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6
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FIRST DAYS IN BOUPARI.
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Throughout that day the natives brought them, from time to time, numerous presents of yam, bananas, and bread-fruit, neatly arranged in little palm-leaf baskets. A few of them brought eggs as well, and one offering even included a live chicken. But the people who brought them, and who were mostly young girls just entering upon womanhood, did not venture to cross the white line of coral-sand that surrounded the huts; they laid down their presents, with many salaams, on the ground outside, and then waited with a half-startled, half-reverent air for one or other of the two Shadows to come out and fetch them. As soon as the baskets were carried well within the marked line, the young girls exhibited every sign of pleasure, and calling aloud, "Korong! Korong!" --that mysterious Polynesian word of whose import Felix was ignorant--they retired once more by tortuous paths through the surrounding jungle.
"Why do they bring us presents?" Felix asked at last of his Shadow, after this curious pantomime had been performed some three or four times. "Are they always going to keep us in such plenty?"
The Shadow looked back at him with an air of considerable surprise. "They bring presents, of course," he said, in his own tongue, "because they are badly in want of rain. We have had much drought of late in Boupari; we need water from heaven. The banana-bushes wither; the flowers on the bread-fruit tree do not swell to breadfruit; the yams are thirsty. Therefore the fathers send their daughters with presents, maidens of the villages, all marriageable girls, to ask for rainfall. But they will always provide for you, and also for the Queen, however you behave; for you are both Korong. Tu-Kila-Kila has said so, and Heaven has accepted you."
"What do you mean by Korong?" Felix asked, with some trepidation.
The Shadow merely looked back at him with a sort of blank surprise that anybody should be ignorant of so simple a conception. "Why, Korong is Korong," he answered, aghast. "You are Korong yourself. The Queen of the Clouds is Korong, too. You are both Korong; that is why they all treat you with such respect and reverence."
And that was as much as Felix could elicit by his subtlest questions from his taciturn Shadow.
In fact, it was clear that in the open, at least, the Shadow was averse to being observed in familiar conversation with Felix. During the heat of the day, however, when they sat alone within the hut, he was much more communicative. Then he launched forth pretty freely into talk about the island and its life, which would no doubt have largely enlightened Felix, had it not been for two drawbacks to their means of inter-communication. In the first place, the Boupari dialect, though agreeing in all essentials with the Polynesian of Fiji, nevertheless contained a great many words and colloquial expressions unknown to the Fijians; this being particularly the case, as Felix soon remarked, in the whole vocabulary of religious rites and ceremonies. And in the second place, the Shadow was so rigidly bound by his own narrow and insular set of ideas, that he couldn't understand the difficulty Felix felt in throwing himself into them. Over and over again, when Felix asked him to explain some word or custom, he would repeat, with naïve impatience, "Why, Korong is Korong," or "Tula is just Tula; even a child must surely know what Tula is; much more yourself, who are indeed Korong, and who have come from the sun to bring fresh fire to us."
In the adjoining hut, Muriel, who was now beginning in some small degree to get rid of her most pressing fear for the immediate future, and whom the obvious reality of the taboo had reassured for the moment, sat with Mali, her own particular Shadow, unravelling the mystery of the girl's knowledge of English.
Mali, indeed, like the other Shadow, showed every disposition to indulge in abundant conversation, as soon as she found herself well within the hut, alone with her mistress, and secluded from the prying eyes of all the other islanders.
"Don't you be afraid, missy," she said, with genuine kindliness in her tone, as soon as the gifts of yam and bread-fruit had all been duly housed and garnered. "No harm come to you. You Korong, you know. You very great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila send King of Fire and King of Water to make taboo over you, so nobody hurt you."
Muriel burst into tears at the sound of her own language from those dusky lips, and exclaimed through her sobs, clinging to the girl's hand for comfort as she spoke, "Why, how did you ever come to speak English? --tell me."
Mali looked up at her with a half-astonished air. "Oh, I servant in Queensland, of course, missy," she answered, with great composure. "Labor vessel come to my island, far away, four, five years ago, steal boy, steal woman. My papa just kill my mamma, because he angry with her, so no want daughters. So my papa sell me and my sister for plenty rum, plenty tobacco, to gentlemen in labor vessel. Gentlemen in labor vessel take Jani and me away, away, to Queensland. Big sea; long voyage. We stop there three yam--three years--do service; then great chief in Queensland send us back to my island. My island too faraway; gentleman on ship not find it out; so he land us in little boat on Boupari. Boupari people make temple slave of us." And that was all; to her quite a commonplace, everyday history.
"I see," Muriel cried. "Then you've been for three years in Australia! And there you learned English. Why, what did you do there?"
Mali looked back at her with the same matter-of-fact air of composure as before. "Oh, me nurse at first," she said, shortly. "Then after, me housemaid, live three year in gentleman's house, good gentleman that buy me. Take care of little girl; clean rooms; do everything. Me know how to make English lady quite comfortable. Me tell that to chief; that make him say, 'Mali, you be Queenie's Shadow.'"
To Muriel in her loneliness even such companionship as that was indeed a consolation. "Oh, I'm so glad you told him," she cried. "If we have to stop here long, before a ship takes us off, it'll be so nice to have you here all the time with me. You won't go away from me ever, will you? You'll always stop with me!"
The girl's surprise showed more profoundly than ever. "Me can't go away," she answered, with emphasis. "Me your Shadow. That great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila great god. If me go away, Tu-Kila-Kila kill me and eat me."
Muriel started back in horror. "But, Mali," she said, looking hard at the girl's pleasant brown face, "if you were three years in Australia, you're a Christian, surely!"
The girl nodded her head in passive acquiescence. "Me Christian in Australia," she answered. "Of course me Christian. All folks make Christian when him go to Queensland. That what for me call Mali, and my sister Jani. We have other names on my own island; but when we go to Queensland, gentleman baptize us, call us Mali and Jani. Me Methodist in Queensland. Methodist very good. But Methodist god no live in Boupari. Not any good be Methodist here any longer. Tu-Kila-Kila god here. Him very powerful."
"What! Not that dreadful creature that they took us to see this morning!" Muriel exclaimed, in horror. "Oh, Mali, you can't mean to say they think he's a _god_, that awful man there!"
Mali nodded her assent with profound conviction. "Yes, yes; him god," she repeated, confidently. "Him very powerful. My sister Jani go too near him temple, against taboo--because her not belong-a Tu-Kila-Kila temple; and last night, when it great feast, plenty men catch Jani, and tie him up in rope; and Tu-Kila-Kila kill him, and plenty Boupari men help Tu-Kila-Kila eat up Jani."
She said it in the same simple, matter-of-fact way as she had said that she was a nurse for three years in Queensland. To her it was a common incident of everyday life. Such accidents _will_ happen, if you break taboo and go too near forbidden temples.
But Muriel drew back, and let the pleasant-looking brown girl's hand drop suddenly. "You can't mean it," she cried. "You can't mean he's a god! Such a wicked man as that! Oh, his very look's too horrible."
Mali drew back in her turn with a somewhat terrified air, and peeped suspiciously around her, as if to make sure whether any one was listening. "Oh, hush," she said, anxiously. "Don't must talk like that. If Tu-Kila-Kila hear, him scorch us up to ashes. Him very great god! Him good! Him powerful!"
"How can he be good if he does such awful things?" Muriel exclaimed, energetically.
Mali peered around her once more with terrified eyes in the same uneasy way. "Take care," she said again. "Him god! Him powerful! Him can do no wrong. Him King of the Trees! Him King of Heaven! On Boupari island, Methodist god not much; no god so great like Tu-Kila-Kila."
"But a _man_ can't be a god!" Muriel exclaimed, contemptuously. "He's nothing but a man! a savage! A cannibal!"
Mali looked back at her in wondering surprise. "Not in Queensland," she answered, calmly--to her, all the world naturally divided itself into Queensland and Polynesia--"no god in Queensland. Governor, him very great chief; but him no god like Tu-Kila-Kila. Methodist god in sky, him only god that live in Queensland. But no use worship Methodist god over here in Boupari. Him no live here. Tu-Kila-Kila live here. All god here make out of man. Live in man. Korong! What for you say a man can't be a god! You god yourself! White gentleman there, god! Korong, Korong. Chief put you in Heaven, so make you a god. People pray to you now. People bring you presents."
"You don't mean to say," Muriel cried, "they bring me these things because they think me a goddess?"
Mali nodded a grave assent. "Same like people give money in church in Queensland," she answered, promptly. "Ask you make rain, make plenty crop, make bread-fruit grow, make banana, make plantain. You Korong now. While your time last, Queenie, people give you plenty of present."
"While my time last?" Muriel repeated, with a curious sense of discomfort creeping over her slowly.
The girl nodded an easy assent. "Yes, while your time last," she answered, laying a small bundle of palm-leaves at Muriel's back by way of a cushion. "For now you Korong. By and by, Korong pass to somebody else. This year, you Korong. So people worship you."
But nothing that Muriel could say would induce the girl further to explain her meaning. She shook her head and looked very wise. "When a god come into somebody," she said, nodding toward Muriel in a mysterious way, "then him god himself; him Korong. When the god go away from him, him Korong no longer; somebody else Korong. Queenie Korong now; so people worship him. While him time last, people plenty kind to him."
The day passed away, and night came on. As it approached, heavy clouds drifted up from eastward. Mali busied herself with laying out a rough bed in the hut for Muriel, and making her a pillow of soft moss and the curious lichen-like material that hangs parasitic from the trees, and is commonly known as "old man's beard." As both Mali and Felix assured her confidently no harm would come to her within so strict a Taboo, Muriel, worn out with fatigue and terror, lay down at last and slept soundly on this native substitute for a bedstead. She slept without dreaming, while Mali lay at her feet, ready at a moment's call. It was all so strange; and yet she was too utterly wearied to do otherwise than sleep, in spite of her strange and terrible surroundings.
Felix slept, too, for some hours, but woke with a start in the night. It was raining heavily. He could hear the loud patter of a fierce tropical shower on the roof of his hut. His Shadow, at his feet, slept still unmoved; but when Felix rose on his elbow, the Shadow rose on a sudden, too, and confronted him curiously. The young man heard the rain; then he bowed down his face with an awed air, not visible, but audible, in the still darkness. "It has come!" he said, with superstitious terror. "It has come at last! my lord has brought it!"
After that, Felix lay awake for some hours, hearing the rain on the roof, and puzzled in his own head by a half-uncertain memory. What was it in his school reading that that ceremony with the water indefinitely reminded him of? Wasn't there some Greek or Roman superstition about shaking your head when water was poured upon it? What could that superstition be, and what light might it cast on that mysterious ceremony? He wished he could remember; but it was so long since he'd read it, and he never cared much at school for Greek or Roman antiquities.
Suddenly, in a lull of the rain, the whole context at once came back with a rush to him. He remembered now he had read it, some time or other, in some classical dictionary. It was a custom connected with Greek sacrifices. The officiating priest poured water or wine on the head of the sheep, bullock, or other victim. If the victim shook its head and knocked off the drops, that was a sign that it was fit for the sacrifice, and that the god accepted it. If the victim trembled visibly, that was a most favorable omen. If it stood quite still and didn't move its neck, then the god rejected it as unfit for his purpose. Couldn't _that_ be the meaning of the ceremony performed on Muriel and himself in "Heaven" that morning? Were they merely intended as human sacrifices? Were they to be kept meanwhile and, as it were, fed up for the slaughter? It was too horrible to believe; yet it almost looked like it.
He wished he knew the meaning of that strange word, "Korong." Clearly, it contained the true key to the mystery.
Anyhow, he had always his trusty knife. If the worst came to the worst--those wretches should never harm his spotless Muriel.
For he loved her to-night; he would watch over and protect her. He would save her at least from the deadliest of insults.
|
{
"id": "13876"
}
|
7
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INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.
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All night long, without intermission, the heavy tropical rain descended in torrents; at sunrise it ceased, and a bright blue vault of sky stood in a spotless dome over the island of Boupari.
As soon as the sun was well risen, and the rain had ceased, one shy native girl after another came straggling up timidly to the white line that marked the taboo round Felix and Muriel's huts. They came with more baskets of fruit and eggs. Humbly saluting three times as they drew near, they laid down their gifts modestly just outside the line, with many loud ejaculations of praise and gratitude to the gods in their own language.
"What do they say?" Muriel asked, in a dazed and frightened way, looking out of the hut door, and turning in wonder to Mali.
"They say, 'Thank you, Queenie, for rain and fruits,'" Mali answered, unconcerned, bustling about in the hut. "Missy want to wash him face and hands this morning? Lady always wash every day over yonder in Queensland."
Muriel nodded assent. It was all so strange to her. But Mali went to the door and beckoned carelessly to one of the native girls just outside, who drew near the line at the summons, with a somewhat frightened air, putting one finger to her mouth in coyly uncertain savage fashion.
"Fetch me water from the spring!" Mali said, authoritatively, in Polynesian. Without a moment's delay the girl darted off at the top of her speed, and soon returned with a large calabash full of fresh cool water, which she lay down respectfully by the taboo line, not daring to cross it.
"Why didn't you get it yourself?" Muriel asked of her Shadow, rather relieved than otherwise that Mali hadn't left her. It was something in these dire straits to have somebody always near who could at least speak a little English.
Mali started back in surprise. "Oh, that would never do," she answered, catching a colloquial phrase she had often heard long before in Queensland. "Me missy's Shadow. That great Taboo. If me go away out of missy's sight, very big sin--very big danger. Man-a-Boupari catch me and kill me like Jani, for no me stop and wait all the time on missy."
It was clear that human life was held very cheap on the island of Boupari.
Muriel made her scanty toilet in the hut as well as she was able, with the calabash and water, aided by a rough shell comb which Mali had provided for her. Then she breakfasted, not ill, off eggs and fruit, which Mali cooked with some rude native skill over the open-air fire without in the precincts.
After breakfast, Felix came in to inquire how she had passed the night in her new quarters. Already Muriel felt how odd was the contrast between the quiet politeness of his manner as an English gentleman and the strange savage surroundings in which they both now found themselves. Civilization is an attribute of communities; we necessarily leave it behind when we find ourselves isolated among barbarians or savages. But culture is a purely personal and individual possession; we carry it with us wherever we go; and no circumstances of life can ever deprive us of it.
As they sat there talking, with a deep and abiding sense of awe at the change (Muriel more conscious than ever now of how deep was her interest in Felix Thurstan, who represented for her all that was dearest and best in England), a curious noise, as of a discordant drum or tom-tom, beaten in a sort of recurrent tune, was heard toward the hills; and at its very first sound both the Shadows, flinging themselves upon their faces with every sign of terror, endeavored to hide themselves under the native mats with which the bare little hut was roughly carpeted.
"What's the matter?" Felix cried, in English, to Mali; for Muriel had already explained to him how the girl had picked up some knowledge of our tongue in Queensland.
Mali trembled in every limb, so that she could hardly speak. "Tu-Kila-Kila come," she answered, all breathless. "No blackfellow look at him. Burn blackfellow up. You and Missy Korong. All right for you. Go out to meet him!"
"Tu-Kila-Kila is coming," the young man-Shadow said, in Polynesian, almost in the same breath, and no less tremulously. "We dare not look upon his face lest he burn us to ashes. He is a very great Taboo. His face is fire. But you two are gods. Step forth to receive him."
Felix took Muriel's hand in his, somewhat trembling himself, and led her forth on to the open space in front of the huts to meet the man-god. She followed him like a child. She was woman enough for that. She had implicit trust in him.
As they emerged, a strange procession met their eyes unawares, coming down the zig-zag path that led from the hills to the shore of the lagoon, where their huts were situated. At its head marched two men--tall, straight, and supple--wearing huge feather masks over their faces, and beating tom-toms, decorated with long strings of shiny cowries. After them, in order, came a sort of hollow square of chiefs or warriors, surrounding with fan-palms a central object all shrouded from the view with the utmost precaution. This central object was covered with a huge regal umbrella, from whose edge hung rows of small nautilus and other shells, so as to form a kind of screen, like the Japanese portières now so common in English doorways. Two supporters held it up, one on either side, in long cloaks of feathers. Under the umbrella, a man seemed to move; and as he approached, the natives, to right and left, fled precipitately to their huts, snatching up their naked little ones from the ground as they went, and crying aloud, "Taboo, Taboo! He comes! he comes. Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila!"
The procession wound slowly on, unheeding these common creatures, till it reached the huts. Then the chiefs who formed the hollow square fell back one by one, and the man under the umbrella, with his two supporters, came forward boldly. Felix noticed that they crossed without scruple the thick white line of sand which all the other natives so carefully respected. The man within the umbrella drew aside the curtain of hanging nautilus shells. His face was covered with a thin mask of paper mulberry bark; but Felix knew he was the self-same person whom they had seen the day before in the central temple.
Tu-Kila-Kila's air was more insolent and arrogant than even before. He was clearly in high spirits. "You have done well, O King of the Rain," he said, turning gayly to Felix; "and you too, O Queen of the Clouds; you have done right bravely. We have all acquitted ourselves as our people would wish. We have made our showers to descend abundantly from heaven; we have caused the crops to grow; we have wetted the plantain bushes. See; Tu-Kila-Kila, who is so great a god, has come from his own home on the hills to greet you."
"It has certainly rained in the night," Felix answered, dryly.
But Tu-Kila-Kila was not to be put off thus. Adjusting his thin mask or veil of bark, so as to hide his face more thoroughly from the inferior god, he turned round once more to the chiefs, who even so hardly dared to look openly upon him. Then he struck an attitude. The man was clearly bursting with spiritual pride. He knew himself to be a god, and was filled with the insolence of his supernatural power. "See, my people," he cried, holding up his hands, palm outward, in his accustomed god-like way; "I am indeed a great deity--Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth, Life of the World, Master of Time, Measurer of the Sun's Course, Spirit of Growth, Creator of the Harvest, Master of Mortals, Bestower of Breath upon Men, Chief Pillar of Heaven!"
The warriors bowed down before their bloated master with unquestioning assent. "Giver of Life to all the host of the gods," they cried, "you are indeed a mighty one. Weigher of the equipoise of Heaven and Earth, we acknowledge your might; we give you thanks eternally."
Tu-Kila-Kila swelled with visible importance. "Did I not tell you, my meat," he exclaimed, "I would bring you new gods, great spirits from the sun, fetchers of fire from my bright home in the heavens? And have they not come? Are they not here to-day? Have they not brought the precious gift of fresh fire with them?"
"Tu-Kila-Kila speaks true," the chiefs echoed, submissively, with bent heads.
"Did I not make one of them King of the Rain?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked once more, stretching one hand toward the sky with theatrical magnificence. "Did I not declare the other Queen of the Clouds in Heaven? And have I not caused them to bring down showers this night upon our crops? Has not the dry earth drunk? Am I not the great god, the Saviour of Boupari?"
"Tu-Kila-Kila says well," the chiefs responded, once more, in unanimous chorus.
Tu-Kila-Kila struck another attitude with childish self-satisfaction. "I go into the hut to speak with my ministers," he said, grandiloquently. "Fire and Water, wait you here outside while I enter and speak with my friends from the sun, whom I have brought for the salvation of the crops to Boupari."
The King of Fire and the King of Water, supporting the umbrella, bowed assent to his words. Tu-Kila-Kila motioned Felix and Muriel into the nearest hut. It was the one where the two Shadows lay crouching in terror among the native mats. As the god tried to enter, the two cowering wretches set up a loud shout, "Taboo! Taboo! Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!" Tu-Kila-Kila retreated with a contemptuous smile. "I want to see you alone," he said, in Polynesian, to Felix. "Is the other hut empty? If not, go in and cut their throats who sit there, and make the place a solitude for Tu-Kila-Kila."
"There is no one in the hut," Felix answered, with a nod, concealing his disgust at the command as far as he was able.
"That is well," Tu-Kila-Kila answered, and walked into it carelessly. Felix followed him close and deemed it best to make Muriel enter also.
As soon-as they were alone, Tu-Kila-Kila's manner altered greatly. "Come, now," he said, quite genially, yet with a curious under-current of hate in his steely gray eye; "we three are all gods. We who are in heaven need have no secrets from one another. Tell me the truth; did you really come to us direct from the sun, or are you sailing gods, dropped from a great canoe belonging to the warriors who seek laborers for the white men in the distant country?"
Felix told him briefly, in as few words as possible, the story of their arrival.
Tu-Kila-Kila listened with lively interest, then he said, very decisively, with great bravado, "It was _I_ who made the big wave wash your sister overboard. I sent it to your ship. I wanted a Korong just now in Boupari. It was _I_ who brought you."
"You are mistaken," Felix said, simply, not thinking it worth while to contradict him further. "It was a purely natural accident."
"Well, tell me," the savage god went on once more, eying him close and sharp, "they say you have brought fresh fire from the sun with you, and that you know how to make it burst out like lightning at will. My people have seen it. They tell me the wonder. I wish to see it too. We are all gods here; we need have no secrets. Only, I didn't want to let those common people outside see I asked you to show me. Make fire leap forth. I desire to behold it."
Felix took out the match-box from his pocket, and struck a vesta carefully. Tu-Kila-Kila looked on with profound interest. "It is wonderful," he said, taking the vesta in his own hand as it burned, and examining it closely. "I have heard of this before, but I have never seen it. You are indeed gods, you white men, you sailors of the sea." He glanced at Muriel. "And the woman, too," he said, with a horrible leer, "the woman is pretty."
Felix took the measure of his man at once. He opened his knife, and held it up threateningly. "See here, fellow," he said, in a low, slow tone, but with great decision, "if you dare to speak or look like that at that lady--god or no god, I'll drive this knife straight up to the handle in your heart, though your people kill me for it afterward ten thousand times over. I am not afraid of you. These savages may be afraid, and may think you are a god; but if you are, then I am a god ten thousand times stronger than you. One more word--one more look like that, I say--and I plunge this knife remorselessly into you."
Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and smiled benignly. Stalwart ruffian as he was, and absolute master of his own people's lives, he was yet afraid in a way of the strange new-comer. Vague stories of the men with white faces--the "sailing gods"--had reached him from time to time; and though only twice within his memory had European boats landed on his island, he yet knew enough of the race to know that they were at least very powerful deities--more powerful with their weapons than even he was. Besides, a man who could draw down fire from heaven with a piece of wax and a little metal box might surely wither him to ashes, if he would, as he stood before him. The very fact that Felix bearded him thus openly to his face astonished and somewhat terrified the superstitious savage. Everybody else on the island was afraid of him; then certainly a man who was not afraid must be the possessor of some most efficacious and magical medicine. His one fear now was lest his followers should hear and discover his discomfiture. He peered about him cautiously, with that careful gleam shining bright in his eye; then he said with a leer, in a very low voice, "We two need not quarrel. We are both of us gods. Neither of us is the stronger. We are equal, that's all. Let us live like brothers, not like enemies, on the island."
"I don't want to be your brother," Felix answered, unable to conceal his loathing any more. "I hate and detest you."
"What does he say?" Muriel asked, in an agony of fear at the savage's black looks. "Is he going to kill us?"
"No," Felix answered, boldly. "I think he's afraid of us. He's going to do nothing. You needn't fear him."
"Can she not speak?" the savage asked, pointing with his finger somewhat rudely toward Muriel. "Has she no voice but this, the chatter of birds? Does she not know the human language?"
"She can speak," Felix replied, placing himself like a shield between Muriel and the astonished savage. "She can speak the language of the people of our distant country--a beautiful language which is as far superior to the speech of the brown men of Polynesia as the sun in the heavens is superior to the light of a candlenut. But she can't speak the wretched tongue of you Boupari cannibals. I thank Heaven she can't, for it saves her from understanding the hateful things your people would say of her. Now go! I have seen already enough of you. I am not afraid. Remember, I am as powerful a god as you. I need not fear. You cannot hurt me."
A baleful light gleamed in the cannibal's eye. But he thought it best to temporize. Powerful as he was on his island, there was one thing yet more powerful by far than he; and that was Taboo--the custom and superstition handed down from his ancestors, These strangers were Korong; he dare not touch them, except in the way and manner and time appointed by custom. If he did, god as he was, his people themselves would turn and rend him. He was a god, but he was bound on every side by the strictest taboos. He dare not himself offer violence to Felix.
So he turned with a smile and bided his time. He knew it would come. He could afford to laugh. Then, going to the door, he said, with his grand affable manner to his chiefs around, "I have spoken with the gods, my ministers, within. They have kissed my hands. My rain has fallen. All is well in the land. Arise, let us go away hence to my temple."
The savages put themselves in marching order at once. "It is the voice of a god," they said, reverently. "Let us take back Tu-Kila-Kila to his temple home. Let us escort the lord of the divine umbrella. Wherever he is, there trees and plants put forth green leaves and flourish. At his bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise up in fountains. His presence diffuses heavenly blessings."
"I think," Felix said, turning to poor, terrified Muriel, "I've sent the wretch away with a bee in his bonnet."
|
{
"id": "13876"
}
|
8
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THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI.
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Human nature cannot always keep on the full stretch of excitement. It was wonderful to both Felix and Muriel how soon they settled down into a quiet routine of life on the island of Boupari. A week passed away--two weeks--three weeks--and the chances of release seemed to grow slenderer and slenderer. All they could do now was to wait for the stray accident of a passing ship, and then try, if possible, to signal it, or to put out to it in a canoe, if the natives would allow them.
Meanwhile, their lives for the moment seemed fairly safe. Though for the first few days they lived in constant alarm, this feeling, after a time, gave way to one of comparative security. The strange institution of Taboo protected them more efficiently in their wattled huts than the whole police force of London could have done in a Belgravian mansion. There thieves break through and steal, in spite of bolts and bars and metropolitan constables; but at Boupari no native, however daring or however wicked, would ever venture to transgress the narrow line of white coral sand which protected the castaways like an intangible wall from all outer interference. Within this impalpable ring-fence they were absolutely safe from all rude intrusion, save that of the two Shadows, who waited upon them, day and night, with unfailing willingness.
In other respects, considering the circumstances, their life was an easy one. The natives brought them freely of their simple store--yam, taro, bread-fruit, and cocoanut, with plenty of fish, crabs, and lobsters, as well as eggs by the basketful, and even sometimes chickens. They required no pay beyond a nod and a smile, and went away happy at those slender recognitions. Felix discovered, in fact, that they had got into a region where the arid generalizations of political economy do not apply; where Adam Smith is unread, and Mill neglected; where the medium of exchange is an unknown quantity, and where supply and demand readjust themselves continuously by simpler and more generous principles than the familiar European one of "the higgling of the market."
The people, too, though utter savages, were not in their own way altogether unpleasing. It was their customs and superstitions, rather than themselves, that were so cruel and horrible. Personally, they seemed for the most part simple-minded and good natured creatures. At first, indeed, Muriel was afraid to venture for a step beyond the precincts of their own huts; and it was long before she could make up her mind to go alone through the jungle paths with Mali, unaccompanied by Felix. But by degrees she learned that she could walk by herself (of course, with the inevitable Shadow ever by her side) over the whole island, and meet everywhere with nothing from men, women, and children but the utmost respect and gracious courtesy. The young lads, as she passed, would stand aside from the path, with downcast eyes, and let her go by with all the politeness of chivalrous English gentlemen. The old men would raise their eyes, but cross their hands on their breasts, and stand motionless for a few minutes till she got almost out of sight. The women would bring their pretty brown babies for the fair English lady to admire or to pat on the head; and when Muriel now and again stooped down to caress some fat little naked child, lolling in the dust outside the hut, with true tropical laziness, the mothers would run up at the sight with delight and joy, and throw themselves down in ecstacies of gratitude for the notice she had taken of their favored little ones. "The gods of Heaven," they would say, with every sign of pleasure, "have looked graciously upon our Unaloa."
At first Felix and Muriel were mainly struck with the politeness and deference which the natives displayed toward them. But after a time Felix at least began to observe, behind it all, that a certain amount of affection, and even of something like commiseration as well, seemed to be mingled with the respect and reverence showered upon them by their hosts. The women, especially, were often evidently touched by Muriel's innocence and beauty. As she walked past their huts with her light, girlish tread, they would come forth shyly, bowing many times as they approached, and offer her a long spray of the flowering hibiscus, or a pretty garland of crimson ti-leaves, saying at the same time, many times over, in their own tongue, "Receive it, Korong; receive it, Queen of the Clouds! You are good. You are kind. You are a daughter of the Sun. We are glad you have come to us."
A young girl soon makes herself at home anywhere; and Muriel, protected alike by her native innocence and by the invisible cloak of Polynesian taboo, quickly learned to understand and to sympathize with these poor dusky mothers. One morning, some weeks after their arrival, she passed down the main street of the village, accompanied by Felix and their two attendants, and reached the _marae_--the open forum or place of public assembly--which stood in its midst; a circular platform, surrounded by bread-fruit trees, under whose broad, cool shade the people were sitting in little groups and talking together. They were dressed in the regular old-time festive costume of Polynesia; for Boupari, being a small and remote island, too insignificant to be visited by European ships, retained still all its aboriginal heathen manners and customs. The sight was, indeed, a curious and picturesque one. The girls, large-limbed, soft-skinned, and with delicately rounded figures, sat on the ground, laughing and talking, with their knees crossed under them; their wrists were encinctured with girdles of dark-red dracæna leaves, their swelling bosoms half concealed, half accentuated by hanging necklets of flowers. Their beautiful brown arms and shoulders were bare throughout; their long, black hair was gracefully twined and knotted with bright scarlet flowers. The men, strong and stalwart, sat behind on short stools or lounged on the buttressed roots of the bread-fruit trees, clad like the women in narrow waist-belts of the long red dracæna leaves, with necklets of sharks' teeth, pendent chain of pearly shells, a warrior's cap on their well-shaped heads, and an armlet of native beans, arranged below the shoulder, around their powerful arms. Altogether, it was a striking and beautiful picture. Muriel, now almost released from her early sense of fear, stood still to look at it.
The men and girls were laughing and chatting merrily together. Most of them were engaged in holding up before them fine mats; and a row of mulberry cloth, spread along on the ground, led to a hut near one side of the _marae_. Toward this the eyes of the spectators were turned. "What is it, Mali?" Muriel whispered, her woman's instinct leading her at once to expect that something special was going on in the way of local festivities.
And Mali answered at once, with many nods and smiles, "All right, Missy Queenie. Him a wedding, a marriage."
The words had hardly escaped her lips when a very pretty young girl, half smothered in flowers, and decked out in beads and fancy shells, emerged slowly from the hut, and took her way with stately tread along the path carpeted with native cloth. She was girt round the waist with rich-colored mats, which formed a long train, like a court dress, trailing on the ground five or six feet behind her.
"That's the bride, I suppose," Muriel whispered, now really interested--for what woman on earth, wherever she may be, can resist the seductive delights of a wedding?
"Yes, her a bride," Mali answered; "and ladies what follow, them her bridesmaids."
At the word, six other girls, similarly dressed, though without the train, and demure as nuns, emerged from the hut in slow order, two and two, behind her.
Muriel and Felix moved forward with natural curiosity toward the scene. The natives, now ranged in a row along the path, with mats turned inward, made way for them gladly. All seem pleased that Heaven should thus auspiciously honor the occasion; and the bride herself, as well as the bridegroom, who, decked in shells and teeth, advanced from the opposite side along the path to meet her, looked up with grateful smiles at the two Europeans. Muriel, in return, smiled her most gracious and girlish recognition. As the bride drew near, she couldn't refrain from bending forward a little to look at the girl's really graceful costume. As she did so, the skirt of her own European dress brushed for a second against the bride's train, trailed carelessly many yards on the ground behind her.
Almost before they could know what had happened, a wild commotion arose, as if by magic, in the crowd around them. Loud cries of "Taboo! Taboo!" mixed with inarticulate screams, burst on every side from the assembled natives. In the twinkling of an eye they were surrounded by an angry, threatening throng, who didn't dare to draw near, but, standing a yard or two off, drew stone knives freely and shook their fists, scowling, in the strangers' faces. The change was appalling in its electric suddenness. Muriel drew back horrified, in an agony of alarm. "Oh, what have I done!" she cried, piteously, clinging to Felix for support. "Why on earth are they angry with us?"
"I don't know," Felix answered, taken aback himself. "I can't say exactly in what you've transgressed. But you must, unconsciously, in some way have offended their prejudices. I hope it's not much. At any rate they're clearly afraid to touch us."
"Missy Queenie break taboo," Mali explained at once, with Polynesian frankness. "That make people angry. So him want to kill you. Missy Queenie touch bride with end of her dress. Korong may smile on bride--that very good luck; but Korong taboo; no must touch him."
The crowd gathered around them, still very threatening in attitude, yet clearly afraid to approach within arm's-length of the strangers. Muriel was much frightened at their noise and at their frantic gestures. "Come away," she cried, catching Felix by the arm once more. "Oh, what are they going to do to us? Will they kill us for this? I'm so horribly afraid! Oh, why did I ever do it!"
The poor little bride, meanwhile, left alone on the carpet, and unnoticed by everybody, sank suddenly down on the mats where she stood, buried her face in her hands, and began to sob as if her heart would break. Evidently, something very untoward of some sort had happened to the dusky lady on her wedding morning.
The final touch was too much for poor Muriel's overwrought nerves. She, too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the native stools hard by, burst into tears herself with half-hysterical violence.
Instantly, as she did so, the whole assembly seemed to change its mind again as if by contagious magic. A loud shout of "She cries; the Queen of the Clouds cries!" went up from all the assembled mob to heaven. "It is a good omen," Toko, the Shadow, whispered in Polynesian to Felix, seeing his puzzled look. "We shall have plenty of rain now; the clouds will break; our crops will flourish." Almost before she understood it, Muriel was surrounded by an eager and friendly crowd, still afraid to draw near, but evidently anxious to see and to comfort and console her. Many of the women eagerly held forward their native mats, which Mali took from them, and, pressing them for a second against Muriel's eyes, handed them back with just a suspicion of wet tears left glistening in the corner. The happy recipients leaped and shouted with joy. "No more drought!" they cried merrily, with loud shouts and gesticulations. "The Queen of the Clouds is good: she will weep well from heaven upon my yam and taro plots!"
Muriel looked up, all dazed, and saw, to her intense surprise, the crowd was now nothing but affection and sympathy. Slowly they gathered in closer and closer, till they almost touched the hem of her robe; then the men stood by respectfully, laying their fingers on whatever she had wetted with her tears, while the women and girls took her hand in theirs and pressed it sympathetically. Mali explained their meaning with ready interpretation. "No cry too much, them say," she observed, nodding her head sagely. "Not good for Missy Queenie to cry too much. Them say, kind lady, be comforted."
There was genuine good-nature in the way they consoled her; and Felix was touched by the tenderness of those savage hearts; but the additional explanation, given him in Polynesian by his own Shadow, tended somewhat to detract from the disinterestedness of their sympathy. "They say, 'It is good for the Queen of the Clouds to weep,'" Toko said, with frank bluntness; "'but not too much--for fear the rain should wash away all our yam and taro plants.'"
By this time the little bride had roused herself from her stupor, and, smiling away as if nothing had happened, said a few words in a very low voice to Felix's Shadow. The Shadow turned most respectfully to his master, and, touching his sleeve-link, which was of bright gold, said, in a very doubtful voice, "She asks you, oh king, will you allow her, just for to-day, to wear this ornament?"
Felix unbuttoned the shining bauble at once, and was about to hand it to the bride with polite gallantry. "She may wear it forever, for the matter of that, if she likes," he said, good-humoredly. "I make her a present of it."
But the bride drew back as before in speechless terror, as he held out his hand, and seemed just on the point of bursting out into tears again at this untoward incident. The Shadow intervened with fortunate perception of the cause of the misunderstanding. "Korong must not touch or give anything to a bride," he said, quietly; "not with his own hand. He must not lay his finger on her; that would be unlucky. But he may hand it by his Shadow." Then he turned to his fellow-tribesmen. "These gods," he said, in an explanatory voice, like one bespeaking forgiveness, "though they are divine, and Korong, and very powerful--see, they have come from the sun, and they are but strangers in Boupari--they do not yet know the ways of our island. They have not eaten of human flesh. They do not understand Taboo. But they will soon be wiser. They mean very well, but they do not know. Behold, he gives her this divine shining ornament from the sun as a present!" And, taking it in his hand, he held it up for a moment to public admiration. Then he passed on the trinket ostentatiously to the bride, who, smiling and delighted, hung it low on her breast among her other decorations.
The whole party seemed so surprised and gratified at this proof of condescension on the part of the divine stranger that they crowded round Felix once more, praising and thanking him volubly. Muriel, anxious to remove the bad impression she had created by touching the bride's dress, hastily withdrew her own little brooch and offered it in turn to the Shadow as an additional present. But Toko, shaking his head vigorously, pointed with his forefinger many times to Mali. "Toko say him no can take it," Mali explained hastily, in her broken English. "Him no your Shadow; me your Shadow; me do everything for you; me give it to the lady." And, taking the brooch in her hand, she passed it over in turn amid loud cries of delight and shouts of approval.
Thereupon, the ceremony began all over again. They seemed by their intervention to have interrupted some set formula. At its close the women crowded around Muriel and took her hand in theirs, kissing it many times over, with tears in their eyes, and betraying an immense amount of genuine feeling. One phrase in Polynesian they repeated again and again; a phrase that made Felix's cheek turn white, as he leaned over the poor English girl with a profound emotion.
"What does it mean that they say?" Muriel asked at last, perceiving it was all one phrase, many times repeated.
Felix was about to give some evasive explanation, when Mali interposed with her simple, unthinking translation. "Them say, Missy Queenie very good and kind. Make them sad to think. Make them cry to see her. Make them cry to see Missy Queenie Korong. Too good. Too pretty."
"Why so?" Muriel exclaimed, drawing back with some faint presentiment of unspeakable horror.
Felix tried to stop her; but the girl would not be stopped. "Because, when Korong time up," she answered, blurting it out, "Korong must--" Felix clapped his hand to her mouth in wild haste, and silenced her. He knew the worst now. He had divined the truth. But Muriel, at least, must be spared that knowledge.
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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9
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SOWING THE WIND.
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Vaguely and indefinitely one terrible truth had been forced by slow degrees upon Felix's mind; whatever else Korong meant, it implied at least some fearful doom in store, sooner or later, for the persons who bore it. How awful that doom might be, he could hardly imagine; but he must devote himself henceforth to the task of discovering what its nature was, and, if possible, of averting it.
Yet how to reconcile this impending terror with the other obvious facts of the situation? the fact that they were considered divine beings and treated like gods; and the fact that the whole population seemed really to regard them with a devotion and kindliness closely bordering on religious reverence? If Korongs were gods, why should the people want to kill them? If they meant to kill them, why pay them meanwhile such respect and affection?
One point at least was now, however, quite clear to Felix. While the natives, especially the women, displayed toward both of them in their personal aspect a sort of regretful sympathy, he could not help noticing at the same time that the men, at any rate, regarded them also largely in an impersonal light, as a sort of generalized abstraction of the powers of nature--an embodied form of the rain and the weather. The islanders were anxious to keep their white guests well supplied, well fed, and in perfect health, not so much for the strangers' sakes as for their own advantage; they evidently considered that if anything went wrong with either of their two new gods, corresponding misfortunes might happen to their crops and the produce of their bread-fruit groves. Some mysterious sympathy was held to subsist between the persons of the castaways and the state of the weather. The natives effusively thanked them after welcome rain, and looked askance at them, scowling, after long dry spells. It was for this, no doubt, that they took such pains to provide them with attentive Shadows, and to gird round their movements with taboos of excessive stringency. Nothing that the new-comers said or did was indifferent, it seemed, to the welfare of the community; plenty and prosperity depended upon the passing state of Muriel's health, and famine or drought might be brought about at any moment by the slightest imprudence in Felix's diet.
How stringent these taboos really were Felix learned by slow degrees alone to realize. From the very beginning he had observed, to be sure, that they might only eat and drink the food provided for them; that they were supplied with a clean and fresh-built hut, as well as with brand-new cocoanut cups, spoons, and platters; that no litter of any sort was allowed to accumulate near their enclosure; and that their Shadows never left them, or went out of their sight, by day or by night, for a single moment. Now, however, he began to perceive also that the Shadows were there for that very purpose, to watch over them, as it were, like guards, on behalf of the community; to see that they ate or drank no tabooed object; to keep them from heedlessly transgressing any unwritten law of the creed of Boupari; and to be answerable for their good behavior generally. They were partly servants, it was true, and partly sureties; but they were partly also keepers, and keepers who kept a close and constant watch upon the persons of their prisoners. Once or twice Felix, growing tired for the moment of this continual surveillance, had tried to give Toko the slip, and to stroll away from his hut, unattended, for a walk through the island, in the early morning, before his Shadow had waked; but on each such occasion he found to his surprise that, as he opened the hut door, the Shadow rose at once and confronted him angrily, with an inquiring eye; and in time he perceived that a thin string was fastened to the bottom of the door, the other end of which was tied to the Shadow's ankle; and this string could not be cut without letting fall a sort of latch or bar which closed the door outside, only to be raised again by some external person.
Clearly, it was intended that the Korong should have no chance of escape without the knowledge of the Shadow, who, as Felix afterward learned, would have paid with his own body by a cruel death for the Korong's disappearance.
He might as well have tried to escape his own shadow as to escape the one the islanders had tacked on to him.
All Felix's energies were now devoted to the arduous task of discovering what Korong really meant, and what possibility he might have of saving Muriel from the mysterious fate that seemed to be held in store for them.
One evening, about six weeks after their arrival in the island, the young Englishman was strolling by himself (after the sun sank low in heaven) along a pretty tangled hill-side path, overhung with lianas and rope-like tropical creepers, while his faithful Shadow lingered a step or two behind, keeping a sharp lookout meanwhile on all his movements.
Near the top of a little crag of volcanic rock, in the center of the hills, he came suddenly upon a hut with a cleared space around it, somewhat neater in appearance than any of the native cottages he had yet seen, and surrounded by a broad white belt of coral sand, exactly like that which ringed round and protected their own enclosure. But what specially attracted Felix's attention was the fact that the space outside this circle had been cleared into a regular flower-garden, quite European in the definiteness and orderliness of its quaint arrangement.
"Why, who lives here?" Felix asked in Polynesian, turning round in surprise to his respectful Shadow.
The Shadow waved his hand vaguely in an expansive way toward the sky, as he answered, with a certain air of awe, often observable in his speech when taboos were in question, "The King of Birds. A very great god. He speaks the bird language."
"Who is he?" Felix inquired, taken aback, wondering vaguely to himself whether here, perchance, he might have lighted upon some stray and shipwrecked compatriot.
"He comes from the sun like yourselves," the Shadow answered, all deference, but with obvious reserve. "He is a very great god. I may not speak much of him. But he is not Korong. He is greater than that, and less. He is Tula, the same as Tu-Kila-Kila."
"Is he as powerful as Tu-Kila-Kila?" Felix asked, with intense interest.
"Oh, no, he's not nearly so powerful as that," the Shadow answered, half terrified at the bare suggestion. "No god in heaven or earth is like Tu-Kila-Kila. This one is only king of the birds, which is a little province, while Tu-Kila-Kila is king of heaven and earth, of plants and animals, of gods and men, of all things created. At his nod the sky shakes and the rocks tremble. But still, this god is Tula, like Tu-Kila-Kila. He is not for a year. He goes on forever, till some other supplants him."
"You say he comes from the sun," Felix put in, devoured with curiosity. "And he speaks the bird language? What do you mean by that? Does he speak like the Queen of the Clouds and myself when we talk together?"
"Oh, dear, no," the Shadow answered, in a very confident tone. "He doesn't speak the least bit in the world like that. He speaks shriller and higher, and still more bird-like. It is chatter, chatter, chatter, like the parrots in a tree; tirra, tirra, tirra; tarra, tarra, tarra; la, la, la; lo, lo, lo; lu, lu, lu; li la. And he sings to himself all the time. He sings this way--" And then the Shadow, with that wonderful power of accurate mimicry which is so strong in all natural human beings, began to trill out at once, with a very good Parisian accent, a few lines from a well-known song in "La Fille de Madame Angot:" "Quand on conspi-re, Quand sans frayeur On pent se di-re Conspirateur, Pour tout le mon-de Il faut avoir Perruque blon-de Et collet noir-- Perruque blon-de Et collet noir."
"That's how the King of the Birds sings," the Shadow said, as he finished, throwing back his head, and laughing with all his might at his own imitation. "So funny, isn't it? It's exactly like the song of the pink-crested parrot."
"Why, Toko, it's French," Felix exclaimed, using the Fijian word for a Frenchman, which the Shadow, of course, on his remote island, had never before heard. "How on earth did he come here?"
"I can't tell you," Toko answered, waving his arms seaward. "He came from the sun, like yourselves. But not in a sun-boat. It had no fire. He came in a canoe, all by himself. And Mali says"--here the Shadow lowered his voice to a most mysterious whisper--"he's a man-a-oui-oui."
Felix quivered with excitement. "Man-a-oui-oui" is the universal name over semi-civilized Polynesia for a Frenchman. Felix seized upon it with avidity. "A man-a-oui-oui!" he cried, delighted. "How strange! How wonderful! I must go in at once to his hut and see him!"
He had lifted his foot and was just going to cross the white line of coral-sand, when his Shadow, catching him suddenly and stoutly round the waist, pulled him back from the enclosure with every sign of horror, alarm, and astonishment. "No, you can't go," he cried, grappling with him with all his force, yet using him very tenderly for all that, as becomes a god. "Taboo! Taboo there!"
"But I am a god myself," Felix cried, insisting upon his privileges. If you have to submit to the disadvantages of taboo, you may as well claim its advantages as well. "The King of Fire and the King of Water crossed my taboo line. Why shouldn't I cross equally the King of the Birds', then?"
"So you might--as a rule," the Shadow answered with promptitude. "You are both gods. Your taboos do not cross. You may visit each other. You may transgress one another's lines without danger of falling dead on the ground as common men would do if they broke taboo-lines. But this is the Month of Birds. The king is in retreat. No man may see him except his own Shadow, the Little Cockatoo, who brings him his food and drink. Do you see that hawk's head, stuck upon the post by the door at the side. That is his Special Taboo. He keeps it for this month. Even gods must respect that sign, for a reason which it would be very bad medicine to mention. While the Month of Birds lasts, no man may look upon the king or hear him. If they did, they would die, and the carrion birds would eat them. Come away. This is dangerous."
Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth when from the recesses of the hut a rollicking French voice was heard, trilling out merrily: "Quand on con-spi-re, Quand, sans frayeur--" Without waiting for more, the Shadow seized Felix's arm in an agony of terror. "Come away!" he cried, hurriedly, "come away! What will become of us? This is horrible, horrible! We have broken taboo. We have heard the god's voice. The sky will fall on us. If his Shadow were to find it out and tell my people, my people would tear us limb from limb. Quick, quick! Hide away! Let us run fast through the forest before any man discover it."
The Shadow's voice rang deep with alarm. Felix felt he dare not trifle with this superstition. Profound as was his curiosity about the mysterious Frenchman, he was compelled to bottle up his eagerness and anxiety for the moment, and patiently wait till the Month of Birds had run its course, and taken its inconvenient taboo along with it. These limitations were terrible. Yet he counted much upon the information the Frenchman could give him. The man had been some time on the island, it was clear, and doubtless he understood its ways thoroughly; he might cast some light at last upon the Korong mystery.
So he went back through the woods with a heart somewhat lighter.
Not far from their own huts he met Muriel and Mali.
As they walked home together, Felix told his companion in a very few words the strange discovery about the Frenchman, and the impenetrable taboo by which he was at present surrounded. Muriel drew a deep sigh. "Oh, Felix," she said--for they were naturally by this time very much at home with one another, "did you ever know anything so dreadful as the mystery of these taboos? It seems as if we should never get really to the bottom of them. Mali's always springing some new one upon me. I don't believe we shall ever be able to leave the island--we're so hedged round with taboos. Even if we were to see a ship to-day, I don't believe they'd allow us to signal it."
There was a red sunset; a lurid, tropical, red-and-green sunset. It boded mischief.
They were passing by some huts at the moment, and over the stockade of one of them a tree was hanging with small yellow fruits, which Felix knew well in Fiji as wholesome and agreeable. He broke off a small branch as he passed; and offered a couple thoughtlessly to Muriel. She took them in her fingers, and tasted them gingerly. "They're not so bad," she said, taking another from the bough. "They're very much like gooseberries."
At the same moment, Felix popped one into his own mouth, and swallowed it without thinking.
Almost before they knew what had happened, with the same extraordinary rapidity as in the case of the wedding, the people in the cottages ran out, with every sign of fear and apprehension, and, seizing the branch from Felix's hands, began upbraiding the two Shadows for their want of attention.
"We couldn't help it," Toko exclaimed, with every appearance of guilt and horror on his face. "They were much too sharp for us. Their hearts are black. How could we two interfere? These gods are so quick! They had picked and eaten them before we ever saw them."
One of the men raised his hand with a threatening air--but against the Shadow, not against the sacred person of Felix. "He will be ill," he said, angrily, pointing toward the white man; "and she will, too. Their hearts are indeed black. They have sown the seed of the wind. They have both of them eaten of it. They will both be ill. You deserve to die! And what will come now to our trees and plantations?"
The crowd gathered round them, cursing low and horribly. The two terrified Europeans slunk off to their huts, unaware of their exact crime, and closely followed by a scowling but despondent mob of natives. As they crossed their sacred boundary, Muriel cried, with a sudden outburst of tears, "Oh, Felix, what on earth shall we ever do to get rid of this terrible, unendurable godship!"
The natives without set up a great shout of horror. "See, see! she cries!" they exclaimed, in indescribable panic. "She has eaten the storm-fruit, and already she cries! Oh, clouds, restrain yourselves! Oh, great queen, mercy! Whatever will become of us and our poor huts and gardens!"
And for hours they crouched around, beating their breasts and shrieking.
That evening, Muriel sat up late in Felix's hut, with Mali by her side, too frightened to go back into her own alone before those angry people. And all the time, just beyond the barrier line, they could hear, above the whistle of the wind around the hut, the droning voices of dozens of natives, cowering low on the ground; they seemed to be going through some litany or chant, as if to deprecate the result of this imprudent action.
"What are they doing outside?" Felix asked of his Shadow at last, after a peculiarly long wail of misery.
And the Shadow made answer, in very solemn tones, "They are trying to propitiate your mightiness, and to avert the omen, lest the rain should fall, and the wind should blow, and the storm-cloud should burst over the island to destroy them."
Then Felix remembered suddenly of himself that the season when this storm-fruit, or storm-apple, as they called it, was ripe in Fiji, was also the season when the great Pacific cyclones most often swept over the land in full fury--storms unexampled on any other sea, like that famous one which wrecked so many European men-of-war a few years since in the harbor of Samoa.
And without, the wail came louder and clearer still! "If you sow the bread-fruit seed, you will reap the breadfruit. If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind. They have eaten the storm-fruit. Oh, great king, save us!"
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{
"id": "13876"
}
|
10
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REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.
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Toward midnight Muriel began to doze lightly from pure fatigue.
"Put a pillow under her head, and let her sleep," Felix said in a whisper. "Poor child, it would be cruel to send her alone to-night into her own quarters."
And Mali slipped a pillow of mulberry paper under her mistress's head, and laid it on her own lap, and bent down to watch her.
But outside, beyond the line, the natives murmured loud their discontent. "The Queen of the Clouds stays in the King of the Rain's hut to-night," they muttered, angrily. "She will not listen to us. Before morning, be sure, the Tempest will be born of their meeting to destroy us."
About two o'clock there came a lull in the wind, which had been rising steadily ever since that lurid sunset. Felix looked out of the hut door. The moon was full. It was almost as clear as day with the bright tropical moonlight, silvery in the open, pale green in the shadow. The people were still squatting in great rings round the hut, just outside the taboo line, and beating gongs, and sticks and human bones, to keep time to the lilt of their lugubrious litany.
The air felt unusually heavy and oppressive. Felix raised his eyes to the sky, and saw whisps of light cloud drifting in rapid flight over the scudding moon. Below, an ominous fog bank gathered steadily westward. Then one clap of thunder rent the sky. After it came a deadly silence. The moon was veiled. All was dark as pitch. The natives themselves fell on their faces and prayed with mute lips. Three minutes later, the cyclone had burst upon them in all its frenzy.
Such a hurricane Felix had never before experienced. Its energy was awful. Round the palm-trees the wind played a frantic and capricious devil's dance. It pirouetted about the atoll in the mad glee of unconsciousness. Here and there it cleared lanes, hundreds of yards in length, among the forest-trees and the cocoanut plantations. The noise of snapping and falling trunks rang thick on the air. At times the cyclone would swoop down from above upon the swaying stem of some tall and stately palm that bent like grass before the wind, break it off short with a roar at the bottom, and lay it low at once upon the ground, with a crash like thunder. In other places, little playful whirlwinds seemed to descend from the sky in the very midst of the dense brushwood, where they cleared circular patches, strewn thick under foot with trunks and branches in their titanic sport, and yet left unhurt all about the surrounding forest. Then again a special cyclone of gigantic proportions would advance, as it were, in a single column against one stem of a clump, whirl round it spirally like a lightning flash, and, deserting it for another, leave it still standing, but turned and twisted like a screw by the irresistible force of its invisible fingers. The storm-god, said Toko, was dancing with the palm-trees. The sight was awful. Such destructive energy Felix had never even imagined before. No wonder the savages all round beheld in it the personal wrath of some mighty spirit.
For in spite of the black clouds they could _see_ it all--both the Europeans and the islanders. The intense darkness of the night was lighted up for them every minute by an almost incessant blaze of sheet and forked lightning. The roar of the thunder mingled with the roar of the tempest, each in turn overtopping and drowning the other. The hut where Felix and Muriel sheltered themselves shook before the storm; the very ground of the island trembled and quivered--like the timbers of a great ship before a mighty sea--at each onset of the breakers upon the surrounding fringe-reef. And side by side with it all, to crown their misery, wild torrents of rain, descending in waterspouts, as it seemed, or dashed in great sheets against the roof of their frail tenement, poured fitfully on with fierce tropical energy.
In the midst of the hut Muriel crouched and prayed with bloodless lips to Heaven. This was too, too terrible. It seemed incredible to her that on top of all they had been called upon to suffer of fear and suspense at the hands of the savages, the very dumb forces of nature themselves should thus be stirred up to open war against them. Her faith in Providence was sorely tried. Dumb forces, indeed! Why, they roared with more terrible voices than any wild beast on earth could possibly compass. The thunder and the wind were howling each other down in emulous din, and the very hiss of the lightning could be distinctly heard, like some huge snake, at times above the creaking and snapping of the trees before the gale in the surrounding forest.
Muriel crouched there long, in the mute misery of utter despair. At her feet Mali crouched too, as frightened as herself, but muttering aloud from time to time, in a reproachful voice, "I tell Missy Queenie what going to happen. I warn her not. I tell her she must not eat that very bad storm-apple. But Missy Queenie no listen. Her take her own way, then storm come down upon us."
And Felix's Shadow, in his own tongue, exclaimed more than once in the self-same tone, half terror, half expostulation, "See now what comes from breaking taboo? You eat the storm-fruit. The storm-fruit suits ill with the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. The heavens have broken loose. The sea has boiled. See what wind and what flood you are bringing upon us."
By and by, above even the fierce roar of the mingled thunder and cyclone, a wild orgy of noise burst upon them all from without the hut. It was a sound as of numberless drums and tom-toms, all beaten in unison with the mad energy of fear; a hideous sound, suggestive of some hateful heathen devil-worship. Muriel clapped her hands to her ears in horror. "Oh, what's that?" she cried to Felix, at this new addition to their endless alarms. "Are the savages out there rising in a body? Have they come to murder us?"
"Perhaps," Felix said, smoothing her hair with his hand, as a mother might soothe her terrified child, "perhaps they're angry with us for having caused this storm, as they think, by our foolish action. I believe they all set it down to our having unluckily eaten that unfortunate fruit. I'll go out to the door myself and speak to them."
Muriel clung to his arm with a passionate clinging.
"Oh, Felix," she cried, "no! Don't leave me here alone. My darling, I love you. You're all the world there is left to me now, Felix. Don't go out to those wretches and leave me here alone. They'll murder you! they'll murder you! Don't go out, I implore you. If they mean to kill us, let them kill us both together, in one another's arms. Oh, Felix, I am yours, and you are mine, my darling!"
It was the first time either of them had acknowledged the fact; but there, before the face of that awful convulsion of nature, all the little deceptions and veils of life seemed rent asunder forever as by a flash of lightning. They stood face to face with each other's souls, and forgot all else in the agony of the moment. Felix clasped the trembling girl in his arms like a lover. The two Shadows looked on and shook with silent terror. If the King of the Rain thus embraced the Queen of the Clouds before their very eyes, amid so awful a storm, what unspeakable effects might not follow at once from it! But they had too much respect for those supernatural creatures to attempt to interfere with their action at such a moment. They accepted their masters almost as passively as they accepted the wind and the thunder, which they believed to arise from them.
Felix laid his poor Muriel tenderly down on the mud floor again. "I _must_ go out, my child," he said. "For the very love of _you_, I must play the man, and find out what these savages mean by their drumming."
He crept to the door of the hut (for no man could walk upright before that awful storm), and peered out into the darkness once more, awaiting one of the frequent flashes of lightning. He had not long to wait. In a moment the sky was all ablaze again from end to end, and continued so for many seconds consecutively. By the light of the continuous zigzags of fire, Felix could see for himself that hundreds and hundreds of natives--men, women, and children, naked, or nearly so, with their hair loose and wet about their cheeks--lay flat on their faces, many courses deep, just outside the taboo line. The wind swept over them with extraordinary force, and the tropical rain descended in great floods upon their bare backs and shoulders. But the savages, as if entranced, seemed to take no heed of all these earthly things. They lay grovelling in the mud before some unseen power; and beating their tom-toms in unison, with barbaric concord, they cried aloud once more as Felix appeared, in a weird litany that overtopped the tumultuous noise of the tempest, "Oh, Storm-God, hear us! Oh, great spirit, deliver us! King of the Rain and Queen of the Clouds, befriend us! Be angry no more! Hide your wrath from your people! Take away your hurricane, and we will bring you many gifts. Eat no longer of the storm-apple--the seed of the wind--and we will feed you with yam and turtle, and much choice bread-fruit. Great king, we are yours; you shall choose which you will of our children for your meat and drink; you shall sup on our blood. But take your storm away; do not utterly drown and submerge our island!"
As they spoke they crawled nearer and nearer, with gliding serpentine motion, till their heads almost touched the white line of coral. But not a man of them all went one inch beyond it. They stopped there and gazed at him. Felix signed to them with his hand, and pointed vaguely to the sky, as much as to say _he_ was not responsible. At the gesture the whole assembly burst into one loud shout of gratitude. "He has heard us, he has heard us!" they exclaimed, with a perfect wail of joy. "He will not utterly destroy us. He will take away his storm. He will bring the sun and the moon back to us."
Felix returned into the hut, somewhat reassured so far as the attitude of the savages went. "Don't be afraid of them, Muriel," he cried, taking her passionately once more in a tender embrace. "They daren't cross the taboo. They won't come near; they're too frightened themselves to dream of hurting us."
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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11
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AFTER THE STORM.
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Next morning the day broke bright and calm, as if the tempest had been but an evil dream of the night, now past forever. The birds sang loud; the lizards came forth from their holes in the wall, and basked, green and gold, in the warm, dry sunshine. But though the sky overhead was blue and the air clear, as usually happen after these alarming tropical cyclones and rainstorms, the memorials of the great wind that had raged all night long among the forests of the island were neither few nor far between. Everywhere the ground was strewn with leaves and branches and huge stems of cocoa-palms. All nature was draggled. Many of the trees were stripped clean of their foliage, as completely as oaks in an English winter; on others, big strands of twisted fibres marked the scars and joints where mighty boughs had been torn away by main force; while, elsewhere, bare stumps alone remained to mark the former presence of some noble dracæna or some gigantic banyan. Bread-fruits and cocoanuts lay tossed in the wildest confusion on the ground; the banana and plantain-patches were beaten level with the soil or buried deep in the mud; many of the huts had given way entirely; abundant wreckage strewed every corner of the island. It was an awful sight. Muriel shuddered to herself to see how much the two that night had passed through.
What the outer fringing reef had suffered from the storm they hardly knew as yet; but from the door of the hut Felix could see for himself how even the calm waters of the inner lagoon had been lashed into wild fury by the fierce swoop of the tempest. Round the entire atoll the solid conglomerate coral floor was scooped under, broken up, chewed fine by the waves, or thrown in vast fragments on the beach of the island. By the eastern shore, in particular, just opposite their hut, Felix observed a regular wall of many feet in height, piled up by the waves like the familiar Chesil Beach near his old home in Dorsetshire. It was the shelter of that temporary barrier alone, no doubt, that had preserved their huts last night from the full fury of the gale, and that had allowed the natives to congregate in such numbers prone on their faces in the mud and rain, upon the unconsecrated ground outside their taboo-line.
But now not an islander was to be seen within ear-shot. All had gone away to look after their ruined huts or their beaten-down plantain-patches, leaving the cruel gods, who, as they thought, had wrought all the mischief out of pure wantonness, to repent at leisure the harm done during the night to their obedient votaries.
Felix was just about to cross the taboo-line and walk down to the shore to examine the barrier, when Toko, his Shadow, laying his hand on his shoulder with more genuine interest and affection than he had ever yet shown, exclaimed, with some horror, "Oh, no! Not that! Don't dare to go outside! It would be very dangerous for you. If my people were to catch you on profane soil just now, there's no saying what harm they might do to you."
"Why so?" Felix exclaimed, in surprise. "Last night, surely, they were all prayers and promises and vows and entreaties."
The young man nodded his head in acquiescence. "Ah, yes; last night," he answered. "That was very well then. Vows were sore needed. The storm was raging, and you were within your taboo. How could they dare to touch you, a mighty god of the tempest, at the very moment when you were rending their banyan-trees and snapping their cocoanut stems with your mighty arms like so many little chicken-bones? Even Tu-Kila-Kila himself, I expect, the very high god, lay frightened in his temple, cowering by his tree, annoyed at your wrath; he sent Fire and Water among the worshippers, no doubt, to offer up vows and to appease your anger."
Then Felix remembered, as his Shadow spoke, that, as a matter of fact, he had observed the men who usually wore the red and white feather cloaks among the motley crowd of grovelling natives who lay flat on their faces in the mud of the cleared space the night before, and prayed hard for mercy. Only they were not wearing their robes of office at the moment, in accordance with a well-known savage custom; they had come naked and in disgrace, as befits all suppliants. They had left behind them the insignia of their rank in their own shaken huts, and bowed down their bare backs to the rain and the lightning.
"Yes, I saw them among the other islanders," Felix answered, half-smiling, but prudently remaining within the taboo-line, as his Shadow advised him.
Toko kept his hand still on his master's shoulder. "Oh, king," he said, beseechingly, and with great solemnity, "I am doing wrong to warn you; I am breaking a very great Taboo. I don't know what harm may come to me for telling you. Perhaps Tu-Kila-Kila will burn me to ashes with one glance of his eyes. He may know this minute what I'm saying here alone to you."
It is hard for a white man to meet scruples like this; but Felix was bold enough to answer outright: "Tu-Kila-Kila knows nothing of the sort, and can never find out. Take my word for it, Toko, nothing that you say to me will ever reach Tu-Kila-Kila."
The Shadow looked at him doubtfully, and trembled as he spoke. "I like you, Korong," he said, with a genuinely truthful ring in his voice. "You seem to me so kind and good--so different from other gods, who are very cruel. You never beat me. Nobody I ever served treated me as well or as kindly as you have done. And for _your_ sake I will even dare to break taboo--if you're quite, quite sure Tu-Kila-Kila will never discover it."
"I'm quite sure," Felix answered, with perfect confidence. "I know it for certain. I swear a great oath to it."
"You swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself?" the young savage asked, anxiously.
"I swear by Tu-Kila-Kila himself," Felix replied at once. "I swear, without doubt. He can never know it."
"That is a great Taboo," the Shadow went on, meditatively, stroking Felix's arm. "A very great Taboo indeed. A terrible medicine. And you are a god; I can trust you. Well, then, you see, the secret is this: you are Korong, but you are a stranger, and you don't understand the ways of Boupari. If for three days after the end of this storm, which Tu-Kila-Kila has sent Fire and Water to pray and vow against, you or the Queen of the Clouds show yourselves outside your own taboo-line--why, then, the people are clear of sin; whoever takes you may rend you alive; they will tear you limb from limb and cut you into pieces."
"Why so?" Felix asked, aghast at this discovery. They seemed to live on a perpetual volcano in this wonderful island; and a volcano ever breaking out in fresh places. They could never get to the bottom of its horrible superstitions.
"Because you ate the storm-apple," the Shadow answered, confidently. "That was very wrong. You brought the tempest upon us yourselves by your own trespass; therefore, by the custom of Boupari, which we learn in the mysteries, you become full Korong for the sacrifice at once. That makes the term for you. The people will give you all your dues; then they will say, 'We are free; we have bought you with a price; we have brought your cocoanuts. No sin attaches to us; we are righteous; we are righteous.' And then they will kill you, and Fire and Water will roast you and boil you."
"But only if we go outside the taboo-line?" Felix asked, anxiously.
"Only if you go outside the taboo-line," the Shadow replied, nodding a hasty assent. "Inside it, till your term comes, even Tu-Kila-Kila himself, the very high god, whose meat we all are, dare never hurt you."
"Till our term comes?" Felix inquired, once more astonished and perplexed. "What do you mean by that, my Shadow?"
But the Shadow was either bound by some superstitious fear, or else incapable of putting himself into Felix's point of view. "Why, till you are full Korong," he answered, like one who speaks of some familiar fact, as who should say, till you are forty years old, or, till your beard grows white. "Of course, by and by, you will be full Korong. I cannot help you then; but, till that time comes, I would like to do my best by you. You have been very kind to me. I tell you much. More than this, it would not be lawful for me to mention."
And that was the most that, by dexterous questioning, Felix could ever manage to get out of his mysterious Shadow.
"At the end of three days we will be safe, though?" he inquired at last, after all other questions failed to produce an answer.
"Oh, yes, at the end of three days the storm will have blown over," the young man answered, easily. "All will then be well. You may venture out once more. The rain will have dried over all the island. Fire and Water will have no more power over you."
Felix went back to the hut to inform Muriel of this new peril thus suddenly sprung upon them. Poor Muriel, now almost worn out with endless terrors, received it calmly. "I'm growing accustomed to it all, Felix," she answered, resignedly. "If only I know that you will keep your promise, and never let me fall alive into these wretches' hands, I shall feel quite safe. Oh, Felix, do you know when you took me in your arms like that last night, in spite of everything, I felt positively happy."
About ten o'clock they were suddenly roused by a sound of many natives, coming in quick succession, single file, to the huts, and shouting aloud, "Oh, King of the Rain, oh, Queen of the Clouds, come forth for our vows! Receive your presents!"
Felix went forth to the door to look. With a warning look in his eyes, his Shadow followed him. The natives were now coming up by dozens at a time, bringing with them, in great arm-loads, fallen cocoanuts and breadfruits, and branches of bananas, and large draggled clusters of half-ripe plantains.
"Why, what are all these?" Felix exclaimed in surprise.
His Shadow looked up at him, as if amused at the absurd simplicity of the question. "These are yours, of course," he said; "yours and the Queen's; they are the windfalls you made. Did you not knock them all off the trees for yourselves when you were coming down in such sheets from the sky last evening?"
Felix wrung his hands in positive despair. It was clear, indeed, that to the minds of the natives there was no distinguishing personally between himself and Muriel, and the rain or the cyclone.
"Will they bring them all in?" he asked, gazing in alarm at the huge pile of fruits the natives were making outside the huts.
"Yes, all," the Shadow answered; "they are vows; they are godsends; but if you like, you can give some of them back. If you give much back, of course it will make my people less angry with you."
Felix advanced near the line, holding his hand up before him to command silence. As he did so, he was absolutely appalled himself at the perfect storm of execration and abuse which his appearance excited. The foremost natives, brandishing their clubs and stone-tipped spears, or shaking their fists by the line, poured forth upon his devoted head at once all the most frightful curses of the Polynesian vocabulary. "Oh, evil god," they cried aloud with angry faces, "oh, wicked spirit! you have a bad heart. See what a wrong you have purposely done us. If your heart were not bad, would you treat us like this? If you are indeed a god, come out across the line, and let us try issues together. Don't skulk like a coward in your hut and within your taboo, but come out and fight us. _We_ are not afraid, who are only men. Why are _you_ afraid of us?"
Felix tried to speak once more, but the din drowned his voice. As he paused, the people set up their loud shouts again. "Oh, you wicked god! You eat the storm-apple! You have wrought us much harm. You have spoiled our harvest. How you came down in great sheets last night! It was pitiful, pitiful! We would like to kill you. You might have taken our bread-fruits and our bananas, if you would; we give you them freely; they are yours; here, take them. We feed you well; we make you many offerings. But why did you wish to have our huts also? Why did you beat down our young plantations and break our canoes against the beach of the island? That shows a bad heart! You are an evil god! You dare not defend yourself. Come out and meet us."
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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12
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A POINT OF THEOLOGY.
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At last, with great difficulty, Felix managed to secure a certain momentary lull of silence. The natives, clustering round the line till they almost touched it, listened with scowling brows, and brandished threatening spears, tipped with points of stone or shark's teeth or turtle-bone, while he made his speech to them. From time to time, one or another interrupted him, coaxing and wheedling him, as it were, to cross the line; but Felix never heeded them. He was beginning to understand now how to treat this strange people. He took no notice of their threats or their entreaties either.
By and by, partly by words and partly by gestures, he made them understand that they might take back and keep for themselves all the cocoanuts and bread-fruits they had brought as windfalls. At this the people seemed a little appeased. "His heart is not quite so bad as we thought," they murmured among themselves; "but if he didn't want them, what did he mean? Why did he beat down our huts and our plantations?"
Then Felix tried to explain to them--a somewhat dangerous task--that neither he nor Muriel were really responsible for last night's storm; but at that the people, with one accord, raised a great loud shout of unmixed derision. "He is a god," they cried, "and yet he is ashamed of his own acts and deeds, afraid of what we, mere men, will do to him! Ha! ha! Take care! These are lies that he tells. Listen to him! Hear him!"
Meanwhile, more and more natives kept coming up with windfalls of fruit, or with objects they had vowed in their terror to dedicate during the night; and Felix all the time kept explaining at the top of his voice, to all as they came, that he wanted nothing, and that they could take all back again. This curiously inconsistent action seemed to puzzle the wondering natives strangely. Had he made the storm, then, they asked, and eaten the storm-apple, for no use to himself, but out of pure perverseness? If he didn't even want the windfalls and the objects vowed to him, why had he beaten down their crops and broken their houses? They looked at him meaningly; but they dared not cross that great line of taboo. It was their own superstition alone, in that moment of danger, that kept their hands off those defenceless white people.
At last a happy idea seemed to strike the crowd. "What he wants is a child?" they cried, effusively. "He thirsts for blood! Let us kill and roast him a proper victim!"
Felix's horror at this appalling proposition knew no bounds. "If you do," he cried, turning their own superstition against them in this last hour of need, "I will raise up a storm worse even than last night's! You do it at your peril! I want no victim. The people of my country eat not of human flesh. It is a thing detestable, horrible, hateful to God and man. With us, all human life alike is sacred. We spill no blood. If you dare to do as you say, I will raise such a storm over your heads to-night as will submerge and drown the whole of your island."
The natives listened to him with profound interest. "We must spill no blood!" they repeated, looking aghast at one another. "Hear what the King says! We must not cut the victim's throat. We must bind a child with cords and roast it alive for him!"
Felix hardly knew what to do or say at this atrocious proposal. "If you roast it alive," he cried, "you deserve to be all scorched up with lightning. Take care what you do! Spare the child's life! I will have no victim. Beware how you anger me!"
But the savage no sooner says than he does. With him deliberation is unknown, and impulse everything. In a moment the natives had gathered in a circle a little way off, and began drawing lots. Several children, seized hurriedly up among the crowd, were huddled like so many sheep in the centre. Felix looked on from his enclosure, half petrified with horror. The lot fell upon a pretty little girl of five years old. Without one word of warning, without one sign of remorse, before Felix's very eyes, they began to bind the struggling and terrified child just outside the circle.
The white man could stand this horrid barbarity no longer. At the risk of his life--at the risk of Muriel's--he must rush out to prevent them. They should never dare to kill that helpless child before his very eyes. Come what might--though even Muriel should suffer for it--he felt he _must_ rescue that trembling little creature. Drawing his trusty knife, and opening the big blade ostentatiously before their eyes, he made a sudden dart like a wild beast across the line, and pounced down upon the party that guarded the victim.
Was it a ruse to make him cross the line, alone, or did they really mean it? He hardly knew; but he had no time to debate the abstract question. Bursting into their midst, he seized the child with a rush in his circling arms, and tried to hurry back with it within the protecting taboo-line.
Quick as lightning he was surrounded and almost cut down by a furious and frantic mob of half-naked savages. "Kill him! Tear him to pieces!" they cried in their rage. "He has a bad heart! He destroyed our huts! He broke down our plantations! Kill him, kill him, kill him!"
As they closed in upon him, with spears and tomahawks and clubs, Felix saw he had nothing left for it now but a hard fight for life to return to the taboo-line. Holding the child in one arm, and striking wildly out with his knife with the other, he tried to hack his way back by main force to the shelter of the taboo-line in frantic lunges. The distance was but a few feet, but the savages pressed round him, half frightened still, yet gnashing their teeth and distorting their faces with anger. "He has broken the Taboo," they cried in vehement tones. "He has crossed the line willingly. Kill him! Kill him! We are free from sin. We have bought him with a price--with many cocoanuts!"
At the sound of the struggle going on so close outside, Muriel rushed in frantic haste and terror from the hut. Her face was pale, but her demeanor was resolute. Before Mali could stop her, she, too, had crossed the sacred line of the coral mark, and had flung herself madly upon Felix's assailants, to cover his retreat with her own frail body.
"Hold off!" she cried, in her horror, in English, but in accents even those savages could read. "You shall not touch him!"
With a fierce effort Felix tore his way back, through the spears and clubs, toward the place of safety. The savages wounded him on the way more than once with their jagged stone spear-tips, and blood flowed from his breast and arms in profusion. But they didn't dare even so to touch Muriel. The sight of that pure white woman, rushing out in her weakness to protect her lover's life from attack, seemed to strike them with some fresh access of superstitious awe. One or two of themselves were wounded by Felix's knife, for they were unaccustomed to steel, though they had a few blades made out of old European barrel-hoops. For a minute or two the conflict was sharp and hotly contested. Then at last Felix managed to fling the child across the line, to push Muriel with one hand at arm's-length before him, and to rush himself within the sacred circle.
No sooner had he crossed it than the savages drew up around, undecided as yet, but in a threatening body. Rank behind rank, their loose hair in their eyes, they stood like wild beasts balked of their prey, and yelled at him. Some of them brandished their spears and their stone hatchets angrily in their victims' faces. Others contented themselves with howling aloud as before, and piling curses afresh on the heads of the unpopular storm-gods. "Look at her," they cried, in their wrath, pointing their skinny brown fingers angrily at Muriel. "See, she weeps even now. She would flood us with her rain. She isn't satisfied with all the harm she has poured down upon Boupari already. She wants to drown us."
And then a little knot drew up close to the line of taboo itself, and began to discuss in loud and serious tones a pressing question of savage theology and religious practice.
"They have crossed the line within the three days," some of the foremost warriors exclaimed, in excited voices. "They are no longer taboo. We can do as we please with them. We may cross the line now ourselves if we will, and tear them to pieces. Come on! Who follows? Korong! Korong! Let us rend them! Let us eat them!"
But though they spoke so bravely they hung back themselves, fearful of passing that mysterious barrier. Others of the crowd answered them back, warmly: "No, no; not so. Be careful what you do. Anger not the gods. Don't ruin Boupari. If the Taboo is not indeed broken, then how dare we break it? They are gods. Fear their vengeance. They are, indeed, terrible. See what happened to us when they merely ate of the storm-apple! What might not happen if we were to break taboo without due cause and kill them?"
One old, gray-bearded warrior, in particular, held his countrymen back. "Mind how you trifle with gods," the old chief said, in a tone of solemn warning. "Mind how you provoke them. They are very mighty. When I was young, our people killed three sailing gods who came ashore in a small canoe, built of thin split logs; and within a month an awful earthquake devastated Boupari, and fire burst forth from a mouth in the ground, and the people knew that the spirits of the sailing gods were very angry. Wait, therefore, till Tu-Kila-Kila himself comes, and then ask of him, and of Fire and Water. As Tu-Kila-Kila bids you, that do you do. Is he not our great god, the king of us all, and the guardian of the customs of the island of Boupari?"
"Is Tu-Kila-Kila coming?" some of the warriors asked, with bated breath.
"How should he not come?" the old chief asked, drawing himself up very erect. "Know you not the mysteries? The rain has put out all the fires in Boupari. The King of Fire himself, even his hearth is cold. He tried his best in the storm to keep his sacred embers still smouldering; but the King of the Rain was stronger than he was, and put it out at last in spite of his endeavors. Be careful, therefore, how you deal with the King of the Rain, who comes down among lightnings, and is so very powerful."
"And Tu-Kila-Kila comes to fetch fresh fire?" one of the nearest savages asked, with profound awe.
"He comes to fetch fresh fire, new fire from the sun," the old man answered, with awe in his voice. "These foreign gods, are they not strangers from the sun? They have brought the divine seeds of fire, growing in a shining box that reflects the sunlight. They need no rubbing-sticks and no drill to kindle fresh flame. They touch the seed on the box, and, lo, like a miracle, fire bursts forth from the wood spontaneous. Tu-Kila-Kila comes, to behold this miracle."
The warriors hung back with doubtful eyes for a moment. Then they spoke with one accord, "Tu-Kila-Kila shall decide. Tu-Kila-Kila! Tu-Kila-Kila! If the great god says the Taboo holds good, we will not hurt or offend the strangers. But if the great god says the Taboo is broken, and we are all without sin--then, Korong! Korong! we will kill them! We will eat them!"
As the two parties thus stood glaring at one another, across that narrow imaginary wall, another cry went up to heaven at the distant sound of a peculiar tom-tom. "Tu-Kila-Kila comes!" they shouted. "Our great god approaches! Women, begone! Men, hide your eyes! Fly, fly from the brightness of his face, which is as the sun in glory! Tu-Kila-Kila comes! Fly far, all profane ones!"
And in a moment the women had disappeared into space, and the men lay flat on the moist ground with low groans of surprise, and hid their faces in their hands in abject terror.
|
{
"id": "13876"
}
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13
|
AS BETWEEN GODS.
|
Tu-Kila-Kila came up in his grandest panoply. The great umbrella, with the hanging cords, rose high over his head; the King of Fire and the King of Water, in their robes of state, marched slowly by his side; a whole group of slaves and temple attendants, clapping hands in unison, followed obedient at his sacred heels. But as soon as he reached the open space in front of the huts and began to speak, Felix could easily see, in spite of his own agitation and the excitement of the moment, that the implacable god himself was profoundly frightened. Last night's storm had, indeed, been terrible; but Tu-Kila-Kila mentally coupled it with Felix's attitude toward himself at their last interview, and really believed in his own heart he had met, after all, with a stronger god, more powerful than himself, who could make the clouds burst forth in fire and the earth tremble. The savage swaggered a good deal, to be sure, as is often the fashion with savages when frightened; but Felix could see between the lines, that he swaggered only on the familiar principle of whistling to keep your courage up, and that in his heart of hearts he was most unspeakably terrified.
"You did not do well, O King of the Rain, last night," he said, after an interchange of civilities, as becomes great gods. "You have put out even the sacred flame on the holy hearth of the King of Fire. You have a bad heart. Why do you use us so?"
"Why do you let your people offer human sacrifices?" Felix answered, boldly, taking advantage of his position. "They are hateful in our sight, these cannibal ways. While we remain on the island, no human life shall be unjustly taken. Do you understand me?"
Tu-Kila-Kila drew back, and gazed around him suspiciously. In all his experience no one had ever dared to address him like that. Assuredly, the stranger from the sun must be a very great god--how great, he hardly dared to himself to realize. He shrugged his shoulders. "When we mighty deities of the first order speak together, face to face," he said, with an uneasy air, "it is not well that the mere common herd of men should overhear our profound deliberations. Let us go inside your hut. Let us confer in private."
They entered the hut alone, Muriel still clinging to Felix's arm, in speechless terror. Then Felix at once began to explain the situation. As he spoke, a baleful light gleamed in Tu-Kila-Kila's eye. The great god removed his mulberry-paper mask. He was evidently delighted at the turn things had taken. If only he dared--but there; he dared not. "Fire and Water would never allow it," he murmured softly to himself. "They know the taboos as well as I do." It was clear to Felix that the savage would gladly have sacrificed him if he dared, and that he made no bones about letting him know it; but the custom of the islanders bound him as tightly as it bound themselves, and he was afraid to transgress it.
"Now listen," Felix said, at last, after a long palaver, looking in the savage's face with a resolute air: "Tu-Kila-Kila, we are not afraid of you. We are not afraid of all your people. I went out alone just now to rescue that child, and, as you see, I succeeded in rescuing it. Your people have wounded me--look at the blood on my arms and chest--but I don't mind for wounds. I mean you to do as I say, and to make your people do so, too. Understand, the nation to which I belong is very powerful. You have heard of the sailing gods who go over the sea in canoes of fire, as swift as the wind, and whose weapons are hollow tubes, that belch forth great bolts of lightning and thunder? Very well, I am one of them. If ever you harm a hair of our heads, those sailing gods will before long send one of their mighty fire-canoes, and bring to bear upon your island their thunder and lightning, and destroy your huts, and punish you for the wrong you have ventured to do us. So now you know. Remember that you act exactly as I tell you."
Tu-Kila-Kila was evidently overawed by the white man's resolute voice and manner. He had heard before of the sailing gods (as the Polynesians of the old school still call the Europeans); and though but one or two stray individuals among them had ever reached his remote island (mostly as castaways), he was quite well enough acquainted with their might and power to be deeply impressed by Felix's exhortation. So he tried to temporize. "Very well," he made answer, with his jauntiest air, assuming a tone of friendly good-fellowship toward his brother-god. "I will bear it in mind. I will try to humor you. While your time lasts, no man shall hurt you. But if I promise you that, you must do a good turn for me instead. You must come out before the people and give me a new fire from the sun, that you carry in a shining box about with you. The King of Fire has allowed his sacred flame to go out in deference to your flood; for last night, you know, you came down heavily. Never in my life have I known you come down heavier. The King of Fire acknowledges himself beaten. So give us light now before the people, that they may know we are gods, and may fear to disobey us."
"Only on one condition," Felix answered, sternly; for he felt he had Tu-Kila-Kila more or less in his power now, and that he could drive a bargain with him. Why, he wasn't sure; but he saw Tu-Kila-Kila attached a profound importance to having the sacred fire relighted, as he thought, direct from heaven.
"What condition is that?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, glancing about him suspiciously.
"Why, that you give up in future human sacrifices."
Tu-Kila-Kila gave a start. Then he reflected for a moment. Evidently, the condition seemed to him a very hard one. "Do you want all the victims for yourself and her, then?" he asked, with a casual nod aside toward Muriel.
Felix drew back, with horror depicted on every line of his face. "Heaven forbid!" he answered, fervently. "We want no bloodshed, no human victims. We ask you to give up these horrid practices, because they shock and revolt us. If you would have your fire lighted, you must promise us to put down cannibalism altogether henceforth in your island."
Tu-Kila-Kila hesitated. After all, it was only for a very short time that these strangers could thus beard him. Their day would come soon. They were but Korongs. Meanwhile, it was best, no doubt, to effect a compromise. "Agreed," he answered, slowly. "I will put down human sacrifices--so long as you live among us. And I will tell the people your taboo is not broken. All shall be done as you will in this matter. Now, come out before the crowd and light the fire from Heaven."
"Remember," Felix repeated, "if you break your word, my people will come down upon you, sooner or later, in their mighty fire-canoes, and will take vengeance for your crime, and destroy you utterly."
Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a cunning smile. "I know all that," he answered. "I am a god myself, not a fool, don't you see? You are a very great god, too; but I am the greater. No more of words between us two. It is as between gods. The fire! the fire!"
Tu-Kila-Kila replaced his mask. They proceeded from the hut to the open space within the taboo-line. The people still lay all flat on their faces. "Fire and Water," Tu-Kila-Kila said, in a commanding tone, "come forward and screen me!"
The King of Fire and the King of Water unrolled a large square of native cloth, which they held up as a screen on two poles in front of their superior deity. Tu-Kila-Kila sat down on the ground, hugging his knees, in the common squatting savage fashion, behind the veil thus readily formed for him. "Taboo is removed," he said, in loud, clear tones. "My people may rise. The light will not burn them. They may look toward the place where Tu-Kila-Kila's face is hidden from them."
The people all rose with one accord, and gazed straight before them.
"The King of Fire will bring dry sticks," Tu-Kila-Kila said, in his accustomed regal manner.
The King of Fire, sticking one pole of the screen into the ground securely, brought forward a bundle of sun-dried sticks and leaves from a basket beside him.
"The King of the Rain, who has put out all our hearths with his flood last night, will relight them again with new fire, fresh flame from the sun, rays of our disk, divine, mystic, wonderful," Tu-Kila-Kila proclaimed, in his droning monotone.
Felix advanced as he spoke to the pile, and struck a match before the eyes of all the islanders. As they saw it light, and then set fire to the wood, a loud cry went up once more, "Tu-Kila-Kila is great! His words are true! He has brought fire from the sun! His ways are wonderful!"
Tu-Kila-Kila, from his point of vantage behind the curtain, strove to improve the occasion with a theological lesson. "That is the way we have learned from our divine ancestors," he said, slowly; "the rule of the gods in our island of Boupari. Each god, as he grows old, reincarnates himself visibly. Before he can grow feeble and die he immolates himself willingly on his own altar; and a younger and a stronger than he receives his spirit. Thus the gods are always young and always with you. Behold myself, Tu-Kila-Kila! Am I not from old times? Am I not very ancient? Have I not passed through many bodies? Do I not spring ever fresh from my own ashes? Do I not eat perpetually the flesh of new victims? Even so with fire. The flames of our island were becoming impure. The King of Fire saw his cinders flickering. So I gave my word. The King of the Rain descended in floods upon them. He put them all out. And now he rekindles them. They burn up brighter and fresher than ever. They burn to cook my meat, the limbs of my victims. Take heed that you do the King of the Rain no harm as long as he remains within his sacred circle. He is a very great god. He is fierce; he is cruel. His taboo is not broken. Beware! Beware! Disobey at your peril. I, Tu-Kila-Kila, have spoken."
As he spoke, it seemed to Felix that these strange mystic words about each god springing fresh from his own ashes must contain the solution of that dread problem they were trying in vain to read. That, perhaps, was the secret of Korong. If only they could ever manage to understand it!
Tu-Kila-Kila beat his tom-tom twice. In a second all the people fell flat on their faces again. Tu-Kila-Kila rose; the kings of Fire and Water held the umbrella over him. The attendants on either side clapped hands in time to the sacred tom-tom. With proud, slow tread, the god retraced his steps to his own palace-temple; and Muriel and Felix were left alone at last in their dusty enclosure.
"Tu-Kila-Kila hates me," Felix said, later in the day, to his attentive Shadow.
"Of course," the young man answered, with a tone of natural assent. "To be sure he hates you. How could he do otherwise? You are Korong. You may any day be his enemy."
"But he's afraid of me, too," Felix went on. "He would have liked to let the people tear me in pieces. Yet he dared not risk it. He seems to dread offending me."
"Of course," the Shadow replied, as readily as before. "He is very much afraid of you. You are Korong. You may any day supplant him. He would like to get rid of you, if he could see his way. But till your time comes he dare not touch you."
