, Ramsay! We've stopped gamestering!"
"We have; but perhaps the others haven't."
"Let them game," laughs M. Radisson scornfully, as the chair moved off. Not knowing what to expect I ran up-stairs to my room. At the door I paused. That morning I had gone from the house light-hearted. Now interest had died from life. I had but one wish, to reach that wilderness of swift conflict, where thought has no time for regret. The door was ajar. A coal fire burned on the hearth. Sitting on the floor were two figures with backs towards me, a ragged, bearded man and a woman with a shawl over her head. What fools does hope make of us! I had almost called out Hortense's name when the noise of the closing door caught their hearing. I was in the north again; an Indian girl was on her knees clinging to my feet, sobbing out incoherent gratitude; a pair of arms were belabouring my shoulders; and a voice was saying with broken gurgles of joy: "Ship ahoy, there! Ease your helm! Don't heave all your ballast overboard!"—a clapping of hands on my back—"Port your helm! Ease her up! All sheets in the wind and the storms'l aflutter! Ha-ha!" with a wringing and a wringing like to wrench my hands off—"Anchor out! Haul away! Home with her … !"
"Jack Battle!"
It was all I could say.
There he was, grizzled and bronzed and weather-worn, laughing with joy and thrashing his arms about as if to belabour me again.
"But who is this, Jack?"
I lifted the Indian woman from her knees. It was the girl my blow had saved that morning long ago.
"Who—what is this?"
"My wife," Says Jack, swinging his arms afresh and proud as a prince.
"Your wife?… Where … who married you?"
"There warn't no parson," says Jack, "that is, there warn't no parson nearer nor three thousand leagues and more. And say," adds Jack, "I s'pose there was marryin' afore there could be parsons! She saved my life. She hain't no folks. I hain't no folks. She got away that morning o' the massacre—she see them take us captive—she gets a white pelt to hide her agen the snow—she come, she do all them cold miles and lets me loose when the braves ain't watching … she risks her life to save my life—she don't belong to nobody. I don't belong to nobody. There waren't no parson, but we're married tight … and—and—let not man put asunder," says Jack.
For full five minutes there was not a word.
The east was trying to understand the west!
"Amen, Jack," said I. "God bless you—you are a man!"
"We mean to get a parson and have it done straight yet," explained Jack, "but I wanted you to stand by me——"
"Faith, Jack, you've done it pretty thorough without any help——"
"Yes, but folks won't understand," pleaded Jack, "and—and—I'd do as much for you—I wanted you to stand by me and tell me where to say 'yes' when the parson reads the words——"
"All right—I shall," I promised, laughing.
If only Hortense could know all this! That is the sorrow of rifted lives—the dark between, on each side the thoughts that yearn.
"And—and," Jack was stammering on, "I thought, perhaps, Mistress Rebecca 'd be willing to stand by Mizza," nodding to the young squaw, "that is, if you asked Rebecca," pleaded Jack.
"We'll see," said I.
For the New England conscience was something to reckon with!
"How did you come here?" I asked.
"Mizza snared rabbits and I stole back my musket when we ran away and did some shooting long as powder lasted——"
"And then?"
"And then we used bow and arrow. We hid in the bush till the hostiles quit cruisin'; but the spring storms caught us when we started for the coast. I s'pose I'm a better sailor on water than land, for split me for a herring if my eyes didn't go blind from snow! We hove to in the woods again, Mizza snaring rabbit and building a lodge and keepin' fire agoin' and carin' for me as if I deserved it. There I lay water-logged, odd's man—blind as a mole till the spring thaws came. Then Mizza an' me built a raft; for sez I to Miz, though she didn't understand: 'Miz,' sez I, 'water don't flow uphill! If we rig up a craft, that river'll carry us to the bay!' But she only gets down on the ground the way she did with you and puts my foot on her neck. Lordy," laughs Jack, "s'pose I don't know what a foot on a neck feels like? I sez: 'Miz, if you ever do that again, I'll throw you overboard!' Then the backwash came so strong from the bay, we had to wait till the floods settled. While we swung at anchorman, what d'y' think happened? I taught Miz English. Soon as ever she knew words enough I told her if I was a captain I'd want a mate! She didn't catch the wind o' that, lad, till we were navigating our raft downstream agen the ice-jam. Ship ahoy, you know, the ice was like to nip us, and lackin' a life-belt I put me arm round her waist! Ease your helm! Port—a little! Haul away! But she understood—when she saw me save her from the jam before I saved myself."
And Jack Battle stood away arm's length from his Indian wife and laughed his pride.