"When will my time come?" Felix asked, with that dim apprehension of some horrible end coming over him yet again in all its vague weirdness.
The Shadow shook his head. "That," he answered, "it is not lawful for me so much as to mention. I tell you too far. You will know soon enough. Wait, and be patient."
|
{
"id": "13876"
}
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14
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"MR. THURSTAN, I PRESUME."
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Naturally enough, it was some time before Felix and Muriel could recover from the shock of their deadly peril. Yet, strange to say, the natives at the end of three days seemed positively to have forgotten all about it. Their loves and their hates were as shortlived as children's. As soon as the period of seclusion was over, their attentions to the two strangers redoubled in intensity. They were evidently most anxious, after this brief disagreement, to reassure the new gods, who came from the sun, of their gratitude and devotion. The men who had wounded Felix, in particular, now came daily in the morning with exceptional gifts of fish, fruit, and flowers; they would bring a crab from the sea, or a joint of turtle-meat. "Forgive us, O king," they cried, prostrating themselves humbly. "We did not mean to hurt you; we thought your time had really come. You are a Korong. We would not offend you. Do not refuse us your showers because of our sin. We are very penitent. We will do what you ask of us. Your look is poison. See, here is wood; here are leaves and fire; we are but your meat; choose and cook which you will of us!"
It was useless Felix's trying to explain to them that he wanted no victims, and no propitiation. The more he protested, the more they brought gifts. "He is a very great god," they exclaimed. "He wants nothing from us. What can we give him that will be an acceptable gift? Shall we offer him ourselves, our wives, our children?"
As for the women, when they saw how thoroughly frightened of them Muriel now was, they couldn't find means to express their regret and devotion. Mothers brought their little children, whom she had patted on the head, and offered them, just outside the line, as presents for her acceptance. They explained to her Shadow that they never meant to hurt her, and that, if only she would venture without the line, as of old, all should be well, and they would love and adore her. Mali translated to her mistress these speeches and prayers. "Them say, 'You come back, Queenie,'" she explained in her broken Queensland English. " 'Boupari women love you very much. Boupari women glad you come. You kind; you beautiful! All Boupari men and women very much pleased with you and the gentleman, because you give back him cocoanut and fruit that you pick in the storm, and because you bring down fresh fire from heaven.'"
Gradually, after several days, Felix's confidence was so far restored that he ventured to stroll beyond the line again; and he found himself, indeed, most popular among the people. In various ways he picked up gradually the idea that the islanders generally disliked Tu-Kila-Kila, and liked himself; and that they somehow regarded him as Tu-Kila-Kila's natural enemy. What it could all mean he did not yet understand, though some inklings of an explanation occasionally occurred to him. Oh, how he longed now for the Month of Birds to end, in order that he might pay his long-deferred visit to the mysterious Frenchman, from whose voice his Shadow had fled on that fateful evening with such sudden precipitancy. The Frenchman, he judged, must have been long on the island, and could probably give him some satisfactory solution of this abstruse problem.
So he was glad, indeed, when one evening, some weeks later, his Shadow, observing the sky narrowly, remarked to him in a low voice, "New moon to-morrow! The Month of Birds will then be up. In the morning you can go and see your brother god at the Abode of Birds without breaking taboo. The Month of Turtles begins at sunrise. My family god is a turtle, so I know the day for it."
So great was Felix's impatience to settle this question, that almost before the sun was up next day he had set forth from his hut, accompanied as usual by his faithful Shadow. Their way lay past Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. As they went by the entrance with the bamboo posts, Felix happened to glance aside through the gate to the sacred enclosure. Early as it was, Tu-Kila-Kila was afoot already; and, to Felix's great surprise, was pacing up and down, with that stealthy, wary look upon his cunning face that Muriel had so particularly noted on the day of their first arrival. His spear stood in his hand, and his tomahawk hung by his left side; he peered about him suspiciously, with a cautious glance, as he walked round and round the sacred tree he guarded so continually. There was something weird and awful in the sight of that savage god, thus condemned by his own superstition and the custom of his people to tramp ceaselessly up and down before the sacred banyan.
At sight of Felix, however, a sudden burst of frenzy seemed to possess at once all Tu-Kila-Kila's limbs. He brandished his spear violently, and set himself spasmodically in a posture of defence. His brow grew black, and his eyes darted out eternal hate and suspicion. It was evident he expected an instant attack, and was prepared with all his might and main to resist aggression. Yet he never offered to desert his post by the tree or to assume the offensive. Clearly, he was guarding the sacred grove itself with jealous care, and was as eager for its safety as for his own life and honor.
Felix passed on, wondering what it all could mean, and turned with an inquiring glance to his trembling Shadow. As for Toko, he had held his face averted meanwhile, lest he should behold the great god, and be scorched to a cinder; but in answer to Felix's mute inquiry he murmured low: "Was Tu-Kila-Kila there? Were all things right? Was he on guard at his post by the tree already?"
"Yes," Felix replied, with that weird sense of mystery creeping over him now more profoundly than ever. "He was on guard by the tree and he looked at me angrily."
"Ah," the Shadow remarked, with a sigh of regret, "he keeps watch well. It will be hard work to assail him. No god in Boupari ever held his place so tight. Who wishes to take Tu-Kila-Kila's divinity must get up early."
They went on in silence to the little volcanic knoll near the centre of the island. There, in the neat garden plot they had observed before, a man, in the last relics of a very tattered European costume, much covered with a short cape of native cloth, was tending his flowers and singing to himself merrily. His back was turned to them as they came up. Felix paused a moment, unseen, and caught the words the stranger was singing: "Très jolie, Peu polie, Possédant un gros magot; Fort en gueule, Pas bégueule; Telle était--" The stranger looked up, and paused in the midst of his lines, open-mouthed. For a moment he stood and stared astonished. Then, raising his native cap with a graceful air, and bowing low, as he would have bowed to a lady on the Boulevard, he advanced to greet a brother European with the familiar words, in good educated French, "Monsieur, I salute you!"
To Felix, the sound of a civilized voice in the midst of so much strange and primitive barbarism, was like a sudden return to some forgotten world, so deeply and profoundly did it move and impress him. He grasped the sunburnt Frenchman's rugged hand in his. "Who are you?" he cried, in the very best Parisian he could muster up on the spur of the moment. "And how did you come here?"
"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, no less profoundly moved than himself, "this is, indeed, wonderful! Do I hear once more that beautiful language spoken? Do I find myself once more in the presence of a civilized person? What fortune! What happiness! Ah, it is glorious, glorious."
For some seconds they stood and looked at one another in silence, grasping their hands hard again and again with intense emotion; then Felix repeated his question a second time: "Who are you, monsieur? and where do you come from?"
"Your name, surname, age, occupation?" the Frenchman repeated, bursting forth at last into national levity. "Ah, monsieur, what a joy to hear those well-known inquiries in my ear once more. I hasten to gratify your legitimate curiosity. Name: Peyron; Christian name: Jules; age: forty-one; occupation: convict, escaped from New Caledonia."
Under any other circumstances that last qualification might possibly have been held an undesirable one in a new acquaintance. But on the island of Boupari, among so many heathen cannibals, prejudices pale before community of blood; even a New Caledonian convict is at least a Christian European. Felix received the strange announcement without the faintest shock of surprise or disgust. He would gladly have shaken hands then and there with M. Jules Peyron, indeed, had he introduced himself in even less equivocal language as a forger, a pickpocket, or an escaped house-breaker.
"And you, monsieur?" the ex-convict inquired, politely.
Felix told him in a few words the history of their accident and their arrival on the island. " _Comment_?" the Frenchman exclaimed, with surprise and delight. "A lady as well; a charming English lady! What an acquisition to the society of Boupari! _Quelle chance! Quel bonheur! _ Monsieur, you are welcome, and mademoiselle too! And in what quality do you live here? You are a god, I see; otherwise you would not have dared to transgress my taboo, nor would this young man--your Shadow, I suppose--have permitted you to do so. But which sort of god, pray? Korong--or Tula?"
"They call me Korong," Felix answered, all tremulous, feeling himself now on the very verge of solving this profound mystery.
"And mademoiselle as well?" the Frenchman exclaimed, in a tone of dismay.
"And mademoiselle as well," Felix replied. "At least, so I make out. We are both Korong. I have many times heard the natives call us so."
His new acquaintance seized his hand with every appearance of genuine alarm and regret. "My poor friend," he exclaimed, with a horrified face, "this is terrible, terrible! Tu-Kila-Kila is a very hard man. What can we do to save your life and mademoiselle's! We are powerless! Powerless! I have only that much to say. I condole with you! I commiserate you!"
"Why, what does Korong mean?" Felix asked, with blanched lips. "Is it then something so very terrible?"
"Terrible! Ah, terrible!" the Frenchman answered, holding up his hands in horror and alarm. "I hardly know how we can avert your fate. Step within my poor hut, or under the shade of my Tree of Liberty here, and I will tell you all the little I know about it."
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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15
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THE SECRET OF KORONG.
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"You have lived here long?" Felix asked, with tremulous interest, as he took a seat on the bench under the big tree, toward which his new host politely motioned him. "You know the people well, and all their superstitions?" " _Hélas_, yes, monsieur," the Frenchman answered, with a sigh of regret. "Eighteen years have I spent altogether in this beast of a Pacific; nine as a convict in New Caledonia, and nine more as a god here; and, believe me, I hardly know which is the harder post. Yours is the first White face I have ever seen since my arrival in this cursed island."
"And how did you come here?" Felix asked, half breathless, for the very magnitude of the stake at issue--no less a stake than Muriel's life--made him hesitate to put point-blank the question he had most at heart for the moment.
"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, trying to cover his rags with his native cape, "that explains itself easily. I was a medical student in Paris in the days of the Commune. Ah! that beloved Paris--how far away it seems now from Boupari! Like all other students I was advanced--Republican, Socialist--what you will--a political enthusiast. When the events took place--the events of '70--I espoused with all my heart the cause of the people. You know the rest. The bourgeoisie conquered. I was taken red-handed, as the Versaillais said--my pistol in my grasp--an open revolutionist. They tried me by court-martial--br'r'r--no delay--guilty, M. le President--hard labor to perpetuity. They sent me with that brave Louise Michel and so many other good comrades of the cause to New Caledonia. There, nine years of convict life was more than enough for me. One day I found a canoe on the shore--a little Kanaka canoe--you know the type--a mere shapeless dug-out. Hastily I loaded it with food--yam, taro, bread-fruit--I pushed it off into the sea--I embarked alone--I intrusted myself and all my fortunes to the Bon Dieu and the wide Pacific. The Bon Dieu did not wholly justify my confidence. It is a way he has--that inscrutable one. Six weeks I floated hither and thither before varying winds. At last one evening I reached this island. I floated ashore. And, _enfin, me voilà_!"
"Then you were a political prisoner only?" Felix said, politely.
M. Jules Peyron drew himself up with much dignity in his tattered costume. "Do I look like a card-sharper, monsieur?" he asked simply, with offended honor.
Felix hastened to reassure him of his perfect confidence. "On the contrary, monsieur," he said, "the moment I heard you were a convict from New Caledonia, I felt certain in my heart you could be nothing less than one of those unfortunate and ill-treated Communards."
"Monsieur," the Frenchman said, seizing his hand a second time, "I perceive that I have to do with a man of honor and a man of feeling. Well, I landed on this island, and they made me a god. From that day to this I have been anxious only to shuffle off my unwelcome divinity, and return as a mere man to the shores of Europe. Better be a valet in Paris, say I, than a deity of the best in Polynesia. It is a monotonous existence here--no society, no life--and the _cuisine_--bah, execrable! But till the other day, when your steamer passed, I have scarcely even sighted a European ship. A boat came here once, worse luck, to put off two girls (who didn't belong to Boupari), returned indentured laborers from Queensland; but, unhappily, it was during my taboo--the Month of Birds, as my jailers call it--and though I tried to go down to it or to make signals of distress, the natives stood round my hut with their spears in line, and prevented me by main force from signalling to them or communicating with them. Even the other day, I never heard of your arrival till a fortnight had elapsed, for I had been sick with fever, the fever of the country, and as soon as my Shadow told me of your advent it was my taboo again, and I was obliged to defer for myself the honor of calling upon my new acquaintances. I am a god, of course, and can do what I like; but while my taboo is on, _ma foi_, monsieur, I can hardly call my life my own, I assure you."
"But your taboo is up to-day," Felix said, "so my Shadow tells me."
"Your Shadow is a well-informed young man," M. Peyron answered, with easy French sprightliness. "As for my donkey of a valet, he never by any chance knows or tells me anything. I had just sent him out--the pig--to learn, if possible, your nationality and name, and what hours you preferred, as I proposed later in the day to pay my respects to mademoiselle, your friend, if she would deign to receive me."
"Miss Ellis would be charmed, I'm sure," Felix replied, smiling in spite of himself at so much Parisian courtliness under so ragged an exterior. "It is a great pleasure to us to find we are not really alone on this barbarous island. But you were going to explain to me, I believe, the exact nature of this peril in which we both stand--the precise distinction between Korong and Tula?"
"Alas, monsieur," the Frenchman replied, drawing circles in the dust with his stick with much discomposure, "I can only tell you I have been trying to make out the secret of this distinction myself ever since the first day I came to the island; but so reticent are all the natives about it, and so deep is the taboo by which the mystery is guarded, that even now I, who am myself Tula, can tell you but very little with certainty on the subject. All I can say for sure is this--that gods called Tula retain their godship in permanency for a very long time, although at the end some violent fate, which I do not clearly understand, is destined to befall them. That is my condition as King of the Birds--for no doubt they have told you that I, Jules Peyron--Republican, Socialist, Communist--have been elevated against my will to the honors of royalty. That is my condition, and it matters but little to me, for I know not when the end may come; and we can but die once; how or where, what matters? Meanwhile, I have my distractions, my little _agréments_--my gardens, my music, my birds, my native friends, my coquetries, my aviary. As King of the Birds, I keep a small collection of my subjects in the living form, not unworthy of a scientific eye. Monsieur is no ornithologist? Ah, no, I thought not. Well, for me, it matters little; my time is long. But for you and Mademoiselle, who are both Korong--" He paused significantly.
"What happens, then, to those who are Korong?" Felix asked, with a lump in his throat--not for himself, but for Muriel.
The Frenchman looked at him with a doubtful look. "Monsieur," he said, after a pause, "I hardly know how to break the truth to you properly. You are new to the island, and do not yet understand these savages. It is so terrible a fate. So deadly. So certain. Compose your mind to hear the worst. And remember that the worst is very terrible."
Felix's blood froze within him; but he answered bravely all the same, "I think I have guessed it myself already. The Korong are offered as human sacrifices to Tu-Kila-Kila."
"That is nearly so," his new friend replied, with a solemn nod of his head. "Every Korong is bound to die when his time comes. Your time will depend on the particular date when you were admitted to Heaven."
Felix reflected a moment. "It was on the 26th of last month," he answered, shortly.
"Very well," M. Peyron replied, after a brief calculation. "You have just six months in all to live from that date. They will offer you up by Tu-Kila-Kila's hut the day the sun reaches the summer solstice."
"But why did they make us gods then?" Felix interposed, with tremulous lips. "Why treat us with such honors meanwhile, if they mean in the end to kill us?"
He received his sentence of death with greater calmness than the Frenchman had expected. "Monsieur," the older arrival answered, with a reflective air, "there comes in the mystery. If we could solve that, we could find out also the way of escape for you. For there _is_ a way of escape for every Korong: I know it well; I gather it from all the natives say; it is a part of their mysteries; but what it may be, I have hitherto, in spite of all my efforts, failed to discover. All I _do_ know is this: Tu-Kila-Kila hates and dreads in his heart every Korong that is elevated to Heaven, and would do anything, if he dared, to get rid of him quietly. But he doesn't dare, because he is bound hand and foot himself, too, by taboos innumerable. Taboo is the real god and king of Boupari. All the island alike bows down to it and worships it."
"Have you ever known Korongs killed?" Felix asked once more, trembling.
"Yes, monsieur. Many of them, alas! And this is what happens. When the Korong's time is come, as these creatures say, either on the summer or winter solstice, he is bound with native ropes, and carried up so pinioned to Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. In the time before this man was Tu-Kila-Kila, I remember--" "Stop," Felix cried. "I don't understand. Has there then been more than one Tu-Kila-Kila?"
"Why, yes," the Frenchman answered. "Certainly, many. And there the mystery comes in again. We have always among us one Tu-Kila-Kila or another. He is a sort of pope, or grand lama, _voyez-vous? _ No sooner is the last god dead than another god succeeds him and takes his name, or rather his title. This young man who now holds the place was known originally as Lavita, the son of Sami. But what is more curious still, the islanders always treat the new god as if he were precisely the self-same person as the old one. So far as I have been able to understand their theology, they believe in a sort of transmigration of souls. The soul of the Tu-Kila-Kila who is just dead passes into and animates the body of the Tu-Kila-Kila who succeeds to the office. Thus they speak as though Tu-Kila-Kila were a continuous existence; and the god of the moment, himself, will even often refer to events which occurred to him, as he says, a hundred years ago or more, but which he really knows, of course, only by the persistent tradition of the islanders. They are a very curious people, these Bouparese. But what would you have? Among savages, one expects things to be as among savages."
Felix drew a quiet sigh. It was certain that on the island of Boupari that expectation, at least, was never doomed to disappointment. "And when a Korong is taken to Tu-Kila-Kila's temple," he asked, continuing the subject of most immediate interest, "what happens next to him?"
"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, "I hardly know whether I do right or not to say the truth to you. Each Korong is a god for one season only; when the year renews itself, as the savages believe, by a change of season, then a new Korong must be chosen by Heaven to fill the place of the old ones who are to be sacrificed. This they do in order that the seasons may be ever fresh and vigorous. Especially is that the case with the two meteorological gods, so to speak, the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds. Those, I understand, are the posts in their pantheon which you and the lady who accompanies you occupy."
"You are right," Felix answered, with profoundly painful interest. "And what, then, becomes of the king and queen who are sacrificed?"
"I will tell you," M. Peyron answered, dropping his voice still lower into a sympathetic key. "But steel your mind for the worst beforehand. It is sufficiently terrible. On the day of your arrival, this, I learn from my Shadow, is just what happened. That night, Tu-Kila-Kila made his great feast, and offered up the two chief human sacrifices of the year, the free-will offering and the scapegoat of trespass. They keep then a festival, which answers to our own New-Year's day in Europe. Next morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that a new and more vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place, who might make the crops grow better and the sky more clement. In the midst of this horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance, arrived. You were immediately selected by Tu-Kila-Kila, for some reason of his own, which I do not sufficiently understand, but which is, nevertheless, obvious to all the initiated, as the next representatives of the rain-giving gods. You were presented to Heaven on their little platform raised about the ground, and Heaven accepted you. Then you were envisaged with the attributes of divinity; the care of the rain and the clouds was made over to you; and immediately after, as soon as you were gone, the old king and queen were laid on an altar near Tu-Kila-Kila's home, and slain with tomahawks. Their flesh was next hacked from their bodies with knives, cooked, and eaten; their bones were thrown into the sea, the mother of all waters, as the natives call it. And that is the fate, I fear the inevitable fate, that will befall you and mademoiselle at these wretches' hands about the commencement of a fresh season."
Felix knew the worst now, and bent his head in silence. His worst fears were confirmed; but, after all, even this knowledge was better than so much uncertainty.
And now that he knew when "his time was up," as the natives phrased it, he would know when to redeem his promise to Muriel.
|
{
"id": "13876"
}
|
16
|
A VERY FAINT CLUE.
|
"But you hinted at some hope, some chance of escape," Felix cried at last, looking up from the ground and mastering his emotion. "What now is that hope? Conceal nothing from me."
"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders with an expression of utter impotence, "I have as good reasons for wishing to find out all that as even you can have. _Your_ secret is _my_ secret; but with all my pains and astuteness I have been unable to discover it. The natives are reticent, very reticent indeed, about all these matters. They fear taboo; and they fear Tu-Kila-Kila. The women, to be sure, in a moment of expansion, might possibly tell one; but, then, the women, unfortunately, are not admitted to the mysteries. They know no more of all these things than we do. The most I have been able to gather for certain is this--that on the discovery of the secret depend Tu-Kila-Kila's life and power. Every Boupari man knows this Great Taboo; it is communicated to him in the assembly of adults when he gets tattooed and reaches manhood. But no Boupari man ever communicates it to strangers; and for that reason, perhaps, as I believe, Tu-Kila-Kila often chooses for Korong, as far as possible, those persons who are cast by chance upon the island. It has always been the custom, so far as I can make out, to treat castaways or prisoners taken in war as gods, and then at the end of their term to kill them ruthlessly. This plan is popular with the people at large, because it saves themselves from the dangerous honors of deification; but it also serves Tu-Kila-Kila's purpose, because it usually elevates to Heaven those innocent persons who are unacquainted with that fatal secret which is, as the natives say, Tu-Kila-Kila's death--his word of dismissal."
"Then if only we could find out this secret--" Felix cried.
His new friend interrupted him. "What hope is there of your finding it out, monsieur," he exclaimed, "you, who have only a few months to live--when I, who have spent nine long years of exile on the island, and seen two Tu-Kila-Kilas rise and fall, have been unable, with my utmost pains, to discover it? _Tenez_; you have no idea yet of the superstitions of these people, or the difficulties that lie in the way of fathoming them. Come this way to my aviary; I will show you something that will help you to realize the complexities of the situation."
He rose and led the way to another cleared space at the back of the hut, where several birds of gaudy plumage were fastened to perches on sticks by leathery lashes of dried shark's skin, tied just above their talons. "I am the King of the Birds, monsieur, you must remember," the Frenchman said, fondling one of his screaming _protégés_. "These are a few of my subjects. But I do not keep them for mere curiosity. Each of them is the Soul of the tribe to which it belongs. This, for example--my Cluseret--is the Soul of all the gray parrots; that that you see yonder--Badinguet, I call him--is the Soul of the hawks; this, my Mimi, is the Soul of the little yellow-crested kingfisher. My task as King of the Birds is to keep a representative of each of these always on hand; in which endeavor I am faithfully aided by the whole population of the island, who bring me eggs and nests and young birds in abundance. If the Soul of the little yellow kingfisher now were to die, without a successor being found ready at once to receive and embody it, then the whole race of little yellow kingfishers would vanish altogether; and if I myself, the King of the Birds, who am, as it were, the Soul and life of all of them, were to die without a successor being at hand to receive my spirit, then all the race of birds, with one accord, would become extinct forthwith and forever."
He moved among his pets easily, like a king among his subjects. Most of them seemed to know him and love his presence. Presently, he came to one very old parrot, quite different from any Felix had ever seen on any trees in the island; it was a parrot with a black crest and a red mark on its throat, half blind with age, and tottering on its pedestal. This solemn old bird sat apart from all the others, nodding its head oracularly in the sunlight, and blinking now and again with its white eyelids in a curious senile fashion.
The Frenchman turned to Felix with an air of profound mystery. "This bird," he said, solemnly stroking its head with his hand, while the parrot turned round to him and bit at his finger with half-doddering affection--"this bird is the oldest of all my birds---is it not so, Methuselah? --and illustrates well in one of its aspects the superstition of these people. Yes, my friend, you are the last of a kind now otherwise extinct, are you not, _mon vieux? _ No, no, there--gently! Once upon a time, the natives tell me, dozens of these parrots existed in the island; they flocked among the trees, and were held very sacred; but they were hard to catch and difficult to keep, and the Kings of the Birds, my predecessors, failed to secure an heir and coadjutor to this one. So as the Soul of the species, which you see here before you, grew old and feeble, the whole of the race to which it belonged grew old and feeble with it. One by one they withered away and died, till at last this solitary specimen alone remained to vouch for the former existence of the race in the island. Now, the islanders say, nothing but the Soul itself is left; and when the Soul dies, the red-throated parrots will be gone forever. One of my predecessors paid with his life in awful tortures for his remissness in not providing for the succession to the soulship. I tell you these things in order that you may see whether they cast any light for you upon your own position; and also because the oldest and wisest natives say that this parrot alone, among beasts or birds or uninitiated things, knows the secret on which depends the life of the Tu-Kila-Kila for the time being."
"Can the parrot speak?" Felix asked, with profound emotion.
"Monsieur, he can speak, and he speaks frequently. But not one word of all he says is comprehensible either to me or to any other living being. His tongue is that of a forgotten nation. The islanders understand him no more than I do. He has a very long sermon or poem, which he knows by heart, in some unknown language, and he repeats it often at full length from time to time, especially when he has eaten well and feels full and happy. The oldest natives tell a romantic legend about this strange recitation of the good Methuselah--I call him Methuselah because of his great age--but I do not really know whether their tale is true or purely fanciful. You never can trust these Polynesian traditions."
"What is the legend?" Felix asked, with intense interest. "In an island where we find ourselves so girt round by mystery within mystery, and taboo within taboo, as this, every key is worth trying. It is well for us at least to learn everything we can about the ideas of the natives. Who knows what clue may supply us at last with the missing link, which will enable us to break through this intolerable servitude?"
"Well, the story they tell us is this," the Frenchman replied, "though I have gathered it only a hint at a time, from very old men, who declared at the same moment that some religious fear--of which they have many--prevented them from telling me any further about it. It seems that a long time ago--how many years ago nobody knows, only that it was in the time of the thirty-ninth Tu-Kila-Kila, before the reign of Lavita, the son of Sami--a strange Korong was cast up upon this island by the waves of the sea, much as you and I have been in the present generation. By accident, says the story, or else, as others aver, through the indiscretion of a native woman who fell in love with him, and who worried the taboo out of her husband, the stranger became acquainted with the secret of Tu-Kila-Kila. As the natives themselves put it, he learned the Death of the High God, and where in the world his Soul was hidden. Thereupon, in some mysterious way or other, he became Tu-Kila-Kila himself, and ruled as High God for ten years or more here on this island. Now, up to that time, the legend goes on, none but the men of the island knew the secret; they learned it as soon as they were initiated in the great mysteries, which occur before a boy is given a spear and admitted to the rank of complete manhood. But sometimes a woman was told the secret wrongfully by her husband or her lover; and one such woman, apparently, told the strange Korong, and so enabled him to become Tu-Kila-Kila."
"But where does the parrot come in?" Felix asked, with still profounder excitement than ever. Something within him seemed to tell him instinctively he was now within touch of the special key that must sooner or later unlock the mystery.
"Well," the Frenchman went on, still stroking the parrot affectionately with his hand, and smoothing down the feathers on its ruffled back, "the strange Tu-Kila-Kila, who thus ruled in the island, though he learned to speak Polynesian well, had a language of his own, a language of the birds, which no man on earth could ever talk with him. So, to beguile his time and to have someone who could converse with him in his native dialect, he taught this parrot to speak his own tongue, and spent most of his days in talking with it and fondling it. At last, after he had instructed it by slow degrees how to repeat this long sermon or poem--which I have often heard it recite in a sing-song voice from beginning to end--his time came, as they say, and he had to give way to another Tu-Kila-Kila; for the Bouparese have a proverb like our own about the king, 'The High God is dead; may the High God live forever!' But before he gave up his Soul to his successor, and was eaten or buried, whichever is the custom, he handed over his pet to the King of the Birds, strictly charging all future bearers of that divine office to care for the parrot as they would care for a son or a daughter. And so the natives make much of the parrot to the present day, saying he is greater than any, save a Korong or a god, for he is the Soul of a dead race, summing it up in himself, and he knows the secret of the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila."
"But you can't tell me what language he speaks?" Felix asked with a despairing gesture. It was terrible to stand thus within measurable distance of the secret which might, perhaps, save Muriel's life, and yet be perpetually balked by wheel within wheel of more than Egyptian mystery.
"Who can say?" the Frenchman answered, shrugging his shoulders helplessly. "It isn't Polynesian; that I know well, for I speak Bouparese now like a native of Boupari; and it isn't the only other language spoken at the present day in the South Seas--the Melanesian of New Caledonia--for that I learned well from the Kanakas while I was serving my time as a convict among them. All we can say for certain is that it may, perhaps, be some very ancient tongue. For parrots, we know, are immensely long-lived. Some of them, it is said, exceed their century. Is it not so, eh, my friend Methuselah?"
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{
"id": "13876"
}
|
17
|
FACING THE WORST.
|
Muriel, meanwhile, sat alone in her hut, frightened at Felix's unexpected disappearance so early in the morning, and anxiously awaiting her lover's return, for she made no pretences now to herself that she did not really love Felix. Though the two might never return to Europe to be husband and wife, she did not doubt that before the eye of Heaven they were already betrothed to one another as truly as though they had plighted their troth in solemn fashion. Felix had risked his life for her, and had brought all this misery upon himself in the attempt to save her. Felix was now all the world that was left her. With Felix, she was happy, even on this horrible island; without him, she was miserable and terrified, no matter what happened.
"Mali," she cried to her faithful attendant, as soon as she found Felix was missing from his tent, "what's become of Mr. Thurstan? Where can he be gone, I wonder, this morning?"
"You no fear, Missy Queenie," Mali answered, with the childish confidence of the native Polynesian. "Mistah Thurstan, him gone to see man-a-oui-oui, the King of the Birds. Month of Birds finish last night; man-a-oui-oui no taboo any longer. King of the Birds keep very old parrot, Boupari folk tell me; and old parrot very wise, know how to make Tu-Kila-Kila. Mistah Thurstan, him gone to find man-a-oui-oui. Parrot tell him plenty wise thing. Parrot wiser than Boupari people; know very good medicine; wise like Queensland lady and gentleman." And Mali set herself vigorously to work to wash the wooden platter on which she served up her mistress's yam for breakfast.
It was curious to Muriel to see how readily Mali had slipped from savagery to civilization in Queensland, and how easily she had slipped back again from civilization to savagery in Boupari. In waiting on her mistress she was just the ordinary trained native Australian servant; in every other respect she was the simple unadulterated heathen Polynesian. She recognized in Muriel a white lady of the English sort, and treated her within the hut as white ladies were invariably treated in Queensland; but she considered that at Boupari one must do as Boupari does, and it never for a moment occurred to her simple mind to doubt the omnipotence of Tu-Kila-Kila in his island realm any more than she had doubted the omnipotence of the white man and his local religion in their proper place (as she thought it) in Queensland.
An hour or two passed before Felix returned. At last he arrived, very white and pale, and Muriel saw at once by the mere look on his face that he had learned some terrible news at the Frenchman's.
"Well, you found him?" she cried, taking his hand in hers, but hardly daring to ask the fatal question at once.
And Felix, sitting down, as pale as a ghost, answered faintly, "Yes, Muriel, I found him!"
"And he told you everything?"
"Everything he knew, my poor child. Oh, Muriel, Muriel, don't ask me what it is. It's too terrible to tell you."
Muriel clasped her white hands together, held bloodless downward, and looked at him fixedly. "Mali, you can go," she said. And the Shadow, rising up with childish confidence, glided from the hut, and left them, for the first time since their arrival on the central island, alone together.
Muriel looked at him once more with the same deadly fixed look. "With you, Felix," she said, slowly, "I can bear or dare anything. I feel as if the bitterness of death were past long ago. I know it must come. I only want to be quite sure when.... And besides, you must remember, I have your promise."
Felix clasped his own hands despondently in return, and gazed across at her from his seat a few feet off in unspeakable misery.
"Muriel," he cried, "I couldn't. I haven't the heart. I daren't."
Muriel rose and laid her hand solemnly on his arm. "You will!" she answered, boldly. "You can! You must! I know I can trust your promise for that. This moment, if you like. I would not shrink. But you will never let me fall alive into the hands of those wretches. Felix, from _your_ hand I could stand anything. I'm not afraid to die. I love you too dearly."
Felix held her white little wrist in his grasp and sobbed like a child. Her very bravery and confidence seemed to unman him, utterly.
She looked at him once more. "When?" she asked, quietly, but with lips as pale as death.
"In about four months from now," Felix answered, endeavoring to be calm.
"And they will kill us both?"
"Yes, both. I think so."
"Together?"
"Together."
Muriel drew a deep sigh.
"Will you know the day beforehand?" she asked.
"Yes. The Frenchman told me it. He has known others killed in the self-same fashion."
"Then, Felix---the night before it comes, you will promise me, will you?"
"Muriel, Muriel, I could never dare to kill you."
She laid her hand soothingly on his. She stroked him gently. "You are a man," she said, looking up into his eyes with confidence. "I trust you. I believe in you. I know you will never let these savages hurt me.... Felix, in spite of everything, I've been happier since we came to this island together than ever I have been in my life before. I've had my wish. I didn't want to miss in life the one thing that life has best worth giving. I haven't missed it now. I know I haven't; for I love you, and you love me. After that, I can die, and die gladly. If I die with _you_, that's all I ask. These seven or eight terrible weeks have made me feel somehow unnaturally calm. When I came here first I lived all the time in an agony of terror. I've got over the agony of terror now. I'm quite resigned and happy. All I ask is to be saved--by you--from the cruel hands of these hateful cannibals."
Felix raised her white hand just once to his lips. It was the first time he had ever ventured to kiss her. He kissed it fervently. She let it drop as if dead by her side.
"Now tell me all that happened," she said. "I'm strong enough to bear it. I feel such a woman now--so wise and calm. These few weeks have made me grow from a girl into a woman all at once. There's nothing I daren't hear, if you'll tell me it, Felix."
Felix took up her hand again and held it in his, as he narrated the whole story of his visit to the Frenchman. When Muriel had heard it, she said once more, slowly, "I don't think there's any hope in all these wild plans of playing off superstition against superstition. To my mind there are only two chances left for us now. One is to concoct with the Frenchman some means of getting away by canoe from the island--I'd rather trust the sea than the tender mercy of these dreadful people; the other is to keep a closer lookout than ever for the merest chance of a passing steamer."
Felix drew a deep sigh. "I'm afraid neither's much use," he said. "If we tried to get away, dogged as we are, day and night, by our Shadows, the natives would follow us with their war-canoes in battle array and hack us to pieces; for Peyron says that, regarding us as gods, they think the rain would vanish from their island forever if once they allowed us to get away alive and carry the luck with us. And as to the steamers, we haven't seen a trace of one since we left the Australasian. Probably it was only by the purest accident that even she ever came so close in to Boupari."
"At any rate," Muriel cried, still clasping his hand tight, and letting the tears now trickle slowly down her pale white cheeks, "we can talk it all over some day with M. Peyron."
"We can talk it over to-day," Felix answered, "if it comes to that; for Peyron means to step round, he says, a little later in the afternoon, to pay his respects to the first white lady he has ever seen since he left New Caledonia."
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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18
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TU-KILA-KILA PLAYS A CARD.
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Before the Frenchman could carry out his plan, however, he was himself the recipient of the high honor of a visit from his superior god and chief, Tu-Kila-Kila.
Every day and all day long, save on a few rare occasions when special duties absolved him, the custom and religion of the islanders prescribed that their supreme incarnate deity should keep watch and ward without cessation over the great spreading banyan-tree that overshadowed with its dark boughs his temple-palace. High god as he was held to be, and all-powerful within the limits of his own strict taboos, Tu-Kila-Kila was yet as rigidly bound within those iron laws of custom and religious usage as the meanest and poorest of his subject worshippers. From sunrise to sunset, and far on into the night, the Pillar of Heaven was compelled to prowl up and down, with spear in hand and tomahawk at side, as Felix had so often seen him, before the sacred trunk, of which he appeared to be in some mysterious way the appointed guardian. His very power, it seemed, was intimately bound up with the performance of that ceaseless and irksome duty; he was a god in whose hands the lives of his people were but as dust in the balance; but he remained so only on the onerous condition of pacing to and fro, like a sentry, forever before the still more holy and venerable object he was chosen to protect from attack or injury. Had he failed in his task, had he slumbered at his post, all god though he might be, his people themselves would have risen in a body and torn him limb from limb before their ancestral fetich as a sacrilegious pretender.
At certain times and seasons, however, as for example at all high feasts and festivals, Tu-Kila-Kila had respite for a while from this constant treadmill of mechanical divinity. Whenever the moon was at the half-quarter, or the planets were in lucky conjunctions, or a red glow lit up the sky by night, or the sacred sacrificial fires of human flesh were lighted, then Tu-Kila-Kila could lay aside his tomahawk and spear, and become for a while as the islanders, his fellows, were. At other times, too, when he went out in state to visit the lesser deities of his court, the King of Fire and the King of Water made a solemn taboo before He left his home, which protected the sacred tree from aggression during its guardian's absence. Then Tu-Kila-Kila, shaded by his divine umbrella, and preceded by the noise of the holy tom-toms, could go like a monarch over all parts of his realm, giving such orders as he pleased (within the limits of custom) to his inferior officers. It was in this way that he now paid his visit to M. Jules Peyron, King of the Birds. And he did so for what to him were amply sufficient reasons.
It had not escaped Tu-Kila-Kila's keen eye, as he paced among the skeletons in his yard that morning, that Felix Thurstan, the King of the Rain, had taken his way openly toward the Frenchman's quarters. He felt pretty sure, therefore, that Felix had by this time learned another white man was living on the island; and he thought it an ominous fact that the new-comer should make his way toward his fellow-European's hut on the very first morning when the law of taboo rendered such a visit possible. The savage is always by nature suspicious; and Tu-Kila-Kila had grounds enough of his own for suspicion in this particular instance. The two white men were surely brewing mischief together for the Lord of Heaven and Earth, the Illuminer of the Glowing Light of the Sun; he must make haste and see what plan they were concocting against the sacred tree and the person of its representative, the King of Plants and of the Host of Heaven.
But it isn't so easy to make haste when all your movements are impeded and hampered by endless taboos and a minutely annoying ritual. Before Tu-Kila-Kila could get himself under way, sacred umbrella, tom-toms, and all, it was necessary for the King of Fire and the King of Water to make taboo on an elaborate scale with their respective elements; and so by the time the high god had reached M. Jules Peyron's garden, Felix Thurstan had already some time since returned to Muriel's hut and his own quarters.
Tu-Kila-Kila approached the King of the Birds, amid loud clapping of hands, with considerable haughtiness. To say the truth, there was no love lost between the cannibal god and his European subordinate. The savage, puffed up as he was in his own conceit, had nevertheless always an uncomfortable sense that, in his heart of hearts, the impassive Frenchman had but a low opinion of him. So he invariably tried to make up by the solemnity of his manner and the loudness of his assertions for any trifling scepticism that might possibly exist in the mind of his follower.
On this particular occasion, as he reached the Frenchman's plot, Tu-Kila-Kila stepped forward across the white taboo-line with a suspicious and peering eye. "The King of the Rain has been here," he said, in a pompous tone, as the Frenchman rose and saluted him ceremoniously. "Tu-Kila-Kila's eyes are sharp. They never sleep. The sun is his sight. He beholds all things. You cannot hide aught in heaven or earth from the knowledge of him that dwells in heaven. I look down upon land and sea, and spy out all that takes place or is planned in them. I am very holy and very cruel. I see all earth and I drink the blood of all men. The King of the Rain has come this morning to visit the King of the Birds. Where is he now? What has your divinity done with him?"
He spoke from under the sheltering cover of his veiled umbrella. The Frenchman looked back at him with as little love as Tu-Kila-Kila himself would have displayed had his face been visible. "Yes, you are a very great god," he answered, in the conventional tone of Polynesian adulation, with just a faint under-current of irony running through his accent as he spoke. "You say the truth. You do, indeed, know all things. What need for me, then, to tell you, whose eye is the sun, that my brother, the King of the Rain, has been here and gone again? You know it yourself. Your eye has looked upon it. My brother was indeed with me. He consulted me as to the showers I should need from his clouds for the birds, my subjects."
"And where is he gone now?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, without attempting to conceal the displeasure in his tone, for he more than half suspected the Frenchman of a sacrilegious and monstrous design of chaffing him.
The King of the Birds bowed low once more. "Tu-Kila-Kila's glance is keener than my hawk's," he answered, with the accustomed Polynesian imagery. "He sees over the land with a glance, like my parrots, and over the sea with sharp sight, like my albatrosses. He knows where my brother, the King of the Rain, has gone. For me, who am the least among all the gods, I sit here on my perch and blink like a crow. I do not know these things. They are too high and too deep for me."
Tu-Kila-Kila did not like the turn the conversation was taking. Before his own attendants such hints, indeed, were almost dangerous. Once let the savage begin to doubt, and the Moral Order goes with a crash immediately. Besides, he must know what these white men had been talking about. "Fire and Water," he said in a loud voice, turning round to his two chief satellites, "go far down the path, and beat the tom-toms. Fence off with flood and flame the airy height where the King of the Birds lives; fence it off from all profane intrusion. I wish to confer in secret with this god, my brother. When we gods talk together, it is not well that others should hear our converse. Make a great Taboo. I, Tu-Kila-Kila, myself have said it."
Fire and Water, bowing low, backed down the path, beating tom-toms as they went, and left the savage and the Frenchman alone together.
As soon as they were gone, Tu-Kila-Kila laid aside his umbrella with a positive sigh of relief. Now his fellow-countrymen were well out of the way, his manner altered in a trice, as if by magic. Barbarian as he was, he was quite astute enough to guess that Europeans cared nothing in their hearts for all his mumbo-jumbo. He believed in it himself, but they did not, and their very unbelief made him respect and fear them.
"Now that we two are alone," he said, glancing carelessly around him, "we two who are gods, and know the world well--we two who see everything in heaven or earth--there is no need for concealment--we may talk as plainly as we will with one another. Come, tell me the truth! The new white man has seen you?"
"He has seen me, yes, certainly," the Frenchman admitted, taking a keen look deep into the savage's cunning eyes.
"Does he speak your language--the language of birds?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked once more, with insinuating cunning. "I have heard that the sailing gods are of many languages. Are you and he of one speech or two? Aliens, or countrymen?"
"He speaks my language as he speaks Polynesian," the Frenchman replied, keeping his eye firmly fixed on his doubtful guest, "but it is not his own. He has a tongue apart--the tongue of an island not far from my country, which we call England."
Tu-Kila-Kila drew nearer, and dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. "Has he seen the Soul of all dead parrots?" he asked, with keen interest in his voice. "The parrot that knows Tu-Kila-Kila's secret? That one over there--the old, the very sacred one?"
M. Peyron gazed round his aviary carelessly. "Oh, that one," he answered, with a casual glance at Methuselah, as though one parrot or another were much the same to him. "Yes, I think he saw it. I pointed it out to him, in fact, as the oldest and strangest of all my subjects."
Tu-Kila-Kila's countenance fell. "Did he hear it speak?" he asked, in evident alarm. "Did it tell him the story of Tu-Kila-Kila's secret?"
"No, it didn't speak," the Frenchman answered. "It seldom does now. It is very old. And if it did, I don't suppose the King of the Rain would have understood one word of it. Look here, great god, allay your fears. You're a terrible coward. I expect the real fact about the parrot is this: it is the last of its own race; it speaks the language of some tribe of men who once inhabited these islands, but are now extinct. No human being at present alive, most probably, knows one word of that forgotten language."
"You think not?" Tu-Kila-Kila asked, a little relieved.
"I am the King of the Birds, and I know the voices of my subjects by heart; I assure you it is as I say," M. Peyron answered, drawing himself up solemnly.
Tu-Kila-Kila looked askance, with something very closely approaching a wink in his left eye. "We two are both gods," he said, with a tinge of irony in his tone. "We know what that means.... _I_ do not feel so certain."
He stood close by the parrot with itching fingers. "It is very, very old," he went on to himself, musingly. "It can't live long. And then--none but Boupari men will know the secret."
As he spoke he darted a strange glance of hatred toward the unconscious bird, the innocent repository, as he firmly believed, of the secret that doomed him. The Frenchman had turned his back for a moment now, to fetch out a stool. Tu-Kila-Kila, casting a quick, suspicious eye to the right and left, took a step nearer. The parrot sat mumbling on its perch, inarticulately, putting its head on one side, and blinking its half-blinded eyes in the bright tropical sunshine. Tu-Kila-Kila paused irresolute before its face for a second. If he only dared--one wring of the neck--one pinch of his finger and thumb almost! --and all would be over. But he dared not! he dared not! Your savage is overawed by the blind terrors of taboo. His predecessor, some elder Tu-Kila-Kila of forgotten days, had laid a great charm upon that parrot's life. Whoever hurt it was to die an awful death of unspeakable torment. The King of the Birds had special charge to guard it. If even the Cannibal God himself wrought it harm, who could tell what judgment might fall upon him forthwith, what terrible vengeance the dead Tu-Kila-Kila might wreak upon him in his ghostly anger? And that dead Tu-Kila-Kila was his own Soul! His own Soul might flare up within him in some mystic way and burn him to ashes.
And yet--suppose this hateful new-comer, the King of the Rain, whom he had himself made Korong on purpose to get rid of him the more easily, and so had elevated into his own worst potential enemy--suppose this new-comer, the King of the Rain, were by chance to speak that other dialect of the bird-language, which the King of the Birds himself knew not, but which the parrot had learned from his old master, the ancient Tu-Kila-Kila of other days, and in which the bird still recited the secret of the sacred tree and the Death of the Great God--ah, then he might still have to fight hard for his divinity. He gazed angrily at the bird. Methuselah blinked, and put his head on one side, and looked craftily askance at him. Tu-Kila-Kila hated it, that insolent creature. Was he not a god, and should he be thus bearded in his own island by a mere Soul of dead birds, a poor, wretched parrot? But the curse! What might not that portend? Ah, well, he would risk it. Glancing around him once more to the right and left, to make sure that nobody was looking, the cunning savage put forth his hand stealthily, and tried with a friendly caress to seize the parrot.
In a moment, before he had time to know what was happening, Methuselah--sleepy old dotard as he seemed--had woke up at once to a sense of danger. Turning suddenly round upon the sleek, caressing hand, he darted his beak with a vicious peck at his assailant, and bit the divine finger of the Pillar of Heaven as carelessly as he would have bitten any child on Boupari. Tu-Kila-Kila, thunder-struck, drew back his arm with a start of surprise and a loud cry of pain. The bird had wounded him. He shook his hand and stamped. Blood was dropping on the ground from the man-god's finger. He hardly knew what strange evil this omen of harm might portend for the world. The Soul of all dead parrots had carried out the curse, and had drawn red drops from the sacred veins of Tu-Kila-Kila.
One must be a savage one's self, and superstitious at that, fully to understand the awful significance of this deadly occurrence. To draw blood from a god, and, above all, to let that blood fall upon the dust of the ground, is the very worst luck--too awful for the human mind to contemplate.
At the same moment, the parrot, awakened by the unexpected attack, threw back its head on its perch, and, laughing loud and long to itself in its own harsh way, began to pour forth a whole volley of oaths in a guttural language, of which neither Tu-Kila-Kila nor the Frenchman understood one syllable. And at the same moment, too, M. Peyron himself, recalled from the door of his hut by Tu-Kila-Kila's sharp cry of pain and by his liege subject's voluble flow of loud speech and laughter, ran up all agog to know what was the matter.
Tu-Kila-Kila, with an effort, tried to hide in his robe his wounded finger. But the Frenchman caught at the meaning of the whole scene at once, and interposed himself hastily between the parrot and its assailant. " _Hé! _ my Methuselah," he cried, in French, stroking the exultant bird with his hand, and smoothing its ruffled feathers, "did he try to choke you, then? Did he try to get over you? That was a brave bird! You did well, _mon ami_, to bite him! ... No, no, Life of the World, and Measurer of the Sun's Course," he went on, in Polynesian, "you shall not go near him. Keep your distance, I beg of you. You may be a high god--though you were a scurvy wretch enough, don't you recollect, when you were only Lavita, the son of Sami--but I know your tricks. Hands off from my birds, say I. A curse is on the head of the Soul of dead parrots. You tried to hurt him, and see how the curse has worked itself out! The blood of the great god, the Pillar of Heaven, has stained the gray dust of the island of Boupari."
Tu-Kila-Kila stood sucking his finger, and looking the very picture of the most savage sheepishness.
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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19
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DOMESTIC BLISS.
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Tu-Kila-Kila went home that day in a very bad humor. The portent of the bitten finger had seriously disturbed him. For, strange as it sounds to us, he really believed himself in his own divinity; and the bare thought that the holy soil of earth should be dabbled and wet with the blood of a god gave him no little uneasiness in his own mind on his way homeward. Besides, what would his people think of it if they found it out? At all hazards almost, he must strive to conceal this episode of the bite from the men of Boupari. A god who gets wounded, and, worse still, gets wounded in the very act of trying to break a great taboo laid on by himself in a previous incarnation--such a god undoubtedly lays himself open to the gravest misapprehensions on the part of his worshippers. Indeed, it was not even certain whether his people, if they knew, would any longer regard him as a god at all. The devotion of savages is profound, but it is far from personal. When deities pass so readily from one body to another, you must always keep a sharp lookout lest the great spirit should at any minute have deserted his earthly tabernacle, and have taken up his abode in a fresh representative. Honor the gods by all means; but make sure at the same time what particular house they are just then inhabiting.
It was the hour of siesta in Tu-Kila-Kila's tent. For a short space in the middle of the day, during the heat of the sun, while Fire and Water, with their embers and their calabash, sat on guard in a porch by the bamboo gate, Tu-Kila-Kila, Pillar of Heaven and Threshold of Earth, had respite for a while from his daily task of guarding the sacred banyan, and could take his ease after his meal in his own quarters. While that precious hour of taboo lasted, no wandering dragon or spirit of the air could hurt the holy tree, and no human assailant dare touch or approach it. Even the disease-making gods, who walk in the pestilence, could not blight or wither it. At all other times Tu-Kila-Kila mounted guard over his tree with a jealousy that fairly astonished Felix Thurstan's soul; for Felix Thurstan only dimly understood as yet how implicitly Tu-Kila-Kila's own life and office were bound up with the inviolability of the banyan he protected.
Within the hut, during that playtime of siesta, while the lizards (who are also gods) ran up and down the wall, and puffed their orange throats, Tu-Kila-Kila lounged at his ease that afternoon, with one of his many wives--a tall and beautiful Polynesian woman, lithe and supple, as is the wont of her race, and as exquisitely formed in every limb and feature as a sculptured Greek goddess. A graceful wreath of crimson hibiscus adorned her shapely head, round which her long and glossy black hair was coiled in great rings with artistic profusion. A festoon of blue flowers and dark-red dracæna leaves hung like a chaplet over her olive-brown neck and swelling bust. One breadth of native cloth did duty for an apron or girdle round her waist and hips. All else was naked. Her plump brown arms were set off by the green and crimson of the flowers that decked her. Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at his slave with approving eyes. He always liked Ula; she pleased him the best of all his women. And she knew his ways, too: she never contradicted him.
Among savages, guile is woman's best protection. The wife who knows when to give way with hypocritical obedience, and when to coax or wheedle her yielding lord, runs the best chance in the end for her life. Her model is not the oak, but the willow. She must be able to watch for the rising signs of ill-humor in her master's mind, and guard against them carefully. If she is wise, she keeps out of her husband's way when his anger is aroused, but soothes and flatters him to the top of his bent when his temper is just slightly or momentarily ruffled.
"The Lord of Heaven and Earth is ill at ease," Ula murmured, insinuatingly, as Tu-Kila-Kila winced once with the pain of his swollen finger. "What has happened today to the Increaser of Bread-Fruit? My lord is sad. His eye is downcast. Who has crossed my master's will? Who has dared to anger him?"
Tu-Kila-Kila kept the wounded hand wrapped up in a soft leaf, like a woolly mullein. All the way home he had been obliged to conceal it, and disguise the pain he felt, lest Fire and Water should discover his secret. For he dared not let his people know that the Soul of all dead parrots had bitten his finger, and drawn blood from the sacred veins of the man-god. But he almost hesitated now whether or not he should confide in Ula. A god may surely trust his own wedded wives. And yet--such need to be careful--women are so treacherous! He suspected Ula sometimes of being a great deal too fond of that young man Toko, who used to be one of the temple attendants, and whom he had given as Shadow accordingly to the King of the Rain, so as to get rid of him altogether from among the crowd of his followers. So he kept his own counsel for the moment, and disguised his misfortune. "I have been to see the King of the Birds this morning," he said, in a grumbling voice; "and I do not like him. That God is too insolent. For my part I hate these strangers, one and all. They have no respect for Tu-Kila-Kila like the men of Boupari. They are as bad as atheists. They fear not the gods, and the customs of our fathers are not in them."
Ula crept nearer, with one lithe round arm laid caressingly close to her master's neck. "Then why do you make them Korong?" she asked, with feminine curiosity, like some wife who seeks to worm out of her husband the secret of freemasonry. "Why do you not cook them and eat them at once, as soon as they arrive? They are very good food--so white and fine. That last new-comer, now--the Queen of the Clouds--why not eat her? She is plump and tender."
"I like her," Tu-Kila-Kila responded, in a gloating tone. "I like her every way. I would have brought her here to my temple and admitted her at once to be one of Tu-Kila-Kila's wives--only that Fire and Water would not have permitted me. They have too many taboos, those awkward gods. I do not love them. But I make my strangers Korong for a very wise reason. You women are fools; you understand nothing; you do not know the mysteries. These things are a great deal too high and too deep for you. You could not comprehend them. But men know well why. They are wise; they have been initiated. Much more, then, do I, who am the very high god--who eat human flesh and drink blood like water--who cause the sun to shine and the fruits to grow--without whom the day in heaven would fade and die out, and the foundations of the earth would be shaken like a plantain leaf."
Ula laid her soft brown hand soothingly on the great god's arm just above the elbow. "Tell me," she said, leaning forward toward him, and looking deep into his eyes with those great speaking gray orbs of hers; "tell me, O Sustainer of the Equipoise of Heaven; I know you are great; I know you are mighty; I know you are holy and wise and cruel; but why must you let these sailing gods who come from unknown lands beyond the place where the sun rises or sets--why must you let them so trouble and annoy you? Why do you not at once eat them up and be done with them? Is not their flesh sweet? Is not their blood red? Are they not a dainty well fit for the banquet of Tu-Kila-Kila?"
The savage looked at her for a moment and hesitated. A very beautiful woman this Ula, certainly. Not one of all his wives had larger brown limbs, or whiter teeth, or a deeper respect for his divine nature. He had almost a mind--it was only Ula? Why not break the silence enjoined upon gods toward women, and explain this matter to her? Not the great secret itself, of course--the secret on which hung the Death and Transmigration of Tu-Kila-Kila--oh, no; not that one. The savage was far too cunning in his generation to intrust that final terrible Taboo to the ears of a woman. But the reason why he made all strangers Korong. A woman might surely be trusted with that--especially Ula. She was so very handsome. And she was always so respectful to him.
"Well, the fact of it is," he answered, laying his hand on her neck, that plump brown neck of hers, under the garland of dracæna leaves, and stroking it voluptuously, "the sailing gods who happen upon this island from time to time are made Korong--but hush! it is taboo." He gazed around the hut suspiciously. "Are all the others away?" he asked, in a frightened tone. "Fire and Water would denounce me to all my people if once they found I had told a taboo to a woman. And as for you, they would take you, because you knew it, and would pull your flesh from your bones with hot stone pincers!"
Ula rose and looked about her at the door of the tent. She nodded thrice; then she glided back, serpentine, and threw herself gracefully, in a statuesque pose, on the native mat beside him. "Here, drink some more kava," she cried, holding a bowl to his lips, and wheedling him with her eyes. "Kava is good; it is fit for gods. It makes them royally drunk, as becomes great deities. The spirits of our ancestors dwell in the bowl; when you drink of the kava they mount by degrees into your heart and head. They inspire brave words. They give you thoughts of heaven. Drink, my master, drink. The Ruler of the Sun in Heaven is thirsty."
She lay propped on one elbow, with her face close to his; and offered him, with one brown, irresistible hand, the intoxicating liquor. Tu-Kila-Kila took the bowl, and drank a second time, for he had drunk of it once with his dinner already. It was seldom he allowed himself the luxury of a second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for he knew too well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but on this particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life of humanity, "the woman tempted him," and he acted as she told him. He drank it off deep. "Ha, ha! that is good!" he cried, smacking his lips. "That is a drink fit for a god. No woman can make kava like you, Ula." He toyed with her arms and neck lazily once more. "You are the queen of my wives," he went on, in a dreamy voice. "I like you so well, that, plump as you are, I really believe, Ula, I could never make up my mind to eat you."
"My lord is very gracious," Ula made answer, in a soft, low tone, pretending to caress him. And for some minutes more she continued to make much of him in the fulsome strain of Polynesian flattery.
At last the kava had clearly got into Tu-Kila-Kila's head. Then Ula bent forward once more and again attacked him. "Now I know you will tell me," she said, coaxingly, "why you make them Korong. As long as I live, I will never speak or hint of it to anybody anywhere. And if I do--why, the remedy is near. I am your meat--take me and eat me."
Even cannibals are human; and at the touch of her soft hand, Tu-Kila-Kila gave way slowly. "I made them Korong," he answered, in rather thick accents, "because it is less dangerous for me to make them so than to choose for the post from among our own islanders. Sooner or later, my day must come; but I can put it off best by making my enemies out of strangers who arrive upon our island, and not out of those of my own household. All Boupari men who have been initiated know the terrible secret--they know where lies the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila. The strangers who come to us from the sun or the sea do not know it; and therefore my life is safest with them. So I make them Korong whenever I can, to prolong my own days, and to guard my secret."
"And the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila?" the woman whispered, very low, still soothing his arm with her hand and patting his cheek softly from time to time with a gentle, caressing motion. "Tell me where does that live? Who holds it in charge? Where is Tu-Kila-Kila's great spirit laid by in safety? I know it is in the tree; but where and in what part of it?"
Tu-Kila-Kila drew back with a little cry of surprise. "You know it is in the tree!" he cried. "You know my soul is kept there! Why, Ula, who told you that? and you a woman! Bad medicine indeed! Some man has been blabbing what he learned in the mysteries. If this should reach the ears of the King of the Rain--" he paused mysteriously.
"What? What?" Ula cried, seizing his hand in hers, and pressing it hard to her bosom in her anxiety and eagerness. "Tell me the secret! Tell me!"
With a sudden sharp howl of darting pain, Tu-Kila-Kila withdrew his hand. She had squeezed the finger the parrot had bitten, and blood began once more to flow from it freely.
A wild impulse of revenge came over the savage. He caught her by the neck with his other hand, pressed her throat hard, till she was black in the face, kicked her several times with ferocious rage, and then flung her away from him to the other side of the hut with a fierce and untranslatable native imprecation.
Ula, shaken and hurt, darted away toward the door, with a face of abject terror. For every reason on earth she was intensely alarmed. Were it merely as a matter of purely earthly fear, she had ground enough for fright in having so roused the hasty anger of that powerful and implacable creature. He would kill her and eat her with far less compunction than an English farmer would kill and eat one of his own barnyard chickens. But besides that, it terrified her not a little in more mysterious ways to see the blood of a god falling upon the earth so freely. She knew not what awful results to herself and her race might follow from so terrible a desecration.
But, to her utter astonishment, the great god himself, mad with rage as he was, seemed none the less almost as profoundly frightened and surprised as she herself was. "What did you do that for?" he cried, now sufficiently recovered for thought and speech, wringing his hand with pain, and then popping his finger hastily into his mouth to ease it. "You are a clumsy thing. And you want to destroy me, too, with your foolish clumsiness."
He looked at her and scowled. He was very angry. But the savage woman is nothing if not quick-witted and politic. In a flash of intuition, Ula saw at once he was more frightened than hurt; he was afraid of the effect of this strange revelation upon his own reputation for supreme godship. With every mark and gesture of deprecatory servility the woman sidled back to his side like a whipped dog. For a second she looked down on the floor at the drops of blood; then, without one word of warning or one instant's hesitation, she bit her own finger hard till blood flowed from it freely. "I will show this to Fire and Water," she said, holding it up before his eyes all red and bleeding. "I will say you were angry with me and bit me for a punishment, as you often do. They will never find out it was the blood of a god. Have no fear for their eyes. Let me look at your finger."
Tu-Kila-Kila, half appeased by her clever quickness, held his hand out sulkily, like a disobedient child. Ula examined it close. "A bite," she said, shortly. "A bite from a bird! a peck from a parrot."
Tu-Kila-Kila jerked out a surly assent. "Yes, the Soul of all dead parrots," he answered, with an angry glare. "It bit me this morning at the King of the Birds'. A vicious brute. But no one else saw it."
Ula put the finger up to her own mouth, and sucked the wound gently. Her medicine stanched it. Then she took a thin leaf of the paper mulberry, soft, cool, and soothing, and bound it round the place with a strip of the lace-like inner bark, as deftly as any hospital nurse in London would have done it. These savage women are capital hands in sickness. Tu-Kila-Kila sat and sulked meanwhile, like a disappointed child. When Ula had finished, she nodded her head and glided softly away. She knew her chance of learning the secret was gone for the moment, and she had too much of the guile of the savage woman to spoil her chances by loitering about unnecessarily while her lord was in his present ungracious humor.
As she stole from the hut, Tu-Kila-Kila, looking ruefully at his wounded hand, and then at that light and supple retreating figure, muttered sulkily to himself, with a very bad grace, "the woman knows too much. She nearly wormed my secret out of me. She knows that Tu-Kila-Kila's life and soul are bound up in the tree. She knows that I bled, and that the parrot bit me. If she blabs, as women will do, mischief may come of it. I am a great god, a very great god--keen, bloodthirsty, cruel. And I like that woman. But it would be wiser and safer, perhaps, after all, to forego my affection and to make a great feast of her."
And Ula, looking back with a smile and a nod, and holding up her own bitten and bleeding hand with a farewell shake, as if to remind her divine husband of her promise to show it to Fire and Water, murmured low to herself as she went, "He is a very great god; a very great god, no doubt; but I hate him, I hate him! He would eat me to-morrow if I didn't coax him and wheedle him and keep him in a good temper. You want to be sharp, indeed, to be the wife of a god. I got off to-day with the skin of my teeth. He might have turned and killed me. If only I could find out the Great Taboo, I would tell it to the stranger, the King of the Rain; and then, perhaps, Tu-Kila-Kila would die. And the stranger would become Tu-Kila-Kila in turn, and I would be one of his wives; and Toko, who is his Shadow, would return again to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple."
But Fire, as she passed, was saying to Water, "We are getting tired in Boupari of Lavita, the son of Sami. If the luck of the island is not to change, it is high time, I think, we should have a new Tu-Kila-Kila."
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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20
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COUNCIL OF WAR.
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That same afternoon Muriel had a visitor. M. Jules Peyron, formerly of the Collége de France, no longer a mere Polynesian god, but a French gentleman of the Boulevards in voice and manner, came to pay his respects, as in duty bound, to Mademoiselle Ellis. M. Peyron had performed his toilet under trying circumstances, to the best of his ability. The remnants of his European clothes, much patched and overhung with squares of native tappa cloth, were hidden as much as possible by a wide feather cloak, very savage in effect, but more seemly, at any rate, than the tattered garments in which Felix had first found him in his own garden parterre. M. Peyron, however, was fully aware of the defects of his costume, and profoundly apologetic. "It is with ten thousand regrets, mademoiselle," he said, many times over, bowing low and simpering, "that I venture to appear in a lady's _salon_--for, after all, wherever a European lady goes, there her _salon_ follows her--in such a _tenue_ as that in which I am now compelled to present myself. _Mais que voulez-vous? Nous ne sommes pas à Paris_!" For to M. Peyron, as innocent in his way as Mali herself, the whole world divided itself into Paris and the Provinces.
Nevertheless, it was touching to both the new-comers to see the Frenchman's delight at meeting once more with civilized beings. "Figure to yourself, mademoiselle," he said, with true French effusion--"figure to yourself the joy and surprise with which I, this morning, receive monsieur, your friend, at my humble cottage! For the first time after nine years on this hateful island, I see again a European face; I hear again the sound, the beautiful sound of that charming French language. My emotion, believe me, was too profound for words. When monsieur was gone, I retired to my hut, I sat down on the floor, I gave myself over to tears, tears of joy and gratitude, to think I should once more catch a glimpse of civilization! This afternoon, I ask myself, can I venture to go out and pay my respects, thus attired, in these rags, to a European lady? For a long time I doubt, I wonder, I hesitate. In my quality of Frenchman, I would have wished to call in civilized costume upon a civilized household. But what would you have? Necessity knows no law. I am compelled to envelope myself in my savage robe of office as a Polynesian god--a robe of office which, for the rest, is not without an interest of its own for the scientific ethnologist. It belongs to me especially as King of the Birds, and in it, in effect, is represented at least one feather of each kind or color from every part of the body of every species of bird that inhabits Boupari. I thus sum up, _pour ainsi dire_, in my official costume all the birds of the island, as Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, sums up, in his quaint and curious dress, the land and the sea, the trees and the stones, earth and air, and fire and water."
Familiarity with danger begets at last a certain callous indifference. Muriel was surprised in her own mind to discover how easily they could chat with M. Peyron on such indifferent subjects, with that awful doom of an approaching death hanging over them so shortly. But the fact was, terrors of every kind had so encompassed them round since their arrival on the island that the mere additional certainty of a date and mode of execution was rather a relief to their minds than otherwise. It partook of the nature of a reprieve, not of a sentence. Besides, this meeting with another speaker of a European tongue seemed to them so full of promise and hope that they almost forgot the terrors of their threatened end in their discussion of possible schemes for escape to freedom. Even M. Peyron himself, who had spent nine long years of exile in the island, felt that the arrival of two new Europeans gave him some hope of effecting at last his own retreat from this unendurable position. His talk was all of passing steamers. If the Australasian had come near enough once to sight the island, he argued, then the homeward-bound vessel, _en route_ for Honolulu, must have begun to take a new course considerably to the eastward of the old navigable channel. If this were so, their obvious plan was to keep a watch, day and night, for another passing Australian liner, and whenever one hove in sight, to steal away to the shore, seize a stray canoe, overpower, if possible, their Shadows, or give them the slip, and make one bold stroke for freedom on the open ocean.
None of them could conceal from their own minds, to be sure, the extreme difficulty of carrying out this programme. In the first place, it was a toss-up whether they ever sighted another steamer at all; for during the weeks they had already passed on the island, not a sign of one had appeared from any quarter. Then, again, even supposing a steamer ever hove in sight, what likelihood that they could make out for her in an open canoe in time to attract attention before she had passed the island? Tu-Kila-Kila would never willingly let them go; their Shadows would watch them with unceasing care; the whole body of natives would combine together to prevent their departure. If they ran away at all, they must run for their lives; as soon as the islanders discovered they were gone, every war-canoe in the place would be manned at once with bloodthirsty savages, who would follow on their track with relentless persistence.
As for Muriel, less prepared for such dangerous adventures than the two men, she was rather inclined to attach a certain romantic importance (as a girl might do) to the story of the parrot and the possible disclosures which it could make if it could only communicate with them. The mysterious element in the history of that unique bird attracted her fancy. "The only one of its race now left alive," she said, with slow reflectiveness. "Like Dolly Pentreath, the last old woman who could speak Cornish! I wonder how long parrots ever live? Do you know at all, monsieur? You are the King of the Birds--you ought to be an authority on their habits and manners."
The Frenchman smiled a gallant smile. "Unhappily, mademoiselle," he said, "though, as a medical student, I took up to a certain extent biological science in general at the Collége de France, I never paid any special or peculiar attention in Paris to birds in particular. But it is the universal opinion of the natives (if that counts for much) that parrots live to a very great age; and this one old parrot of mine, whom I call Methuselah on account of his advanced years, is considered by them all to be a perfect patriarch. In effect, when the oldest men now living on the island were little boys, they tell me that Methuselah was already a venerable and much-venerated parrot. He must certainly have outlived all the rest of his race by at least the best part of three-quarters of a century. For the islanders themselves not infrequently live, by unanimous consent, to be over a hundred."
"I remember to have read somewhere," Felix said, turning it over in his mind, "that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of South America he found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which, the Indians assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe, incomprehensible then by any living person. If I recollect aright, Humboldt believed that particular bird must have lived to be nearly a hundred and fifty."
"That is so, monsieur," the Frenchman answered. "I remember the case well, and have often recalled it. I recollect our professor mentioning it one day in the course of his lectures. And I have always mentally coupled that parrot of Humboldt's with my own old friend and subject, Methuselah. However, that only impresses upon one more fully the folly of hoping that we can learn anything worth knowing from him. I have heard him recite his story many times over, though now he repeats it less frequently than he used formerly to do; and I feel convinced it is couched in some unknown and, no doubt, forgotten language. It is a much more guttural and unpleasant tongue than any of the soft dialects now spoken in Polynesia. It belonged, I am convinced, to that yet earlier and more savage race which the Polynesians must have displaced; and as such it is now, I feel certain, practically irrecoverable."
"If they were more savage than the Polynesians," Muriel said, with a profound sigh, "I'm sorry for anybody who fell into their clutches."
"But what would not many philologists at home in England give," Felix murmured, philosophically, "for a transcript of the words that parrot can speak--perhaps a last relic of the very earliest and most primitive form of human language!"
At the very moment when these things were passing under the wattled roof of Muriel's hut, it happened that on the taboo-space outside, Toko, the Shadow, stood talking for a moment with Ula, the fourteenth wife of the great Tu-Kila-Kila.
"I never see you now, Toko," the beautiful Polynesian said, leaning almost across the white line of coral-sand which she dared not transgress. "Times are dull at the temple since you came to be Shadow to the white-faced stranger."
"It was for that that Tu-Kila-Kila sent me here," the Shadow answered, with profound conviction. "He is jealous, the great god. He is bad. He is cruel. He wanted to get rid of me. So he sent me away to the King of the Rain that I might not see you."
Ula pouted, and held up her wounded finger before his eyes coquettishly. "See what he did to me," she said, with a mute appeal for sympathy--though in that particular matter the truth was not in her. "Your god was angry with me to-day because I hurt his hand, and he clutched me by the throat, and almost choked me. He has a bad heart. See how he bit me and drew blood. Some of these days, I believe, he will kill me and eat me."
The Shadow glanced around him suspiciously with an uneasy air. Then he whispered low, in a voice half grudge, half terror, "If he does, he is a great god--he can search all the world--I fear him much, but Toko's heart is warm. Let Tu-Kila-Kila look out for vengeance."
The woman glanced across at him open-eyed, with her enticing look. "If the King of the Rain, who is Korong, knew all the secret," she murmured, slowly, "he would soon be Tu-Kila-Kila himself; and you and I could then meet together freely."
The Shadow started. It was a terrible suggestion. "You mean to say--" he cried; then fear overcame him, and, crouching down where he sat, he gazed around him, terrified. Who could say that the wind would not report his words to Tu-Kila-Kila?
Ula laughed at his fears. "Pooh," she answered, smiling. "You are a man; and yet you are afraid of a little taboo. I am a woman; and yet if I knew the secret as you do, I would break taboo as easily as I would break an egg-shell. I would tell the white-faced stranger all--if only it would bring you and me together forever."
"It is a great risk, a very great risk," the Shadow answered, trembling. "Tu-Kila-Kila is a mighty god. He may be listening this moment, and may pinch us to death by his spirits for our words, or burn us to ashes with a flash of his anger."
The woman smiled an incredulous smile. "If you had lived as near Tu-Kila-Kila as I have," she answered, boldly, "you would think as little, perhaps, of his divinity as I do."
For even in Polynesia, superstitious as it is, no hero is a god to his wives or his valets.
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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21
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METHUSELAH GIVES SIGN.
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All the hopes of the three Europeans were concentrated now on the bare off-chance of a passing steamer. M. Peyron in particular was fully convinced that, if the Australasian had found the inner channel practicable, other ships in future would follow her example. With this idea firmly fixed in his head, he arranged with Felix that one or other of them should keep watch alternately by night as far as possible; and he also undertook that a canoe should constantly be in readiness to carry them away to the supposititious ship, if occasion arose for it. Muriel took counsel with Mali on the question of rousing the Frenchman if a steamer appeared, and they were the first to sight it; and Mali, in whom renewed intercourse with white people had restored to some extent the civilized Queensland attitude of mind, readily enough promised to assist in their scheme, provided she was herself taken with them, and so relieved from the terrible vengeance which would otherwise overtake her. "If Boupari man catch me," she said, in her simple, graphic, Polynesian way, "Boupari man kill me, and lay me in leaves, and cook me very nice, and make great feast of me, like him do with Jani." From that untimely end both Felix and Muriel promised faithfully, as far as in them lay, to protect her.
To communicate with M. Peyron by daytime, without arousing the ever-wakeful suspicion of the natives, Felix hit upon an excellent plan. He burnished his metal matchbox to the very highest polish it was capable of taking, and then heliographed by means of sun-flashes on the Morse code. He had learned the code in Fiji in the course of his official duties; and he taught the Frenchman now readily enough how to read and reply with the other half of the box, torn off for the purpose.
It was three or four days, however, before the two English wanderers ventured to return M. Peyron's visit. They didn't wish to attract too greatly the attention of the islanders. Gradually, as their stay on the island went on, they learned the truth that Tu-Kila-Kila's eyes, as he himself had boasted, were literally everywhere. For he had spies of his own, told off in every direction, who dogged the steps of his victims unseen. Sometimes, as Felix and Muriel walked unsuspecting through the jungle paths, closely followed by their Shadows, a stealthy brown figure, crouched low to the ground, would cross the road for a moment behind them, and disappear again noiselessly into the dense mass of underbrush. Then Mali or Toko, turning round, all hushed, with a terrified look, would murmur low to themselves, or to one another, "There goes one of the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!" It was only by slow degrees that this system of espionage grew clear to the strangers; but as soon as they had learned its reality and ubiquity, they felt at once how undesirable it would be for them to excite the terrible man-god's jealousy and suspicion by being observed too often in close personal intercourse with their fellow-exile and victim, the Frenchman. It was this that made them have recourse to the device of the heliograph.
So three or four days passed before Muriel dared to approach M. Peyron's cottage. When she did at last go there with Felix, it was in the early morning, before the fierce tropical sun, that beat full on the island, had begun to exert its midday force and power. The path that led there lay through the thick and tangled mass of brushwood which covered the greater part of the island with its dense vegetation; it was overhung by huge tree-ferns and broad-leaved Southern bushes, and abutted at last on the little wind-swept knoll where the King of the Birds had his appropriate dwelling-place. The Frenchman received them with studied Parisian hospitality. He had decorated his arbor with fresh flowers for the occasion, and bright tropical fruits, with their own green leaves, did duty for the coffee or the absinthe of his fatherland on his homemade rustic table. Yet in spite of all the rudeness of the physical surroundings, they felt themselves at home again with this one exiled European; the faint flavor of civilization pervaded and permeated the Frenchman's hut after the unmixed savagery to which they had now been so long accustomed.
Muriel's curiosity, however, centred most about the mysterious old parrot, of whose strange legend so much had been said to her. After they had sat for a little under the shade of the spreading banyan, to cool down from their walk--for it was an oppressive morning--M. Peyron led her round to his aviary at the back of the hut, and introduced her, by their native names, to all his subjects. "I am responsible for their lives," he said, gravely, "for their welfare, for their happiness. If I were to let one of them grow old without a successor in the field to follow him up and receive his soul--as in the case of my friend Methuselah here, who was so neglected by my predecessors--the whole species would die out for want of a spirit, and my own life would atone for that of my people. There you have the central principle of the theology of Boupari. Every race, every element, every power of nature, is summed up for them in some particular person or thing; and on the life of that person or thing depends, as they believe, the entire health of the species, the sequence of events, the whole order and succession of natural phenomena."
Felix approached the mysterious and venerable bird with somewhat incautious fingers. "It looks very old," he said, trying to stroke its head and neck with a friendly gesture. "You do well, indeed, in calling it Methuselah."
As he spoke, the bird, alarmed at the vague consciousness of a hand and voice which it did not recognize and mindful of Tu-Kila-Kila's recent attack, made a vicious peck at the fingers outstretched to caress it. "Take care!" the Frenchman cried, in a warning voice. "The patriarch's temper is no longer what it was sixty or seventy years ago. He grows old and peevish. His humor is soured. He will sing no longer the lively little scraps of Offenbach I have taught him. He does nothing but sit still and mumble now in his own forgotten language. And he's dreadfully cross--so crabbed--_mon Dieu_, what a character! Why, the other day, as I told you, he bit Tu-Kila-Kila himself, the high god of the island, with a good hard peck, when that savage tried to touch him; you'd have laughed to see his godship sent off bleeding to his hut with a wounded finger! I will confess I was by no means sorry at the sight myself. I do not love that god, nor he me; and I was glad when Methuselah, on whom he is afraid to revenge himself openly, gave him a nice smart bite for trying to interfere with him."
"He's very snappish, to be sure," Felix said, with a smile, trying once more to push forward one hand to stroke the bird cautiously. But Methuselah resented all such unauthorized intrusions. He was growing too old to put up with strangers. He made a second vicious attempt to peck at the hand held out to soothe him, and screamed, as he did so, in the usual discordant and unpleasant voice of an angry or frightened parrot.
"Why, Felix," Muriel put in, taking him by the arm with a girlish gesture--for even the terrors by which they were surrounded hadn't wholly succeeded in killing out the woman within her--"how clumsy you are! You don't understand one bit how to manage parrots. I had a parrot of my own at my aunt's in Australia, and I know their ways and all about them. Just let me try him." She held out her soft white hand toward the sulky bird with a fearless, caressing gesture. "Pretty Poll, pretty Poll!" she said, in English, in the conventional tone of address to their kind. "Did the naughty man go and frighten her then? Was she afraid of his hand? Did Polly want a lump of sugar?"
On a sudden the bird opened its eyes quickly with an awakened air, and looked her back in the face, half blindly, half quizzingly. It preened its wings for a second, and crooned with pleasure. Then it put forward its neck, with its head on one side, took her dainty finger gently between its beak and tongue, bit it for pure love with a soft, short pressure, and at once allowed her to stroke its back and sides with a very pleased and surprised expression. The success of her skill flattered Muriel. "There! it knows me!" she cried, with childish delight; "it understands I'm a friend! It takes to me at once! Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! Come, Poll, come and kiss me!"
The bird drew back at the words, and steadied itself for a moment knowingly on its perch. Then it held up its head, gazed around it with a vacant air, as if suddenly awakened from a very long sleep, and, opening its mouth, exclaimed in loud, clear, sharp, and distinct tones--and in English--"Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! Polly wants a buss! Polly wants a nice sweet bit of apple!"
For a moment M. Peyron couldn't imagine what had happened. Felix looked at Muriel. Muriel looked at Felix. The Englishman held out both his hands to her in a wild fervor of surprise. Muriel took them in her own, and looked deep into his eyes, while tears rose suddenly and dropped down her cheeks, one by one, unchecked. They couldn't say why, themselves; they didn't know wherefore; yet this unexpected echo of their own tongue, in the mouth of that strange and mysterious bird, thrilled through them instinctively with a strange, unearthly tremor. In some dim and unexplained way, they felt half unconsciously to themselves that this discovery was, perhaps, the first clue to the solution of the terrible secret whose meshes encompassed them.
M. Peyron looked on in mute astonishment. He had heard the bird repeat that strange jargon so often that it had ceased to have even the possibility of a meaning for him. It was the way of Methuselah--just his language that he talked; so harsh! so guttural! "Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll!" he had noticed the bird harp upon those quaint words again and again. They were part, no doubt, of that old primitive and forgotten Pacific language the creature had learned in other days from some earlier bearer of the name and ghastly honors of Tu-Kila-Kila. Why should these English seem so profoundly moved by them?
"Mademoiselle doesn't surely understand the barbarous dialect which our Methuselah speaks!" he exclaimed in surprise, glancing half suspiciously from one to the other of these incomprehensible Britons. Like most other Frenchmen, he had been brought up in total ignorance of every European language except his own; and the words the parrot pronounced, when delivered with the well-known additions of parrot harshness and parrot volubility, seemed to him so inexpressibly barbaric in their clicks and jerks that he hadn't yet arrived at the faintest inkling of the truth as he observed their emotion.
Felix seized his new friend's hand in his and wrung it warmly. "Don't you see what it is?" he exclaimed, half beside himself with this vague hope of some unknown solution. "Don't you realize how the thing stands? Don't you guess the truth? This isn't a Polynesian, dialect at all. It's our own mother tongue. The bird speaks English!"
"English!" M. Peyron replied, with incredulous scorn. "What! Methuselah speak English! Oh, no, monsieur, impossible. _Vous vous trompez, j'en suis sûr_. I can never believe it. Those harsh, inarticulate sounds to belong to the noble language of Shaxper and Newtowne! _Ah, monsieur, incroyable! vous vous trompez; vous vous trompez! _" As he spoke, the bird put its head on one side once more, and, looking out of its half-blind old eyes with a crafty glance round the corner at Muriel, observed again, in not very polite English, "Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! Polly wants some fruit! Polly wants a nut! Polly wants to go to bed! ... God save the king! To hell with all papists!"
"Monsieur," Felix said, a certain solemn feeling of surprise coming over him slowly at this last strange clause, "it is perfectly true. The bird speaks English. The bird that knows the secret of which we are all in search--the bird that can tell us the truth about Tu-Kila-Kila--can tell us in the tongue which mademoiselle and I speak as our native language. And what is more--and more strange--gather from his tone and the tenor of his remarks, he was taught, long since--a century ago, or more--and by an English sailor!"
Muriel held out a bit of banana on a sharp stick to the bird. Methuselah-Polly took it gingerly off the end, like a well-behaved parrot? "God save the king!" Muriel said, in a quiet voice, trying to draw him on to speak a little further.
Methuselah twisted his eye sideways, first this way, then that, and responded in a very clear tone, indeed, "God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! Long live Dr. Oates! And to hell with all papists!"
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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22
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TANTALIZING, VERY.
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They looked at one another again with a wild surmise. The voice was as the voice of some long past age. Could the parrot be speaking to them in the words of seventeenth-century English?
Even M. Peyron, who at first had received the strange discovery with incredulity, woke up before long to the importance of this sudden and unexpected revelation. The Tu-Kila-Kila who had taught Methuselah that long poem or sermon, which native tradition regarded as containing the central secret of their creed or its mysteries, and which the cruel and cunning Tu-Kila-Kila of to-day believed to be of immense importance to his safety--that Tu-Kila-Kila of other days was, in all probability, no other than an English sailor. Cast on these shores, perhaps, as they themselves had been, by the mercy of the waves, he had managed to master the language and religion of the savages among whom he found himself thrown; he had risen to be the representative of the cannibal god; and, during long months or years of tedious exile, he had beguiled his leisure by imparting to the unconscious ears of a bird the weird secret of his success, for the benefit of any others of his own race who might be similarly treated by fortune in future. Strange and romantic as it all sounded, they could hardly doubt now that this was the real explanation of the bird's command of English words. One problem alone remained to disturb their souls. Was the bird really in possession of any local secret and mystery at all, or was this the whole burden of the message he had brought down across the vast abyss of time--"God save the king, and to hell with all papists?"
Felix turned to M. Peyron in a perfect tumult of suspense. "What he recites is long?" he said, interrogatively, with profound interest. "You have heard him say much more than this at times? The words he has just uttered are not those of the sermon or poem you mentioned?"
M. Peyron opened his hands expansively before him. "Oh, _mon Dieu_, no, monsieur," he answered, with effusion. "You should hear him recite it. He's never done. It is whole chapters--whole chapters; a perfect Henriade in parrot-talk. When once he begins, there's no possibility of checking or stopping him. On, on he goes. Farewell to the rest; he insists on pouring it all forth to the very last sentence. Gabble, gabble, gabble; chatter, chatter, chatter; pouf, pouf, pouf; boum, boum, boum; he runs ahead eternally in one long discordant sing-song monotone. The person who taught him must have taken entire months to teach him, a phrase at a time, paragraph by paragraph. It is wonderful a bird's memory could hold so much. But till now, taking it for granted he spoke only some wild South Pacific dialect, I never paid much attention to Methuselah's vagaries."
"Hush. He's going to speak," Muriel cried, holding up, in alarm, one warning finger.
And the bird, his tongue-strings evidently loosened by the strange recurrence after so many years of those familiar English sounds, "Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll!" opened his mouth again in a loud chuckle of delight, and cried, with persistent shrillness, "God save the king! A fig for all arrant knaves and roundheads!"
A creepier feeling than ever came over the two English listeners at those astounding words. "Great heavens!" Felix exclaimed to the unsuspecting Frenchman, "he speaks in the style of the Stuarts and the Commonwealth!"
The Frenchman started. " _Époque Louis Quatorze_!" he murmured, translating the date mentally into his own more familiar chronology. "Two centuries since! Oh, incredible! incredible! Methuselah is old, but not quite so much of a patriarch as that. Even Humboldt's parrot could hardly have lived for two hundred years in the wilds of South America."
Felix regarded the venerable creature with a look of almost superstitious awe. "Facts are facts," he answered shortly, shutting his mouth with a little snap. "Unless this bird has been deliberately taught historical details in an archaic diction--and a shipwrecked sailor is hardly likely to be antiquarian enough to conceive such an idea--he is undoubtedly a survival from the days of the Commonwealth or the Restoration. And you say he runs on with his tale for an hour at a time! Good heavens, what a thought! I wish we could manage to start him now. Does he begin it often?"
"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, "when I came here first, though Methuselah was already very old and feeble, he was not quite a dotard, and he used to recite it all every morning regularly. That was the hour, I suppose, at which the master, who first taught him this lengthy recitation, used originally to impress it upon him. In those days his sight and his memory were far more clear than now. But by degrees, since my arrival, he has grown dull and stupid. The natives tell me that fifty years ago, while he was already old, he was still bright and lively, and would recite the whole poem whenever anybody presented him with his greatest dainty, the claw of a moora-crab. Nowadays, however, when he can hardly eat, and hardly mumble, he is much less persistent and less coherent than formerly. To say the truth, I have discouraged him in his efforts, because his pertinacity annoyed me. So now he seldom gets through all his lesson at one bout, as he used to do at the beginning. The best way to get him on is for me to sing him one of my French songs. That seems to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry. Then he will put his head on one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior smile, and finally begin--jabber, jabber, jabber--trying to talk me down, as if I were a brother parrot."
"Oh, do sing now!" Muriel cried, with intense persuasion in her voice. "I do so want to hear it." She meant, of course, the parrot's story.
But the Frenchman bowed, and laid his hand on his heart. "Ah, mademoiselle," he said, "your wish is almost a royal command. And yet, do you know, it is so long since I have sung, except to please myself--my music is so rusty, old pieces you have heard--I have no accompaniment, no score--_mais enfin_, we are all so far from Paris!"
Muriel didn't dare to undeceive him as to her meaning, lest he should refuse to sing in real earnest, and the chance of learning the parrot's secret might slip by them irretrievably. "Oh, monsieur," she cried, fitting herself to his humor at once, and speaking as ceremoniously as if she were assisting at a musical party in the Avenue Victor Hugo, "don't decline, I beg of you, on those accounts. We are both most anxious to hear your song. Don't disappoint us, pray. Please begin immediately."
"Ah, mademoiselle," the Frenchman said, "who could resist such an appeal? You are altogether too flattering." And then, in the same cheery voice that Felix had heard on the first day he visited the King of Birds' hut, M. Peyron began, in very decent style, to pour forth the merry sounds of his rollicking song: "Quand on conspi-re, Quand sans frayeur On peut se di-re Conspirateur-- Pour tout le mon-de Il faut avoir Perruque blon-de Et collet noir."
He had hardly got as far as the end of the first stanza, however, when Methuselah, listening, with his ear cocked up most knowingly, to the Frenchman's song, raised his head in opposition, and, sitting bolt upright on his perch, began to scream forth a voluble stream of words in one unbroken flood, so fast that Muriel could hardly follow them. The bird spoke in a thick and very harsh voice, and, what was more remarkable still, with a distinct and extremely peculiar North Country accent. "In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second," he blurted out, viciously, with an angry look at the Frenchman, "I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master--" "Oh, hush, hush!" Muriel cried, unable to catch the parrot's precious words through the emulous echo of the Frenchman's music. "Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master--go on, Polly."
"Perruque blonde Et collet noir," the Frenchman repeated, with a half-offended voice, finishing his stanza.