"And by the time we'd got to the bay you'd gone, but Jean Groseillers sent us to the English ship that came out expecting to find Governor Brigdar at Nelson. We shipped with the company boat, and here we be."
"And what are you going to do?"
"Oh, I get work enough on the docks to pay for Mizza's lessons—"
"Lessons?"
"Yes—she's learning sewin' and readin' from the nuns, and as soon as she's baptized we're going to be married regular."
"Oh!" A sigh of relief escaped me. "Then you'll not need Rebecca for six months or so?"
"No; but you'll ask her?" pleaded Jack.
"If I'm here."
As they were going out Jack slipped back from the hallway to the fireplace, leaving Mizza outside.
"Ramsay?"
"Yes?"
"You think—it's—it's—all right?"
"What?"
"What I done about a mate?"
"Right?" I reiterated. "Here's my hand to you—blessing on the voyage, Captain Jack Battle!"
"Ah," smiled Jack, "you've been to the wilderness—you understand! Other folks don't! That is the way it happens out there!"
He lingered as of old when there was more to come.
"Ramsay?"
"Sail away, captain!"
"Have you seen Hortense?" he asked, looking straight at me.
"Um—yes—no—that is—I have and I haven't."
"Why haven't you?"
"Because having become a grand lady, her ladyship didn't choose to see me."
Jack Battle turned on his heel and swore a seaman's oath. "That—that's a lie," said he.
"Very well—it's a lie, but this is what happened," and I told him of the scene in the theatre. Jack pulled a puzzled face, looking askance as he listened.
"Why didn't you go round to her box, the way M. Radisson did to the king's?"
"You forget I am only a trader!"
"Pah," says Jack, "that is nothing!"
"You forget that Lieutenant Blood might have objected to my visit," and I told him of Blood.
"But how was Mistress Hortense to know that?"
Wounded pride hugs its misery, and I answered nothing.
At the door he stopped. "You go along with Radisson to Oxford," he called. "The court will be there."
Rioting through London streets or playing second in M. Radisson's games of empire, it was possible to forget her, but not in Oxford with the court retinue all about and the hedgerows abloom and spring-time in the air. M. Radisson had gone to present his reports to the king. With a vague belief that chance might work some miracle, I accompanied M. Radisson till we encountered the first belaced fellow of the King's Guard. 'Twas outside the porter's lodge of the grand house where the king had been pleased to breakfast that morning.
"And what might this young man want?" demanded the fellow, with lordly belligerence, letting M. Radisson pass without question.
Your colonial hero will face the desperate chance of death; but not the smug arrogance of a beliveried flunkey.
"Wait here," says M. Radisson to me, forgetful of Hortense now that his own end was won.
And I struck through the copse-wood, telling myself that chance makes grim sport. Ah, well, the toughening of the wilderness is not to be undone by fickle fingers, however dainty, nor a strong life blown out by a girl's caprice! Riders went clanking past. I did not turn. Let those that honoured dishonour doff hats to that company of loose women and dissolute men! Hortense was welcome to the womanish men and the mannish women, to her dandified lieutenant and foreign adventuresses and grand ambassadors, who bought English honour with the smiles of evil women. Coming to a high stone wall, I saw two riders galloping across the open field for the copse wood.
"A very good place to break foolish necks," thought I; for the riders were coming straight towards me, and a deep ditch ran along the other side of the wall.
To clear the wall and then the ditch would be easy enough; but to clear the ditch and then the wall required as pretty a piece of foolhardy horsemanship as hunters could find. Out of sheer curiosity to see the end I slackened my walk. A woman in green was leading the pace. The man behind was shouting "Don't try it! Don't try it! Ride round the end! Wait! Wait!" But the woman came on as if her horse had the bit. Then all my mighty, cool stoicism began thumping like a smith's forge. The woman was Hortense, with that daring look on her face I had seen come to it in the north land; and her escort, young Lieutenant Blood, with terror as plainly writ on his fan-shaped elbows and pounding gait as if his horse were galloping to perdition.
"Don't jump! Head about, Mistress Hillary!" cried the lieutenant.
But Hortense's lips tightened, the rein tightened, there was that lifting bound into air when horse and rider are one—the quick paying-out of the rein—the long, stretching leap—the backward brace—and the wall had been cleared. But Blood's horse balked the jump, nigh sending him head over into the moat, and seizing the bit, carried its cursing rider down the slope of the field. In vain the lieutenant beat it about the head and dug the spurs deep. The beast sidled off each time he headed it up, or plunged at the water's edge till Mistress Hortense cried out: "Oh—please! I cannot see you risk yourself on that beast! Oh—please won't you ride farther down where I can get back!"
"Ho—away, then," calls Blood, mighty glad of that way out of his predicament, "but don't try the wall here again, Mistress Hillary! I protest 'tis not safe for you! Ho—away, then! I race you to the end of the wall!"
And off he gallops, never looking back, keen to clear the wall and meet my lady half-way up. Hortense sat erect, reining her horse and smiling at me.
"And so you would go away without seeing me," she said, "and I must needs ride you down at the risk of the lieutenant's neck."
"'Tis the way of the proud with the humble," I laughed back; but the laugh had no mirth.
Her face went grave. She sat gazing at me with that straight, honest look of the wilderness which neither lies nor seeks a lie.
"Your horse is champing to be off, Hortense!"
"Yes—and if you looked you might see that I am keeping him from going off."
I smiled at the poor jest as a court conceit.
"Or perhaps, if you tried, you might help me to hold him," says Hortense, never taking her search from my face.
"And defraud the lieutenant," said I.
"Ah!" says Hortense, looking away. "Are you jealous of anything so small?"
I took hold of the bit and quieted the horse. Hortense laughed.
"Were you so mighty proud the other night that you could not come to see a humble ward of the court?" she asked.
"I am only a poor trader now!"
"Ah," says Hortense, questioning my face again, "I had thought you were only a poor trader before! Was that the only reason?"
"To be sure, Hortense, the lieutenant would not have welcomed me—he might have told his fellow to turn me out and made confusion."
And I related M. Radisson's morning encounter with Lieutenant Blood, whereat Mistress Hortense uttered such merry peals of laughter I had thought the chapel-bells were chiming.
"Ramsay!" she cried impetuously, "I hate this life—why did you all send me to it?"
"Hate it! Why——?"
"Why?" reiterated Hortense. "Why, when a king, who is too busy to sign death-reprieves, may spend the night hunting a single moth from room to room of the palace? Why, when ladies of the court dress in men's clothes to run the streets with the Scowerers? Why, when a duchess must take me every morning to a milliner's shop, where she meets her lover, who is a rope-walker? Why, when our sailors starve unpaid and gold enough lies on the basset-table of a Sunday night to feed the army? Ah, yes!" says Hortense, "why do I hate this life? Why must you and Madame Radisson and Lady Kirke all push me here?"
"Hortense," I broke in, "you were a ward of the crown! What else was there for us to do?"
"Ah, yes!" says Hortense, "what else? You kept your promise, and a ward of the crown must marry whom the king names—"
"Marry?"
"Or—or go to a nunnery abroad."
"A nunnery?"
"Ah, yes!" mocks Hortense, "what else is there to do?"
And at that comes Blood crashing through the brush.
"Here, fellow, hands off that bridle!"
"The horse became restless. This gentleman held him for me till you came."
"Gad's life!" cries the lieutenant, dismounting. "Let's see?" And he examines the girths with a great show of concern. "A nasty tumble," says he, as if Hortense had been rolled on. "All sound, Mistress Hillary! Egad! You must not ride such a wild beast! I protest, such risks are too desperate!" And he casts up the whites of his eyes at Mistress Hortense, laying his hand on his heart. "When did you feel him getting away from you?"
"At the wall," says Hortense.
The lieutenant vaulted to his saddle.
"Here, fellow!"
He had tossed me a gold-piece. They were off. I lifted the coin, balanced it on my thumb, and flipped it ringing against the wall. When I looked up, Hortense was laughing back over her shoulder.
On May 17th we sailed from Gravesend in the Happy Return, two ships accompanying us for Hudson Bay, and a convoy of the Royal Marine coming as far as the north of Scotland to stand off Dutch highwaymen and Spanish pirates.
But I made the news of Jack Battle's marriage the occasion of a letter to one of the queen's maids of honour.
'Twas as fair sailing under English colours as you could wish till Pierre Radisson had undone all the mischief that he had worked against the Fur Company in Hudson Bay. Pierre Radisson sits with a pipe in his mouth and his long legs stretched clear across the cabin-table, spinning yarns of wild doings in savage lands, and Governor Phipps, of the Hudson's Bay Company, listens with eyes a trifle too sleepily watchful, methinks, for the Frenchman's good. A summer sea kept us course all the way to the northern bay, and sometimes Pierre Radisson would fling out of the cabin, marching up and down the deck muttering, "Pah! Tis tame adventuring! Takes a dish o' spray to salt the freshness out o' men! Tis the roaring forties put nerve in a man's marrow! Soft days are your Delilah's that shave away men's strength! Toughen your fighters, Captain Gazer! Toughen your fighters!"