But just as he stopped, Methuselah stopped too, and, throwing back his head in the air with a triumphant look, stared hard at his vanquished and silenced opponent out of those blinking gray eyes of his. "I thought I'd be too much for you!" he seemed to say, wrathfully.
"Whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master," Muriel suggested again, all agog with excitement. "Go on, good bird! Go on, pretty Polly."
But Methuselah was evidently put off the scent now by the unseasonable interruption. Instead of continuing, he threw back his head a second time with a triumphant air and laughed aloud boisterously. "Pretty Polly," he cried. "Pretty Polly wants a nut. Tu-Kila-Kila maroo! Pretty Poll! Pretty Polly!"
"Sing again, for Heaven's sake!" Felix exclaimed, in a profoundly agitated mood, explaining briefly to the Frenchman the full significance of the words Methuselah had just begun to utter.
The Frenchman struck up his tune afresh to give the bird a start; but all to no avail. Methuselah was evidently in no humor for talking just then. He listened with a callous, uncritical air, bringing his white eyelids down slowly and sleepily over his bleared gray eyes. Then he nodded his head slowly. "No use," the Frenchman murmured, pursing his lips up gravely. "The bird won't talk. It's going off to sleep now. Methuselah gets visibly older every day, monsieur and mademoiselle. You are only just in time to catch his last accents."
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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23
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A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD.
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Early next morning, as Felix lay still in his hut, dozing, and just vaguely conscious of a buzz of a mosquito close to his ear, he was aroused by a sudden loud cry outside--a cry that called his native name three times, running: "O King of the Rain, King of the Rain, King of the Rain, awake! High time to be up! The King of the Birds sends you health and greeting!"
Felix rose at once; and his Shadow, rising before him, and unbolting the loose wooden fastener of the door, went out in haste to see who called beyond the white taboo-line of their sacred precincts.
A native woman, tall, lithe, and handsome, stood there in the full light of morning, beckoning. A strange glow of hatred gleamed in her large gray eyes. Her shapely brown bosom heaved and panted heavily. Big beads glistened moistly on her smooth, high brow. It was clear she had run all the way in haste. She was deeply excited and full of eager anxiety.
"Why, what do you want here so early, Ula?" the Shadow asked, in surprise--for it was indeed she. "How have you slipped away, as soon as the sun is risen, from the sacred hut of Tu-Kila-Kila?"
Ula's gray eyes flashed angry fire as she answered. "He has beaten me again," she cried, in revengeful tones; "see the weals on my back! See my arms and shoulders! He has drawn blood from my wounds. He is the most hateful of gods. I should love to kill him. Therefore I slipped away from him with the early dawn and came to consult with his enemy, the King of the Birds, because I heard the words that the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who pervade the world, report to their master. The Eyes have told him that the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, and the King of the Birds are plotting together in secret against Tu-Kila-Kila. When I heard that, I was glad; I went to the King of the Birds to warn him of his danger; and the King of the Birds, concerned for your safety, has sent me in haste to ask his brother gods to go at once to him."
In a minute Felix was up and had called out Mali from the neighboring hut. "Tell Missy Queenie," he cried, "to come with me to see the man-a-oui-oui! The man-a-oui-oui has sent me for us to come. She must make great haste. He wants us immediately."
With a word and a sign to Toko, Ula glided away stealthily, with the cat-like tread of the native Polynesian woman, back to her hated husband.
Felix went out to the door and heliographed with his bright metal plate, turned on the Frenchman's hill, "What is it?"
In a moment the answer flashed back, word by word, "Come quick, if you want to hear. Methuselah is reciting!"
A few seconds later Muriel emerged from her hut, and the two Europeans, closely followed, as always, by their inseparable Shadows, took the winding side-path that led through the jungle by a devious way, avoiding the front of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple, to the Frenchman's cottage.
They found M. Peyron very much excited, partly by Ula's news of Tu-Kila-Kila's attitude, but more still by Methuselah's agitated condition. "The whole night through, my dear friends," he cried, seizing their hands, "that bird has been chattering, chattering, chattering. _Oh, mon Dieu, quel oiseau! _ It seems as though the words heard yesterday from mademoiselle had struck some lost chord in the creature's memory. But he is also very feeble. I can see that well. His garrulity is the garrulity of old age in its last flickering moments. He mumbles and mutters. He chuckles to himself. If you don't hear his message now and at once, it's my solemn conviction you will never hear it."
He led them out to the aviary, where Methuselah, in effect, was sitting on his perch, most tremulous and woebegone. His feathers shuddered visibly; he could no longer preen himself. "Listen to what he says," the Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. "It is your last, last chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah's aid, now is, without doubt, the proper moment to unravel it."
Muriel put out her hand and stroked the bird gently. "Pretty Poll," she said, soothingly, in a sympathetic voice. "Pretty Poll! Poor Poll! Was he ill! Was he suffering?"
At the sound of those familiar words, unheard so long till yesterday, the parrot took her finger in his beak once more, and bit it with the tenderness of his kind in their softer moments. Then he threw back his head with a sort of mechanical twist, and screamed out at the top of his voice, for the last time on earth, his mysterious message: "Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! Death to all arrant knaves and roundheads!
"In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island, called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry. In which wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners, whereof I am one, who in God's good providence swam safely through an exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island. There my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela. But I, myself, having through God's grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the post which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this bird, my mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover."
Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked his eyes wearily.
"What does he say?" the Frenchman began, eager to know the truth. But Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of the bird's discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning finger, and then laid it on his lips in mute injunction. Methuselah threw back his head at that and laughed aloud. "God save the king!" he cried again, in a still feebler way, "and to hell with all papists!"
It was strange how they all hung on the words of that unconscious messenger from a dead and gone age, who himself knew nothing of the import of the words he was uttering. Methuselah laughed at their earnestness, shook his head once or twice, and seemed to think to himself. Then he remembered afresh the point he had broken off at.
"More fully discover. For seven years have I now lived on this island, never having seen or h'ard Christian face or voice; and at the end of that time, feeling my health feail, and being apprehensive lest any of my fellow-countrymen should hereafter suffer the same fate as I have done, I began to teach this parrot his message, a few words at a time, impressing it duly and fully on his memory.
"Larn, then, O wayfarer, that the people of Boo Parry are most arrant gentiles, heathens, and carribals. And this, as I discover, is the nature and method of their vile faith. They hold that the gods are each and several incarnate in some one particular human being. This human being they worship and reverence with all ghostly respect as his incarnation. And chiefly, above all, do they revere the great god Too-Keela-Keela, whose representative (may the Lord in Heaven forgive me for the same) I myself am at this present speaking. Having thus, for my sins, attained to that impious honor.
"God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! To hell with all papists!
"It is the fashion of this people to hold that their gods must always be strong and lusty. For they argue to themselves thus: that the continuance of the rain must needs depend upon the vigor and subtlety of its Soul, the rain-god. So the continuance and fruitfulness of the trees and plants which yield them food must needs depend upon the health of the tree-god. And the life of the world, and the light of the sun, and the well-being of all things that in them are, must depend upon the strength and cunning of the high god of all, Too-Keela-Keela. Hence they take great care and woorship of their gods, surrounding them with many rules which they call Taboo, and restricting them as to what they shall eat, and what drink, and wherewithal they shall seemly clothe themselves. For they think that if the King of the Rain at' anything that might cause the colick, or like humor or distemper, the weather will thereafter be stormy and tempestuous; but so long as the King of the Rain fares well and retains his health, so long will the weather over their island of Boo Parry be clear and prosperous.
"Furthermore, as I have larned from their theologians, being myself, indeed, the greatest of their gods, it is evident that they may not let any god die, lest that department of nature over which he presideth should wither away and feail, as it were, with him. But reasonably no care that mortal man can exercise will prevent the possibility of their god--seeing he is but one of themselves--growing old and feeble and dying at last. To prevent which calamity, these gentile folk have invented (as I believe by the aid and device of Sathan) this horrid and most unnatural practice. The man-god must be killed so soon as he showeth in body or mind that his native powers are beginning to feail. And it is necessary that he be killed, according to their faith, in this ensuing fashion.
"If the man-god were to die slowly by a death in the course of nature, the ways of the world might be stopped altogether. Hence these savages catch the soul of their god, as it were, ere it grow old and feeble, and transfer it betimes, by a magic device, to a suitable successor. And surely, they say, this suitable successor can be none other than him that is able to take it from him. This, then, is their horrid counsel and device--that each one of their gods should kill his antecessor. In doing thus, he taketh the old god's life and soul, which thereupon migrates and dwells within him. And by this tenure--may Heaven be merciful to me, a sinner--do I, Nathaniel Cross, of the county of Doorham, now hold this dignity of Too-Keela-Keela, having slain, therefor, in just quarrel, my antecessor in the high godship."
As he reached these words Methuselah paused, and choked in his throat slightly. The mere mechanical effort of continuing the speech he had learned by heart two hundred years before, and repeated so often since that it had become part of his being, was now almost too much for him. The Frenchman was right. They were only just in time. A few days later, and the secret would have died with the bird that preserved it.
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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24
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AN UNFINISHED TALE.
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For a minute or two Methuselah mumbled inarticulately to himself. Then, to their intense discomfiture, he began once more: "In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross--" "Oh, this will never do," Felix cried. "We haven't got yet to the secret at all. Muriel, do try to set him right. He must waste no breath. We can't afford now to let him go all over it."
Muriel stretched out her hand and soothed the bird gently as before. "Having slain, therefore, my predecessor in the high godship," she suggested, in the same singsong voice as the parrot's.
To her immense relief, Methuselah took the hint with charming docility.
"In the high godship," he went on, mechanically, where he had stopped. "And this here is the manner whereby I obtained it. The Too-Keela-Keela from time to time doth generally appoint any castaway stranger that comes to the island to the post of Korong--that is to say, an annual god or victim. For, as the year doth renew itself at each change of seasons, so do these carribals in their gentilisme believe and hold that the gods of the seasons--to wit, the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, the Lord of Green Leaves, the King of Fruits, and others--must needs be sleain and renewed at the diverse solstices. Now, it so happened that I, on my arrival in the island, was appointed Korong, and promoted to the post of King of the Rain, having a native woman assigned me as Queen of the Clouds, with whom I might keep company. This woman being, after her kind, enamored of me, and anxious to escape her own fate, to be sleain by my side, did betray to me that secret which they call in their tongue the Great Taboo, and which had been betrayed to herself in turn by a native man, her former lover. For the men are instructed in these things in the mysteries when they coom of age, but not the women.
"And the Great Taboo is this: No man can becoom a Too-Keela-Keela unless he first sleay the man in whom the high god is incarnate for the moment. But in order that he may sleay him, he must also himself be a full Korong, only those persons who are already gods being capable for the highest post in their hierarchy; even as with ourselves, none but he that is a deacon may become a priest, and none but he that is a priest may be made a bishop. For this reason, then, the Too-Keela-Keela prefers to advance a stranger to the post of Korong, seeing that such a person will not have been initiated in the mysteries of the island, and therefore will not be aware of those sundry steps which must needs be taken of him that would inherit the godship.
"Furthermore, even a Korong can only obtain the highest rank of Too-Keela-Keela if he order all things according to the forms and ceremonies of the Taboo parfectly. For these gentiles are very careful of the levitical parts of their religion, deriving the same, as it seems to me, from the polity of the Hebrews, the fame of whose tabernacle must sure have gone forth through the ends of the woorld, and the knowledge of whose temple must have been yet more wide dispersed by Solomon, his ships, when they came into these parts to fetch gold from Ophir. And the ceremony is, that before any man may sleay the 'arthly tenement of Too-Keela-Keela and inherit his soul, which is in very truth, as they do think the god himself, he must needs fight with the person in whom Too-Keela-Keela doth then dwell, and for this reason: If the holder of the soul can defend himself in fight, then it is clear that his strength is not one whit decayed, nor is his vigor feailing; nor yet has his assailant been able to take his soul from him. But if the Korong in open fight do sleay the person in whom Too-Keela-Keela dwells, he becometh at once a Too-Keela-Keela himself--that is to say, in their tongue, the Lord of Lords, because he hath taken the life of him that preceded him.
"Yet so intricate is the theology and practice of these loathsome savages, that not even now have I explained it in full to you, O shipwrecked mariner, for your aid and protection. For a Korong, though it be a part of his privilege to contend, if he will, with Too-Keela-Keela for the high godship and princedom of this isle, may only do so at certain appointed times, places, and seasons. Above all things, it is necessary that he should first find out the hiding-place of the soul of Too-Keela-Keela. For though the Too-Keela-Keela for the time that is, be animated by the god, yet, for greater security, he doth not keep his soul in his own body, but, being above all things the god of fruitfulness and generation, who causes women to bear children, and the plant called taro to bring forth its increase, he keepeth his soul in the great sacred tree behind his temple, which is thus the Father of All Trees, and the chiefest abode of the great god Too-Keela-Keela.
"Nor does Too-Keela-Keela's soul abide equally in every part of this aforesaid tree; but in a certain bough of it, resembling a mistletoe, which hath yellow leaves, and, being broken off, groweth ever green and yellow afresh; which is the central mystery of all their Sathanic religion. For in this very bough--easy to be discerned by the eye among the green leaves of the tree--" the bird paused and faltered.
Muriel leaned forward in an agony of excitement. "Among the green leaves of the tree--" she went on soothing him.
Her voice seemed to give the parrot a fresh impulse to speak. " --Is contained, as it were," he continued, feebly, "the divine essence itself, the soul and life of Too-Keela-Keela. Whoever, then, being a full Korong, breaks this off, hath thus possessed himself of the very god in person. This, however, he must do by exceeding stealth; for Too-Keela-Keela, or rather the man that bears that name, being the guardian and defender of the great god, walks ever up and down, by day and by night, in exceeding great cunning, armed with a spear and with a hatchet of stone, around the root of the tree, watching jealously over the branch which is, as he believes, his own soul and being. I, therefore, being warned of the Taboo by the woman that was my consort, did craftily, near the appointed time for my own death, creep out of my hut, and my consort, having induced one of the wives of Too-Keela-Keela to make him drunken with too much of that intoxicating drink which they do call kava, did proceed--did proceed--did proceed--In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second--" Muriel bent forward once more in an agony of suspense. "Oh, go on, good Poll!" she cried. "Go on. Remember it. Did proceed to--" The single syllable helped Methuselah's memory. " --Did proceed to stealthily pluck the bough, and, having shown the same to Fire and Water, the guardians of the Taboo, did boldly challenge to single combat the bodily tenement of the god, with spear and hatchet, provided for me in accordance with ancient custom by Fire and Water. In which combat, Heaven mercifully befriending me against my enemy, I did coom out conqueror; and was thereupon proclaimed Too-Keela-Keela myself, with ceremonies too many and barbarous to mention, lest I raise your gorge at them. But that which is most important to tell you for your own guidance and safety, O mariner, is this--that being the sole and only end I have in imparting this history to so strange a messenger--that after you have by craft plucked the sacred branch, and by force of arms over-cootn Too-Keela-Keela, it is by all means needful, whether you will or not, that submitting to the hateful and gentile custom of this people--of this people--Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save--God save the king! Death to the nineteenth year of the reign of all arrant knaves and roundheads."
He dropped his head on his breast, and blinked his white eyelids more feebly than ever. His strength was failing him fast. The Soul of all dead parrots was wearing out. M. Peyron, who had stood by all this time, not knowing in any way what might be the value of the bird's disclosures, came forward and stroked poor Methuselah with his caressing hand. But Methuselah was incapable now of any further effort. He opened his blind eyes sleepily for the last, last time, and stared around him with a blank stare at the fading universe. "God save the king!" he screamed aloud with a terrible gasp, true to his colors still. "God save the king, and to hell with all papists!"
Then he fell off his perch, stone dead, on the ground. They were never to hear the conclusion of that strange, quaint message from a forgotten age to our more sceptical century.
Felix looked at Muriel, and Muriel looked at Felix. They could hardly contain themselves with awe and surprise. The parrot's words were so human, its speech was so real to them, that they felt as though the English Tu-Kila-Kila of two hundred years back had really and truly been speaking to them from that perch; it was a human creature indeed that lay dead before them. Felix raised the warm body from the ground with positive reverence. "We will bury it decently," he said in French, turning to M. Peyron. "He was a plucky bird, indeed, and he has carried out his master's intentions nobly."
As they spoke, a little rustling in the jungle hard by attracted their attention. Felix turned to look. A stealthy brown figure glided away in silence through the tangled brushwood. M. Peyron started. "We are observed, monsieur," he said. "We must look out for squalls! It is one of the Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila!"
"Let him do his worst!" Felix answered. "We know his secret now, and can protect ourselves against him. Let us return to the shade, monsieur, and talk this all over. Methuselah has indeed given us something to-day very serious to think about."
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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25
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TU-KILA-KILA STRIKES.
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And yet, when all was said and done, knowledge of Tu-Kila-Kila's secret didn't seem to bring Felix and Muriel much nearer a solution of their own great problems than they had been from the beginning. In spite of all Methuselah had told them, they were as far off as ever from securing their escape, or even from the chance of sighting an English steamer.
This last was still the main hope and expectation of all three Europeans. M. Peyron, who was a bit of a mathematician, had accurately calculated the time, from what Felix told him, when the Australasian would pass again on her next homeward voyage; and, when that time arrived, it was their united intention to watch night and day for the faintest glimmer of her lights, or the faintest wreath of her smoke on the far eastern horizon. They had ventured to confide their design to all three of their Shadows; and the Shadows, attached by the kindness to which they were so little accustomed among their own people, had in every case agreed to assist them with the canoe, if occasion served them. So for a time the two doomed victims subsided into their accustomed calm of mingled hope and despair, waiting patiently for the expected arrival of the much-longed-for Australasian.
If she took that course once, why not a second time? And if ever she hove in sight, might they not hope, after all, to signal to her with their rudely constructed heliograph, and stop her?
As for Methuselah's secret, there was only one way, Felix thought, in which it could now prove of any use to them. When the actual day of their doom drew nigh, he might, perhaps, be tempted to try the fate which Nathaniel Cross, of Sunderland, had successfully courted. That might gain them at least a little respite. Though even so he hardly knew what good it could do him to be elevated for a while into the chief god of the island. It might not even avail him to save Muriel's life; for he did not doubt that when the awful day itself had actually come the natives would do their best to kill her in spite of him, unless he anticipated them by fulfilling his own terrible, yet merciful, promise.
Week after week went by--month after month passed--and the date when the Australasian might reasonably be expected to reappear drew nearer and nearer. They waited and trembled. At last, a few days before the time M. Peyron had calculated, as Felix was sitting under the big shady tree in his garden one morning, while Muriel, now worn out with hope deferred, lay within her hut alone with Mali, a sound of tom-toms and beaten palms was heard on the hill-path. The natives around fell on their faces or fled. It announced the speedy approach of Tu-Kila-Kila.
By this time both the castaways had grown comparatively accustomed to that hideous noise, and to the hateful presence which it preceded and heralded. A dozen temple attendants tripped on either side down the hillpath, to guard him, clapping their hands in a barbaric measure as they went; Fire and Water, in the midst, supported and flanked the divine umbrella. Felix rose from his seat with very little ceremony, indeed, as the great god crossed the white taboo-line of his precincts, followed only beyond the limit by Fire and Water.
Tu-Kila-Kila was in his most insolent vein. He glanced around with a horrid light of triumph dancing visibly in his eyes. It was clear he had come, intent upon some grand theatrical _coup_. He meant to take the white-faced stranger by surprise this time. "Good-morning, O King of the Rain," he exclaimed, in a loud voice and with boisterous familiarity. "How do you like your outlook now? Things are getting on. Things are getting on. The end of your rule is drawing very near, isn't it? Before long I must make the seasons change. I must make my sun turn. I must twist round my sky. And then, I shall need a new Korong instead of you, O pale-faced one!"
Felix looked back at him without moving a muscle.
"I am well," he answered shortly, restraining his anger. "The year turns round whether you will or not. You are right that the sun will soon begin to move southward on its path again. But many things may happen to all of us meanwhile. _I_ am not afraid of you."
As he spoke, he drew his knife, and opened the blade, unostentatiously, but firmly. If the worst were really coming now, sooner than he expected, he would at least not forget his promise to Muriel.
Tu-Kila-Kila smiled a hateful and ominous smile. "I am a great god," he said, calmly, striking an attitude as was his wont. "Hear how my people clap their hands in my honor! I order all things. I dispose the course of nature in heaven and earth. If I look at a cocoa-nut tree, it dies; if I glance at a bread-fruit, it withers away. We will see before long whether or not you are afraid of me. Meanwhile, O Korong, I have come to claim my dues at your hands. Prepare for your fate. To-morrow the Queen of the Clouds must be sealed my bride. Fetch her out, that I may speak with her. I have come to tell her so."
It was a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and it fell with terrible effect on Felix. For a moment the knife trembled in his grasp with an almost irresistible impulse. He could hardly restrain himself, as he heard those horrible, incredible words, and saw the loathsome smirk on the speaker's face by which they were accompanied, from leaping then and there at the savage's throat, and plunging his blade to the haft into the vile creature's body. But by a violent effort he mastered his indignation and wrath for the present. Planting himself full in front of Tu-Kila-Kila, and blocking the way to the door of that sacred English girl's hut--oh, how horrible it was to him even to think of her purity being contaminated by the vile neighborhood, for one minute, of that loathsome monster! He looked full into the wretch's face, and answered very distinctly, in low, slow tones, "If you dare to take one step toward the place where that lady now rests, if you dare to move your foot one inch nearer, if you dare to ask to see her face again, I will plunge the knife hilt-deep into your vile heart, and kill you where you stand without one second's deliberation. Now you hear my words and you know what I mean. My weapon is keener and fiercer than any you Polynesians ever saw. Repeat those words once more, and by all that's true and holy, before they're out of your mouth I leap upon you and stab you."
Tu-Kila-Kila drew back in sudden surprise. He was unaccustomed to be so bearded in his own sacred island. "Well, I shall claim her to-morrow," he faltered out, taken aback by Felix's unexpected energy. He paused for a second, then he went on more slowly: "To-morrow I will come with all my people to claim my bride. This afternoon they will bring her mats of grass and necklets of nautilus shell to deck her for her wedding, as becomes Tu-Kila-Kila's chosen one. The young maids of Boupari will adorn her for her lord, in the accustomed dress of Tu-Kila-Kila's wives. They will clap their hands; they will sing the marriage song. Then early in the morning I will come to fetch her--and woe to him who strives to prevent me!"
Felix looked at him long, with a fixed and dogged look.
"What has made you think of this devilry?" he asked at last, still grasping his knife hard, and half undecided whether or not to use it. "You have invented all these ideas. You have no claim, even in the horrid customs of your savage country, to demand such a sacrifice."
Tu-Kila-Kila laughed loud, a laugh of triumphant and discordant merriment. "Ha, ha!" he cried, "you do not understand our customs, and will you teach _me_, the very high god, the guardian of the laws and practices of Boupari? You know nothing; you are as a little child. I am absolute wisdom. With every Korong, this is always our rule. Till the moon is full, on the last month before we offer up the sacrifice, the Queen of the Clouds dwells apart with her Shadow in her own new temple. So our fathers decreed it. But at the full of the moon, when the day has come, the usage is that Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, confers upon her the honor of making her his bride. It is a mighty honor. The feast is great. Blood flows like water. For seven days and nights, then, she lives with Tu-Kila-Kila in his sacred abode, the threshold of Heaven; she eats of human flesh; she tastes human blood; she drinks abundantly of the divine kava. At the end of that time, in accordance with the custom of our fathers, those great dead gods, Tu-Kila-Kila performs the high act of sacrifice. He puts on his mask of the face of a shark, for he is holy and cruel; he brings forth the Queen of the Clouds before the eyes of all his people, attired in her wedding robes, and made drunk with kava. Then he gashes her with knives; he offers her up to Heaven that accepted her; and the King of the Rain he offers after her; and all the people eat of their flesh, Korong! and drink of their blood, so that the body of gods and goddesses may dwell within all of them. And when all is done, the high god chooses a new king and queen at his will (for he is a mighty god), who rule for six moons more, and then are offered up, at the end, in like fashion."
As he spoke, the ferocious light that gleamed in the savage's eye made Felix positively mad with anger. But he answered nothing directly. "Is this so?" he asked, turning for confirmation to Fire and Water. "Is it the custom of Boupari that Tu-Kila-Kila should wed the Queen of the Clouds seven days before the date appointed for her sacrifice?"
The King of Fire and the King of Water, tried guardians of the etiquette of Tu-Kila-Kila's court, made answer at once with one accord, "It is so, O King of the Rain. Your lips have said it. Tu-Kila-Kila speaks the solemn truth. He is a very great god. Such is the custom of Boupari."
Tu-Kila-Kila laughed his triumph in harsh, savage outbursts.
But Felix drew back for a second, irresolute. At last he stood face to face with the absolute need for immediate action. Now was almost the moment when he must redeem his terrible promise to Muriel. And yet, even so, there was still one chance of life, one respite left. The mystic yellow bough on the sacred banyan! the Great Taboo! the wager of battle with Tu-Kila-Kila! Quick as lightning it all came up in his excited brain. Time after time, since he heard Methuselah's strange message from the grave, had he passed Tu-Kila-Kila's temple enclosure and looked up with vague awe at that sacred parasite that grew so conspicuously in a fork of the branches. It was easy to secure it, if no man guarded. There still remained one night. In that one short night he must do his best--and worst. If all then failed, he must die himself with Muriel!
For two seconds he hesitated. It was hateful even to temporize with so hideous a proposition. But for Muriel's sake, for her dear life's sake, he must meet these savages with guile for guile. "If it be, indeed, the custom of Boupari," he answered back, with pale and trembling lips, "and if I, one man, am powerless to prevent it, I will give your message, myself, to the Queen of the Clouds, and you may send, as you say, your wedding decorations. But come what will--mark this--you shall not see her yourself to-day. You shall not speak to her. There I draw a line--so, with my stick in the dust, if you try to advance one step beyond, I stab you to the heart. Wait till to-morrow to take your prey. Give me one more night. Great god as you are, if you are wise, you will not drive an angry man to utter desperation."
Tu-Kila-Kila looked with a suspicious side glance at the gleaming steel blade Felix still fingered tremulously. Though Boupari was one of those rare and isolated small islands unvisited as yet by European trade, he had, nevertheless, heard enough of the sailing gods to know that their skill was deep and their weapons very dangerous. It would be foolish to provoke this man to wrath too soon. To-morrow, when taboo was removed, and all was free license, he would come when he willed and take his bride, backed up by the full force of his assembled people. Meanwhile, why provoke a brother god too far? After all, in a little more than a week from now the pale-faced Korong would be eaten and digested!
"Very well," he said, sulkily, but still with the sullen light of revenge gleaming bright in his eye. "Take my message to the queen. You may be my herald. Tell her what honor is in store for her--to be first the wife and then the meat of Tu-Kila-Kila! She is a very fair woman. I like her well. I have longed for her for months. Tomorrow, at the early dawn, by the break of day, I will come with all my people and take her home by main force to me."
He looked at Felix and scowled, an angry scowl of revenge. Then, as he turned and walked away, under cover of the great umbrella, with its dangling pendants on either side, the temple attendants clapped their hands in unison. Fire and Water marched slow and held the umbrella over him. As he disappeared in the distance, and the sound of his tom-toms grew dim on the hills, Toko, the Shadow, who had lain flat, trembling, on his face in the hut while the god was speaking, came out and looked anxiously and fearfully after him.
"The time is ripe," he said, in a very low voice to Felix. "A Korong may strike. All the people of Boupari murmur among themselves. They say this fellow has held the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila within himself too long. He waxes insolent. They think it is high time the great God of Heaven should find before long some other fleshly tabernacle."
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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26
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A RASH RESOLVE.
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The rest of that day was a time of profound and intense anxiety. Felix and Muriel remained alone in their huts, absorbed in plans of escape, but messengers of many sorts from chiefs and gods kept continually coming to them. The natives evidently regarded it as a period of preparation. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila surrounded their precinct; yet Felix couldn't help noticing that they seemed in many ways less watchful than of old, and that they whispered and conferred very much in a mysterious fashion with the people of the village. More than once Toko shook his head, sagely, "If only any one dared break the Great Taboo," he said, with some terror on his face, "our people would be glad. It would greatly please them. They are tired of this Tu-Kila-Kila. He has held the god in his breast far, far too long. They would willingly see some other in place of him."
Before noon, the young girls of the village, bringing native mats and huge strings of nautilus shells, trooped up to the hut, like bridesmaids, with flowers in their hands, to deck Muriel for her approaching wedding. Before them they carried quantities of red and brown tappa-cloth and very fine net-work, the dowry to be presented by the royal bride to her divine husband. Within the hut, they decked out the Queen of the Clouds with garlands of flowers and necklets of shells, in solemn native fashion, bewailing her fate all the time to a measured dirge in their own language. Muriel could see that their sympathy, though partly conventional, was largely real as well. Many of the young girls seized her hand convulsively from time to time, and kissed it with genuine feeling. The gentle young English woman had won their savage hearts by her purity and innocence. "Poor thing, poor thing," they said, stroking her hand tenderly. "She is too good for Korong! Too good for Tu-Kila-Kila! If only we knew the Great Taboo like the men, we would tell her everything. She is too good to die. We are sorry she is to be sacrificed!"
But when all their preparations were finished, the chief among them raised a calabash with a little scented oil in it, and poured a few drops solemnly on Muriel's head. "Oh, great god!" she said, in her own tongue, "we offer this sacrifice, a goddess herself, to you. We obey your words. You are very holy. We will each of us eat a portion of her flesh at your feast. So give us good crops, strong health, many children!"
"What does she say?" Muriel asked, pale and awestruck, of Mali.
Mali translated the words with perfect _sang-froid_. At that awful sound Muriel drew back, chill and cold to the marrow. How inconceivable was the state of mind of these terrible people! They were really sorry for her; they kissed her hand with fervor; and yet they deliberately and solemnly proposed to eat her!
Toward evening the young girls at last retired, in regular order, to the clapping of hands, and Felix was left alone with Muriel and the Shadows.
Already he had explained to Muriel what he intended to do; and Muriel, half dazed with terror and paralyzed by these awful preparations, consented passively. "But how if you never come back, Felix?" she cried at last, clinging to him passionately.
Felix looked at her with a fixed look. "I have thought of that," he said. "M. Peyron, to whom I sent a message by flashes, has helped me in my difficulty. This bowl has poison in it. Peyron sent it to me to-day. He prepared it himself from the root of the kava bean. If by sunrise to-morrow you have heard no news, drink it off at once. It will instantly kill you. You shall _not_ fall alive into that creature's clutches."
By slow degrees the evening wore on, and night approached--the last night that remained to them. Felix had decided to make his attempt about one in the morning. The moon was nearly full now, and there would be plenty of light. Supposing he succeeded, if they gained nothing else, they would gain at least a day or two's respite.
As dusk set in, and they sat by the door of the hut, they were all surprised to see Ula approach the precinct stealthily through the jungle, accompanied by two of Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes, yet apparently on some strange and friendly message. She beckoned imperiously with one finger to Toko to cross the line. The Shadow rose, and without one word of explanation went out to speak to her. The woman gave her message in short, sharp sentences. "We have found out all," she said, breathing hard. "Fire and Water have learned it. But Tu-Kila-Kila himself knows nothing. We have found out that the King of the Rain has discovered the secret of the Great Taboo. He heard it from the Soul of all dead parrots. Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes saw, and learned, and understood. But they said nothing to Tu-Kila-Kila. For my counsel was wise; I planned that they should not, with Fire and Water. Fire and Water and all the people of Boupari think, with me, the time has come that there should arise among us a new Tu-Kila-Kila. This one let his blood fall out upon the dust of the ground. His luck has gone. We have need of another."
"Then for what have you come?" Toko asked, all awestruck. It was terrible to him for a woman to meddle in such high matters.
"I have come," Ula answered, laying her hand on his arm, and holding her face close to his with profound solemnity--"I have come to say to the King of the Rain, 'Whatever you do, that do quickly.' To-night I will engage to keep Tu-Kila-Kila in his temple. He shall see nothing. He shall hear nothing. I know not the Great Taboo; but I know from him this much--that if by wile or guile I keep him alone in his temple to-night, the King of the Rain may fight with him in single combat; and if the King of the Rain conquers in the battle, he becomes himself the home of the great deity."
She nodded thrice, with her hands on her forehead, and withdrew as stealthily as she had come through the jungle. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, falling into line, remained behind, and kept watch upon the huts with the closest apparent scrutiny.
More than ever they were hemmed in by mystery on mystery.
The Shadow went back and reported to Felix. Felix, turning it over in his own mind, wondered and debated. Was this true, or a trap to lure him to destruction?
As the night wore on, and the hour drew nigh, Muriel sat beside her friend and lover, in blank despair and agony. How could she ever allow him to leave her now? How could she venture to remain alone with Mali in her hut in this last extremity? It was awful to be so girt with mysterious enemies. "I must go with you, Felix! I must go, too!" she cried over and over again. "I daren't remain behind with all these awful men. And then, if he kills either of us, he will kill us at least both together."
But Felix knew he might do nothing of the sort. A more terrible chance was still in reserve. He might spare Muriel. And against that awful possibility he felt it his duty now to guard at all hazard.
"No, Muriel," he said, kissing her, and holding her pale hand, "I must go alone. You can't come with me. If I return, we will have gained at least a respite, till the Australasian may turn up. If I don't, you will at any rate have strength of mind left to swallow the poison, before Tu-Kila-Kila comes to claim you."
Hour after hour passed by slowly, and Felix and the Shadow watched the stars at the door, to know when the hour for the attempt had arrived. The eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, peering silent from just beyond the line, saw them watching all the time, but gave no sign or token of disapproval. With heads bent low, and tangled hair about their faces, they stood like statues, watching, watching sullenly. Were they only waiting till he moved, Felix wondered; and would they then hasten off by short routes through the jungle to warn their master of the impending conflict?
At last the hour came when Felix felt sure there was the greatest chance of Tu-Kila-Kila sleeping soundly in his hut, and forgetting the defence of the sacred bough on the holy banyan-tree. He rose from his seat with a gesture for silence, and moved forward to Muriel. The poor girl flung herself, all tears, into his arms. "Oh, Felix, Felix," she cried, "redeem your promise now! Kill us both here together, and then, at least, I shall never be separated from you! It wouldn't be wrong! It can't be wrong! We would surely be forgiven if we did it only to escape falling into the hands of these terrible savages!"
Felix clasped her to his bosom with a faltering heart. "No, Muriel," he said, slowly. "Not yet. Not yet. I must leave no opening on earth untried by which I can possibly or conceivably save you. It's as hard for me to leave you here alone as for you to be left. But for your own dear sake, I must steel myself. I must do it."
He kissed her many times over. He wiped away her tears. Then, with a gentle movement, he untwined her clasping arms. "You must let me go, my own darling," he said, "You must let me go, without crossing the border. If you pass beyond the taboo-line to-night, Heaven only knows what, perhaps, may happen to you. We must give these people no handle of offence. Good-night, Muriel, my own heart's wife; and if I never come back, then good-by forever."
She clung to his arm still. He disentangled himself, gently. The Shadow rose at the same moment, and followed in silence to the open door. Muriel rushed after them, wildly. "Oh, Felix, Felix, come back," she cried, bursting into wild floods of hot, fierce tears. "Come back and let me die with you! Let me die! Let me die with you!"
Felix crossed the white line without one word of reply, and went forth into the night, half unmanned by this effort. Muriel sank, where she stood, into Mali's arms. The girl caught her and supported her. But before she had fainted quite away, Muriel had time vaguely to see and note one significant fact. The Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, who stood watching the huts with lynx-like care, nodded twice to Toko, the Shadow, as he passed between them; then they stealthily turned and dogged the two men's footsteps afar off in the jungle.
Muriel was left by herself in the hut, face to face with Mali.
"Let us pray, Mali," she cried, seizing her Shadow's arm.
And Mali, moved suddenly by some half-obliterated impulse, exclaimed in concert, in a terrified voice, "Let us pray to Methodist God in heaven!"
For her life, too, hung on the issue of that rash endeavor.
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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27
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A STRANGE ALLY.
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In Tu-Kila-Kila's temple-hut, meanwhile, the jealous, revengeful god, enshrined among his skeletons, was having in his turn an anxious and doubtful time of it. Ever since his sacred blood had stained the dust of earth by the Frenchman's cottage and in his own temple, Tu-Kila-Kila, for all his bluster, had been deeply stirred and terrified in his inmost soul by that unlucky portent. A savage, even if he be a god, is always superstitious. Could it be that his own time was, indeed, drawing nigh? That he, who had remorselessly killed and eaten so many hundreds of human victims, was himself to fall a prey to some more successful competitor? Had the white-faced stranger, the King of the Rain, really learned the secrets of the Great Taboo from the Soul of all dead parrots? Did that mysterious bird speak the tongue of these new fire-bearing Korongs, whose doom was fixed for the approaching solstice? Tu-Kila-Kila wondered and doubted. His suspicions were keen, and deeply aroused. Late that night he still lurked by the sacred banyan-tree, and when at last he retired to his own inner temple, white with the grinning skulls of the victims he had devoured, it was with strict injunctions to Fire and Water, and to his Eyes that watched there, to bring him word at once of any projected aggression on the part of the stranger.
Within the temple-hut, however, Ula awaited him. That was a pleasant change. The beautiful, supple, satin-skinned Polynesian looked more beautiful and more treacherous than ever that fateful evening. Her great brown limbs, smooth and glossy as pearl, were set off by a narrow girdle or waistband of green and scarlet leaves, twined spirally around her. Armlets of nautilus shell threw up the dainty plumpness of her soft, round forearm. A garland hung festooned across one shapely shoulder; her bosom was bare or but half hidden by the crimson hibiscus that nestled voluptuously upon it. As Tu-Kila-Kila entered, she lifted her large eyes, and, smiling, showed two even rows of pearly white teeth. "My master has come!" she cried, holding up both lissome arms with a gesture to welcome him. "The great god relaxes his care of the world for a while. All goes on well. He leaves his sun to sleep and his stars to shine, and he retires to rest on the unworthy bosom of her, his mate, his meat, that is honored to love him."
Tu-Kila-Kila was scarcely just then in a mood for dalliance. "The Queen of the Clouds comes hither to-morrow," he answered, casting a somewhat contemptuous glance at Ula's more dusky and solid charms. "I go to seek her with the wedding gifts early in the morning. For a week she shall be mine. And after that--" he lifted his tomahawk and brought it down on a huge block of wood significantly.
Ula smiled once more, that deep, treacherous smile of hers, and showed her white teeth even deeper than ever. "If my lord, the great god, rises so early to-morrow," she said, sidling up toward him voluptuously, "to seek one more bride for his sacred temple, all the more reason he should take his rest and sleep soundly to-night. Is he not a god? Are not his limbs tired? Does he not need divine silence and slumber?"
Tu-Kila-Kila pouted. "I could sleep more soundly," he said, with a snort, "if I knew what my enemy, the Korong, is doing. I have set my Eyes to watch him, yet I do not feel secure. They are not to be trusted. I shall be happier far when I have killed and eaten him." He passed his hand across his bosom with a reflective air. You have a great sense of security toward your enemy, no doubt, when you know that he slumbers, well digested, within you.
Ula raised herself on her elbow, and gazed snake-like into his face, "My lord's Eyes are everywhere," she said, reverently, with every mark of respect. "He sees and knows all things. Who can hide anything on earth from his face? Even when he is asleep, his Eyes watch well for him. Then why should the great god, the Measurer of Heaven and Earth, the King of Men, fear a white-faced stranger? To-morrow the Queen of the Clouds will be yours, and the stranger will be abased: ha, ha, he will grieve at it! To-night, Fire and Water keep guard and watch over you. Whoever would hurt you must pass through Fire and Water before he reach your door. Fire would burn, Water would drown. This is a Great Taboo. No stranger dare face it."
Tu-Kila-Kila lifted himself up in his thrasonic mood. "If he did," he cried, swelling himself, "I would shrivel him to ashes with one flash of my eyes. I would scorch him to a cinder with one stroke of my lightning."
Ula smiled again, a well-satisfied smile. She was working her man up. "Tu-Kila-Kila is great," she repeated, slowly. "All earth obeys him. All heaven fears him."
The savage took her hand with a doubtful air. "And yet," he said, toying with it, half irresolute, "when I went to the white-faced stranger's hut this morning, he did not speak fair; he answered me insolently. His words were bold. He talked to me as one talks to a man, not to a great god. Ula, I wonder if he knows my secret?"
Ula started back in well-affected horror. "A white-faced stranger from the sun know your secret, O great king!" she cried, hiding her face in a square of cloth. "See me beat my breast! Impossible! Impossible! No one of your subjects would dare to tell him so great a taboo. It would be rank blasphemy. If they did, your anger would utterly consume them!"
"That is true," Tu-Kila-Kila said, practically, "but I might not discover it. I am a very great god. My Eyes are everywhere. No corner of the world is hid from my gaze. All the concerns of heaven and earth are my care, And, therefore; sometimes, I overlook some detail."
"No man alive would dare to tell the Great Taboo!" Ula repeated, confidently. "Why, even I myself, who am the most favored of your wives, and who am permitted to bask in the light of your presence--even I, Ula--I do not know it. How much less, then, the spirit from the sun, the sailing god, the white-faced stranger!"
Tu-Kila-Kila pursed up his brow and looked preternaturally wise, as the savage loves to do. "But the parrot," he cried, "the Soul of all dead parrots! _He_ knew the secret, they say:--I taught it him myself in an ancient day, many, many years ago--when no man now living was born, save only I--in another incarnation--and _he_ may have told it. For the strangers, they say, speak the language of birds; and in the language of birds did I tell the Great Taboo to him."
Ula pooh-poohed the mighty man-god's fears. "No, no," she cried, with confidence; "he can never have told them. If he had, would not your Eyes that watch ever for all that happens on heaven or earth, have straightway reported it to you? The parrot died without yielding up the tale. Were it otherwise, Toko, who loves and worships you, would surely have told me."
The man-god puckered his brows slightly, as if he liked not the security. "Well, somehow, Ula," he said, feeling her soft brown arms with his divine hand, slowly, "I have always had my doubts since that day the Soul of all dead parrots bit me. A vicious bird! What did he mean by his bite?" He lowered his voice and looked at her fixedly. "Did not his spilling my blood portend," he asked, with a shudder of fear, "that through that ill-omened bird I, who was once Lavita, should cease to be Tu-Kila-Kila?"
Ula smiled contentedly again. To say the truth, that was precisely the interpretation she herself had put on that terrific omen. The parrot had spilled Tu-Kila-Kila's sacred blood upon the soil of earth. According to her simple natural philosophy, that was a certain sign that through the parrot's instrumentality Tu-Kila-Kila's life would be forfeited to the great eternal earth-spirit. Or, rather, the earth-spirit would claim the blood of the man Lavita, in whose body it dwelt, and would itself migrate to some new earthly tabernacle.
But for all that, she dissembled. "Great god," she cried, smiling, a benign smile, "you are tired! You are thirsty! Care for heaven and earth has wearied you out. You feel the fatigue of upholding the sun in heaven. Your arms must ache. Your thews must give under you. Drink of the soul-inspiring juice of the kava! My hands have prepared the divine cup. For Tu-Kila-Kila did I make it--fresh, pure, invigorating!"
She held the bowl to his lips with an enticing smile. Tu-Kila-Kila hesitated and glanced around him suspiciously. "What if the white-faced stranger should come to-night?" he whispered, hoarsely. "He may have discovered the Great Taboo, after all. Who can tell the ways of the world, how they come about? My people are so treacherous. Some traitor may have betrayed it to him."
"Impossible," the beautiful, snake-like woman answered, with a strong gesture of natural dissent. "And even if he came, would not kava, the divine, inspiriting drink of the gods, in which dwell the embodied souls of our fathers--would not kava make you more vigorous, strong for the fight? Would it not course through your limbs like fire? Would it not pour into your soul the divine, abiding strength of your mighty mother, the eternal earth-spirit?"
"A little," Tu-Kila-Kila said, yielding, "but not too much. Too much would stupefy me. When the spirits, that the kava-tree sucks up from the earth, are too strong within us, they overpower our own strength, so that even I, the high god--even I can do nothing."
Ula held the bowl to his lips, and enticed him to drink with her beautiful eyes. "A deep draught, O supporter of the sun in heaven," she cried, pressing his arm tenderly. "Am I not Ula? Did I not brew it for you? Am I not the chief and most favored among your women? I will sit at the door. I will watch all night. I will not close an eye. Not a footfall on the ground but my ear shall hear it."
"Do." Tu-Kila-Kila said, laconically. "I fear Fire and Water. Those gods love me not. Fain would they make me migrate into some other body. But I myself like it not. This one suits me admirably. Ula, that kava is stronger than you are used to make it."
"No, no," Ula cried, pressing it to his lips a second time, passionately. "You are a very great god. You are tired; it overcomes you. And if you sleep, I will watch. Fire and Water dare not disobey your commands. Are you not great? Your Eyes are everywhere. And I, even I, will be as one of them."
The savage gulped down a few more mouthfuls of the intoxicating liquid. Then he glanced up again suddenly with a quick, suspicious look. The cunning of his race gave him wisdom in spite of the deadly strength of the kava Ula had brewed too deep for him. With a sudden resolve, he rose and staggered out. "You are a serpent, woman!" he cried angrily, seeing the smile that lurked upon Ula's face. "To-morrow I will kill you. I will take the white woman for my bride, and she and I will feast off your carrion body. You have tried to betray me, but you are not cunning enough, not strong enough. No woman shall kill me. I am a very great god. I will not yield. I will wait by the tree. This is a trap you have set, but I do not fall into it. If the King of the Rain comes, I shall be there to meet him."
He seized his spear and hatchet and walked forth, erect, without one sign of drunkenness. Ula trembled to herself as she saw him go. She was playing a deep game. Had she given him only just enough kava to strengthen and inspire him?
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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28
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WAGER OF BATTLE.
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Felix wound his way painfully through the deep fern-brake of the jungle, by no regular path, so as to avoid exciting the alarm of the natives, and to take Tu-Kila-Kila's palace-temple from the rear, where the big tree, which overshadowed it with its drooping branches, was most easily approachable. As he and Toko crept on, bending low, through that dense tropical scrub, in deathly silence, they were aware all the time of a low, crackling sound that rang ever some paces in the rear on their trail through the forest. It was Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes, following them stealthily from afar, footstep for footstep, through the dense undergrowth of bush, and the crisp fallen leaves and twigs that snapped light beneath their footfall. What hope of success with those watchful spies, keen as beagles and cruel as bloodhounds, following ever on their track? What chance of escape for Felix and Muriel, with the cannibal man-gods toils laid round on every side to insure their destruction?
Silently and cautiously the two men groped their way on through the dark gloom of the woods, in spite of their mute pursuers. The moonlight flickered down athwart the trackless soil as they went; the hum of insects innumerable droned deep along the underbrush. Now and then the startled scream of a night jar broke the monotony of the buzz that was worse than silence; owls boomed from the hollow trees, and fireflies darted dim through the open spaces. At last they emerged upon the cleared area of the temple. There Felix, without one moment's hesitation, with a firm and resolute tread, stepped over the white coral line that marked the taboo of the great god's precincts. That was a declaration of open war; he had crossed the Rubicon of Tu-Kila-Kila's empire. Toko stood trembling on the far side; none might pass that mystic line unbidden and live, save the Korong alone who could succeed in breaking off the bough "with yellow leaves, resembling a mistletoe," of which Methuselah, the parrot, had told Felix and Muriel, and so earn the right to fight for his life with the redoubted and redoubtable Tu-Kila-Kila.
As he stepped over the taboo-line, Felix was aware of many native eyes fixed stonily upon him from the surrounding precinct. Clearly they were awaiting him. Yet not a soul gave the alarm; that in itself would have been to break taboo. Every man or woman among the temple attendants within that charmed circle stood on gaze curiously. Close by, Ula, the favorite wife of the man-god, crouched low by the hut, with one finger on her treacherous lips, bending eagerly forward, in silent expectation of what next might happen. Once, and once only, she glanced at Toko with a mute sign of triumph; then she fixed her big eyes on Felix in tremulous anxiety; for to her as to him, life and death now hung absolutely on the issue of his enterprise. A little farther back the King of Fire and the King of Water, in full sacrificial robes, stood smiling sardonically. For them it was merely a question of one master more or less, one Tu-Kila-Kila in place of another. They had no special interest in the upshot of the contest, save in so far as they always hated most the man who for the moment held by his own strong arm the superior godship over them. Around, Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes kept watch and ward in sinister silence. Taboo was stronger than even the commands of the high god himself. When once a Korong had crossed that fatal line, unbidden and unwelcomed by Tu-Kila-Kila, he came as Tu-Kila-Kila's foe and would-be successor; the duty of every guardian of the temple was then to see fair play between the god that was and the god that might be--the Tu-Kila-Kila of the hour and the Tu-Kila-Kila who might possibly supplant him.
"Let the great spirit itself choose which body it will inhabit," the King of Fire murmured in a soft, low voice, glancing toward a dark spot at the foot of the big tree. The moonlight fell dim through the branches on the place where he looked. The glibbering bones of dead victims rattled lightly in the wind. Felix's eyes followed the King of Fire's, and saw, lying asleep upon the ground, Tu-Kila-Kila himself, with his spear and tomahawk.
He lay there, huddled up by the very roots of the tree, breathing deep and regularly. Right over his head projected the branch, in one part of whose boughs grew the fateful parasite. By the dim light of the moon, straggling through the dense foliage, Felix could see its yellow leaves distinctly. Beneath it hung a skeleton, suspended by invisible cords, head downward from the branches. It was the skeleton of a previous Korong who had tried in vain to reach the bough, and perished. Tu-Kila-Kila had made high feast on the victim's flesh; his bones, now collected together and cunningly fastened with native rope, served at once as a warning and as a trap or pitfall for all who might rashly venture to follow him.
Felix stood for one moment, alone and awe-struck, a solitary civilized man, among those hideous surroundings. Above, the cold moon; all about, the grim, stolid, half-hostile natives; close by, that strange, serpentine, savage wife, guarding, cat-like, the sleep of her cannibal husband; behind, the watchful Eyes of Tu-Kila-Kila, waiting ever in the background, ready to raise a loud shout of alarm and warning the moment the fatal branch was actually broken, but mute, by their vows, till that moment was accomplished. Then a sudden wild impulse urged him on to the attempt. The banyan had dropped down rooting offsets to the ground, after the fashion of its kind, from its main branches. Felix seized one of these and swung himself lightly up, till he reached the very limb on which the sacred parasite itself was growing.
To get to the parasite, however, he must pass directly above Tu-Kila-Kila's head, and over the point where that ghastly grinning skeleton was suspended, as by an unseen hair, from the fork that bore it.
He walked along, balancing himself, and clutching, as he went, at the neighboring boughs, while Tu-Kila-Kila, overcome with the kava, slept stolidly and heavily on beneath him. At last he was almost within grasp of the parasite. Could he lunge out and clutch it? One try--one effort! No, no; he almost lost footing and fell over in the attempt. He couldn't keep his balance so. He must try farther on. Come what might, he must go past the skeleton.
The grisly mass swung again, clanking its bones as it swung, and groaned in the wind ominously. The breeze whistled audibly through its hollow skull and vacant eye-sockets. Tu-Kila-Kila turned uneasily in his sleep below. Felix saw there was not one instant of time to be lost now. He passed on boldly; and as he passed, a dozen thin cords of paper mulberry, stretched every way in an invisible network among the boughs, too small to be seen in the dim moonlight, caught him with their toils and almost overthrew him. They broke with his weight, and Felix himself, tumbling blindly, fell forward. At the cost of a sprained wrist and a great jerk on his bruised fingers, he caught at a bough by his side, but wrenched it away suddenly. It was touch and go. At the very same moment, the skeleton fell heavily, and rattled on the ground beside Tu-Kila-Kila.
Before Felix could discover what had actually happened, a very great shout went up all round below, and made him stagger with excitement. Tu-Kila-Kila was awake, and had started up, all intent, mad with wrath and kava. Glaring about him wildly, and brandishing his great spear in his stalwart hands, he screamed aloud, in a perfect frenzy of passion and despair: "Where is he, the Korong? Bring him on, my meat! Let me devour his heart! Let me tear him to pieces. Let me drink of his blood! Let me kill him and eat him!"
Sick and desperate at the accident, Felix, in turn, clinging hard to his bough with one hand, gazed wildly about him to look for the parasite. But it had gone as if by magic. He glanced around in despair, vaguely conscious that nothing was left for it now but to drop to the ground and let himself be killed at leisure by that frantic savage. Yet even as he did so, he was aware of that great cry--a cry as of triumph--still rending the air. Fire and Water had rushed forward, and were holding back Tu-Kila-Kila, now black in the face from rage, with all their might. Ula was smiling a malicious joy. The Eyes were all agog with interest and excitement. And from one and all that wild scream rose unanimous to the startled sky: "He has it! He has it! The Soul of the Tree! The Spirit of the World! The great god's abode. Hold off your hands, Lavita, son of Sami! Your trial has come. He has it! He has it!"
Felix looked about him with a whirling brain. His eye fell suddenly. There, in his own hand, lay the fateful bough. In his efforts to steady himself, he had clutched at it by pure accident, and broken it off unawares with the force of his clutching. As fortune would have it, he grasped it still. His senses reeled. He was almost dead with excitement, suspense, and uncertainty, mingled with pain of his wrenched wrist. But for Muriel's sake he pulled himself together. Gazing down and trying hard to take it all in--that strange savage scene--he saw that Tu-Kila-Kila was making frantic attempts to lunge at him with the spear, while the King of Fire and the King of Water, stern and relentless, were holding him off by main force, and striving their best to appease and quiet him.
There was an awful pause. Then a voice broke the stillness from beyond the taboo-line: "The Shadow of the King of the Rain speaks," it said, in very solemn, conventional accents. "Korong! Korong! The Great Taboo is broken. Fire and Water, hold him in whom dwells the god till my master comes. He has the Soul of all the spirits of the wood in his hands. He will fight for his right. Taboo! Taboo! I, Toko, have said it."
He clapped his hands thrice.
Tu-Kila-Kila made a wild effort to break away once more. But the King of Fire, standing opposite him, spoke still louder and clearer. "If you touch the Korong before the line is drawn," he said, with a voice of authority, "you are no Tu-Kila-Kila, but an outcast and a criminal. All the people will hold you with forked sticks, while the Korong burns you alive slowly, limb by limb, with me, who am Fire, the fierce, the consuming. I will scorch you and bake you till you are as a bamboo in the flame. Taboo! Taboo! Taboo! I, Fire, have said it."
The King of Water, with three attendants, forced Tu-Kila-Kila on one side for a moment. Ula stood by and smiled pleased compliance. A temple slave, trembling all over at this conflict of the gods, brought out a calabash full of white coral-sand. The King of Water spat on it and blessed it. By this time a dozen natives, at least, had assembled outside the taboo-line, and stood eagerly watching the result of the combat. The temple slave made a long white mark with the coral-sand on one side of the cleared area. Then he handed the calabash solemnly to Toko. Toko crossed the sacred precinct with a few inaudible words of muttered charm, to save the Taboo, as prescribed in the mysteries. Then he drew a similar line on the ground on his side, some twenty yards off. "Descend, O my lord!" he cried to Felix; and Felix, still holding the bough tight in his hand, swung himself blindly from the tree, and took his place by Toko.
"Toe the line!" Toko cried, and Felix toed it.
"Bring up your god!" the Shadow called out aloud to the King of Water. And the King of Water, using no special ceremony with so great a duty, dragged Tu-Kila-Kila helplessly along with him to the farther taboo-line.
The King of Water brought a spear and tomahawk. He handed them to Felix. "With these weapons," he said, "fight, and merit heaven. I hold the bough meanwhile--the victor takes it."
The King of Fire stood out between the lists. "Korongs and gods," he said, "the King of the Rain has plucked the sacred bough, according to our fathers' rites, and claims trial which of you two shall henceforth hold the sacred soul of the world, the great Tu-Kila-Kila. Wager of Battle decides the day. Keep toe to line. At the end of my words, forth, forward, and fight for it. The great god knows his own, and will choose his abode. Taboo, Taboo, Taboo! I, Fire, have spoken it."
Scarcely were the words well out of his mouth, when, with a wild whoop of rage, Tu-Kila-Kila, who had the advantage of knowing the rules of the game, so to speak, dashed madly forward, drunk with passion and kava, and gave one lunge with his spear full tilt at the breast of the startled and unprepared white man. His aim, though frantic, was not at fault. The spear struck Felix high up on the left side. He felt a dull thud of pain; a faint gurgle of blood. Even in the pale moonlight his eye told him at once a red stream was trickling--out over his flannel shirt. He was pricked, at least. The great god had wounded him.
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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29
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VICTORY--AND AFTER?
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The great god had wounded him. But not to the heart. Felix, as good luck would have it, happened to be wearing buckled braces. He had worn them on board, and, like the rest of his costume, had, of course, never since been able to discard them. They stood him in good stead now. The buckle caught the very point of the bone-tipped spear, and broke the force of the blow, as the great god lunged forward. The wound was but a graze, and Tu-Kila-Kila's light shaft snapped short in the middle.
Madder and wilder than ever, the savage pitched it away, yelling, rushed forward with a fierce curse on his angry tongue, and flung himself, tooth and nail, on his astonished opponent.
The suddenness of the onslaught almost took the Englishman's breath away. By this time, however, Felix had pulled together his ideas and taken in the situation. Tu-Kila-Kila was attacking him now with his heavy stone axe. He must parry those deadly blows. He must be alert, but watchful. He must put himself in a posture of defence at once. Above all, he must keep cool and have his wits about him.
If he could but have drawn his knife, he would have stood a better chance in that hand-to-hand conflict. But there was no time now for such tactics as those. Besides, even in close fight with a bloodthirsty savage, an English gentleman's sense of fair play never for one moment deserts him. Felix felt, if they were to fight it out face to face for their lives, they should fight at least on a perfect equality. Steel against stone was a mean advantage. Parrying Tu-Kila-Kila's first desperate blow with the haft of his own hatchet, he leaped aside half a second to gain breath and strength. Then he rushed on, and dealt one deadly downstroke with the ponderous weapon.
For a minute or two they closed, in perfectly savage single combat. Fire and Water, observant and impartial, stood by like seconds to see the god himself decide the issue, which of the two combatants should be his living representative. The contest was brief but very hard-fought. Tu-Kila-Kila, inspired with the last frenzy of despair, rushed wildly on his opponent with hands and fists, and teeth and nails, dealing his blows in blind fury, right and left, and seeking only to sell his life as dearly as possible. In this last extremity, his very superstitions told against him. Everything seemed to show his hour had come. The parrot's bite--the omen of his own blood that stained the dust of earth--Ula's treachery--the chance by which the Korong had learned the Great Taboo--Felix's accidental or providential success in breaking off the bough--the length of time he himself had held the divine honors--the probability that the god would by this time begin to prefer a new and stronger representative--all these things alike combined to fire the drunk and maddened savage with the energy of despair. He fell upon his enemy like a tiger upon an elephant. He fought with his tomahawk and his feet and his whole lithe body; he foamed at the mouth with impotent rage; he spent his force on the air in the extremity of his passion.
Felix, on the other hand, sobered by pain, and nerved by the fixed consciousness that Muriel's safety now depended absolutely on his perfect coolness, fought with the calm skill of a practised fencer. Happily he had learned the gentle art of thrust and parry years before in England; and though both weapon and opponent were here so different, the lesson of quickness and calm watchfulness he had gained in that civilized school stood him in good stead, even now, under such adverse circumstances. Tu-Kila-Kila, getting spent, drew back for a second at last, and panted for breath. That faint breathing-space of a moment's duration sealed his fate. Seizing his chance with consummate skill, Felix closed upon the breathless monster, and brought down the heavy stone hammer point blank upon the centre of his crashing skull. The weapon drove home. It cleft a great red gash in the cannibal's head. Tu-Kila-Kila reeled and fell. There was an infinitesimal pause of silence and suspense. Then a great shout went up from all round to heaven, "He has killed him! He has killed him! We have a new-made god! Tu-Kila-Kila is dead! Long live Tu-Kila-Kila!"
Felix drew back for a moment, panting and breathless, and wiped his wet brow with his sleeve, his brain all whirling. At his feet, the savage lay stretched, like a log. Felix gazed at the blood-bespattered face remorsefully. It is an awful thing, even in a just quarrel, to feel that you have really taken a human life! The responsibility is enough to appall the bravest of us. He stooped down and examined the prostrate body with solemn reverence. Blood was flowing in torrents from the wounded head. But Tu-Kila-Kila was dead--stone-dead forever.
Hot tears of relief welled up into Felix's eyes. He touched the body cautiously with a reverent hand. No life. No motion.
Just as he did so, the woman Ula came forward, bare-limbed and beautiful, all triumph in her walk, a proud, insensitive savage. One second she gazed at the great corpse disdainfully. Then she lifted her dainty foot, and gave it a contemptuous kick. "The body of Lavita, the son of Sami," she said, with a gesture of hatred. "He had a bad heart. We will cook it and eat it." Next turning to Felix, "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila," she cried, clapping her hands three times and bowing low to the ground, "you are a very great god. We will serve you and salute you. Am not I, Ula, one of your wives, your meat? Do with me as you will. Toko, you are henceforth the great god's Shadow!"
Felix gazed at the beautiful, heartless creature, all horrified. Even on Boupari, that cannibal island, he was hardly prepared for quite so low a depth of savage insensibility. But all the people around, now a hundred or more, standing naked before their new god, took up the shout in concert. "The body of Lavita, the son of Sami," they cried. "A carrion corpse! The god has deserted it. The great soul of the world has entered the heart of the white-faced stranger from the disk of the sun; the King of the Rain; the great Tu-Kila-Kila. We will cook and eat the body of Lavita, the son of Sami. He was a bad man. He is a worn-out shell. Nothing remains of him now. The great god has left him."
They clapped their hands in a set measure as they recited this hymn. The King of Fire retreated into the temple. Ula stood by, and whispered low with Toko. There was a ceremonial pause of some fifteen minutes. Presently, from the inner recesses of the temple itself, a low noise issued forth as of a rising wind. For some seconds it buzzed and hummed, droningly. But at the very first note of that holy sound Ula dropped her lover's hand, as one drops a red-hot coal, and darted wildly off at full speed, like some frightened wild beast, into the thick jungle. Every other woman near began to rush away with equally instantaneous signs of haste and fear. The men, on the other hand, erect and naked, with their hands on their foreheads, crossed the taboo-line at once. It was the summons to all who had been initiated at the mysteries--the sacred bull-roarer was calling the assembly of the men of Boupari.
For several minutes it buzzed and droned, that mystic implement, growing louder and louder, till it roared like thunder. One after another, the men of the island rushed in as if mad or in flight for their lives before some fierce beast pursuing them. They ran up, panting, and dripping with sweat; their hands clapped to their foreheads; their eyes starting wildly from their staring sockets; torn and bleeding and lacerated by the thorns and branches of the jungle, for each man ran straight across country from the spot where he lay asleep, in the direction of the sound, and never paused or drew breath, for dear life's sake, till he stood beside the corpse of the dead Tu-Kila-Kila.
And every moment the cry pealed louder and louder still. "Lavita, the son of Sami, is dead, praise Heaven! The King of the Rain has slain him, and is now the true Tu-Kila-Kila!"
Felix bent irresolute over the fallen savage's bloodstained corpse. What next was expected of him he hardly knew or cared. His one desire now was to return to Muriel--to Muriel, whom he had rescued from something worse than death at the hateful hands of that accursed creature who lay breathless forever on the ground beside him.
Somebody came up just then, and seized his hand warmly. Felix looked up with a start. It was their friend, the Frenchman. "Ah, my captain, you have done well," M. Peyron cried, admiring him. "What courage! What coolness! What pluck! What soldiership! I couldn't see all. But I was in at the death! And oh, _mon Dieu_, how I admired and envied you!"
By this time the bull-roarer had ceased to bellow among the rocks. The King of Fire stood forth. In his hands he held a length of bamboo-stick with a lighted coal in it. "Bring wood and palm-leaves," he said, in a tone of command. "Let me light myself up, that I may blaze before Tu-Kila-Kila."
He turned and bowed thrice very low before Felix. "The accepted of Heaven," he cried, holding his hands above him. "The very high god! The King of all Things! He sends down his showers upon our crops and our fields. He causes his sun to shine brightly over us. He makes our pigs and our slaves bring forth their increase. All we are but his meat. We, his people, praise him."
And all the men of Boupari, naked and bleeding, bent low in response. "Tu-Kila-Kila is great," they chanted, as they clapped their hands. "We thank him that he has chosen a fresh incarnation. The sun will not fade in the heavens overhead, nor the bread-fruits wither and cease to bear fruit on earth. Tu-Kila-Kila, our god, is great. He springs ever young and fresh, like the herbs of the field. He is a most high god. We, his people, praise him."
Four temple attendants brought sticks and leaves, while Felix stood still, half dazed with the newness of these strange preparations. The King of Fire, with his torch, set light to the pile. It blazed merrily on high. "I, Fire, salute you," he cried, bending over it toward Felix.
"Now cut up the body of Lavita, the son of Sami," he went on, turning toward it contemptuously. "I will cook it in my flame, that Tu-Kila-Kila the great may eat of it."
Felix drew back with a face all aglow with horror and disgust. "Don't touch that body!" he cried, authoritatively, putting his foot down firm. "Leave it alone at once. I refuse to allow you." Then he turned to M. Peyron. "The King of the Birds and I," he said, with calm resolve, "we two will bury it."
The King of Fire drew back at these strange words, nonplussed. This was, indeed, an ill-omened break in the ceremony of initiation of a new Tu-Kila-Kila, to which he had never before in his life been accustomed. He hardly knew how to comport himself under such singular circumstances. It was as though the sovereign of England, on coronation-day, should refuse to be crowned, and intimate to the archbishop, in his full canonicals, a confirmed preference for the republican form of Government. It was a contingency that law and custom in Boupari had neither, in their wisdom, foreseen nor provided for.
The King of Water whispered low in the new god's ear. "You must eat of his body, my lord," he said. "That is absolutely necessary. Every one of us must eat of the flesh of the god; but you, above all, must eat his heart, his divine nature. Otherwise you can never be full Tu-Kila-Kila."
"I don't care a straw for that," Felix cried, now aroused to a full sense of the break in Methuselah's story and trembling with apprehension. "You may kill me if you like; we can die only once; but human flesh I can never taste; nor will I, while I live, allow you to touch this dead man's body. We will bury it ourselves, the King of the Birds and I. You may tell your people so. That is my last word." He raised his voice to the customary ceremonial pitch. "I, the new Tu-Kila-Kila," he said, "have spoken it."
The King of Fire and the King of Water, taken aback at his boldness, conferred together for some seconds privately. The people meanwhile looked on and wondered. What could this strange hitch in the divine proceedings mean? Was the god himself recalcitrant? Never in their lives had the oldest men among them known anything like it.
And as they whispered and debated, awe-struck but discordant, a shout arose once more from the outer circle--a mighty shout of mingled surprise, alarm, and terror. "Taboo! Taboo! Fence the mysteries. Beware! Oh, great god, we warn you. The mysteries are in danger! Cut her down! Kill her! A woman! A woman!"
At the words, Felix was aware of somebody bursting through the dense crowd and rushing wildly toward him. Next moment, Muriel hung and sobbed on his shoulder, while Mali, just behind her, stood crying and moaning.
Felix held the poor startled girl in his arms and soothed her. And all around another great cry arose from five hundred lips: "Two women have profaned the mysteries of the god. They are Tu-Kila-Kila's trespass-offering. Let us kill them and eat them!"
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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30
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SUSPENSE.
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In a moment, Felix's mind was fully made up. There was no time to think; it was the hour for action. He saw how he must comport himself toward this strange wild people. Seating Muriel gently on the ground, Mali beside her, and stepping forward himself, with Peyron's hand in his, he beckoned to the vast and surging crowd to bespeak respectful silence.
A mighty hush fell at once upon the people. The King of Fire and the King of Water stood back, obedient to his nod. They waited for the upshot of this strange new development.
"Men of Boupari," Felix began, speaking with a marvellous fluency in their own tongue, for the excitement itself supplied him with eloquence; "I have killed your late god in the prescribed way; I have plucked the sacred bough, and fought in single combat by the established rules of your own religion. Fire and Water, you guardians of this holy island, is it not so? You saw all things done, did you not, after the precepts of your ancestors?"
The King of Fire bowed low and answered: "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks, indeed, the truth. Water and I, with our own eyes, have seen it."
"And now," Felix went on, "I am myself, by your own laws, Tu-Kila-Kila."
The King of Fire made a gesture of dissent. "Oh, great god, pardon me," he murmured, "if I say aught, now, to contradict you; but you are not a full Tu-Kila-Kila yet till you have eaten of the heart of the god, your predecessor."
"Then where is now the spirit of Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, if I am not he?" Felix asked, abruptly, thus puzzling them with a hard problem in their own savage theology.
The King of Fire gave a start, and pondered. This was a detail of his creed that had never before so much as occurred to him. All faiths have their _cruces_. "I do not well know," he answered, "whether it is in the heart of Lavita, the son of Sami, or in your own body. But I feel sure it must now be certainly somewhere, though just where our fathers have never told us."
Felix recognized at once that he had gained a point. "Then look to it well," he said, austerely. "Be careful how you act. Do nothing rash. For either the soul of the god is in the heart of Lavita, the son of Sami; and then, since I refuse to eat it, it will decay away, as Lavita's body decays, and the world will shrivel up, and all things will perish, because the god is dead and crumbled to dust forever. Or else it is in my body, who am god in his place; and then, if anybody does me harm or hurt, he will be an impious wretch, and will have broken taboo, and Heaven knows what evils and misfortunes may not, therefore, fall on each and all of you."
A very old chief rose from the ranks outside. His hair was white and his eyes bleared. "Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well," he cried, in a loud but mumbling voice. "His words are wise. He argues to the point. He is very cunning. I advise you, my people, to be careful how you anger the white-faced stranger, for you know what he is; he is cruel; he is powerful. There was never any storm in my time--and I am an old man--so great in Boupari as the storm that rose when the King of the Rain ate the storm-apple. Our yams and our taros even now are suffering from it. He is a mighty strong god. Beware how you tamper with him!"
He sat down, trembling. A younger chief rose from a nearer rank, and said his say in turn. "I do not agree with our father," he cried, pointing to the chief who had just spoken. "His word is evil; he is much mistaken. I have another thought. My thought is this. Let us kill and eat the white-faced stranger at once, by wager of battle; and let whosoever fights and overcomes him receive his honors, and take to wife the fair woman, the Queen of the Clouds, the sun-faced Korong, whom he brought from the sun with him."
"But who will then be Tu-Kila-Kila?" Felix asked, turning round upon him quickly. Habituation to danger had made him unnaturally alert in such utmost extremities.
"Why, the man who slays you," the young chief answered, pointedly, grasping his heavy tomahawk with profound expression.
"I think not," Felix answered. "Your reasoning is bad. For if I am not Tu-Kila-Kila, how can any man become Tu-Kila-Kila by killing me? And if I am Tu-Kila-Kila, how dare you, not being yourself Korong, and not having broken off the sacred bough, as I did, venture to attack me? You wish to set aside all the customs of Boupari. Are you not ashamed of such gross impiety?"
"Tu-Kila-Kila speaks well," the King of Fire put in, for he had no cause to love the aggressive young chief, and he thought better of his chances in life as Felix's minister. "Besides, now I think of it, he _must_ be Tu-Kila-Kila, because he has taken the life of the last great god, whom he slew with his hands; and therefore the life is now his--he holds it."
Felix was emboldened by this favorable opinion to strike out a fresh line in a further direction. He stood forward once more, and beckoned again for silence. "Yes, my people," he said calmly, with slow articulation, "by the custom of your race and the creed you profess I am now indeed, and in every truth, the abode of your great god, Tu-Kila-Kila. But, furthermore, I have a new revelation to make to you. I am going to instruct you in a fresh way. This creed that you hold is full of errors. As Tu-Kila-Kila, I mean to take my own course, no islander hindering me. If you try to depose me, what great gods have you now got left? None, save only Fire and Water, my ministers. King of the Rain there is none; for I, who was he, am now Tu-Kila-Kila. Tu-Kila-Kila there is none, save only me; for the other, that was, I have fought and conquered. The Queen of the Clouds is with me. The King of the Birds is with me. Consider, then, O friends, that if you kill us all, you will have nowhere to turn; you will be left quite godless."
"It is true," the people murmured, looking about them, half puzzled. "He is wise. He speaks well. He is indeed a Tu-Kila-Kila."
Felix pressed his advantage home at once. "Now listen," he said, lifting up one solemn forefinger. "I come from a country very far away, where the customs are better by many yams than those of Boupari. And now that I am indeed Tu-Kila-Kila--your god, your master--I will change and alter some of your customs that seem to me here and now most undesirable. In the first place--hear this! --I will put down all cannibalism. No man shall eat of human flesh on pain of death. And to begin with, no man shall cook or eat the body of Lavita, the son of Sami. On that I am determined--I, Tu-Kila-Kila. The King of the Birds and I, we will dig a pit, and we will bury in it the corpse of this man that was once your god, and whom his own wickedness compelled me to fight and slay, in order to prevent more cruelty and bloodshed."
The young chief stood up, all red in his wrath, and interrupted him, brandishing a coral-stone hatchet. "This is blasphemy," he said. "This is sheer rank blasphemy. These are not good words. They are very bad medicine. The white-faced Korong is no true Tu-Kila-Kila. His advice is evil--and ill-luck would follow it. He wishes to change the sacred customs of Boupari. Now, that is not well. My counsel is this: let us eat him now, unless he changes his heart, and amends his ways, and partakes, as is right, of the body of Lavita, the son of Sami."
The assembly swayed visibly, this way and that, some inclining to the conservative view of the rash young chief, and others to the cautious liberalism of the gray-haired warrior. Felix noted their division, and spoke once more, this time still more authoritatively than ever.
"Furthermore," he said, "my people, hear me. As I came in a ship propelled by fire over the high waves of the sea, so I go away in one. We watch for such a ship to pass by Boupari. When it comes, the Queen of the Clouds--upon whose life I place a great Taboo; let no man dare to touch her at his peril; if he does, I will rush upon him and kill him as I killed Lavita, the son of Sami. When it comes, the Queen of the Clouds, the King of the Birds, and I, we will go away back in it to the land whence we came, and be quit of Boupari. But we will not leave it fireless or godless. When I return back home again to my own far land, I will send out messengers, very good men, who will tell you of a God more powerful by much than any you ever knew, and very righteous. They will teach you great things you never dreamed of. Therefore, I ask you now to disperse to your own homes, while the King of Birds and I bury the body of Lavita, the son of Sami."
All this time Muriel had been seated on the ground, listening with profound interest, but scarcely understanding a word, though here and there, after her six months' stay in the island, a single phrase was dimly intelligible to her. But now, at this critical moment she rose, and, standing upright by Felix's side in her spotless English purity among those assembled savages, she pointed just once with her uplifted finger to the calm vault of heaven, and then across the moonlit horizon of the sea, and last of all to the clustering huts and villages of Boupari. "Tell them," she said to Felix, with blanched lips, but without one sign of a tremor in her fearless voice, "I will pray for them to Heaven, when I go across the sea, and will think of the children that I loved to pat and play with, and will send out messengers from our home beyond the waves, to make them wiser and happier and better."
Felix translated her simple message to them in its pure womanly goodness. Even the natives were touched. They whispered and hesitated. Then after a time of much murmured debate, the King of Fire stood forward as a mediator. "There is an oracle, O Korong," he said, "not to prejudge the matter, which decides all these things--a great conch-shell at a sacred grove in the neighboring island of Aloa Mauna. It is the holiest oracle of all our holy religion. We gods and men of Boupari have taken counsel together, and have come to a conclusion. We will put forth a canoe and send men with blood on their faces to inquire at Aloa Mauna of the very great oracle. Till then, you are neither Tu-Kila-Kila, nor not Tu-Kila-Kila. It behooves us to be very careful how we deal with gods. Our people will stand round your precinct in a row, and guard you with their spears. You shall not cross the taboo line to them, nor they to you: all shall be neutral. Food shall be laid by the line, as always, morn, noon, and night; and your Shadows shall take it in; but you shall not come out. Neither shall you bury the body of Lavita, the son of Sami. Till the canoe comes back it shall lie in the sun and rot there."
He clapped his hands twice.
In a moment a tom-tom began to beat from behind, and the people all crowded without the circle. The King of Fire came forward ostentatiously and made taboo. "If, any man cross this line," he said in a droning sing-song, "till the canoe return from the great oracle of our faith on Aloa Mauna, I, Fire, will scorch him into cinder and ashes. If any woman transgress, I will pitch her with palm oil, and light her up for a lamp on a moonless night to lighten this temple."
The King of Water distributed shark's-tooth spears. At once a great serried wall hemmed in the Europeans all round, and they sat down to wait, the three whites together, for the upshot of the mission to Aloa Mauna.
And the dawn now gleamed red on the eastern horizon.
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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31
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AT SEA: OFF BOUPARI.
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Thirteen days out from Sydney, the good ship Australasian was nearing the equator.
It was four of the clock in the afternoon, and the captain (off duty) paced the deck, puffing a cigar, and talking idly with a passenger on former experiences.
Eight bells went on the quarter-deck; time to change watches.
"This is only our second trip through this channel," the captain said, gazing across with a casual glance at the palm-trees that stood dark against the blue horizon. "We used to go a hundred miles to eastward, here, to avoid the reefs. But last voyage I came through this way quite safely--though we had a nasty accident on the road--unavoidable--unavoidable! Big sea was running free over the sunken shoals; caught the ship aft unawares, and stove in better than half a dozen portholes. Lady passenger on deck happened to be leaning over the weather gunwale; big sea caught her up on its crest in a jiffy, lifted her like a baby, and laid her down again gently, just so, on the bed of the ocean. By George, sir, I was annoyed. It was quite a romance, poor thing; quite a romance; we all felt so put out about it the rest of that voyage. Young fellow on board, nephew of Sir Theodore Thurstan, of the Colonial Office, was in love with Miss Ellis--girl's name was Ellis--father's a parson somewhere down in Somersetshire--and as soon as the big sea took her up on its crest, what does Thurstan go and do, but he ups on the taffrail, and, before you could say Jack Robinson, jumps over to save her."
"But he didn't succeed?" the passenger asked, with languid interest.
"Succeed, my dear sir? and with a sea running twelve feet high like that? Why, it was pitch dark, and such a surf on that the gig could hardly go through it." The captain smiled, and puffed away pensively. "Drowned," he said, after a brief pause, with complacent composure. "Drowned. Drowned. Drowned. Went to the bottom, both of 'em. Davy Jones's locker. But unavoidable, quite. These accidents _will_ happen, even on the best-regulated liners. Why, there was my brother Tom, in the Cunard service--same that boast they never lost a passenger; there was my brother Tom, he was out one day off the Newfoundland banks, heavy swell setting in from the nor'-nor'-east, icebergs ahead, passengers battened down--Bless my soul, how that light seems to come and go, don't it?"
It was a reflected light, flashing from the island straight in the captain's eyes, small and insignificant as to size, but strong for all that in the full tropical sunshine, and glittering like a diamond from a vague elevation near the centre of the island.
"Seems to come and go in regular order," the passenger observed, reflectively, withdrawing his cigar. "Looks for all the world just like naval signalling."
The captain paused, and shaded his eyes a moment. "Hanged if that isn't just what it _is_," he answered, slowly. "It's a rigged-up heliograph, and they're using the Morse code; dash my eyes if they aren't. Well, this _is_ civilization! What the dickens can have come to the island of Boupari? There isn't a darned European soul in the place, nor ever has been. Anchorage unsafe; no harbor; bad reef; too small for missionaries to make a living, and natives got nothing worth speaking of to trade in."
"What do they say?" the passenger asked, with suddenly quickened interest.
"How the devil should I tell you yet, sir?" the captain retorted with choleric grumpiness. "Don't you see I'm spelling it out, letter by letter? O, r, e, s, c, u, e, u, s, c, o, m, e, w, e, l, l, a, r, m, e, d--Yes. yes, I twig it." And the captain jotted it down in his note-book for some seconds, silently.
"Run up the flag there," he shouted, a moment later, rushing hastily forward. "Stop her at once, Walker. Easy, easy. Get ready the gig. Well, upon my soul, there _is_ a rum start anyway."
"What does the message say?" the passenger inquired, with intense surprise.
"Say? Well, there's what I make it out," the captain answered, handing him the scrap of paper on which he had jotted down the letters. "I missed the beginning, but the end's all right. Look alive there, boys, will you. Bring out the Winchester. Take cutlasses, all hands. I'll go along myself in her."
The passenger took the piece of paper on which he read, "and send a boat to rescue us. Come well armed. Savages on guard. Thurstan, Ellis."
In less than three minutes the boat was lowered and manned, and the captain, with the Winchester six-shooter by his side, seated grim in the stern, took command of the tiller.
On the island it was the first day of Felix and Muriel's imprisonment in the dusty precinct of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple. All the morning through, they had sat under the shade of a smaller banyan in the outer corner; for Muriel could neither enter the noisome hut nor go near the great tree with the skeletons on its branches; nor could she sit where the dead savage's body, still festering in the sun, attracted the buzzing blue flies by thousands, to drink up the blood that lay thick on the earth in a pool around it. Hard by, the natives sat, keen as lynxes, in a great circle just outside the white taboo-line, where, with serried spears, they kept watch and ward over the persons of their doubtful gods or victims. M. Peyron, alone preserving his equanimity under these adverse circumstances, hummed low to himself in very dubious tones; even he felt his French gayety had somewhat forsaken him; this revolution in Boupari failed to excite his Parisian ardor.
About one o'clock in the day, however, looking casually seaward--what was this that M. Peyron, to his great surprise, descried far away on the dim southern horizon? A low black line, lying close to the water? No, no; not a steamer!
Too prudent to excite the natives' attention unnecessarily, the cautious Frenchman whispered, in the most commonplace voice on earth to Felix: "Don't look at once; and when you do look, mind you don't exhibit any agitation in your tone or manner. But what do you make that out to be--that long black haze on the horizon to southward?"
Felix looked, disregarding the friendly injunction, at once. At the same moment, Muriel turned her eyes quickly in the self-same direction. Neither made the faintest sign of outer emotion; but Muriel clenched her white hands hard, till the nails dug into the palm, in her effort to restrain herself, as she murmured very low, in an agitated voice, "_Un vapeur, un vapeur_!"
"So I think," M. Peyron answered, very low and calm. "It is, indeed, a steamer!"
For three long hours those anxious souls waited and watched it draw nearer and nearer. Slowly the natives, too, began to perceive the unaccustomed object. As it drew abreast of the island, and the decisive moment arrived for prompt action, Felix rose in his place once more and cried aloud, "My people, I told you a ship, propelled by fire, would come from the far land across the sea to take us. The ship has come; you can see for yourselves the thick black smoke that issues in huge puffs from the mouth of the monster. Now, listen to me, and dare not to disobey me. My word is law; let all men see to it. I am going to send a message of fire from the sun to the great canoe that walks upon the water. If any man ventures to stop me from doing it the people from the great canoe will land on this isle and take vengeance for his act, and kill with the thunder which the sailing gods carry ever about with them."
By this time the island was alive with commotion. Hundreds of natives, with their long hair falling unkempt about their keen brown faces, were gazing with open eyes at the big black ship that ploughed her way so fast against wind and tide over the surface of the waters. Some of them shouted and gesticulated with panic fear; others seemed half inclined to waste no time on preparation or doubt, but to rush on at once, and immolate their captives before a rescue was possible. But Felix, keeping ever his cool head undisturbed, stood on the dusty mound by Tu-Kila-Kila's house, and taking in his hand the little mirror he had made from the match-box, flashed the light from the sun full in their eyes for a moment, to the astonishment and discomfiture of all those gaping savages. Then he focussed it on the Australasian, across the surf and the waves, and with a throbbing heart began to make his last faint bid for life and freedom.
For four or five minutes he went flashing on, uncertain of the effect, whether they saw or saw not. Then a cry from Muriel burst at once upon his ears. She clasped her hands convulsively in an agony of joy. "They see us! They see us!"
And sure enough, scarcely half a minute later, a British flag ran gayly up the mainmast, and a boat seemed to drop down over the side of the vessel.
As for the natives, they watched these proceedings with considerable surprise and no little discomfiture--Fire and Water, in particular, whispering together, much alarmed, with many superstitious nods and taboos, in the corner of the enclosure.
Gradually, as the boat drew nearer and nearer, divided counsels prevailed among the savages. With no certainly recognized Tu-Kila-Kila to marshal their movements, each man stood in doubt from whom to take his orders. At last, the King of Fire, in a hesitating voice, gave the word of command. "Half the warriors to the shore to repel the enemy; half to watch round the taboo-line, lest the Korongs escape us! Let Breathless Fear, our war-god, go before the face of our troops, invisible!"
And, quick as thought, at his word, the warriors had paired off, two and two, in long lines; some running hastily down to the beach, to man the war-canoes, while others remained, with shark's tooth spears still set in a looser circle, round the great temple-enclosure of Tu-Kila-Kila.
For Muriel, this suspense was positively terrible. To feel one was so close to the hope of rescue, and yet to know that before that help arrived, or even as it came up, those savages might any moment run their ghastly spears through them.
But Felix made the best of his position still. "Remember," he cried, at the top of his voice, as the warriors started at a run for the water's edge, "your Tu-Kila-Kila tells you, these new-comers are his friends. Whoever hurts them, does so at his peril. This is a great Taboo. I bid you receive them. Beware for your lives. I, Tu-Kila-Kila the Great, have said it."
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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32
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THE DOWNFALL OF A PANTHEON.
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The Australasian's gig entered the lagoon through the fringing reef by its narrow seaward mouth, and rowed steadily for the landing place on the main island.
A little way out from shore, amid loud screams and yells, the natives came up with it in their laden war-canoes. Shouting and gesticulating and brandishing their spears with the shark's tooth tips, they endeavored to stop its progress landward by pure noise and bravado.
"We must be careful what we do, boys," the captain observed, in a quiet voice of seamanlike resolution to his armed companions. "We mustn't frighten the savages too much, or show too hostile a front, for fear they should retaliate on our friends on the island." He held up his hand, with the gold braid on the wrist, to command silence; and the natives, gazing open-mouthed, looked and wondered at the gesture. These sailing gods were certainly arrayed in most gorgeous vestments, and their canoe, though devoid of a grinning figure-head, was provided with a most admirable and well-uniformed equipment.
A coral rock jutted high out of the sea to the left hard by. Its summit was crowded with a basking population of sea-gulls and pelicans. The captain gave the word to "easy all." In a second the gig stopped short, as those stout arms held her. He rose in his place and lifted the six-shooter. Then he pointed it ostentatiously at the rock, away from the native canoes, and held up his hand yet again for silence. "We'll give 'em a taste of what we can do, boys," he said, "just to show 'em, not to hurt 'em." At that he drew the trigger twice. His first two chambers were loaded on purpose with duck-shot cartridges. Twice the big gun roared; twice the fire flashed red from its smoking mouth. As the smoke cleared away, the natives, dumb with surprise, and perfectly cowed with terror, saw ten or a dozen torn and bleeding birds float mangled upon the water.
"Now for the dynamite!" the captain said, cheerily, proceeding to lower a small object overboard by a single wire, while he held up his hand a third time to bespeak silence and attention.
The natives looked again, with eyes starting from their heads. The captain gave a little click, and pointed with his finger to a spot on the water's top, a little way in front of him. Instantly, a loud report, and a column of water spurted up into the air, some ten or twelve feet, in a boisterous fountain. As it subsided again, a hundred or so of the bright-colored fish that browse among the submerged, coral-groves of these still lagoons, rose dead or dying to the seething, boiling surface.
The captain smiled. Instantly the natives set up a terrified shout. "It is even as he said," they cried. "These gods are his ministers! The white-faced Korong is a very great deity! He is indeed the true Tu-Kila-Kila. These gods have come for him. They are very mighty. Thunder and lightning and waterspouts are theirs. The waves do as they bid. The sea obeys them. They are here to take away our Tu-Kila-Kila from our midst. And what will then become of the island of Boupari? Will it not sink in the waves of the sea and disappear? Will not the sun in heaven grow dark, and the moon cease to shed its benign light on the earth, when Tu-Kila-Kila the Great returns at last to his own far country?"
"That lot'll do for 'em, I expect," the captain said cheerily, with a confident smile. "Now forward all, boys. I fancy we've astonished the natives a trifle."
They rowed on steadily, but cautiously, toward the white bank of sand which formed the usual landing-place, the captain holding the six-shooter in readiness all the time, and keeping an eye firmly fixed on every movement of the savages. But the warriors in the canoes, thoroughly cowed and overawed by this singular exhibition of the strangers' prowess, paddled on in whispering silence, nearly abreast of the gig, but at a safe distance, as they thought, and eyed the advancing Europeans with quiet looks of unmixed suspicion.
At last, the adventurous young chief, who had advised killing Felix off-hand on the island, mustered up courage to paddle his own canoe a little nearer, and flung his spear madly in the direction of the gig. It fell short by ten yards. He stood eying it angrily. But the captain, grimly quiet, raising his Winchester to his shoulder without one second's delay, and marking his man, fired at the young chief as he stood, still half in the attitude of throwing, on the prow of his canoe, an easy aim for fire-arms. The ball went clean through the savage's breast, and then ricochetted three times on the water afar off. The young chief fell stone dead into the sea like a log, and sank instantly to the bottom.
It was a critical moment. The captain felt uncertain whether the natives would close round them in force or not. It is always dangerous to fire a shot at savages. But the Boupari men were too utterly awed to venture on defence. "He was Tu-Kila-Kila's enemy," they cried, in astonished tones. "He raised his voice against the very high god. Therefore, the very high god's friends have smitten him with their lightning. Their thunderbolt went through him, and hit the water beyond. How strong is their hand! They can kill from afar. They are mighty gods. Let no man strive to fight against the friends of Tu-Kila-Kila."
The sailors rowed on and reached the landing-place. There, half of them, headed by the captain, disembarked in good order, with drawn cutlasses, while the other half remained behind to guard the gig, under the third officer. The natives also disembarked, a little way off, and, making humble signs of submission with knee and arm, endeavored, by pantomime, to express the idea of their willingness to guide the strangers to their friends' quarters.
The captain waved them on with his hand. The natives, reassured, led the way, at some distance ahead, along the paths through the jungle. The captain had his finger on his six-shooter the while; every sailor grasped his cutlass and kept his revolver ready for action. "I don't half like the look of it," the captain observed, partly to himself. "They seem to be leading us into an ambuscade or something. Keep a sharp lookout against surprise from the jungle, boys; and if any native shows fight shoot him down instantly."
At last they emerged upon a clear space in the front, where a great group of savages stood in a circle, with serried spears, round a large wattled hut that occupied the elevated centre of the clearing.
For a minute or two the action of the savages was uncertain. Half of the defenders turned round to face the invaders angrily; the other half stood irresolute, with their spears still held inward, guarding a white line of sand with inflexible devotion.
The warriors who had preceded them from the shore called aloud to their friends by the temple in startled tones. The captain and sailors had no idea what their words meant. But just then, from the midst of the circle, an English voice cried out in haste, "Don't fire! Do nothing rash! We're safe. Don't be frightened. The natives are disposed to parley and palaver. Take care how you act. They're terribly afraid of you."
Just outside the taboo-line the captain halted. The gray-headed old chief, who had accompanied his fellows to the shore, spoke out in Polynesian. "Do not resist them," he said, "my people. If you do, you will be blasted by their lightning like a bare bamboo in a mighty cyclone. They carry thunder in their hands. They are mighty, mighty gods. The white-faced Korong spoke no more than the truth. Let them do as they will with us. We are but their meat. We are as dust beneath their sole, and as driven mulberry-leaves before the breath of the tempest."
The defenders hesitated still a little. Then, suddenly losing heart, they broke rank at last at a point close by where the captain of the Australasian stood, one man after another falling aside slowly and shamefacedly a pace or two. The captain, unhesitatingly, overstepped the white taboo-line. Next instant, Felix and Muriel were grasping his hand hard, and M. Peyron was bowing a polite Parisian reception.
Forthwith, the sailors crowded round them in a hollow square. Muriel and Felix, half faint with relief from their long and anxious suspense, staggered slowly down the seaward path between them. But there was no need now for further show of defence. The islanders, pressing near and flinging away their weapons, followed the procession close, with tears and lamentations. As they went on, the women, rushing out of their huts while the fugitives passed, tore their hair on their heads, and beat their breasts in terror. The warriors who had come from the shore recounted, with their own exaggerative additions, the miracle of the six-shooter and the dynamite cartridge. Gradually they approached the landing-place on the beach. There the third officer sat waiting in the gig to receive them. The lamentations of the islanders now became positively poignant. "Oh, my father," they cried aloud, "my brother, my revered one, you are indeed the true Tu-Kila-Kila. Do not go away like this and desert us! Oh, our mother, great queen, mighty goddess, stop with us! Take not away your sun from the heavens, nor your rain from the crops. We acknowledge we have sinned; we have done very wrong; but the chief sinner is dead; the wrong-doer has paid; spare us who remain; spare us, great deity; do not make the bright lights of heaven become dark over us. Stay with your worshippers, and we will give you choice young girls to eat every day, we will sacrifice the tenderest of our children to feed you."
It is an awful thing for any race or nation when its taboos fail all at once, and die out entirely. To the men of Boupari, the Tu-Kila-Kila of the moment represented both the Moral Order and the regular sequence of the physical universe. Anarchy and chaos might rule when he was gone. The sun might be quenched, and the people run riot. No wonder they shrank from the fearful consequence that might next ensue. King and priest, god and religion, all at one fell blow were to be taken away from them!
Felix turned round on the shore and spoke to them again. "My people," he said, in a kindly tone--for, after all, he pitied them--"you need have no fear. When I am gone, the sun will still shine and the trees will still bear fruit every year as formerly. I will send the messengers I promised from my own land to teach you. Until they come, I leave you this as a great Taboo. Tu-Kila-Kila enjoins it. Shed no human blood; eat no human flesh. Those who do will be punished when another fire-canoe comes from the far land to bring my messengers."
The King of Fire bent low at the words. "Oh, Tu-Kila-Kila," he said, "it shall be done as you say. Till your messengers come, every man shall live at peace with all his neighbors."
They stepped into the gig. Mali and Toko followed before M. Peyron as naturally as they had always followed their masters on the island before.
"Who are these?" the captain asked, smiling.
"Our Shadows," Felix answered. "Let them come. I will pay their passage when I reach San Francisco. They have been very faithful to us, and they are afraid to remain, lest the islanders should kill them for letting us go or for not accompanying us."
"Very well," the captain answered. "Forward all, there, boys! Now, ahead for the ship. And thank God, we're well out of it!"
But the islanders still stood on the shore and wept, stretching their hands in vain after the departing boat, and crying aloud in piteous tones, "Oh, my father, return! Oh, my mother, come back! Oh, very great gods, do not fly and desert us!"
Seven weeks later Mr. and Mrs. Felix Thurstan, who had been married in the cathedral at Honolulu the very morning the Australasian arrived there, sat in an eminently respectable drawing-room in a London square, where Mrs. Ellis, Muriel's aunt by marriage, was acting as their hostess.
"But how dreadful it is to think, dear," Mrs. Ellis remarked for the twentieth time since their arrival, with a deep-drawn sigh, "how dreadful to think that you and Felix should have been all those months alone on the island together without being married!"
Muriel looked up with a quiet smile toward Felix. "I think, Aunt Mary," she said, dreamily, "if you'd been there yourself, and suffered all those fears, and passed through all those horrors that we did together, you'd have troubled your head very little indeed about such conventionalities, as whether or not you happened to be married.... Besides," she added, after a pause, with a fine perception of the inexorable stringency of Mrs. Grundy's law, "we weren't quite without chaperons, either, don't you know; for our Shadows, of course, were always with us."
Whereat Felix smiled an equally quiet smile. "And terrible as it all was," he put in, "I shall never regret it, because it made Muriel know how profoundly I loved her, and it made me know how brave and trustful and pure a woman could be under such awful conditions."
But Mrs. Ellis sat still in her chair and smiled uncomfortably. It affected her spirits. Taboos, after all, are much the same in England as in Boupari.
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{
"id": "13876"
}
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1
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THE FAIR OF BEAUCAIRE.
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There was magic, to my young ears, in the very name of the Fair of Beaucaire. Beaucaire is only ten miles from Nismes, therefore no wonder I heard plenty about it. It is true, that in my time, the world-famous fair did not exercise so vast an influence on commercial affairs In general, as in the old days, when it was the great market of France; and not only France, but of all civilized countries. With what enjoyment would I hear my grandfather relate how great caravans of wealthy merchants would assemble for mutual protection, because of the audacious outlaws, often headed by some powerful baron, who lay in wait for them to despoil them of their merchandise, and often to carry them off prisoners and extort heavy ransom. My grandfather would tell hew long files of mules, laden with rich silks, cloths, serges, camlets, and furs, from Montpelier, from Narbonne, from Toulouse, from Carcassonne, and other places, would wend towards Beaucaire, as the day called the Feast of St. Magdalene approached, on which the fair was opened. The roads were then thronged with travelers; the city was choke-full of strangers; not a bed to be had, unless long preëngaged, for love or money. The shops exhibited the utmost profusion of rich goods; hospitality was exercised without grudging; old friends met from year to year; matches between their children were frequently concerted; bargains were struck, and commercial bills were commonly made payable at the Fair of Beaucaire. The crowd was immense while it lasted; a hundred thousand strangers being generally present.
Thus, you can easily conceive what charms such a lively scene had for the young; while to the old it was the crown of their industry during the year. Those at a distance, finding communications difficult and journeys expensive, were glad to make an annual pilgrimage serve their turn, when they were certain of meeting their fellow-traders, and of having under their notice goods from all parts of the world.
It was with great glee, therefore, that I, a youth of nineteen, started with my family for the Fair of Beaucaire on the 21st of July, 1685. Accommodation was promised us by my uncle Nicolas, and we went the day before the festival in order to see it from the beginning. I drove a large and commodious char-a-banc, in which were my father and mother, my younger brothers and sisters, Monsieur Bourdinave, my father's partner, his two fair daughters, Madeleine and Gabrielle, and their old servant Alice, who was also their kinswoman in a distant degree.
I was held to be a smart youth in those days, by my family and friends, and certainly I had made myself as fine as I could, in the hope of pleasing Madeleine, who, to my mind, was the most charming girl in the world. Nor was she behindhand in the way of ornament, for she and her sister were dressed in their best, and looked as fresh as daisies. In fact, we were, one and all, in holiday attire; even the horse being tricked out with ribbons, tassels, fringes, and flowers, till he was quite a sight.
My father opened the day with family worship, which always seemed to put us in tune for the morning, and spread a balmy influence over us. I well remember the portion of Scripture he read was the seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel, which, I need not remind you, contains this verse--"I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." My father dwelt on this in his prayer, and said, "Lord, I know that these dear young people cannot pass through life without hearing and seeing much of evil: but, oh, keep them unspotted by it! Let an atmosphere of sanctity and safety surround them even in the midst of the fires, that they receive no hurt. In their allowed pleasures and pastimes, let them wear that spiritual hauberk which is invulnerable to the darts of the wicked; let them steadfastly set their faces against whatever thy word disallows; and, should fiery trial and temptation beset them, enable them, having done all, to stand."
I am confident that these were as nearly as possible the very words of my father; for they made an impression on me that I could hardly account for: and as he had recently been explaining to the children the nature of a hauberk, as a coat of defensive armor, and remarking on its pliancy and being often worn out of sight, the metaphor fixed itself in my memory.
We had a substantial breakfast of soup and bread before we started; and then drove in state to M. Bourdinave's door, where I sprang out to help the smiling girls into the char-a-banc. I would gladly have had Madeleine next me, but, as ill-luck would have it, M. Bourdinave placed himself at my side, and my father just behind; so that I was completely shut out from her, to my great chagrin. However, if I could not see her, unless by looking round, I knew she could see me; so I carried myself my best, and flourished my whip in fine style.
And thus we went to the Fair of Beaucaire. As we passed Les Arènes, that famous Roman amphitheatre in the centre of our city, I heard my father and his old friend allude to its former uses, without paying much heed to them. I believe they reminded one another that not only wild beasts but Christians had formerly been put to death there, for the recreation of those who were wild beasts themselves; and my father said how he hated the Sunday bull-fights that took place there still, and never would let me go near them; on which I put in soberly, "I never want to, father."
"Thou art a steady lad, I'll warrant thee," said M. Bourdinave, approvingly. "Hold fast the form of sound words which hath been given thee in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus."
"Ay, ay, sir," said I, whipping old Réné smartly. And in another minute we were thumping and bumping over great paving-stones, too noisily for conversation to be carried on, and getting into a mêlée of carts, wagons, and horsemen, all bound for Beaucaire. The women were now in great delight, looking from side to side, commenting on the dress of one, the equipage of another, nodding to acquaintance, and crying "O, look!" to each other, when they saw anything beyond common. I had enough to do, I assure you, to steer a straight course; and M. Bourdinave observing it, remarked that he hoped I should be equally vigilant in steering a straight course through life, which made me cry "Ay, ay, sir," and set me thinking.
When the road became a little quieter, I heard him and my father discussing the price of cocoons, the superiority of good cocoons to cocalons, dupions, and soufflons; which last, I need not tell you, are very imperfect cocoons; dupions have two threads, and confuse one with another; and pointed cocoons are apt to break in the winding. But all these, as you know, are turned to account by the silk-spinner, and worked up into stockings, sewing-silk, and handkerchiefs. But the good cocoons that yield a strong, thick, compact filament, are appropriated by the silk-throwsters.
But this trade-talk was interrupted by cries of amused delight from the women, and on looking about to see what tickled their fancies, they pointed out to us a most extraordinary figure, standing bolt upright in a cart. He was tall and meagre, and wore a long black robe and tall pointed cap, both of which appeared spangled with silver; instead of which, they were studded with steel buttons, needles, and pins, of which he was an itinerant vendor. I believe the women would have purchased largely of him, had my father let me stop.
Next we came up with a little house upon wheels, drawn by a sorry horse, and on the wooden wall of the said house was depicted, many sizes larger than life, a great human tooth, with bleeding fangs. Beneath was an inscription that the owner of the cart was a traveling dentist, who drew teeth without the least pain.
Alice, the maid, had instantly a great desire to let him draw a troublesome tooth of hers which, she took pains to assure us, was not impaired by natural decay, but only accidentally broken in cracking a cherry-stone. "The edge is so rough," said she, "that it hurts my tongue; and since this honest gentleman can extract it painlessly, I have a great mind to try his hand."
"Plenty of time for that when we get to Beaucaire," said M. Bourdinave. "Sure, you would not have a tooth drawn in the middle of the high road?"
"Truly, I should not mind it, inside that nice little wooden house," said she.
But no, she was not allowed to do so; and, to console her, Madeleine uncovered a little basket she carried on her arm, and discovered cherries as red as her own lips, nestling in dark green leaves. "Here," said she, cheerfully, "are some stones to take your revenge on."
"Ah, what beauties," cried Alice, taking a few; and the basket being handed round, we were soon all eating cherries; and Gabrielle asked me if I did not wish she had the gift of St. Marguerite.
"I do not know what gift you mean," said I, turning half round, and looking full at her.
"Once on a time," said the lively girl, "the foolish story goes, that two saints, who were brother and sister, lived in separate monasteries; but the brother was frequently visited by his sister, on the pretence of seeking spiritual advice. Their names were St. Honorat and St. Marguerite. At length the brother grew rather tired of his sister's visits, and called them a waste of time. 'Henceforth, let it suffice that I shall visit you occasionally, said he. 'When?' said St. Marguerite. 'When the cherry-trees blossom,' said St Honorat. Thereupon, St. Marguerite prayed that the cherry-trees might blossom once a month, which they did; so her brother acknowledged himself outwitted."
"Fie for shame, daughter," said M. Bourdinave, with displeasure. "I am grieved that you should remember and repeat such lying legends."
"Dear father, they exercise the fancy--" "Exercise the fancy, indeed! Let fancy confine herself to her own province. She is a good servant, but a bad mistress. The Jews exercised their fancies in the wild Talmudical fables. What said our Saviour of them? 'Ye make the word of God of none effect through your traditions. Let me hear no more papistical fables."
Gabrielle hung her head, and stealing a glance that way, I saw Madeleine pass her arm round her sister's waist, and look sweetly at her, which made me think Madeleine more attractive than ever. M. Bourdinave did not immediately recover his equanimity, but addressing my father, said it more than ever behooved good Reformers to walk warily, and not give in to any of the ensnaring practices of the surrounding Catholics. "Little by little they are stealing in on us already," said he, "and, if our sagacious men are to be believed, a time of trouble is preparing for us that may perhaps not fall very short of the massacre on the day of St. Bartholomew."
"Still," said my father, "we are under the protection of the Edict of Nantes."
"Edicts may be set aside," said M. Bourdinave, in a lowered voice, which yet I heard, being next him. "Only think how we have been annoyed and injured the last two or three years, by edicts differing greatly from the Edict of Nantes. That one, for instance, which rendered us liable to the intrusion of Catholics into our temples, to spy at our observances, pick up scraps of our sermons, and report them incorrectly. What advantage the rabble have taken of it!"
"Too true," said my father, gravely.
"Last year," pursued M. Bourdinave, "that attempted confederacy for mutual protection, when all our closed meetinghouses were reopened for worship, showed what temper our adversaries were of."
"It was an ill-considered measure," said my father, slowly.
"Ill-conducted, rather," said M. Bourdinave. "The act should have been simultaneous; whereas the want of concert among our people betrayed their weakness, and laid them open to attack. The military at Bordeaux acted with shocking barbarity."
"I do not like to think upon it," said my father. "I trust there will be no recurrence of such lamentable scenes."
"I much fear there will be, though," said M. Bourdinave, gloomily. "Satan desires to have us, that he may sift us like wheat. Let us hope to abide the trial."
At this moment a burst of noisy music, drowned their voices; and the needle-seller's horse, which was just before us, making a sudden start, the poor needle-vendor was thrown off his balance, and jerked out of his cart on to a heap of flints by the road-side, while his horse began to kick. Giving the reins to my father, I jumped out, and ran to his assistance; but he was so prickly all over, that it was difficult to lay hold of him. His needles and pins ran into my fingers in a dozen places. To make matters worse, his nose began to bleed, so that he was in a pitiable plight. However, I picked him up at last, found he was not seriously injured, gave him a clean handkerchief (which he promised to return), and started him off again in his cart, in a sitting position this time, and much crestfallen.
The throng increased as we approached Beaucaire, and when we got into the streets there was frequently a complete stoppage. Oh, what a lively scene it was! and what a noise! Music playing, bells ringing, people talking at the top of their voices. What joyous meetings I what hearty welcomes! what various smells of fried fish, hot soups, and roast meats! Truly, the Fair of Beaucaire exceeded my liveliest imaginings, and yours will certainly never come up to it.
The fair, you have perhaps heard, is held on a wide open ground between the Rhone and the castle rock. This space was covered with streets of booths and sheds, in which all kinds of merchandise were displayed. The river was choked with heavily-freighted barges. As for the streets, they were hung from their upper windows with the richest tapestries; silks, damasks, velvets, and goldsmiths' work were displayed in the richest abundance; the most costly valuables exposed, almost at the mercy of jostling wayfarers; banners flaunting overhead, and casting fleeting shadows beneath. Languages of all nations mingled in strange medley--German, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Russian. Ah, it was like a dream!
My uncle Nicolas received us most heartily; and, while my father and M. Bourdinave went about their affairs, I had the pleasing charge of the women, and showing them what was to be seen. My mother, with a child in each hand, Madeleine and I, each with another child, Gabrielle and old Alice close behind us, formed such a phalanx that we made way for ourselves, or had it made for us, wherever we went, and saw everything we wanted to see. We even saw the dentist, and Alice would not be foiled this time, but almost thrust herself on his notice. He made her sit on the ground, put her head between his knees and dragged out the tooth by main force. She screamed horribly, and said, "You engaged to give no pain!" "To myself," said he, "but I could not engage for you." So there was the laugh against her. However, the tooth was out, and he generously gave it to her; so we walked away laughing.
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{
"id": "13896"
}
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2
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THE FEAST OF ST. MAGDALEN.
|
We looked about us till dinner, and after dinner we looked about us again; for the women and children seemed as though they would never be sated with sightseeing; and as for me, I was never sated of going about with Madeleine. All at once she cried out in a frightened voice, "Where is Gabrielle?"
We looked about and could see neither her nor Alice; and as it was nearly the hour they call vesper, though the days were still pretty long, we were greatly alarmed at their disappearance. Little Louison, however, plucked my sleeve, and said, "I think they went in there," pointing to a church-door; so, although my father specially objected to my setting foot within a Catholic place of worship, Madeleine and I went in to look for her sister; but my mother kept the children outside. As soon as we entered we found ourselves almost in darkness, what little light there was proceeding from great wax candles; and there was a good deal of tawdry finery and trumpery all about, and a strong smell of incense. I was looking about me with curiosity and interest, mixed with a certain repulsion, when Madeleine, in an eager undertone, exclaimed, "There she is!" and pressed forward, I close following, to a little side-altar, where Gabrielle and Alice were listening, with amused wonder, to a priest, who was telling a group of people about him that what he was exhibiting to them was one of Mary Magdalen's bones; and that she and Lazarus, and Martha his sister, had put to sea in an old boat, and in process of time, after being sorely buffeted by winds and waves, had been cast ashore at Marseilles, where they preached the gospel to the natives, and converted them all.
I did not believe one word of this, nor did Madeleine, who drew her reluctant sister away; and when we got her into the open air, rebuked her for doing what their father would not approve. Gabrielle looked inclined to defend herself, and make a joke of it. However, a great bell began to clang so near us as to drown her voice; people were pushing past us into church, and we found ourselves going against the stream, and made the best of our way out of it, and back to our quarters. My father and M. Bourdinave were standing at the door, conversing with my uncle, and when they saw us they smiled, and my father said, with unwonted softness in his tone, "Well, children, are you come back? Have you enjoyed yourselves?" and looked earnestly at Madeleine, whose eyes sank under his.
My uncle Nicolas kept a mercer's shop, and his shelves and counters were now so laden with goods that it was difficult to steer our way through them to the steep stair which led to the floor above; and that, too, was converted, for the time, into a kind of warehouse; but above that was the living-room, and above that, again, numerous bedrooms with sloping sides, and small windows piercing the steep roof. My aunt Jeanne was good and hospitable to excess. She would not let M. Bourdinave and his family return to their lodging till they had supped with her, though there were other guests; so we were jammed rather closely around the table with little elbow-room. Then ensued clinking of glasses, clatter of plates, dishes, knives, forks, the buzzing of many tongues, savory smells of hot viands, and much helping and pressing of one another; much talk of the price of silks, velvets, and serges; of the credit of such and such a house; of the state of trade; of the court; and of the country. I, wedged between Madeleine and her sister, had the opportunity of giving her many tender looks, though few words passed between us. Among the strangers at table was a strangely unpleasant Englishman, who prefaced every speech with "I want to know--" and would not be satisfied with a short answer. At length my father mildly said-- "Sir, you seek to know trade secrets. You know there are secrets in all trades."
"That is precisely why I want to know them," said he, laughing.
"But a good reason why we should not tell them," said my father; who then turned from him, and addressed some one else. Gabrielle whispered, "I shall call that man Monsieur I-want-to-know."
"Ah, well, I know already what I chiefly want," pursued the Englishman, who, had he not been drinking more freely than was good for him, would probably have been less communicative. "I've been to Italy, and have seen the Italian machinery for throwing silk, and shall carry back a pretty good idea of the process."
"That man shall never carry anything back," whispered a vindictive-looking Italian, whose eyes glittered like fire.
"Hush! he is only an empty boaster."
"We want no empty boasters. We will not let him steal our trade secrets."
That night, going home to his lodging, the Englishman was set upon by the Italian, and pricked with his stiletto, narrowly escaping with his life. He gave him what he called "a good English black-eye," and bawled loudly for justice. The Italian ran off, and was no more seen; and the Englishman, whose ugly name was Hogg, talked big about applying to his ambassador, Sir William Trumbull, but was induced to let the matter drop. The ambassador shortly had worse things to complain of.
The next day was the Catholic Feast of St. Magdalen, which, though we Huguenots felt no manner of respect for, we were obliged to conform to outwardly, by not selling or working in open shops, till the services of the day were over. We made up to ourselves for it by having a prayer-service of our own in-doors, followed by a long exposition and exhortation from a godly minister named Brignolles, who warned us of times of trial that should soon be revealed, and adjured us to put on the whole armor of God, that we might be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Then, after our mid-day meal, we went forth to see the show.
This time I had the care of Gabrielle, and wished I had not, for she was in her giddiest humor, and a young man, whose appearance I did not like, continually hung about us, and looked attentively at her, which I resented, but she was evidently pleased with. At length, some waxwork attracting our notice, a change took place in the disposition of our party. I shifted the charge of Gabrielle to her father, and got Madeleine instead. My memories of the rest of the day are more about Madeleine than anything else.
I remember, though, that we fell in with our neighbors the Lefevres at a waxwork stall, and while Madeleine and I were admiring some fruit that exactly imitated nature, little Jules Lefevre stretched out his hand to touch a little waxen boy with a lamb, saying, "Pretty, pretty!"
"Dear child, you shall have it!" cried a honeyed voice behind; and a lady nicely dressed put the image into his hand, and stooped down to kiss him. When Marie Lefevre turned round, and saw what her little boy held, she looked displeased, and made him lay it on the stall again, for it was one of those papistical images which we hold in detestation.
At night, when all had dispersed but our own immediate party, there was a pause, and I saw that the elders had something on their minds that they were about to unfold. I felt a strange emotion that presaged what was coming, for not a hint had been dropped.
"Son," said my father--and I looked towards him with awe--"you are now on the confines of manhood, and it behooves us to consider your future. At your time of life I was betrothed to your mother, and a share was promised me of my father's business. What are your own views respecting your course in life?"
All the elder people fixed their eyes on me with gravity, and Madeleine afterwards told me her heart stopped beating; while Gabrielle struggled with a disposition to laugh.
"My views are," returned I, boldly, "to follow my honored father, step by step, and, his concurrence obtained, to get betrothed as fast as I can."
"Well said, my boy," said my father, heartily, while every face wore a broad smile but one, which was mantling with blushes.
"Provided," continued I, "that I may choose the young lady."
"Let us know where your choice will fall," said my father, trying to keep the corners of his mouth in order, while M. Bourdinave scarcely suppressed a chuckle.
I stepped across the room, and took Madeleine's hand. "Here is my choice," said I, "if she will have me. We have known each other from childhood."
Madeleine instantly snatched her hand away, and covered her face. However, the next moment her father joined our hands, and gave us his blessing; and then we were bewildered with congratulations and good auguries; and Master Brignolles gave us a world of good advice, and offered a prayer; and my father gave me a ring of betrothal to put on her finger, and thus we became plighted to one another.
The rest of our stay at Beaucaire passed like a dream, and its brightness yet remained while we pursued our homeward journey. Madeleine sat close behind me this time, and on her knee was little Jules Lefevre, whom we had taken in charge of because his father's wagon was over-full. He had something clasped tight in his hand, which he unclosed for a moment at Madeleine's request, and gave her a glimpse of a little "Agnus Dei," which he said had been given him by "the pretty lady." How or when she had done so, we never made out. Madeleine tried to get it from him; but he resisted with all his might, saying it was "his own."
"It must be confessed," said Gabrielle, "that the Catholic churches have much more in them to attract the eye than our plain temples."
"Who denies it?" said I. "Their appeals are to the outward senses, which never influence the heart."
"I think my heart would be very much influenced by them," said Gabrielle, "if I had not been brought up to think them wrong."
"I cannot bear to hear you talk in that way, sister," said Madeleine. "Pray, do not seem indifferent to the blessings of a purer faith."
Gabrielle pouted, and said, "Indifferent? no; but perhaps if you and I had been brought up Catholics, we might have been as positive we held the purer faith as we are now that we are of the Reformed."
"A very good thing, then, that you were not so brought up," said I, "for then I should not have been betrothed to Madeleine;" and to prevent her pursuing so unpleasant a subject, I lifted up my voice and sang. Little Jules presently dropped asleep in Madeleine's arms, and his little fat fingers unclosing, the dangerous bauble dropped from them, and, by a dexterous touch of my whip, I flicked it into the road. By-and-by, awaking, he cried for it, and beat Madeleine with his tiny fists; nor was pacified till his attention was diverted by an almost interminable file of mules, with their five or six olive-faced muleteers in brown jackets and red sashes.
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{
"id": "13896"
}
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3
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LES ARÈNES.
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When we got back, we found my uncle Chambrun, my mother's only brother, standing at the door. He was the minister of a small town near Avignon, and did not care to go to the Fair; nevertheless he was very glad to hear all about it from those who had been there. We were well pleased to have so ready a listener; and when we had said our say, he fell into grave talk with my father and mother of the signs of the times, which he thought very threatening.
"What can we expect otherwise," said he, "with Louis the Fourteenth for king and Louvois for his minister, and Père la Chaise for his confessor, and Madame de Maintenon for his confidante and adviser? A storm is gathering overhead, but never mind--there is a heaven higher than all." These words checked us; but youthful spirits soon rise, and the impression did not last long. I now seemed walking on air, for I loved and was loved by Madeleine.
A few days after our return from Beaucaire, Marie Lefevre burst in on us with troubled looks, and exclaimed, "Have you seen my boy?"
"No!" exclaimed we all.
"Then something has befallen him," cried she, wringing her hands. "We have lost sight of him."
We gathered about her, full of pity, and asked where he had last been seen.
"Near Les Arènes."
"He may have fallen into some pit, or lost himself among the dungeons," said my mother. "We will go and help you to find him."
So she and I accompanied Marie, who was crying bitterly, and made frequent inquiries for him by the way.
When we got inside that vast, circular inclosure, we agreed that Marie should explore one side and we the other, and thus meet at the other end. This took us some time, for you must know that it consists of two stories, each of sixty arcades, seventy feet high; and under its great arches and pillars are many vaulted chambers and passages, wherein good Christians have been confined; and again, wherein other good Christians have found asylums in time of hot persecution. Within the amphitheatre were originally thirty-two rows of seats, which would accommodate at least twenty thousand spectators that had a mind to feast their eyes on scenes of blood in the central arena. I looked with curiosity at this place, which I had never so thoroughly visited before. Some of the dens were still in use for the bulls that were baited on Sundays, and others seemed lairs for rogues and vagabonds; but there was many a corner which, as I said to my mother, would afford a good hiding-place in time of danger, and one, especially, in which I thought a fugitive might defy detection (though _I_ had detected it).
Well, we hunted high and low, but could not find little Jules. His mother was distracted: we feared she would lose her reason altogether. Madeleine devoted herself to her like an angel; neighbors were full of compassion--those of our own persuasion, I mean; for the Catholics mocked her and said, "Go seek him in the Jews' quarter. The Jew baker's daughter has, doubtless, made him into pies. Go seek him in their secret assemblies--in their cellars--in their slaughter-houses--doubtless they are fattening him for their Passover." Conceive the anguish of the mother.
At length she found he was not dead. Her heart leaped for joy. But when she found how the case stood with him, she was ready to wish him dead and numbered among the little children that follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. Jules had been kidnapped and tampered with by the Catholics. The little apostate had been taught to curse his parents.
The case occasioned a great deal of talk in Nismes at the time; unhappily, similar kidnappings made it soon forgotten, except by the family.
One day, when I had been hunting for him, I came suddenly on the young man who had stared so rudely at Gabrielle at Beaucaire. I was sorry to see him in Nismes. I did not like the look of him, with his narrow head, low forehead, and eyes too near his nose, though otherwise he was well enough. Returning to our factory, I found him just coming out of it. I said to my father, "Who is that?" He said, "A troublesome fellow, I think, but he brought a message from your uncle Nicolas. He is called Martin Prunevaux. He asked me all manner of impertinent questions, and, if he fall in with you, may ask you as many; but remember Jaques Coeur's motto, "'En close bouche N'entre mouche--' "And again, 'Dire, faire, taire.'"
"Ay, ay, father, you may depend on me," said I, heartily.
Sometimes, before I went to bed, I stepped out to get a glimpse of the light in Madeleine's window. I should observe, it was also Gabrielle's, for the sisters shared the same room. The moon cast strong lights and shadows, and I kept in the shade till close to the house, when what was my disgust to hear the wretched tinkle of a guitar under the window! Serenades might be all very well for Italy, but we did not favor them in Nismes; and stepping briskly up to the musician, I said abruptly, "We want none of this miserable noise!"
He started as if shot, saying, "Pardon, monsieur," evidently taking me for one of the family; a mistake which I favored by knocking at the door. As I was in deep shadow he did not recognize me, but the moonlight fell full on his face, and I saw it was Martin Prunevaux. I felt exceedingly inclined to fall on him and beat him for daring to tune his wretched pipes under Madeleine's window; but a second thought assured me that Gabrielle must be his object; the more so that I was sure I saw her shadow (which was shorter than her sister's) fall on the curtain, and I could even fancy her making merry behind it. Still, I liked not such a fellow to come prowling about either of the sisters. I stood my ground, that I might not be guilty of a runaway knock, and when Alice came to the door I made a bungling speech and said, "Oh, I suppose the family are all gone to bed. I am late tonight." She said, "They are so, sir," and looked surprised. I said, "There was a street musician of some sort before the house when I came up. I think I have chased him away." She said, "All the better, sir; we are much obliged to you; we never encourage such people."
When I rallied Madeleine, next day, on having been serenaded, tears sprang into her eyes, and she assured me it was not her fault, adding that she feared Gabrielle, in her thoughtlessness, must have given some encouragement to a presumptuous young man. "However, when my father returns, he will take measures," she added, "to prevent our being further troubled with him." Monsieur Bourdinave was at this time traveling on business.
The sisters spent that evening at our house as was not unusual. On these occasions we often sang hymns; and I had just set the tune of "Chantez de Dieu le renom"-- "Chantez de Dieu le renom, Vous serviteurs du Seigneur! Venez pour lui faire honneur, Vous qui avez eu ce don"-- and was lifting up my voice on high, followed by the sweet treble of the girls, when a shower of stones rattled against the casement, and a flint passed close to Madeleine and hit my father on the cheekbone. Hot with anger, I rushed into the street, and found a group of unmannerly fellows outside, who, instead of taking to their heels, gathered round me with defiant looks.
"What is the meaning of this?" cried I in anger.
"What is the meaning of your disturbing the neighborhood with your uproar?" cried one of them, saucily.
"Uproar! We were singing to the praise and glory of God. Do you know that you have hurt my father?"
"We neither know nor care; and if you don't keep a quiet tongue in your head, will slit it as soon as not."
"Come in, son, come in," said my father, whose cheek was covered with blood. "As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men"--drawing me indoors as he spoke.
"Excellent advice! Take care that he follows it," cried they, tauntingly, as my father shut-to the door. I was burning with rage; Madeleine was in tears; the children, with scared looks, were gathered round my mother. My father, with gentle force, drew me into the little circle, and made me sit down beside him.
"My children," said he, "we have been warned that evil times are coming, and this may be the beginning. If it prove otherwise, we shall have the more reason to praise the Lord; but if it please Him to try and to prove us, let us not be found unprepared. Our strength lies in prayer, in not giving offence, and in not being easily offended."
"We gave no offence, father," said I. "But you were too easily offended. If any one had cause of complaint, it was I; but I do not take it up."
My mother was meanwhile bathing his cut cheek and applying a plaster.
"Sure, it would make any son's blood boil, to see his father hit!" cried I; and I saw that Madeleine sympathized with me.
"Why, then, let his blood cool again," said my father, jocularly. "Tush, many a school-boy gets a worse hurt than this, and makes no moan. There! your mother has made all right, and I feel no smart. Let us say no more about it."
I thought he strikingly acted on our Lord's axiom of "If thine enemy smite thee on the one cheek, offer him the other," but could not just then enter into it. I longed to give those rascals a good beating.
"Now, then, I'll set the tune again," said I, affecting composure.
But, "No, no," said the girls simultaneously; and "No, no," said my dear mother. "Don't you see," she continued, "I have all this broken glass to pick up? If you will do me a real kindness, you will step round to the glazier, the first thing in the morning, and get him to mend the window before breakfast."
"I'll go at once," said I; but "No, no," was again the word. My father laid his hand firmly on my right arm, and Madeleine hers on my left. Though her touch was as light as a snow-flake, I would not have shaken it off for the world.
"The streets are unquiet to-night," said my father, "and I mean no one to go forth till the girls return home, when we will see them safely to their door; going out the back way."
So we spent the next hour in a sober, subdued manner. Madeleine shyly let me steal her hand and hold it some minutes, as though she knew it would calm me. And so it did; there was much sweetness in that hour, after all.
At length it was time to see them home; my mother kissed and blessed them as if they were going further than into the next street. We went out the back way, my father taking Gabrielle and I Madeleine, and we met with no evil by the way. Being rather high-wrought, I would willingly have faced a little danger for Madeleine's sake.
I kissed her soft cheek unrebuked, and followed my father through the dark with a happy heart Mechanically, rather than from either devotion or defiance, I began to hum "Chantez de Dieu," when my father's warning hand plucked my sleeve, and, at the same instant, a rough voice beside me said, "Hold your peace! Have you not heard of the _arrêt? _" and passed on.
We had heard nothing of any _arrêt_; but next morning, when I went to the glazier's, he told me that an order had been issued forbidding the Reformed to sing psalms in the streets and public walks, or even within their own houses loud enough to be heard outside. And he told me he was so full of work that he hardly knew which way to turn, in consequence of the many windows broken over night by evil-disposed men suborned to interrupt psalmody. I asked him, half jesting, if he thought any of the suborned men were glaziers; but it hurt him, for he was as good a Huguenot as any in Nismes.
Going home with him, I saw a horrid sight--a dead body that had been some time buried, torn from the grave, stripped of its shroud, and lying in the gutter. I shuddered, and asked the glazier if we had not better tell the authorities; but he hurried on, saying, "Better let it be. The authorities doubtless know all about it." So there had we to leave the ghastly object, though its remaining there was equally prejudicial to decency and to health.
Men's tongues were very busy that day; every one foreboding calamity and nobody knowing how to meet it.
My mother sent me, after breakfast, to visit my uncle Chambrun, who had fallen sick; and as the distance was about seven leagues, I went to him on a small but active horse. On my arrival, I found him in bed, with a royal commissioner seated beside him, who was talking to him with great show of courtesy, while my uncle looked much wearied. The bishop of Valence was on the other side of his bed. Finding myself in such high company, I fell back, and awaited a better opportunity of presenting myself.
The commissioner was inquiring very sedulously after my uncle's health, and assuring him he respected him greatly, and wished to show him favor.
"We have been constrained," said he, "to subject several of your colleagues to temporary confinement, but I have great hope that nothing of the kind will be necessary in your case, if you are a man of wisdom who know how to comply with exigencies as they arise, and thereby set an example to those around you. To this end the bishop has come to put a few easy interrogations. It is a mere form, and I am sure you will make no difficulty."
My uncle thanked him for his kind expressions, but said he had a Master in heaven to whom he owed his first duty.
"So have we all," interposed the bishop. And that he should make answer with that end in view and nothing else.
The bishop then took up the word, and very little can I remember of what he said, so hampered was I by his presence; but it was plain that he sought to entangle my uncle in his talk. That was no easy thing to do, my uncle was so temperate and logical, and so much more conversant with the Holy Scriptures than the bishop was.
The commissioner, perceiving that the bishop was getting the worst of it, broke in with-- "All this is beside the mark. The king is determined that you, Monsieur Chambrun, should be a good Catholic; so it is no good begging off. You had much better accept the good offer made you, which I trust you will do on thinking it over."
"The only offer I desire," replied my uncle, "is of a passport, to enable me, as soon as I am well enough, to follow my brother ministers to Holland. My reason tells me--" "A truce with your reason," interrupted the bishop, rising to go away. "You have too much rhetoric by half. I advise you to reflect and to obey."
"Monseigneur, I am sure you think you are giving me the best advice," said my uncle, feebly. "Nephew, see the noble and reverend gentlemen out."
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{
"id": "13896"
}
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4
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MY UNCLE CHAMBRUN.
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Having done so, I returned to my uncle, and said to him,--"Uncle, the bishop has gone away in great wrath, vowing that you shall repent of your conduct."
"And when I would have made way for him," said my aunt, indignantly, "he called me a bad name, and looked as if I were the very scum of the earth."
"Ah, he does not recognize marriages among the clergy," said my uncle, calmly. "Never mind him, my good Dorothée; he'd be glad enough to have a wife of his own, and seeing me so much better off than he is, makes him captious and querulous. Come and shake up my pillow, for my poor head aches sadly. I will try to get a little sleep."
At that instant, a loud trampling of horses' feet was heard, together with the jingling of spurs and the clanking of armor.
"What's that?" cried Aunt Dorothée, running from the bed to the window, and pulling back the little curtain, "Ah, le beau spectacle! Look out, Jacques!"
It was indeed a fine spectacle, as far as mere outward splendor went, to see a troup of cavalry in blue and burnished steel, on powerful black horses, ride proudly by, making the very earth shake under them; and many children, attracted by the sight, ran towards them, shouting and throwing up their caps; but when I looked at the ferocious faces of these men, seamed with many an ugly scar--their lowering brows, their terrible eyes, their sour aspect--I felt they might be as dreadful to face in peace as in war. I watched them out of sight, and then placed myself beside my uncle, who, with closed eyes and folded hands, was endeavoring to sleep. My aunt went below to baste the poulet for his dinner. The house was very still; nothing was to be heard but the ticking of the clock.
All at once I heard heavy feet tramping towards the house, and a confused medley of rough voices. The next instant, the house door was battered as if to break it in, which, being of solid oak, was no easy matter. The door being opened, I heard a faint cry of terror from my aunt, and a brawling and trampling impossible to describe. I looked down from the stair-head and counted forty-two dragoons, trampling in one after another, till, the house being of moderate size, there was hardly room for them to stand. Yet they continued to pour in, jostling, pushing, and elbowing one another, each trying to shout louder than his comrades, "Holà! holà! House! house! --Give us to eat! Give us to drink!" with frightful oaths and curses.
"Good sirs, a moment's patience, and you shall be waited on," cried my terrified aunt.
"To Jericho with your patience! We wait for nobody. I decide for this poulet," said one, taking it up hot in his hands, and bawling because they were burnt; "dress two dozen more--cook all you have in the poultry-yard, or we will cook you."
"I claim my share of that poulet," says one.
"Why not have one apiece?" said another. "Who would make two bites of a cherry? He has gnawn off all the best mouthfuls already. Come, be quick, mistress housewife! Where are the cellar keys?"
"I've mislaid them, good sirs," said the poor terrified woman.
"We'll kick the door open, then. Here's a ham! here are two hams! Ha! ha! ham is good--we will heat the copper and boil them."
"No, slice them and fry them," says another; "they take too long to boil. Bread! --where's the bread? Where's the oven? If it were big enough, goody, we'd put you into it."
"Ha! ha! what have I found here! --a bag of money."
"Divide! divide!" shouted two dozen voices.
"It's mine, I found it!" cried the first. Then they fell to blows, and some of them fell sprawling to the ground, and were kicked, the bag was snatched from the finder, and the money scattered on the floor; then they scrambled for it, as many as could get near it, laughing and cursing; while others ransacked drawers, cupboards, and shelves, and others broke open the cellar door, and began to drink.
Terrified beyond expression, I went back to my uncle, and saw, to my surprise and relief, that he had fallen into a heavy sleep, which was a restorative he particularly needed. On looking from the window, I say my aunt, almost incapacitated by her fears, attempting to catch the poultry, in which the dragoons alternately helped and hindered her, roaring with laughter when a hen flew shrieking over their heads, and then abusing my aunt. They were quickly caught and plucked, and set, some to roast, some to broil, according to their capricious mandates; and then, when everything was in as fair train for their disorderly feast as it well could be (two or three additional fires having been kindled), one of them said, "Let us divert the time with a little good music;" and began to beat a drum.
"Louder! louder!" cried his comrades. "Let's have a chorus of drums!" How they came to have so many, I know not, except that they were brought for the special purpose of tormenting; but they produced six or eight, slung them round their necks, and began to beat them, crying,-- "Now for the tour of the house!"
"Sure my uncle must be dead!" thought I, leaning over him anxiously. But no, his breath came and went, though inaudibly, and had he been allowed to finish his sleep in peace it might have been for his healing.
Instead of this, I heard the dragoons come stamping upstairs, producing a muffled roll on their drums that sounded like muttering thunder. They went into one room after another, and speedily reached that of my uncle, on catching sight of whom they triumphantly exclaimed, "Hah! ha! v'lâ notre ami! Here is he whom we seek, and for whom we prepare the reveille." And ranging themselves round his bed in a moment of time, in spite of a warning gesture from me, it being impossible for my voice to be heard, they simultaneously beat their drums with a clangor that might have waked the dead. No wonder, therefore, that my poor uncle started from his sleep bewildered, terrified, and looking as if he believed himself in some horrid dream. In vain he moved his lips, in vain he raised his clasped hands to one and another, as if in supplication; the more distress he showed the more noise they made, till it seemed to me as if my eardrums would split. In the midst of it all up came my aunt, whose fortitude and presence of mind at that moment I can never sufficiently admire; and with forced smiles and courteous gestures made them to understand, in dumb show, that the first course of their meal was served. Instantly the drums ceased; one of them seized her by the shoulders, and hurried her down stairs before him, the others clattering after him. I turned, and saw my uncle raise his eyes and hands to heaven, and fall back on his pillow.
There was now a lull, while the viands were being consumed; but soon a new uproar arose--the supply was inadequate for the demand: every morsel of food in the house was consumed at one sitting, and yet there was not nearly enough. The dragoons were furious: they gathered about my aunt, pulling her hair, threatening her with their fists, threatening to boil her in her own copper, and set fire to the house, with her sick husband in it, if she did not procure an ample supply. With matchless patience she looked one after another in the face, said, "Attendez, attendez, messieurs, s'il vous plait;" and then, calling me down, bid me go forth and beg of my neighbors as much food as I could.
When wondering much at my aunt's fortitude and self-possession, she afterwards told me that she lifted her heart to God in earnest prayer, and there came to her the comforting remembrance of these words. "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Alas! what a scene presented itself out of doors. The people were running up and down in despair; a woman rushed wildly out of her house, and seized me by the arm, crying, "They are batooning my husband!" Another shrieked from a window, 'Help, help, they are killing my father!' Children ran about the streets, crying, "Oh, my father! --oh, my mother!" It seemed a heartless task to be going from one to another begging something to eat under such piteous circumstances; and yet how knew I that as bad or worse a tragedy might be acted at my uncle's if I failed to supply what was wanted?
At length I returned, staggering under the weight of a huge cheese and a bag of chestnuts. And though I was reviled for not bringing them better cheer, yet I pacified them by smiling like my aunt, and echoing her "Attendez, messieurs, s'il vous plait;" and started forth again on my foraging expedition, though very doubtful of having anything to bring back.
How long were these horrible men going to stay? How could we go on supplying their wants at this rate? If their orders were to eat my uncle out of house and home, and drive him and my aunt to distraction, would it not be just as well to let them do so at once, and have done with it?
One and another to whom I applied were so full of their own griefs that I had to listen to what they had to say before they would or could hear a word from me in return. One had been hung up by his feet over a chimney; another had a knife held to his throat; one had seen her little infant nearly strangled; another had been dragged along the ground by her hair. I could not help pitying them sincerely, but not so much as I should have done, but for the sad plight of my uncle. When I, with a kind of wrench, forced the talk into the subject of what was going on at his house, they, through their great love for him, forgot for a moment their own trials in thinking of his; and those who had anything to contribute brought it out, and those who had nothing to spare made up for it in pity. All this consumed so much time that when I got back it was nearly dark, and the house was all in a blaze with lights, for the dragoons had lighted candles all over the house; and some of them were stupid with drink, and lying in heaps; others were rendered quarrelsome by it, and fighting and abusing one another; but as for the drummers, they never ceased. They were at it when I set forth, they were at it while I was away, they were at it when I came back again, and stared at the good things I spread out before them without once staying their drumsticks. I was so sick of it by this time, and so unable to disguise my disgust and anger, that I persuaded myself I might as well return home, for that I could do no good where I was, and things could get no worse without me. So I went up to my aunt, who was then sitting like a stone image, without seeming able to hear or see anything, and made signs of leave-taking. She grasped my hand in both hers, and looked up so piteously at me, her lips moving as if with the words "do not go," that I felt I must stay by her, come what would. For was she not my mother's sister-in-law? and was not my uncle my mother's brother? I made a sign I would remain, on which she kissed my hands; and then I patted her on the shoulder, and could not help letting fall a tear. Then she got up, and bestirred herself for the men, hoping, no doubt, they would intermit their drumming if she could but conciliate them. But as soon as one relay ceased drumming another took it up; and thus, shameful to relate, they continued the whole night without intermission, crowding round my uncle's bed, making his room intolerably hot and close, and pushing in and out of the room and up and down the stairs.
My uncle now lay in a kind of torpor; the expression of his face painful to witness; his wan hands lying outside the counterpane, and now and then slightly moving, which showed me he still lived. Towards daybreak I was so worn out that I dropped asleep as I sat beside him with my face on the edge of his pillow--such deep sleep that I neither heard nor dreamed of the drumming. When I woke, with a strangely confused, unrefreshed feeling, the daylight was faintly making its way into the room, which had no one in it but my uncle, my aunt, and me. She seemed to have crawled with difficulty to the foot of his bed, and there sunk and fallen asleep I went out on the landing--candles were burning in their sockets with a vile smell--the house was full of vile smells and of confusion and disorder--the house-door stood ajar--one or two dragoons lay sleeping heavily on the ground. I went up again to tell my aunt, and found her straightening my uncle like a corpse. At the same moment a dragoon came up behind me. He was going to recommence the disturbance, when I pointed to the bed, and said, sternly, "See what you have done. You may now go away satisfied with having made this lately peaceful family completely wretched. God grant you forgiveness ere you are laid out like those cold remains."
The dragoon looked confounded. He muttered something, turned on his heel, said something to his companions below, and we presently saw them run out of the house. I went and shut the door. On returning I saw my uncle was not dead. Their thinking him so was a mercy, since it gave him a little respite. He was too weak to be moved, but he begged me to return home and tell what had happened to my parents: adding, as I left him, "Do not make the affair worse than it is." I thought it would be difficult to do that.
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{
"id": "13896"
}
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5
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THE PASSPORT.
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When I reached home it was some hours after sunrise. The dragoons, just recalled from the Spanish frontier, where they were no longer wanted, were spreading themselves over the country with the express commission to harass the Huguenot inhabitants as much as possible, short of death, but had not yet reached Nismes.
I entered my father's house. Contrary to custom, he was not at the factory, but awaiting my return. He rose when I appeared, and stood silently looking at me, while my mother put her hands on my shoulders, and looked piteously in my face.
"Son, thou hast been out all night."
"At my uncle's, mother. He was ill in bed; the dragoons were there; and my aunt begged me to stay as a safeguard."
"You did quite right to comply, my boy," said my father, heartily. "I trust the dragoons did not misuse thy good uncle."
"I know not what you call misusing," replied I, "if beating their drums round his bed all night did not deserve that term. They almost killed him with their clamor--ate everything in the house--called for more--reviled my aunt--scrambled for her money--broke open the cellar, and drank every drop it contained."
I spoke this so fast as to be almost unintelligible; they listened in silent dismay. My father, then bidding me be seated, desired me to go over the whole matter from the beginning, with composure and method. Having drunk a cup of water, I did so; and we then held a family council, in which it was decided that my uncle, in his precarious health, would probably sink under a similar attack of the dragoons, and that it would be expedient for me to return to him at dusk with a covered cart, well supplied with hay, and to place him thereon and bring him back with me, to be kept at our house, in secresy and safety, till he should be able to escape from the kingdom--"though this would have been an easier matter to effect," observed my father, "before he had made himself personally obnoxious to the bishop."
My father then went to his daily business at the silk-factory, while I remained behind awhile with my mother, to assist her in clearing out a loft for my uncle's reception, the entrance to which could be concealed.
I then paid a hasty visit to Madeleine, whom I found bathed in tears, as she had learnt from my mother that I had been away all night; and though this at another time would have occasioned no alarm, yet at a season of so much uneasiness she had foreboded some sad calamity. My sudden appearance caused a fresh flow of tears, but they were of thankfulness for my safety. A few tender words reassured her. I then gave her a short account of what had passed, taking care, as my uncle desired me, not to make things worse than they were. But still it was evident that he was marked for the victim of a persecution he was not in a condition to support; and as Madeleine had a sincere regard for him, which his character justly merited, she commended me for standing by him, and rejoiced that I was going to fetch him to our house.
"We have not been quite undisturbed, even during your short absence," said she. "Our evening service was yesterday interrupted, just as the congregation were in the middle of a psalm, by several officials rudely entering the temple, and commanding us to desist, because the Host was being carried by."
"In the temper in which those in authority seem to be at present," said I, "it is to be feared that things will grow worse before they mend."
"Meanwhile, remember your father's admonition, I entreat you," said Madeleine; "and, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men."
"Rely on it, sweet Madeleine," said I. "I am a man of peace, not of war."
Cheered by my little interview with her, I proceeded to my usual work, and, after supping with my family, stole quietly forth on my mission.
I reached the neighboring town without misadventure, and, leaving the cart out of sight, raised my uncle's latch and went in. He and my aunt had the house to themselves (for their only servant had gone to her friends); and she was sitting on the bed, supporting his head on her shoulder.
"Here's Jacques," said she, looking up.
"Jacques, my good lad," said my uncle, holding out his feeble hand, "I thank you for this visit, and yet more for staying with us last night."
"You have not noticed any of the dragoons lurking about outside, I hope?" said my aunt, anxiously.
"No," said I, "all seems quiet at present; but there is no knowing when they will return, and my parents have sent me to fetch you away. My mother declares she shall know no peace till she has you under her roof."
"My good boy, I can no more go to her than I can fly," said my uncle.
"Oh yes, uncle, you can. I have brought you a nice covered cart, filled with hay, on which you will lie quite easily, and I will carry you down to it on my back."
My uncle and aunt were most thankful for this, and, after very little preparation, closed the shutters of the little dwelling, and turned the key on it. My uncle was made tolerably comfortable, with my aunt seated beside him; and in this way we stealthily quitted the neighborhood. I could hear uproarious voices in the distance, and occasionally a faint scream or wail, but gradually left these painful sounds behind. To say truth, I was by no means sure of our performing this journey in safety, and had many alarms by the way; and as for my uncle, my aunt afterwards told me he was in prayer the whole of the way, to which might probably be ascribed our safety; for ours is a God that heareth prayer, not when it is a mere babble of words, in a language we do not understand, repeated over and over again, and made a merit of; but His ears are attent unto the cry of the contrite heart, and the prayer of them that are sorrowful.
It was far into the night, or rather near morning, when we reached our journey's end. My father cautiously admitted us; my mother received the fugitives with the tenderest affection. A hot supper awaited them, after partaking which they were thankful to retire to the loft; and not even the children were to know they were there, and the youngest of our two servants had been sent to her home; for my father told me that the dragoons were expected to pay us a visit shortly, when the premises would doubtless be ransacked; "and since your uncle has borne the journey better than might have been expected," said he, "the sooner we can get him out of the country the better."
He then told me what plans he had been devising for this purpose, and that if my uncle were equal to it on the morrow, I should set him and my aunt on their way to a certain point, which, if they reached in safety, they would then be cared for.
"The greatest difficulty," said he, "is about a passport; but that may possibly be procured on the frontier, for the great object of government seems to be to chase all our godly ministers out of the kingdom, that their flocks, deprived of their strengthening exhortations, may fall an easier prey."
While he thus spoke, a noise at the door, as if some one were hammering on it with his fist, made us start.
"Who's there?" said my father, without withdrawing the bolt.
"Your neighbor Romilly," returned the other; and we, knowing his voice, let him in.
"Neighbor, I have traveled far and fast," said he, "and would not go home without looking in to tell you the bad news. They are carrying things hardly at Arles and Uséz, and you had better warn M. Chambrun he is in danger."
My father changed countenance.
"He and his wife are with us at this moment," said he.
"They must depart, then," said Romilly, "and without loss of time, or she will not be allowed to go with him. See, here is a passport," said he, dubiously smiling, "which will do for him as well as the person for whom it was intended. He shall have it."
We thanked him warmly, and after a little more eager talk, he hurried homeward. Day was now breaking, and I threw myself on my bed for a short sleep. When I awoke, my dear mother was beside me.
"Your uncle is awake, and talking to your father," said she, softly. "He refuses the passport, because it was not made out for himself, saying he will not do an evil that good may come."
"This is sheer madness," said I, springing up.
"It is consistency," said my mother. "We are now on the brink of a great struggle between the powers of light and darkness. Those who feel they have no strength of their own to meet it with, and do not care to seek it from above, will probably give in at the very first word--certainly do so sooner or later; but those whose adhesion to God's cause is of any worth, will brace themselves for the encounter, knowing that He can and will arm them for the fight."
"You approve my uncle's making a point of conscience, then, of this?"
"I must say I do, though your father is angry with him for it. Perhaps, during the day, we may yet get him a proper passport; for if the authorities are so anxious to get rid of our godly ministers, surely they will not hinder their departure. However that may be, you are to convey your uncle and aunt towards the coast tonight."
"She goes with him, then?"
"She will not leave him. They have lost all their money, but we have made a little purse for them. Oh, my child, what times are these! You have scarcely had any rest these two nights; but do not forget to say your morning prayers."
And kissing my forhead, she left me, that I might obey her injunction.
It may be said that trade was at a standstill that day. The weaver at his loom, the jeweler behind his counter, the baker at his kneading-trough, all thought and talked but of one subject, the expected visitation of the dragoons.
My father, with vexation, gave me back the passport, saying, "Your uncle will not use it, so you must return it to Romilly."
Romilly raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders when I did so, saying, "What will he do, then?"
"I know not. Take his chance, I suppose."
"Here, take you it," said he, thrusting it into my pocket "He may be glad of it at the end."
It was a sad day. Mothers were weeping over their new-born infants; men were talking to one another in anger and sorrow. The Catholics were already carrying their heads high, and smiling scornfully as we passed them. I thought, "Oh that we were in a desert, all to ourselves, with none to impugn our faith!" But then I called to mind that without needing to be in a desert, people might dwell in happy countries where each man's faith is respected and tolerated. I hoped my uncle would safely reach one of these happy countries; but yet one's native land is very dear after all!
Twilight came; the parting took place amid tears and embraces and benedictions; and soon I was driving my good uncle and aunt towards the coast. We had gone some miles, when a man, scarcely distinguishable in the dark, emerged from a corner and said, "Who goes there?"
I was greatly alarmed, but my uncle, recognizing the voice, said, "Oh, Joseph, is it thou? Whither art thou bound?"
"Fleeing for my life," said Joseph, "as I take it you are doing. It is well you have escaped, though I cannot make out how you come to be so far on the road. I have just left your neighborhood; the dragoons are turning your house out of window."
"Give him a lift, Jacques," said my uncle to me; "the poor man is weary." Finding him to be one of my uncle's flock, I readily did so; the more that his tone and words betokened honesty.
"Sir, you are doubtless going to join your brother-ministers," said Joseph. "Have you a passport?"
"I have not, but I hope to get one on the frontier, or find some other path open to me," said my uncle.
"Let us trust the 'other path' may open, then," said Joseph, "for most vexatious obstacles are being thrown in the way of our ministers on the frontier; they are either refused passports altogether, or such as they are provided with are declared worthless."
"Romilly's passport, then, will be no good," thought I, and I was musing on the moral advantage to my uncle of his having refused to use it from the first, when Joseph in alarm cried-- "Hist--I hear some one galloping hard after us. Let us whip on as fast as we can."
But we had just reached the foot of a heavy ascent, and the pursuer gained upon us, and presently came up panting.
"Is Minister Chambrun here?" cried he, breathlessly.
"Who are you that ask?" returned I. At the same instant my uncle cried-- "Yes, here I am. What is it?"
"What a dance you have led me!" cried the messenger. "I come from the commissioner, who sends you a passport, and desires you to go to Bordeaux as fast as you can."
What a smile broke over my uncle's face!
"Said I not," cried he, joyfully, "that a path would doubtless open for me? Henceforth, my children, never distrust the Lord."
His course was now altered. Instead of making for the nearest coast, now within a few miles, on the borders of the Mediterranean, he decided to proceed with all convenient speed to Montauban, where my aunt had friends, thence down the Garonne, and so to Bordeaux. I could but set him on his way and trust his future course to the same good Providence that had hitherto protected him. My aunt was decided to follow his fortunes, happen what would.
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{
"id": "13896"
}
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6
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TRIAL BY FIRE.
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Day was far spent before I got back, my horse having gone lame. There seemed unusual disturbance in the town; I distinguished a distant hum of many voices, and all at once a shrill cry that made me shudder, followed by the passionate wailing of children, and the incessant barking of dogs. I took the back way to our house, where lay our stable, and entering the little yard, saw to my dismay six or eight cavalry horses standing in it. I sprang from my cart and hurried into the house, on the threshold of which my little brother Charles met me all in tears, and cried, "Oh, they're burning mamma!"
I burst into the kitchen; there was a roaring fire on the hearth, which a dragoon was feeding with handfuls of paper torn from our great family Bible; but there were also great billets of wood burning, which threw out intense heat, and close in front of it was placed my mother, penned in with heavy pieces of furniture, while two dragoons in front of her were thrusting their clenched fists in her face, saying, "Now then, you obstinate woman! will you roast like a pig, or say where he is gone?"
My mother looked immovable as stone, but directly I entered, I saw her change countenance a little. My father lay on the ground, bound hand and foot, while a dragoon was preparing to beat him with a heavy bridle.
"Ah, ah, here is the young cub," cried they as I entered; "here is the young fellow that was attending on his uncle!" Then, with more bad language than I choose to repeat, they bade me tell where I had carried him, unless I would see my mother roasted alive.
"Out of your reach," said I, boldly; "so now let my mother go free," and springing towards her, I released her before they could throw themselves upon me. The next minute, we were rolling on the ground, but, as my mother for the moment was safe, I did not mind the blows I was getting, but returned them with a fire-iron that lay within reach. I dealt blows with such a will that for a time I had the advantage, never ceasing to shout, "Never fear, mother! All's safe! he's on the wide sea. Fly with the children and leave me to deal with these gentry."
This so enraged them that they redoubled their violence; no wonder, then, that I was got down at last, bound hand and foot, and my feet made bare to receive the bastinado. Before they laid it on, they put the question to me: "Wilt thou now, then, recant thine accursed doctrines?"
"What doctrines?" said I, to gain time.
"Those that are falsely called reformed."
"Oh yes, all that are falsely called reformed."
They stood at pause on this, and looked at one another.
"He gives in," muttered one.
"Not a bit," replied another. "He is only lying."
"Well but, mark you, that's no matter of ours," said the first.
"I tell you it is!" roared the second, pushing him aside. "Let me take him in hand. You don't know how to question him." Then accosting me, in a defiant sort of way (he was far from sober), he said, "Hark ye, young man. Now answer for your life. Give us no double meanings. What is your religion?"
"That which was brought us and taught us by our Lord Jesus Christ."
"Do you believe in St. Peter?"
"Of course."
"And in the Virgin Mother of God?"
"The angel Gabriel called her blessed among women."
"But do you worship her?"
"I reverence her, and worship her Divine Son."
"Do you worship her, I say?" threatening me with the stirrup-leather.
"Son, son," put in my father.
"Silence, old man!" and they hit him on the mouth.
"Do you worship her?"
"I do not."
Then they beat the soles of my feet, till my father in anguish cried, "Oh, I cannot bear this--" but had to bear it. And so had I. But on their burning my soles with a red-hot iron, a merciful Providence took me out of their hands, by bringing me insensibility. How long they pursued their barbarities after I fainted, I know not; but when I came to myself, it was in cold and darkness, lying in the open street, where I suppose they had cast me, thinking me dead. How long a time must have passed! for the stars were shining above me. Where were my parents, my brothers and sisters? I tried to raise myself a little and look around, but was beaten and bruised so that I was in agonies of pain, and sank back on the ground. The cold made my wounded feet smart indescribably; but while, with closed eyes, I was inwardly murmuring, "Lord, help thy poor servant, for I cannot help myself;" something that made me wince with pain, but the next moment gave exquisite relief, was applied to the soles of my feet, and the next instant I heard the hushed voices of those who were dearest to me on earth, my mother and Madeleine "Can it be that we are too late?" said Madeleine. "No, his pulse yet beats, though as feebly as possible. Oh, what he must have suffered, and how I love him for not having given in!"
In pain though I was, a smile of joy broke over my face on this, and I opened my eyes.
"Praise the Lord, he revives!" said my mother. "How art thou, my son?"
"I shall do well, my mother--," but I could not speak another word. I closed my eyes, and felt about to faint.
"Jacques, dear Jacques," said Madeleine, whispering energetically and distinctly, close to my ear, "be of good courage, and God will help thee. I have found a place of safety in the vaults of Les Arènes, whither Gabrielle has already taken the children; and now, if you can but master the pain enough to get there with such help as we can give you, before the dragoons return, we shall all be safe."
"Oh, most certainly I will," said I, trying to rise; but when I attempted to set my feet to the ground, I was in such anguish that I nearly fell down; but what will not "needs must" effect? The poor galley-slaves at Marseilles and Dunkirk can tell how, when it seems impossible for them to pull another stroke, the taskmaster's whip, mercilessly applied, proves that they not only can pull still, but pull well too. I am ashamed to say how these two beloved women had almost to carry me, a stout youth; and even all their strength might have been insufficient but for the potent spur of the dragoons' return. With an arm round the neck of each, and resting almost my entire weight on their shoulders, I managed to scuffle along, very slowly and with fearful pain, towards Les Arènes. We paused now and then, under the deep shadow of a wall, for me to regain my strength. I was astonished at my mother's utter forgetfulness of herself in her care for me; and said, "Were you much burnt, my mother?"
"No, my son; no," she answered, cheerfully; but in truth she was sadly seared and blistered, and her heroism under suffering might be likened to that of the martyrs of old.
"What took place after I fainted?" said I. "They believed you were dead, and threw you into the road," said my mother, "saying they hoped the dogs would come and lick your blood like Ahab's. After that a trumpet was blown, and there seemed something going on in the town, and they all ran off. The children had meanwhile taken refuge with Madeleine; and I then took the opportunity of raising your father, after cutting his bonds, and sending him off to the factory, whence he was to return with men to carry you away, but they have never come, and I fear some mischief may have befallen him. I would fain have gone to see, but you were my first object. I could not carry you, and went to Madeleine for help. She had just gone with Gabrielle and the children to Les Arènes; but while I was preparing bandages and a liniment for your poor feet, she returned and accompanied me back."
"Madeleine is a good angel," said I, pressing my arm more closely to her.
"What is your case to-day, may be ours to-morrow," said she.
We continued our painful and tedious course, "lurking in the thievish corners of the streets," like evil-doers, if we saw any one coming. The moon was dangerously bright, but the shadows were proportionately dark, and at length we reached Les Arènes, with their depths of mysterious shadow, and solemn pillars and arches silvered by the white beams. Though the amphitheatre is in the heart of the city, the neighborhood seemed unusually deserted. People had fled, or were cowering in hiding-places, or were flocking to see what was going on elsewhere. I cannot otherwise account for it. Only that as we passed near the house of good old Monsieur de Laccassagne, we could hear the abominable uproar of drums within it, and it would seem as if all the drummers in Nismes must have been congregated to drive the poor old gentleman to distraction. We had also seen in the distance, floods of light streaming from the windows of the cathedral, and heard a strange murmur of cries, and we afterwards learnt that multitudes of poor people of the baser sort had been driven like oxen or silly sheep into the church, pricked on by the dragoons' swords and shouts of "Kill! kill!" to be present at mass.
But now, as we gained a spot where, at the end of a street, we could gain a distant glimpse of our factory, we perceived the sky red with flurid flames bursting from it.
"The factory is on fire!" I exclaimed.
Then my mother wrung her hands, crying, "Oh, my husband! you are ruined, perhaps sacrificed! I must go in quest of thee, and leave my son with a faithful friend."
Then she hastened off towards the factory, and I could not blame her nor wonder at her, though my heart misgave me that she might fall into mischief.
Madeleine's support was insufficient for me now; but I set my teeth like a flint, and commanded the pain I was in every time I set foot to the ground. Was it not alleviation enough to have her dear arm for my stay, and her tender hand wiping from my brow the drops forced forth by my suffering?
Then we came to some steps. These gave me much trouble to descend, especially as we were so nearly in the dark, but Madeleine seemed to know them pretty well.
"I have often been here already," whispered she, "only not after dark, and have laid in stores of many things necessary for our subsistence."
We were now groping along a chill stone passage, and were presently brought up by a wall right in front, against which we violently hit our heads.
"I fear I have missed the way," said Madeleine, in alarm. "Hark! I hear the children laughing. Nothing damps the spirits at their age."
The next turn brought us to the entrance of a chamber, or rather den, for it had probably been built for wild beasts, and formerly tenanted by them. A ruddy fire burned in the middle, and circles of smoke escaped through crannies and fissures, for of course there was no chimney. A savory steam arose from a large black pot suspended over this fire, and round it was gathered a motley and unruly group, not Gabrielle and the children, but of tramps, gipsies, peddlers, and very likely thieves. Swarthy Morescoes, Basques, I know not how many nations, were there represented. They were singing, carousing, and making much noise.
"Here's a pretty lady," cried a gipsy woman, as Madeleine shrank back affrighted.
"Welcome, welcome!" cried one or two voices. "Come and make one of us."
"Not so fast," said a dissentient voice. "There's a young man with her. How do we know he is not a spy?"
"Good sir, I am lame on both feet," said I, and was turning away with Madeleine, both of us anxious to plunge into the darkness, out of their sight, when a threatening, swarthy man, of great strength, prevented our departure.
"You are neither of you going," said he, defiantly, "till you give some account of yourselves and your object."
"We are harmless people; we have only mistaken our way," interposed Madeleine.
"Soho! Only mistaken your way? And how come harmless people to be abroad at this time of night, groping about among the vaults of Les Arènes?"
Before there was time to answer, a tall, lean man in black, with a bottle in his hand, which he had just removed from his lips, came forward from a corner, and said. "Hold, there, enough has been said. I know this young man, and, I dare say, this young maiden. We are very good friends. Don't you remember me?" looking sharply at me.
"Not exactly," said I, straining my memory.
"Oh, come, don't deny it. Last time you had the best of it; this time I have. Don't you remember the Fair of Beaucaire?"
"Yes, of course, sir," said Madeleine, readily, "and your beautiful needles and pins and pretty equipage."
The needle-vender looked pleased, and said, "You have a better memory than the young fellow; however, I owe him a good turn. You saved me from the hoofs of le Docteur Jameray's horse, and lent me your handkerchief. I have had it in keeping for you ever since," drawing it from his breast. Then, turning to his companions, he said, "Excuse me; I attend these young persons a little way. They are friends, and the young man is ill."
In fact, my head swam round, and I swooned again, and have no remembrance but of a confused babble of sounds. When I came to, Madeleine and the needle-seller, whose name was La Croissette, were conveying me between them; or, in fact, he was chiefly carrying me, and she supporting my feet. I said, "Set me down, I'll try to walk," but found I could not. Then she said, "Wait here; I'll run on a little, and find where Gabrielle is."
I would have stayed her, but she was gone. La Croissette said, "You seem in trouble; what is it?"
I said, "Don't you know the dragoons are in Nismes? They have tried to burn my mother, have bound and beaten my father, destroyed our property, and cudgelled and burnt me till I cannot stand."
He drew in his breath, and said, "Any one of those things is trouble enough. Is that pretty girl your sister?"
"No; my affianced wife."
"And you have taken to Les Arènes for safety, and left your father and mother behind?"
"Not willingly, you may be sure. My mother and Madeleine half carried me hither. Then we saw my father's silk factory in flames, and she ran to find him."
Madeleine here returned, and said, encouragingly, "I have found where they are; it is a very little way, and they look so comfortable!"
With her help and La Croissette's I dragged myself along, and though it seemed a long way off, we got there at last; and very snug did the old vault look, with the little brazier and the lamp, and the curtain to keep off the draught, and food and bedding on the floor. I sank down on the straw they had prepared for me, and never was couch of down more grateful to a luxurious man than this poor pallet to me. La Croissette viewed the whole party with keenness, then, putting his bottle to my lips, said, "Take this; there's a little left." Whatever it was, it revived me; and then he nodded, said "Bon soir," and went away.
I now became anxious for my parents, though Madeleine assured me they knew the way to our retreat. A long time passed; the children fell asleep; we remained in anxious suspense. At length we heard footsteps. Were they of friend or foe? Madeleine went out to see. I could not bear her taking on herself every office that ought to devolve upon me, but could not help it. In a few instants she guided my father and mother into our dungeon, holding a hand of each. As they entered, the red fire-light leaped up and showed their grave faces. The first thing my father did, after taking us in at a glance, was to say, "Children, let us pray!"
Even the little ones, roused from their slumber, and but half awake, put up their hands. My mother and the girls knelt; my father stood. His prayer began with earnest thanksgiving that we were all together again, and that, though his worldly substance had been taken from him, there was no loss of life or limb. Then he returned hearty thanks that, in this our day of spiritual trial and temptation, there had been no apostacy, no temporizing cowardice, no falling short. But, he added, he knew, and we all knew, that this was but the beginning of sorrows; that many a sore trial and temptation remained behind; that we had no strength of our own wherewith to meet it; but that there was all-sufficient strength in the great Captain of our salvation. Then he prayed the Lord to give us his strength, sufficient for our day, whatever it might be, even as He had strengthened Daniel in the lions' den, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, and Peter and Paul and Silas in prison, and John in Patmos; and that we might have grace to rejoice at being accounted worthy to suffer for his name's sake, and be strengthened to bear testimony even before kings if need were; and to cast all our burden upon Him, not caring much for the things of this life, knowing that he could reduplicate them if it were his will, at any time, as he had done to Job.
While he thus prayed, an ineffable calm and sweetness took possession of me, my eyes involuntarily closed, or, if opened at intervals, only saw vague, uncertain forms, and thus a deep, deep sleep fell on me, without even a dream, that lulled all sense of pain, and loss, and fear, and sorrow, until morning.
"For so he giveth his beloved sleep." Words how beautiful, and true, and reassuring! They that expend all their little strength for him, and lay their little substance at his feet, are his beloved. There is no need to be afraid we are not; we know it; we feel it; we have the witness in ourselves, just as the child, nestling in his father's arms, knows that he loves and is beloved. I have heard persons say, "Have you the faith of assurance?" Yes, thank God, I have it, and have had it ever since He was first graciously pleased to call me to Him, and that was long, long ago. But all have not this faith; just as a man, wanting to go to Bordeaux, may not be assured he is on the road to Bordeaux, and yet he may be on the way thither nevertheless. Then if you have not the faith of assurance, practise at least the faith of adherence. That, at least, is in your own power. Cleave to God exactly as if you were certain of being accepted by Him at last; and thus, fulfilling his own conditions, you will be accepted by Him whether you are assured of it beforehand or not. "Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out."
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{
"id": "13896"
}
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7
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LA CROISSETTE.
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How chill and painful was my awaking! The soles of my feet were raw with so much walking after they were blistered, and the inflammation irritated my whole frame, which was likewise stiffened with so much beating. When I opened my eyes, I saw the anxious face of my dear mother, as she examined my wounds, and prepared with light hand to dress them. Nor would anybody have guessed she herself was terribly burnt, had not one of the children, inadvertently running against her, caused a sudden wince, but without any audible expression of pain. The thought of what she was enduring with such stoicism, or rather, let me say, with such Christianity, enabled me, better than any stimulant would have done, to endure without murmuring; and she said to me, with strong approval in her kind eyes, "Your wounds tell me, my poor boy, how much you have to bear; therefore there is no need to cry out. Our light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."
"Yes, that is true indeed," said my father, "and things might have gone much worse with us."
"Can you say that, my father," said I, "when you have lost all?"
"I have not lost all," replied he. "Before the factory was attacked, I had time to disperse the workmen, dispatch a hasty line to an English correspondent, and secrete certain bills of exchange; so that if we can but find our way to England we shall, indeed, have to begin life again, but with God's blessing, shall not fare badly. And with that blessing, my son, we shall not fare badly even here."
"No, indeed, father." And as I spoke I looked towards where the lamp-light (for we had no other) fell on the bending head of Madeleine, as she talked in a low voice to the children, and kept them amused. Not a glimpse of the sun's light could penetrate our refuge, and thus it always seemed night with us when, in fact, it was bright day. Doubtless this was tedious to all; but no one, even the children, so much as murmured at it, except Gabrielle, who was inexpressibly wearied, and now and then gave a long yawn, which set others yawning, and procured her a good-humored rebuke.
"How long is this to last?" said she.
"Till the dragoons find us out, perhaps," said my father, gravely; which silenced her for a little while.
"Our provisions will not last long," said she presently.
"Then we must procure more," said my mother. "We have enough for the present."
"Yes, we have cheese and wine and flour; but what good is flour unless it is cooked?"
"Do not make mountains of molehills, Gabrielle," said Madeleine, aside; "it is such a bad example for the children."
"Well, but they are not molehills," returned Gabrielle, in rather a lower tone, which, however, we could hear well enough. "I suppose we cannot starve."
"Has your endurance so soon ceased, my dear girl?" said my father. "Think of the believers of old. They had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned; they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy); they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And yet none of these, though they obtained a good report in God's own word for their faith, had received the explicit promises through Christ, God having provided those better things for us; wherefore we surely should be ashamed to show less constancy than they did."
"Oh, of course," said Gabrielle.
"Think of what Jacques is bearing without a murmur," said Madeleine. "I'm sure he sets an example to us all."
"And as to minding what we eat," said little Charles, "I'm sure I don't mind it a bit. Do I, mamma?"
"Oh, if you are all going to be against me, I shall say no more," said Gabrielle.
"That's right," said my mother. "Put a brave heart on it, my dear; I know you have it in you."
Gabrielle bit her lip, but took out a comb, and began to arrange little Louison's hair. "Now," she whispered, "I'll make you as smart as the young lady we saw with Madame de Laccassagne;" and in this way she amused herself and the child, talking nonsense with her, and inventing imaginary scenes and people, all in a hushed voice, that my father might not hear.
Suddenly, some one at the entrance of our dungeon wishing us "Bon jour," made us start violently and look towards him in alarm.
"You need not shrink from me," said La Croissette, advancing among us when he had looked around. "I may not be as good as yourselves, or I may be--that's neither here nor there. I'm not quite a bad fellow, I believe, though at times I am driven to keep indifferent company. Still, I am not very fond of those I'm among at present, so I thought I'd look in on you. Your servant, sir," to my father. "A votre service, madame," very politely to my mother. "You were not here last night, when your son and that young lady rather unexpectedly looked in on us. To speak the truth, there are reasons why some of us don't relish being looked in on unexpectedly."
"Quite natural," said my father; "no more do we."
"Ah, but you need not be afraid of me," said La Croissette, "I'm no traitor, I! It might be rash, though, to say as much of some of my companions, and therefore I advise you not to be too familiar with them."
"My good friend, we have not the least intention of being so."
"Age is wary, and youth is full of trust," said La Croissette. "Not knowing that you, respected sir, and you, madame, were here to look after the younger persons, I ventured to do so myself, to bid them beware of their neighbors."
"That was very friendly, and I thank you heartily for it," said my father.
"Shall you remain here long?" said La Croissette.
"That depends entirely on circumstances."
"Doubtless you are hiding from the dragoons."
"Is it necessary to tell you?"
"Why, no; but you might do so without fear. I have no love for them myself, but nothing to fear; I am certainly not a Huguenot; but neither would I betray one. Come, I see you would rather I went away. I am going into town. There is nothing I can do for you, then?"
"Nothing; we thank you very much."
When he was gone, Gabrielle exclaimed, "Now that is what I call an opportunity wasted."
"We must beware, my child, who we trust," said my mother.
"Of course; but he was so evidently a harmless, good sort of man."
"We had no occasion to trouble him."
Gabrielle plainly thought there was a good deal of occasion. Indeed, had she known she was actually doomed to spend a few days in the vaults of Les Arènes, I am persuaded she would have fitted them up with upholstery and eatables, even to pickles and preserves. Meanwhile Madeleine was beguiling the time to the children by setting them easy sums on the wall, scratched with a nail, and drawing pictures for them with the same implement, accompanied with stories, as thus:--"Once on a time there was a poor Christian captive in this very dungeon--here he is (drawing his picture)--sentenced to be thrown to the lions (picture). Once he had been a little boy like this (picture), fond of playing with other little boys (picture), and ready to carry his mother's pitcher to the well (picture), or sweep her floor (picture), or make himself useful to her in any way whatever. One day,"--and so forth. Gabrielle's fancy was tickled with this, and when Madeleine desisted she continued it, though now and then with a furtive yawn. Meanwhile my father was pondering over the papers he had about him, and sitting immersed in thought, or now and then saying a little to my mother. By-and-by he ventured out a little without quitting the precincts of the amphitheatre, and returned, saying several tramps were loitering about, whose attention it would not be prudent to attract. The day, which seemed the longest I ever knew, at length drew to a close, which we only learnt by my father's watch, for we were out of hearing of the town clocks. He said it would make time pass less heavily if we divided it methodically, and had our set hours for meals, rest, prayer, and mutual improvement, whether by exhortation, discussion, or general discourse, We followed his lead as well as we could, but our thoughts were chiefly with the outer world.
Just after the women and children had retired for the night to a little inner dungeon, La Croissette once more presented himself uninvited.
"I thought, messieurs, you might like to hear the news of the day," said he.
"Most certainly," said my father. "Pray be seated. I wish I had a better seat to offer you. What is stirring?"
"The news, then, is, that Nismes is being converted as fast as possible," said La Croissette. "No persuader, sirs, like fire and sword. Dragoons are quartered on every Protestant. They are destroying whatever they cannot make booty of. Some are littering their fine black horses with bales of broadcloth, silk, and cotton; others with fine Holland cloths. The common people are being driven to church at the sword's point, and conforming by shoals. The gentry give more trouble, but end by coming round."
"Some may--some weak-hearted persons," said my father, reluctantly.
"Well, they may be weak-hearted; I'm sure I should be, in their place," said La Croissette. "In fact, what is it? --a mere form. They just slur over a few words--cross themselves--kiss a relic, or some little matter of that sort. No more is required; the bishop lets them off easy."
"Will the Lord let them off easy?" said my father. "Christianity admits of no such temporizing. The early Christians might have saved their lives by burning a handful of incense before the Roman Emperor's statue; but they did not hold it a mere form. And the Romanists admit in principle what they dissent from in practice; for they almost deify those early martyrs for their constancy to the truth, and yet would martyr us for doing the very same thing."
"Well, I don't mean them to martyr me," said La Croissette, "I've an elastic creed, I! --it stretches or collapses like an easy stocking."
"Beware, beware, my friend, of fancying a creed like that of any worth at all."
"Sir, we all have our weak points and our strong ones. I'm no polemic, I! --I prefer meddling with things that will not bring me into trouble. There was a factory burnt down last night--" "Ah!" groaned my father.
"Some say both the partners were burnt; others that one of them is at a distance. Some think the factory was set on fire on purpose; others that it was an accident. Nothing remains of it but the outer walls and a smoking heap of ruins."
My father covered his face with his hand.
"Then, again," pursued La Croissette, "that worthy old Monsieur Laccassagne, unable to stand the deprivation of sleep any longer, has conformed--" "Has he, though!" cried my father, with a start. "Oh, how sad a fall!"
"Outwardly, only outwardly," said La Croissette. "The poor old gentleman was driven almost out of his senses by that deafening drumming. 'You shall have rest now,' said the bishop. 'Alas!' replied he, 'I look for no rest on this side heaven; and may God grant that its doors may not be closed against me by this act.'"
"Poor old man! poor Monsieur Laccassagne!" ejaculated my father. "Well might he say so."
"Yes, but what reasonable person can suppose the doors of heaven will be closed against him by it?" said La Croissette. "The Lord is a God of mercy--" "But will by no means clear the guilty," said my father.
"And He looketh not to the outward appearance, but to the heart," said La Croissette.
"That expression applies to the personal, bodily appearance, which none of us can help," said my father, "not to the pretence of believing one thing, when we believe, its opposite. I mourn over the backsliding of my old friend. Better had it been to suffer affliction for a season.
"So the virtuous lady his wife thought," said La Croissette. "She escaped in the disguise of a servant, and is now wandering in the open fields."
"Ah, what sorrow! May the good Lord support her under it!"
"Ay, and the many other women who are in similar case. Numbers of them are at this instant cowering in the cold and darkness in ditches and under hedges."
"Monsieur Laccassagne might well say he could hope for no rest on this side heaven," said my father, bitterly. "How can he rest, knowing that his excellent wife, accustomed to every comfort, is now an outcast for her faith--the faith which he has denied?"
"Well, I wish I could have brought you more cheerful news," said La Croissette, rising. "In truth, you need it, in this dismal hole, to keep up your spirits. Tell me, now, good sir, how long do you expect to be able, you and yours, to hold out?"
"Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof," said my father. "Thanks be to God, He does not require us to dwell on what may be in store for our chastening. He says explicitly, 'Take no thought for the morrow--the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.' Words how kind and how wise!"
This seemed to strike La Croissette a good deal. He remained in thought a few minutes, and then said, "Well, it is time I should take my leave. I respect you very much." Then, resuming his bantering tone, "Since you are so willing to hazard the disturbance which poor old Monsieur Laccassagne found it so hard to bear, I advise you to sleep day and night while you are here, and lay in a good stock of repose against the time when you will be deprived of it."
Stepping back again, just as he seemed going, he said, "You fancy yourselves very safe here; and, indeed, the dragoons unless with a guide to you, might possibly take some time to find you out; but depend on it, Les Arènes will be well searched some day--perhaps very soon; it is too well known as having been an old hiding-place. Every corner--this among the rest--is known to outcasts, many of them of bad reputation, who, for a morsel of bread, would give up St. Paul or St. Peter. All are not so, however, and those I am now among have a kind of the honor which exists among thieves. Do not depend too much on it, however."
And with this very unsatisfactory speech, he left us. My father, after brooding on what he had said for some time, knelt down, and was long in prayer: then he murmured, "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety." And I knew soon, by his breathing, that he had indeed found rest in sleep. For me, I could not close my eyes: the text that dwelt in my mind was, "My soul is among lions." I thought of Madame Laccassagne and the other poor women wandering in the fields, and pictured a thousand distressing circumstances. Our solitary oil-lamp was beginning to languish for want of trimming, and I thought, "What if it should leave us in darkness altogether, and we should never know when it is day?" and dwelt on the Egyptians in the plague of darkness, when none of them rose from his place for three days. I was so feverish that it seemed to me a darkness like that would madden me--I must dash my head against the wall, or do something desperate; and I thought of Jonah in the whale's belly, when the waters compassed him round about, and his soul fainted in that hideous darkness; and again it was "three days." Then I thought, "Why three days?" Was it because the Son of Man was three days in the heart of the earth? And shall we remain here in this subterranean darkness three days?