And once, when M. Radisson had passed beyond hearing, the governor turns with a sleepy laugh to the captain.
"A pox on the rantipole!" says he. "May the sharks test the nerve of his marrow after he's captured back the forts!"
In the bay great ice-drift stopped our way, and Pierre Radisson's impatience took fire.
"What a deuce, Captain Gazer!" he cries. "How long do you intend to squat here anchored to an ice-pan?"
A spark shot from the governor's sleepy eyes, and Captain Gazer swallowed words twice before he answered.
"Till the ice opens a way," says he.
"Opens a way!" repeats Radisson. "Man alive, why don't you carve a way?"
"Carve a way yourself, Radisson," says the governor contemptuously.
That was let enough for Pierre Radisson. He had the sailors lowering jolly-boats in a jiffy; and off seven of us went, round the ice-pans, ploughing, cutting, portaging a way till we had crossed the obstruction and were pulling for the French fort with the spars of three Company boats far in the offing.
I detained the English sailors at the river-front till M. Radisson had entered the fort and won young Jean Groseillers to the change of masters. Before the Fur Company's ships came, the English flag was flying above the fort and Fort Bourbon had become Fort Nelson.
"I bid you welcome to the French Habitation," bows Radisson, throwing wide the gates to the English governor.
"Hm!" returns Phipps, "how many beaver-skins are there in store?"
M. Radisson looked at the governor. "You must ask my tradespeople that," he answers; and he stood aside for them all to pass.
"Your English mind thinks only of the gain," he said to me.
"And your French mind?" I asked.
"The game and not the winnings," said he.
No sooner were the winnings safe—twenty thousand beaver-skins stowed away in three ships' holds—than Pierre Radisson's foes unmasked. The morning of our departure Governor Phipps marched all our Frenchmen aboard like captives of war.
"Sir," expostulated M. de Radisson, "before they gave up the fort I promised these men they should remain in the bay."
Governor Phipps's sleepy eyes of a sudden waked wide.
"Aye," he taunted, "with Frenchmen holding our fort, a pretty trick you could play us when the fancy took you!"
M. Radisson said not a word. He pulled free a gantlet and strode forward, but the doughty governor hastily scuttled down the ship's ladder and put a boat's length of water between him and Pierre Radisson's challenge.
The gig-boat pulled away. Our ship had raised anchor. Radisson leaned over the deck-rail and laughed.
"Egad, Phipps," he shouted, "a man may not fight cowards, but he can cudgel them! An I have to wait for you on the River Styx, I'll punish you for making me break promise to these good fellows!"
"Promise—and when did promise o' yours hold good, Pierre Radisson?"
The Frenchman turned with a bitter laugh.
"A giant is big enough to be hit—a giant is easy to fight," says he, "but egad, these pigmies crawl all over you and sting to death before they are visible to the naked eye!"
And as the Happy Return wore ship for open sea he stood moodily silent with eyes towards the shore where Governor Phipps's gig-boat had moored before Fort Nelson.
Then, speaking more to himself than to Jean and me, his lips curled with a hard scorn.
"The Happy Return!" says he. "Pardieu! 'tis a happy return to beat devils and then have all your own little lies come roosting home like imps that filch the victory! They don't trust me because I won by trickery! Egad! is a slaughter better than a game? An a man wins, who a devil gives a rush for the winnings? 'Tis the fight and the game—pah!—not the thing won! Storm and cold, man and beast, powers o' darkness and devil, knaves and fools and his own sins—aye, that's the scratch!—The man and the beast and the dark and the devil, he can breast 'em all with a bold front! But knaves and fools and his own sins, pah!—death grubs!—hatching and nesting in a man's bosom till they wake to sting him! Flesh-worms—vampires—blood-suckers—spun out o' a man's own tissue to sap his life!"
He rapped his pistol impatiently against the deck-rail, stalked past us, then turned.
"Lads," says he, "if you don't want gall in your wine and a grub in your victory, a' God's name keep your own counsel and play the game fair and square and aboveboard."
And though his speech worked a pretty enough havoc with fine-spun rhetoric to raise the wig off a pedant's head, Jean and I thought we read some sense in his mixed metaphors.
On all that voyage home he never once crossed words with the English officers, but took his share of hardship with the French prisoners.
"I mayn't go back to France. They think they have me cornered and in their power," he would say, gnawing at his finger-ends and gazing into space.
Once, after long reverie, he sprang up from a gun-waist where he had been sitting and uttered a scornful laugh.
"Cornered? Hah! We shall see! I snap my fingers in their faces."
Thereafter his mood brightened perceptibly, and he was the first to put foot ashore when we came to anchor in British port. There were yet four hours before the post-chaise left for London, and the English crew made the most of the time by flocking to the ale-houses. M. Radisson drew Jean and me apart.
"We'll beat our detractors yet," he said. "If news of this capture be carried to the king and the Duke of York[1] before the shareholders spread false reports, we are safe. If His Royal Highness favour us, the Company must fall in line or lose their charter!"
And he bade us hire three of the fleetest saddle-horses to be found. While the English crew were yet brawling in the taverns, we were to horse and away. Our horse's feet rang on the cobblestones with the echo of steel and the sparks flashed from M. Radisson's eyes. A wharfmaster rushed into mid-road to stop us, but M. Radisson rode him down. A uniformed constable called out to know what we were about.
"Our business!" shouts M. Radisson, and we are off.
Country franklins got their wains out of our way with mighty confusion, and coaches drew aside for us to pass, and roadside brats scampered off with a scream of freebooters; but M. Radisson only laughed.
"This is living," said he. "Give your nag rein, Jean! Whip and spur! Ramsay! Whip and spur! Nothing's won but at cost of a sting! Throw off those jack-boots, Jean! They're a handicap! Loose your holsters, lad! An any highwaymen come at us to-day I'll send him a short way to a place where he'll stay! Whip up! Whip up!"
"What have you under your arm?" cries Jean breathlessly.
"Rare furs for the king," calls Radisson.
Then the wind is in our hair, and thatched cots race off in a blur on either side; plodding workmen stand to stare and are gone; open fields give place to forest, forest to village, village to bare heath; and still we race on.
Midnight found us pounding through the dark of London streets for Cheapside, where lived Mr. Young, a director of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was favourable to Pierre Radisson.
"Halloo! Halloo!" shouts Radisson, beating his pistol-butt on the door.
A candle and a nightcap emerge from the upper window.
"Who's there?" demands a voice.
"It's Radisson, Mr. Young!"
"Radisson! In the name o' the fiends—where from?"
"Oh, we've just run across the way from Hudson Bay!" says Radisson.
And the good man presently appears at the door with a candle in one hand and a bludgeon in the other.
"In the name o' the fiends, when did you arrive, man?" exclaims Mr. Young, hailing us inside.
"Two minutes ago by the clock," laughs Radisson, looking at the timepiece in the hall. "Two minutes and a half ago," says he, following our host to the library.
"How many beaver-skins?" asks the Englishman, setting down his candle.
The Frenchman smiles.
"Twenty thousand beaver—skins and as many more of other sorts!"
The Englishman sits down to pencil out how much that will total at ten shillings each; and Pierre Radisson winks at us.
"The winnings again," says he.
"Twenty thousand pounds!" cries our host, springing up.
"Aye," says Pierre Radisson, "twenty thousand pounds' worth o' fur without a pound of shot or the trade of a nail-head for them. The French had these furs in store ready for us!"
Mr. Young lifts his candle so that the light falls on Radisson's bronzed face. He stands staring as if to make sure we are no wraiths.
"Twenty thousand pounds," says he, slowly extending his right hand to Pierre Radisson. "Radisson, man, welcome!"
The Frenchman bows with an ironical laugh.
"Twenty thousand pounds' worth o' welcome, sir!"
But the director of the Fur Company rambles on unheeding.
"These be great news for the king and His Royal Highness," says he.
"Aye, and as I have some rare furs for them both, why not let us bear the news to them ourselves?" asks Radisson.
"That you shall," cries Mr. Young; and he led us up-stairs, where we might refresh ourselves for the honour of presentation to His Majesty next day.
[1] The Duke of York became Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company after Prince Rupert's death, and the Company's charter was a royal favour direct from the king.
M. Radisson had carried his rare furs to the king, and I was at Sir John Kirke's door to report the return of her husband to Madame Radisson. The same grand personage with sleek jowls and padded calves opened the door in the gingerly fashion of his office. This time he ushered me quick enough into the dark reception-room.
As I entered, two figures jumped from the shadow of a tapestried alcove with gasps of fright.
"Ramsay!"
It was Rebecca, the prim monkey, blushing a deal more than her innocence warranted, with a solemn-countenanced gentleman of the cloth scowling from behind.
"When—when—did you come?" she asked, all in a pretty flutter that set her dimples atrembling; and she forgot to give me welcome.
"Now—exactly on the minute!"
"Why—why—didn't you give us warning?" stammered Rebecca, putting out one shy hand.