Just as the lamp seemed going out my loved mother stole out of the inner dungeon, and trimmed it; then noiselessly stole to my side, and, seeing my eyes open, smiled on me and kissed me, and then lay down beside my father. Oh, the peace, the security of her presence! I sank into dreamless sleep.
I was awakened by the most horrid noise I ever heard in my life. It seemed like the roar of a lion close to my ear, and I started up in wild affright, fancying myself a Christian prisoner about to be thrown to the wild beasts. All around was dark as pitch--the lamp had gone out! The frightful bellowing continued without intermission; and, besides, there were sobs and screams, brutal laughter and cursing. Dreadful moment! Presently a spark of light momentarily illumined our cell, and showed the anxious face of my mother, as she re-kindled the lamp, surrounded by the terrified children and girls, roused from their sleep by the hideous uproar.
"Oh, what is it? --what is it?" cried I. My mother's lips moved, but she could not make herself heard. Having succeeded in lighting the lamp, she came close to me, and said-- "They seem to have put one of the bulls of La Camargue into the adjoining den for the next bull-baiting, and to have lashed it to frenzy with their goads. The noise is terrific, but I do not suppose the animal can break loose."
La Croissette now appeared among us, suffocating with laughter. "Are you frightened out of your lives?" said he. " 'Tis nothing."
"Nay, sir," said my mother, "'tis something, I think, to be raised up in the middle of the night by such a dreadful noise."
"Night? 'tis broad daylight! No wonder you were frightened. I can hardly hear myself speak; but I felt impelled to come and see how you took it. They have put an enormous bull in the adjoining den; and if you don't like his company, you will have to change your quarters, which I advise you to do at any rate; for the Basques who have him in charge are brutal fellows, whose jargon I don't understand. Ten to one they will discover you before the day's out; and then what will you do?"
"Truly, our case is hard," said my mother, looking wistfully at my father.
"It is so, my dear wife," replied he; "and I do not see my way clearly. Let us ask God to make it a little clearer to us."
La Croissette looked amazed when he saw the whole family kneel down, and made a movement to go, but paused at the entrance and looked back on us. Though the bellowing still continued, it was neither so loud nor so frequent; but still only snatches of my father's voice could be heard. But his very look and attitude was a prayer; and there were the two sweet sisters, with their clasped hands and bent heads, and the little ones crowded about my mother. Now and then such broken sentences were heard as--"Lord, thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another--Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance--The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the air, and the flesh of thy saints to the beasts of the land--We are become an open shame to our enemies, and a very scorn to them that hate us. Return, O Lord! how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants--Oh, satisfy us with thy mercy, and that soon; so will we rejoice, and give thanks to thee all the days of our life--Make thy way plain before us, O Lord, because of our enemies."
I could not help furtively watching the workings of La Croissette's face as he listened to these words of the Psalmist, so appropriate and pathetic. He started as if shot when touched by some one behind; and the next instant M. Bourdinave stood among us.
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{
"id": "13896"
}
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8
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PERSECUTED, YET NOT FORSAKEN.
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"My father!" exclaimed the girls, and flew into his arms. The next instant the bellowing recommenced.
"What is that?" cried M. Bourdinave, starting.
"One of the bulls intended for baiting," said my father.
"Ah, what a vicinity to find you in?" said M. Bourdinave.
"Better, my dear friend, than the captives of old had in this very dungeon. And now, what news? Where have you been?"
"I'd better go; I'm not wanted." muttered La Croissette, heard only by me, and then retiring.
"I bring the worst of news," returned M. Bourdinave, sitting down. "The Edict of Nantes is revoked."
"Ah!" and a general cry broke from us.
"What signifies it," said my mother, bitterly, "when already its provisions have been set at nought? Are we any the better for it?"
"We may be yet worse for losing it," said M. Bourdinave. "Every Reformed meeting-house in France is to be demolished; no private assemblages for devotional purposes are to be allowed on any pretext whatever. All Huguenot schools are to be suppressed; all children born of Huguenot parents to be baptized and educated as Catholics; all non-conforming ministers to quit the country within fifteen days, on pain of the galleys."
"Let us rise, my children," cried my father in great agitation, "and leave this country, which is no longer a mother to us, shaking the dust off our feet. Alas, what am I saying? Whither can we go?"
"To England," replied M. Bourdinave. "I have already taken measures for it."
"Heaven be praised!" cried we simultaneously.
"But it will be under circumstances of great hardship, difficulty, and danger."
"Never mind; we willingly encounter them. Yes, yes," said one after another.
"Have you the courage, my daughters?" looking earnestly at them.
Madeleine threw herself into his arms.
"I knew what your answer would be," said he, fondly kissing her; "but my little Gabrielle--" "Oh, fear me not, father," cried Gabrielle, hastily. "Anything to get out of this horrid place. I believe I have seemed too impatient of it to those around me, but that was because inaction is always so trying to me."
"My love, you may yet be exposed to it. I have known one of our brethren put into a chest, with very few air-holes, and lowered into the hold of a merchant-vessel, with considerable roughness, where he was left many hours before he could be released."
Gabrielle changed color. "Never mind," said she, in a low voice, and pressing her father's hand. "What man has done man may do, though I am but a woman who say it."
"That's my brave girl!" fondly kissing her. "Well, my friends, if we can but get to Bordeaux, we shall escape; that is provided for. It was this which kept me from you so long. And what a return has been mine! I got no answers from you to my letters; I heard the persecution here was raging with fury; I came to snatch you from it, and found my home deserted, the factory burnt, the workmen scattered, no tidings of you to be found. At length I got news of you from one of the men, who told me of your retreat, and that he, under cover of night, brought you bread. We planned how to remove you hence to-night, but it must be in detachments. At a place agreed on there will be a small cart that will convey the children and perhaps their mother."
"I prefer walking," interposed my mother. "Jacques is unable to do so."
"Impossible! I am sure you have not the strength for it," said we all.
"Never fear," said she, stoutly.
"No, no; it must not be," said I. "And you, my son?"
"I will undertake for him," said La Croissette, who, it now appeared, had been listening behind the doorway all this time.
"Who are you, my man?" said M. Bourdinave, in surprise and some distrust.
"An honest fellow, though I say it that shouldn't," was his answer. "I am one of those who deal in deeds more than words. I cannot patter Ave Marias with a Catholic, nor sing interminable psalms like a Huguenot, but neither can I endure the ways the Catholics are taking to compel the Huguenots to submission. I take my own way, d'ye see, and am fettered by nobody. No one would molest La Croissette the needle-seller, not even a dragoon. And I have learnt to esteem you all; I admire the young ladies, and respect the old lady and gentleman. Therefore, there's my hand; you may take it or not. 'Tis not over soft; but there's no blood on it, and it never took a bribe. Let those say so who can. And what I say next is this: Dr. Jameray has fallen sick, and I've undertaken to drive his little wagon, with the sign of the bleeding tooth, from hence to Montauban. As far as that I'll give my young friend here a cast, and he may thence easily take boat down the Garonne to Bordeaux. At least, if he cannot of himself, I'll manage it for him."
How grateful we were to the worthy La Croissette! Not one of us distrusted him in the least; at any rate, if M. Bourdinave did so at first, he was soon reassured by us, and took the honest fellow heartily by the hand. A good deal more was now said than I have space to recount or memory to recall. Indeed, my head was in a confused state, and I was conscious of little but of the tender pressure of dear Madeleine's hand, from whom I must so soon part.
We were to start as soon as night afforded us its friendly cover; but some hours of daylight remained. My father and M. Bourdinave had many business affairs to discuss, and Madeleine kept the children quiet, that they might not interrupt them. I never thought Gabrielle so pretty as now that she had spoken with resolution, and seemed strengthening herself to keep up to it. Nevertheless, we have no real strength of our own; it all comes from God; but He gives it to all who ask it faithfully. Madeleine whispered to me, "Let us pray that strength for her duty may be given her." I nodded and smiled.
Meanwhile my mother went out to the appointed place where, it seems, Raoul had daily placed a loaf. We, who were not in the secret, had much wondered where our bread came from, and how it lasted out. This time she returned with a large sausage as well; so we ate our meal with gladness and thankfulness of heart, La Croissette insisting on passing round his bottle, which, somehow, he always kept well filled. And had this man had a mind to betray us, how easily he might have done so! He overheard our plans, might have drugged our wine, and stretched us all powerless; might have told his comrades to make sport of us, and kept out of sight himself; or might openly have led the dragoons to our hiding-place with torches and weapons. Our blessed Lord had more reason, humanly speaking, to trust Judas, than we to trust La Croissette; but you see this man was honest; you could not have tempted him to sell us for thirty pieces of silver.
When he went forth, though, after supper, my mind misgave me for a while, thinking, "What if he be gone to betray us?" I wronged his worthy heart. So many people are worse than we think them, that it is a comfort when some prove better than we think them. Worthy La Croissette! I have thy tall, meagre form and lantern jaws now before me. Many a showy professor might be bettered by having as true a heart.
When he was gone, my father said, "Let us join once more in family worship, and then get a little sleep before our night-journey begins."
I think he and M. Bourdinave and the children actually did sleep, but not my mother or the girls. I certainly did not. My mother dressed and bandaged my wounded feet for the last time. They were healing, but too tender for walking or standing without injury to the newly-formed skin. Then she sat beside me, with looks of love, and was presently joined by Madeleine. We knew so well what was passing in each other's minds, that we did not need to say much. Then my father awoke, with all his faculties about him, looked at his watch, and said it was time to start. M. Bourdinave went out, and after what seemed to our impatience rather a long time, returned, and said Raoul reported unusual disturbance in the city, but that now all was ready. We took leave of one another, agreed on places of rendezvous (if we were ever enabled to reach them), and had a valedictory prayer. Still they did not like to go and leave me without La Croissette. At length he appeared, and, addressing my father, said: "You had better avoid the precincts of your famous temple, La Calade: it has been completely demolished, and crowds are yet hanging about their beloved place of worship, regardless of danger, but the military will presently disperse them."
"Ah, what desecration!" exclaimed my mother.
"Keep your regrets for the sufferings of living people, my good lady," said La Croissette. "Stones have no feeling, and are not prone to revenge insult. 'Tis said, walls have ears. The walls of La Calade have, at all events, a tongue; for on the summit of the ruins lies a stone with these words on it, 'Lo, this is the house of God; this is the gate of heaven!'"
Then addressing my father, he said. "The very fact of the public attention being drawn to this point makes other parts of the city comparatively deserted, and therefore favors your escape. Lose no time, I advise you, in availing yourselves of it."
We exchanged our last embraces in tears, and they went forth, he following them. I felt inexpressibly lonely and sad.
Just as I was beginning to get uneasy at his absence, and to think, "What if he should never come back?" he returned.
"They are safely off now," said he, "and little know what peril they have been in here. Another twelve hours, and they would all have been taken. Now, then, let us bestir ourselves, young man. They call you Jacques; but I shall call you Jean, after my younger brother."
Helped on by him, I hobbled along, though in pain. How chill, but how fresh and pleasant, felt the open air! It seemed the breath of life to me, and revived me like a potent medicine. There was a distant, sullen murmur in the city, but around us all was still. Above us were bright stars, but no moon.
At length we got among low dwellings, some of which had twinkling lights. We entered a dark, narrow passage, smelling powerfully of fried fish and onions. Some one from above said cautiously, "Who goes there?"
"La Croissette."
"Who else?"
"My brother Jean."
"Advance, brothers La Croissette."
We ascended a mean staircase and entered a room where we found a man and woman standing beside a large basket.
"Now get you into this," said La Croissette to me, "and we will lower you from the window. Stay, I will go first; it will give you confidence."
Twisting his long frame into the basket, he clasped his arms round his knees, and the others began to raise him by well-secured pulleys. The woman grew quite red in the face with the exertion of getting him over the window-ledge, and I own I trembled for him.
"All is right, he is safely down," said she, at length, and helped to pull up the basket. "Now, young man; you're not afraid?"
"Oh no; only don't let me down too fast."
"That must depend on how heavy you are. We can't keep dangling you between sky and earth all night. Come; you are not nearly as heavy as your brother. Adieu, mon cher; bon voyage!"
"Adieu, madame; mille remerciments."
I thought of St. Paul in the basket, and the two Israelitish spies. La Croissette eased my descent a good deal, by steadying the basket, and helped me out of it to our mutual satisfaction. It was then swiftly drawn up, and taken in.
"Thank heaven, we are safe!" said I. "That was very cleverly managed."
"Do you suppose it the first time?" said La Croissette. "Far from it, I can tell you. Many things are done in Nismes that the authorities know nothing of, for all their vigilance. Now we are fairly outside the city, and, with ordinary good luck, shall perform our night-journey in safety."
"With God's blessing we may," said I. "Make that proviso with all my heart," said La Croissette. "some trust in Providence and some in luck. I have nothing to say against either. Now get into the cart."
He led the horse a little out of the shadow as he spoke, and helped me inside the little house on wheels, where I found a mattress that proved a most acceptable rest; and then we drove slowly and quietly off, and gradually got among fields and hedges.
"How are you getting on?" said La Croissette, at length. "Do you mind the shaking?"
"Oh," said I, "I have so many things on my mind that I take no thought for the body."
"All the better; though some say that pain of the mind is the worst to bear of the two."
"I have little doubt of it," said I, "though each are bad enough. But all I meant was that my mind is preoccupied and anxious, and prevents my noticing any mere discomforts; for I cannot say I am miserable."
"Indeed I think you ought not to be, for you have had an escape from that troubled city that many would rejoice at."
"Tell me truly; do you think I have actually escaped?"
"What know I? You have escaped from the evils behind; you may not escape from the evils before. Yesterday was cloudy, to-morrow may be rainy, the day after may be fine; none of us knows. At least there is a weather-prophet at Arles whom some of the fools believe in; but he broke his leg a little while ago, and his spirit of prophecy did not enable him to foresee that, therefore I doubt his knowing about the weather."
"There have always been those who dealt in lying signs and wonders," said I, "from the days of Moses, when the magicians feigned to change their rods into serpents, which of course they could not do really."
"They were clever at sleight-of-hand, I suppose," said La Croissette. "So is Doctor Jameray. He can do many wonderful things. I can do some of them myself. You see, some of his conjuring tricks require a second person, who must not be known for his assistant; so that when he sets out on his tours through the provinces, I generally do the same, and contrive to cross his path, as if by accident. Then we play off on a new set of people the tricks we have played twenty times before in other places."
"Then needle-selling is only a blind?" said I. "I turn a little money by it; the more, that I am careful always to sell the best needles and pins. Thus I have acquired a name--the housewives trust me; I have a character to support. And my character supports me."
"A good character always does so in the long run," said I. "Well, I don't know what to say about that. You are too young to have any authority of weight. It must be your father's wisdom, and I am not sure it will stand the test."
"I feel sure of it," said I. 'What, when you are this very moment a houseless wanderer, without having done any wrong? How does your good character support you now?"
"For example, it has secured me your good offices," said I. "You would not have given me this good turn if I had been a worthless villain."
"Well, perhaps not; supposing I had known you for such--though worthless villains often escape deserved punishment, and sometimes are very plausible, and pay very well. And sometimes not"--reflectively.
"You seem to remember a case in point," said I, smiling.
"Well, I do," said La Croissette. "There was a young lord who led a sad course, and nearly fell into the hands of justice. He had a dashing, off-hand manner, that made friends till he was found out for what he was; and partly because he talked me over, and partly for high pay, I smuggled him beyond the reach of his enemies. But the pay never came. He won't get me to help him another time."
"He'll miss the want of a good character in the long run, then," said I. "Oh, he has done so already; he lies in prison now. But so do many of you Huguenots, who have done nothing amiss. It seems to me there is one event to the good and to the wicked."
"Oh no, do not believe it," said I. "In the first place, none of us are righteous; no, not one; our merits only comparative. Thus, there is something in every one of us to punish; and sometimes the Lord sees fit to chasten His best-loved servants so severely, that it is difficult to distinguish their chastisement from His judgments on the wicked."
"That comes to what I was saying," said La Croissette; "that there is but one event to the good and to the bad."
"It seems so, though it is not so," said I. "But don't you perceive in this a grand argument in favor of a future life?"
"I am no scholar, I;--you must explain it to me," said La Croissette.
"If the Lord lets his dear children fall into the same afflictions here as the rebellious and impenitent, it is because He knows that in the long run, it will be to their advantage rather than otherwise: that they will turn their trials to such good account as actually to be the better for them; and that their light affliction, which is but for a moment, will work for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. So that hereafter they shall look back on their present pains, not only with indifference but with thankfulness. But ah! where shall then the unrighteous and sinner appear?"
"You seem to have a natural gift for preaching," said La Croissette, after a pause. "Where will they appear, say you? Why, if our priests are to be believed, those of them, even the very worst, who have money enough to pay for masses and indulgences, may buy themselves off from purgatory, and shine in glory with the best."
"Does not that carry incredibility and absurdity on the very face of it?"
"It seems very hard on the poor man who can't buy himself off," said La Croissette. "You Huguenots, then, don't believe in it?"
"Most assuredly not. God accepts no prayers that do not spring from a lowly and contrite heart: and they may be offered by a poor man as well as a rich one."
"But does not a poor man's soul require those purgatorial fires?"
"Oh no, my dear La Croissette! The Son of God told of no purgatory--only of heaven and hell. And He was so truthful that He would not have told of a hell if there had not been one--nor have failed to tell of a purgatory if there had been one. The end would not have been commensurate with the means, had He laid down his life to save us from anything short of condign punishment, or to save us only incompletely. If there were a purgatory to endure at any rate, where would be the all-sufficiency of his sacrifice once offered?"
He bade us believe in him and be saved. He did not say, 'believe also in my mother, and my brethren, and my apostles, and ask them to ask me to save you.' He said, 'Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'"
"No! did he, though?" said La Croissette, suddenly checking his horse.
At the same moment, a woman sprang from the hedge and laid her hand on the shaft, saying: "Good sir, save us! we perish!"
"What is the matter?" said he, starting.
"We are fugitives from Nismes; we were beaten, we were burnt, we were pillaged."
"My poor good woman, there are numbers in like case."
"But we starve," said she, bursting into tears. "My aged mother and my little ones."
"I am very sorry for you, but I am a poor man myself--here, take this trifle."
"Alas, we cannot eat money!" in a tone of such mournful reproach.
"No, true; it will buy a little bread--but there are no shops. Jean," in a lower voice to me, "I've a loaf in the cart, shall we part with it?"
"Give it to her by all means," said I. Before he did so, he said to her, "True, you cannot eat money, but money will buy you bread in Nismes. Why not return there? The authorities are welcoming all that conform."
"Death rather than that!" said she, clasping her hands to her heart, and turning away.
"Stay, stay. Here is bread for you. It is all we have."
"Ah! bless--." She could say no more, but sobbed bitterly. La Croissette turned his face away.
"There are many of us, many!" sobbed she. "We shall so bless you. We will pray for you."
"Do so; do," said he, affecting composure, and whipping on.
|
{
"id": "13896"
}
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9
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CAST DOWN, BUT NOT DESTROYED.
|
The moon had now risen, and shone full on our road, which was completely exposed; but happily we met with no hindrance. The motion of the cart now made me very drowsy, and I fell into deep dreamless sleep. When I woke, feeling stiff and chilled, I wondered where I was. The cart had stopped, I was alone, the gray light of morning was forcing its way through the chinks of my little lodging-house, but the door was locked. I thought my position a curious one, and wondered whether La Croissette was going to give me up after all, to my enemies, but could not readily distrust a fellow apparently so kind-hearted. I lay still and listened to the sounds about me; the clucking of hens, gobbling of turkeys, stamping of horses, and lowing of calves, told me I was in a farm-yard. Then I heard voices, including that of La Croissette, and presently a sharp cry and then a laugh. By-and-by, the key turned in the lock and he looked in on me.
"So ho, you are awake after a famous long nap," said he. "Do you want your breakfast?"
"If I do, want must be my master," said I, returning his smile. "We gave away our only loaf."
"But what if I have earned another, and a good bowl of milk?" rejoined La Croissette, producing both as he spoke. "There, sit up and eat your fill; I've had my share in the house."
"Where are we?" said I, readily obeying his instructions.
"At a wayside farm-house, where the honest people have given my horse a good feed, and you and me a good breakfast."
"How did you earn it, then?"
"By pulling out a tooth for a great lubberly boy, whose cheek had swollen enormously with toothache. Did you not hear him cry out? You might almost have heard him from here to Nismes."
"Yes, I heard him cry and then laugh."
"Because he was so glad to have got rid of it."
"Can you draw teeth, then?"
"I never drew one before, but I went at it as if it was a regular thing with me."
"How could you venture?"
"Psha! it is good to show confidence; and every one must have a beginning. Which of us would let a doctor try his hand on us, if we knew it was for the first time?"
I smiled and shook my head at him, but said no more. When I had swallowed the delicious milk, he said, "Now I will return the bowl, and bring out my horse. I told them I had a sick brother in the cart, recovering from a burning fever, or you would have had some visitors. To make doubly sure, I locked you up."
"Would not that have been enough without the other?" I said, grieved at his want of truth.
"No, I think not, and I'm not as particular as you are."
Presently we were driving off again, and for a mile or so in silence. Then La Croissette, looking back at me, said, "There are certainly good people on both sides. That poor wretch to whom we gave the loaf was undoubtedly a good Huguenot; she would rather starve and die than abjure her faith. But here, again, are a family of Catholics, who are good, too, and believed every word I said, and liberally supplied my wants."
"Doubtless there are good people on both sides," said I; "and if the Catholics would believe it of us, we might yet live in peace and quietness together. We have not harmed them--it is they who harm us."
"For your good, they will tell you."
"They may tell us, but we cannot believe it. Their compulsions are not in the spirit of love."
La Croissette softly whistled, and presently talked of other things. By-and-by he said, "Now we are coming to a town, and you shall see some fun."
"Will it be quite safe?"
"Safer than anything else. It is a fair-day; I shall drive straight into the market-place, blow my horn, and play the quack doctor. Nay, you shall be my accomplice and blow the horn. Let me put you in costume at once."
Saying which, he fished out a soiled scarlet cloak, gaily spangled, which he threw over my shoulders, produced a half-mask with an enormous red nose, with which he concealed the upper part of my face, covered my head with a Spanish hat and feather, and gave me a horn.
"Now blow as much as you like," said he; "be as brazen as your trumpet."
I laughed, and entered into the joke; no one would suspect me for a Huguenot.
La Croissette then disguised himself in Dr. Jameray's long black gown, and added a pair of green spectacles, which certainly heightened the effect. Having driven into the market-place, he placed a little table before him and spread it with boxes and phials, I blowing the horn from time to time in a way which he called quite original, and which speedily drew people about us. Then, with wonderful self-possession, he harangued them on the merits of his medicines. For instance, taking up a phial which contained a pink-colored fluid, he descanted on its virtues in this style: "My friends, this small bottle contains a famous specific, for those who know how to use it prudently. When I say prudently, I mean that there are certain things it will do and others it will not. This remedy is for increasing the strength, improving the appetite, and clearing the head. Will it, therefore, set a broken arm or draw a tooth? Most certainly not. I can draw a tooth for you, if you like it (by-the-by, some think I have a gift that way, but self-praise is no recommendation); I can draw a tooth, I say, no matter with how many fangs; but this medicine cannot. Does it follow, then, that it will cure a cough or sore throat? Not at all. Here, if you like (taking up another bottle) is something that will, but what is that to the purpose? Will it cure sore eyes? No; or sprains? Far from it. No, no, my most excellent ladies and gentlemen, let us not form unreasonable expectations; day is not night; summer is not winter; nor is a horse-medicine a febrifuge. It is useless to assert such trash to sensible, well-informed people, Here is an opportunity, such as most of you may possibly never have again, of buying a most delightful and effectual medicine, sweet, not nauseous (strongly reminding one of cherry-brandy), gently exhilarating, and very difficult to be procured; indeed, I have only three small doses of it--three, did I say? I'm afraid I have only two--let me see--Oh, yes, here are three; and the price is merely nominal--" The extreme frankness and moderation of this harangue of course met with great success; and purchasers speedily bought, not only his three pink bottles, but his green ones, his blue ones, his pills, his pomades, and his perfumed medicinal soaps that were to soften the skin, strengthen the joints, and promote longevity. After this, he sang a comic song of innumerable verses (with horn obligato) and delivered a discourse, in which he said there had never been more than three great men in the world, Louis the Fourteenth, Alexander the Great, and Hippocrates, the father of physic.
It was surprising to me how he carried on this game hour after hour, apparently without fatigue, and always to the delight of his audience, new-comers continually pressing around him, and old ones lingering in the distance with broad smiles on their faces. A little of it was well enough, but I thought that to be always at it must be harder work than the hardest handywork trade I knew. At last the day closed in, the people departed, we supplied ourselves with food, and departed like the rest.
"Now, then, have I not come off with flying colors?" said La Croissette, complacently.
"Assuredly you have: but you must be very tired."
"Tired as can be--you know I had no sleep last night--we are coming to a little thicket where we will roost for the night."
We had scarcely drawn up under the trees, which were thinning of leaves, when we heard a distant hollow sound gradually growing louder as it approached. "The dragoons," said La Croissette, in a low voice. "I trust we shall escape their notice."
They passed by like a whirlwind, taking the direction we had just left, and we congratulated ourselves on having quitted their path.
"These wretches, look you," said La Croissette, "know neither mercy nor justice; they know they are let loose on the country to do all the mischief they can, and if they find a Paradise, they leave it a howling wilderness."
Of this we had proof next day, when we came on their track, and found wretched women and children in tears and lamentations impossible for us to assuage: men that had been cudgelled within an inch of their lives, or hung up by their wrists or their heels till they swooned, lying on the ground uncared for and dying. Ah, what wickedness! and all under pretence of doing God service! I cannot dwell on the terrible scenes we saw in crossing the country. Sometimes La Croissette did some trifling act of kindness, but the evils demanded more potent remedies.
"This unfits me for my calling," said he, one day, as he scrambled into the cart and drove off. "How can one play the merry-andrew under such circumstances? What will become of these poor creatures as winter comes on, even if they can last till then? It is impossible they should all escape from the country--they will have to conform after all, and had they not better do so now?"
I replied, "It is written, 'Fear not, little flock; for it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.'"
"The kingdom of France?"
"No, the kingdom of heaven."
"To whom were the words spoken?"
"To the early Christians, whose praise is in all the churches--whom the Catholics not only reverence but worship."
"Hum. Well, if they weathered such persecution as this, perhaps these may; but I could not stand it, I! --Do you know (with great awe) there are dungeons called Hippocrates' Sleeves, the walls of which slope like the inside of a funnel tapering to a point, so that those who are put inside them can neither lie, sit, nor stand? They are let down into them with cords, and drawn up every day to be whipped."
"And have any come forth alive from such places?"
"I grant you; but sometimes without teeth or hair."
"O, what glorious faith, to survive such a test!" exclaimed I. "But some don't survive."
"O, what hallelujahs their freed spirits must sing as they find themselves suddenly released and soaring upward with myriads of rejoicing angels, to receive their welcome at the throne of God!"
"Jean, I never knew anything like you!" said La Croissette. "The worse the stories I tell you, the greater the triumph and exultation you cap them with."
I answered, "They overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death." Rev. xii. II.
"Do you think you could bear being put into a Hippocrates' Sleeve?"
"I am not called on to think what I could bear: only to bear what is put on me."
"Your father, every word! As the old cock crows, so does the young one. But after all, 'tis a fearful thing to lie at the mercy of those that can devise and carry out such tortures."
"It is written, 'I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do; but I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear. Fear Him which after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, fear Him.'"
"You seem to have all the texts on this particular head at the tips of your fingers. Did you learn them for this particular purpose?"
"My dear mother used to repeat to me a text every night, and expect me to repeat it to her the next day."
"An excellent plan," said La Croissette, whipping his horse. And he hummed a tune.
When we reached Montauban, he said, "I must now begin my old tricks, to earn a little money;" and he drew up in the market-place. But the people had been as heavily visited as at Nismes, and were in no mood for jesting. When he began to vend his nostrums, an old man of severe aspect held up his hand, and said: "Peace, unfeeling man--you bring your senseless ribaldry to the wrong market. Here are only lamentations, and mourning, and woe."
"My good sir, one must live," said La Croisette.
"And how? tell me that!" retorted the old man, indignantly. "They that fed delicately are desolate in the streets; they that were clad in scarlet are cast on dunghills; the tongue of the suckling child cleaves to the roof of its mouth for thirst; the young children ask for bread, and no man giveth unto them."
Then, with a wail that was almost like a howl, he tore his hair and cried, "For this, for this mine eyes run down with water and mine eyelids take no rest. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?"
"Jean, I cannot stand this," said La Croissette, as the old man hurried away. "All the people seem with broken hearts--it takes all spirit out of me. I cannot even hawk needles and pins among the starving--who would buy?"
I could only say, "How dreadful is this place! The Lord seems to have forsaken his sanctuary."
"Let us seek another place as soon as we can--" "You forget: I am to be met here by an agent of my father's at La Boule d'Or."
"Ah, well, we will go thither."
When we drove into the inn-yard, however, we could hear unruly voices in the house, and feared we might fall into bad company. A man immediately came up to us, and said to me, in a low voice: "Are you M. Jacques Bonneval?"
"I am. Are you Antoine Leroux?"
"Hist! --yes. There are ill-disposed people in the inn; you had better not go in-doors. Can you walk a little way?"
"Yes."
"Come with me, then."
"I must bid my companion farewell." Turning to La Croissette, I took his hand in both mine, and pressed it fervently, saying: "My dear La Croissette, adieu. May God bless you in this world and the next. I wish I could make some return for your exceeding kindness, but, unfortunately, can give you nothing but my prayers."
"Pray say nothing of it," said he, cordially. "Your prayers are the very thing I should like to have, for, unfortunately, I am not good at them myself. As I pass a Calvary by the roadside I pull off my hat, in token of respect, you know, for what it represents; and had I had a bringing up like yours I might have had as pretty a turn for psalmody; but as the matter stands, why, you will be Jacques Bonneval, and I Bartholomé La Croissette to the end of the chapter. As for what I have done for you, why, it's nothing! I was coming this way, at any rate, and I've given you a lift; that's all."
"You may make light of it, if you will," said I, "but I know you have continually run risks for me; and depend on it, I shall never forget you. Adieu, my friend."
"Farewell, then," said he, "and take my best wishes with you. I hope you will now slip safely out of the country, but a good piece of it remains before you yet. Nor are your feet in good condition for walking."
"That has been provided for," said Antoine. "As soon as we get to the waterside we shall find a boat awaiting us, which will carry us to Bordeaux."
"But you are some way from the water.'
"Yes, but I have a cart."
We then parted, La Croissette kissing me on both cheeks with the utmost kindness; and I turned away with Antoine. Looking round as we quitted the court, I had my last glimpse of his tall, meagre figure, as he stood with his hand on his hip, looking after me; and I thought how strange and disproportionate a return his kindness to me had been for mine to him, in lifting him up and saving him from a kicking horse on the way to Beaucaire. The whole scene at once started up before me--our family party in the wagon--the girls' blooming faces and gay dresses--the crowded road--the music--the bustle. Then my thoughts flew on to what followed--the humors of the fair--the crowded table at my uncle's--my betrothal to Madeleine. What a different future then seemed to lie before us to what awaited us now! Where was she? Should we meet soon? Might we not be separated for ever? I cannot tell how many thoughts like these passed through my mind as I limped after Antoine, who was himself somewhat awkward in his gait, like many of the silk-weavers from sitting so constantly at the loom.
Thus we passed through some of the by-ways of Montauban, and entered a small house.
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{
"id": "13896"
}
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10
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"MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD-NIGHT"
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The room we entered was destitute of furniture and blackened with smoke. Heaps of broken fragments impeded our entrance and lay on the floor. A man sitting on the ground was restlessly taking up one piece after another, and laying them down again, muttering to himself, without noticing us.
"I know not why they should have done so," he said hurriedly; "the poor chairs and tables could not hurt. And, after all, when they hung me up I gave in, and kissed the cross made by their swords; and they knocked me about after that. If that was justice, I don't know what justice is. They hurt my wife, too, or she would not have shrieked out so. And her word always had been--'Hold out; pain may be borne; and they dare not kill us!' But when she saw them tie me up, she cried out, 'Oh, Pierre, Pierre, give in--give in!' So what was I to do? Answer me that."
"This poor fellow has lost his senses," said Antoine, softly. "Wait here a minute. I will soon return."
I stood where I was. It seemed to me from the charred remains that the furniture had been just broken up and then partially burnt. There was a great beam across the ceiling, with large iron hooks on which to hang bacon, onions, and such-like. From one of these hooks dangled a strong chain.
"They drew me up with that," said he, turning his dull eyes on me, and the next instant looking away. "They passed the chain under one of my armpits, and so suspended me; and then beat me. I was not going to stand that, you know. My wife ran away, calling on me to give in; so what could I do? Could I help it? Am I a renegade?"
I said, "Let us remember David's words--'Have mercy on me, O Lord, for my sin is great.' He did not say, 'for my sin is little--a very little one--the first I ever sinned;' but 'my sin is great;' and therefore have mercy on me. Say it after me. 'Have mercy on me, for my sin is great.'"
--"For my sin is great," repeated he, melting into tears. And again and again he repeated, weeping, "For my sin is great--my sin is great. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for my sin is great."
"He also hath forgiven the wickedness of thy sin," said I. "Let us turn unto the Lord, for he will heal us, and not be angry with us for ever."
Antoine drew me away. We left the poor man in tears, and went into the yard, where stood a cart, with a sorry horse in it, and a heap of loose fagots and pieces of broken furniture beside it.
"Get you in here, sir, and lie down," said he. "I will pile the wood over you as lightly as I can."
I did as he desired. He bestowed the wood over me as carefully as he could, and then led the horse out.
"Whither away?" said somebody, passing.
"To dispose of this rubbish," said he, carelessly. "Poor Pierre's chattels have been reduced to mere firewood. If a trifle can be got for them, it may buy him bread."
I thought of the two messengers to King David, whom a woman concealed in a well at Bahurim, spreading a covering over the well's mouth, and spreading ground corn thereon. I was startled when the man said, "I have a mind to buy it of you: it will do to heat my oven."
"But this load is engaged already," said Antoine.
"Why did you not say so at first? You said you were going to see if you could get a trifle for it."
"I confess I expressed myself badly. My poor brother's sad state has bewildered me. Go you, and look in on him, and see what a pitiable object he is."
"Well, I think I will. What is the value of this load, as it stands?"
Antoine seemed so disposed to haggle for it that I confess I quaked; however, he set such a high value on it that the other demurred.
Happily we got out of the town without further molestation. I was very much cramped, but that was no matter. The church-bells began to ring; and Antoine said, in a low voice, "How pitiable are the poor people who are now going to vespers on compulsion! Where will all this end? Can it be that he who now goeth forth weeping, and bearing good seed, shall return again in joy, bringing his sheaves with him?"
I said, "The Lord's hand is not straitened, that he cannot save. What is impossible with man is possible with God."
"Oh that we may live to see it, sir."
We came up with a wagon, with the driver of which Antoine fell into conversation for some time, but what they said I could not well hear. At length we reached the water-side, at a landing-place where a boat laden with kitchen stuff was awaiting us. Here Antoine saw me safely placed in charge of the boatman, who bade me never fear, for he would safely carry me to Bordeaux. We pushed off: the moon shone cold and bright; the air on the river felt fresh and chill. The boatman threw a warm covering on me, bade me sleep, and began a monotonous boat-song. I soon slept.
When I awoke it was late in the morning, for the bright October sun overhead was making the rapid Garonne quiver in a sheen of golden light. I found we had made good progress, and were not many hours from our destination. I found it inexpressibly pleasant to float down that bright river, as it carried me to new scenes, which love, hope, and inexperience painted in pleasing colors. My feet were sufficiently painful for me to be glad to lie idly among the piles of cabbages and while the time in day-dreams. Aged confessors might go forth sighing, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" but to the young and buoyant, change of occupation and foreign travel have great allurement, even when rudely come by.
The boatman seemed an honest poor fellow. Sometimes he exchanged greetings and jokes with other boatmen; sometimes he sang snatches of plaintive songs, such as "N'erount très frères N'erount très frères N'haut qu'une soeur à marida:" for his mother was from Languedoc. At other times he talked to me quietly.
"Yours seems a contented, merry life, said I. "Well, I make it so," said he. "Where is the good of picking up troubles? they come sure enough. Once I was foolish enough to think 'What a poor lot is this, to be pulling a market-boat up and down stream, with greens for the seafaring men, while others go riding on horseback or in carriages, wear fine clothes, feast every day, and go to theatres at night.' But when the dragoons came I was thankful to be what I was. Did you hear what happened to Collette at our place? Collette was the prettiest girl of our village, and a good girl, but a thought too vain. Perhaps it is too much to expect a woman not to be vain when she is pretty, but all are not. Collette's skin was like lilies and roses. When the dragoons were let loose on us they burnt her father's furniture, and beat him within an inch of his life. They asked Collette if she would go to mass: she said, 'I will not.' They pulled her hair, beat her, pinched her, but she only said the more, 'I will not.' Then a dragoon said, 'This girl is too pert, her conceit must be lowered a little.' And he took a comb off her toilette, and drew it down her face two or three times, quite hard, till it was scratched and scored all over. Conceive how the poor thing was cut up! She burst into tears, and said, 'Take me to a convent; I don't care where I go now, so that I am not seen. I shall never be worth looking at again.'"
"But what an unworthy motive for an unworthy act!" cried I. "But only think how she was goaded to it!" said he. "Women think so much of their looks. I am told the dragoons have tried that trick with many ladies of quality."
"If they deserved the name of men they would be ashamed of it."
"Well, I think so too; but see how they treat the men! Have you seen a chain of galley-slaves on their way to Marseilles? Certainly no treatment can be too bad for the infamous, but that nobles and gentlemen should be fettered along with felons, forgers, murderers, and such-like--ah, 'tis too bad!" [1]... [Footnote 1: See "Autobiography of a French Protestant." Religious Tract Society. A thrilling narrative, of which the Quarterly Review says:--"The facts are more interesting than fiction, and the incidents not less strange."]
"But now we come to Bordeaux," said he, at length; and in fact, the increase of traffic on the water was sufficient of itself to tell us that we were approaching an important commercial city, while in the distance were seen the masts of ships of many nations. Nearer at hand the richly-wooded heights were studded with the country seats of opulent merchants, many of whom either were Huguenots or had made their fortunes by Huguenots. It was to be supposed, therefore, that we had many friends here; and, indeed, many were favoring our escape as much as they could without compromising themselves; but such jealous watch was being kept on the port that this was extremely difficult. Soon my companion ran his boat in between two others similarly laden--as far as vegetables when, that is, for I know not they held any fugitives; and a great war of words ensued, in which it was difficult to know whether they were really quarrelling or not.
At length I got ashore, and found my way to the counting-house of my father's correspondent, Monsieur Bort. He was a very business-looking man, with a short, hard, dry way of speaking. I found him immersed in his books. Directly he saw me, he said, abruptly.
"You are young Bonneval. You come too late. The others are gone."
"Oh" And I dropped into a seat, quite stunned by this reverse.
"Mais que voulez-vous?" said he. "They could not wait. The opportunity would have been lost."
"Are they really off, and safe?"
"Off they are, but whether safe--." He shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows. However, seeing my chagrin, he added, "I imagine they are in the river Thames by this time."
"Do you mean they are ascending the river to London?"
"Precisely. It may not be so, but we may hope the best. And you?" --eyeing me inquiringly.
"What am I to do, sir? Did my father leave me no word of direction?"
"He left you his blessing, and bade you be a good boy, and submit yourself to my direction."
"That I will gladly do, if you will direct me."
"Well, I am pledged to do the best I can for you. But, unhappily, the surveillance is now so strict that I know not how to smuggle you on board."
"In a box--in a cask," said I, desperately.
"Have you really courage to be packed in that manner?"
"Yes, if there is no alternative."
"Come, you are un brave garçon! I respect you for your resolution. There is a vessel of mine being loaded now, and if you will really go on board in such a way as you propose I think we can manage it, and your durance will not last more than a few hours. You will be a Regulus without the nails."
Smiling grimly at this allusion, he went out, and left me to meditate on what lay before me. It was not pleasant, certainly; but then the incentive was so great! --to join all whom I held dear, in a free land! The light affliction would be but for a moment.
Monsieur Bort returned. "All is arranged," said he complacently. "I have taken the porter who will roll you into the secret. He promises to be as careful of you as he can. An officer on board is likewise in my confidence: he engages you shall be released as soon as the vessel is fairly under weigh. So take heart; it will be but a short trial compared with what many Huguenots are put to. Take this money and these papers--" After some business directions he accompanied me to the warehouse, where the cask awaited me, with some hay to soften my journey in it.
"You are a pipe of Bordeaux, going as a present to my particular friend in London," said he, smiling. "Now, behave yourself as a good pipe of wine should; and don't cry out even if you are hurt. See, there are some air-holes. You won't stifle."
"They are very small--" "How can that be helped? Who would have doors and windows in a wine-cask? You will get on board alive, will be released when well to sea, and must not mind a little discomfort."
We shook hands, and I stepped in and settled myself as well as I could, with my mouth close to one of the air-holes; and the cask was closed upon me. The next minute I was rolled slowly off; and a most odd sensation it was! I advise you to try it, if you would like something perfectly new; but have bigger air-holes if you can; and even then let your experiment be short.
I verily believe the porter did his best for me; but how slowly he rolled: and even then what bumps and jolts I had when we came to uneven ground! Now and then he stopped, to wipe his face and rest, seemingly--then on we trundled again Meanwhile I was getting exceedingly hot; all the blood in my body seemed mounting into my head: and unpleasant ideas of smothering obtruded themselves. The noises around me told me we were on the wharf; then the jolting and bumping became worse than before: I fancied I could tell we passed up a sloping plank and were on shipboard. Then, without the least warning, I was rolled over and over, and then set upon my head! but a loud cry outside drowned a smothered cry within; and I was placed in a horizontal position again, with feelings impossible to describe.
I think I became sleepy after that; or else in a painless state of insensibility. When I woke I was numb all over, and had to rub my dazzled eyes as the bright daylight broke in on them.
"He seems to like his quarters so well as to have no mind to turn out," said a rough voice.
"He wants assistance," said some one, in a kinder tone; and a handsome, frank-looking man laid hold of my arm, and helped me to rise. Above me were the sails and cordage of a ship; all around me the sparkling blue waves, leaping in freedom. I clasped my hands, and raised them to heaven.
"You do well to give thanks where thanks are due," said the mate. "Now come into the cabin."
Seeing me stagger, he took me by the arm, and kindly assisted me into the presence of the captain, saying, "Here is one of the noble army of martyrs."
The captain gave me a most kind reception, made me dine with him, and asked me a great many questions. He then told me many moving stories of other Huguenots who had escaped or tried to escape to England; and he related such instances of the kindness of the English to the fugitives that my heart warmed towards them with gratitude and hope.
After this I suffered much from seasickness, and lay two or three days in my cot, where we were buffeted of the winds, and tossed. We were chased by a strange ship, and had to put on all the sail we could to escape being overhauled; and this led to our being driven out of our course; so that, what with one thing and another, we we did not reach Gravesend till the 8th of November. Then the captain went ashore with his ship's papers, and, after transacting business, started for London, and took me with him.
What a day it was for forming one's first impressions of that much-longed-for capital! There was a thick November fog, through which street-lamps sent an imperfect light; and shops were lighted up with candles. Vehicles ran against one another in the streets, in spite of link-boys darting between the horses, fearless of danger, and scattering sparks from their fiery torches. The noise, the unknown language, the strange streets and lanes bewildered me. The captain called a hackney-coach, and in this we made our way to Fenchurch street, where lived his shipping agent, Mr. Smith. We went upstairs to his counting-house, and found him talking to some one, who turned round as we entered.
I exclaimed "Oh, my father!" and precipitated myself into his arms. He embraced me with transport.
"Where is my mother? Where is Madeline?"
"Safe and well, at the country-house of our esteemed friend Mr. Smith. Thither I will speedily take you, my dear boy. I came here to gather tidings of you."
"How long it seems since we lost sight of one another!"
"Long, indeed! And how much we have to tell each other! But we are in smooth water now. In this free, happy land people are no longer persecuted for their faith. We must begin the world again, my son; but what does that signify? You have youth and energy; I have experience and patience."
The captain and Mr. Smith looked on with sympathy at our mutual felicitations. Soon I was with my father in a stage-coach on our way to Walthamstow. There, in an old-fashioned red-brick mansion, I found my mother, brothers and sisters, my Madeleine, and Gabrielle. What joy! What affection!
In short, we were all, without one exception, among the four hundred thousand persons who forsook France rather than renounce their faith. Of that number, a very great many perished of famine, hardships, and fatigue; but we were among the many who safely reached this hospitable country and commenced life anew. Many of us settled without the city walls in the open ground of Spital Fields, which we gradually covered with houses and silk-factories. Here we spoke our own language, sang our own songs, had our own places of worship, and built our dwellings in the old French style, with porticoes and seats at the doors, where our old men sat and smoked on summer evenings, and conversed with one another in their own tongue.
At first our starving refugees were relieved by a Parliamentary grant of £15,000 a year; but, God prospering our industry our trade went on steadily increasing till that, now, in 1713, three hundred thousand of us are maintained by it in England. And many others of us in friendly countries abroad, where we have been driven. Prosperity to those among whom we have settled has followed. The native land that cast us forth has been impoverished. Happy are the people whom the Lord hath blessed. Yea, happy are they who have the Lord for their God.
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{
"id": "13896"
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1
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When the widow of Martino Consalvi married young Corbario, people shook their heads and said that she was making a great mistake. Consalvi had been dead a good many years, but as yet no one had thought it was time to say that his widow was no longer young and beautiful, as she had always been. Many rich widows remain young and beautiful as much as a quarter of a century, or even longer, and the Signora Consalvi was very rich indeed. As soon as she was married to Folco Corbario every one knew that she was thirty-five years old and he was barely twenty-six, and that such a difference of ages on the wrong side was ridiculous if it was not positively immoral. No well-regulated young man had a right to marry a rich widow nine years older than himself, and who had a son only eleven years younger than he.
A few philosophers who said that if the widow was satisfied the matter was nobody's business were treated with the contempt they deserved. Those who, on the contrary, observed that young Corbario had married for money and nothing else were heard with favour, until the man who knew everything pointed out that as the greater part of the fortune would be handed over to Marcello when he came of age, six years hence, Corbario had not made a good bargain and might have done better. It was true that Marcello Consalvi had inherited a delicate constitution of body, it had even been hinted that he was consumptive. Corbario would have done better to wait another year or two to see what happened, said a cynic, for young people often died of consumption between fifteen and twenty. The cynic was answered by a practical woman of the world, who said that Corbario had six years of luxury and extravagance before him, and that many men would have sold themselves to the devil for less. After the six years the deluge might come if it must; it was much pleasanter to drown in the end than never to have had the chance of swimming in the big stream at all, and bumping sides with the really big fish, and feeling oneself as good as any of them. Besides, Marcello was pale and thin, and had been heard to cough; he might die before he came of age. The only objection to this theory was that it was based on a fiction; for the whole fortune had been left to the Signora by a childless relation.
These amiable and interesting views were expressed with variations by people who knew the three persons concerned, and with such a keen sense of appropriate time and place as made it quite sure that none of the three should ever know what was said of them. The caution of an old fox is rash temerity compared with the circumspection of a first-rate gossip; and when the gossips were tired of discussing Folco Corbario and his wife and her son, they talked about other matters, but they had a vague suspicion that they had been cheated out of something. A cat that has clawed all the feathers off a stuffed canary might feel just what they did.
For nothing happened. Corbario did not launch into wild extravagance after all, but behaved himself with the faultless dulness of a model middle-aged husband. His wife loved him and was perfectly happy, and happiness finally stole her superfluous years away, and they evaporated in the sunshine, and she forgot all about them. Marcello Consalvi, who had lost his father when he was a mere child, found a friend in his mother's husband, and became very fond of him, and thought him a good man to imitate; and in return Corbario made a companion of the fair-haired boy, and taught him to ride and shoot in his holidays, and all went well.
Moreover, Marcello's mother, who was a good woman, told him that the world was very wicked; and with the blind desire for her son's lasting innocence, which is the most touching instinct of loving motherhood, she entreated him to lead a spotless life. When Marcello, in the excusable curiosity of budding youth, asked his stepfather what that awful wickedness was against which he was so often warned, Corbario told him true stories of men who had betrayed their country and their friends, and of all sorts of treachery and meanness, to which misdeeds the boy did not feel himself at all inclined; so that he wondered why his mother seemed so very anxious lest he should go astray. Then he repeated to her what Corbario had told him, and she smiled sweetly and said nothing, and trusted her husband all the more. She felt that he understood her, and was doing his best to help her in making Marcello what she wished him to be.
The boy was brought up at home; in Rome in the winter, and in summer on the great estate in the south, which his father had bought and which was to be a part of his inheritance.
He was taught by masters who came to the house to give their lessons and went away as soon as the task was over. He had no tutor, for his mother had not found a layman whom she could trust in that capacity, and yet she understood that it was not good for a boy to be followed everywhere by a priest. Besides, Corbario gave so much of his time to his stepson that a tutor was hardly needed; he walked with him and rode with him, or spent hours with him at home when the weather was bad. There had never been a cross word between the two since they had met. It was an ideal existence. Even the gossips stopped talking at last, and there was not one, not even the most ingeniously evil-tongued of all, that prophesied evil.
They raised their eyebrows, and the more primitive among them shrugged their shoulders a little, and smiled. If Providence really insisted upon making people so perfect, what was to be done? It was distressing, but there was nothing to be said; they must just lead their lives, and the gossips must bear it. No doubt Corbario had married for money, since he had nothing in particular and his wife had millions, but if ever a man had married for money and then behaved like an angel, that man was Folco Corbario and no other. He was everything to his wife, and all things to his stepson--husband, father, man of business, tutor, companion, and nurse; for when either his wife or Marcello was ill, he rarely left the sick-room, and no one could smooth a pillow as he could, or hold a glass so coaxingly to the feverish lips, or read aloud so untiringly in such a gentle and soothing voice.
No ascendency of one human being over another is more complete than that of a full-grown man over a boy of sixteen, who venerates his elder as an ideal. To find a model, to believe it perfection, and to copy it energetically, is either a great piece of good fortune, or a misfortune even greater; in whatever follows in life, there is the same difference between such development and the normally slow growth of a boy's mind as that which lies between enthusiasm and indifference. It is true that where there has been no enthusiastic belief there can be no despairing disillusionment when the light goes out; but it is truer still that hope and happiness are the children of faith by the ideal.
A boy's admiration for his hero is not always well founded; sometimes it is little short of ridiculous, and it is by no means always harmless. But no one found fault with Marcello for admiring his stepfather, and the attachment was a source of constant satisfaction to his mother. In her opinion Corbario was the handsomest, bravest, cleverest, and best of men, and after watching him for some time even the disappointed gossips were obliged to admit, though without superlatives, that he was a good-looking fellow, a good sportsman, sufficiently well gifted, and of excellent behaviour. There was the more merit in the admission, they maintained, because they had been inclined to doubt the man, and had accused him of marrying out of pure love of money. A keen judge of men might have thought that his handsome features were almost too still and too much like a mask, that his manner was so quiet as to be almost expressionless, and that the soft intonation of his speech was almost too monotonous to be natural. But all this was just what his wife admired, and she encouraged her son to imitate it. His father had been a man of quick impulses, weak to-day, strong to-morrow, restless, of uncertain temper, easily enthusiastic and easily cast down, capable of sudden emotions, and never able to conceal what he felt if he had cared to do so. Marcello had inherited his father's character and his mother's face, as often happens; but his unquiet disposition was tempered as yet by a certain almost girlish docility, which had clung to him from childhood as the result of being brought up almost entirely by the mother he worshipped. And now, for the first time, comparing him with her second husband, she realised the boy's girlishness, and wished him to outgrow it. Her own ideal of what even a young man should be was as unpractical as that of many thoroughly good and thoroughly unworldly mothers. She wished her son to be a man at all points, and yet she dreamed that he might remain a sort of glorified young girl; she desired him to be well prepared to face the world when he grew up, and yet it was her dearest wish that he might never know anything of the world's wickedness. Corbario seemed to understand her better in this than she understood herself, and devoted his excellent gifts and his almost superhuman patience to the task of forming a modern Galahad. Her confidence in her husband increased month by month, and year by year.
"I wish to make a new will," she said to her lawyer in the third year of her marriage. "I shall leave my husband a life-interest in a part of my fortune, and the reversion of the whole in case anything should happen to my son."
The lawyer was a middle-aged man, with hard black eyes. While he was listening to a client, he had a habit of folding his arms tightly across his chest and crossing one leg over the other. When the Signora Corbario had finished speaking he sat quite still for a moment, and then noiselessly reversed the crossing of his legs and the folding of his arms, and looked into her face. It was very gentle, fair, and thoughtful.
"I presume," answered the lawyer, "that the clause providing for a reversion is only intended as an expression of your confidence in your husband?"
"Affection," answered the Signora, "includes confidence."
The lawyer raised one eyebrow almost imperceptibly, and changed his position a little.
"Heaven forbid," he said, "that any accident should befall your son!"
"Heaven forbid it!" replied the Signora. "He is very strong," she continued, in the tone people use who are anxious to convince themselves of something doubtful. "Yet I wish my husband to know that, after my son, he should have the first right."
"Shall you inform him of the nature of your will, Signora?" inquired the lawyer.
"I have already informed him of what I mean to do," replied Signora Corbario.
Again the lawyer's eyebrow moved a little nervously, but he said nothing. It was not his place to express any doubt as to the wisdom of the disposition. He was not an old family adviser, who might have taken such a liberty. There had been such a man, indeed, but he was dead. It was the duty of the rich woman's legal adviser to hinder her from committing any positive legal mistake, but it was not his place to criticise her judgment of the man she had chosen to marry. The lawyer made a few notes without offering any comment, and on the following day he brought the will for the Signora to sign. By it, at her death, Marcello, her son, was to inherit her great fortune. Her husband, Folco Corbario, was constituted Marcello's sole guardian, and was to enjoy a life-interest in one-third of the inheritance. If Marcello died, the whole fortune was to go to Corbario, without any condition or reservation whatsoever.
When the will was executed, the Signora told her husband that she had done what she intended.
"My dear," said Corbario, gently, "I thank you for the true meaning of it. But as for the will itself, shall we talk of it thirty years hence, when Marcello's children's children are at your knee?"
He kissed her hand tenderly.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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Marcello stood at an open window listening to the musical spring rain and watching the changing lights on the city below him, as the dove-coloured cloud that floated over Rome like thin gauze was drawn up into the sunshine. Then there were sudden reflections from distant windows and wet domes, that blazed like white fires for a little while, till the raindrops dried and the waves of changing hues that had surged up under the rain, rising, breaking, falling, and spreading, subsided into a restful sea of harmonious colour.
After that, the sweet smell of the wet earth came up to Marcello's nostrils. A light breeze stirred the dripping emerald leaves, and the little birds fluttered down and hopped along the garden walks and over the leaves, picking up the small unwary worms that had been enjoying a bath while their enemies tried to keep dry under the ilex boughs.
Marcello half closed his eyes and drank the fragrant air with parted lips, his slim white hands resting on the marble sill. The sunshine made his pale face luminous, and gilded his short fair hair, casting the shadow of the brown lashes upon his delicate cheeks. There was something angel-like in his expression--the look of the frescoed angels of Melozzo da Forli in the Sacristy of St. Peter's. They are all that is left of something very beautiful, brought thither broken from the Church of the Holy Apostles; and so, too, one might have fancied that Marcello, standing at the window in the morning sunshine, belonged to a world that had long passed away--fit for a life that was, fit for a life to come hereafter, perhaps, but not fit for the life that is. There are rare and beautiful beings in the world who belong to it so little that it seems cruelty and injustice to require of them what is demanded of us all. They are born ages too late, or ages too soon; they should not have been born now. Their very existence calls forth our tenderest sympathy, as we should pity a fawn facing its death among wolves.
But Marcello Consalvi had no idea that he could deserve pity, and life looked very bright to him, very easy, and very peaceful. He could hardly have thought of anything at all likely to happen which could darken the future, or even give him reasonable cause for anxiety. There was no imaginative sadness in his nature, no morbid dread of undefined evil, no melancholy to dye the days black; for melancholy is more often an affliction of the very strong in body or mind than of the weak, or of average men and women. Marcello was delicate, but not degenerate; he seemed gentle, cheerful, and ready to believe the world a very good place, as indeed it is for people who are not too unlike their neighbours to enjoy it, or too unlucky to get some of its good things, or too weak to work, fight, and love, or too clever to be as satisfied with themselves as most men are. For plain, common, everyday happiness and contentment belong to plain, average people, who do what others do and have a cheerfully good opinion of themselves. Can a man make a good fight of it if he does not believe himself to be about as good as his adversary?
It had never occurred to Marcello that he might have to fight for anything, and if some one had told him on that spring morning that he was on the very verge of a desperate struggle for existence against overwhelming odds, he would have turned his bright eyes wonderingly to the prophet of evil, asking whence danger could come, and trying to think what it might be like.
At the first appearance of it he would have been startled into fear, too, as many a grown man has been before now, when suddenly brought face to face with an unknown peril, being quite untried: and small shame to him. He who has been waked from a peaceful sleep and pleasant dreams to find death at his throat, for the first time in his life, knows the meaning of that. Samson was a tried warrior when Delilah first roused him with her cry, "The Philistines are upon thee!"
Marcello was no youthful Samson, yet he was not an unmanly boy, for all his bringing up. So far as his strength would allow he had been accustomed to the exercises and sports of men: he could ride fearlessly, if not untiringly; he was a fair shot; he had hunted wild boar with his stepfather in the marshy lands by the sea; he had been taught to fence and was not clumsy with weapons, though he had not yet any great skill. He had always been told that he was delicate and must be careful, and he knew that he was not strong; but there was one good sign in that his weakness irritated him and bred at least the desire for strength, instead of the poor-spirited indolence that bears bodily infirmity as something inevitable, and is ready to accept pity if not to ask for it.
The smell of the damp earth was gone, and as the sun shone out the air was filled with the scent of warm roses and the faintly sweet odour of wistaria. Marcello heard a light footstep close to him, and met his mother's eyes as he turned.
Even to him, she looked very young just then, as she stood in the light, smiling at him. A piece of lace was drawn half over her fair hair, and the ends went round her throat like a scarf and fell behind her. Its creamy tints heightened the rare transparency of her complexion by faint contrast. She was a slight woman and very graceful.
"I have looked for you everywhere," she said, and she still smiled, as if with real pleasure at having found him.
"I have been watching the shower" Marcello answered, drawing her to the window. "And then the earth and the roses smelt so sweet that I stayed here. Did you want me, mother?"
"I always like to know where you are."
She passed her arm through his with a loving pressure, and looked out of the window with him. The villa stood on the slope of the Janiculum, close to the Corsini gardens.
"Do I run after you too much?" the mother asked presently, as if she knew the answer. "Now that you are growing up, do I make you feel as if you were still a little boy? You are nearly nineteen, you know! I suppose I ought to treat you like a man."
Marcello laughed, and his hand slipped into hers with an almost childish and nestling movement.
"You have made a man of me," he answered.
Had she? A shadow of doubt crossed her thoughtful face as she glanced at his. He was so different from other young men of his age, so delicately nurtured, so very gentle; there was the radiance of maidenly innocence in his look, and she was afraid that he might be more like a girl than a man almost grown.
"I have done my best," she said. "I hope I have done right."
He scarcely understood what she meant, and his expression did not change.
"You could not do anything that was not right," he answered.
Perhaps such a being as Marcello would be an impossibility anywhere but in Italy. Modern life tears privacy to tatters, and privacy is the veil of the temple of home, within which every extreme of human development is possible, good and bad. Take privacy away and all the strangely compound fractions of humanity are soon reduced to a common denomination. In Italy life has more privacy than anywhere else west of Asia. The Englishman is fond of calling his home his castle, but it is a thoroughfare, a market-place, a club, a hotel, a glass house, compared with that of an average Italian. An Englishman goes home to escape restraint: an Italian goes out. But the northern man, who lives much in public, learns as a child to conceal what he feels, to be silent, to wear an indifferent look; whereas the man of the south, who hides nothing when the doors of his house are shut, can hide but little when he meets his enemy in the way. He laughs when he is pleased, and scowls when he is not, threatens when he is angry, and sheds tears when he is hurt, with a simplicity that too often excites the contempt of men accustomed to suffer or enjoy without moving a muscle.
Privacy favours the growth of individual types, differing widely from each other; the destruction of it makes people very much alike. Marcello's mother asked herself whether she had done well in rearing him as a being apart from those amongst whom he must spend his life.
And yet, as she looked at him, he seemed to be so nearly the ideal of which she had dreamt throughout long years of loving care that she was comforted, and the shadow passed away from her sweet face. He had answered that she could do nothing that was not right; she prayed that his words might be near the truth, and in her heart she was willing to believe that they were almost true. Had she not followed every good impulse of her own good heart? Had she not tried to realize literally for him the most beautiful possibilities of the Christian faith? That, at least, was true, and she could tell herself so without any mistaken pride. How, then, had she made any mistake? The boy had the face of a young saint.
"Are you ready, my dear?" she asked suddenly, as a far-off clock struck.
"Yes, mother, quite ready."
"I am not," she answered with a little laugh. "And Folco is waiting, and I hear the carriage driving up."
She slipped from Marcello's side and left the room quickly, for they were going to drive down to the sea, to a little shooting-lodge that belonged to them near Nettuno, a mere cottage among the trees by the Roman shore, habitable only in April and May, and useful only then, when the quail migrate along the coast and the malarious fever is not yet to be feared. It was there that Marcello had first learned to handle a gun, spending a week at a time there with his stepfather; and his mother used to come down now and then for a day or two on a visit, sometimes bringing her friend the Contessa dell' Armi. The latter had been very unhappy in her youth, and had been left a widow with one beautiful girl and a rather exiguous fortune. Some people thought that it was odd that the Signora Corbario, who was a saint if ever there was one, should have grown so fond of the Contessa, for the latter had seen stormy days in years gone by; and of course the ill-disposed gossips made up their minds that the Contessa was trying to catch Marcello for her daughter Aurora, though the child was barely seventeen.
This was mere gossip, for she was quite incapable of any such scheme. What the gossips did not know was something which would have interested them much more, namely, that the Contessa was the only person in Rome who distrusted Folco Corbario, and that she was in constant fear lest she should turn out to be right, and lest her friend's paradise should be suddenly changed into a purgatory. But she held her tongue, and her quiet face never betrayed her thoughts. She only watched, and noted from month to month certain small signs which seemed to prove her right; and she should be ready, whenever the time should come, by day or night, to help her friend, or comfort her, or fight for her.
If Corbario guessed that the Contessa did not trust him, he never showed it. He had found her installed as his wife's friend, and had accepted her, treating her with much courtesy and a sort of vicarious affection; but though he tried his best he could not succeed in reaching anything like intimacy with her, and while she seemed to conceal nothing, he felt that she was hiding her real self from him. Whether she did so out of pride, or distrust, or jealousy, he could never be sure. He was secretly irritated and humiliated by her power to oppose him and keep him at a distance without ever seeming to do so; but, on the other hand, he was very patient, very tenacious of his purpose, and very skilful. He knew something of the Contessa's past, but he recognised in her the nature that has known the world's worst side and has done with it for ever, and is lifted above it, and he knew the immense influence which the spectacle of a blameless life exercises upon the opinion of a good woman who has not always been blameless herself. Whatever he had been before he met his wife, whatever strange plans had been maturing in his brain since he had married her, his life had seemed as spotless from that day as the existence of the best man living. His wife believed in him, and the Contessa did not; but even she must in time accept the evidence of her senses. Then she, too, would trust him. Why it was essential that she should, he alone knew, unless he was merely piqued by her quiet reserve, as a child is when it cannot fix the attention of a grown-up person.
The Contessa and her daughter were to be of the party that day, and the carriage stopped where they lived, near the Forum of Trajan. They appeared almost directly, the Contessa in grey with a grey veil and Aurora dressed in a lighter shade, the thick plaits of her auburn hair tied up short below her round straw hat, on the theory that she was still a school-girl, whose skirt must not quite touch the ground, who ought not to wear a veil, and whose mind was supposed to be a sensitive blank, particularly apt to receive bad impressions rather than good ones. In less than a year she would be dancing all night with men she had scarcely heard of before, listening to compliments of which she had never dreamt--of course not--and to declarations which no right-minded girl one day under eighteen could under any circumstances be thought to expect. Such miracles as these are wrought by the eighteenth birthday.
Corbario's eyes looked from the mother to the daughter, as he and Marcello stood on the pavement to let them get in. The Contessa touched his outstretched hand without restraint but without cordiality, smiling just as much as was civil, and less readily than would have been friendly. Aurora glanced at him and laughed prettily without any apparent reason, which is the privilege of very young girls, because their minds are supposed to be a blank. Also because her skirt must not quite touch the ground, one very perfect black silk ankle was distinctly visible for a moment as she stepped into the carriage. Note that from the eve of her eighteenth birthday till she is old enough to be really wicked no well-regulated young woman shows her ankles. This also is one of the miracles of time.
Marcello blushed faintly as he sat down beside Aurora. There were now five in the big carriage, so that she was between the two men; and though there was enough room Marcello felt the slight pressure of her arm against his. His mother saw his colour change, and looked away and smiled. The idea of marrying the two in a few years had often crossed her mind, and she was pleased whenever she saw that Marcello felt a little thrill of emotion in the girl's presence. As for Aurora, she looked straight before her, between the heads of the two elder women, and for a long time after they had started she seemed absorbed in watching the receding walls of the city and the long straight road that led back to it. The Contessa and her friend talked quietly, happy to be together for a whole day. Corbario now and then looked from one to the other, as if to assure himself that they were quite comfortable, and his still face wore an unchanging look of contented calm as his eyes turned again to the sunlit sweep of the low Campagna. Marcello looked steadily away from Aurora, happily and yet almost painfully aware that her arm could not help pressing against his. The horses' hoofs beat rhythmically on the hard high road, with the steady, cheerful energy which would tell a blind man that a team is well fed, fresh from rest, and altogether fit for a long day's work. The grey-haired coachman sat on his box like an old dragoon in the saddle; the young groom sat bolt upright beside him with folded arms, as if he could never tire of sitting straight. The whole party looked prosperous, harmonious, healthy, and perfectly happy, as if nothing in the least unpleasant could possibly happen to them, still less anything terrible, that could suddenly change all their lives.
One of fate's favourite tricks is to make life look particularly gay and enjoyable, and full of sunshine and flowers, at the very moment when terror wakes from sleep and steps out of the shadow to stalk abroad.
The cottage where the party were going to spend the next few days together was built like an Indian bungalow, consisting of a single story surrounded by a broad, covered verandah, and having a bit of lawn in front. It was sheltered by trees, and between it and the beach a bank of sand from ten to fifteen feet high ran along the shore, the work of the southwest gales during many ages. In many places this bank was covered with scrub and brushwood on the landward side.
A little stream meandered down to the sea on the north side of the cottage, ending in a pool full of tall reeds, amongst which one could get about in a punt. The seashore itself is very shelving at that place, and there is a bar about a cable's length out, over which the sea breaks with a tremendous roar during westerly storms. Two hundred yards from the cottage, a large hut had been built for the men-servants and for the kitchen; near by it there was a rough coach-house and a stable with room for a dozen horses. The carriage usually went back to Rome on the day after every one had arrived, and was sent for when wanted; but there were a number of rough Campagna horses in the stable, such as are ridden by the cattle herders about Rome, tough little beasts of fairly good temper and up to a much heavier weight than might be guessed by a stranger in the country. In the morning the men of the party usually went shooting, if the wind was fair, for where quail are concerned much depends on that. Dinner was in the middle of the day, and every one was supposed to go to sleep after it. In the late afternoon the horses were saddled, and the whole party went for a gallop on the sands, or up to classic Ardea, or across the half-cultivated country, coming back to supper when it was dark. A particularly fat and quiet pony was kept for Marcello's mother, who was no great rider, but the Contessa and Aurora rode anything that was brought them, as the men did. To tell the truth, the Campagna horse is rarely vicious, and, even when only half broken, can be ridden by a lady if she be an average horsewoman.
Everything happened as usual. The party reached the cottage in time for a late luncheon, rested afterwards, and then rode out. But the Signora Corbario would not go.
"Your pony looks fatter and quieter than ever," said Maddalena dell' Armi with a smile. "If you do not ride him, he will turn into a fixture."
"He is already a very solid piece of furniture," observed Folco, looking at the sleek animal.
"He is very like the square piano I practise on," said Aurora. "He has such a flat back and such straight thick legs."
"More like an organ," put in Marcello, gravely. "He has a curious, half-musical wheeze when he tries to move, like the organ in the church at San Domenico, when the bellows begin to work."
"It is a shame to make fun of my horse," answered the Signora, smiling. "But really I am not afraid of him. I have a little headache from the drive, that is all."
"Take some phenacetine," said Corbario with concern. "Let me make you quite comfortable before we start."
He arranged a long straw chair for her in a sheltered corner of the verandah, with cushions and a rug and a small table beside it, on which Marcello placed a couple of new books that had been brought down. Then Folco went in and got a little glass bottle of tablets from his wife's travelling-bag and gave her one. She was subject to headaches and always had the medicine with her. It was the only remedy she ever carried or needed, and she had such confidence in it that she felt better almost as soon as she had swallowed the tablet her husband gave her.
"Let me stay and read to you," he said. "Perhaps you would go to sleep."
"You are not vain of your reading, my dear," she answered with a smile. "No, please go with the others."
Then the Contessa offered to stay, and the good Signora had to use a good deal of persuasion to make them all understand that she would much rather be left alone. They mounted and rode away through the trees towards the beach, whence the sound of the small waves, breaking gently under the afternoon breeze, came echoing softly up to the cottage.
The two young people rode in front, in silence; Corbario and the Contessa followed at a little distance.
"How good you are to my wife!" Folco exclaimed presently, as they emerged upon the sand. "You are like a sister to her!"
Maddalena glanced at him through her veil. She had small and classic features, rather hard and proud, and her eyes were of a dark violet colour, which is very unusual, especially in Italy. But she came from the north. Corbario could not see her expression, and she knew it.
"You are good to her, too," she said presently, being anxious to be just. "You are very thoughtful and kind."
Corbario thought it wiser to say nothing, and merely bent his head a little in acknowledgment of what he instinctively felt to be an admission on the part of a secret adversary. Maddalena had never said so much before.
"If you were not, I should never forgive you," she added, thinking aloud.
"I don't think you have quite forgiven me as it is," Folco answered more lightly.
"For what?"
"For marrying your best friend."
The little speech was well spoken, so utterly without complaint, or rancour, or suggestion of earnestness, that the Contessa could only smile.
"And yet you admit that I am not a bad husband," continued Folco. "Should you accept me, or, say, my exact counterpart, for Aurora, in a year or two?"
"I doubt whether you have any exact counterpart," Maddalena answered, checking the sharp denial that rose to her lips.
"Myself, then, just for the sake of argument?"
"What an absurd question! Do you mind tightening the girth for me a little? My saddle is slipping."
She drew rein, and he was obliged to submit to the check. As he dismounted he glanced at Aurora's graceful figure, a hundred yards ahead, and for one instant he drew his eyelids together with a very strange expression. He knew that the Contessa could not see his face.
Marcello and Aurora had been companions since they were children, and just now they were talking familiarly of the place, which they had not seen since the previous year. All sorts of details struck them. Here, there was more sand than usual; there, a large piece of timber had been washed ashore in the winter gales; at another place there was a new sand-drift that had quite buried the scrub on the top of the bank; the keeper of the San Lorenzo tower had painted his shutters brown, though they had always been green; here was the spot where Aurora had tumbled off her pony when she was only twelve years old--so long ago! And here--they looked at each other and then quickly at the sea, for it was here that Marcello, in a fit of boyish admiration, had once suddenly kissed her cheek, telling her that she was perfectly beautiful. Even now, he blushed when he thought of it, and yet he longed to do it again, and wondered inwardly what would happen if he did.
As for Aurora, though she looked at the sea for a moment, she seemed quite self-possessed. It is a strange thing that if a boy and a girl are brought up in just the same way, by women, and without many companions, the boy should generally be by far the more shy of the two when childhood is just past.
"You are very fond of your stepfather, are you not?" asked Aurora, so suddenly that Marcello started a little and hesitated slightly before he answered.
"Yes," he said, almost directly, "of course I am! Don't you like him, too?"
"I used to," answered Aurora in a low voice, "but now his eyes frighten me--sometimes. For instance, though he is a good way behind, I am sure he is looking at me now, just in that way."
Marcello turned his head instinctively, and saw that Folco had just dismounted to tighten the girth of the Contessa's saddle. It was exactly while Aurora was speaking that he had drawn his eyelids together with such a strange expression--a mere coincidence, no doubt, but one that would have startled the girl if she could have suddenly seen his face.
They rode on without waiting for the others, at an even canter over the sand.
"I never saw anything in Folco's eyes that could frighten anybody," Marcello said presently.
"No," answered Aurora. "Very likely not."
Marcello had always called Corbario by his first name, and as he grew up it seemed more and more natural to do so. Folco was so young, and he looked even younger than he was.
"It must be your imagination," Marcello said.
"Women," said Aurora, as if she were as near thirty as any young woman would acknowledge herself, "women have no imagination. That is why we have so much sense," she added thoughtfully.
Marcello was so completely puzzled by this extraordinary statement that he could find nothing to say for a few moments. Then he felt that she had attacked his idol, and that Folco must be defended.
"If you could find a single thing, however small, to bring against him, it would not be so silly to say that his eyes frighten you."
"There!" laughed Aurora. "You might as well say that because at this moment there is only that one little cloud near the sun, there is no cloud at all!"
"How ridiculous!" Marcello expressed his contempt of such girlish reasoning by putting his rough little horse to a gallop.
"Men always say that," retorted Aurora, with exasperating calm. "I'll race you to the tower for the first choice of oranges at dessert. They are not very good this year, you know, and you like them."
"Don't be silly!" Marcello immediately reined his horse back to a walk, and looked very dignified.
"It is impossible to please you," observed Aurora, slackening her pace at once.
"It is impossible, if you abuse Folco."
"I am sure I did not mean to abuse him," Aurora answered meekly. "I never abuse anybody."
"Women never do, I suppose," retorted Marcello, with a little snort of dissatisfaction.
They were little more than children yet, and for pretty nearly five minutes neither spoke a word, as their horses walked side by side.
"The keeper of the tower has more chickens this year," observed Aurora. "I can see them running about."
This remark was evidently intended as an overture of reconciliation. It acted like magic upon Marcello, who hated quarrelling, and was moreover much more in love with the girl than he knew. Instinctively he put out his left hand to take her right. They always made peace by taking hands.
But Aurora's did not move, and she did not even turn her head towards him.
"Take care!" she said quickly, in a low tone. "They are watching us."
Marcello looked round and saw that the others were nearer than he had supposed, and he blushed foolishly.
"Well, what harm would there be if you gave me your hand?" he asked. "I only meant--" "Yes, I understand," Aurora answered, in the same tone as before. "And I am glad you like me, Marcello--if you really do."
"If I do!" His tone was full of youthful and righteous indignation.
"I did not mean to doubt it," she said quickly. "But it is getting to be different now, you know. We are older, and somehow everything means more, even the little things."
"Oh!" ejaculated Marcello. "I begin to see. I suppose," he added, with what seemed to him reckless brutality, "that if I kissed you now you would be furious."
He glanced uneasily at Aurora's face to note the effect of this terrible speech. The result was not exactly what he had expected. A faint colour rose in her cheeks, and then she laughed.
"When you do," she said, "I would rather it should not be before people."
"I shall try to remember that," answered Marcello, considerably emboldened.
"Yes, do! It would be so humiliating if I boxed your ears in the presence of witnesses."
"You would not dare," laughed Marcello.
From a distance, as Aurora had guessed, Folco was watching them while he quietly talked to the Contessa; and as he watched, he understood what a change had taken place since last year, when he had seen Marcello and Aurora riding over the same stretch of sand on the same little horses. He ventured a reflection, to see what his companion would answer.
"I daresay many people would say that those two young people were made for each other."
Maddalena looked at him inquiringly and then glanced at her daughter.
"And what do you say?" she asked, with some curiosity.
"I say 'no.' And you?"
"I agree with you. Aurora is like me--like what I was. Marcello would bore her to death in six months, and Aurora would drive him quite mad."
Corbario smiled.
"I had hoped," he said, "that women with marriageable daughters would think Marcello a model husband. But of course I am prejudiced. I have had a good deal to do with his bringing up during the last four years."
"No one can say that you have not done your duty by him," Maddalena answered. "I wish I could feel that I had done as well by Aurora--indeed I do!"
"You have, but you had quite a different nature to deal with."
"I should think so! It is my own."
Corbario heard the little sigh as she turned her head away, and being a wise man he said nothing in answer. He was not a Roman, if indeed he were really an Italian at all, but he had vaguely heard the Contessa's story. She had been married very young to a parliamentary high-light, who had made much noise in his day, had spent more than half of her fortune after getting rid of his own, and had been forgotten on the morrow of his premature death. It was said that she had loved another man with all her heart, but Corbario had never known who it was.
The sun was almost setting when they turned homeward, and it was dark when they reached the cottage. They found an unexpected arrival installed beside the Signora in the doorway of the sitting-room.
"Professor Kalmon is here," said the Signora's voice out of the gloom. "I have asked him to stay till to-morrow."
The Professor rose up in the shadow and came forward, just as a servant brought a lamp. He was celebrated as a traveller, and occupied the chair of comparative physiology in the University of Milan. He belonged to the modern type of scientific man, which has replaced the one of fifty years ago, who lived in a dressing-gown and slippers, smoked a long pipe, and was always losing his belongings through absence of mind. The modern professor is very like other human beings in dress and appearance, and has even been known to pride himself on the fit of his coat, just like the common people.
There were mutual greetings, for the Professor knew all the party, and everybody liked him. He was a big man, with a well-kept brown beard, a very clear complexion, and bright brown eyes that looked as if they would never need spectacles.
"And where have you been since we last saw you?" asked Corbario.
"Are your pockets full of snakes this time?" asked Aurora.
The Professor looked at her and smiled, realising that she was no longer the child she had been when he had seen her last, and that she was very good to look at. His brown eyes beamed upon her benevolently.
"Ah, my dear young lady, I see it is all over," he said. "You will never pull my beard again and turn my pockets inside out for specimens when I come back from my walks on the beach."
"Do you think I am afraid of you or your specimens?" laughed Aurora.
"I have got a terrible thing in my waistcoat pocket," the Professor answered. "Something you might very well be afraid of."
"What is it? It must be very small to be in your waistcoat pocket."
"It is a new form of death."
He beamed on everybody with increasing benevolence; but somehow nobody smiled, and the Signora Corbario shivered and drew her light cloak more closely round her, as the first gust of the night breeze came up from the rustling reeds that grew in the pool below.
"It is time to get ready for supper," said Folco. "I hope you are not hungry, Kalmon, for you will not get anything very elaborate to eat!"
"Bread and cheese will do, my dear fellow."
When Italians go to the country they take nothing of the city with them. They like the contrast to be complete; they love the total absence of restraint; they think it delightful to dine in their shooting-coats and to eat coarse fare. If they had to dress for dinner it would not be the country at all, nor if dinner had to begin with soup and end with sweets just as it does in town. They eat extraordinary messes that would make a Frenchman turn pale and a German look grave. They make portentous pasties, rich with everything under the sun; they eat fat boiled beef, and raw fennel, and green almonds, and vast quantities of cream cheese, and they drink sour wine like water; and it all agrees with them perfectly, so that they come back to the city refreshed and rested after a gastronomic treatment which would bring any other European to death's door.
The table was set out on the verandah that evening, as usual in spring, and little by little the Professor absorbed the conversation, for they all asked him questions, few of which could be answered shortly. He was one of those profoundly cultivated Italians who are often to be met nowadays, but whose gifts it is not easy to appreciate except in a certain degree of intimacy. They are singularly modest men as a rule, and are by no means those about whom there is the most talk in the world.
The party sat in their places when supper was over, with cloaks and coats thrown over them against the night air, while Kalmon talked of all sorts of things that seemed to have the least possible connection with each other, but which somehow came up quite naturally. He went from the last book on Dante to a new discovery in chemistry, thence to Japanese monks and their beliefs, and came back smiling to the latest development of politics, which led him quite naturally to the newest play, labour and capital, the German Emperor, and the immortality of the soul.
"I believe you know everything!" exclaimed Marcello, with an admiring look. "Or else I know nothing, which is really more probable!" The boy laughed.
"You have not told us about the new form of death yet," said Aurora, leaning on her elbows and burying her young hands in her auburn hair as she looked across the table at Kalmon.
"You will never sleep again if I tell you about it," answered the Professor, opening his brown eyes very wide and trying to look terrible, which was quite impossible, because he had such a kindly face. "You do not look frightened at all," he added, pretending to be disappointed.
"Let me see the thing," Aurora said. "Perhaps we shall all be frightened."
"It looks very innocent," Kalmon answered. "Here it is."
He took a small leather case from his pocket, opened it, and drew out a short blue glass tube, with a screw top. It contained half a dozen white tablets, apparently just like those in common use for five-grain doses of quinine.
A little murmur of disappointment went around the table. The new form of death looked very commonplace. Corbario was the only one who showed any interest.
"May I see?" he asked, holding out his hand to take the tube.
Kalmon would not give it to him, but held the tube before his eyes under the bright light of the lamp.
"Excuse me," he said, "but I make it a rule never to let it go out of my hands. You understand, don't you? If it were passed round, some one might lay it down, it might be forgotten, somebody might take it for something else."
"Of course," said Folco, looking intently at the tube, as though he could understand something about the contents by mere inspection. "You are quite right. You should take no risks with such things--especially as they look so innocent!"
He leaned back in his chair again, as if satisfied, and his eyes met the Contessa's at the same moment. There was no reason why she should not have looked at him just then, but he rested one elbow on the table and shaded his eyes from the light.
"It is strange to reflect," said Kalmon, looking at the tube thoughtfully, "that one of those little things would be enough to put a Hercules out of misery, without leaving the slightest trace which science could discover."
Corbario was still shading his eyes from the light.
"How would one die if one took it?" asked Aurora. "Very suddenly?"
"I call it the sleeping death," answered the Professor. "The poisoned person sinks into a sweet sleep in a few minutes, smiling as if enjoying the most delightful dreams."
"And one never wakes up?" inquired Marcello.
"Never. It is impossible, I believe. I have made experiments on animals, and have not succeeded in waking them by any known means."
"I suppose it congests the brain, like opium," observed Corbario, quietly.
"Not at all, not at all!" answered Kalmon, looking benevolently at the little tube which contained his discovery. "I tell you it leaves no trace whatever, not even as much as is left by death from an electric current. And it has no taste, no smell,--it seems the most innocent stuff in the world."
Corbario's hand again lay on the table and he was gazing out into the night, as if he were curious about the weather. The moon was just rising, being past the full.
"Is that all you have of the poison?" he asked in an idle tone.
"Oh, no! This is only a small supply which I carry with me for experiments. I have made enough to send all our thirty-three millions of Italians to sleep for ever!"
Kalmon laughed pleasantly.
"If this could be properly used, civilisation would make a gigantic stride," he added. "In war, for instance, how infinitely pleasanter and more æsthetic it would be to send the enemy to sleep, with the most delightful dreams, never to wake again, than to tear people to pieces with artillery and rifle bullets, and to blow up ships with hundreds of poor devils on board, who are torn limb from limb by the explosion."
"The difficulty," observed the Contessa, "would be to induce the enemy to take your poison quietly. What if the enemy objected?"
"I should put it into their water supply," said Kalmon.
"Poison the water!" cried the Signora Corbario. "How barbarous!"
"Much less barbarous than shedding oceans of blood. Only think--they would all go to sleep. That would be all."
[Illustration: "'I CALL IT THE SLEEPING DEATH,' ANSWERED THE PROFESSOR"] "I thought," said Corbario, almost carelessly, "that there was no longer any such thing as a poison that left no traces or signs. Can you not generally detect vegetable poisons by the mode of death?"
"Yes," answered the Professor, returning the glass tube to its case and the latter to his pocket. "But please to remember that although we can prove to our own satisfaction that some things really exist, we cannot prove that any imaginable thing outside our experience cannot possibly exist. Imagine the wildest impossibility you can think of; you will not induce a modern man of science to admit the impossibility of it as absolute. Impossibility is now a merely relative term, my dear Corbario, and only means great improbability. Now, to illustrate what I mean, it is altogether improbable that a devil with horns and hoofs and a fiery tail should suddenly appear, pick me up out of this delightful circle, and fly away with me. But you cannot induce me to deny the possibility of such a thing."
"I am so glad to hear you say that," said the Signora, who was a religious woman.
Kalmon looked at her a moment and then broke into a peal of laughter that was taken up by the rest, and in which the good lady joined.
"You brought it on yourself," she said at last.
"Yes," Kalmon answered. "I did. From your point of view it is better to admit the possibility of a mediæval devil with horns than to have no religion at all. Half a loaf is better than no bread."
"Is that stuff of yours animal, vegetable, or mineral?" asked Corbario as the laughter subsided.
"I don't know," replied the Professor. "Animal, vegetable, mineral? Those are antiquated distinctions, like the four elements of the alchemists."
"Well--but what is the thing, then?" asked Corbario, almost impatiently. "What should you call it in scientific language?"
Kalmon closed his eyes for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts.
"In scientific language," he began, "it is probably H three C seven, parenthesis, H two C plus C four O five, close parenthesis, HC three O." Corbario laughed carelessly.
"I am no wiser than before," he said.
"Nor I," answered the Professor. "Not a bit."
"It is much simpler to call it 'the sleeping death,' is it not?" suggested the Contessa.
"Much simpler, for that is precisely what it is."
It was growing late, according to country ideas, and the party rose from the table and began to move about a little before going to bed. The moon had risen high by this time.
Marcello and Aurora, unheeded by the rest, went round the verandah to the other side of the house and stood still a moment, looking out at the trees and listening to the sounds of the night. Down by the pool a frog croaked now and then; from a distance came the plaintive, often repeated cry of a solitary owlet; the night breeze sighed through the long grass and the low shrubbery.
The boy and girl turned to each other, put out their hands and then their arms, and clasped each other silently, and kissed. Then they walked demurely back to their elders, without exchanging a word.
"We have had to give you the little room at the end of the cottage," Corbario was saying to Kalmon. "It is the only one left while the Contessa is here."
"I should sleep soundly on bare boards to-night," Kalmon answered. "I have been walking all day."
Corbario went with him, carrying a candle, and shielding the flame from the breeze with his hand. The room was furnished with the barest necessities, like most country rooms in Italy. There were wooden pegs on which to hang clothes instead of a wardrobe, an iron bedstead, a deal wash-stand, a small deal table, a rush-bottomed chair. The room had only one window, which was also the only door, opening to the floor upon the verandah.
"You can bolt the window, if you like," said Corbario when he had bidden the Professor good-night, "but there are no thieves about."
"I always sleep with my windows open," Kalmon answered, "and I have no valuables."
"No? Good-night again."
"Good-night."
Corbario went out, leaving him the candle, and turned the corner of the verandah. Then he stood still a long time, leaning against one of the wooden pillars and looking out. Perhaps the moonlight falling through the stiff little trees upon the long grass and shrubbery reminded him of some scene familiar long ago. He smiled quietly to himself as he stood there.
Three hours later he was there again, in almost exactly the same attitude. He must have been cold, for the night breeze was stronger, and he wore only his light sleeping clothes and his feet were bare. He shivered a little from time to time, and his face looked very white, for the moon was now high in the heavens and the light fell full upon him. His right hand was tightly closed, as if it held some small object fast, and he was listening intently, first to the right, whence he had come, then to the left, and then he turned his ear towards the trees, through which the path led away towards the hut where the men slept. But there was no sound except the sighing of the wind. The frog by the pool had stopped croaking, and the melancholy cry of the owlet had ceased.
Corbario went softly on, trying the floor of the verandah with his bare feet at each step, lest the boards should creak a little under his weight. He reached the window door of his own room, and slipped into the darkness without noise.
Kalmon cared little for quail-shooting, and as the carriage was going back to Rome he took advantage of it to reach the city, and took his departure about nine o'clock in the morning.
"By the way, how did you sleep?" asked Corbario as he shook hands at parting. "I forgot to ask you."
"Soundly, thank you," answered the Professor.
And he drove away, waving his felt hat to his hosts.
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{
"id": "13932"
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Marcello coughed a little as he and Corbario trudged home through the sand under the hot May sun. It was sultry, though there were few clouds, and everything that grew looked suddenly languid; each flower and shrub gave out its own peculiar scent abundantly, the smell of last year's rotting leaves and twigs all at once returned and mingled with the odours of green things and of the earth itself, and the heavy air was over-rich with it all, and hard to breathe. By and by the clouds would pile themselves up into vast grey and black fortresses, far away beyond Rome, between the Alban and the Samnite hills, and the lightning would dart at them and tear them to pieces in spite, while the thunder roared out at each home-thrust that it was well done; and then the spring rain would sweep the Campagna, by its length and breadth, from the mountains to the sea, and the world would be refreshed. But now it was near noon and a heavy weariness lay upon the earth.
"You are tired," said Corbario, as they reached the shade of some trees, less than half a mile from the cottage. "Let us sit down for a while."
They sat down, where they could see the sea. It was dull and glassy under the high sun; here and there, far out, the sluggish currents made dark, irregular streaks.
Corbario produced cigarettes and offered one to Marcello, but the boy would not smoke; he said that it made him cough.
"I should smoke all the time, if I were quite well," he said, with a smile.
"And do many other things that young men do, I daresay," laughed Corbario. "Ride steeplechases, play cards all night, and drink champagne at breakfast."
"Perhaps." Marcello was amused at the picture. "I wonder whether I ever shall," he added.
Corbario glanced at him curiously. There was the faintest accent of longing in the tone, which was quite new.
"Why not?" Folco asked, still smiling. "It is merely a question of health, my dear boy. There is no harm in steeplechases if you do not break your neck, nor in playing cards if you do not play high, nor in drinking a glass of champagne now and then--no harm at all, that I can see. But, of course, so long as your lungs are delicate, you must be careful."
"Confound my lungs!" exclaimed Marcello with unusual energy. "I believe that I am much stronger than any of you think."
"I am sometimes inclined to believe it too," Corbario answered encouragingly.
"And I am quite sure that it would do me good to forget all about them and live as if there were nothing the matter with me. Don't you think so yourself?"
Corbario made a gesture of doubt, as if it were possible after all.
"Of course I don't mean dissipation," Marcello went on to say, suddenly assuming the manner of an elderly censor of morals, simply because he did not know what he was talking about. "I don't mean reckless dissipation."
"Of course not," Folco answered gravely. "You see, there are two sorts of dissipation. You must not forget that. The one kind means dissipating your fortune and your health; the other merely means dissipating melancholy, getting rid of care now and then, and of everything that bores one. That is the harmless sort."
"What they call 'harmless excitement'--yes, that is what I should like sometimes. There are days when I feel that I must have it. It is as if the blood went to my head, and my nerves are all on edge, and I wish something would happen, I don't know what, but something, something!"
"I know exactly what you mean, my dear boy," said Corbario in a tone of sympathy. "You see I am not very old myself, after all--barely thirty--not quite, in fact. I could call myself twenty-nine if it were not so much more respectable to be older."
"Yes. But do you mean to say that you feel just what I do now and then?" Marcello asked the question in considerable surprise. "Do you really know that sensation? That burning restlessness--that something like what the earth must feel before a thunderstorm--like the air at this moment?"
Not a muscle of Folco's still face moved.
"Yes," he answered quietly. "I know it very well. It is nothing but the sudden wish for a little harmless excitement, nothing else in the world, my dear boy, and it is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. It does not follow that it is at all convenient to yield to it, but we feel it because we lead such a very quiet life."
"But surely, we are perfectly happy," observed Marcello.
"Perfectly, absolutely happy. I do not believe that there are any happier people in the world than we three, your mother, you, and I. We have not a wish unfulfilled."
"No, except that one, when it comes."
"And that does not count in my case," answered Folco. "You see I have had a good deal of--'harmless excitement' in my life, and I know just what it is like, and that it is quite possible to be perfectly happy without it. In fact, I am. But you have never had any at all, and it is as absurd to suppose that young birds will not try to fly as that young men will not want amusement, now and then."
"I suppose that women cannot always understand that," said Marcello, after a moment.
"Women," replied Folco, unmoved, "do not always distinguish quite closely between excitement that is harmless for a man and excitement which is not. To tell the truth," he added, with a laugh, "they hardly ever distinguish at all, and it is quite useless to talk to them about it."
"But surely, there are exceptions?"
"Not many. That is the reason why there is a sort of freemasonry among men of the world, a kind of tacit agreement that women need not be told what goes on at the clubs, and at men's dinners, and late at night when old friends have spent an evening together. Not that there is any harm in it all; but women would not understand. They have their innocent little mysteries which they keep from us, and we have harmless little secrets which we do not let them know."
Folco laughed softly at his own way of putting it, and perhaps because Marcello so easily accepted his point of view.
"I see," said the boy. "I wonder whether my mother would not understand that. It seems so simple!"
"She will, when the time comes, no doubt," answered Corbario. "Your mother is a great exception, my dear boy. On the other hand, she is so anxious about your health just now, that, if I were you, I would not say anything about feeling the want of a little excitement. Of course your life is monotonous. I know it. But there is nothing more monotonous than getting well, is there? The best part of it is the looking forward to what one will do when one is quite strong. You and I can talk of that, sometimes, and build castles in the air; but it is of no use to give your mother the idea that you are beating your wings against the bars of your cage, is it?"
Folco was quite lyric that day, but the words made exactly the impression he wished.
"You are right," Marcello said. "You always are. There is nobody like you, Folco. You are an elder brother to me, and yet you don't preach. I often tell my mother so."
This was true, and what Marcello told her added to her happiness, if anything could do that, and she encouraged the two to go off together as much as possible. She even suggested that they should go down to San Domenico for a fortnight, to look after the great Calabrian estate.
They rose and began to walk toward the cottage. The shooting had been good that morning, as quail-shooting goes, and the man who acted as keeper, loader, gardener, and general factotum, and who went out with any one who wanted to shoot, had gone on to the cottage with the bag, the two guns, and the animal which he called his dog. The man's name was Ercole, that is to say, Hercules; and though he was not a giant, he certainly bore a closer resemblance to the hero than his dog did to dogs in general.
"He was born in my house," Ercole said, when any one asked questions. "Find a better one if you can. His name? I call him Nino, short for John, because he barks so well at night. You don't understand? It is the 'voice of one crying in the wilderness.' Did you never go to Sunday school? Or do you call this place a garden, a park, a public promenade? I call it a desert. There are not even cats."
When an Italian countryman says of a place that even cats will not stay in it, he considers that he has evoked a picture of ultimate desolation that cannot be surpassed. It had always been Ercole's dream to live in the city, though he did not look like a man naturally intended for town life. He was short and skinny, though he was as wiry as a monkey; his face was slightly pitted with the smallpox, and the malaria of many summers had left him with a complexion of the colour of cheap leather; he had eyes like a hawk, matted black hair, and jagged white teeth. He and his fustian clothes smelt of earth, burnt gunpowder, goat's cheese, garlic, and bad tobacco. He was no great talker, but his language was picturesque and to the point; and he feared neither man nor beast, neither tramp nor horned cattle, nor yet wild boar. He was no respecter of persons at all. The land where the cottage was had belonged to a great Roman family, now ruined, and when, the land had been sold, he had apparently been part of the bargain, and had come into the possession of the Signora Corbario with it. In his lonely conversations with Nino, he had expressed his opinion of each member of the family with frankness.
"You are a good dog, Nino," he would say. "You are the consolation of my soul. But you do not understand these things. Corbario is an assassin. Money, money, money! That is all he thinks of from morning till night. I know it, because he never speaks of it, and yet he never gives away anything. It is all for himself, the Signora's millions, the boy's millions, everything. When I look at his face, a chill seizes me, and I tremble as when I have the fever. You never had the malaria fever, Nino. Dogs don't have it, do they?"
At the question Nino turned his monstrous head to one side and looked along his muzzle at his master. If he had possessed a tail he would have wagged it, or thumped the hard ground with it a few times; but he had none. He had probably lost it in some wild battle of his stormy youth, fought almost to death against the huge Campagna sheep-dogs; or perhaps a wolf had got it, or perhaps he had never had a tail at all. Ercole had probably forgotten, and it did not really matter much.
"Corbario is an assassin," he said. "Remember that, Nino. As for his poor lady, she is a little lacking, or she would never have married him. But she is a saint, and what do saints want with cleverness? They go to paradise. Does that need much sense? We should all go if we could. Why do you cock your head on one side and look at me like a Christian? Are you trying to make me think you have a soul? You are made of nothing but corn meal and water, and a little wool, poor beast! But you have more sense than the Signora, and you are not an assassin, like her husband."
At this, Nino threw himself upon his back with his four legs in the air and squirmed with sheer delight, showing his jagged teeth and the roof of a very terrible mouth, and emitting a series of wolfish snorts; after which he suddenly rolled over upon his feet again, shook himself till his shaggy coat bristled all over his body, walked sedately to the open door of the hut, and sat down to look at the weather.
"He is almost a Christian," Ercole remarked under his breath, as if he were afraid the dog might hear the compliment and grow too vain.
For Ercole was a reticent man, and though he told Nino what he thought about people, he never told any one else. Marcello was the only person to whom he ever showed any inclination to attach himself. He regarded even the Contessa with suspicion, perhaps merely because she was a woman; and as for Aurora, girls did not count at all in his cosmogony.
"God made all the other animals before making women," he observed contemptuously one day, when he had gone out alone with Marcello.
"I like them," laughed the boy.
"So did Adam," retorted Ercole, "and you see what came of it."
No answer to this argument occurred to Marcello just then, so he said nothing; and he thought of Aurora, and his mother, and the sad-eyed Contessa, and wondered vaguely whether they were very unlike other women, as Ercole implied.
"When you know women," the man vouchsafed to add presently, "you will wish you were dead. The Lord sent them into the world for an affliction and for the punishment of our sins."
"You were never married, were you?" asked Marcello, still smiling.
Ercole stopped short in the sand, amongst the sea-thistles that grew there, and Nino trotted up and looked at him, to be ready if anything happened. Marcello knew the man's queer ways, and waited for him to speak.
"Married?" he snorted. "Married? You have said it!"
This seemed enigmatical, but Marcello understood the words to convey an affirmation.
"Well?" he asked, expecting more.
"Well? Well, what?" growled Ercole. "This is a bad world. A man falls in love with a pretty little caterpillar; he wakes up and finds himself married to a butterfly. Oh, this is a very bad world!"
Marcello was struck by the simile, but he reflected that Aurora looked much more like a butterfly than a caterpillar, a fact which, if it meant anything, should signify that he knew the worst beforehand. Ercole declined to enter into any account of his conjugal experiences, and merely shrugged his shoulders and went on through the sand.
With such fitting and warning as this to keep him out of trouble, Marcello was to face life: with his saintly mother's timid allusions to its wickedness, with Corbario's tempting suggestions of harmless dissipation, with an unlettered peasant's sour reflections on the world in general and women in particular.
In the other scale of the balance fate set his delicate and high-strung nature, his burning desire for the great unknown something, the stinging impatience of bodily weakness, and the large element of recklessness he inherited from his father, besides a fine admixture of latent boyish vanity for women to play upon, and all the ordinary weaknesses of human nature in about the same proportion as every one has them.
Given a large fortune and ordinary liberty, it might be foreseen that the boy would not reach the haven of maturity without meeting a storm, even if the outward circumstances of chance were all in his favour, even if no one had an interest in ruining him, even if Folco Corbario did not want all for himself, as poor Ercole told his dog that he did in the solitude of his hut.
Marcello had a bad chance at the start, and Maddalena dell' Armi, who knew the world well in all its moods, and had suffered by it and sinned for it, and had shed many tears in secret before becoming what she was now, foresaw danger, and hoped that her daughter's fate might not be bound up with that of her friend's son, much as she herself liked the gentle-hearted boy. She wondered how long any one would call him gentle after he got his first taste of pleasure and pain.
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It was very early morning, and there was no shooting, for a southwesterly gale had been blowing all night, and the birds passed far inland. All along the beach, for twenty-five miles in an unbroken line, the surf thundered in, with a double roar, breaking on the bar, then gathering strength again, rising grey and curling green and crashing down upon the sand. Then the water opened out in vast sheets of crawling foam that ran up to the very foot of the bank where the scrub began to grow, and ran regretfully back again, tracing myriads of tiny channels where the sand was loose; but just as it had almost subsided, another wave curled and uncurled itself, and trembled a moment, and flung its whole volume forwards through a cloud of unresisting spray.
It had rained a little, too, and it would rain again. The sky was of an even leaden grey, and as the sun rose unseen, a wicked glare came into it, as if the lead were melting; and the wind howled unceasingly, the soft, wet, southwest wind of the great spring storms.
Less than a mile from the shore a small brigantine, stripped to a lower topsail, storm-jib, and balance-reefed mainsail, was trying to claw off shore. She had small chance, unless the gale shifted or moderated, for she evidently could not carry enough sail to make any way against the huge sea, and to heave to would be sure destruction within two hours.
The scrub and brushwood were dripping with raindrops, and the salt spray was blown up the bank with the loose sand. Everything was wet, grey, and dreary, as only the Roman shore can be at such times, with that unnatural dreariness of the south which comes down on nature suddenly like a bad dream, and is a thousand times more oppressive than the stern desolation of any northern sea-coast.
Marcello and Aurora watched the storm from a break in the bank which made a little lee. The girl was wrapped in a grey military cloak, of which she had drawn the hood over her loose hair. Her delicate nostrils dilated with pleasure to breathe the salt wind, and her eyelids drooped as she watched the poor little vessel in the distance.
"You like it, don't you?" asked Marcello, as he looked at her.
"I love it!" she answered enthusiastically. "And I may never see it all again," she added after a little pause.
"Never?" Marcello started a little. "Are you going away?"
"We are going to Rome to-day. But that is not what I mean. We have always come down every year for ever so long. How long is it, Marcello? We were quite small the, first time."
"It must be five years. Four or five--ever since my mother bought the land here."
"We were mere children," said Aurora, with the dignity of a grown person. "That is all over."
"I wish it were not!" Marcello sighed.
"How silly you are!" observed Aurora, throwing back her beautiful head. "But then, I am sure I am much more grown up than you are, though you are nineteen, and I am not quite eighteen."
"You are seventeen," said Marcello firmly.
"I shall be eighteen on my next birthday!" retorted Aurora with warmth. "Then we shall see who is the more grown up. I shall be in society, and you--why, you will not even be out of the University."
She said this with the contempt which Marcello's extreme youth deserved.
"I am not going to the University."
"Then you will be a boy all your life. I always tell you so. Unless you do what other people do, you will never grow up at all. You ought to be among men by this time, instead of everlastingly at home, clinging to your mother's skirts!"
A bright flush rose in Marcello's cheeks. He felt that he wanted to box her ears, and for an instant he wished himself small again that he might do it, though he remembered what a terrible fighter Aurora had been when she was a little girl, and had preserved a vivid recollection of her well-aimed slaps.
"Don't talk about my mother in that way," he said angrily.
"I'm not talking of her at all. She is a saint, and I love her very much. But that is no reason why you should always be with her, as if you were a girl! I don't suppose you mean to begin life as a saint yourself, do you? You are rather young for that, you know."
"No," Marcello answered, feeling that he was not saying just the right thing, but not knowing what to say. "And I am sure my mother does not expect it of me, either," he added. "But that is no reason why you should be so disagreeable."
He felt that he had been weak, and that he ought to say something sharp. He knew very well that his mother believed it quite possible for a boy to develop into saintship without passing through the intermediate state of sinning manhood; and though his nature told him that he was not of the temper that attains sanctity all at once, he felt that he owed to his mother's hopes for him a sort of loyalty in which Aurora had made him fail. The reasonings of innocent sentiment are more tortuous than the wiles of the devil himself, and have amazing power to torment the unfledged conscience of a boy brought up like Marcello.
Aurora's way of thinking was much more direct.
"If you think I am disagreeable, you can go away," she said, with a scornful laugh.
"Thank you. You are very kind." He tried to speak sarcastically, but it was a decided failure.
To his surprise, Aurora turned and looked at him very quietly.
"I wonder whether I shall like you, when you are a man," she said in a tone of profound reflection. "I am rather ashamed of liking you now, because you are such a baby."
He flushed again, very angry this time, and he moved away to leave her, without another word.
She turned her face to the storm and took no notice of him. She thought that he would come back, but there was just the least doubt about it, which introduced an element of chance and was perfectly delightful while it lasted. Was there ever a woman, since the world began, who did not know that sensation, either by experience or by wishing she might try it? What pleasure would there be in angling if the fish did not try to get off the hook, but stupidly swallowed it, fly and all? It might as well crawl out of the stream at once and lay itself meekly down in the basket.
And Marcello came back, before he had taken four steps.
"Is that what you meant when you said that you might never come here again?" he asked, and there was something rough in his tone that pleased her.
"No," she answered, as if nothing had happened. "Mamma talked to me a long time last night."
"What did she say?"
"Do you want to know?"
"Yes."
"There is no reason why I should not tell you. She says that we must not come here after I go into society, because people will think that she is trying to marry me to you."
She looked at him boldly for a moment, and then turned her eyes to the sea.
"Why should she care what people think?" he asked.
"Because it would prevent me from marrying any one else," answered Aurora, with the awful cynicism of youth. "If every one thought I was engaged to you, or going to be, no other man could ask for me. It's simple enough, I'm sure!"
"And you wish other men to ask you to marry them, I suppose?"
Marcello was a little pale, but he tried to throw all the contempt he could command into his tone. Aurora smiled sweetly.
"Naturally," she said. "I'm only a woman."
"Which means that I'm a fool to care for you!"
"You are, if you think I'm not worth caring for." The girl laughed.
This was so very hard to understand that Marcello knit his smooth young brow and looked very angry, but could find nothing to say on the spur of the moment. All women are born with the power to put a man into such a position that he must either contradict himself, hold his tongue, or fly into a senseless rage. They do this so easily, that even after the experience of a life-time we never suspect the trap until they pull the string and we are caught. Then, if we contradict ourselves, woman utters an inhuman cry of triumph and jeers at our unstable purpose; if we lose our tempers instead, she bursts into tears and calls us brutes; and finally, if we say nothing, she declares, with a show of reason, that we have nothing to say.
[Illustration: "HE FLUSHED AGAIN, VERY ANGRY THIS TIME, AND HE MOVED AWAY TO LEAVE HER, WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD."]
Marcello lost his temper.
"You are quite right," he said angrily. "You are not worth caring for. You are a mere child, and you are a miserable little flirt already, and you will be a detestable woman when you grow up! You will lead men on, and play with them, and then laugh at them. But you shall not laugh at me again. You shall not have that satisfaction! You shall wish me back, but I will not come, not if you break your silly little heart!"
With this terrific threat the boy strode away, leaving her to watch the storm alone in the lee of the sandbank. Aurora knew that he really meant to go this time, and at first she was rather glad of it, since he was in such a very bad temper. She felt that he had insulted her, and if he had stayed any longer she would doubtless have called him a brute, that being the woman's retort under the circumstances. She had not the slightest doubt of being quite reconciled with him before luncheon, of course, but in her heart she wished that she had not made him angry. It had been very pleasant to watch the storm together, and when they had come to the place, she had felt a strong presentiment that he would kiss her, and that the contrast between the kiss and the howling gale would be very delightful.
The presentiment had certainly not come true, and now that Marcello was gone it was not very amusing to feel the spray and the sand on her face, or to watch the tumbling breakers and listen to the wind. Besides, she had been there some time, and she had not even had her little breakfast of coffee and rolls before coming down to the shore. She suddenly felt hungry and cold and absurdly inclined to cry, and she became aware that the sand had got into her russet shoes, and that it would be very uncomfortable to sit down in such a place to take them off and shake it out; and that, altogether, misfortunes never come singly.
After standing still three or four minutes longer, she turned away with a discontented look in her face, all rosy with the wind and spray. She started as she saw Corbario standing before her, for she had not heard his footsteps in the gale. He wore his shooting-coat and heavy leathern gaiters, but he had no gun. She thought he looked pale, and that there was a shade of anxiety in his usually expressionless face.
"We wondered where you were," he said. "There is coffee in the verandah, and your mother is out already."
"I came down to look at the storm," Aurora answered. "I forgot all about breakfast."
They made a few steps in the direction of the cottage. Aurora felt that Corbario was looking sideways at her as they walked.
"Have you seen Marcello?" he asked presently.
"Did you not meet him?" Aurora was surprised. "It is not five minutes since he left me."
"No. I did not meet him."
"That is strange."
They went on in silence for a few moments.
"I cannot understand why you did not meet Marcello," Aurora said suddenly, as if she had thought it over. "Did you come this way?"
"Yes."
"Perhaps he got back before you started. He walks very fast."
"Perhaps," Corbario said, "but I did not see him. I came to look for you both."
"Expecting to find us together, of course!" Aurora threw up her head a little disdainfully, for Marcello had offended her.
"He is generally somewhere near you, poor boy," answered Corbario in a tone of pity.
"Why do you say 'poor boy' in that tone? Do you think he is so much to be pitied?"
"A little, certainly." Corbario smiled.
"I don't see why."
"Women never do, when a man is in love!"
"Women"--the flattery was subtle and Aurora's face cleared. Corbario was a man of the world, without doubt, and he had called her a woman, in a most natural way, as if she had been at least twenty years old. It did not occur to her to ask herself whether Folco had any object in wishing to please her just then, but she knew well enough that he did wish to do so. Even a girl's instinct is unerring in that; and Corbario further pleased her by not pursuing the subject, for what he had said seemed all the more spontaneous because it led to nothing.
"If Marcello is not in the cottage," he observed, as they came near, "he must have gone off for a walk after he left you. Did you not see which way he turned?"
"How could I from the place where I stood?" asked Aurora in reply. "As soon as he had turned behind the bank it was impossible to say which way he had gone."
"Of course," assented Folco. "I understand that."
Marcello had not come home, and Aurora was sorry that she had teased him into a temper and had then allowed him to go away. It was not good for him, delicate as he was, to go for a long walk in such weather without any breakfast, and she felt distinctly contrite as she ate her roll in silence and drank her coffee, on the sheltered side of the cottage, under the verandah. The Signora Corbario had not appeared yet, but the Contessa was already out. As a rule the Signora preferred to have her coffee in her room, as if she were in town. For some time no one spoke.
"Had we not better send Ercole to find Marcello?" the Contessa asked at last.
"I had to send Ercole to Porto d'Anzio this morning," Corbario answered. "I took the opportunity, because I knew there would be no quail with this wind."
"Marcello will come in when he is hungry," said Aurora, rather sharply, because she really felt sorry.
But Marcello did not come in.
Soon after eight o'clock his mother appeared on the verandah. Folco dropped his newspaper and hastened to make her comfortable in her favourite chair. Though she was not strong, she was not an invalid, but she was one of those women whom it seems natural to help, to whom men bring cushions, and with whom other women are always ready to sympathise. If one of Fra Angelico's saints should walk into a modern drawing-room all the men would fall over each other in the scramble to make her comfortable, and all the women would offer her tea and ask her if she felt the draught.
The Signora looked about, expecting to see her son.
"Marcello has not come in," said Folco, understanding. "He seems to have gone for a long walk."
"I hope he has put on his thick boots," answered the Signora, in a thoughtful tone. "It is very wet."
She asked why Folco was not with him shooting, and was told that there were no birds in such weather. She had never understood the winds, nor the points of the compass, nor why one should see the new moon in the west instead of in the east. Very few women do, but those who live much with men generally end by picking up a few useful expressions, a little phrase-book of jargon terms with which men are quite satisfied. They find out that a fox has no tail, a wild boar no teeth, a boat no prow, and a yacht no staircase; and this knowledge is better than none.
The Signora accepted the fact that there were no birds that morning, and began to talk to Maddalena. Aurora got a book and pretended to read, but she was really listening for Marcello's footsteps, and wondering whether he would smile at her, or would still be cross when he came in. Corbario finished his paper and went off to look at the weather from the other side of the house, and the two women talked in broken sentences as old friends do, with long intervals of silence.
The wind had moderated a good deal, but as the sun rose higher the glare in the sky grew more yellow, the air was much warmer, and the trees and shrubs and long grass began to steam as if they had been half boiled. All manner of tiny flies and gnats chased each other in the lurid light.
"It feels as if there were going to be an earthquake," said Maddalena, throwing back the lace from her grey hair as if even its light weight oppressed her.
"Yes."
The women sat in silence, uneasy, their lips a little parted. Not that an earthquake would have disturbed them much, for slight ones are common enough in Italy, and could do no harm at all to a wooden cottage; it was a mere physical breathlessness that they felt, as the gale suddenly dropped and the heavy air became quite still on the sheltered side of the cottage.
Aurora threw aside her book impatiently and rose from her chair.
"I am going to look for Marcello," she said, and she went off without turning her head.
On the other side of the cottage, as she went round, she found Folco sitting on the steps of the verandah, his elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his folded hands, apparently in deep thought. He had a cigar between his teeth, but it had gone out.
"I am going to look for Marcello," said Aurora, as she passed close beside him.
He said nothing, and hardly moved his head. Aurora turned and looked at him as she stepped upon the path.
"What is the matter?" she asked, as she saw his face. "Is anything wrong?"
Corbario looked up quickly, as if he had been in a reverie.
"Anything the matter? No. Where did you say you were going?"
"To find Marcello. He has not come in yet."
"He has gone for a walk, I suppose. He often walks alone on off days. He will be back before luncheon, and you are not going to town till the afternoon."
"Will you come with me?" Aurora asked, for she was in a good humour with Folco.
He rose at once.
"I'll go with you for a stroll," he said, "but I don't think it is of any use to look for Marcello near the house."
"It can do no harm."
"And it will do us good to walk a bit."
They went down the path and through the trees towards the break in the bank.
"The sand was very wet this morning, even inside the bank," Aurora said. "I daresay we shall find his footsteps and be able to guess which way he went."
"Very likely," Folco answered.
He pushed back his tweed cap a little and passed his handkerchief across his smooth brow. Aurora noticed the action, because he did not usually get warm so easily.
"Are you hot?" she asked carelessly.
"A little," he answered. "The air is so heavy this morning."
"Perhaps you are not quite well," said Aurora. "You are a little pale."
Apparently something in her youthfully patronising tone came as near irritating him as anything ever could.
"What does it matter, whether I am hot or not?" he asked, almost impatiently, and again he passed his handkerchief over his forehead.
"I did not mean to annoy you," Aurora answered with uncommon meekness.
They came near the break in the bank, and she looked at the sand on each side of her. She thought it seemed smoother than usual, and that there were not so many little depressions in it, where there had been footsteps on previous days, half obliterated by wind and rain.
"I cannot see where you and I passed an hour ago," she said, in some surprise.
"The wind draws through the gap with tremendous strength," Folco explained. "Just before the gale moderated there was a heavy squall with rain."
"Was there? I did not notice that--but I was on the lee side of the house. The wind must have smoothed the sand, just like a flat-iron!"
"Yes." Corbario answered indifferently and gazed out to sea.
Aurora left his side and looked about, going to a little distance from the gap, first on one side and then on the other.
"It is as if the wind had done it on purpose!" she cried impatiently. "It is as smooth as if it had all been swept with a gardener's broom."
Corbario turned, lighted his extinguished cigar, and watched her, as she moved about, stooping now and then to examine the sand.
"I don't believe it is of any use to look here," he said. "Besides, he will be back in time for luncheon."
"I suppose so," answered Aurora. "Why do you look at me in that way?" she asked, standing upright and meeting his eyes suddenly.
He laughed softly and took his cigar from his mouth.
"I was watching you. You are very graceful when you move."
She did not like his expression.
"I wish you would think less about me and more about finding Marcello," she said rather sharply.
"You talk as if he were lost. I tell you he will surely come back before long."
"I hope so."
But Marcello did not come back, and after Aurora had returned to the cottage and was seated in her chair again, with her book, she grew restless, and went over in her memory what had passed in the morning. It was not possible that Marcello should really mean to carry out his threat, to go away without a word, to leave her, to leave his mother; and yet, he was gone. A settled conviction came over her that he was really gone, just as he was, most probably back to Rome. She had teased him, and he had been very angry, absurdly angry; and yet she was perhaps responsible, in a way, for his disappearance. Presently his mother would grow anxious and would ask questions, and then it would all come out. It would be better to be brave and to say at once that he had been angry with her; she could confess the truth to her mother, to the Signora, if necessary, or even to both together, for they were women and would understand. But she could not tell the story before Corbario. That would be out of the question; and yet, anything would be better than to let them all think that something dreadful had happened to Marcello. He had gone to Rome, of course; or perhaps only to Porto d'Anzio, in which case he would meet Ercole coming back.
The hours wore on to midday, and Signora Corbario's uneasiness grew into real anxiety. The Contessa did her best to soothe her, but was anxious herself, and still Aurora said nothing. Folco was grave, but assured every one that the boy would soon return, though the Signora would not believe it.
"He will never come back! Something dreadful has happened to him!" And therewith she broke down completely and burst into tears.
"You must go and look for him," said Maddalena quietly to Corbario.
"I think you are right," he answered. "I am going to find him," he said softly, bending down to his wife as she lay in her chair, trying to control her sobs. "I will send some of the men towards Porto d'Anzio and will go towards Nettuno myself."
She loved him and believed in him, and she was comforted when she saw him go away and heard him calling the men from their hut.
Aurora was left alone with the two women.
"I am afraid Marcello is gone to Rome," she said, with an effort.
The Signora raised herself in her long chair and stared hard at the girl. The Contessa looked at her in surprise.
"What do you know about it?" cried the Signora. "Why have you not spoken, if you know anything? Don't you see that I am half mad with anxiety?"
Aurora had never seen the good lady in such a state, and was almost frightened; but there was nothing to be done now, except to go on. She told her little story timidly, but truthfully, looking from her mother to the Signora while she spoke, and wondering what would happen when she had finished.
"He said, 'You shall wish me back, but I will not come.' I think those were his last words."
"You have broken my boy's heart!" cried the Signora Corbario, turning her face away.
Maddalena, whose heart had really been broken long ago, could not help smiling.
"I am sure I did not mean to," cried Aurora, contritely. "And after all, though I daresay it was my fault, he called me a miserable little flirt, and I only called him a baby."
Maddalena would have laughed if her friend had not been in such real distress. As for Aurora, she did not know whether she would have laughed or cried if she had not felt that her girl's dignity was at stake. As it was, she grew preternaturally calm.
"You have driven him away," moaned the Signora piteously. "You have driven away my boy! Was he not good enough for you?"
She asked the question suddenly and vehemently, turning upon poor Aurora with something like fury. She was quite beside herself, and the Contessa motioned the girl away. Aurora rose and disappeared round the corner of the house.
Alone with her friend, Maddalena did her best to comfort her. There were arguments enough: it was barely noon, and Marcello had not been gone four hours; he was used to taking long walks, he had probably gone as far as the tower, and had rested there before coming back; or he had gone to meet Ercole on the road to Porto d'Anzio; or he had gone off towards the Nettuno woods to get over his anger in solitude; it was natural enough; and after all, if he had gone to Rome as Aurora thought, no harm could come to him, for he would go home, and would surely send a telegram before evening. It was unlike him, yes; but just at his age boys often did foolish things.
"Marcello is not foolish!" objected the Signora indignantly.
She could by no means listen to reason, and was angry because her friend tried to argue with her. She rose with an energy she seldom displayed, and began to walk up and down the verandah. Her face was very pale, her lip quivered when she spoke, and there was an unnatural light in her eyes. There was room for much moderate affection in her gentle nature; she had loved her first husband; she loved Corbario dearly; but the passion of her life was her son, and at the first presentiment of real danger to him the dominant preoccupation of her heart took violent possession of everything else in her, regardless of reason, friendship, consideration for others, or common sense.
Maddalena walked up and down beside her, putting one arm affectionately round her waist, and doing the best she could to allay the tempest.
It subsided suddenly, and was followed by a stony silence that frightened the Contessa. It was time for luncheon, and Aurora came back, hoping to find that she had been forgiven during her absence, but the Signora only looked at her coldly once or twice and would not speak. None of the three even pretended to have an appetite.
"I shall not go back to Rome to-day," said the Contessa. "I cannot leave you in such anxiety."
"Folco will take care of me," answered the Signora in a dull tone. "Do not change your plans on my account. The carriage is ordered at three o'clock."
She spoke so coldly that Maddalena felt a little pardonable resentment, though she knew that her friend was not at all herself.
"Very well," she answered quietly. "If you had rather that I should not stay with you we will go back this afternoon."
"It will be much better."
When the carriage appeared neither Folco nor any of the men had returned. The Signora made an evident attempt to show a little of her habitual cordiality at parting, and she even kissed Aurora coldly on the forehead, and embraced Maddalena with something like her usual affection. The two looked back as they drove away, calling out a last good-bye, but they saw that the Signora was not even looking after them; she was leaning against one of the wooden supports of the verandah, gazing towards the trees, and pressing one hand to her forehead.
"Do you think it was my fault, mamma?" asked Aurora, when they were out of sight of the cottage.
"No, dear," answered Maddalena. "Something has happened, I wish I knew what!"
"I only told him he was a baby," said Aurora, settling herself in the corner of the carriage, and arranging her parasol behind her so that it rested on the open hood; for the weather had cleared and the sun was shining brightly after the storm.
So she and her mother went back to Rome that afternoon. But when the Signora was alone, she was sorry that her friend was gone, and was all at once aware that her head was aching terribly. Every movement she made sent an agonizing thrill through her brain, and her hand trembled from the pain, as she pressed her palm to her forehead.
She meant to go down to the beach alone, for she was sure that she could find Marcello, and at least she would meet the men who were searching for him, and have news sooner than if she stayed in the cottage. But she could not have walked fifty steps without fainting while her headache lasted. She would take five grains of phenacetine, and in a little while she would be better.
She found the glass tube with the screw cap, and swallowed one of the tablets with a little water. Then she sat down on the edge of her long chair in the verandah to wait for the pain to pass. She was very tired, and presently, she scarcely knew how it was, she was lying at full length in her chair, her head resting comfortably against the cushion.
The sunlight fell slanting across her feet. Amongst the trees two or three birds were twittering softly; it was warm, it was dreamy, she was forgetting Marcello. She tried to rouse herself as the thought of him crossed her mind, and she fancied that she almost rose from the chair; but she had hardly lifted one hand. Then she saw his face close before her, her lips relaxed, the pain was gone, she smiled happily, and she was asleep.
Half an hour later her maid came quietly out to ask whether she needed anything, and seeing that she was sleeping peacefully spread a light shawl over her feet, placed the silver handbell within easy reach on the table, and went away again.
Towards evening Folco came back and then the men, straggling in on their tired little horses, for they had ridden far and fast. Marcello was not with them.
Corbario came in alone, and saw his wife lying in her chair in the evening light. He stood still a moment, and then came over and bent near her, looking earnestly into her quiet face.
"Already," he said aloud, but in a very low voice.
His hand shook as he laid it on her heart, bending low. Then he started violently and stood bolt upright, as an unearthly howl rent the air.
Nino, Ercole's queer dog, was close beside him, his forepaws planted on the upper step of the verandah, his head thrown up, his half-open jaws showing his jagged teeth, his rough coat bristling like spikes of bearded barley.
And Ercole, still a hundred yards away amongst the trees, shook his head and hurried forward as he heard the long-drawn note of brute terror.
"Somebody is dead," he said to himself.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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5
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For a few weeks all Italy was profoundly interested in the story of Marcello Corbario's disappearance and of his mother's almost unaccountable death. It was spoken of as the "double tragedy of the Campagna," and the newspapers were full of it.
The gates of the beautiful villa on the Janiculum were constantly assailed by reporters; the servants who came out from time to time were bribed, flattered, and tempted away to eat sumptuous meals and drink the oldest wine in quiet gardens behind old inns in Trastevere, in the hope that they might have some information to sell. But no one gained admittance to the villa except the agents of the police, who came daily to report the fruitless search; and the servants had nothing to tell beyond the bare truth. The young gentleman had gone for a walk near the sea, down at the cottage by the Roman shore, and he had never been heard of again. His mother had been suffering from a bad headache, had lain down to rest in a cane chair on the verandah, and had been found dead, with a smile on her face, by her husband, when he came back from his first attempt to find Marcello. The groom who always went down with the carriage could describe with greatest accuracy the spot where the Signorina Aurora had last seen him; the house servants gave the most minute details about the cane chair, the verandah, and the position in which the poor lady had been found; but that was all, and it was not at all what the reporters wanted. They had all been down to the cottage, each with his camera and note-book, and had photographed everything in sight, including Nino, Ercole's dog. What they wanted was a clue, a story, a scandal if possible, and they found nothing of the sort.
Folco Corbario's mourning was unostentatious and quiet, but none of the few persons who saw him, whether detectives or servants, could doubt that he was profoundly affected. He grew paler and thinner every day, until his own man even began to fear that his health was failing. He had done, and continued to do, everything that was humanly possible. He had brought his wife's body to Rome, and had summoned the very highest authorities in the medical profession to discover, if possible, the cause of her death. They had come, old men of science, full of the experience of years, young men of the future, brimming with theories, experts in chemistry, experts in snake poisons; for Folco had even suggested that she might have been bitten by a viper or stung by a venomous spider, or accidentally poisoned by some medicine or something she had eaten.
But the scientific gentlemen were soon agreed that no such thing had happened. Considerably disappointed, and with an unanimity which is so unusual in the confraternity as to be thought absolutely conclusive when it is observed, they decided that the Signora Corbario had died of collapse after intense excitement caused by the disappearance of her son. Thereafter she was buried out at San Lorenzo, with the secret, if there were any; masses were said, the verdict of the doctors was published, with the signatures of the most eminent practitioners and specialists in Italy; and the interest of the public concentrated itself upon the problem of Marcello's mysterious removal, or abduction, or subduction, or recession, or flight, from the very bosom of his family.
This problem had the merit of defying solution. In a comparatively open country, within a space of time which could certainly be limited to five minutes, at a place whence he should have been clearly seen by Folco Corbario as soon as Aurora dell' Armi could no longer see him, the boy had been spirited away, leaving not even the trace of his footsteps in the sand. It was one of the most unaccountable disappearances on record, as Folco insisted in his conversations with the Chief of Police, who went down with him to the cottage and examined the spot most carefully, with several expert detectives. Folco showed him exactly where Aurora had stood, and precisely the direction he himself had followed in approaching the gap, and he declared it to be almost a physical impossibility that Marcello should have become suddenly invisible just then.
The official thought so too, and shook his head. He looked at the detectives, and they shook their heads, also. And then they all looked at Corbario and expressed the opinion that there was some mistake about the length of time supposed by Aurora to have elapsed between the moment when Marcello left her and the instant of Folco's appearance before her. She had not looked at her watch; in fact, she had not carried a watch. The whole story therefore depended upon her more or less accurate judgment of time. It might have been a quarter of an hour instead of five minutes, in which case Corbario had not yet left the cottage, and Marcello would have had ample leisure to disappear in any direction he pleased. Ercole had been away at Porto d'Anzio, the men had been all at the hut; if Folco had not been on the path precisely at the time guessed by Aurora, everything could be accounted for.
"Very well," Corbario answered. "Let us suppose that my stepson had time to get away. In that case he can be found, alive or dead. Italy is not China, nor Siberia, and I can place unlimited funds at your disposal. Find him for me; that is all I ask."
"We shall find him, never fear!" answered the Chief of Police with a confidence he did not feel.
"We shall find him!" echoed the three detectives in chorus.
Ercole watched the proceedings and listened to what was said, for he considered it his duty to attend on such an occasion, his dog at his heels, his gun slung over his shoulder. He listened and looked from one to the other with his deep eyes and inscrutable parchment face, shrivelled by the malarious fever. But he said nothing. The Chief of Police turned to him at last.
"Now what do you think about it?" asked the official. "You know the country. Had there been any suspicious characters about, fellows who could have carried off the boy?"
"Such people would ask a ransom," answered Ercole. "You would soon hear from them. But I saw no one. There have been no brigands about Rome for more than twenty years. Do you dream that you are in Sicily? Praise be to Heaven, this is the Roman Campagna; we are Christians and we live under King Victor! Where are the brigands? They have melted. Or else they are making straw hats in the galleys. Do I know where they are? They are not here. That is enough."
"Quite right, my friend," answered the Chief of Police. "There are no brigands. But I am sorry to say that there are thieves in the Campagna, as there are near every great city."
Ercole shrugged his angular shoulders contemptuously.
"Thieves would not carry a man away," he answered. "You know that, you who are of the profession, as they say. Such ruffians would have knocked the young gentleman on the head to keep him quiet, and would have made off. And besides, we should have found their tracks in the sand, and Nino would have smelt them."
Nino pricked up one ragged ear at the sound of his name.
"He does not look very intelligent," observed the official. "A clever dog might have been used to track the boy."
"How?" inquired Ercole with scorn. "The footsteps of the young gentleman were everywhere, with those of all the family, who were always coming and going about here. How could he track them, or any of us? But he would have smelt a stranger, even if it had rained. I know this dog. He is the head dog on the Roman shore. There is no other dog like him."
"I daresay not," assented the Chief of Police, looking at Nino. "In fact, he is not like any animal I ever saw."
The detectives laughed at this.
"There is no other," said Ercole without a smile. "He is the only son of a widowed mother. I am his family, and he is my family, and we live in good understanding in this desert. If there were no fever we should be like the saints in paradise--eating our corn meal together. And I will tell you another thing. If the young gentleman had been wounded anywhere near here, Nino would have found the blood even after three days. As for a dead man, he would make a point for him and howl half a mile off, unless the wind was the wrong way."
"Would he really?" asked Corbario with a little interest.
Ercole looked at him and nodded, but said no more, and presently the whole party of men went back to Rome, leaving him to the loneliness of the sand-banks and the sea.
Then Ercole came back to the gap and stood still a little while, and his dog sat bolt upright beside him.
"Nino," he said at last, in a rather regretful tone, "I gave you a good character. What could I say before those gentlemen? But I tell you this, you are growing old. And don't answer that I am getting old too, for that is my business. If your nose were what it was once, we should know the truth by this time. Smell that!"
Ercole produced a small green morocco pocket-book, of the sort made to hold a few visiting cards and a little paper money, and held it to Nino's muzzle.
Nino smelt it, looked up to his master's face inquiringly, smelt it again, and then, as if to explain that it did not interest him, lay down in the sand with his head on his forepaws.
"You see!" growled Ercole. "You cannot even tell whether it belonged to the boy or to Corbario. An apoplexy on you! You understand nothing! Ill befall the souls of your dead, you ignorant beast!"
Nino growled, but did not lift his head.
"You understand that," said Ercole, discontentedly. "If you were a Christian you would stick a knife into me for insulting your dead! Yet you cannot tell whose pocket-book this is! And if I knew, I should know something worth knowing."
The pocket-book disappeared in the interior recesses of Ercole's waistcoat. It was empty and bore no initial, and he could not remember to have seen it in Corbario's or Marcello's hands, but he was quite sure that it belonged to one of them. He was equally sure that if he showed it to Corbario the latter would at once say that it was Marcello's, and would take it away from him, so he said nothing about it. He had found it in the sand, a little way up the bank, during his first search after Marcello's disappearance.
Ercole's confidence in the good intentions of his fellow-men was not great; he was quite lacking in the sort of charity which believeth all things, and had a large capacity for suspicion of everybody and everything; he held all men to be liars and most women to be something worse.
"Men are at least Christians," he would say to Nino, "but a female is always a female."
If he took a liking for any one, as for Marcello, he excused himself for the weakness on the ground that he was only human after all, and in his heart he respected his dog for snarling at everybody without discrimination. There was no doubt, however, that he felt a sort of attachment for the boy, and he admitted the failing while he deplored it. Besides, he detested Corbario, and had felt that his own common sense was insulted by the fact that Folco seemed devoted to Marcello. The suspicion that Folco had got rid of his stepson in order to get his fortune was therefore positively delightful, accompanied as it was by the conviction that he should one day prove his enemy a murderer. Perhaps if he could have known what Folco Corbario was suffering, he might have been almost satisfied, but he had no means of guessing that. In his opinion the man knew what had become of Marcello, and could be made to tell if proper means were used. At night Ercole put himself to sleep by devising the most horrible tortures for his master, such as no fortitude could resist, and by trying to guess what the wretched man would say when his agony forced him to confess the truth.
He was almost sure by this time that Marcello was dead, though how Folco could have killed him, carried off his body to a great distance and buried him, without ever absenting himself from the cottage, was more than Ercole could imagine. He paid Corbario's skill the compliment of believing that he had not employed any accomplice, but had done the deed alone.
How? That was the question. Ercole knew his dog well enough, and was perfectly sure that if the body had been concealed anywhere within a mile of the cottage Nino would have found it out, for the dog and his master had quartered every foot of the ground within three days after Marcello had been lost. It was utterly, entirely impossible that Folco, without help, could have dragged the dead boy farther. When he had gone on his pretended search he had not been alone; one of the men had ridden with him, and had never lost sight of him, as Ercole easily ascertained without seeming to ask questions. Ercole had obtained a pretty fair knowledge of Corbario's movements on that day, and it appeared that he had not been absent from the cottage more than half an hour at any time before he went to look for Marcello.
"If Corbario himself had disappeared in that way," said Ercole to himself and Nino, "it would be easy to understand. We should know that the devil had carried him off."
But no such supernatural intervention of the infernal powers could be supposed in Marcello's case, and Ercole racked his brains to no purpose, and pondered mad schemes for carrying Corbario off out of Rome to a quiet place where he would extract the truth from him, and he growled at the impossibility of such a thing, and fell to guessing again.
In the magnificent library of the villa on the Janiculum, Folco was guessing, too, and with no better result. But because he could not guess right, and could get no news of Marcello, his eyes were growing hollow and his cheeks wan.
The lawyers came and talked about the will, and explained to him that all the great property was his, unless Marcello came back, and that in any case he was to administer it. They said that if no news of the boy were obtained within a limited time, the law must take it for granted that he had perished in some unaccountable way. Folco shook his head.
"He must be found," he said. "I have good nerves, but if I do not find out what has become of him I shall go mad."
The lawyers spoke of courage and patience, but a sickly smile twisted Folco's lips.
"Put yourself in my place, if you can," he answered.
The lawyers, who knew the value of the property to a farthing, wished they could, though if they had known also what was passing in his mind they might have hesitated to exchange their lot for his.
"He was like your own son," they said sympathetically. "A wife and a son gone on the same day! It is a tragedy. It is more than a man can bear."
"It is indeed!" answered Corbario in a low voice and looking away.
Almost the same phrases were exchanged each time that the two men came to the villa about the business, and when they left they never failed to look at each other gravely and to remark that Folco was a person of the deepest feeling, to whom such an awful trial was almost worse than death; and the elder lawyer, who was of a religious turn of mind, said that if such a calamity befell him he would retire from the world, but the younger answered that, for his part, he would travel and see the world and try to divert his thoughts. In their different ways they were hard-headed, experienced men; yet neither of them suspected for a moment that there was anything wrong. Both were honestly convinced that Folco had been a model husband to his dead wife, and a model father to her lost son. What they could not understand was that he should not find consolation in possessing their millions, and they could only account for the fact by calling him a person of the deepest feeling--a feeling, indeed, quite past their comprehension.
Even the Contessa dell' Armi was impressed by the unmistakable signs of suffering in his face. She went twice to see him within three weeks after her friend's death, and she came away convinced that she had misjudged him. Aurora did not go with her, and Corbario barely asked after her. He led Maddalena to his dead wife's room and begged her to take some object that had belonged to the Signora, in memory of their long friendship. He pressed her to accept a necklace, or a bracelet, or some other valuable ornament, but Maddalena would only take a simple little gold chain which she herself had given long ago.
Her own sorrow for her friend was profound but undemonstrative, as her nature had grown to be. Aurora saw it, and never referred to it, speaking only now and then of Marcello, to ask if there were any news of him.
"He is not dead," the girl said one day. "I know he will come back. He went away because I called him a baby."
Her mother smiled sadly and shook her head.
"Did you love him, dear?" she asked softly.
"We were children then," Aurora answered. "How do I know? I shall know when he comes back."
It was true that the girl had changed within a few weeks, and her mother saw it. Her smile was not the same, and her eyes were deeper. She had begun to gather her hair in a knot, closer to her head, and that altered her expression a little and made her look much older; but there was more than that, there was something very hard to describe, something one might call conviction--the conviction that the world is real, which comes upon girlhood as suddenly as waking on sleep, or sleep on waking. She had crossed the narrow borderland between play and earnest, and she had crossed it very soon.
"He will come back," she said. "He went away on that little ship that was tossing in the storm. I know it, though I cannot tell how he got out to it through the breaking waves."
"That is perfectly impossible, child," said Maddalena with certainty.
"Never mind. If we knew what ship that was, and where she is now, we could find Marcello. I am as sure of it as I am sure of seeing you at this moment. You know you often say that my presentiments come true. As soon as we knew he was gone I thought of the little ship."
It was natural, perhaps. The picture of the small brigantine, fighting for existence, had graved itself in her memory. With its crew so near death, it had been the only thing within sight that suggested human life after Marcello was gone. The utter impossibility of a man's swimming out through the raging sea that broke upon the bar was nothing compared with Aurora's inward conviction that the little vessel had borne away the secret of his disappearance. And she had not been wrecked: Aurora knew that, for a wreck anywhere on the Roman shore would have been spoken of at once. They are unfortunately common enough, and since her childhood Aurora had more than once seen a schooner's masts sticking up out of the treacherous water a cable's length from the shore. The brigantine had got away, for the gale had moderated very suddenly, as spring gales do in the Mediterranean, just when the captain was making up his mind to let go both anchors and make a desperate attempt to save his vessel by riding out the storm--a forlorn hope with such ground tackle as he had in his chain lockers. And then he had stood out, and had sailed away, one danger more behind him in his hard life, and one less ahead. He had sailed away--whither? No one could tell. Those little vessels, built in the south of Italy, often enough take salt to South America, and are sold there, cargo and all; and some of the crew stay there, and some get other ships, but almost all are dispersed. The keeper of the San Lorenzo tower, who had been a deep-water man, had told Aurora about it. He himself had once gone out in a Sicilian brigantine from Trapani, and had stayed away three years, knocking about the world in all sorts of craft.
Yet this one might have been on a coastwise trip to Genoa and Marseilles. That was quite possible. If one could only find out her name. And yet, if she had put into a near port Marcello would have come back; for Aurora was quite sure that he had got on board her somehow. It was all a mystery, all but the certainty she felt that he was still alive, and which nothing could shake, even when every one else had given him up. Aurora begged her mother to speak to Corbario about it. With his experience and knowledge of things he would know what to do; he could find some way of tracing the vessel, wherever she might be.
The Contessa was convinced that the girl's theory was utterly untenable, and it was only to please her that she promised to speak of it if she saw Corbario again. Soon afterward she decided to leave Rome for the summer, and before going away she went once more to the villa. It was now late in June, and she found Folco in the garden late in the afternoon.
He looked ill and tired, but she thought him a little less thin than when she had seen him last. He said that he, too, meant to leave Rome within a few days, that he intended to go northward first to see an old friend of his who had recently returned from South America, and that he should afterwards go down to Calabria, to San Domenico, and spend the autumn there. He had no news of Marcello. He looked thoughtfully down at his hands as he said this in a tone of profound sorrow.
"Aurora has a fixed idea," said Maddalena. "While she was talking with Marcello at the gap in the bank there was a small ship tossing about not far from the shore."
"Well?" asked Corbario. "What of it?"
As he looked up from the contemplation of his hands Maddalena was struck by his extreme pallor and the terrible hollowness of his eyes.
"How ill you look!" she exclaimed, almost involuntarily. "The sooner you go away the better."
"What did Aurora say about the brigantine?" he asked earnestly, by way of answer.
Maddalena knew too little about the sea to understand that he must have noticed the vessel's rig to name it correctly, as he did, and without hesitation.
"She is convinced that Marcello got on board of her," she answered.
Corbario's face relaxed a little, and he laughed harshly.
"That is utterly absurd!" he answered. "No swimmer that ever lived could have got to her, nor any boat either! There was a terrific surf on the bar."
"Of course not," assented Maddalena. "But you saw the ship, too?"
"Yes. Aurora was looking at her when I reached the gap. That is why I noticed the vessel," Corbario added, as if by an afterthought. "She was a Sicilian brigantine, and was carrying hardly any sail. If the gale had lasted she would probably have been driven ashore. Her only chance would have been to drop anchor."
"You know all about ships and the sea, don't you?" asked Maddalena, with a very little curiosity, but without any particular intention.
"Oh, no!" cried Corbario, as if he were protesting against something. "I have made several long voyages, and I have a knack of remembering the names of things, nothing more."
"I did not mean to suggest that you had been a sailor," Maddalena answered.
"What an idea! I, a sailor!"
He seemed vaguely amused at the idea. The Contessa took leave of him, after giving him her address in the north of Italy, and begging him to write if he found any clue to Marcello's disappearance. He promised this, and they parted, not expecting to meet again until the autumn.
In a few days they had left Rome for different destinations. The little apartment near the Forum of Trajan where the Contessa and her daughter lived was shut up, and at the great villa on the Janiculum the solemn porter put off his mourning livery and dressed himself in brown linen, and smoked endless pipes within the closed gates when it was not too hot to be out of doors. The horses were turned out to grass, and the coachman and grooms departed to the country. The servants opened the windows in the early morning, shut them at ten o'clock against the heat, and dozed the rest of the time, or went down into the city to gossip with their friends in the afternoon. It was high summer, and Rome went to sleep.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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6
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"What do we eat to-day?" asked Paoluccio, the innkeeper on the Frascati road, as he came in from the glare and the dust and sat down in his own black kitchen.
"Beans and oil," answered his wife.
"An apoplexy take you!" observed the man, by way of mild comment.
"It is Friday," said the woman, unmoved, though she was of a distinctly apoplectic habit.
The kitchen was also the eating-room where meals were served to the wine-carters on their way to Rome and back. The beams and walls were black with the smoke of thirty years, for no whitewash had come near them since the innkeeper had married Nanna. It was a rich, crusty black, lightened here and there to chocolate brown, and shaded off again to the tint of strong coffee. High overhead three hams and half a dozen huge sausages hung slowly curing in the acrid wood smoke. There was an open hearth, waist high, for roasting, and having three square holes sunk in it for cooking with charcoal. An enormous bunch of green ferns had been hung by a long string from the highest beam to attract the flies, which swarmed on it like bees on a branch. The floor was of beaten cement, well swept and watered. Along three of the walls there were heavy tables of rough-hewn oak, with benches, polished by long and constant use. A trap-door covered the steps that led down to the deep cellar, which was nothing but a branch of those unexplored catacombs that undermine the Campagna in all directions. The place was dim, smoky, and old, but it was not really dirty, for in his primitive way the Roman wine-carter is fastidious. It is not long since he used to bring his own solid silver spoon and fork with him, and he will generally rinse a glass out two or three times before he will drink out of it.
The kitchen of the inn was cool compared with the road outside, and though it smelt chiefly of the stale smoke of green wood, this was pervaded and tempered by odours of fern, fresh cabbages, goats'-milk cheese, and sour red wine. The brown earthen pot simmered over one of the holes in the hearth, emitting little clouds of steam; but boiling beans have no particular smell, as everybody knows.
Paoluccio had pushed his weather-beaten soft hat back on his head, and sat drumming on the oak table with his knotty fingers. He was a strong man, thickset and healthy, with grizzled hair and an intensely black beard. His wife was fat, and purple about the jaws and under the ears. She stood with her back to the hearth, looking at him, with a wooden spoon in her hand.
"Beans," she said slowly, and she looked up at the rafters and down again at her husband.
"You have told me so," he growled, "and may the devil fly away with you!"
"Beans are not good for people who have the fever," observed Nanna.
"Beans are rather heavy food," assented the innkeeper, apparently understanding. "Bread and water are better. Pour a little oil on the bread."
"A man who has the fever may die of eating beans," said Nanna thoughtfully. "This is also to be considered."
"It is true." Paoluccio looked at his wife in silence for a moment. "But a person who is dead must be buried," he continued, as if he had discovered something. "When a person is dead, he is dead, whether he dies of eating beans or--" He broke off significantly, and his right hand, as it lay before him, straightened itself and made a very slight vibrating motion, with the fingers all close together. It is the gesture that means the knife among the southern people. Nanna instantly looked round, to be sure that no one else was in the room.
"When you have given that medicine, you cannot send for the doctor," she observed, lowering her voice. "But if he eats, and dies, what can any one say? We have fed him for charity; it is Friday and we have given him beans. What can we know? Are not beans good food? We have nothing else, and it is for charity, and we give what we have. I don't think they could expect us to give him chickens and French wine, could they?"
Paoluccio growled approval.
"It is forty-seven days," continued Nanna. "You can make the account. Chickens and milk and fresh meat for forty-seven days! Even the bread comes to something in that time, at least two soldi a day--two forties eighty, two sevens fourteen, ninety-four--nearly five francs. Who will give us the five francs? Are we princes?"
"There is the cow," observed Paoluccio with a grin.
"Imbecile," retorted his wife. "It has been a good year; we bought the wine cheap, we sell it dear, without counting what we get for nothing from the carters; we buy a cow with our earnings, and where is the miracle?"
The innkeeper looked towards the door and the small window suspiciously before he answered in a low voice.
"If I had not been sure that he would die, I would not have sold the watch and chain," he said. "In the house of my father we have always been honest people."
"He will die," answered Nanna, confidently and with emphasis. "The girl says he is hungry to-day. He shall eat beans. They are white beans, too, and the white are much heavier than the brown."
She lifted the tin cover off the earthen pot and stirred the contents.
"White beans!" grumbled Paoluccio. "And the weather is hot. Do you wish to kill me?"
"No," answered Nanna quietly. "Not you."
"Do you know what I say?" Paoluccio planted a huge finger on the oaken board. "That sick butterfly upstairs is tougher than I am. Forty-seven days of fever, and nothing but bread and water! Think of that, my Nanna! Think of it! You or I would be consumed, one would not even see our shadows on the floor! But he lives."
"If he eats the white beans he has finished living," remarked Nanna.
A short silence followed, during which Paoluccio seemed to be meditating, and Nanna began to ladle the beans out into four deep earthenware bowls, roughly glazed and decorated with green and brown stripes.
"You are a jewel; you are the joy of my heart," he observed thoughtfully, as Nanna placed his portion before him, covered it with oil, and scattered some chopped basil on the surface.
"Eat, my love," she said, and she cut a huge piece from a coarse loaf and placed it beside him on a folded napkin that looked remarkably clean in such surroundings, and emitted a pleasant odour of dried lavender blossoms.
"Where is the girl?" asked Paoluccio, stirring the mess and blowing upon it.
As he spoke, the door was darkened, and the girl stood there with a large copper "conca," the water-jar of the Roman province, balanced on her head--one of the most magnificent human beings on whom the sun of the Campagna ever shone. She was tall, and she bent her knees without moving her neck, in order to enter the door without first setting down the heavy vessel.
[Illustration: " ... THE DOOR WAS DARKENED, AND THE GIRL STOOD THERE WITH A LARGE COPPER 'CONCA' ..."] Her thick dark hair grew low on her forehead, almost black, save for the reddish chestnut lights where a few tiny ringlets curled themselves about her small and classic ears. Straight black eyebrows outlined the snow-white forehead, and long brown lashes shaded the fearless eyes, that looked black too. She smiled a little, quite unconsciously, as she lowered herself with the weight and gracefully rose to her height again after she had entered. One shapely brown hand steadied the conca above, the other gathered her coarse skirt; then she stood still, lifted the load from her head with both hands and without any apparent effort, and set it down in its place on a stone slab near the hearth. Most women need a little help to do that.
She laid aside the twisted cloth on which the conca had rested while she carried it, and she smoothed her hair carelessly.
"There are beans," said Nanna, giving the girl one of the bowls. "There is the bread. While they are cooling take the other portion upstairs."
The girl looked at the bowl, and at Nanna, and then at Paoluccio, and stood stock still.
"Hey, there!" the man cried, with a rough laugh. "Hey! Reginella! Are you going to sleep, or are you turning into a statue?"
"Am I to give him the beans to eat?" asked Regina, looking hard at the innkeeper.
"You said he was hungry. That is what there is for dinner. We give him what we have."
Regina's dark eyes lightened; her upper lip rose in a curve and showed her closed teeth, strong and white as those of a young animal.
"Do as you are told," added Paoluccio. "This is charity. When you examine your conscience at Easter you can say, 'I have fed the hungry and cared for the sick.' The beans are mine, of course, but that makes no difference. I make you a present of them."
"Thank you!"
"Welcome," answered Paoluccio, with his mouth, full.
Regina took the fourth bowl and a piece of bread and went out. The steps to the upper part of the house were on the outside, as is common in the houses of the Campagna.
"How old is she?" Paoluccio asked when she was gone.
"She must be twenty," answered Nanna. "It must be ten years since her mother died, and her mother said she was ten years old. She has eaten many loaves in this house."
"She has worked for her food," said the innkeeper. "And she is an honest girl."
"What did you expect? That I should let her be idle, or make eyes at the carters? But you always defend her, because she is pretty, you ugly scamp!"
Nanna uttered her taunt in a good-natured tone, but she glanced furtively at her husband to see the effect of her words, for it was not always safe to joke with Paoluccio.
"If I did not defend her," he answered, "you would beat the life out of her."
"I daresay," replied Nanna, and filled her mouth with beans.
"But now," said Paoluccio, swallowing, "if you are not careful she will break all your bones. She has the health of a horse."
So the couple discussed matters amiably, while Regina was out of the way.
In a garret that had a small unglazed window looking to the north, the girl was bending over a wretched trestle-bed, which was literally the only piece of furniture in the room; and on the coarse mattress, stuffed with the husks and leaves of maize, lay all that the fever had left of Marcello Consalvi, shivering under a tattered brown blanket. There was little more than the shadow of the boy, and his blue eyes stared dully up at the girl's face. But there was life in him still, thanks to her, and though there was no expression in his gaze, his lips smiled faintly, and faint words came from them.
"Thank you," he said, "I am better to-day. Yes, I could eat something."
Regina bent lower, smiling happily, and she kissed the boy's face three times; she kissed his eyes and dry lips. And he, too, smiled again.
Then she left the bedside and went to a dark corner, where she cautiously moved aside a loose board. From the recess she took a common tumbler and a bottle of old wine and a battered iron spoon. She crouched upon the floor, because there was no table; she took two fresh eggs out of the folds of the big red and yellow cotton handkerchief that covered her shoulders and was crossed over her bosom, and she broke them into the glass, and hid the empty shells carefully in the folds again, so that they should not be found in the room. For she had stolen these for Marcello, as usual, as well as the old wine. She poured a little of the latter into the glass and stirred the eggs quickly and softly, making hardly any noise. From the recess in the wall she got a little sugar, which was wrapped up in a bit of newspaper brown with age and smoke, and she sweetened the eggs and wine and stirred again; and at last she came and fed Marcello with the battered spoon. She had put off her coarse slippers and walked about in her thick brown woollen stockings, lest she should be heard below. She was very quiet and skilful, and she had strangely small and gentle hands for a peasant girl. Marcello's head was propped up by her left arm while she fed him.
She had kept him alive six weeks, and she had saved his life. She had found him lying against the door of the inn at dawn, convulsed with ague and almost unconscious, and had carried him into the house like a child, though he had been much heavier then. Of course the innkeeper had taken his watch and chain, and his jacket and sleeve-links and studs, to keep them safe, he said. Regina knew what that meant, but Paoluccio had ordered her to take care of him, and she had done her best. Paoluccio felt that if the boy died it would be the will of heaven, and that he probably would not live long with such care and such nourishment as he would get up there in the attic. When he was dead, it would be time enough to tell the carabineers who passed the house twice every twenty-four hours on their beat; they would see that a sick boy had been taken in, and that he had died of the fever, and as they need never know how long he had been in the inn, the whole affair would redound to Paoluccio's credit with them and with customers. But as long as he was alive it was quite unnecessary that any one should know of his existence, especially as the watch and chain had been converted into money, and the money into a fine young cow. That Marcello could get well on bread and water never entered Paoluccio's head.
But he had counted without Regina; that is to say that he had overlooked the love and devotion of an intensely vital creature, younger, quicker, and far cleverer that he, who would watch the sick boy day and night, steal food and wine for him, lose sleep for him, risk blows for him, and breathe her strong life into his weak body; to whom the joy of saving him from death would be so much greater than all fatigue, that there would be no shadow under her eyes, no pallor in her cheek, no weariness in her elastic gait to tell of sleepless nights spent by his bedside in soothing his ravings, or in listening for the beat of his heart when he lay still and exhausted, his tired head resting on her strong white arm. And when he seemed better and at ease she often fell asleep beside him, half sitting, half lying, on the pallet bed, her cheek on the straw pillow, her breath mingling with his in the dark.
He was better now, and she felt the returning life in him, almost before he was sure of it himself; and while her heart was almost bursting with happiness, so that she smiled to herself throughout her rough work all day long, she knew that he could not stay where he was. Paoluccio expected him to die, and was beginning to be tired of waiting, and so was Nanna. If he recovered, he would ask for his watch and other things; he was evidently a fine young gentleman to whom some strange accident had happened, and he must have friends somewhere. Half delirious, he had spoken of them and of his mother, and of some one called Aurora, whom Regina already hated with all her heart and soul. The innkeeper and his wife had never come near him since the former had helped the girl to carry him upstairs, but if they suspected that he was recovering she would not be able to prevent them from seeing him; and if they did, she knew what would happen. They would send her on an errand, and when she came back Marcello would be dead. She might refuse to go, but they were strong people and would be two to one. Brave as Regina was, she did not dare to wait for the carabineers when they came by on their beat and to tell them the truth, for she had the Italian peasant's horror and dread of the law and its visible authority; and moreover she was quite sure that Paoluccio would murder her if she told the secret.
"If I could only take you to Rome!" she whispered, bending over him when he had swallowed the contents of the glass. "You could tell me where your friends are."
"Rome?" he repeated, with a vacant questioning.
She nodded and smiled, and then sighed. She had long been sure that the fever had affected his memory, and she had tried many times to awaken it.
She loved him because he had the face of an angel, and was fair-haired, and seemed so gentle and patient, and smiled so sweetly when she kissed him. That was all. He could thank her; he could tell her that he was better or worse; he could speak of what he saw; he could even tell her that she was beautiful, and that was much. He was Marcello, he had told her that, but when she asked what other name he had, he looked at her blankly at first, and then an expression of painful effort came over his face, and she would not disturb him any more. He could not remember. He did not know how he had come to the inn door; he had been walking in the Campagna alone and had felt tired. He knew no more.
If only she could get him to Rome. It was not more than seven or eight miles to the city, and Regina had often been there with Nanna. She had been to Saint John Lateran's at midsummer for the great festival, and she knew where the hospital was, in which famous professors cured every ill under the sun. If she could bring Marcello to them, he would get well; if he stayed much longer at the inn, Paoluccio would kill him; being a woman, and a loving one, Regina only regarded as possible what she wished, where the man she loved was concerned.
She made up her mind that if it could not be done by any other means she would carry Marcello all the way. During his illness she had often lifted him from his bed like a little child, for he was slightly built by nature and was worn to a shadow by the fever. Even Aurora could have raised him, and he was a featherweight in the arms of such a creature as Regina. But it would be another matter to carry such an awkward burden for miles along the highroad; and besides, she would meet the carabineers, and as she would have to go at night, they would probably arrest her and put her in prison, and Marcello would die. She must find some other way.
She laid his head tenderly on the pillow and left him, promising to come back as soon as she could. For safety she had brought the dish of beans with her, lest Nanna should follow her, and she took it with her, just as it was; but at the foot of the outer stairs she ran along the back of the house to the pig-sty, and emptied the mess into the trough, carefully scraping the bowl with the spoon so that it looked as if some one had eaten the contents. Then she went back to the kitchen.
"Has he eaten?" inquired Nanna, and Paoluccio looked up, too.
"You see," answered Regina, showing the empty bowl.
"Health to him!" answered Paoluccio. "He has a good appetite."
"Eat your own," said Nanna to the girl.
She suspected that Regina might have eaten the beans meant for Marcello, but her doubt vanished as she saw how the hungry young thing devoured her own portion.
"Are there any more left?" Regina asked when she had finished, for she understood perfectly what was going on in the minds of the other two.
She looked into the earthen cooking-pot which now stood on the corner of the hearth.
"Not even the smell of any more," answered Nanna. "There is bread."
Regina's white teeth crushed the hard brown crust as if she had not eaten for a week. There could be no doubt but that the sick boy had eaten the beans; and beans, especially white ones, are not good for people who have the fever, as Nanna had justly observed.
"On Sunday he shall have a dish of liver and cabbage," she said, in a cheerful tone. "There is much strength in liver, and cabbage is good for the blood. I shall take it to him myself, for it will be a pleasure to see him eat."
"The beans were soon finished," said Regina, with perfect truth.
"I told you how it would be," Paoluccio answered.
But Regina knew that the time had come to get Marcello away from the inn if he ever was to leave it alive, and in the afternoon, when Nanna was dozing in her chair in the kitchen and Paoluccio was snoring upstairs, and when she had smoothed Marcello's pillow, she went out and sat down in front of the house, where there was shade at that hour, though the glare from the dusty road would have blinded weaker eyes than hers. She sat on the stone seat that ran along the house, and leaned against the rough wall, thinking and scheming, and quite sure that she should find a way.
At first she looked about, while she thought, from the well-known mountains that bounded her world to the familiar arches of the distant aqueduct, from the dry ditch opposite to the burning sky above and the greyish green hillocks below Tivoli. But by and by she looked straight before her, with a steady, concentrated stare, as if she saw something happening and was watching to see how it would end.
She had found what she wanted, and was quite sure of it; only a few details remained to be settled, such as what was to become of her after she left the inn where she had grown up. But that did not trouble her much.
She was not delicately nurtured that she should dread the great world of which she knew nothing, nor had Nanna's conversation during ten years done much to strengthen her in the paths of virtue. Her pride had done much more and might save her wherever she went, but she was very well aware of life's evil truths. And what would her pride be compared with Marcello, the first and only being she had ever loved? To begin with, she knew that the handsome people from the country earned money by serving as models for painters and sculptors, and she had not the slightest illusion about her own looks. Since she had been a child people who came to the inn had told her that she was beautiful; and not the rough wine-carters only, for the fox-hunters sometimes came that way, riding slowly homeward after a long run, and many a fine gentleman in pink had said things to her which she had answered sharply, but which she remembered well. She had not the slightest doubt but that she was one of the handsomest girls in Italy, and the absolute certainty of the conviction saved her from having any small vanity about her looks. She knew that she had only to show herself and that every one would stand and look at her, only to beckon and she would be followed. She did not crave admiration; a great beauty rarely does. She simply defied competition, and was ready to laugh at it in a rather good-natured way, for she knew what she had, and was satisfied.
As for the rest, she was merely clever and fearless, and her moral inheritance was not all that might be desired; for her father had left her mother in a fit of pardonable jealousy, after nearly killing her and quite killing his rival, and her mother had not redeemed her character after his abrupt departure. On the contrary, if an accident had not carried her off suddenly, Regina's virtuous parent would probably have sold the girl into slavery. Poor people are not all honest, any more than other kinds of people are. Regina did not mourn her mother, and hardly remembered her father at all, and she never thought of either.
She owed Paoluccio and Nanna nothing, in her opinion. They had fed her sufficiently, and clothed her decently for the good of the house; she had done the work of two women in return, because she was strong, and she had been honest, because she was proud. Even the innkeeper and his wife would not have pretended that she owed them much gratitude; they were much too natural for that, and besides, the girl was too handsome, and there might be some scandal about her any day which would injure the credit of the inn. Nanna thought Paoluccio much too fond of watching her, as it was, and reflected that if she went to the city she would be well out of the way, and might go to the devil if she pleased.
Regina's plan for taking Marcello was simple, like most plans which succeed, and only depended for its success on being carried out fearlessly.
The wine-carters usually came to the inn from the hills between nine and eleven o'clock at night, and the carts, heavy-laden with wine casks, stood in a line along the road, while the men went into the kitchen to eat and drink. They generally paid for what they consumed by giving a measure or two of wine from the casks they were bringing, and which they filled up with water, a very simple plan which seems to have been in use for ages. It has several advantages; the owner of the wine does not suffer by it, since he gets his full price in town; the man who buys the wine in Rome does not suffer, because he adds so much water to the wine before selling it that a little more or less makes no difference; the public does not suffer, as it is well known that wine is much better for the health when drunk with plenty of water; and the carters do not suffer, because nobody would think of interfering with them. Moreover, they get food and drink for nothing.
While the men were having supper in the inn, their carts were guarded by their little woolly dogs, black, white, or brown, and always terribly wide-awake and uncommonly fierce in spite of their small size.
Now, just at this time, there was one carter who had none, and Regina knew it, for he was one of her chief admirers. He was the hardest-drinking ruffian of all the men who came and went on the Frascati road, and he had been quite willing to sell his dog in the street to a gentleman who admired it and offered him fifty francs for it, though that is a small price for a handsome "lupetto." But Mommo happened to be deeper in debt than usual, took the money, and cast about to steal another dog that might serve him. So far he had not seen one to his liking.
It is the custom of the wine-carters, when they have had plenty to eat and drink, to climb to their seats under the fan-like goat-skin hoods of their carts, and to go to sleep, wrapped in their huge cloaks. Their mules plod along and keep out of the way of other vehicles without any guidance, and their dogs protect them from thieves, who might steal their money; for they always carry the sum necessary to pay the octroi duty at the city gates, where every cart is stopped. As they are on the road most of their lives, winter and summer, they would not get much sleep if they tried to keep awake all night; and they drink a good deal, partly because wine is really a protection against the dangerous fever, and partly because their drink costs them nothing. Some of them drank their employers' wine at supper, others exchanged what they brought for Paoluccio's, which they liked better.
They usually got away about midnight, and Mommo was often the last to go. It was a part of Regina's work to go down to the cellar and draw the wine that was wanted from the hogsheads when the host was too lazy to go down himself, and being quite unwatched she could draw a measure from the oldest and strongest if she chose. Mommo could easily be made a little sleepier than usual, after being tempted to outstay the others.
And so it turned out that night. After the necessary operation of tapping one of his casks and filling it up with water, he lingered on before a measure of the best, while Nanna and Paoluccio dozed in their chairs; and at last all three were asleep.
Then Regina went out softly into the dark summer night, and climbed the stairs to the attic.
"I am going to take you to Rome to-night," she whispered in Marcello's ear.
"Rome?" he repeated vaguely, half asleep.
She wrapped him in the tattered blanket as he was, and lifted him lightly in her arms. Down the stairs she bore him, and then lifted him upon the tail of the cart, propping him up as best she could, and passing round him the end of one of the ropes that held the casks in place. He breathed more freely in the open air, and she had fed him again before the carters came to supper.
"And you?" he asked faintly.
"I shall walk," she whispered. "Now wait, and make no noise, or they will kill you. Are you comfortable?"
She could see that he nodded his head.
"We shall start presently," she said.
She went into the kitchen, waked Mommo, and made him swallow the rest of his wine. He was easily persuaded that he had slept too long, and must be on the road. The innkeeper and Nanna grumbled a good-night as he went out rather unsteadily, followed by Regina. A moment later the mules' bells jingled, the cart creaked, and Mommo was off.
Paoluccio and his wife made their way to the outer stairs and to bed, leaving Regina to put out the lights and lock up the kitchen. She lost no time in doing this, ran up the steps in the dark, hung the key on its nail in the entry, and went to her attic, making a loud noise with her loose slippers, so that the couple might hear her. She came down again in her stockings almost at once, carrying the slippers and a small bundle containing her belongings. She made no noise now, though it was almost quite dark, and in another instant she was out on the road to Rome. It had all been done so quickly that she could still hear the jingling of Mommo's mule bells in the distance. She had only a few hundred yards to run, and she was walking at the tail of the cart with one hand resting on Marcello's knee as he lay there wrapped up in the ragged blanket.
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{
"id": "13932"
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7
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It was clear dawn, and there was confusion at the Porta San Giovanni. Mommo had wakened, red-eyed and cross as usual, a little while before reaching the gate, and had uttered several strange noises to quicken the pace of his mules. After that, everything had happened as usual, for a little while; he had stopped inside the walls before the guard-house of the city customs, had nodded to the octroi inspectors, and had got his money ready while the printed receipt was being filled out. Then the excitement had begun.
"You have a passenger," said one, and Mommo stared at him, not understanding.
"You have a dead man on behind!" yelled a small boy, standing at safe distance.
Mommo began to swear, but one of the inspectors stopped him.
"Get down," said the man. "The carabineers are coming."
Mommo finished his swearing internally, but with increased fervour. The small boy was joined by others, and they began to jeer in chorus, and perform war-dances.
"There is a tax on dead men!" they screamed. "You must pay!"
"May you all be butchered!" shouted Mommo, in a voice of thunder. "May your insides be fried!"
"Brute beast, without education!" hooted the biggest boy, contemptuously.
"I'll give you the education, and the instruction too," retorted the carter, making at them with his long whip.
They scattered in all directions, like a flock of cawing jackdaws that fly a little way in tremendous haste, and then settle again at a distance and caw louder than before.
"Animal!" they yelled. "Animal! Animal and beast!"
By this time a crowd had collected round the cart, and two carabineers had come up to see what was the matter, quiet, sensible men in extraordinary cocked hats and well-fitting swallow-tailed uniforms of the fashion of 1810. The carabineers are quite the finest corps in the Italian service, and there are a good many valid reasons why their antiquated dress should not be changed. Their presence means law and order without unnecessary violence.
Mommo was surly, but respectful enough. Yes, it was his cart, and he was a regular carter on the Frascati road. Yes, this was undoubtedly a sick man, who had climbed upon the cart while Mommo was asleep. Of course he had slept on the road, all carters did, and he had no dog, else no one would have dared to take liberties with his cart. No, he had never seen the sick man. The carabineers might send him to penal servitude for life, tear out his tongue, cut off his ears and nose, load him with chains, and otherwise annoy him, but he had never seen the sick man. If he had seen him, he would have pulled him off, and kicked him all the way to the hospital, where he ought to be. What right had such brigands as sick men to tamper with the carts of honest people? If the fellow had legs to jump upon the cart, he had legs to walk. Had Mommo ever done anything wrong in his life, that this should be done to him? Had he stolen, or killed anybody, or tried to evade the octroi duty? No. Then why should an ugly thief of a sick man climb upon his cart? The wretch had hardly clothes enough to cover him decently--a torn shirt and a pair of old trousers that he must have stolen, for they were much too short for him! And so on, and so forth, to the crowd, for the carabineers paid no more attention to him after he had answered their first questions; but the crowd listened with interest, the small boys drew near again, the octroi inspectors looked on, and Mommo had a sympathetic audience. It was the general opinion that he had been outrageously put upon, and that some one had murdered the sick man, and had tied the body to the cart in order that Mommo should be accused of the crime, it being highly likely that a murderer should take so much unnecessary trouble to carry his victim and the evidence of his crime about with him in such a very public manner.
"If he were dead, now," observed an old peasant, who had trudged in with a bundle on his back, "you would immediately be sent to the galleys."
This was so evident that the crowd felt very sorry for Mommo.
"Of course I should," he answered. "By this time to-morrow I should have chains on my legs, and be breaking stones! What is the law for, I should like to know?"
Meanwhile, the carabineers had lifted Marcello very gently from the cart and had carried him into the octroi guard-house, where they set him in a chair, wrapped the ragged blanket round his knees and waist, and poured a little wine down his throat. Seeing that he was very weak, and having ascertained that he had nothing whatever about him by which he could be identified, they sent for the municipal doctor of that quarter of the city.
While they were busy within, one of the inspectors chanced to look at the closed window, and saw the face of a handsome girl pressed against the pane outside, and a pair of dark eyes anxiously watching what was going on. The girl was so very uncommonly handsome that the inspector went out to look at her, but she saw him coming and moved away, drawing her cotton kerchief half across her face. Regina's only fear was that Mommo might recognise her, in which case she would inevitably be questioned by the carabineers. It was characteristic of the class in which she had been brought up, that while she entertained a holy dread of being cross-questioned by them, she felt the most complete conviction that Marcello was safe in their hands. She had meant that he should somehow be taken off the cart at the gate, probably by the inspectors, and conveyed at once to the great hospital near by. She knew nothing about hospitals, and supposed that when he was once there, she might be allowed to come and take care of him. It would be easy, she thought, to invent some story to account for her interest in him. But she could do nothing until Mommo was gone, and he might recognise her figure even if he could not see her face.
Finding that nothing more was wanted of him, and that he was in no immediate danger of penal servitude for having been found with a sick man on his cart, Mommo started his mules up the paved hill towards the church, walking beside them, as the carters mostly do within the city. The crowd dispersed, the small boys went off in search of fresh matter for contemptuous comment, and Regina went boldly to the door of the guard-house.
"Can I be of any use with the sick man?" she asked of the inspector who had seen her through the window.
The inspector prided himself on his gallantry and good education.
"Signorina," he said, lifting his round hat with a magnificent gesture, "if you were to look only once at a dying man, he would revive and live a thousand years."
He made eyes at her in a manner he considered irresistible, and replaced his hat on his head, a little on one side. Regina had never been called "Signorina" before, and she was well aware that no woman who wears a kerchief out of doors, instead of a hat, is entitled to be addressed as a lady in Rome; but she was not at all offended by the rank flattery of the speech, and she saw that the inspector was a good-natured young coxcomb.
"You are too kind," she answered politely. "Do you think I can be of any use?"
"There are the carabineers," objected the inspector, as if that were a sufficient answer. "But you may look in through the door and see the sick man."
"I have seen him through the window. He looks very ill."
"Ah, Signorina," sighed the youth, "if I were ill, I should pray the saints to send you--" He was interrupted by the arrival of the doctor, who asked him what was the matter, and was at once led in by him. Regina withdrew to a little distance in the direction of the church and waited. The doctor had come in a cab, and in a few moments she saw Marcello carried out and placed in it. Then she walked as fast as she could towards the church, quite sure that the cab would stop at the door of the hospital, and anxious to be within sight of it. Everything had turned out well, even beyond her expectations. The cab passed her at a brisk pace before she reached the top of the hill, and though she walked as fast as she could, it was no longer there when she had gone far enough to see the door. The doctor, who was a busy man, had handed Marcello over to the men on duty at the entrance, with an order he had pencilled on his card while driving up, and had gone on at once. But Regina was convinced that Marcello was there, as she hurried forward.
A man in blue linen clothes and a laced cap stopped her on the steps and asked what she wanted.
"A young man has just been brought here, very ill," she explained, "and I want to see him."
"A very young man? Fair? Thin? From the Campagna? In rags?"
"Yes. I want to see him."
"You can see him to-morrow, if he is alive," answered the orderly in a business-like tone.
"To-morrow?" repeated Regina, in a tone of profound disappointment.
"To-morrow is Sunday. Friends and relatives can visit patients on Sundays between nine and four."
"But he has no other friends," pleaded Regina. "Please, please let me go to him!"
"To-morrow between nine and four."
"No, no--to-day--now--he knows me--my name is Regina."
"Not if you were the Queen of the world," answered the orderly, jesting with perfect calm. "You must have a written order from the Superintendent."
"Yes, yes! Let me see him!"
"You can see him on Mondays between ten and twelve."
"The day after to-morrow?" cried Regina in despair.
"Yes, between ten and twelve, the day after to-morrow."
"But I may come to-morrow without an order?"
"Yes. Friends and relatives can visit patients on Sundays between nine and four."
The man's imperturbability was exasperating, and Regina, who was not patient, felt that if she stayed any longer she should try to take him by the collar, shake him, and force her way in. But she was much too sensible to do anything so rash. There was no choice but to go away.
"Thank you," she said, as she turned to go down the steps.
"You are welcome," the man answered very civilly, for he was watching her and was reflecting that he had never seen such a face and figure before.
Some hours later, when the police communicated with the Superintendent, and when he found that a woman had come to the door who said that she knew the waif, and had been sent away, he called the orderly who had been on duty several hard names in his heart for having followed the rule of the hospital so scrupulously. He was an antediluvian, he was a case of arrested mental development, he was an ichthyosaurus, he was a new kind of idiot, he was a monumental fool, he was the mammoth ass reported to have been seen by a mediæval traveller in the desert, that was forty cubits high, and whose braying was like the blast of ten thousand trumpets. The Superintendent wished he had time to select more choice epithets for that excellent orderly, but the police seemed so particularly curious about the new patient that he had no leisure for thinking out what he wanted.
Nevertheless, the man had done his duty and nothing more nor less according to the rules, and Regina was forced to go away discomfited.
She walked a hundred yards or more down the hill, towards San Clemente, and then stood still to think. The sun had risen, and Marcello was safe, though she could not see him. That was something. She stood there, young, strong, beautiful, and absolutely penniless; and Rome was before her.
For the first time since the previous evening she asked herself what was to become of her, and how she was to find bread for that day and for the next, and for all the days afterwards. She would have robbed a church to feed Marcello, but she would sooner have lost her right hand than steal so much as a crust for herself. As for begging, she was too proud, and besides, no one would have given her anything, for she was the picture of health, her rough clothes were whole and clean, she had tiny gold earrings in her ears, and the red and yellow cotton kerchief on her head was as good as new. Nobody would believe that she was hungry.
Meanwhile Marcello was made comfortable in one of the narrow white beds of an airy ward in the San Giovanni hospital. The institution is intended for women only, but there is now a ward for male patients, who are admitted when too ill to be taken farther. The doctor on duty had written him down as much reduced by malarious fever and wandering in his mind, but added that he might live and get well. It was wonderful, the doctor reflected for the thousandth time in his short experience, that humanity should bear so much as it daily did.
The visiting physician, who was a man of learning and reputation, came three hours later and examined Marcello with interest. The boy had not suffered much by sleeping on the tail of the cart in the warm summer's night, and was now greatly refreshed by the cleanliness and comparative luxury of his new surroundings. He had no fever now and had slept quietly for two hours, but when he tried to remember what had happened to him, where he had been, and how he had come to the place where he was, it all grew vague and intricate by turns, and his memories faded away like the dreams we try to recall when we can only just recollect that we have had a dream of some sort. He knew that he was called Marcello, but the rest was gone; he knew that a beautiful creature had taken care of him, and that her name was Regina. How long? How many days and nights had he lain in the attic, hot by day and cold at night? He could not guess, and it tired him to try.
The doctor asked two or three questions while he examined him, and then stood quite still for a few seconds, watching him intently. The two young house surgeons who accompanied the great man kept a respectful silence, waiting for his opinion. When he found an interesting case he sometimes delivered a little lecture on it, in a quiet monotonous tone that did not disturb the other patients. But to-day he did not seem inclined to talk.
"Convalescent," he said, "at least of the fever. He needs good food more than anything else. In two days he will be walking about."
He passed on, but in his own mind he was wondering what was the matter with the young man, why he had lost his memory, and what accident had brought him alone and friendless to one of the city hospitals. For the present it would be better to let him alone rather than tire him by a thorough examination of his head. There was probably a small fracture somewhere at the back of the skull, the doctor thought, and it would be easy enough to find it when the patient was strong enough to sit up.