At that I laughed outright; but it was as much the fashion for gentlemen of the cloth to affect a mighty solemnity in those days as it was for the laity to let out an oath at every other word, and the young divine only frowned sourly at my levity.
"If—if—if you'd only given us warning," interrupts Rebecca.
"Faith, Rebecca, an you talk of warning, I'll begin to think you needed it——"
"To give you welcome," explains Rebecca. Then recovering herself, she begs, with a pretty bobbing courtesy, to make me known to the Reverend Adam Kittridge.
The Reverend Kittridge shakes hands with an air as he would sound my doctrine on the spot, and Rebecca hastens to add that I am "a very—old—old friend."
"Not so very old, Rebecca, not so very long ago since you and I read over the same lesson-books. Do you mind the copy-heads on the writing-books?
"'Heaven to find. The Bible mind. In Adam's fall we sinn'ed all. Adam lived a lonely life until he got himself a wife.'"
But at that last, which was not to be found among the head-lines of Boston's old copy-books, little Rebecca looked like to drop, and with a frightened gesture begged us to be seated, which we all accomplished with a perceptible stiffening of the young gentleman's joints.
"Is M. Radisson back?" she asks.
"He reached England yesterday. He bade me say that he will be here after he meets the shareholders. He goes to present furs to the king this morning."
"That will please Lady Kirke," says the young gentleman.
"Some one else is back in England," exclaims Rebecca, with the air of news. "Ben Gillam is here."
"O-ho! Has he seen the Company?"
"He and Governor Brigdar have been among M. Radisson's enemies. Young Captain Gillam says there's a sailor-lad working on the docks here can give evidence against M. Radisson."
"Can you guess who that sailor-lad is, Rebecca?"
"It is not—no—it is not Jack?" she asks.
"Jack it is, Rebecca. That reminds me, Jack sent a message to you!"
"A message to me?"
"Yes—you know he's married—he married last year when he was in the north."
"Married?" cries Rebecca, throwing up her hands and like to faint from surprise. "Married in the north? Why—who—who married him, Ramsay?"
"A woman, of course!"
"But—" Rebecca was blushing furiously, "but—I mean—was there a chaplain? Had you a preacher? And—and was not Mistress Hortense the only woman——?"
"No—child—there were thousands of women—native women——"
"Squaws!" exclaims the prim little Puritan maid, with a red spot burning on each cheek. "Do you mean that Jack Battle has married a squaw?" and she rose indignantly.
"No—I mean a woman! Now, Rebecca, will you sit down till I tell you all about it?"
"Sir," interjects the young gentleman of the cloth, "I protest there are things that a maid ought not to hear!"
"Then, sir, have a care that you say none of them under cloak of religion! Honi soit qui mal y pense! The mind that thinketh no evil taketh no evil."
Then I turned to Rebecca, standing with a startled look in her eyes.
"Rebecca, Madame Radisson has told you how Jack was left to be tortured by the Indians?"
"Hortense has told me."
"And how he risked his life to save an Indian girl's life?"
"Yes," says Rebecca, with downcast lids.
"That Indian girl came and untied Jack's bonds the night of the massacre. They escaped together. When he went snow-blind, Mizza hunted and snared for him and kept him. Her people were all dead; she could not go back to her tribe—if Jack had left her in the north, the hostiles would have killed her. Jack brought her home with him——"
"He ought to have put her in a house of correction," snapped Rebecca.
"Rebecca! Why would he put her in a house of correction? What had she done that she ought not to have done? She had saved his life. He had saved hers, and he married her."
"There was no minister," said Rebecca, with a tightening of her childish dimpled mouth and a reddening of her cheeks and a little indignant toss of the chin.
"Rebecca! How could they get a minister a thousand leagues away from any church? They will get one now——"
Rebecca rose stiffly, her little lily face all aflame.
"My father saith much evil cometh of this—it is sin—he ought not to have married her; and—and—it is very wrong of you to be telling me this—" she stammered angrily, with her little hands clasped tight across the white stomacher.
"Very unfit," comes from that young gentleman of the cloth.
We were all three standing, and I make no doubt my own face went as red as theirs, for the taunt bit home. That inference of evil where no evil was, made an angrier man than was my wont. The two moved towards the door. I put myself across their way.
"Rebecca, you do yourself wrong! You are measuring other people's deeds with too short a yardstick, little woman, and the wrong is in your own mind, not theirs."
"I—I—don't know what you mean!" cried Rebecca obstinately, with a break in her voice that ought to have warned; but her next words provoked afresh. "It was wicked!—it was sinful!"—with an angry stamp—"it was shameful of Jack Battle to marry an Indian girl——"
There I cut in.