The doctor had not been long gone when an elderly man with a grizzled moustache and thoughtful eyes was led to Marcello's bedside by the Superintendent himself. The appearance of the latter at an unusual hour was always an event in the ward, and the nurses watched him with curiosity. They would have been still more curious had they known that the elderly gentleman was the Chief of the Police himself. The Superintendent raised his hand to motion them away.
"What is your name, sir?" asked the Chief, bending down and speaking in a low voice.
"Marcello."
"Yes," replied the other, almost in a whisper, "you are Marcello. But what else? What is your family name? It is very important. Will you tell me?"
The vague look came into Marcello's eyes, and then the look of pain, and he shook his head rather feebly.
"I cannot remember," he answered at last. "It hurts me to remember."
"Is it Consalvi?" asked the officer, smiling encouragement.
"Consalvi?" Marcello's eyes wandered, as he tried to think. "I cannot remember," he said again after an interval.
The Chief of Police was not discouraged yet.
"You were knocked down and robbed by thieves, just after you had been talking with Aurora," he said, inventing what he believed to have happened.
A faint light came into Marcello's eyes.
"Aurora?" He repeated the name almost eagerly.
"Yes. You had been talking to Signorina Aurora dell' Armi. You remember that?"
The light faded suddenly.
"I thought I remembered something," answered Marcello. "Aurora? Aurora? No, it is gone. I was dreaming again. I want to sleep now."
The Chief stood upright and looked at the Superintendent, who looked at him, and both shook their heads. Then they asked what the visiting doctor had said, and what directions he had given about Marcello's treatment.
"I am sure it is he," said the Chief of Police when they were closeted in the Superintendent's office, five minutes later. "I have studied his photograph every day for nearly three months. Look at it."
He produced a good-sized photograph of Marcello which had been taken about a year earlier, but was the most recent. The Superintendent looked at it critically, and said it was not much like the patient. The official objected that a man who was half dead of fever and had lain starving for weeks, heaven only knew where, could hardly be quite himself in appearance. The Superintendent pointed out that this was precisely the difficulty; the photograph was not like the sick man. But the Chief politely insisted that it was. They differed altogether on this point, but quarrelled over it in the most urbane manner possible.
The Superintendent suggested that it would be easy to identify Marcello Consalvi, by bringing people who knew him to his bedside, servants and others. The official answered that he should prefer to be sure of everything before calling in any one else. The patient had evidently lost his memory by some accident, and if he could not recall his own name it was not likely that he could recognise a face. Servants would swear that it was he, or not he, just as their interest suggested. Most of the people of his own class who knew him were out of town at the present season; and besides, the upper classes were not, in the Chief's opinion, a whit more intelligent or trustworthy than those that served them. The world, said the Chief, was an exceedingly bad place. That this was true, the Superintendent could not doubt, and he admitted the fact; but he was not sure how the Chief was applying the statement of it in his own reasoning. Perhaps he thought that some persons might have an interest in recognising Marcello.
"In the meantime," said the Chief, rising to go away, "we will put him in a private room, where we shall not be watched by everybody when we come to see him. I have funds from Corbario to pay any possible expenses in the case."
"Who is that man?" asked the Superintendent. "There has been a great deal of talk about him in the papers since his stepson was lost. What was he before he married the rich widow?"
The Chief of Police did not reply at once, but lit a cigarette preparatory to going away, smoothed his hat on his arm, and flicked a tiny speck of dust from the lapel of his well-made coat. Then he smiled pleasantly and gave his answer.
"I suppose that before he married Consalvi's widow he was a gentleman of small means, like many others. Why should you think that he was ever anything else?"
To this direct question the Superintendent had no answer ready, nor, in fact, had the man who asked it, though he had looked so very wise. Then they glanced at each other and both laughed a little, and they parted.
Half an hour later, Marcello was carried to an airy room with green blinds, and was made even more comfortable than he had been before. He slept, and awoke, and ate and slept again. Twice during the afternoon people were brought to see him. They were servants from the villa on the Janiculum, but he looked at them dully and said that he could not remember them.
"We do not think it is he," they said, when questioned. "Why does he not know us, if it is he? We are old servants in the house. We carried the young gentleman in our arms when he was small. But this youth does not know us, nor our names. It is not he."
They were dismissed, and afterwards they met and talked up at the villa.
"The master has been sent for by telegraph," they said one to another. "We shall do what he says. If he tells us that it is the young gentleman we will also say that it is; but if he says it is not he, we will also deny it. This is the only way."
Having decided upon this diplomatic course as the one most likely to prove advantageous to them, they went back to their several occupations and amusements. But at the very first they said what they really thought; none of them really believed the sick youth at the hospital to be Marcello. An illness of nearly seven weeks and a long course of privation can make a terrible difference in the looks of a very young person, and when the memory is gone, too, the chances of his being recognised are slight.
But the Chief of Police was not disturbed in his belief, and after he had smoked several cigarettes very thoughtfully in his private office, he wrote a telegram to Corbario, advising him to come back to Rome at once. He was surprised to receive an answer from Folco late that night, inquiring why he was wanted. To this he replied in a second telegram of more length, which explained matters clearly. The next morning Corbario telegraphed that he was starting.
The visiting physician came early and examined Marcello's head with the greatest minuteness. After much trouble he found what he was looking for--a very slight depression in the skull. There was no sign of a wound that had healed, and it was clear that the injury must have been either the result of a fall, in which case the scalp had been protected by a stiff hat, or else of a blow dealt with something like a sandbag, which had fractured the bone without leaving any mark beyond a bruise, now no longer visible.
"It is my opinion," said the doctor, "that as soon as the pressure is removed the man's memory will come back exactly as it was before. We will operate next week, when he has gained a little more strength. Feed him and give him plenty of air, for he is very weak."
So he went away for the day. But presently Regina came and demanded admittance according to the promise she had received, and she was immediately brought to the Superintendent's office, for he had given very clear instructions to this effect in case the girl came again. He had not told the Chief of Police about her, for he thought it would be amusing to do a little detective work on his own account, and he anticipated the triumph of finding out Marcello's story alone, and of then laying the facts before the authorities, just to show what ordinary common sense could do without the intervention of the law.
Regina was ushered into the high cool room where the Superintendent sat alone, and the heavy door closed behind her. He was a large man with close-cropped hair and a short brown beard, and he had kind brown eyes. Regina came forward a few steps and then stood still, looking at him, and waiting for him to speak. He was astonished at her beauty, and at once decided that she had a romantic attachment for Marcello, and probably knew all about him. He leaned back in his chair, and pointed to a seat near him.
"Pray sit down," he said. "I wish to have a little talk with you before you go upstairs to see Marcello."
"How is he?" asked Regina, eagerly. "Is he worse?"
"He is much better. But sit down, if you please. You shall stay with him as long as you like, or as long as it is good for him. You may come every day if you wish it."
"Every day?" cried Regina in delight. "They told me that I could only come on Sunday."
"Yes. That is the rule, my dear child. But I can give you permission to come every day, and as the poor young man seems to have no friends, it is very fortunate for him that you can be with him. You will cheer him and help him to get well."
"Thank you, thank you!" answered the girl fervently, as she sat down.
A great lady of Rome had been to see the Superintendent about a patient on the previous afternoon; he did not remember that she moved with more dignity than this peasant girl, or with nearly as much grace. Regina swept the folds of her short coarse skirt forward and sideways a little, so that they hid her brown woollen ankles as she took her seat, and with the other hand she threw back the end of the kerchief from her face.
"You do not mind telling me your name?" said the Superintendent in a questioning tone.
"Spalletta Regina," answered the girl promptly, putting her family name first, according to Italian custom. "I am of Rocca di Papa."
"Thank you. I shall remember that. And you say that you know this poor young man. Now, what is his name, if you please? He does not seem able to remember anything about himself."
"I have always called him Marcello," answered Regina.
"Indeed? You call him Marcello? Yes, yes. Thank you. But, you know, we like to write down the full name of each patient in our books. Marcello, and then? What else?"
By this time Regina felt quite at her ease with the pleasant-spoken gentleman, but in a flash it occurred to her that he would think it very strange if she could not answer such a simple question about a young man she professed to know very well.
"His name is Botti," she said, with no apparent hesitation, and giving the first name that occurred to her.
"Thank you. I shall enter him in the books as 'Botti Marcello.'"
"Yes. That is the name." She watched the Superintendent's pen, though she could not read writing very well.
"Thank you," he said, as he stuck the pen into a little pot of small-shot before him, and then looked at his watch. "The nurse is probably just making him comfortable after the doctor's morning visit, so you had better wait five minutes, if you do not mind. Besides, it will help us a good deal if you will tell me something about his illness. I suppose you have taken care of him."
"As well as I could," Regina answered.
"Where? At Rocca di Papa? The air is good there."
"No, it was not in the village." The girl hesitated a moment, quickly making up her mind how much of the truth to tell. "You see," she continued presently, "I was only the servant girl there, and I saw that the people meant to let him die, because he was a burden on them. So I wrapped him in a blanket and carried him downstairs in the night."
"You carried him down?" The Superintendent look at her in admiration.
"Oh, yes," answered Regina quietly. "I could carry you up and down stairs easily. Do you wish to see?"
The Superintendent laughed, for she actually made a movement as if she were going to leave her seat and pick him up.
"Thank you," he said. "I quite believe you. What a nurse you would make! You say that you carried him down in the night--and then? What did you do?"
"I laid him on the tail of a cart. The carter was asleep. I walked behind to the gate, for I was sure that when he was found he would be brought here, and that he would have care, and would get well."
"Was it far to walk?" inquired the Superintendent, delighted with the result of his efforts as a detective. "You must have been very tired!"
"What is it to walk all night, if one carries no load on one's head?" asked Regina with some scorn. "I walk as I breathe."
"You walked all night, then? That was Friday night. I do not wish to keep you, my dear child, but if you would tell me how long Botti has been ill--" he waited.
"This is the forty-ninth day," Regina answered at once.
"Dear me! Poor boy! That is a long time!"
"I stole eggs and wine to keep him alive," the girl explained. "They tried to make me give him white beans and oil. They wanted him to die, because he was an expense to them."
"Who were those people?" asked the Superintendent, putting the question suddenly.
But Regina had gained time to prepare her story.
"Why should I tell you who they are?" she asked. "They did no harm, after all, and they let him lie in their house. At first they hoped he would get well, but you know how it is in the country. When sick people linger on, every one wishes them to die, because they are in the way, and cost money. That is how it is."
"But you wished him to live," said the Superintendent in an encouraging tone.
Regina shrugged her shoulders and smiled, without the slightest affectation or shyness.
"What could I do?" she asked. "A passion for him had taken me, the first time that I saw him. So I stole for him, and sat up with him, and did what was possible. He lay in an attic with only one blanket, and my heart spoke. What could I do? If he had died I should have thrown myself into the water below the mill."
Now there had been no mill within many miles of the inn on the Frascati road, in which there could be water in summer. Regina was perfectly sincere in describing her love for Marcello, but as she was a clever woman she knew that it was precisely when she was speaking with the greatest sincerity about one thing, that she could most easily throw a man off the scent with regard to another. The Superintendent mentally noted the allusion to the mill for future use; it had created an image in his mind; it meant that the place where Marcello had lain ill had been in the hills and probably near Tivoli, where there is much water and mills are plentiful.
"I suppose he was a poor relation of the people," said the Superintendent thoughtfully, after a little pause. "That is why they wished to get rid of him."
Regina made a gesture of indifferent assent, and told something like the truth.
"He had not been there since I had been servant to them," she answered. "It must have been a long time since they had seen him. We found him early in the morning, lying unconscious against the door of the house, and we took him in. That is the whole story. Why should I tell you who the people are? I have eaten their bread, I have left them, I wish them no harm. They knew their business."
"Certainly, my dear, certainly. I suppose I may say that Marcello Botti comes from Rocca di Papa?"
"Oh, yes," answered Regina readily. "You may say that, if you like."
As a matter of fact she did not care what he wrote in his big book, and he might as well write one name as another, so far as she was concerned.
"But I never saw him there," she added by an afterthought. "There are many people of that name in our village, but I never saw him. Perhaps you had better say that he came from Albano."
"Why from Albano?" asked the Superintendent, surprised.
"It is a bigger place," explained Regina quite naturally.
"Then I might as well write 'Rome' at once?"
"Yes. Why not? If you must put down the name of a town in the book, you had better write a big one. You will be less likely to be found out if you have made a mistake."
"I see," said the Superintendent, smiling. "I am much obliged for your advice. And now, if you will come with me, you shall see Botti. He has a room by himself and is very well cared for."
The orderlies and nurses who came and went about the hospital glanced with a little discreet surprise at the handsome peasant girl who followed the Superintendent, but she paid no attention to them and looked straight before her, at the back of his head; for her heart was beating faster than if she had run a mile uphill.
Marcello put out his arms when he saw her enter, and returning life sent a faint colour to his emaciated cheeks.
"Regina--at last!" he cried in a stronger and clearer tone than she had ever heard him use.
A splendid blush of pleasure glowed in her own face as she ran forward and leaned over him, smoothing the smooth pillow unconsciously, and looking down into his eyes.
The Superintendent observed that Marcello certainly had no difficulty in recalling the girl's name, whatever might have become of his own during his illness. What Regina answered was not audible, but she kissed Marcello's eyes, and then stood upright beside the bed, and laughed a little.
"What can I do?" she asked. "It is a passion! When I see him, I see nothing else. And then, I saved his life. Are you glad that Regina saved your life?" She bent down again, and her gentle hand played with Marcello's waving fair hair. "What should you have done without Regina?"
"I should have died," Marcello answered happily.
With much more strength than she had been used to find in him, he threw his arms round her neck and drew her face down to his.
The Superintendent spoke to the nurse in a low tone, by the door, and both went out, leaving the two together. He was a sensible man, and a kind-hearted one; and though he was no doctor, he guessed that the peasant girl's glorious vitality would do as much for the sick man as any medicine.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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Corbario reached Rome in the afternoon, and the footman who stood waiting for him on the platform was struck by the change in his appearance. His eyes were hollow and bright, his cheeks were sunken, his lips looked dry; moreover, he moved a little nervously and his foot slipped as he got out of the carriage, so that he nearly fell. In the crowd, the footman asked his valet questions. Was he ill? What had happened to him? Was he consuming himself with grief? No, the valet thought not. He had been much better in Paris and had seen some old friends there. What harm was there in that? A bereaved man needed diversion. The change had come suddenly, when he had decided to return to Rome, and he had eaten nothing for thirty-six hours. The valet asked if the youth at the hospital, of whom Corbario had told him, were really Marcello. The footman answered that none of the servants thought so, after they had all been taken to see him.
Having exchanged these confidences in the half-dumb language which servants command, they reached the gate. The footman rushed out to call the carriage, the valet delivered the tickets and followed the footman more slowly, carrying Corbario's bag and coat, and Corbario lighted a cigar and followed his man at a leisurely pace, absorbed in thought.
Until the moment of passing the gate he had meant to drive directly to the hospital, which is at some distance from the station in a direction almost opposite to that of the Janiculum. He could have driven there in ten minutes, whereas he must lose more than an hour by going home first and then coming back. But his courage failed him, he felt faint and sick, and quite unable to bear any great emotion until he had rested and refreshed himself a little. A long railway journey stupefies some men, but makes others nervous and inclined to exaggerate danger or trouble. During the last twelve hours Corbario had been forcing himself to decide that he would go to the hospital and know the worst at once, but now that the moment was come he could not do it.
He was walking slowly through the outer hall of the station when a large man came up with him and greeted him quietly. It was Professor Kalmon. Corbario started at the sound of his voice. They had not met since Kalmon had been at the cottage.
"I wish I had known that you were in the train," the Professor said.
"So do I," answered Corbario without enthusiasm. "Not that I am very good company," he added, looking sideways at the other's face and meeting a scrutinising glance.
"You look ill," Kalmon replied. "I don't wonder."
"I sometimes wish I had one of those tablets of yours that send people to sleep for ever," said Corbario, making a great effort to speak steadily.
But his voice shook, and a sudden terror seized him, the abject fright that takes hold of a man who has been accustomed to do something very dangerous and who suddenly finds that his nerve is gone at the very moment of doing it again.
The cold sweat stood on Folco's forehead under his hat; he stopped where he was and tried to draw a long breath, but something choked him. Kalmon's voice seemed to reach him from a great distance. Then he felt the Professor's strong arm under his own, supporting him and making him move forward.
"The weather is hot," Kalmon said, "and you are ill and tired. Come outside."
"It is nothing," Corbario tried to say. "I was dizzy for a moment."
Kalmon and the footman helped him into his low carriage, and raised the hood, for the afternoon sun was still very hot.
"Shall I go home with you?" Kalmon asked.
"No, no!" cried Corbario nervously. "You are very kind. I am quite well now. Good-bye. Home!" he added to the footman, as he settled himself back under the hood, quite out of sight.
The Professor stood still in the glaring heat, looking after the carriage, his travelling-bag in his hand, while the crowd poured out of the station, making for the cabs and omnibuses that were drawn up in rows, or crossing the burning pavement on foot to take the tram.
When the carriage was out of sight, Kalmon looked up at the hot sky and down at the flagstones, and then made up his mind what to do.
"To the hospital of San Giovanni," he said, as he got into a cab.
He seemed to be well informed, for he inquired at the door about a certain Marcello Botti, who was in a private room; and when he gave his name he was admitted without even asking permission of the Superintendent, and was at once led upstairs.
"Are you a friend of his, sir?" asked Regina, when he had looked a long time at the patient, who did not recognise him in the least.
"Are you?" Kalmon looked at her quietly across the bed.
"You see," she answered. "If I were not, why should I be here?"
"She has saved my life," said Marcello suddenly, and he caught her hand in his and held it fast. "As soon as I am quite well we shall be married."
"Certainly, my dear boy, certainly," replied Kalmon, as if it were quite a matter of course. "You must make haste and get well as soon as possible."
He glanced at Regina's face, and as her eyes met his she shook her head almost imperceptibly, and smiled. Kalmon was not quite sure what she meant. He made a sign to her to go with him to the window, which was at some distance from the bed.
"It may be long before he is well," he whispered. "There must be an operation."
She nodded, for she knew that.
"And do you expect to marry him when he is recovered?"
She shook her head and laughed, glancing at Marcello.
"He is a gentleman," she whispered, close to Kalmon's ear. "How could he marry me?"
"You love him," Kalmon answered.
Again she nodded, and laughed too.
"What would you do for him?" asked Kalmon, looking at her keenly.
"Die for him!"
She meant it, and he saw that she did. Her eyes shone as she spoke, and then the lids drooped a little and she looked at him almost fiercely. He turned from her and his fingers softly tapped the marble window-sill. He was asking himself whether he could swear to Marcello's identity, in case he should be called upon to give evidence. On what could he base his certainty? Was he himself certain, or was he merely moved by the strong resemblance he saw, in spite of long illness and consequent emaciation? Was the visiting surgeon right in believing that the little depression in the skull had caused a suspension of memory? Such things happened, no doubt, but it also happened that doctors were mistaken and that nothing came of such operations. Who could prove the truth? The boy and girl might have a secret to keep; she might have arranged to get him into the hospital because it was his only chance, but the rest of the story, such as it was, might be a pure invention; and when Marcello was discharged cured, they would disappear together. There was the coincidence of the baptismal name, but men of science know how deceptive coincidences can be. Besides, the girl was very intelligent. She might easily have heard about the real Marcello's disappearance, and she was clever enough to have given her lover the name in the hope that he might be taken for the lost boy at least long enough to ensure him a great deal more comfort and consideration in the hospital than he otherwise would have got; she was clever enough to have seen that it would be a mistake to say outright that he was Marcello Consalvi, if she was practising a deception. Kalmon did not know what to think, and he wished the operation could be performed before Corbario came; but that was impossible.
Regina stood beside him, waiting for him to speak again.
"Do you need money?" he asked abruptly, with a sharp look at her face.
"No, thank you, sir," she answered. "He has everything here."
"But for yourself?" He kept his eyes on her.
"I thank you, sir, I want nothing." Her look met his almost coldly as she spoke.
"But when he is well again, how shall you live?"
"I shall work for him, if it turns out that he has no friends. We shall soon know, for his memory will come back after the operation. The doctors say so. They know."
"And if he has friends after all? If he is really the man I think he is, what then? What will become of you?"
"I do not know. I am his. He can do what he likes with me."
The Professor did not remember to have met any one who took quite such an elementary view of life, but he could not help feeling a sort of sympathy for the girl's total indifference to consequences.
"I shall come to see him again," he said presently, turning back towards the bed and approaching Marcello. "Are you quite sure that you never saw me before?" he asked, taking the young man's hand.
"I don't remember," answered Marcello, wearily. "They all want me to remember," he added almost peevishly. "I would if I could, if it were only to please them!"
Kalmon went away, for he saw that his presence tired the patient. When he was gone Regina sat down beside the bed and stroked Marcello's hand, and talked soothingly to him, promising that no one should tease him to remember things. By and by, as she sat, she laid her head on the pillow beside him, and her sweet breath fanned his face, while a strange light played in her half-closed eyes.
"Heart of my heart," she sighed happily. "Love of my soul! Do you know that I am all yours, soul and body, and earrings too?" And she laughed low.
"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," Marcello answered. "I love you!"
She laughed again, and kissed him.
"You love me better than Aurora," she said suddenly.
"Aurora?"
"Yes, for you have forgotten her. But you will not forget Regina now, not even when you are very, very old, and your golden hair is all grey. You will never forget Regina, now!"
"Never!" echoed Marcello, like a child. "Never, never, never!"
"Not even when your friends try to take me away from you, love, not even if they try to kill me, because they want you to marry Aurora, who is a rich girl, all dressed with silk and covered with jewels, like the image of the Madonna at Genazzano. I am sure Aurora has yellow hair and blue eyes!"
"I don't want any one but you," answered Marcello, drawing her face nearer.
So the time passed, and it was to them as if there were no time. Then the door opened again, and a very pale man in deep mourning was brought in by the Superintendent himself. Regina rose and drew back a little, so that the shadow should not fall across Marcello's face, and she fixed her eyes on the gentleman in black.
"This is the patient," said the Superintendent in a low voice.
Corbario laid his hand nervously on his companion's arm, and stood still for a moment, holding his breath and leaning forward a little, his gaze riveted on Marcello's face. Regina had never before seen a man transfixed with fear.
He moved a step towards the bed, and then another, forcing himself to go on. Then Marcello turned his head and looked at him vacantly. Regina heard the long breath Corbario drew, and saw his body straighten, as if relieved from a great burden. He stood beside the bed, and put out his hand to take Marcello's.
"Do you know me?" he asked; but even then his voice was unsteady.
Instead of answering, Marcello turned away to Regina.
"You promised that they should not tease me any more," he said querulously. "Make them go away! I want to sleep."
Regina came to his side at once, and faced the two men across the bed.
"What is all this for?" she asked, with a little indignation. "You know that he cannot remember you, even if he ever saw you before. Cannot you leave him in peace? Come back after the operation. Then he will remember you, if you really know him."
"Who is this girl?" asked Corbario of the Superintendent.
"She took care of him when he had the fever, and she managed to get him here. She has undoubtedly saved his life."
At the words a beautiful blush coloured Regina's cheeks, and her eyes were full of triumphant light; but at the same words Corbario's still face darkened, and as if it had been a mask that suddenly became transparent, the girl saw another face through it, drawn into an expression of malignant and devilish hatred.
[Illustration: "HE MOVED A STEP TOWARDS THE BED, AND THEN ANOTHER, FORCING HIMSELF TO GO ON."]
The vision only lasted a moment, and the impenetrable pale features were there once more, showing neither hate nor fear, nor any feeling or emotion whatever. Corbario was himself again, and turned quietly to the Superintendent.
"She is quite right," he said. "His memory is gone, and we shall only disturb him. You tell me that the doctors have found a very slight depression in his head, as if from a blow. Do you think--but it will annoy him--I had better not."
"What do you mean?" asked the other, as he hesitated.
"It is such a strange case that I should like to see just where it is, out of pure curiosity."
"It is here," said Regina, answering, and setting the tip of one straight finger against her own head to point out the place.
"Oh, at the back, on the right side? I see--yes--thank you. A little on one side, you say?"
"Here," repeated Regina, turning so that Corbario could see exactly where the end of her finger touched her hair.
"To think that so slight an injury may have permanently affected the young man's memory!" Corbario appeared much impressed. "Well," he continued, speaking to Regina, "if we ever find out who he is, his relations owe you a debt of gratitude quite beyond all payment."
"Do you think I want to be paid?" asked Regina, and in her indignation she turned away and walked to the window.
But Marcello called her back.
"Please, Regina--please tell them to go away!" he pleaded.
Corbario nodded to the Superintendent, and they left the room.
"There is certainly a strong resemblance," said Folco, when they were outside, "but it really cannot be my poor Marcello. I was almost too much affected by the thought of seeing him again to control myself when we first entered, but when I came near I felt nothing. It is not he, I am sure. I loved him as if he were my own son; I brought him up; we were always together. It is not possible that I should be mistaken."
"No," replied the Superintendent, "I should hardly think it possible. Besides, from what the girl has told me, I am quite sure that he lay ill near Tivoli. How is it possible that he should have got there, all the way from the Roman shore?"
"And with a fractured skull! It is absurd!" Corbario was glad to find that the Superintendent held such a strong opinion. "It is not Marcello. The nose is not the same, and the expression of the mouth is quite different."
He said these things with conviction, but he was not deceived. He knew that Marcello Consalvi was living and that he had seen him, risen from the dead, and apparently likely to remain among the living for some time. The first awful moment of anxiety was past, it was true, and Folco was able to think more connectedly than he had since he had received the telegram recalling him from Paris; but there was to be another. The doctors said that his memory would return--what would he remember? It would come back, beginning, most probably, at the very moment in which it had been interrupted. For one instant he would fancy that he saw again what he had seen then. What had he seen? That was the question. Had he seen anything but the sand, the scrubby bushes, and the trees round the cottage in the distance? Had he heard anything but the howling of the southwest gale and the thundering of the big surf over the bar and up the beach? The injury was at the back of his head, but it was a little on one side. Had he been in the act of turning? Had he turned far enough to see before the blow had extinguished memory? How far was the sudden going out of thought really instantaneous? What fraction of a second intervened between full life and what was so like death? How long did it take a man to look round quickly? Much less than a second, surely! Without effort or hurry a man could turn his head all the way from left to right, so as to look over each shoulder alternately, while a second pendulum swung once. A second was a much longer time than most people realised. Instruments made for scientific photography could be made to expose the plate not more than one-thousandth of a second. Corbario knew that, and wondered whether a man's eye could receive any impression in so short a time. He shuddered when he thought that it might be possible.
The question was to be answered sooner than he expected. The doctors had reported that a week must pass before Marcello would be strong enough to undergo the operation, but he improved so quickly after he reached the hospital that it seemed useless to wait. It was not considered to be a very dangerous operation, nor one which weakened the patient much.
Regina was not allowed to be present, and when Marcello had been wheeled out of his room, already under ether, she went and stood before the window, pressing down her clasped hands upon the marble sill with all her might, and resting her forehead against the green slats of the blind. She did not move from this position while the nurse made Marcello's bed ready to receive him on his return. It was long to wait. The great clock in the square struck eleven some time after he had been taken away, then the quarter, then half-past.
Regina felt the blood slowly sinking to her heart. She would have given anything to move now, but she could not stir hand or foot; she was cold, yet somehow she could not even shiver; that would have been a relief; any motion, any shock, any violent pain would have been a thousand times better than the marble stillness that was like a spell.
Far away on the Janiculum Folco Corbario sat in his splendid library alone, with strained eyes, waiting for the call of the telephone that stood on the polished table at his elbow. He, too, was motionless, and longed for release as he had never thought he could long for anything. A still unlighted cigar was almost bitten through by his sharp front teeth; every faculty was tense; and yet it was as if his brain had stopped thinking at the point where expectation had begun. He could not think now, he could only suffer. If the operation were successful there would be more suffering, doubt still more torturing, suspense more agonising still.
The great clock over the stables struck eleven, then the quarter, then half-past. The familiar chimes floated in through the open windows.
A wild hope came with the sound. Marcello, weak as he was, had died under ether, and that was the end. Corbario trembled from head to foot. The clock struck the third quarter, but no other sound broke the stillness of the near noon-tide. Yes, Marcello must be dead.
Suddenly, in the silence, came the sharp buzz of the instrument. He leapt in his seat as if something had struck him unawares, and then, instantly controlling himself, he grasped the receiver and held it to his ear.
"Signor Corbario?" came the question.
"Yes, himself."
"The hospital. The operation has been successful. Do you hear?"
"Yes. Go on."
"The patient has come to himself. He remembers everything."
"Everything!" Corbario's voice shook.
"He is Marcello Consalvi. He asks for his mother, and for you."
"How--in what way does he ask for me? Will my presence do him good--or excite him?"
The moment had come, and Folco's nerve was restored with the sense of danger. His face grew cold and expressionless as he waited for the answer.
"He speaks most affectionately of you. But you had better not come until this afternoon, and then you must not stay long. The doctors say he must rest quietly."
"I will come at four o'clock. Thank you. Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
The click of the instrument, as Folco hung the receiver on the hook, and it was over. He shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair, his arms hanging by his sides as if there were no strength in them, and his head falling forward till his chin rested on his chest. He remained so for a long time without moving.
But in the room at the hospital Marcello lay in bed with his head bound up, his cheek on the pillow, and his eyes fixed on Regina's face, as she knelt beside him and fanned him slowly, for it was hot.
"Sleep, heart of my heart," she said softly. "Sleep and rest!"
There was a sort of peaceful wonder in his look now. Nothing vacant, nothing that lacked meaning or understanding. But he did not answer her, he only gazed into her face, and gazed and gazed till his eyelids drooped and he fell asleep with a smile on his lips.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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Two years had passed since Marcello had been brought home from the hospital, very feeble still, but himself again and master of his memory and thoughts.
In his recollection, however, there was a blank. He had left Aurora standing in the gap, where the storm swept inland from the sea; then the light had gone out suddenly, in something violent which he could not understand, and after that he could remember nothing except that he had wandered in lonely places, trying to find out which way he was going, and terrified by the certainty that he had lost all sense of direction; so he had wandered on by day and night, as in a dark dream, and had at last fallen asleep, to wake in the wretched garret of the inn on the Frascati road, with Regina kneeling beside him and moistening his lips from a glass of water.
He remembered that and other things, which came back to him uncertainly, like the little incidents of his early childhood, like the first words he could remember hearing and answering, like the sensation of being on his mother's knee and resting his head upon her shoulder, like the smell of the roses and the bitter-orange blossoms in the villa, like the first sensation of being set upon a pony's back in San Domenico, while Corbario held him up in the saddle, and tried to make his little hands hold the bridle. The inn was quite as far away as all that, and but for Regina he might have forgotten it altogether.
She was "Consalvi's Regina" now; half Rome called her that, and she was famous. Naples and Florence and Milan had heard of her; she had been seen at Monte Carlo, and even in Paris and London her name was not unknown in places where young men congregate to discuss the wicked world, and where young women meet to compare husbands, over the secret and sacrificial teapot which represents virtue, or the less sacred bridge-table which represents vice. Smart young dandies who had never exchanged a word with her spoke of her familiarly as "Regina "; smarter and older men, who knew her a little, talked of her as "the Spalletta," not without a certain respect; their mothers branded her as "that creature," and their wives, who envied her, called her "Consalvi's Regina."
When people remonstrated with Folco Corbario for allowing his stepson too much liberty, he shook his head gravely and answered that he did what he could to keep Marcello in the right way, but that the boy's intellect had been shaken by the terrible accident, and that he had undoubtedly developed vicious tendencies--probably atavistic, Folco added. Why did Folco allow him to have so much money? The answer was that he was of age and the fortune was his. But why had Folco let him have it before he was twenty-one, ever since he was found and brought home? He had not had much, was the reply; at least it had not been much compared with the whole income he now enjoyed one could not bring up the heir of a great estate like a pauper, could one? So the questioners desisted from questioning, but they said among themselves that, although Folco had been an admirable husband and stepfather while his wife had lived, he had not shown as much good sense after her death as they had been led to expect. Meanwhile, no one had any right to interfere, and Marcello did as he pleased.
Children instinctively attach themselves to whichever of their parents gives them the most liberty. It is sheer nonsense to deny it. Marcello had loved his mother dearly, but she had always been the one to hinder him from doing what he wished to do, because she had been excessively anxious about his bodily health, and over-desirous of bringing him up to manhood in a state of ideal moral perfection. Folco, on the other hand, had been associated with all the boy's sports and pleasures, and had always encouraged him to amuse himself, giving as a reason that there was no medicine like healthy happiness for a boy of delicate constitution. Corbario, like Satan, knew the uses of truth, which are numerous and not all good. Though Marcello would not have acknowledged it to himself, his stepfather had been nearer to him, and more necessary to him, than his mother, during several years; and besides, it was less hard to bear the loss of which he learned when he recovered, because it had befallen him during that dark and uncertain period of his illness that now seemed as if it had lasted for years, and whereby everything that had been before it belonged to a remote past.
Moreover, there was Regina, and there was youth, and there was liberty; and Corbario was at hand, always ready to encourage and satisfy his slightest whim, on the plea that a convalescent must be humoured at any cost, and that there would be time enough to consider what should be done with Regina after Marcello was completely recovered. After all, Corbario told him, the girl had saved his life, and it was only right to be grateful, and she should be amply rewarded for all the trouble she had taken. It would have been sheer cruelty to have sent her away to the country; and what was the cost of a quiet lodging for her in Trastevere, and of a few decent clothes, and of a respectable middle-aged woman-servant to take care of her? Nothing at all; only a few francs, and Marcello was so rich! Regina, also, was so very unusually well-behaved, and so perfectly docile, so long as she was allowed to see Marcello every day! She did not care for dress at all, and was quite contented to wear black, with just a touch of some tender colour. Corbario made it all very easy, and saw to everything, and he seemed to know just how such things were arranged. He was so fortunate as to find a little house that had a quiet garden with an entrance on another street, all in very good condition because it had lately been used by a famous foreign painter who preferred to live in Trastevere, away from the interruptions and distractions of the growing city; and by a very simple transaction the house became the property of the minor, Marcello Consalvi, to do with as he thought fit. This was much more convenient than paying rent to a tiresome landlord who might at any time turn his tenant out. Corbario thought of everything. Twice a week a gardener came, early in the morning, and soon the garden was really pretty; and the respectable woman-servant watered the flowers every evening just before sunset. There was a comfortable Calcutta chair for Marcello in a shady corner, the very first time he came there, and Regina had learned how to make tea for him; for the respectable woman-servant knew how to do all sorts of things belonging to civilised life. She was so intensely respectable and quiet that Marcello was almost afraid of her, until it occurred to him that as she took so much trouble, he ought to give her a present of money; and when he had done this twice, he somehow became aware that she was his devoted slave--middle-aged and excessively respectable. Folco was really a very good judge of character, Marcello thought, since he could at once pick out such a person from the great horde of the unemployed.
Her name was Settimia, and it was wonderful to see how she quietly transformed Regina into a civilised creature, who must attract attention by her beauty and carriage, but who might have belonged to a middle-class Roman family so far as manners and dress were concerned. It is true that the girl possessed by nature the innate dignity of the Roman peasant, with such a figure and such grace as any aristocrat might have envied, and that she spoke with the Roman accent which almost all other Italians admire; but though her manners had a certain repose, they were often of an extremely unexpected nature, and she had an astonishingly simple way of calling things by their names which sometimes disconcerted Marcello and sometimes amused him. Settimia civilised her, almost without letting her know it, for she was quick to learn, like all naturally clever people who have had no education, and she was imitative, as all womanly women are when they are obliged to adapt themselves quickly to new surroundings. She was stimulated, too, by the wish to appear well before Marcello, lest he should ever be ashamed of her. That was all. She never had the least illusion about herself, nor any hope of raising herself to his social level. She was far too much the real peasant girl for that, the descendant of thirty or more generations of serfs, the offspring of men and women who had felt that they belonged body and soul to the feudal lord of the land on which they were born, and had never been disturbed by tempting dreams of liberty, equality, fraternity, and the violent destruction of ladies and gentlemen.
So she lived, and so she learned many things of Settimia, and looked upon herself as the absolute property of the man she loved and had saved; and she was perfectly happy, if not perfectly good.
"When I am of age," Marcello used to say, "I shall buy a beautiful little palace near the Tiber, and you shall live in it."
"Why?" she always asked. "Are we not happy here? Is it not cool in summer, and sunny in winter? Have we not all we want? When you marry, your wife will live in the splendid villa on the Janiculum, and when you are tired of her, you will come and see Regina here. I hope you will always be tired of her. Then I shall be happy."
Marcello would laugh a little, and then he would look grave and thoughtful, for he had not forgotten Aurora, and sometimes wondered what she was doing, as a young man does who is losing his hold upon himself, and on the things in which he has always believed. He who has never lived through such times and outlived them, knows neither the world nor himself.
Marcello wondered whether Aurora would ever meet Regina face to face, and what would happen if he were called upon to choose between the two. He would choose Regina, he said to himself, when he was going down the steep way from the villa to the little house, eager for her touch, her voice, her breath, and feeling in his pocket the key that opened the garden gate. But when the hours had passed, and he slowly walked up the road under the great plane-trees, in the cool of the late evening, glancing at the distant lights of Rome beyond the Tiber, and dimly conscious that something was still unsatisfied, then he hesitated and he remembered his boyish love, and fancied that if he met Aurora in the way they would stand still, each finding the other in the other's eyes, and silently kiss, as they had kissed long ago. Yet, with the thought, he felt shame, and he blushed, alone there under the plane-trees.
But Aurora had never come back to Rome, and the small apartment that overlooked the Forum of Trajan had other tenants. It was strange that the Contessa and her daughter should not have returned, and sometimes Marcello felt a great longing to see them. He said "them" to himself at such times, but he knew what he meant.
So time went on. Corbario said that he himself must really go to San Domenico, to look after the Calabrian property, but added that it would be quite useless for Marcello to go with him. Marcello could stay in Rome and amuse himself as he pleased, or he might make a little journey to the north, to Switzerland, to the Tyrol--there were so many places. Settimia would take care of Regina, and perhaps Regina herself had better make a little trip for a change. Yes, Settimia had travelled a good deal; she even knew enough French to travel in a foreign country, if necessary. Corbario said that he did not know where she had learned French, but he was quite sure she knew it tolerably well. Regina would be safe under her care, in some quiet place where the air would do her good.
Thereupon Corbario went off to the south, leaving Marcello plentifully supplied with money and promising to write to him. They parted affectionately.
"If you wish to go away," Corbario said, as he was leaving, "it might be as well to leave your next address, so that you may get letters. But please don't fancy that I want to know everything you do, my dear boy. You are quite old enough to take care of yourself, and quite sensible enough, too. The only thing you had better avoid for a few years is marriage!"
Folco laughed softly as he delivered this piece of advice, and lit a cigar. Then he looked critically at Marcello.
"You are still very pale," he observed thoughtfully. "You have not got back all your strength yet. Drink plenty of champagne at luncheon and dinner. There is nothing like it when a man is run down. And don't sit up all night smoking cigarettes more than three times a week!"
He laughed again as he shook hands and got into the carriage, and Marcello was glad when he was gone, though he was so fond of him. It was a bore to be told that he was not strong, because it certainly was true, and, besides, even Folco was sometimes a little in the way.
In a week Marcello and Regina were in Venice; a month later they were in Paris. The invaluable Settimia knew her way about, and spoke French with a fluency that amazed Marcello; she even taught Regina a few of those phrases which are particularly useful at a dressmaker's and quite incomprehensible anywhere else. Marcello told her to see that Regina was perfectly dressed, and Settimia carried out his instructions with taste and wisdom. Regina had arrived in Paris with one box of modest dimensions; she left with four more, of a size that made the railway porters stagger.
One day Marcello brought home a string of pearls in his pocket, and tried to fasten it round her throat; but she would not let him do it. She was angry.
"Keep those things for your wife!" she said, with flashing eyes and standing back from him. "I will wear the clothes you buy for me, because you like me to be pretty and I don't want you to be ashamed of me. But I will not take jewels, for jewels are money, just as gold is! You can buy a wife with that stuff, not a woman who loves you!"
Her brows were level and stern, her face grew whiter as she spoke, and Marcello was suddenly aware, for the first time in his life, that he did not understand women. That knowledge comes sooner or later to almost every man, but many are spared it until they are much older than he was.
"I did not mean to offend you," he said, in a rather injured tone, as he slipped the pearls into his pocket.
"Of course not," she answered. "But you do not understand. If I thought you did, I would go back to the inn and never see you again. I should die, but it would not matter, for I should still respect myself!"
"I only wished to please you," said Marcello apologetically.
"You wish to please me? Love me! That is what I want. Love me as much as you can, it will always be less than I love you, and as long as you can, it will always be less long than I shall love you, for that will be always. And when you are tired of me, tell me so, heart of my heart, and I will go away, for that is better than to hang like a chain on a young man's neck. I will go away, and God will forgive me, for to love you is all I know."
His kisses closed her flashing eyes, and her lips parted in a faint, expectant smile, that was not disappointed.
So time passed, and Marcello heard occasionally from Corbario, and wrote to him once or twice, when he needed money. Folco never alluded to Regina, and Marcello wondered whether he guessed that she had left Rome. He was never quite sure how much Folco knew of his life, and Folco was careful never to ask questions.
But the existence Marcello was leading was not calculated to restore his strength, which had never been great, even before his illness. Though Regina did not understand the language, she grew very fond of the theatre, for Marcello translated and explained everything; and it was such a pleasure to give her pleasure, that he forgot the stifling air and the late hours. Moreover, he met in Paris a couple of acquaintances a little older than himself, who were only too glad to see something of the beautiful Regina, so that there were often supper-parties after the play, and trips in motorcars in the morning, horse races in the afternoon, and all manner of amusements, with a general tendency to look upon sleep as a disease to be avoided and the wish to rest as a foolish weakness. It was true that Marcello never coughed, but he was very thin, and his delicate face had grown perfectly colourless, though he followed Corbario's advice and drank a good deal of champagne, not to mention other less harmless things, because the quick stimulant was as pleasant as a nap and did not involve such a waste of time.
As for Regina, the life suited her, at least for a while, and her beauty was refined rather than marred by a little bodily weariness. The splendid blush of pleasure rarely rose in her cheeks now, but the clear pallor of her matchless complexion was quite as lovely. The constitution of a healthy Roman peasant girl does not break down easily under a course of pleasure and amusement, and it might never have occurred to Regina that Marcello was almost exhausted already, if her eyes had not been opened to his condition by some one else.
They were leaving the Théâtre Français one evening, intending to go home on foot as the night was fine and warm. They had seen _Hernani_, and Regina had naturally found it hard to understand the story, even with Marcello's explanations; the more so as he himself had never seen the play before, and had come to the theatre quite sure that it must be easily comprehensible from the opera founded on it, which he had heard. Regina's arm was passed through his, and as they made their way through the crowd, under the not very brilliant lights in the portico, Marcello was doing his best to make the plot of the piece clear, and Regina was looking earnestly into his face, trying to follow what he said. Suddenly he heard an Italian voice very near to him, calling him by name, in a tone of surprise.
"Marcello!"
He started, straightened himself, turned his head, and faced the Contessa dell' Armi. Close beside her was Aurora, leaning forward a little, with an expression of cold curiosity; she had already seen Regina, who did not withdraw her hand from Marcello's arm.
"You here?" he cried, recovering himself quickly.
As he spoke, the Contessa realised the situation, and at the same moment Marcello met Aurora's eyes. Regina felt his arm drop by his side, as if he were disowning her in the presence of these two smart women who were friends of his. She forgave him, for she was strangely humble in some ways, but she hated them forthwith.
The Contessa, who was a woman of the world, nodded quietly and smiled as if she had seen nothing, but she at once began to steer her daughter in a divergent direction.
"You are looking very ill," she said, turning her head back as she moved away. "Come and see us."
"Where?" asked Marcello, making half a step to follow, and looking at the back of Aurora's head and at the pretty hat she wore.
The Contessa named a quiet hotel in the Rue Saint Honoré, and was gone in the crowd. Marcello stood quite still for a moment, staring after the two. Then he felt Regina's hand slipping through his arm.
"Come," she said softly, and she led him away to the left.
He did not speak for a long time. They turned under the arches into the Palais Royal, and followed the long portico in silence, out to the Rue Vivienne and the narrow Rue des Petits Champs. Still Marcello did not speak, and without a word they reached the Avenue de l'Opéra. The light was very bright there, and Regina looked long at Marcello's face, and saw how white it was.
"She said you were looking very ill," said she, in a voice that shook a little.
"Nonsense!" cried Marcello, rousing himself. "Shall we have supper at Henry's or at the Café de Paris? We are near both."
"We will go home," Regina answered. "I do not want any supper to-night."
They reached their hotel. Regina tossed her hat upon a chair in the sitting-room and drew Marcello to the light, holding him before her, and scrutinising his face with extraordinary intensity. Suddenly her hands dropped from his shoulders.
"She was right; you are ill. Who is this lady that knows your face better than I?"
She asked the question in a tone of bitterness and self-reproach.
"The Contessa dell' Armi," Marcello answered, with a shade of reluctance.
"And the girl?" asked Regina, in a flash of intuition.
"Her daughter Aurora." He turned away, lit a cigarette, and rang the bell.
Regina bit her lip until it hurt her, for she remembered how often he had pronounced that name in his delirium, many months ago. She could not speak for a moment. A waiter came in answer to the bell, and Marcello ordered something, and then sat down. Regina went to her room and did not return until the servant had come back and was gone again, leaving a tray on the table.
"What is the matter?" asked Marcello in surprise, as he caught sight of her face.
She sat down at a little distance, her eyes fixed on him.
"I am a very wicked woman," she said, in a dull voice.
"You?" Marcello laughed and filled the glasses.
"I am letting you kill yourself to amuse me," Regina said. "I am a very, very wicked woman. But you shall not do it any more. We will go away at once."
"I am perfectly well," Marcello answered, holding out a glass to her; but she would not take it.
"I do not want wine to-night," she said. "It is good when one has a light heart, but my heart is as heavy as a stone. What am I good for? Kill me. It will be better. Then you will live."
"I should have died without you long ago. You saved my life."
"To take it again! To let you consume yourself, so that I may see the world! What do I care for the world, if you are not well? Let us go away quickly."
"Next week, if you like."
"No! To-morrow!"
"Without waiting to hear Melba?"
"Yes--to-morrow!"
"Or Sarah Bernhardt in Sardou's new play?"
"To-morrow! To-morrow morning, early! What is anything compared with your getting well?"
"And your new summer costume that Doucet has not finished? How about that?"
Marcello laughed gaily and emptied his glass. But Regina rose and knelt down beside him, laying her hands on his.
"We must go to-morrow," she said. "You shall say where, for you know what countries are near Paris, and where there are hills, and trees, and waterfalls, and birds that sing, where the earth smells sweet when it rains, and it is quiet when the sun is high. We will go there, but you know where it is, and how far."
"I have no doubt Settimia knows," laughed Marcello. "She knows everything."
But Regina's face was grave, and she shook her head slowly.
"What is the use of laughing?" she asked. "You cannot deceive me, you know you cannot! I deceived myself and was blind, but my eyes are open now, and I can only see the truth. Do you love me, Marcello?"
His eyes looked tired a moment ago, even when he laughed, but the light came into them now. He breathed a little faster and bent forward to kiss her. She could feel the rising pulse in his thin hands. But she leaned back as she knelt, and pressed her lips together tightly.
"Not that," she said, after they had both been motionless ten seconds. "I don't mean that! Love is not all kisses. There is more. There are tears, but there is more too. There is pain, there is doubting, there is jealousy, and more than that! There is avarice also, for a woman who loves is a miser, counting her treasure when others sleep. And she would kill any one who robbed her, and that is murder. Yet there is more, there are all the mortal sins in love, and even then there is worse. For there is this. She will not count her own soul for him she loves, no, not if the saints in Paradise came down weeping and begging her to think of her salvation. And that is a great sin, I suppose."
Marcello looked at her, thinking that she was beautiful, and he said nothing.
"But perhaps a man cannot love like that," she added presently. "So what is the use of my asking you whether you love me? You love Aurora too, I daresay! Such as your man's love is, and of its kind, you have enough for two!"
Marcello smiled.
"I do not love Aurora now," he said.
"But you have, for you talked to her in your fever, and perhaps you will again, or perhaps you wish to marry her. How can I tell what you think? She is prettier than I, for she has fair hair. I knew she had. I hate fair women, but they are prettier than we dark things ever are. All men think so. What does it matter? It was I that saved your life when you were dying, and the people meant you to die. I shall always have that satisfaction, even when you are tired of me."
"Say never, then!"
"Never? Yes, if I let you stay here, you will not have time to be tired of me, for you will grow thinner and whiter, and one day you will be breathing, and not breathing, and breathing a little again, and then not breathing at all, and you will be lying dead with your head on my arm. I can see how it will be, for I thought more than once that you were dead, just like that, when you had the fever. No! If I let that happen you will never be tired of me while you are alive, and when you are dead Aurora cannot have you. Perhaps that would be better. I would almost rather have it so."
"Then why should we go away?" asked Marcello, smiling a little.
"Because to let you die would be a great sin, much worse than losing my soul for you, or killing some one to keep you. Don't you see that?"
"Why would it be worse?"
"I do not know, but I am sure it would. Perhaps because it would be losing your soul instead of mine. Who knows? It is not in the catechism. The catechism has nothing about love, and I never learned anything else. But I know things that I never learned. Every woman does. How? The heart says them, and they are true. Where shall we go to-morrow?"
"Do you really want to leave Paris?"
To impress upon him that she was in earnest Regina squeezed his hands together in hers with such energy that she really hurt him.
"What else have I been saying for half an hour?" she asked impatiently. "Do you think I am playing a comedy?" She laughed. "Remember that I have carried you up and down stairs in my arms," she added, "and I could do it again!"
"If you insist on going away, I will walk," Marcello answered with a laugh.
She laughed too, as she rose to her feet. He put out his hand to fill his glass again, but she stopped him.
"No," she said, "the wine keeps you awake, and makes you think you are stronger than you are. You shall sleep to-night, and to-morrow we will go. I am so glad it is settled!"
She could do what she would with him, and so it turned out that Marcello left Paris without going to see the Contessa and Aurora; and when he was fairly away he felt that it was a relief not to be able to see them, since it would have been his duty to do so if he had stayed another day. Maddalena dell' Armi had not believed that he would come, but she stopped at home that afternoon on the bare possibility. Aurora made up her mind that if he came she would shut herself up in her own room. She expected that he would certainly call before the evening, and was strangely disappointed because he did not.
"Who was that lady with him last night?" she asked of her mother.
"I do not know that--lady," answered the Contessa, with a very slight hesitation before pronouncing the last word.
But they had both heard of Regina already.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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The Contessa wrote to Corbario two days later, addressing her letter to Rome, as she did not know where he was. It was not like her to meddle in the affairs of other people, or to give advice, but this was a special case, and she felt that something must be done to save Marcello; for she was a woman of the world, with much experience and few illusions, and she understood at a glance what was happening to her dead friend's son. She wrote to Folco, telling him of the accidental meeting in the portico of the Théâtre Français, describing Marcello's looks, and saying pretty clearly what she thought of the extremely handsome young woman who was with him.
Now Paris is a big city, and it chanced that Corbario himself was there at that very time. Possibly he had kept out of Marcello's way for some reason of his own, but he had really not known that the Contessa was there. Her letter was forwarded from Rome and reached him four days after it was written. He read it carefully, tore it into several dozen little bits, looked at his watch, and went at once to the quiet hotel in the Rue Saint Honoré. The Contessa was alone, Aurora having gone out with her mother's maid.
Maddalena was glad to see him, not because she liked him, for she did not, but because it would be so much easier to talk of what was on her mind than to write about it.
"I suppose you are surprised to see me," said Folco, after the first conventional greeting.
"No, for one may meet any one in Paris, at any time of the year. When I wrote, I thought Marcello must be alone here--I mean, without you," she added.
"I did not know he had been here, until I heard that he was gone. He left three or four days ago. I fancy that when you wrote your letter he was already gone."
"Do you let him wander about Europe as he pleases?" asked the Contessa.
"He is old enough to take care of himself," answered Corbario. "There is nothing worse for young men than running after them and prying into their affairs. I say, give a young fellow his independence as soon as possible. If he has been brought up in a manly way, with a feeling of self-respect, it can only do him good to travel alone. That is the English way, you know, and always succeeds."
"Not always, and besides, we are not English. It is not 'succeeding,' as you call it, in Marcello's case. He will not live long, if you let him lead such a life."
"Oh, he is stronger than he looks! He is no more threatened with consumption than I am, and a boy who can live through what happened to him two years ago can live through anything."
Not a muscle of his face quivered as he looked quietly into the Contessa's eyes. He was quite sure that she did not suspect him of having been in any way concerned in Marcello's temporary disappearance.
"Suppose him to be as strong as the strongest," Maddalena answered. "Put aside the question of his health. There is something else that seems to me quite as important."
"The moral side?" Corbario smiled gravely. "My dear lady, you and I know the world, don't we? We do not expect young men to be saints!"
Maddalena, who had not always been a saint, returned his look coldly.
"Let us leave the saints out of the discussion," she said, "unless we speak of Marcello's mother. She was one, if any one ever was. I believe you loved her, and I know that I did, and I do still, for she is very real to me, even now. Don't you owe something to her memory? Don't you know how she would have felt if she could have met her son the other night, as I met him, looking as he looked? Don't you know that it would have hurt her as nothing else could? Think a moment!"
She paused, waiting for his answer and watching his impenetrable face, that did not change even when he laughed, that could not change, she thought; but she had not seen him by Marcello's bedside at the hospital, when the mask had been gone for a few seconds. It was there now, in all its calm stillness.
"You may be right," he answered, almost meekly, after a little pause. "I had not looked at it in that light. You see, I am not a very sensitive man, and I was brought up rather roughly. My dear wife went to the other extreme, of course. No one could really be what she wished to make Marcello. He felt that himself, though I honestly did all I could to make him act according to his mother's wishes. But now that she is gone--" he broke off, and was silent a moment. "You may be right," he repeated, shaking his head thoughtfully. "You are a very good woman, and you ought to know."
She leaned back in her chair, and looked at him in silence, wondering whether she was not perhaps doing him a great injustice; yet his voice rang false to her ear, and the old conviction that he had never loved his wife came back with increased force and with the certainty that he had been playing a part for years without once breaking down.
"I will join Marcello, and see what I can do," he said.
"Do you know where he is?"
"Oh, yes! He keeps me informed of his movements; he is very good about writing. You know how fond of each other we are, too, and I am sure he will be glad to see me. He is back in Italy by this time. He was going to Siena. We were to have met in Rome in about a month, to go down to San Domenico together, but I will join him at once."
"If you find that--that young person with him, what shall you do?"
"Send her about her business, of course," answered Folco promptly.
"Suppose that she will not go, what then?"
"It can only be a question of money, my dear lady. Leave that to me. Marcello is not the first young fellow who has been in a scrape!"
Still Maddalena did not trust him, and she merely nodded with an air of doubt.
"Shall I not see Aurora?" he asked suddenly.
"She is out," answered the Contessa. "I will tell her that you asked after her."
"Is she as beautiful as ever?" inquired Folco.
"She is a very pretty girl."
"She is beautiful," Folco said, with conviction. "I have never seen such a beautiful girl as she was, even when she was not quite grown up. No one ever had such hair and such eyes, and such a complexion!"
"Dear me!" exclaimed Maddalena with a little surprise. "I had no idea that you thought her so good-looking!"
"I always did. As for Marcello, we used to think he would never have eyes for any one else."
"Young people who have known each other well as children rarely fall in love when they grow up," answered Maddalena.
"So much the better," Folco said. "Aurora and Marcello are not at all suited to one another."
"That is true," answered the Contessa.
"And besides, he is much too young for her. They are nearly of the same age."
"I never thought of their marrying," replied Maddalena, with a little emphasis, "and I should certainly not choose this time to think of it!"
"I fancy few men can look at your daughter without wishing that they might marry her, my dear lady," said Corbario, rising to go away. "Pray present my homage to her, and tell her how very sorry I am not to have seen her."
He smiled as if he were only half in earnest, and he took his leave. He was scarcely gone when Aurora entered the sitting-room by another door.
"Was it Marcello?" she asked quietly enough, though her voice sounded a little dull.
"No, dear," answered her mother. "It was Folco Corbario. I wrote to him some days ago and he came to see me. Marcello has left Paris. I did not know you had come home."
Aurora sat down rather wearily, pulled out her hatpins, and laid her hat on her knee. Then she slowly turned it round and round, examining every inch of it with profound attention, as women do. They see things in hats which we do not.
"Mamma--" Aurora got no further, and went on turning the hat round.
"Yes? What were you going to say?"
"Nothing--I have forgotten." The hat revolved steadily. "Are we going to stay here long?"
"No. Paris is too expensive. When we have got the few things we want we will go back to Italy--next week, I should think."
"I wish we were rich," observed Aurora.
"I never heard you say that before," answered her mother. "But after all, wishing does no harm, and I am silly enough to wish we were rich too."
"If I married Marcello, I should be very rich," said Aurora, ceasing to turn the hat, but still contemplating it critically.
Maddalena looked at her daughter in some surprise. The girl's face was quite grave.
"You had better think of getting rich in some other way, my dear," said the Contessa presently, with an asperity that did not escape Aurora, but produced no impression on her.
"I was only supposing," she said. "But if it comes to that, it would be much better for him to marry me than that good-looking peasant girl he has picked up."
The Contessa sat up straight and stared at her in astonishment. There was a coolness in the speech that positively horrified her.
"My dear child!" she cried. "What in the world are you talking about?"
"Regina," answered Aurora, looking up, and throwing the hat upon the table. "I am talking about Marcello's Regina. Did you suppose I had never heard of her, and that I did not guess that it was she, the other night? I had a good look at her. I hate her, but she is handsome. You cannot deny that."
"I do not deny it, I'm sure!" The Contessa hardly knew what to say.
"Very well. Would it not be much better for Marcello if he married me than if he let Regina marry him, as she will!"
"I--possibly--you put it so strangely! But I am sure Marcello will never think of marrying her."
"Then why does he go about with her, and what is it all for?" Aurora gazed innocently at her mother, waiting for an answer which did not come. "Besides," she added, "the girl will marry him, of course."
"Perhaps. I daresay you are right, and after all, she may be in love with him. Why should you care, child?"
"Because he used to be my best friend," Aurora answered demurely. "Is it wrong to take an interest in one's friends? And I still think of him as my friend, though I have never had a chance to speak to him since that day by the Roman shore, when he went off in a rage because I laughed at him. I wonder whether he has forgotten that! They say he lost his memory during his illness."
"What a strange girl you are! You have hardly ever spoken of him in all this time, and now"--the Contessa laughed as if she thought the idea absurd--"and now you talk of marrying him!"
"I have seen Regina," Aurora replied, as if that explained everything.
The Contessa returned no answer, and she was rather unusually silent and preoccupied during the rest of that day. She was reflecting that if Aurora had not chanced to meet Marcello just when Regina was with him the girl might never have thought of him again, except with a half-amused recollection of the little romantic tenderness she had once felt for the friend and playfellow of her childhood. Maddalena was a wise woman now, and did not underestimate the influence of little things when great ones were not far off. That is a very important part of worldly wisdom, which is the science of estimating chances in a game of which love, hate, marriage, fortune, and social life and death may be the stakes.
Her impulse was to prevent Aurora from seeing Marcello for a long time, for the thought of a possible marriage had never attracted her, and since the appearance of Regina on the scene every instinct of her nature was against it. Her pride revolted at the idea that her daughter might be the rival of a peasant girl, quite as much as at the possibility of its being said that she had captured her old friend's son for the sake of his money. But she remembered her own younger years and she judged Aurora by herself. There had been more in that little romantic tenderness for Marcello than any one had guessed, much of it had remained, it had perhaps grown instead of dying out, and the sight of Regina had awakened it to something much stronger than a girlish fancy.
Maddalena remembered little incidents now, of which the importance had escaped her the more easily because the loss of her dearest friend had made her dull and listless at the time. Aurora had scarcely asked about Marcello during the weeks that followed his disappearance, but she had often looked pale and almost ill just then. She had been better after the news had come that he had been found, though she had barely said that she was glad to hear of him. Then she had grown more restless than she used to be, and there had sometimes been a dash of hardness in the things she said; and her mother was now quite sure that Aurora had intentionally avoided all mention of Marcello. To-day, she had suddenly made that rather startling remark about marrying him. All this proved clearly enough that he had been continually in her thoughts. When very young people take unusual pains to ignore a certain subject, and then unexpectedly blurt out some very rough observation about it, the chances are that they have been thinking of nothing else for a long time.
A good deal had happened on that afternoon, for what Corbario had said about Aurora, half playfully and half in earnest, had left Maddalena under the impression that he had been trying a little experiment on his own account, to feel his way. Aurora had more than once said in the preceding years that she did not like his eyes and a certain way he had of looking at her. He had admired her, even then, and now that he was a widower it was not at all unlikely that he should think of marrying her. He was not much more than thirty years old, and he had a singularly youthful face. There was no objection on the score of his age. He was rich, at least for his life-time. He had always been called a model husband while his wife had been alive, and was said to have behaved with propriety since. Maddalena tried to look at the matter coolly and dispassionately, as if she did not instinctively dislike him. Why should he not wish to marry Aurora? No one of the Contessa's acquaintances would be at all surprised if he did, and most people would say that it was a very good match, and that Aurora was fortunate to get such a husband.
This was precisely what Folco thought; and as it was his nature to think slowly and act quickly, it is not impossible that he may have revolved the plan in his mind for a year or two while Aurora was growing up. The final decision had perhaps been reached on that evening down by the Roman shore, when Professor Kalmon had held up to his eyes the sure means of taking the first step towards its accomplishment; and it had been before him late on the same night when he had stood still in the verandah holding the precious and terrible little tablet in the hollow of his hand; and the next morning when he had suddenly seen Marcello close before him, unconscious of his presence and defenceless. He had run a great risk in vain that day, since Marcello was still alive, a risk more awful than he cared to remember now; but it had been safely passed, and he must never do anything so dangerous again. There was a far safer and surer way of gaining his end than clumsy murder, and from what the Contessa had told him of the impression she had received the accomplishment was not far off. She had said that Marcello had looked half dead; his delicate constitution could not bear such a life much longer, and he would soon be dead in earnest.
Marcello did not write as regularly as Folco pretended, but the latter had trustworthy and regular news of him from some one else. Twice a week, wherever he might be, a square envelope came by the post addressed in a rather cramped feminine hand, the almost unmistakable writing of a woman who had seen better days and had been put to many shifts in order to keep up some sort of outward respectability. The information conveyed was tolerably well expressed, in grammatical Italian; the only names contained in the letters were those of towns, and hotels, and the like, and Marcello was invariably spoken of as "our dear patient," and Regina as "that admirable woman" or "that ideal companion." The writer usually said that the dear patient seemed less strong than a month ago, or a week ago, and expressed a fear that he was slowly losing ground. Sometimes he was better, and the news was accompanied by a conventional word or two of satisfaction. Again, there would be a detailed account of his doings, showing that he had slept uncommonly little and had no appetite, and mentioning with a show of regret the sad fact that he lived principally on cigarettes, black coffee, and dry champagne. The ideal companion seemed to be always perfectly well, showed no tendency to be extravagant, and gave proof of the most constant devotion. The writer always concluded by promising that Corbario's instructions with regard to the dear patient should be faithfully carried out in future as they had been in the past.
This was very reassuring, and Folco often congratulated himself on the wisdom he had shown in the selection of Settimia as a maid for Regina. The woman not only did what was required of her with the utmost exactitude; she took an evident pleasure in her work, and looked forward to the fatal result at no very distant time with all the satisfaction which Corbario could desire. So far everything had gone smoothly.
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It was high summer again, and the Roman shore was feverish. In the hot afternoon Ercole had tramped along the shore with his dog at his heels as far as Torre San Lorenzo to have a chat with the watchman. They sat in the shade of the tower, smoking little red clay pipes with long wooden stems. The chickens walked about slowly, evidently oppressed by the heat and by a general lack of interest in life, since not a single grain of maize from the morning feed remained to be discovered on the disused brick threshing-floor or in the sand that surrounded it. From some dark recess came the occasional grunt of the pig, attending in solitude to the business of getting fat before October. Now and then the watchman's wife moved a chair in the lower room of the tower, or made a little clatter with some kitchen utensils, and the sounds came out to the solitude sharply and distinctly.
There had been a flat calm for several days. Forty yards below the tower the sea lay along the sandy beach like a strip of glistening white glass, beyond which was a broader band of greenish blue that did not glitter; and beyond that, the oily water stretched out to westward in an unending expanse of neutral tints, arabesqued with current streaks and struck right across by the dazzling dirty-white blaze of the August sun.
Swarms of flies chased each other where the two men sat, settled on their backs and dusty black hats, tried to settle on their faces and were brushed away, crawled on the ground, on the walls, even on the chickens, and on the rough coat of Nino, the dog. He followed the motions of those he saw before him with one bloodshot eye; the other seemed to be fast asleep.
From time to time the men exchanged a few words. Ercole had apparently come over to enjoy the novelty of seeing a human being, and Padre Francesco, the watchman, was glad to talk with some one besides his wife. He enjoyed the title of "Padre," because he had once been master of a small martingane that traded between Cività Vecchia and the south. In still earlier days he had been in deep water and had been boatswain of a square-rigger, yet there was nothing about his appearance now to show that he had been a sailor man. It was ten years since he had left the sea, and he had turned into a peasant.
Ercole had told Padre Francesco that the second hay crop had been half spoilt by thunderstorms; also that the price of wine in Ardea had gone up, while the price of polenta had remained the same; also that a wild boar had broken out of the king's preserves near Nettuno and was supposed to be wandering in the brush not far away; also that if Ercole and Nino found him they would kill him, and that there would be a feast. Padre Francesco observed that his wife understood the cooking of wild boar with vinegar, sugar, pine-nuts, and sweet herbs, and that he himself knew how to salt the hams; he had also salted the flesh of porpoises at sea, more than once, and had eaten pickled dog-fish, which he considered to be nothing but young sharks, in the West Indies. This did not interest Ercole much, as he had heard it before, and he smoked in silence for a while. So did Padre Francesco; and both brushed away the flies. Nino rolled one bloodshot eye at his master, every time the latter moved; and it grew excessively hot, and the air smelt of chickens, rotten seaweed, and the pig. Yet both men were enjoying themselves after a fashion, though Ercole distrusted Padre Francesco, as he distrusted all human beings, and Padre Francesco looked upon Ercole as a person having no knowledge of the world, because he had never eaten pickled dog-fish in the West Indies.
After a time, Padre Francesco remembered a piece of news which he had not yet told, cleared his throat, stirred the contents of his pipe with the point of a dangerous-looking knife, and looked at his companion for a full minute.
"Speak," said Ercole, who understood these premonitory signs.
"There has been one here who asked after you," Padre Francesco began.
"What species of Christian?" inquired Ercole.
"He was at the cottage when the blessed soul of the Signora departed, or just before that. It is a big gentleman with a brown beard and bright eyes. He looks for things in the sand and in the bushes and amongst the seaweed. Who knows what he looks for? Perhaps he looks for gold."
"Or the souls of his dead," suggested Ercole with fine irony. "But I know this Signore who was at the cottage, with the brown beard and the bright eyes. He sometimes came to shoot quail. He also killed some. He is a professor of wisdom."
"He asked if I knew you, but of course I said I did not. Why should he ask? How could I know what he wanted of you. I said that I had never heard of you."
"You did well. Those who have business with me know where to find me. What else did he say?"
"He asked if I had seen the young gentleman this year, and he told me that he had not seen him since the night before he was lost. So then I knew that he was a gentleman of some kind, since he had been at the cottage. I also asked if your masters were never coming to the Roman shore again."
"What did he answer?" inquired Ercole, with an air of utter indifference.
"He said an evil thing. He said that your young gentleman had gone off to foreign countries with a pretty peasant from Frascati, whose name was Regina; that it was she who had nursed him when he was ill, in some inn, and that out of gratitude, and because she was very pretty, he had given her much money, and silk dresses and earrings. That is what he said."
Ercole gazed down at Nino's bloodshot eye, which was turned to him just then.
"A girl called Regina," Ercole grumbled, in a tone even harsher than usual.
"That is what he said. Why should he tell me one thing for another? He said that your young gentleman would perhaps come back when he was tired of Regina. And he laughed. That is all."
A low growl from Nino interrupted the conversation. It was very low and long and then rose quickly and ended in a short bark, as the dog gathered his powerful hindquarters suddenly and raised himself, bristling all over and thrusting his sinewy forepaws out before him. Then the growl began again, but Ercole touched him lightly with the toe of his hob-nailed boot, and the dog was instantly silent. Both men looked about, but no one was to be seen.
"There is a boat on the beach," said Padre Francesco, who had caught the faint soft sound of the keel running upon the sand.
They both rose, Ercole picking up his gun as he did so; Nino, seeing that his master was on the alert, slunk to his heels without growling any more. A moment later a man's voice was heard calling on the other side of the tower.
"Hi! Watchman of the tower! A favour! Watchman of the tower! Hi!"
Padre Francesco turned the corner, followed by Ercole. A sailor in scanty ragged clothes and the remains of a rush hat was standing barefoot in the burning sand, with an earthen jug in his hand. A battered boat, from which all traces of paint had long since disappeared, was lying with her nose buried in the sand, not moving in the oily water. Another man was in her, very much like the first in looks.
On seeing Nino at Ercole's heels, the man who was ashore drew back with an exclamation, as if he were going to run away, but Ercole spoke in a reassuring tone.
"Be not afraid," he said. "This dog does not eat Christians. He gets enough to eat at home. He is not a dog, he is a lamb, and most affectionate."
"It is an evil beast," observed the sailor, looking at Nino. "I am afraid."
"What do you desire?" inquired Padre Francesco politely. "Is it water that you wish?"
"As a favour," answered the man, seeing that the dog did not fly at him. "A little water to drink. We have been pulling all day; it is hot, and we have drunk what we had."
"Come with me," said Padre Francesco. "Where is your vessel?"
"At Fiumicino. The master sent us on an errand to Porto d'Anzio last night and we are going back."
"It is a long pull," observed the watchman. "Tell the other man to come ashore and rest in the shade. I also have been to sea. The water is not very good here, but what there is you shall have."
"Thank you," said the man gratefully, and giving Nino a very wide berth as he followed Padre Francesco. "We could have got some water at the Incastro creek, but it would have been the same as drinking the fever."
"May the Madonna never will that you drink of it," said Padre Francesco, as they reached the shady side of the tower. "I see that you know the Roman shore."
"It is our business," replied the man, taking off his ragged rush hat, and rubbing his still more ragged blue cotton sleeve over his wet forehead. "We are people of the sea, bringing wine and lemons to Cività Vecchia and taking charcoal back. Evil befall this calm weather."
"And when it blows from the west-southwest we say, evil befall this time of storm," said Padre Francesco, nodding wisely. "Be seated in the shade. I will fetch water."
"And also let us drink here, so that we may take the jug away full."
"You shall also drink here." The old watchman went into the tower.
"The last time I passed this way, it was in a west-southwest gale," said the man, addressing Ercole, who had sat down in his old place with his dog at his feet.
"It is an evil shore," Ercole answered. "Many vessels have been lost here."
"We were saved by a miracle that time," said the sailor, who seemed inclined to talk. "I was with a brigantine with wine for Marseilles. That vessel was like a rock in the sea, she would not move with less than seven points of the wind in fair weather. We afterwards went to Rio Janeiro, and it was two years before we got back."
"So it was two years ago that you passed?" inquired Ercole.
"Two years ago May or the beginning of June. She was so low in the water that she would have swamped if we had tried to carry on sail, and with the sail she could carry she could make no headway; so there we were, hove to under lower topsail and balance-reefed mainsail and storm-jib, with a lee shore less than a mile away. We recommended ourselves to the saints and the souls of purgatory, and our captain said to us, 'My fine sons, unless the wind shifts in half an hour we must run her ashore and save the cargo!' That is what he said. But I said that I knew this Roman shore from a boy, and that sometimes there was no bar at the mouth of the Incastro, so that a vessel might just slip into the pool where the reeds grow. You certainly know the place."
"I know it well," said Ercole.
"Yes. So I pointed out the spot to our captain, standing beside him, and he took his glasses and looked to see whether the sea was breaking on the bar."
"The bar has not been open since I came here," said Padre Francesco, returning with water. "And that is ten years."
The men drank eagerly, one after the other, and there was silence. The one who had been speaking wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and drew a long breath of satisfaction.
"No, I daresay not," he said at last. "The captain looked all along the shore for a better place. Then he saw a bad thing with his glasses; for they were fine glasses, and though he was old, he had good sight. And I stood beside him, and he told me what he saw while he was looking."
"What did he see?" asked Ercole, watching the man.
"What did he see? I tell you it was a bad sight! Health to us all, as many as are here, he saw one man kill another and drag his body into some bushes."
"Apoplexy!" observed Ercole, glancing at Padre Francesco. "Are there brigands here?"
"I tell you what the captain said. 'There are two men,' said he, 'and they are like gentlemen by their dress.' 'They shoot quail,' said I, knowing the shore. 'They have no guns,' said he. Then he cried out, keeping his glasses to his eyes and steadying himself by the weather vang. 'God be blessed,' he cried--for he never said an evil word, that captain,--'one of those gentlemen has struck the other on the back of the head and killed him! And now he drags his body away towards the bushes.' And he saw nothing more, but he showed me the place, where there is a gap in the high bank. Afterwards he said he thought he had seen a woman too, and that it must have been an affair of jealousy."
Ercole and Padre Francesco looked at each other in silence for a moment.
"Did you hear of no murder at that time?" asked the sailor, taking up the earthen jar full of water.
"We heard nothing," said Ercole promptly.
"Nothing," echoed Padre Francesco. "The captain was dreaming. He saw trees moving in the wind."
"Don Antonino had good eyes," answered the sailor incredulously.
"What was the name of your vessel?" asked Padre Francesco.
"The _Papa_" replied the sailor without a smile. "She was called _Papa_."
Ercole stared at him a moment and then laughed; and he laughed so rarely that it distorted the yellow parchment of his face as if it must crack it. The sound of his laughter was something like the creaking of a cart imitated by a ventriloquist. But Padre Francesco knit his bushy brows, for he thought the sailor was making game of him, who had been boatswain on a square-rigger.
"I went to sea for thirty years," he said, "but I never heard of a vessel called the _Papa_. You have said a silly thing. I have given you water to drink, and filled your jar. It is not courtesy to jest at men older than you."
"Excuse me," answered the man politely. "May it never be that I should jest at such a respectable man as you seem to be; and, moreover, you have filled the jar with your own hands. The brigantine was called as I say. And if you wish to know why, I will tell you. She was built by two rich brothers of Torre Annunziata, who wished much good to their papa when he was old and no longer went to sea. Therefore, to honour him, they called the vessel the _Papa_. This is the truth."
Lest this should seem extravagantly unlikely to the readers of this tale, I shall interrupt the conversation to say that I knew the _Papa_ well, that "she" was built and christened as the sailor said, and that her name still stood on the register of Italian shipping a few years ago. She was not a brigantine, however, but a larger vessel, and she was bark-rigged; and she was ultimately lost in port, during a hurricane.
"We have learned something to-day," observed Ercole, when the man had finished speaking.
"It is true," the man said. "And the name of the captain was Don Antonino Maresca. He was of Vico."
"Where is Vico?" inquired Ercole, idly scratching his dog's back with the stock of his gun.
"Near Castellamare," answered Padre Francesco, willing to show his knowledge.
"One sees that you are a man of the sea," said the sailor, meaning to please him. "And so we thank you, and we go."
Ercole and the old watchman saw the two ragged sailors put off in the battered boat and pull away over the bar; then they went back to the shade of the tower and sat down again and refilled their pipes, and were silent for a long time. Padre Francesco's old wife, who had not shown herself yet, came and stood in the doorway, nodded to Ercole, fanned herself with her apron, counted the chickens in sight, and observed that the weather was hot. Then she went in again.
"It is easy to remember the name of that ship," said Ercole at last, without glancing at his companion.
"And the master was Antonino Maresca of Vico," said Padre Francesco.
"But the truth is that it is none of our business," said Ercole.
"The captain was mistaken," said Padre Francesco.
"He saw trees moving in the wind," said Ercole.
Then they looked at each other and nodded.
"Perhaps the Professor was mistaken about the girl, and the silk dress and the gold earrings," suggested Padre Francesco, turning his eyes away.
"He was certainly mistaken," asserted Ercole, watching him closely. "And moreover it is none of our business."
"None whatever."
They talked of other things, making remarks at longer and longer intervals, till the sun sank near the oily sea, and Ercole took his departure, much wiser in regard to Marcello's disappearance than when he had come. He followed the long beach for an hour till he came to the gap in the bank. There he stopped, and proceeded to examine the place carefully, going well inside it, and then turning to ascertain exactly where Marcello must have been when he was struck, since at that moment he must have been distinctly visible from the brigantine. The gap was so narrow that it was not hard to fix upon the spot where the deed had been done, especially as the captain had seen Marcello dragged quickly away towards the bushes. Every word of the sailor's story was stamped with truth; and so it came about that when Corbario believed himself at last quite safe, a man in his own pay suddenly discovered the whole truth about the attempted crime, even to the name of the principal witness.
It was only in the quail season, when there were poachers about, during April, May, and early June, that Ercole lived in his straw hut, a little way from the cottage. He spent the rest of the year in a small stone house that stood on a knoll in sight of Ardea, high enough to be tolerably safe from the deadly Campagna fever. Every other day an old woman from the village brought him a copper conca full of water; once a month she came and washed for him. When he needed supplies he went to Ardea for them himself. His dwelling was of elementary simplicity, consisting of two rooms, one above the other, with grated windows and heavy shutters. In the lower one he cooked and ate, in the upper chamber he slept and kept his few belongings, which included a plentiful supply of ammunition, his Sunday clothes, his linen, and his papers. The latter consisted of a copy of his certificate of birth, his old military pass-book, showing that he had served his time in an infantry regiment, had been called in for six weeks' drill in the reserve, had been a number of years in the second reserve, and had finally been discharged from all military service. This booklet serves an Italian throughout life as a certificate of identity, and is necessary in order to obtain a passport to leave the country. Ercole kept his, with two or three other yellow papers, tied up in an old red cotton handkerchief in the bottom of the chest that held his clothes.
When he got home after his visit to Padre Francesco he took the package out, untied the handkerchief, and looked through all the papers, one by one, sitting by the grated window in the twilight. He could read, and had once been able to write more or less intelligibly, and he knew by heart the contents of the paper he wanted, though he had not unfolded it for years. He now read it carefully, and held it some time open in his hand before he put it back with the rest. He held it so long, while he looked out of his grated window, that at last he could see the little lights twinkling here and there in the windows of Ardea, and it was almost dark in the room. Nino grew restless, and laid his grim head on Ercole's knee, and his bloodshot eyes began to glow in the dark like coals. Then Ercole moved at last.
"Ugly animal, do you wish me well?" he asked, rubbing the dog's head with his knotty hand. "If you are good, you shall go on a journey with me."
Nino's body moved in a way which showed that he would have wagged his tail if he had possessed one, and he uttered a strange gurgling growl of satisfaction.
The next morning, the old woman came before sunrise with water.
"You need not bring any more, till I let you know," Ercole said. "I am going away on business for a few days, and I shall shut up the house."
"For anything that is in it, you might leave the door open," grumbled the hag, who was of a sour temper. "Give me my pay before you go."
"You fear that I am going to America," retorted Ercole, producing an old sheepskin purse from the inside of his waistcoat. "Here is your money. Four trips, four pennies. Count them and go in peace."
He gave her the coppers, and she carefully tied them up in a corner of her ragged kerchief.
"And the bread?" she asked anxiously.
Ercole went to the blackened cupboard, took out the remains of a stale loaf, drew a big clasp-knife from his pocket, and cut off a moderate slice.
"Eat," he said, as he gave it to her.
She went away grumbling, and Nino growled after her, standing on the door-step. When she was a hundred yards from the house, he lay down with his jaw on his forepaws and continued to watch her till she was out of sight; then he gave a snort of satisfaction and immediately went to sleep.
Ercole left his home after sunset that evening. He locked both the upper and lower doors and immediately dropped the huge key into a crevice in the stone steps, from which one might have supposed that it would not be easy to recover it; but he doubtless knew what he was about. He might have had one of the little horses from the farm if he had wanted one, for he was a privileged person, but he preferred to walk. To a man of his wiry frame thirty or forty miles on foot were nothing, and he could easily have covered the distance in a night; but he was not going so far, by any means, and a horse would only have been in the way. He carried his gun, from force of habit, and he had his gun-licence in his pocket, with his other papers, tied up in the old red handkerchief. There was all that was left of the stale loaf, with the remains of some cheese, in a canvas bag, he had slung over his shoulder, and he had plenty of money; for his wages were good, and he never spent more than half of what he received, merely because he had no wants, and no friends.
Under the starlight he walked at a steady pace by familiar paths and byways, so as to avoid the village and strike the highroad at some distance beyond it. Nino followed close at his heels and perfectly silent, and the pair might have been dangerous to any one inclined to quarrel with them.
When Ercole was in sight of Porta San Sebastiano it was past midnight, and he stood still to fill and light his little clay pipe. Then he went on; but instead of entering the gate he took the road to the right again, along the Via Appia Nuova. Any one might have supposed that he would have struck across to that highroad some time before reaching the city, but it was very long since Ercole had gone in that direction; many new roads had been opened and some old ones had been closed, and he was simply afraid of losing his way in a part of the Campagna no longer familiar to him.
[Illustration: "ERCOLE LEFT HIS HOME AFTER SUNSET THAT EVENING"] A short distance from the gate, where the inn stands that goes by the name of Baldinotti, he took the turning to the left, which is the Frascati road; and after that he walked more slowly, often stopping and peering into the gloom to right and left, as if he were trying to recognise objects in the Campagna.
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Corbario was not pleased with the account given by Settimia in the letter she wrote him after reaching Pontresina with Regina and Marcello, who had chosen the Engadine as the coolest place he could think of in which to spend the hot months, and had preferred Pontresina to Saint Moritz as being quieter and less fashionable. Settimia wrote that the dear patient had looked better the very day after arriving; that the admirable companion was making him drink milk and go to bed at ten o'clock; that the two spent most of the day in the pine-woods, and that Marcello already talked of an excursion up the glacier and of climbing some of the smaller peaks. If the improvement continued, Settimia wrote, it was extremely likely that the dear patient would soon be better than he had ever been in his life.
Folco destroyed the letter, lit a cigarette, and thought the matter over. He had deemed it wise to pretend assent when the Contessa had urged him to join Marcello at once, but he had not had the least intention of doing so, and had come back to Paris as soon as he was sure that the Contessa was gone. But he had made a mistake in his calculations. He had counted on Regina for the love of excitement, display, and inane dissipation which women in her position very often develop when they find that a man will give them anything they like; and he had counted very little on her love for Marcello. Folco was still young enough to fall into one of the most common errors of youth, which is to believe most people worse than they are. Villains, as they grow older, learn that unselfish devotion is more common than they had thought, and that many persons habitually speak the truth, for conscience' sake; finding this out, villains have been known to turn into good men in their riper years, and have sometimes been almost saints in their old age. Corbario smoked his cigarette and mentally registered his mistake, and it is to be feared that the humiliation he felt at having made it was much more painful than the recollection of having dropped one deadly tablet into a little bottle that contained many harmless ones. He compared it in his mind to the keen disappointment he had felt when he had gone down to hide Marcello's body, and had discovered that he had failed to kill him. It is true that what he had felt then had been accompanied by the most awful terror he could imagine, but he distinguished clearly between the one sensation and the other. There was nothing to fear now; he had simply lost time, but that was bad enough, since it was due to his own stupidity.
He thought over the situation carefully and considered how much it would be wise to risk. Another year of the life Marcello had been leading in Paris would have killed him to a certainty; perhaps six months would have done it. But a summer spent at Pontresina, living as it was clear that Regina meant him to live, would give the boy strength enough to last much longer, and might perhaps bring him out of all danger.
Corbario considered what might be done, went over many plans in his mind, compared many schemes, for the execution of some of which he might have paid dearly; and in the end he was dissatisfied with all, and began over again. Still he reached no conclusion, and he attributed the fault to his own dulness, and his dulness to the life he had been leading of late, which was very much that which he wished Marcello to lead. But he had always trusted his nerves, his ingenuity, and his constitution; if one of the three were to fail him, now that he was rich, it was better that it should be his ingenuity.
He made up his mind to go to the Engadine and see for himself how matters looked. He could stay at Saint Moritz, or even Samaden, so as not to disturb Marcello's idyl, and Marcello could come down alone to see him. He should probably meet acquaintances, and would give them to understand that he had come in order to get rid of Regina and save his stepson from certain destruction. Society was very lenient to young men as rich as Marcello, he reflected, but was inclined to lay all the blame of their doings on their natural guardians. There was no reason why Corbario should expose himself to such criticism, and he was sure that the Contessa had only said what many people clearly thought, namely, that he was allowing Marcello far too much liberty. The world should see that he was doing his duty by the boy.
He left Paris with regret, as he always did, after writing to Marcello twenty-four hours beforehand. He wrote at the same time to Settimia.
"Folco will be here to-morrow," Marcello said, as he and Regina sat under the pine-trees beyond the stream, a little way above the town.
Regina sat leaning against the trunk of a tree, and Marcello lay on his side, resting on his elbow and looking up to her. He saw her face change.
"Why should he come here?" she asked. "We are so happy!"
"He will not disturb us," Marcello answered. "He will stop at Saint Moritz. I shall go down to see him there. I am very fond of him, you know, and we have not seen each other for at least two months. I shall be very glad to see him."
The colour was sinking in Regina's face, and her eyelids were almost closed.
"You are the master," she said quietly enough. "You will do as you will."
He was surprised, and he felt a little resentment at her tone. He liked her better when she dominated him, as on that night in Paris when she had made him promise to come away, and had refused to let him drink more wine, and had sent him to bed like a child. Now she spoke as her forefathers, serfs born to the plough and bound to the soil, must have spoken to their lords and owners. There was no ancient aristocratic blood in his own veins; he was simply a middle-class Italian gentleman who chanced to be counted with the higher class because he had been born very rich, had been brought up by a lady, and had been more or less well educated. That was all. It did not seem natural to him that she should call him "the master" in that tone. He knew that she was not his equal, but somehow it was a little humiliating to have to own it, and he often wished that she were. Often, not always; for he had never been sure that he should have cared to make her his wife, had she been ever so well born. He scarcely knew what he really wanted now, for he had lost his hold on himself, and was content with mere enjoyment from day to day. He could no longer imagine living without her, and while he was conscious that the present state of things could not last very long, he could not face the problem of the future.
He did not answer at once, and she sat quite still, almost closing her eyes.
"Why should you be displeased because I am going to see Folco?" he asked after a while.
"He comes to take you away from me," she answered, without moving.
"That is absurd!" cried Marcello, annoyed by her tone.
"No. It is true. I know it."
"You are unreasonable. He is the best friend I have in the world. Do you expect me to promise that I will never see him again?"
"You are the master."
She repeated the words in the same dull tone, and her expression did not change in the least. Marcello moved and sat up opposite to her, clasping his hands round his knees. He was very thin, but the colour was already coming back to his face, and his eyes did not look tired.
"Listen to me," he said. "You must put this idea out of your head. It was Folco who found the little house in Trastevere for you. He arranged everything. It was he who got you Settimia. He did everything to make you comfortable, and he has never disturbed us once when we have been together. He never so much as asked where I was going when I used to go down to see you every afternoon. No friend could have done more."