"Was it?" I asked. "Young woman, let me tell you a bald truth! When a white man marries an Indian, the union is as honourable as your own would be. It is when the white man does not marry the Indian that there is shame; and the shame is to the white man, not the Indian——!"
Sure, one might let an innocent bundle of swans' down and baby cheeks have its foibles without laying rough hands upon them!
The next,—little Rebecca cries out that I've insulted her, is in floods of tears, and marches off on the young gentleman's arm.
Comes a clatter of slippered heels on the hall floor and in bustles my Lady Kirke, bejewelled and befrilled and beflounced till I had thought no mortal might bend in such massive casings of starch.
"La," she pants, "good lack!—Wellaway! My fine savage! Welladay! What a pretty mischief have you been working? Proposals are amaking at the foot of the stairs. O—lud! The preacher was akissing that little Puritan maid as I came by! Good lack, what will Sir John say?"
And my lady laughs and laughs till I look to see the tears stain the rouge of her cheeks.
"O-lud," she laughs, "I'm like to die! He tried to kiss the baggage! And the little saint jumps back so quick that he hit her ear by mistake! La," she laughs, "I'm like to die!"
I'd a mind to tell her ladyship that a loosening of her stays might prolong life, but I didn't. Instead, I delivered the message from Pierre Radisson and took myself off a mighty mad man; for youth can be angry, indeed. And the cause of the anger was the same as fretteth the Old World and New to-day. Rebecca was measuring Jack by old standards. I was measuring Rebecca by new standards. And the measuring of the old by the new and the new by the old teareth love to tatters.
Pierre Radisson I met at the entrance to the Fur Company's offices in Broad Street. His steps were of one on steel springs and his eyes afire with victory.
"We've beaten them," he muttered to me. "His Majesty favours us! His Majesty accepted the furs and would have us at Whitehall to-morrow night to give account of our doings. An they try to trick me out of reward I'll have them to the foot o' the throne!"
But of Pierre Radisson's intrigue against his detractors I was not thinking at all.
"Were the courtiers about?" I asked.
"Egad! yes; Palmer and Buckingham and Ashley leering at Her Grace of Portsmouth, with Cleveland looking daggers at the new favourite, and the French ambassador shaking his sides with laughter to see the women at battle. His Royal Highness, the Duke of York, got us access to present the furs. Egad, Ramsay, I am a rough man, but it seemed prodigious strange to see a king giving audience in the apartments of the French woman, and great men leering for a smile from that huzzy! The king lolls on a Persian couch with a litter of spaniel puppies on one side and the French woman on the other. And what do you think that black-eyed jade asks when I present the furs and tell of our captured Frenchmen? To have her own countrymen sold to the Barbadoes so that she may have the money for her gaming-table! Egad, I spiked that pretty plan by saying the Frenchmen were sending her a present of furs, too! To-morrow night we go to Whitehall to entertain His Majesty with our doings! We need not fear enemies in the Company now!"
"I'm not so sure of that," said I. "The Gillams have been working against you here, and so has Brigdar."
"Hah—let them work!"
"Did you see her?" I asked.
"Her?" questions Radisson absently. "Pardieu, there are so many hers about the court now with no she-saint among them! Which do you mean?"
The naming of Hortense after such speech was impossible. Without more mention of the court, we entered the Company's office, where sat the councillors in session around a long table. No one rose to welcome him who had brought such wealth on the Happy Return; and the reason was not far to seek. The post-chaise had arrived with Pierre Radisson's detractors, and allied with them were the Gillams and Governor Brigdar.
Pierre Radisson advanced undaunted and sat down. Black looks greeted his coming, and the deputy-governor, who was taking the Duke of York's place, rose to suggest that "Mr. Brigdar, wrongfully dispossessed of the fort on the bay by one Frenchman known as Radisson, be restored as governor of those parts."
A grim smile went from face to face at Pierre Radisson's expense.
"Better withdraw, man, better withdraw," whispers Sir John Kirke, his father-in-law.
But Radisson only laughs.
Then one rises to ask by what authority the Frenchman, Radisson, had gone to report matters to the king instead of leaving that to the shareholders.
M. de Radisson utters another loud laugh.
Comes a knocking, and there appears at the door Colonel Blood, father of the young lieutenant, with a message from the king.
"Gentlemen," announces the freebooter, "His Majesty hath bespoke dinner for the Fur Company at the Lion. His Royal Highness, the Duke of York, hath ordered Madeira for the councillors' refreshment, and now awaits your coming!"
For the third time M. Radisson laughs aloud with a triumph of insolence.
"Come, gentlemen," says he, "I've countered. Let us be going. His Royal Highness awaits us across the way."
Blood stood twirling his mustaches and tapping his sword-handle impatiently. He was as swarth and straight and dauntless as Pierre Radisson, with a sinister daring in his eyes that might have put the seal to any act.
"Egad's life!" he exclaimed, "do fur-traders keep royalty awaiting?"
And our irate gentleman must needs haste across to the Lion, where awaited the Company Governor, the Duke of York, with all the merry young blades of the court. King Charles's reign was a time of license, you have been told. What that meant you would have known if you had seen the Fur Company at dinner. Blood, Senior, I mind, had a drinking-match against Sir George Jeffreys, the judge; and I risk not my word on how much those two rascals put away. The judge it was who went under mahogany first, though Colonel Blood scarce had wit enough left to count the winnings of his wager. Young Lieutenant Blood stood up on his chair and bawled out some monstrous bad-writ verse to "a fair-dark lady"—whatever that meant—"who was as cold as ice and combustible as gunpowder." Healths were drunk to His Majesty King Charles, to His Royal Highness the Duke of York, to our councillors of the Company, to our governors of the fur-posts, and to the captains. Then the Duke of York himself lifted the cup to Pierre Radisson's honour; whereat the young courtiers raised such a cheering, the grim silence of Pierre Radisson's detractors passed unnoticed. After the Duke of York had withdrawn, our riotous sparks threw off all restraint. On bended knee they drank to that fair evil woman whom King Louis had sent to ensnare King Charles. Odds were offered on how long her power with the king would last. Then followed toasts to a list of second-rate names, dancing girls and French milliners, who kept place of assignation for the dissolute crew, and maids of honour, who were no maids of honour, but adventuresses in the pay of great men to advance their interest with the king, and riffraff women whose names history hath done well to forget. To these toasts Colonel Blood and Pierre Radisson and I sat with inverted glasses.
While the inn was ringing to the shouts of the revellers, the freebooter leaned across to Pierre Radisson.
"Gad's name if they like you," he mumbled drunkenly.
"Who?" asked Radisson.
"Fur Company," explained Blood. "They hate you! So they do me! But if the king favours you, they've got to have you," and he laughed to himself.
"That's the way with me," he whispered in drunken confidence to M. Radisson. "What a deuce?" he asked, turning drowsily to the table. "What's my boy doing?"
Young Lieutenant Blood was to his feet holding a reaming glass high as his head.
"Gentlemen, I give you the sweet savage!" he cried, "the Diana of the snows—a thistle like a rose—ice that burns—a pauper that spurns—"
"Curse me if he doesn't mean that saucy wench late come from your north fort," interrupted the father.
My hands were itching to throw a glass in the face of father or son, but Pierre Radisson restrained me.
"More to be done sometimes by doing nothing," he whispered.
The young fellows were on their knees draining bumpers; but Colonel Blood was rambling again.
"He gives 'em that saucy brat, does he? Gad's me, I'd give her to perdition for twopenny-worth o' rat poison! Look you, Radisson, 'tis what I did once; but she's come back! Curse me, I could 'a' done it neater and cheaper myself—twopenny-worth o' poison would do it, Picot said; but gad's me, I paid him a hundred guineas, and here she's come back again!"
"Blood … Colonel Blood," M. Picot had repeated at his death.
I had sprung up. Again M. Radisson held me back.
"How long ago was that, Colonel Blood?" he asked softly.
"Come twenty year this day s'ennight," mutters the freebooter. "'Twas before I entered court service. Her father had four o' my fellows gibbeted at Charing Cross, Gad's me, I swore he'd sweat for it! She was Osmond's only child—squalling brat coming with nurse over Hounslow Heath. 'Sdeath—I see it yet! Postillions yelled like stuck pigs, nurses kicked over in coach dead away. When they waked up, curse me, but the French poisoner had the brat! Curse me, I'd done better to finish her myself. Picot ran away and wrote letters—letters—letters, till I had to threaten to slit his throat, 'pon my soul, I had! And now she must marry the boy——"
"Why?" put in Radisson, with cold indifference and half-listening air.
"Gad's life, can't you see?" asked the knave. "Osmond's dead, the boy's lands are hers—the French doctor may 'a' told somebody," and Colonel Blood of His Majesty's service slid under the table with the judge.
M. Radisson rose and led the way out.
"You'd like to cudgel him," he said. "Come with me to Whitehall instead!"