"I know it," Regina answered; but still there was something in her tone which he could not understand.
"Then why do you say that he means to separate us?"
Regina did not reply, but she opened her eyes and looked into Marcello's long and lovingly. She knew something that he did not know, and which had haunted her long. When Folco had come to the bedside in the hospital, she had seen the abject terror in his face, the paralysing fear in his attitude, the trembling limbs and the cramped fingers. It had only lasted a moment, but she could never forget it. A child would have remembered how Folco looked then, and Regina knew that there was a mystery there which she could not understand, but which frightened her when she thought of it. Folco had not looked as men do who see one they love called back from almost certain death.
"What are you thinking?" Marcello asked, for her deep look stirred his blood, and he forgot Folco and everything in the world except the beautiful creature that sat there, within his reach, in the lonely pine-woods.
She understood, and turned her eyes to the distance; and she saw the quiet room in the hospital, the iron bedstead painted white, the smooth pillow, Marcello's emaciated head, and Corbario's face.
"I was thinking how you looked when you were ill," she answered simply.
The words and the tone broke the soft little spell that had been weaving itself out of her dark eyes. Marcello drew a short, impatient breath and threw himself on his side again, supporting his head on his hand and looking down at the brown pine-needles.
"You do not know Folco," he said discontentedly. "I don't know why you should dislike him."
"I will tell you something," Regina answered. "When you are tired of me, you shall send me away. You shall throw me away like an old coat."
"You are always saying that!" returned Marcello, displeased. "You know very well that I shall never be tired of you. Why do you say it?"
"Because I shall not complain. I shall not cry, and throw myself on my knees, and say, 'For the love of heaven, take me back!' I am not made like that. I shall go, without any noise, and what must be will be. That is all. Because I want nothing of you but love, I shall go when you have no more love. Why should I ask you for what you have not? That would be like asking charity of the poor. It would be foolish. But I shall tell you something else."
"What?" asked Marcello, looking up to her face again, when she had finished her long speech.
"If any one tries to make me go before you are tired of me, it shall be an evil day for him. He shall wish that he had not been born into this world."
"You need not fear," Marcello said. "No one shall come between us."
"Well, I have spoken. It does not matter whether I fear Signor Corbario or not, but if you like I will tell him what I have told you, when he comes. In that way he will know."
She spoke quietly, and there was no murderous light in her eyes, nor any dramatic gesture with the words; but she was a little paler than before, and there was an odd fixedness in her expression, and Marcello knew that she was deeply moved, by the way she fell back into her primitive peasant's speech, not ungrammatical, but oddly rough and forcible compared with the language of educated society which she had now learned tolerably well from him.
After that she was silent for a while, and then they talked as usual, and the day went by as other days had gone.
On the next afternoon Folco Corbario reached Saint Moritz and sent a note up to Marcello asking him to come down on the following morning.
Regina was left alone for a few hours, and she went out with the idea of taking a long walk by herself. It would be a relief and almost a pleasure to walk ten miles in the clear air, breathing the perfume of the pines and listening to the roar of the torrent. Marcello could not walk far without being tired, and she never thought of herself when he was with her; but when she was alone a great longing sometimes came over her to feel the weight of a conca full of water on her head, to roll up her sleeves and scrub the floors, to carry burdens and work with her hands all day long, as she had done ever since she was a child, with the certainty of being tired and hungry and sleepy afterwards. Her hands had grown smooth and white in a year, and her feet were tender, and she had almost forgotten what bodily weariness meant.
But she was alone this morning, and she was full of gloomy presentiments. To stay indoors, or even to go and sit in the accustomed place under the pine-trees, would be unbearable. She felt quite sure that when Marcello came back he would be changed, that his expression would be less frank and natural, that he would avoid her eyes, and that by and by he would tell her something that would hurt her very much. Folco had come to take him away, she was quite sure, and it would be intolerable to sit still and think of it.
She walked fast along the road that leads to the Rosegg glacier, not even glancing at the few people she met, though most of them stared at her, for almost every one in Pontresina knew who she was. The reputation of a great beauty is soon made, and Regina had been seen often enough in Paris alone with Marcello in a box at the theatre, or dining with him and two or three other young men at Ritz's or the Café Anglais, to be an object of interest to the clever Parisian "chroniclers." The papers had duly announced the fact that the beauty had arrived at Pontresina, and the dwellers in the hotel were delighted to catch a glimpse of her, while those at Saint Moritz wished that she and Marcello had taken up their quarters there instead of in the higher village. Old maids with shawls and camp-stools glared at her round the edge of their parasols. English girls looked at her in frank admiration, till they were reproved by their mothers, who looked at her with furtive interest. Young Englishmen pretended not to see her at all, as they strode along with their pipes in their mouths; but they had an odd habit of being about when she passed. An occasional party of German students, who are the only real Bohemians left to the world in these days of progress, went sentimentally mad about her for twenty-four hours, and planned serenades in her honour which did not come off. A fashionable Italian composer dedicated a song to her, and Marcello asked him to dinner, for which he was more envied by the summer colony than for his undeniable talent. The Anglican clergyman declared that he would preach a sermon against her wickedness, but the hotel-keepers heard of his intention and unanimously requested him to let her alone, which, he did, reluctantly yielding to arguments which shall remain a secret. A certain Archduchess who was at Saint Moritz and was curious to see her adopted the simple plan of asking her to tea without knowing her, at which Marcello was furious; a semi-imperial Russian personage unblushingly scraped acquaintance with Marcello and was extremely bland for a few days, in the hope of being introduced to Regina. When he found that this was impossible, he went away, not in the least disconcerted, and he was heard to say that the girl "would go far."
Regina would have been blind if she had not been aware that she attracted all this attention, and as she was probably not intended by nature for a saint, she would have been pleased by it if there had been room in her thoughts for any one but Marcello--even for herself.
She walked far up the road, and after the first mile or two she met no one. At that hour the people who made excursions were already far away, and those who meant to do nothing stayed nearer to Pontresina. She grew tired of the road after a time. It led straight to the foot of the glacier, and she was not attracted by snow and ice as northern people are; there was something repellent to her in the thought of the bleakness and cold, and the sunshine itself looked as hard as the distant peaks on which it fell. But on the right there were rocky spurs of the mountains, half covered with short trees and brilliant with wild flowers that grew in little natural gardens here and there, not far below the level of perpetual snow. She left the road, and began to climb where there was no path. The air was delicious with the scent of flowers and shrubs; there were alp-roses everywhere, and purple gentian, and the little iva blossom that has an aromatic smell, and on tiny moss ledges the cold white stars of the edelweiss seemed to be keeping themselves as far above reach as they could. But she climbed as lightly as a savage woman, and picked them and sat down to look at them in the sunshine. Just beyond where she rested, the rock narrowed suddenly to a steep pass, within which were dark shadows. People who do not attempt anything in the way of ascending peaks often wander in that direction in search of edelweiss, but Regina fancied that she was sure to be alone as long as she pleased to stay.
If she had not been sure of that she would not have taken off her left shoe to shake out some tiny thing that had got into it and that annoyed her. It turned out to be a bit of pine-needle. It was pleasant to feel her foot freed from the hot leather and resting on the thick moss, and so the other shoe came off too, and was turned upside down and shaken, as an excuse, for there was nothing in it, and both feet rested in the moss, side by side. She wished she could take off her stockings, and if there had been a stream she would have done it, so sure was she that no one would disturb her, up there amongst the rocks and ever so far from Pontresina. It would have been delightful to paddle in the cold running water, for it was much hotter than she had ever supposed that it could be in such a place.
She took off her straw hat, and fanned herself gently with it, letting the sunshine fall full upon her thick black hair. She had never owned a hat in her life till she had been installed in the little house in Trastevere, and she hated the inconvenient things. What was her hair for, if it could not protect her head? But a straw hat made a very good fan. The air was hot and still, and there were none of those thousand little sounds which she would have heard in the chestnut woods above Frascati.
A little cry broke the silence, and she turned her head in the direction whence it came. Then she dropped her hat, sprang to her feet, and ran forwards, forgetting that she had no shoes on. She saw a figure clinging to the rocks, where they suddenly narrowed, and she heard the cry again, desperate with fear and weak with effort. A young girl had evidently been trying to climb down, when she had lost her footing, and had only been saved from a bad fall because her grey woollen frock had caught her upon a projecting point of granite, giving her time to snatch at the strong twigs of some alp-roses, and to find a very slight projection on which she could rest the toe of one shoe. She was hanging there with her face to the rock, eight or ten feet from the ground, which was strewn with big stones, and she was in such a position that she seemed unable to turn her head in order to look down.
In ten seconds Regina was standing directly below the terrified girl, raising herself on tiptoe, and trying to reach her feet with her hands, to guide them to a hold; but she could not.
"Don't be frightened," Regina said in Italian, which was the only language she knew.
"I cannot hold on!" answered the girl, trying to look down, but feeling that her foot would slip if she turned her head far enough.
"Yes, you can," Regina replied, too much roused to be surprised that the answer had come in her own language. "Your dress will hold you, even if you let go with your hands. It is new and it is strong, and it is fairly caught on the rock. I can see that."
"But I can't hang here until you go and get help," cried the girl, not much reassured.
"I am going to climb to the top by an easier way and pull you up again," Regina answered. "Then we can get down together."
While Regina was speaking she had already begun the ascent, which was easy enough for her, at the point she had chosen, though many an Alpine climber might have envied the quickness and sureness of her hold with feet and hands. She realised that she had forgotten her shoes now, and was glad that she had taken them off.
"One minute more!" she cried in an encouraging tone, when she had almost reached the top.
"Quick!" came the imploring answer.
Then Regina was lying flat on the ledge above the girl, stretching both hands down and catching the slender white wrists with a hold like steel. And then, feeling herself held and safe to move, the girl looked up, and Regina was looking into Aurora's face below her. For one instant the two did not recognise each other, for they had only seen each other once, by night, under the portico of the Théâtre Français. But an instant later a flush of anger rose to Aurora's forehead, and the dark woman turned pale, and her brows were suddenly level and stern. They hated each other, as the one hung there held by the other's hands, and the black eyes gazed savagely into the angry blue ones. Aurora was not frightened any longer; she was angry because she was in Regina's power. The strong woman could save her if she would, and Aurora would despise herself ever afterwards for having been saved by her. Or the strong woman could let her fall, and she would probably be maimed for life if she were not killed outright. That seemed almost better. She had never understood before what it could mean to be altogether in the power of an enemy.
Regina meant to save her; that was clear. With quick, commanding words she told her what to do.
"Set your knees against the rock and pull yourself up a little by my hands. So! I can pull you higher now. Get one knee well on that ledge. Now I will hold your left hand with both mine while you disentangle your frock from the point. Now put your right hand round my neck while I raise myself a little. Yes, that way. Now, hold on tight!"
Regina made a steady effort, lifting fully half Aurora's weight with her, as she got first upon one knee and then upon both.
[Illustration: "REGINA MADE A STEADY EFFORT, LIFTING FULLY HALF AURORA'S WEIGHT WITH HER."]
"There! Take breath and then scramble over the edge," she said.
A few seconds, another effort, and Aurora sank exhausted beside Regina, half sitting, half lying, and resting on one hand.
She looked up sideways at the dark woman's face; for Regina stood upright, gazing down into the valley. Aurora turned her eyes away, and then looked up again; she had recovered her breath now.
"Thank you," she said, with an effort.
"It is nothing," Regina answered in an indifferent tone, and without so much as moving her head; she was no more out of breath than if she had been sitting still.
The fair girl hated her at that moment as she had never hated any one in her short life, nor had ever dreamed of hating. The flush of anger rose again and again to her forehead, to the very roots of her auburn hair, and lingered a second and sank again. Regina stood perfectly motionless, her face as unchanging as marble.
Aurora rose to her feet, and leaned against the rock. She had suddenly felt herself at a disadvantage in remaining seated on the ground while her adversary was standing. It was the instinct of the animal that expects to be attacked. When two people who hate each other or love each other very much meet without warning in a very lonely place, the fierce old passions of the stone age may take hold of them and sway them, even nowadays.
For a time that seemed long, there was silence; without words each knew that the other had recognised her. The peasant woman spoke first, though with an evident effort, and without turning her eyes.
"When you are rested, we will go down," she said.
Aurora moved a step towards the side on which Regina had climbed up.
"I think I can get down alone," she answered coldly.
Regina looked at her and laughed with a little contempt.
"You will break your neck if you try," she said. "You cannot climb at all!"
"I think I can get down," Aurora repeated.
She went to the edge and was going to begin the attempt when Regina seized her by the wrist and dragged her back in spite of her resistance.
"I have something to tell you first," Regina said. "Afterwards I will take you down, and you shall not fall. You shall reach the bottom safely and go home alone, or I will show you the way, as you please."
"Let go of my wrist!" Aurora spoke angrily, for the strong grasp hurt her and humiliated her.
"Listen to me," continued Regina, loosing her hold at once. "I am Regina. You are Aurora. We have heard of each other, and we have met. Let us talk. This is a good place and we are alone, and the day is long, and we may not meet again soon. We will say what we have to say now, and then we will part."
"What is there to be said?" Aurora asked coldly and drawing back a little.
"We two love the same man," Regina said. "Is that nothing? You know it is true. If we were not Christians we should try to kill each other here, where it is quiet. I could easily have killed you just now, and I wished to."
"I wonder why you did not!" exclaimed Aurora, rather scornfully.
"I thought with myself thus: 'If I kill her, I shall always have the satisfaction of it as long as I live. This is the truth. But I shall go to prison for many years and shall not see him again, therefore I will not do it. Besides, it will not please him. If it would make him happy I would kill her, even if I were to go to the galleys for it. But it would not. He would be very angry.' This is what I thought; and I pulled you up. And now, I will not let you hurt yourself in getting down, because he would be angry with me if he knew that it was my fault."
Aurora listened to this extraordinary argument in silent surprise. She was not in the least frightened, but she saw at a glance that Regina was quite in earnest, and she knew her own people, and that the Roman peasants are not the gentlest of the Italians.
"He would be very angry," Regina repeated. "I am sure he would!"
"Why should he be angry?" Aurora asked, in a tone half contemptuous and yet half sad.
"I know he would, because when he raved in his fever he used to call for you."
Aurora started and fixed her eyes on Regina's.
"Yes," Regina said, answering the look. "He often called you by name. He loved you once."
She pronounced the words with an accent of pity, drawing herself up to her full height; and there was triumph in the light of her eyes. It is not every woman that has a chance of saying so much to her rival.
"We were children then," Aurora said, in the very words she had used to her mother more than two years earlier.
She was almost as pale as Regina now, for the thrust had been straight and sure, and right at her heart. But she was prouder than the peasant woman who had wounded her.
"I have heard that you saved his life," she said presently. "And he loves you. You are happy!"
"I should always be happy if he and I were alone in the world," Regina answered, for she was a little softened by the girl's tone. "But even now they are trying to part us."
"To part you?" Again Aurora looked up suddenly. "Who is trying to do that? A woman?"
Regina laughed a little.
"You are jealous," she said. "That shows that you love him still. No. It is not a woman."
"Corbario?" The name rose instinctively to Aurora's lips.
"Yes," Regina answered. "That is why I am left alone this morning. Signor Corbario is at Saint Moritz and Marcello is gone down to see him. I know he is trying to separate us. You did not know that he was so near?"
"We only came yesterday afternoon," Aurora answered. "We did not know that--that Signor Consalvi was here, or we should not have come at all."
It had stung her to hear Regina speak of him quite naturally by his first name. Regina felt the rebuke.
"I am truly sorry that I should have accidentally found myself in your path," she said, emphasising the rather grand phrase, and holding her handsome head very high.
Aurora almost smiled at this sudden manifestation of the peasant's nature, and wondered whether Regina ever said such things to Marcello, and whether, if she did, they jarred on him very much. The speech had the very curious effect of restoring Aurora's sense of superiority, and she answered more kindly.
"You need not be sorry," she said. "If you had not chanced to be here I should probably be lying amongst the rocks down there with several broken bones."
"If it were not by my fault I should not care," Regina retorted, with elementary frankness.
"But I should!" Aurora laughed, in spite of herself, and liking this phase of Regina's character better than any she had yet seen. "Come," she said, with a sudden generous impulse, and holding out her hand, "let us stop quarrelling. You saved me from a bad accident, and I was too ungenerous to be grateful. I thank you now, with all my heart."
Regina was surprised and stared hard at her for a moment, and then glanced at her outstretched hand.
"You would not take my hand if there were any one here to see."
"Why not?"
"Because they have told you that I am a wicked woman," Regina answered, a slight blush rising in her cheeks. "And perhaps it is true. But it was for him."
"I would take your hand anywhere, because you saved his life," said Aurora, and her voice shook a little as she said the last words. "And besides, no one has told me that you are wicked. Come, what is the use of hating each other?"
Regina took her hand reluctantly, but not suspiciously, and held it a moment.
"It does not mean that I shall not hate you if he ever loves you again," she said. "If I made you think that it would be treachery, and that is the worst sin."
"It only means that I thank you now, quite honestly," Aurora answered, and their hands parted.
"Very well." Regina seemed satisfied. "And I thank you for taking my hand," she added, with something oddly like real gratitude, "and because you said you would do it anywhere, even before other women. I know what I am, and what people call me. But it was for him. Let us not talk of it any more. I will help you down, and you shall go home alone."
"My mother is waiting for me far down, towards the village," Aurora said.
"All the better. A young lady like you should not go about without any one. It is not proper."
Aurora suppressed a smile at the thought of being reproved concerning the proprieties by "Marcello's Regina," and she began the descent. Regina went down first, facing the rock, and planting the young girl's feet in the best stepping places, one after the other, with constant warnings and instructions as to holding on with her hands. They reached the bottom in safety, and came to the place where Regina had left her hat and shoes. She sat down where she had been sitting when she had first heard the cry, and began to put them on.
"I had taken them off for coolness as I sat here," she explained. "You see, until I was fourteen I only wore them on Sundays."
"And yet you have such beautiful feet," Aurora said.
"Have I?" Regina asked indifferently. "I thought all feet were alike. But I have torn my stocking--it is hard to get the shoe on."
"Let me help you." Aurora knelt down quickly, and began to loosen the lacing further, but Regina protested, flushing deeply and trying to draw her foot back.
"No, no!" she cried. "You are a lady!"
"What difference does that make?" asked Aurora, laughing and insisting.
"This is not right!" Regina still protested, and the blush had not left her cheeks.
But Aurora smoothed the torn stocking under the sole of each foot, and slipped on the shoes, which were by no means tight, and tied the lacing fast.
"Thank you, Signorina," Regina said, much confused. "You are too good!"
She picked up her hat and put it on, but she was not clever with the pin, for she was used to having Settimia do everything for her which she had not learned to do for herself before she had come to Rome.
"I can never manage it without Settimia," she said, as if excusing herself for her awkwardness, as she again submitted to Aurora's help.
"Settimia?" repeated the young girl, as she put the hat on and thrust a long pin through it. "Who is Settimia?"
"Our--I mean my maid," Regina explained. "Thank you. You are too good!"
"It is an uncommon name," Aurora said, looking critically at the hat. "But I think I have heard it before."
"She is a wonderful woman. She knows French. She knows everything!"
Aurora said nothing to this, but seemed to be trying to recall something she had long forgotten. Regina was very busy in her turn, pulling down the girl's frock all round, and brushing it with her hand as well as she could, and picking off bits of dry grass and thistles that clung to the grey woollen. Aurora thanked her.
"The way down is very easy now," Regina said. "A few steps farther on we can see the road."
"After all, why should you not come with me till we find my mother?" Aurora asked.
"No," Regina answered with quiet decision. "I am what I am. You must not be seen with Regina. Do not tell your mother that you have been with me, and I shall not tell Marcello--I mean, Signor Consalvi."
"Why not?"
"Neither of them would be pleased. Trust me. I know the world. Good-bye, and the Madonna accompany you; and remember what I said when I took your hand."
So they parted, and Regina stood up a long time, and watched the slender grey figure descending to the road in the valley.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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"Variety, my dear Marcello, variety! There is nothing like it. If I were you, I would make some change, for your life must be growing monotonous, and besides, though I have not the least intention of reading you a lecture, you have really made your doings unnecessarily conspicuous of late. The Paris chroniclers have talked about you enough for the present. Don't you think so? Yes, finish the bottle. I always told you that champagne was good for you."
Marcello filled his glass and sipped the wine before he answered. It had not gone to his head, but there was colour in his lean cheeks, his eyes were brighter than usual, and he felt the familiar exhilaration which he had missed of late.
"I have been drinking milk for ten days," he said with a smile, as he set down the glass.
"Good in its way, no doubt," Corbario answered genially, "but a little tiresome. One should often change from simple things to complicated ones. It is the science of enjoyment. Besides, it is bad for the digestion to live always on bread and milk."
"I don't live on that altogether," laughed Marcello.
"I mean it metaphorically, my dear boy. There is such a thing as simplifying one's existence too much. That sometimes ends in getting stuck. Now you cannot possibly allow yourself to get stuck in your present position. You know what I mean. Oh, I don't blame you! If I were your age I should probably do the same thing, especially if I had your luck. Blame you? No! Not in the least. The cigarettes are there. You've not given up smoking too? No, that's right. A man without a small vice is as uninteresting as a woman without a past or a landscape without shadows. Cigarettes never hurt anybody. Look at me! I used to smoke fifty a day when I was your age."
Marcello blew a cloud of smoke, stirred his coffee, and leaned back. He had scarcely heard what Corbario said, but the elder man's careless chatter had put him at his ease.
"Folco," he said quietly, "I want to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me seriously. Will you?"
"As well as I can," answered Corbario, instantly changing his tone and growing earnest.
"Don't be surprised," Marcello said, half apologetically, as if he were already weakening. "I shall never do anything without your advice. Of course you know how I feel about all this, that I am leading a disorderly life, and--well, you understand!"
"Perfectly, my dear boy. I only wish to help you out of it as soon as possible, if you want to be helped. I'm quite sure that you will pull through in time. I have always believed in you."
"Thank you. I know you have. Well, I'll ask you my question. You know well enough that I shall never care for society much, don't you?"
"Society will care for you," answered Folco. "What is the question?"
"I'm coming to it, but I want to explain, or it will not be quite clear. You see, it is not as if I were a personage in the world."
"What sort of personage? Please explain."
"I mean, if I were the head of a great house, with a great title and hereditary estate."
"What has that to do with it?" Folco was mystified.
"If I were, it would make a difference, I suppose. But I'm not. I'm plain Marcello Consalvi, no better than any one else."
"But vastly richer," Folco suggested.
"I wish I were not. I wish I were a poor clerk, working for my living."
"The air of this place is not good for you, my boy." Folco laughed gaily.
"No, don't laugh! I'm in earnest. If I were a poor man, nobody would think it at all strange if--" Marcello hesitated.
"If what?"
"If I married Regina," said Marcello rather desperately.
Folco's expression changed instantly.
"Was that the question you were going to ask me?" he inquired.
"Yes."
Marcello grew very red and smoked so fast that he choked himself.
"Is there any earthly reason why you should marry her?" asked Folco very quietly.
"It would be right," Marcello answered, gaining courage.
"Yes, yes, undoubtedly," Folco hastened to admit. "In principle it would undoubtedly be right. But it is a very serious matter, my dear boy. It means your whole life and future. Have you"--he hesitated, with an affectation of delicacy--"have you said anything to her about it?"
"I used to, at first, but she would not hear of it. You have no idea how simple she is, and how little she expects anything of the sort. She always tells me that I am to send her away when I am tired of her, to throw her away like an old coat, as she says herself. But I could never do that, you know. Could I?"
Marcello blushed again, hardly knowing why. Corbario seemed deeply interested.
"She must be a very unusual sort of girl," he observed thoughtfully. "There are not many like her, I fancy."
"There is nobody like her," Marcello answered with conviction. "That is why I want to marry her. I owe it to her. You must admit that. I owe her my life, for I certainly should have died if she had not taken care of me. And then, there is the rest. She has given me all she has, and that is herself, and she asks nothing in return. She is very proud, too. I tried to make her accept a string of pearls in Paris, just because I thought they would be becoming to her, but she absolutely refused."
"Really? I suppose you gave the pearls back to the jeweller?"
"No, I kept them. Perhaps I shall get her to wear them some day."
Folco smiled.
"You may just as well encourage her simple tastes," he said. "Women always end by learning how to spend money, unless it is their own."
Having delivered himself of this piece of wisdom Folco chose a cigar, nipped off the end of it neatly with a gold cutter, lit it and snuffed the rich smoke up his nose in a deliberate manner.
"Regina is a very remarkable woman," he said at last. "If she had been well educated, she would make an admirable wife; and she loves you devotedly, Marcello. Now, the real question is--at least, it seems to me so--you don't mind my talking to you just as I would to myself, do you? Very well. If I were in your position, I should ask myself, as a man of honour, whether I really loved her as much as she loved me, or whether I had only been taken off my feet by her beauty. Don't misunderstand me, my boy! I should feel that if I were not quite sure of that, I ought not to marry her, because it would be much worse for her in the end than if we parted. Have you ever asked yourself that question, Marcello?"
"Yes, I have."
Marcello spoke in a low voice, and bent his head, as if he were not sure of the answer. Corbario, satisfied with the immediate effect of his satanic speech, waited a moment, sighed, looked down at his cigar, and then went on in gentle tones.
"That is so often the way," he said. "A man marries a woman out of a sense of duty, and then makes her miserably unhappy, quite in spite of himself. Of course, in such a case as yours, you feel that you owe a woman amends--you cannot call it compensation, as if it were a matter of law! She has given everything, and you have given nothing. You owe her happiness, if you can bestow it upon her, don't you?"
"Indeed I do!" assented Marcello.
"Yes. The question is, whether the way to make her happy is to marry her, when you have a reasonable doubt as to whether you can be a good husband to her. That is the real problem, it seems to me. Do you love her enough to give up the life to which you were born, and for which you were educated? You would have to do that, you know. Our friends--your dear mother's friends, my boy--would never receive her, least of all after what has happened."
"I know it."
"You would have to wander about Europe, or live in San Domenico, for you could not bear to live in Rome, meeting women who would not bow to your wife. I know you. You could not possibly bear it."
"I should think not!"
"No. Therefore, since you have the doubt, since you are not absolutely sure of yourself, I think the only thing to do is to find out what you really feel, before taking an irreparable step."
"Yes," said Marcello, who had fallen into the trap laid for him. "I know that. But how am I to make sure of myself?"
"There is only one way," Folco answered. "I know it is not easy, and if I were not sure that you are perfectly sincere I should be afraid to propose it to you."
"What is it? Tell me. You are the only friend I have in the world, Folco, and I want to do what is right. God knows, I am in earnest! There are moments when I cannot imagine living without Regina--it seemed hard to leave her this morning, even for these few hours, and I long to be back at Pontresina already! Yet you know how fond I am of you, and how I like to be with you, for we have always been more like brothers than anything else."
"Indeed we have!" Folco assented fervently. "You were saying that there were moments--yes?"
"Sometimes she jars upon me dreadfully," Marcello said in a low voice, as if he were ashamed of owning it. "Then I want to get away."
"Exactly. You want to get away, not to leave her, but to be alone for a few hours, or a few days. That would be the very best thing you could do--to separate for a little while. You would very soon find out whether you could live without her or not; and believe me, if you feel that you can live without her, that means that you could not live with her for your whole life."
"I should go back to her in twenty-four hours. I am sure I should."
"Perhaps you would, if you went, say, from here to Paris alone, with nothing to distract your attention. But suppose that you and I should go together, to some place where we should meet our friends, all amusing themselves, where you could talk to other women, and meet men of your own age, and lead the life people expect you to lead, just for a few weeks. You know that society will be only too glad to see something of you, whenever you choose to go near it. You are what is called a good match, and all the mothers with marriageable daughters would run after you."
"Disgusting!" exclaimed Marcello, with contempt.
"No doubt, but it would be a wholesome change and a good test. When a young girl is determined to be a nun, she is generally made to spend a year in society, in order to make acquaintance with what she intends to give up. I don't see much difference between that and your case. Before you say good-bye for ever to your own world, find out what it is like. At the same time, you will settle for ever any doubts you have about really loving Regina."
"Perhaps you are right. It would only be for a few days."
"And besides," Folco continued, "if you have not yet found it dull at Pontresina, you certainly will before long. There is no reason why you should lead the life of an invalid, for you are quite strong now."
"Oh, quite. I always tell Regina so, but she insists that I am too thin, and it amuses her to take care of me."
"Naturally. That is how you first made acquaintance. A woman who has once taken care of a man she loves wants him to be ever afterwards an invalid, for ever getting better! A man gets tired of that in time. It was a great pity you left Paris just when I came, for there are many things we could have enjoyed together there."
"I daresay," Marcello answered, not paying much attention to the other's words.
"Take my advice, my dear boy," said Folco. "Come away with me for a few days. I will wait here till you are quite ready, for of course you cannot be sure of getting off at once. You will have to prepare Regina for this."
"Of course. I am not sure that it is possible at all."
Folco laughed gaily.
"Anything is possible that you really wish to do," he said.
"Regina may insist upon coming with me."
"Nonsense. Women always submit in the end, and they never die of it. Assert yourself, Marcello! Be a man! You cannot be ordered about like a child by any woman, not even if she has saved your life, not even if she loves you to distraction. You have a right to a will of your own."
"I know. And yet--oh, I wish I knew what I ought to do!"
"Think over all I have said, and you will see that I am right," said Folco, rising from the table. "And if you take my advice, you will be doing what is fair and honest by Regina as well as by yourself. Your own conscience must tell you that."
Poor Marcello was not very sure what had become of his own conscience during the past year, and Folco's arguments swayed him as he groped for something definite to follow, and found nothing but what Corbario chose to thrust into his hand.
As they stood by the table, a servant brought a note on a little salver, holding it out to them as if he were not sure which of them was to receive it. Both glanced at the address; it was for Corbario, who took it quickly and put it into his pocket; but Marcello had recognised the handwriting--that rather cramped feminine hand of a woman who has seen better days, in which Settimia kept accounts for Regina. The latter insisted that an account should be kept of the money which Marcello gave her, and that he should see it from time to time. At the first moment, being absorbed with other matters, and inwardly much engaged in the pursuit of his own conscience, which eluded him at every turn like a figure in a dream, he paid no attention to what he had seen; but the writing had impressed itself on his memory.
They had been lunching in Folco's sitting-room, and Corbario made an excuse to go into his bedroom for a moment, saying that he wanted certain cigars that his man had put away. Marcello stood at the window gazing down the broad valley. Scarcely a minute elapsed before Folco came back with a handful of Havanas which he dropped on a writing-table.
"By the bye," he said carelessly, "there is another reason why you may not care to stay long in Pontresina. The Contessa and Aurora are there."
"Are they?" Marcello turned sharply as he asked the question.
He was surprised, and at the same instant it flashed upon him that Folco had just received the information from Settimia in the note that had been brought.
"Yes," Folco answered with a smile. "And Pontresina is such a small place that you can hardly help meeting them. I thought I might as well tell you."
"Thank you. Yes, it would be awkward, and unpleasant for them."
"Precisely. The Contessa wrote me that she and Aurora had come upon you two unexpectedly in leaving a theatre, and that she had felt very uncomfortable."
"Oh! I suppose she suggested that I should mend my ways?"
"As a matter of fact, she did." Corbario smiled. "You know what a very proper person she is!"
"She is quite right," answered Marcello gravely.
"It certainly cannot have been pleasant for her, on account of Aurora."
Folco looked at him thoughtfully, for his tone had suddenly changed.
"If you don't mind," Folco said, "I think I will drive up with you and call on them this afternoon. You can drop me at their hotel, and I shall find my way back alone."
"Certainly."
"Are you sure you don't mind?" Folco affected to speak anxiously.
"Why should I?"
"You see," Folco said, without heeding the question, "they let me know that they were there, and as we are such old friends it would be strange if I did not go to see them."
"Of course it would," answered Marcello in an absent tone.
He already connected Folco's knowledge of the Contessa's arrival in Pontresina so closely with Settimia's note that Folco's last statement had taken him by surprise, and a multitude of confused questions presented themselves to his mind. If Settimia had not written about the Contessa, why had she written at all? How did she know where Corbario was stopping in Saint Moritz? Was she in the habit of writing to him? Corbario had found her for Regina; was Settimia helping Corbario to exercise a sort of paternal vigilance over him? Somehow Marcello did not like that idea at all. So far as he knew, Folco had always been singularly frank with him, and had never deceived him in the smallest thing, even "for his own good." Marcello could only attribute good motives to him, but the mere idea of being watched was excessively disagreeable. He wondered whether Settimia had influenced Regina to get him away from Paris, acting under directions from Corbario. Was Regina deceiving him too, "for his own good"? If there is anything a man cannot bear from those he loves best, it is that they should take counsel together secretly to direct him "for his own good."
Marcello tried to put the thought out of his mind; but it had dawned upon him for the first time that Folco could tell even a pious falsehood. Yet he had no proof whatever that he had guessed right; it was a sudden impression and nothing more. He was much more silent during the rest of the afternoon as he drove up to Pontresina with Folco, and it seemed to him that he had at last touched something definite; which was strange enough, considering that it was all a matter of guess-work and doubt.
And now fate awoke again and did one of those little things that decide men's lives. If Folco and Marcello had stopped at the door of the Contessa's hotel two minutes earlier, or thirty seconds later, than they did, they would not have chanced upon the Contessa and Aurora just coming in from a walk. But fate brought the four together precisely at that moment. As the carriage stopped, the two ladies had come from the opposite direction and were on the door-step.
"What a surprise!" exclaimed the Contessa, giving her hand graciously to Folco and then to Marcello.
The latter had got hold of a thread. Since the Contessa was surprised to see Folco, she could not possibly have already let him know that she was in Pontresina.
"I came as soon as I knew that you were here," said Corbario quickly.
Marcello heard the words, though he was at that moment shaking hands with Aurora, and their eyes had met. She was perfectly calm and collected, none the worse for her adventure in the morning, and considerably the wiser.
"Will you come in?" asked the Contessa, leading the way, as if expecting both men to follow.
Corbario went at once. Marcello hesitated, and flushed a little, and Aurora seemed to be waiting for him.
"Shall I come, too?" he asked.
"Just as you please," she answered. "My mother will think it strange if you don't."
Marcello bent his head, and the two followed the others towards the stairs at a little distance.
"Did your mother send word to Folco that you were here?" asked Marcello quickly, in a low tone.
"Not that I know. Why?"
"It is no matter. I wanted to be sure. Thank you."
They went upstairs side by side, not even glancing at each other, much more anxious to seem perfectly indifferent than to realise what they felt now that they had met at last.
Marcello stayed ten minutes in the small sitting-room, talking as well as he could. He had no wish to be alone with Aurora or her mother, and since the visit had been pressed upon him he was glad that Folco was present. But he got away as soon as he could, leaving Corbario to his own devices. The Contessa gave him her hand quietly, as if she had not expected him to stay, and she did not ask him to come again. Aurora merely nodded to him, and he saw that just as he went out she left the room by another door, after glancing at him once more with apparent coldness.
He walked quickly through the village until he came near to his own hotel, and then his pace slackened by degrees. He knew that he had felt a strong emotion in seeing Aurora again, and he was already wishing that he had not come away so soon. The room had been small, and it had been uncomfortable to be there, feeling himself judged and condemned by the Contessa and distrusted by Aurora; but he had been in an atmosphere that recalled all his youth, with people whose mere presence together brought back the memory of his dead mother as nothing else had done since his illness. He was just in that state of mind in which he would have broken away and freed himself within the hour, at any cost, if he had been involved in a common intrigue.
At the same time he had become convinced that Folco had deceived him, for some reason or other which he could not guess, and the knowledge was the first serious disillusionment of his life. The deception had been small, and perhaps intended in some mysterious way to be "for his own good"; but it had been a distinct deception and no better than a lie. He was sure of that.
He went upstairs slowly and Regina met him at the door of their rooms, and took his hat and stick without a word, for she saw that something had happened, and she felt suddenly cold. He was quite unlike himself. The careless look was gone from his face, his young lips were tightly closed, and he looked straight before him, quite unconscious that his manner was hurting her desperately.
"Has Settimia been out to-day?" he asked, looking at her quickly.
"I don't know," she answered, surprised. "I went for a long walk this morning. She probably went out into the village. I cannot tell. Why do you ask?"
"I wish to know whether she sent a note to Saint Moritz by a messenger. Can you find out, without asking her a direct question? I am very anxious to know."
"I will try, but it will not be easy," said Regina, watching him.
She had made up her mind that the blow was coming, and that Marcello was only putting off the moment when she must be told that he meant to leave her. She was very quiet, and waited for him to speak again, for she was too proud to ask him questions. His inquiry about Settimia was in some way connected with what was to come. He sat down by the table, and drummed upon it absently with his fingers for a moment. Then he looked up suddenly and met her eyes; his look of troubled preoccupation faded all at once, and he smiled and held out one hand to draw her nearer.
"Forgive me," he said. "All sorts of things have happened to-day. I have been annoyed."
She came and bent over him, turning his face up to hers with her hands, very gently. His eyes lightened slowly, and his lips parted a little.
"You are not tired of Regina yet," she said.
"No!" he laughed. "But you were right," he added, almost immediately.
"I knew I was," she answered, but not as she had expected to say the words when she had seen him come in.
She dared not hope to keep him always, but she had not lost him yet, and that was enough for the moment. The weight had fallen from her heart, and the pain was gone.
"Was it what I thought?" she asked softly. "Does your stepfather wish to separate us?"
"For a little while," Marcello answered. "He says we ought to part for a few weeks, so that I may find out whether I love you enough to marry you!"
"And he almost persuaded you that he was right," said Regina. "Is that what happened?"
"That--and something else."
"Will you tell me, heart of my heart?"
In the falling twilight he told her all that had passed through his mind, from the moment when he had seen Settimia's handwriting on the note. Then Regina's lips moved.
"He shall pay!" she was saying under her breath. "He shall pay!"
"What are you saying?" Marcello asked.
"An Ave Maria," she answered. "It is almost dark."
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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The little house in Trastevere was shut up, but the gardener had the keys, and came twice a week to air the rooms and sweep the paths and water the shrubs. He was to be informed by Settimia of Regina's return in time to have everything ready, but he did not expect any news before the end of September; and if he came regularly, on Tuesday and Saturday, and did his work, it was because he was a conscientious person in his way, elderly, neat, and systematic, a good sort of Roman of the old breed. But if he came on other days, as he often did, not to air the rooms, but to water and tend certain plants, and to do the many incomprehensible things which gardeners do with flower-pots, earth, and seeds, that was his own affair, and would bring a little money in the autumn when the small florists opened their shops and stands again, and the tide of foreigners set once more towards Rome. Also, if he had made friends with the gardeners at the beautiful villa on the Janiculum, that was not Corbario's business; and they gave him cuttings, and odds and ends, such as can be spared from a great garden where money is spent generously, but which mean a great deal to a poor man who is anxious to turn an honest penny by hard work.
The immediate result of this little traffic was that the gardeners at the villa knew all about the little house in Trastevere; and what the gardeners knew was known also by the porter, and by the other servants, and through them by the servants of other people, and the confidential valet told his master, and the maid told her mistress; and so everybody had learned where "Consalvi's Regina" lived, and it was likely that everybody would know when she came back to Rome, and whether Marcello came with her or not.
He had not taken Folco's advice, much to the latter's disappointment and annoyance. On the contrary, he and Regina had left the Engadine very suddenly, without so much as letting Corbario guess that they were going away; and Regina had managed to keep Settimia so very busy and so constantly under her eye that the maid had not been able to send Folco a word, warning him of the anticipated move. Almost for the first time Marcello had made up his mind for himself, and had acted upon his decision; and it seemed as if the exercise of his will had made a change in his character.
They wandered from place to place; they went to Venice in the hottest season, when no one was there, and they came down to Florence and drove up to Vallombrosa, where they stumbled upon society, and were stared at accordingly. They went down to Siena, they stopped in Orvieto, and drove across to Assisi and Perugia; but they were perpetually drawn towards Rome, and knew that they longed to be there again.
Marcello had plenty of time to think, and there was little to disturb his meditations on the past and future; for Regina was not talkative, and was content to be silent for hours, provided that she could see his face. He never knew whether she felt her ignorance about all they saw, and his own knowledge was by no means great. He told her what he knew and read about places they visited, and she remembered what he said, and sometimes asked simple questions which he could answer easily enough. For instance, she wished to know whether America were a city or an island, and who the Jews were, and if the sun rose in the west on the other side of the world, since Marcello assured her that the world was round.
He was neither shocked nor amused; Ercole had asked him similar questions when he had been a boy; so had the peasants in Calabria, and there was no reason why Regina should know more than they did. Besides, she possessed wonderful tact, and now spoke her own language so well that she could pass for a person of average education, so long as she avoided speaking of anything that is learned from books. She was very quick to understand everything connected with the people she heard of, and she never forgot anything that Marcello told her. She was grateful to him for never laughing at her, but in reality he was indifferent. If she had known everything within bounds of knowledge, she would not have been a whit more beautiful, or more loving, or more womanly.
But he himself was beginning to think, now that his faith in Folco had been shaken, and he began to realise that he had been strangely torpid and morally listless during the past years. The shock his whole system had received, the long interval during which his memory had been quite gone, the physical languor that had lasted some time after his recovery from the fever, had all combined to make the near past seem infinitely remote, to cloud his judgment of reality, and to destroy the healthy tension of his natural will. A good deal of what Corbario had called "harmless dissipation" had made matters worse, and when Regina had persuaded him to leave Paris he had really been in that dangerous moral, intellectual, and physical condition in which it takes very little to send a man to the bad altogether, and not much more to kill him outright, if he be of a delicate constitution and still very young. Corbario had almost succeeded in his work of destruction.
He would not succeed now, for the worst danger was past, and Marcello had found his feet after being almost lost in the quicksand through which he had been led.
He had not at first accused Folco of anything worse than that one little deception about the arrival of the Contessa, and of having caused him to be too closely watched by Settimia. Little by little, however, other possibilities had shaped themselves and had grown into certainties at an alarming rate. He understood all at once how Folco himself had been spending his time, while society had supposed him to be a broken hearted widower. A few hints which he had let fall about the things he would have shown Marcello in Paris suggested a great deal; his looks and manner told the rest, now that Marcello had guessed the main truth. He had not waited three months after his wife's death to profit by his liberty and the wealth she had left him. Marcello remembered the addresses he had given from time to time--Monte Carlo, Hombourg, Pau, and Paris very often. He had spoken of business in his letters, as an excuse for moving about so much, but "business" did not always take a man to places of amusement, and Folco seemed to have visited no others. Men whom Marcello had met had seen Corbario, and what they said about him was by no means indefinite. He had been amusing himself, and not alone, and the young men had laughed at his attempts to cloak his doings under an appearance of sorrowing respectability.
As all this became clear to Marcello he suffered acutely at times, and he reproached himself bitterly for having been so long blind and indifferent. It was bad enough that he should have been leading a wild life with Regina in Paris within a few months of his mother's death, but even in the depths of his self-reproach he saw how much worse it was that Folco should have forgotten her so soon. It was worse than a slight upon his mother's memory, it was an insult. The good woman who was gone would have shed hot tears if she could have come to life and seen how her son was living; but she would have died again, could she have seen the husband she adored in the places where many had seen him since her death. It was no wonder that Marcello's anger rose at the mere thought.
Moreover, as Marcello's understanding awoke, he realised that Folco had encouraged him in all he had done, and had not seemed pleased when he had begun to live more quietly. Folco would have made him his companion in pleasure, if he could, and the idea was horrible to Marcello as soon as it presented itself.
It was the discovery that he had been mistaken in Corbario that most directly helped him to regain his foothold in life and his free will. There was more in the Spartan method than we are always ready to admit, for it is easier to disgust most men by the sight of human degradation than to strengthen them against temptation by preaching, or by the lessons of example which are so very peculiarly disagreeable to the normal man.
"I am virtuous, I am sober, I resist temptation, imitate me!" cries the preacher. You say that you are virtuous, and you are apparently sober, my friend; and perhaps you are a very good man, though you need not scream out the statement at the top of your voice. But how are we to know that you have any temptations to resist? Or that your temptations are the same as ours, even supposing that you have any? Or that you are speaking the truth about yourself, since what you say is so extremely flattering to your vanity? Wherever there is preaching, those who are preached at are expected to accept a good deal on the mere word of the preacher, quite aside from anything they have been brought to believe elsewhere.
"Temptation?" said a certain great lady who was not strong in theology. "That is what one yields to, isn't it?"
She probably knew what she was talking about, for she had lived in the world a good while, as we have. But the preacher is not very often one of us, and he knows little of our ways and next to nothing of our real feelings; yet he exhorts us to be like him. It would be very odd if we succeeded. The world would probably stand still if we did, and most of us are so well aware of the fact that we do not even try; and the sermon simply has no effect at all, which need not prevent the preacher from being richly remunerated for delivering it.
"Vice is very attractive, of course," he says, "but you must avoid it because it is sinful."
And every time vice is mentioned we think how attractive it must be, since it is necessary to preach against it so much; and the more attractive it seems, the greater the temptation.
"Should you like to try a vice or two?" said the Spartan, "Very well. Come with me, my boy, and you shall see what vice is; and after that, if you care to try it, please yourself, for I shall have nothing more to say!"
And forthwith he played upon the string of disgust, which is the most sensitive of all the strings that vibrate in the great human instrument; and the boy's stomach rose, and he sickened and turned away, and remembered for ever, though he might try ever so hard to forget.
Marcello at last saw Folco as he was, though still without understanding the worst, and with no suspicion that Folco wished him out of the world, and had deliberately set to work to kill him by dissipation; and the disgust he felt was the most horrible sensation that he could remember. At the same time he saw himself and his whole life, and the perplexity of his position frightened him.
It seemed impossible to go back and live under the same roof with Corbario now. He flushed with shame when he remembered the luncheon at Saint Moritz, and how he had been almost persuaded to leave poor Regina suddenly, and to go back to Paris with his stepfather. He saw through the devilish cleverness of the man's arguments, and when he remembered that his dead mother's name had been spoken, a thrill of real pain ran through his body and he clenched his teeth and his hands.
He asked himself how he could meet Folco after that, and the only answer was that if they met they must quarrel and part, not to meet again.
He told Regina that he would not go back to the villa after they reached Rome, but would live in the little house in Trastevere. To his surprise, she looked grave and shook her head. She had never asked him what was making him so silent and thoughtful, but she had guessed much of the truth from little things; she herself had never trusted Corbario since she had first seen his face at the hospital, and she had long foreseen the coming struggle.
"Why do you shake your head?" he asked. "Do you not want me at the little house?"
"The villa is yours, not his," she said. "He will be glad if you will leave him there, for he will be the master. Then he will marry again, and live there, and it will be hard to turn him out."
"What makes you think he wishes to marry again?"
"He would be married already, if the girl would have him," answered Regina.
"How do you know?"
"You told me to watch, to find out. I have obeyed you. I know everything."
Marcello was surprised, and did not quite understand. He only remembered that he had asked her to ascertain whether Settimia had sent a note to Folco at Saint Moritz. After a day or two she told him that she was quite sure of it. That was all, and Regina had scarcely ever spoken of Folco since then. Marcello reminded her of this, and asked her what she had done.
"I can read," she said. "I can read writing, and that is very hard, you know. I made Settimia teach me. I said with myself, if he should be away and should write to me, what should I do? I could not let Settimia read his letters, and I am too well dressed to go to a public letter-writer in the street, as the peasants do. He would think me an ignorant person, and the people in the street would laugh. That would not help me. I should have to go to the priest, to my confessor."
"Your confessor? Do you go to confession?"
"Do you take me for a Turk?" Regina asked, laughing. "I go to confession at Christmas and Easter. I tell the priest that I am very bad, and am sorry, but that it is for you and that I cannot help it. Then he asks me if I will promise to leave you and be good. And I say no, that I will not promise that. And he tells me to go away and come back when I am ready to promise, and that he will give me absolution then. It is always the same. He shakes his head and frowns when he sees me coming, and I smile. We know each other quite well now. I have told him that when you are tired of me, then I will be good. Is not that enough? What can I do? I should like to be good, of course, but I like still better to be with you. So it is."
"You are better than the priest knows," said Marcello thoughtfully, "and I am worse."
"It is not true. But if I had a letter from you, I would not take it to the priest to read for me. He would be angry, and tear it up, and send me away. I understood this at the beginning, so I made Settimia teach me how to read the writing, and I also learned to write myself, not very well, but one can understand it."
"I know. I have seen you writing copies. But how has that helped you to find out what Folco is doing?"
"I read all Settimia's letters," Regina answered, with perfect simplicity.
"Eh?" Marcello thought he had misunderstood her.
"I read all the letters she gets," Regina replied, unmoved. "When she was teaching me to read I saw where she kept all her letters. It is always the same place. There is a pocket inside a little black bag she has, which opens easily, though she locks it. She puts the letters there, and when she has read them over she burns them. You see, she has no idea that I read them. But I always do, ever since you asked me about that note. When I know that she has had a letter, I send her out on an errand. Then I read. It is so easy!"
Regina laughed, but Marcello looked displeased.
"It is not honest to do such things," he said.
"Not honest?" Regina stared at him in amazement. "How does honesty enter into the question? Is Settimia honest? Then honest people should all be in the galleys! And if you knew how he writes to her! Oh, yes! You are the 'dear patient,' and I am the 'admirable companion.' They have known each other long, those two. They have a language between them, but I have learned it. They have no more secrets that I do not know. Everything the admirable companion does that makes the dear patient better is wrong, and everything that used to make him worse was right. They were killing you in Paris, they wanted you to stay there until you were dead. Do you know who saved your life? It was the Contessa, when I heard her say that you were looking ill! If you ever see her again, thank her, for I was blind and she opened my eyes. The devil had blinded me, and the pleasure, and I could not see. I see now, thanks to heaven, and I know all, and they shall not hurt you. But they shall pay!"
She was not laughing now, as she said the last words under her breath, and her beautiful lips just showed her white teeth, set savagely tight as though they had bitten through something that could be killed. Folco Corbario was not timid, but if he had seen her then, and known that the imaginary bite was meant for his life, he would have taken special care of his bodily safety whenever she was in his neighbourhood.
Marcello had listened in profound surprise, for what she said threw new light on all he had thought out for himself of late.
"And you say that Folco is thinking of marrying again," he said, almost ashamed to profit by information obtained as Regina had got it.
"Yes, he is in love with a young girl, and wishes to marry her."
Marcello said nothing.
"Should you like to know her name?" asked Regina.
Still Marcello was silent, as if refusing to answer, and yet wishing that she should go on.
"I will tell you," Regina said. "Her name is Aurora dell' Armi."
Marcello started, and looked into her face, doubting her word for the first time. He changed colour, too, flushing and then turning pale.
"It is not true!" he cried, rather hoarsely. "It cannot be true!"
"It is true," Regina answered, "but she will not have him. She would not marry him, even if her mother would allow it."
"Thank God!" exclaimed Marcello fervently.
Regina sighed, and turned away.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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15
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Ercole sat on the stone seat that ran along the wall of the inn, facing the dusty road. He was waiting in the cool dawn until it should please the innkeeper to open the door, and Nino crouched beside him, his head resting on his forepaws.
A great many years had passed since Ercole had sat there the last time, but nothing had changed, so far as he could see. He had been young, and the women had called him handsome; his face had not been shrivelled to parchment by the fever, and there had been no grey threads in his thick black hair. Nino had not been born then, and now Nino seemed to be a part of himself. Nino's grandam had lain in almost the same spot then, wolfish and hungry as her descendant was now, and only a trifle less uncannily hideous. It was all very much the same, but between that time and this there lay all Ercole's life by the Roman shore.
When he had heard, as every one had, how Marcello had been brought to Rome on the tail of a wine-cart, he had been sure that the boy had been laid upon it while the cart was standing before Paoluccio's inn in the night. He knew the road well, and the ways of the carters, and that they rarely stopped anywhere else between Frascati and Rome. Again and again he had been on the point of tramping up from the seashore to the place, to see whether he could not find some clue to Marcello's accident there, but something had prevented him, some old dislike of returning to the neighbourhood after such a long absence. He knew why he had not gone, but he had not confided the reason even to Nino, who was told most things. He had, moreover, been tolerably sure that nothing short of thumb-screws would extract any information from Paoluccio or his wife, for he knew his own people. The only thing that surprised him was that the boy should ever have left the inn alive after being robbed of everything he had about him that was worth taking.
Moreover, since Marcello had been found, and was alive and well, it was of very little use to try and discover exactly what had happened to him after he had been last seen by the shore. But the aspect of things had changed since Ercole had heard the sailor's story, and his wish to see the place where the boy had been hidden so long overcame any repugnance he felt to visiting a neighbourhood which had unpleasant associations with his younger years.
He sat and waited at the door, and before the sun rose a young woman came round the house with the big key and opened the place, just as Regina had done in old days. She looked at Ercole, and he looked at her, and neither said anything as she went about her work, sprinkling the floor with water and then sweeping it, and noisily pulling the heavy benches about. When this operation was finished, Ercole rose and went in, and sat down at the end of a table. He took some bread and cheese from his canvas bag and began to eat, using his clasp-knife.
"If you wish wine," said the woman, "you will have to wait till the master comes down."
Ercole only answered by raising his head and throwing out his chin, which means "no" in gesture language. He threw pieces of the bread and the rind of the cheese to his dog. Nino caught each fragment in the air with a snap that would have lamed a horse for a month. The woman glanced nervously at the animal, each time she heard his jagged teeth close.
Paoluccio appeared in due time, without coat or waistcoat, and with his sleeves rolled up above the elbows, as if he had been washing. If he had, the operation had succeeded very imperfectly. He glanced at Ercole as he passed in.
"Good-morning," he said, for he made it a point to be polite to customers, even when they brought their own food.
"Good-morning," answered Ercole, looking at him curiously.
Possibly there was something unusual in the tone of Ercole's voice, for Nino suddenly sat up beside his master's knee, forgetting all about the bread, and watched Paoluccio too, as if he expected something. But nothing happened. Paoluccio opened a cupboard in the wall with a key he carried, took out a bottle of the coarse aniseed spirits which the Roman peasants drink, and filled himself a small glass of the stuff, which he tossed off with evident pleasure. Then he filled his pipe, lit it carefully, and went to the door again. By this time, though he had apparently not bestowed the least attention on Ercole, he had made up his mind about him, and was not mistaken. Ercole belonged to the better class of customers.
"You come from the Roman shore?" he said, with an interrogation.
"To serve you," Ercole assented, with evident willingness to enter into conversation. "I am a keeper and watchman on the lands of Signor Corbario."
Paoluccio took his pipe from his mouth and nodded twice.
"That is a very rich gentleman, I have heard," he observed. "He owns much land."
"It all belongs to his stepson, now that the young gentleman is of age," Ercole answered. "But as it was his mother's, and she married Signor Corbario, we have the habit of the name."
"What is the name of the stepson?" asked Paoluccio.
"Consalvi," Ercole replied.
Paoluccio said nothing to this, but lit his pipe again with a sulphur match.
"Evil befall the soul of our government!" he grumbled presently, with insufficient logic, but meaning that the government sold bad tobacco.
"You must have heard of the young gentleman," Ercole said. "His name is Marcello Consalvi. They say that he lay ill for a long time at an inn on this road--" "For the love of heaven, don't talk to me about Marcello Consalvi!" cried Paoluccio, suddenly in a fury. "Blood of a dog! If you had not the face of an honest man I should think you were another of those newspaper men in disguise, pigs and animals that they are and sons of evil mothers, and ill befall their wicked dead, and their little dead ones, and those that shall be born to them!"
Paoluccio's eyes were bloodshot and he spat furiously, half across the road. Nino watched him and hitched the side of his upper lip on one of his lower fangs, which produced the effect of a terrific smile. Ercole was unmoved.
"I suppose," he observed, "that they said it happened in your inn."
"And why should it happen in my inn, rather than in any other inn?" inquired Paoluccio angrily.
"Indeed," said Ercole, "I cannot imagine why they should say that it did! Some one must have put the story about. A servant, perhaps, whom you sent away."
"We did not send Regina away," answered Paoluccio, still furious. "She ran away in the night, about that time. But, as you say, she may have invented the story and sent the newspaper men here to worry our lives with their questions, out of mere spite."
"Who was this Regina?" Ercole asked. "What has she to do with it?"
"Regina? She was the servant girl we had before this one. We took her out of charity."
"The daughter of some relation, no doubt," Ercole suggested.
"May that never be, if it please the Madonna!" cried Paoluccio. "A relation? Thank God we have always been honest people in my father's house! No, it was not a relation. She came of a crooked race. Her mother took a lover, and her father killed him, here on the Frascati road, and almost killed her too; but the law gave him the right and he went free."
"And then, what did he do?" asked Ercole, slowly putting the remains of his bread into his canvas bag.
"What did he do? He went away and never came back. What should he do?"
"Quite right. And the woman, what became of her?"
"She took other men, for she had no shame. And at last one of them was jealous, and struck her on the head with a paving stone, not meaning to kill her; but she died."
"Oh, she died, did she?"
"She died. For she was always spiteful. And so that poor man went to the galleys, merely for hitting her on the head, and not meaning to kill her."
"And you took the girl for your servant?"
"Yes. She was old enough to work, and very strong, so we took her for charity. But for my part, I was glad when she ran away, for she grew up handsome, and with that blood there surely would have been a scandal some day."
"One sees that you are a very charitable person," Ercole observed thoughtfully. "The girl must have been very ungrateful if she told untrue stories about your inn, after all you had done for her. You had nourished a viper in your house."
"That is what my wife says," Paoluccio answered, now quite calm. "Those are my wife's very words. As for believing that the young man was ever in this house, I tell you that the story is a wicked lie. Where should we have put him? In the cellar with the hogsheads, or in the attic with the maid? or in our own room? Tell me where we could have put him! Or perhaps they will say that he slept on the ceiling, like the flies? They will say anything, chattering, chattering, and coming here with their questions and their photographing machines, and their bicycles, and the souls of their dead! If you do not believe me, you can see the place where they say that he lay! I tell you there is not room for a cat in this house. Believe me if you like!"
"How can I not believe such a respectable person as you seem to be?" inquired Ercole gravely.
"I thank you. And since it happens that you are in the service of the young gentleman himself, I hope you will tell him that if he fancies he was in my house, he is mistaken."
"Surely," said Ercole.
"Besides," exclaimed Paoluccio, "how could he know where he was? Are not all inns on these roads alike? He was in another, that is all. And what had I to do with that?"
"Nothing," assented Ercole. "I thank you for your conversation. I will take a glass of the aniseed before I go, if you please."
"Are you going already?" asked Paoluccio, as he went to fetch the bottle and the little cast glass from which he himself had drunk.
"Yes," Ercole answered. "I go to Rome. I stopped to refresh myself."
"It will be hot on the road," said Paoluccio, setting the full glass down on the table. "Two sous," he added, as Ercole produced his old sheepskin purse. "Thank you."
"Thank you," Ercole answered, and tipped the spirits down his throat. "Yes, it will be hot, but what can one do? We are used to it, my dog and I. We are not of wax to melt in the sun."
"It is true that this dog does not look as if he were wax," Paoluccio remarked, for the qualities of Nino had not escaped him.
"No. He is not of wax. He is of sugar, all sugar! He has a very sweet nature."
"One would not say so," answered Paoluccio doubtfully. "If you go to the city you must muzzle him, or they will make you pay a fine. Otherwise they will kill him for you."
"Do you think any one would try to catch him if I let him run loose?" asked Ercole, as if in doubt. "He killed a full-grown wolf before he was two years old, and not long ago he worried a sheepdog of the Campagna as if it had been nothing but a lamb. Do you think any one would try to catch him?"
"If it fell to me, I should go to confession first," said Paoluccio.
So Ercole left the inn and trudged along the road to Rome with Nino at his heels, without once looking behind him; past the Baldinotti houses and into the Via Appia Nuova, and on into the city through the gate of San Giovanni, where the octroi men stopped him and made him show them what he had in his canvas bag. When they saw that there was no cheese left and but little bread, they let him go by without paying anything.
He went up to the left and sat down on the ground under the trees that are there, and he filled his little clay pipe and smoked a while, without even speaking to his dog. It was quiet, for it was long past the hour when the carts come in, and the small boys were all gone to school, and the great paved slope between the steps of the basilica and the gate was quite deserted, and very white and hot.
Ercole was not very tired, though he had walked all night and a good part of the morning. He could have gone on walking till sunset if he had chosen, all the way to his little stone house near Ardea, stopping by the way to get a meal; and then he would not have slept much longer than usual. A Roman peasant in his native Campagna, with enough to eat and a little wine, is hard to beat at walking. Ercole had not stopped to rest, but to think.
When he had thought some time, he looked about to see if any one were looking at him, and he saw that the only people in sight were a long way off. He took his big clasp-knife out of his pocket and opened it. As the clasp clicked at the back of the blade Nino woke and sat up, for the noise generally meant food.
The blade was straight and clean, and tolerably sharp. Ercole looked at it critically, drew the edge over his coarse thumb-nail to find if there were any nick in the steel, and then scratched the same thumb-nail with it, as one erases ink with a knife, to see how sharp it was. The point was like a needle, but he considered that the edge was dull, and he drew it up and down one of the brown barrels of his gun, as carefully as he would have sharpened a razor on a whetstone. After that he stropped it on the tough leathern strap by which he slung the gun over his shoulder when he walked; when he was quite satisfied, he shut the knife again and put it back into his pocket, and fell to thinking once more.
Nino watched the whole operation with bloodshot eyes, his tongue hanging out and quivering rhythmically as he panted in the heat to cool himself. When the knife disappeared, and the chance of a crust with it, the dog got up, deliberately turned his back to his master, and sat down again to look at the view.
"You see," said Ercole to himself and Nino, "this is an affair which needs thought. One must be just. It is one thing to kill a person's body, but it is quite another thing to kill a person's soul. That would be a great sin, and besides, it is not necessary. Do I wish harm to any one? No. It is justice. Perhaps I shall go to the galleys. Well, I shall always have the satisfaction, and it will be greater if I can say that this person is in Paradise. For I do not wish harm to any one."
Having said this in a tone which Nino could hear, Ercole sat thinking for some time longer, and then he rose and slung his gun over his shoulder, and went out from under the trees into the glaring heat, as if he were going into the city. But instead of turning to the left, up the hill, he went on by the broad road that follows the walls, till he came to the ancient church of Santa Croce. He went up the low steps to the deep porch and on to the entrance at the left. Nino followed him very quietly.
Ercole dipped his finger into the holy water and crossed himself, and then went up the nave, making as little noise as he could with his hob-nailed boots. An old monk in white was kneeling at a broad praying-stool before an altar on the left. Ercole stood still near him, waiting for him to rise, and slowly turning his soft hat in his hands, as if it were a rosary. He kept his eyes on the monk's face, studying the aged features. Presently the old man had finished his prayer and got upon his feet slowly, and looked at Ercole and then at Nino. Ercole moved forward a step, and stood still in an attitude of respect.
"What do you desire, my son?" asked the monk, very quietly. "Do you wish to confess?"
"No, father, not to-day," answered Ercole. "I come to pray you to say three masses for the soul of a person who died suddenly. I have also brought the money. Only tell me how much it will be, and I will pay."
"You shall give what you will, my son," the monk said, "and I will say the masses myself."
Ercole got out his sheepskin purse, untied the strings, and looked into it, weighing it in his hand. Then he seemed to hesitate. The monk looked on quietly.
"It is of your own free will," he said. "What you choose to give is for the community, and for this church, and for the chapel of Saint Helen. It is better that you know."
Ercole drew the mouth of the purse together again and returned it to the inside of his waistcoat, from which he produced a large old leathern pocket-book.
"I will give five francs," he said, "for I know that if you say the masses yourself, they will be all good ones."
A very faint and gentle smile flitted over the aged face. Ercole held out the small note, and the monk took it.
"Thank you," he said. "Shall I say the masses for a man or a woman?"
"As it pleases you, father," Ercole answered.
"Eh?" The old monk looked surprised.
"It does not matter," Ercole explained. "Is not a mass for a man good for a woman also?"
"We say 'his' soul or 'her' soul, as the case may be, my son."
"Is that written in the book of the mass?" inquired Ercole distrustfully.
"Yes. Also, most people tell us the baptismal name of the dead person."
"Must I do that too?" Ercole asked, by no means pleased.
"Not unless you like," the monk answered, looking at him with some curiosity.
"But it is in the book of the mass that you must say 'his' or 'her' soul?"
"Yes."
"Then the masses will not be good unless you say the right word." Ercole paused a moment in deep thought, and looked down at his hat. "It will be better to say the masses for a female," he said at length, without meeting the monk's eyes.
"Very well," the latter answered. "I will say the first mass to-morrow."
"Thank you," said Ercole. "My respects!"
He made a sort of bow and hurried away, followed by Nino. The old monk watched him thoughtfully, and shook his head once or twice, for he guessed something of the truth, though by no means all.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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16
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"One might almost think that you wished to marry Aurora yourself," said Corbario, with a sneer.
He was standing with his back to the fire in the great library of the villa, for it was late autumn again; it was raining hard and the air was raw and chilly.
"You may think what you please," Marcello answered, leaning back in his deep leathern chair and taking up a book. "I am not going to argue with you."
"Insufferable puppy," growled Folco, almost under his teeth; but Marcello heard.
He rose instantly and faced the elder man without the slightest fear or hesitation.
"If this were not my house, and you my guest, I would have you put out of doors by the servants," he said, in a tone Corbario had never heard before. "As it is, I only advise you to go before I lose my temper altogether."
Corbario backed till his heels were against the fender, and tried to smile.
"My dear Marcello!" he protested. "What nonsense is this? You know I am not in earnest!"
"I am," said Marcello quietly enough, but not moving.
The half-invalid boy was not a boy any longer, nor an invalid either, and he had found his hold on things, since the days when Folco had been used to lead him as easily as if he had no will of his own. No one would have judged him to be a weak man now, physically or mentally. His frame was spare and graceful still, but there was energy and directness in his movements, his shoulders were square and he held his head high; yet it was his face that had changed most, though in a way very hard to define. A strong manhood sometimes follows a weak boyhood, very much to the surprise of those who have long been used to find feebleness where strength has suddenly developed. Marcello Consalvi had never been cowardly, or even timid; he had only been weak in will as in body, an easy prey to the man who had tried to ruin him, body and soul, in the hope of sending him to his grave.
"I really cannot understand you, my dear boy," Corbario said very sweetly. "You used to be so gentle! But now you fly into a passion for the merest thing."
"I told you that I would not argue with you," Marcello said, keeping his temper. "This is my house, and I choose that you should leave it at once. Go your way, and leave me to go mine. You are amply provided for, as long as you live, and you do not need my hospitality any longer, since you are no longer my guardian. Live where you please. You shall not stay here."
"I certainly don't care to stay here if you don't want me," Folco answered. "But this is really too absurd! You must be going mad, to take such a tone with me!"
"It is the only one which any honourable man who knows you would be inclined to take."
"Take care! You are going too far."
"Because you are under my roof? Yes, perhaps. As my guest, if I have been hasty, I apologise for expressing my opinion of you. I am going out now. I hope you will find it convenient to have left before I come in."
Thereupon Marcello turned his back on Corbario, crossed the great library deliberately, and went out without looking round.
Folco was left alone, and his still face did not even express surprise or annoyance. He had indeed foreseen the coming break, ever since he had returned to the villa three weeks earlier, when Marcello had received him with evident coldness, not even explaining where he had been since they had last parted. But Folco had not expected that the rupture would come so suddenly, still less that he was literally to be turned out of the house which he still regarded as his own, and in which he had spent so many prosperous years. There had, indeed, been some coldly angry words between the two men. Marcello had told Folco quite plainly that he meant to be the master, and that he was of age, and should regulate his own life as he pleased, and he had expressed considerable disgust at the existence Folco had been leading in Paris and elsewhere; and Folco had always tried to laugh it off, calling Marcello prudish and hypersensitive in matters of morality, which he certainly was not. Once he had attempted an appeal to Marcello's former affection, recalling his mother's love for them both, but a look had come into the young man's eyes just then which even Corbario did not care to face again, and the relations between the two had become more strained from that time on.
It might seem almost incredible that a man capable of the crimes Corbario had committed in cold blood, for a settled purpose, should show so little power of following the purpose to its accomplishment after clearing the way to it by a murder; but every one who has had to do with criminals is aware that after any great exertion of destructive energy they are peculiarly subject to a long reaction of weakness which very often leads to their own destruction. If this were not a natural law, if criminals could exert continually the same energy and command the same superhuman cunning which momentarily helped them to perpetrate a crime, the world would be in danger of being possessed and ruled by them, instead of being mercifully, and perhaps too much, inclined to treat them as degenerates and madmen. Their conduct after committing a murder, for instance, seems to depend much more on their nerves than on their intelligence, and the time almost invariably comes when their nerves break down. It is upon the moment when this collapse of the will sets in that the really experienced detective counts, knowing that it may be hastened or retarded by circumstances quite beyond the murderer's control. The life of a murderer, after the deed, is one long fight with such circumstances, and if he once loses his coolness he is himself almost as surely lost as a man who is carried away by his temper in a duel with swords.
After Folco had killed his wife and had just failed to kill Marcello, he had behaved with wonderful calm and propriety for a little while; but before long the old wild longing for excitement and dissipation, so long kept down during his married life, had come upon him with irresistible force, and he had yielded to it. Then, in hours of reaction, in the awful depression that comes with the grey dawn after a night of wine and pleasure and play, terrible little incidents had come back to his memory. He had recalled Kalmon's face and quiet words, and his own weakness when he had first come to see Marcello in the hospital--that abject terror which both Regina and the doctor must have noticed--and his first impression that Marcello no longer trusted him as formerly, and many other things; and each time he had been thus disturbed, he had plunged deeper into the dissipation which alone could cloud such memories and keep them out of sight for a time; till at last he had come to live in a continual transition from recklessness to fear and from fear to recklessness, and he had grown to detest the very sight of Marcello so heartily that an open quarrel was almost a relief.
If he had been his former self, he would undoubtedly have returned to his original purpose of killing Marcello outright, since he had not succeeded in killing him by dissipation. But his nerve was not what it had been, and the circumstances were not in his favour. Moreover, Marcello was now of age, and had probably made a will, unknown to Corbario, in which case the fortune would no longer revert to the latter. The risk was too great, since it would no longer be undertaken for a certainty amounting to millions. It was better to be satisfied with the life-interest in one-third of the property, which he already enjoyed, and which supplied him with abundant means for amusing himself.
It was humiliating to be turned out of the house by a mere boy, as he still called Marcello, but he was not excessively sensitive to humiliation, and he promised himself some sort of satisfactory vengeance before long. What surprised him most was that the first quarrel should have been about Aurora. He had more than once said in conversation that he meant to marry the girl, and Marcello had chosen to say nothing in answer to the statement; but when Folco had gone so far as to hint that Aurora was in love with him and was about to accept him, Marcello had as good as given him the lie direct, and a few more words had led to the outbreak recorded at the beginning of this chapter.
As a matter of fact Corbario understood what had led to it better than Marcello himself, who had no very positive reason for entirely disbelieving his stepfather's words. The Contessa and her daughter had returned to Rome, and Corbario often went to see them, whereas Marcello had not been even once. When Marcello had last seen Folco in the Engadine, he had left him sitting in their little room at the hotel. Folco was not at all too old to marry Aurora; he was rich, at least for life, and Aurora was poor; he was good-looking, accomplished, and ready with his tongue. It was by no means impossible that he might make an impression on the girl and ultimately win her. Besides, Marcello felt that odd little resentment against Aurora which very young men sometimes feel against young girls, whom they have thought they loved, or are really about to love, or are afraid of loving, which makes them rude, or unjust, or both, towards those perhaps quite unconscious maidens, and which no woman can ever understand.
"My dear Harry, why will you be so disagreeable to Mary?" asks the wondering mother. "She is such a charming girl, and only the other day she was saying that you are such a nice boy!"
"Humph!" snorts Harry rudely, and forthwith lights his pipe and goes off to the stables to growl in peace, or across country, or to his boat, or to any other heavenly place not infested by women.
There had been moments when, in his heart, Marcello had almost said that it would serve Aurora right to be married to Corbario; yet at the first hint from the latter that she was at all in danger of such a fate, Marcello had broken out as if the girl's good name had been attacked, and had turned his stepfather out of the house in a very summary fashion.
Having done so, he left the villa on foot, though it was raining hard, and walked quickly past San Pietro in Montorio and down the hill towards Trastevere. The southwest wind blew the rain under his umbrella; it was chilly as well as wet, and a few big leaves were beginning to fall from the plane-trees.
He was not going to the little house, where Regina sat by the window looking at the rain and wishing that he would come soon. When he was down in the streets he hailed the first cab he saw, gave the man an address in the Forum of Trajan, and climbed in under the hood, behind the dripping leathern apron, taking his umbrella with him and getting thoroughly wet, as is inevitable when one takes a Roman cab in the rain.
The Contessa was out, in spite of the weather, but Marcello asked if Aurora would see him, and presently he was admitted to the drawing-room, where she was sitting beside a rather dreary little fire, cutting a new book. She threw it down and rose to meet him, as little outwardly disturbed as if they had seen each other constantly during the past two years. She gave him her hand quietly, and they sat down and looked at the fire.
"It won't burn," Aurora said, rather disconsolately. "It never did burn very well, but those horrid people who have had the apartment for two years have spoilt the fireplace altogether."
"I remember that it used to smoke," Marcello answered, going down on his knees and beginning to move the little logs into a better position.
"Thank you," Aurora said, watching him. "You won't succeed, but it's good of you to try."
Marcello said nothing, and presently he took the queer little Roman bellows, and set to work to blow upon the smouldering spots where the logs touched each other. In a few seconds a small flame appeared, and soon the fire was burning tolerably.
"How clever you are!" Aurora laughed quietly.
Marcello rose and sat upon a low chair, instead of on the sofa beside her. For a while neither spoke, and he looked about him rather awkwardly, while Aurora watched the flames. It was long since he had been in the room, and it looked shabby after the rather excessive magnificence of the villa on the Janiculum, for which Corbario's taste had been largely responsible. It was just a little shabby, too, compared with the dainty simplicity of the small house in Trastevere. The furniture, the carpets, and the curtains were two years older than when he had seen them last, and had been unkindly used by the tenants to whom the Contessa had sub-let the apartment in order to save the rent. Marcello missed certain pretty things that he had been used to see formerly, some bits of old Saxe, a little panel by an early master, a chiselled silver cup in which there always used to be flowers. He wondered where these things were, and felt that the room looked rather bare without them.
"It burns very well now," said Aurora, still watching the fire.
"What has become of the old silver cup," Marcello asked, "and all the little things that used to be about?"
"We took them away with us when we let the apartment, and they are not unpacked yet, though we have been here two months."
"Two months?"
"Yes. I was wondering whether you were ever coming to see us again!"
"Were you? I fancied that you would not care very much to see me now."
Aurora said nothing to this, and they both looked at the fire for some time. The gentle sound of the little flames was cheerful, and gave them both the impression of a third person, talking quietly.
"I should not have come to-day," Marcello said at last, "except that something has happened."
"Nothing bad, I hope!" Aurora looked up with a sudden anxiety that surprised him.
"Bad? No. At least, I think not. Why are you startled?"
"I have had a headache," Aurora explained. "I am a little nervous, I fancy. What is it that has happened?"
Marcello glanced at her doubtfully before he answered. Her quick interest in whatever chanced to him took him back to the old times in an instant. The place was familiar and quiet; her voice was like forgotten music, once delightful, and now suddenly recalled; her face had only changed to grow more womanly.
"You never thought of marrying Folco, did you?" he asked, all at once, and a little surprised at the sound of his own words.
"I?" Aurora started again, but not with anxiety. "How can you think such a thing?"
"I don't think it; but an hour ago, at the villa, he told me in almost so many words that you loved him and meant to accept him."
A blush of honest anger rose in the girl's fair face, and subsided instantly.
"And what did you say?" she asked, with a scarcely perceptible tremor in her tone.
"I turned him out of the house," Marcello answered quietly.
"Turned him out?" Aurora seemed amazed. "You turned him out because he told you that?"
"That and other things. But that was the beginning of it. I told him that he was lying, and he called me names, and then I told him to go. He will be gone when I reach home."
To Marcello's surprise, Aurora got up suddenly, crossed the room and went to one of the windows. Marcello rose, too, and stood still. She seemed to be looking out at the rain, but she had grasped one of the curtains tightly, and it looked as if she were pressing the other hand to her left side. For a second her head bent forward a little and her graceful shoulders moved nervously, as though she were trying to swallow something hard. Marcello watched her a moment, and then crossed the room and stood beside her.
"What is it?" he asked in a low voice, and laying his hand gently on hers that held the curtain.
She drew her own away quietly and turned her head. Her eyes were dry and bright, but there were deep bistre shadows under them that had not been there before, and the lower lids were swollen.
"It is nothing," she answered, and then laughed nervously. "I am glad you have made your stepfather go away. It was time! I was afraid you were as good friends as ever."
"We have not been on good terms since we parted in Pontresina. Do you remember when I left him in your sitting-room at the hotel? He had been trying to persuade me to go back to Paris with him at once. In fact--" he hesitated.
"You intended to go," Aurora said, completing the sentence. "And then you changed your mind."
"Yes. I could not do it. I cannot explain everything."
"I understand without any explanation. I think you did right."
She went back to the fireplace and sat down in the corner of the sofa, leaning far back and stretching out one foot to the fender in an unconscious attitude of perfect grace. In the grey afternoon the firelight began to play in her auburn hair. Now and then she glanced at Marcello with half-closed lids, and there was a suggestion of a smile on her lips. Marcello saw that in her way she was as beautiful as Regina, and he remembered how they had kissed, without a word, when the moon's rays quivered through the trees by the Roman shore, more than two years ago. They had been children then. All at once he felt a great longing to kneel down beside the sofa and throw his arms round her waist and kiss her once again; but at almost the same instant he thought of Regina, waiting for him by the window over there in Trastevere, and he felt the shame rising to his face; and he leaned back in his low chair, clasping his hands tightly over one knee, as if to keep himself from moving.
"Marcello," Aurora began presently, but she got no further.
"Yes?" Still he did not move.
"I have something on my conscience." She laughed low. "No, it is serious!" she went on, as if reproving herself. "I have always felt that everything that has happened to you since we parted that morning by the shore has been my fault."
"Why?" Marcello seemed surprised.
"Because I called you a baby," she said. "If you had not been angry at that, if you had not turned away and left me suddenly--you were quite right, you know--you would not have been knocked down, you would not have wandered away and lost yourself. You would not have lost your memory, or been ill in a strange place, or--or all the rest! So it is all my fault, you see, from beginning to end."
"How absurd!" Marcello looked at her and smiled.
"No. I think it is true. But you have changed very much, Marcello. You are not a boy any longer. You have a will of your own now; you are a man. Do you mind my telling you that?"
"Certainly not!" He smiled again.
"I remember very well what you answered. You said that I should not laugh at you again. And that has come true. You said a good many other things. Do you remember?"
"No. I was angry. What did I say? Everything that happened before I was hurt seems very far off."
"It does not matter," Aurora answered softly. "I am glad you have forgotten, for though I was angry too, and did not care at the time, the things you said have hurt me since."
"I am sorry," Marcello said gently, "very, very sorry. Forgive me."
"It was all my fault, for I was teasing you for the mere fun of the thing. I was nothing but a silly school-girl then."
"Yes. You have changed, too."
"Am I at all what you expected I should be?" Aurora asked, after a moment's silence.
Marcello glanced at her, and clasped his hands over his knee more tightly than ever.
"I wish you were not," he answered in a low voice.
"Don't wish that." Her tone was even lower than his.
Neither spoke again for some time, and they did not look at each other. But the flames flickering in the small fireplace seemed to be talking, like a third person in the room. Aurora moved at last, and changed her position.
"I am glad that you have quarrelled with your stepfather," she said. "He meant to do you all the harm he could. He meant you to die of the life you were leading."
"You know that?" Marcello looked up quickly.
"Yes. I have heard my mother and Professor Kalmon talking about it when they thought I was not listening. I always pretend that I am not listening when anybody talks about you." She laughed a little. "It is so much simpler," she added, as if to explain. "The Professor said that your stepfather was killing you by inches. Those were his words."
"The Professor never liked him. But he was right. Have you seen him often?"
"Yes." Aurora laughed again. "He always turns up wherever we are, pretending that it is the most unexpected meeting in the world. He is just like a boy!"
"What do you mean? Is he in love with you?"
"With me? No! He is madly in love with my mother! Fancy such a thing! When he found that we were coming back to Rome he gave up his professorship in Milan, and he has come to live here so as to be able to see her. So I hear them talking a great deal, and he seems to have found out a great many things about your stepfather which nobody ever knew. He takes an extraordinary interest in him for some reason or other."
"What has he found out?" asked Marcello.
"Enough to hang him, if people could be hanged in Italy," Aurora answered.
"I should have thought Folco too clever to do anything really against the law," said Marcello, who did not seem much surprised at what she said.
"The Professor believes that it was he that tried to kill you."
"How is that possible?" Marcello asked, in great astonishment. "You would have seen him!"
"I did. You had not been gone three minutes when he came round to the gap in the bank where I was standing. He came from the side towards which I had seen you go. It was perfectly impossible that he should not have met you. The Professor says he must have known that you were there, looking at the storm, but that he did not know that I was with you, and that he was lying in wait for you to strike you from behind. If we had gone back together he would not have shown himself, that's all, and he would have waited for a better chance. If I had only followed you I should have seen what happened."
"That is the trouble," said Marcello thoughtfully. "No one ever saw what happened, and I remember nothing but that I fell forward, feeling that I had been struck on the back of the head. Did you not hear any sound?"
"How could I, in such a gale as was blowing? It all looks dreadfully likely and quite possible, and the Professor is convinced that your stepfather has done some worse things."
"Worse?"
"Yes, because he did not fail in doing them, as he did when he tried to kill you."
"But what must such a man be?" cried Marcello, suddenly breaking out in anger. "What must his life have been in all the years before my mother married him?"
"He was a kind of adventurer in South America. I don't quite know what he did there, but Professor Kalmon has found out a great deal about him from the Argentine Republic, where he lived until he killed somebody and had to escape to Europe. If I were you I would go and see the Professor, since he is in Rome. He lives at No. 16, Via Sicilia. He will tell you a great deal about that man when he knows that you have parted for good."
"I'll go and see him. Thank you. I cannot imagine that he could tell me anything worse than I have already heard."
"Perhaps he may," Aurora answered very gravely.
Then she was silent, and Marcello could not help looking at her as she leaned back in the corner of the sofa. Of all things, at that moment, he dreaded lest he should lose command of himself under the unexpected influence of her beauty, of old memories, of the failing light, of the tender shadows that still lingered under her eyes, of that exquisite small hand that lay idly on the sofa beside her, just within his reach. He rose abruptly, no longer trusting himself.
"I must be going," he said.
"Already? Why?" She looked up at him and their eyes met.
"Because I cannot be alone with you any longer. I do not trust myself."
"Yes, you do. You are a man now, and I trust you."
He had spoken roughly and harshly in his momentary self-contempt, but her words were clear and quiet, and rang true. He stood still in silence for a moment.
"And besides," she added softly, "she trusts you too."
There was a little emphasis on the word "she" and in her tone that was a reproach, and he looked at her in wonder.
"We cannot talk of her, you and I," she said, turning her eyes to the fire, "but you know what I mean, Marcello. It is not enough to be kind. We women do not think so much of that as you men fancy. You must be true as well."
"I know it," Marcello answered, bending his head a little. "Good-bye, Aurora."
"No. Not good-bye, for you will come again soon, and then again, and often."
"Shall I?"
"Yes, because we can trust each other, though we are fond of each other. We are not children any longer, as we used to be."
"Then I will come sometimes."
He took her hand, trying not to feel that it was in his, and he left her sitting by the rather dreary little fire, in the rather shabby room, in the grey twilight.
As he drove through the wet streets, he went over all she had said, went over it again and again, till he knew her words by heart. But he did not try, or dare to try, to examine what he felt, and was going to feel. The manliness that had at last come to its full growth in him clung to the word "true" as she had meant it.
But she, being left alone, leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and clasping her hands as she gazed at the smouldering remains of the fire. She had known well enough that she had loved him before he had come; she had known it too well when he had told her how he had driven Folco out of his house for having spoken of her too carelessly. Then the blood had rushed to her throat, beating hard, and if she had not gone quickly to the window she felt that she must have cried for joy. She was far too proud to let him guess that, but she was not too proud to love him, in spite of everything, though it meant that she compared herself with the peasant girl, and envied her, and in all maiden innocence would have changed places with her if she could.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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17
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It was late in the evening when Marcello reached the villa, and was told that his stepfather had left suddenly with his valet, before sunset, taking a good deal of luggage with him. The coachman had driven him to the station and had seen no more of him. He had not left any message or note for Marcello. This was as it should be, and Marcello did not care to know whither he had gone, since he was out of the house. He was glad, however, that he had left Rome at once instead of going to an hotel, which would have made an interesting topic of conversation for gossips.
Marcello vaguely wondered why Folco had told a perfectly gratuitous falsehood about Aurora, and whether he could possibly have lied merely for the sake of hurting him. If so, he had got his deserts. It mattered very little now, and it was a waste of thought to think of him at all.
The young man had a big fire built in the library, and sat down in his favourite leathern chair under the shaded light. He was tired, but not sleepy, and he was glad to be alone at last, for he had felt Corbario's evil presence in the house, though they had met little of late, and it was a great relief to know that he would never return.
He was glad to be alone, and yet he felt lonely, for the one condition did not make the other impossible. He was glad to be able to think in peace, but when he did think, he longed for some companionship in his thoughts, and he found that he was wishing himself back in the room that looked down upon the Forum of Trajan, with Aurora, and that she was telling him again that she could trust him; and yet the very thought seemed to mean that he was not to be trusted.
Psychological problems are only interesting when they concern other people than ourselves, for there can be no problem where there is not a difficulty, and where the inner self is concerned there can be no difficulty that does not demand immediate solution if we are to find peace. Some men of very strong and thoughtful character are conscious of a sort of second self within themselves, to which they appeal in trouble as Socrates to his Dæmon; but most men, in trouble and alone, would turn to a friend if there were one at hand.
Marcello had none, and he felt horribly lonely in his great house, as the faces of two women rose before him, on the right and left.
But he was a man now, and as he sat there he determined to face the problem bravely and to solve it once and for ever by doing what was right, wheresoever he could convince himself that right lay, and without any regard for his own inclinations.
He told himself that this must be possible, because where right and wrong were concerned it was never possible to hesitate long. A man is never so convinced that right is easy to distinguish and to do as when he has lately made up his mind to reform. Indeed, the weakness as well as the strength of all reformers lies in their blind conviction that whatever strikes them as right must be done immediately, with a haste that strongly resembles hurry, and with no regard for consequences. You might as well try, when an express train is running at full speed on the wrong track, to heave it over to the right one without stopping it and without killing the passengers. Yet most reformers of themselves and others, from the smallest to the greatest, seem to believe that this can be done, ought to be done, and must be done at once.
Marcello was just then a reformer of this sort. He had become aware in the course of that afternoon that something was seriously wrong, and as his own will and character had served him well of late, he trusted both beforehand and set to work to find out the right track, with the distinct intention of violently transferring the train of his existence to it as soon as it had been discovered. He was very sure of the result.
Besides, he had been brought up by a very religious woman, and a strong foundation of belief remained in him, and was really the basis of all his thinking about himself. He had been careless, thoughtless, reckless, since his mother had died, but he had never lost that something to which a man may best go back in trouble. Sometimes it hurt him, sometimes it comforted him vaguely, but he was always conscious that it was there, and had been there through all his wildest days. It was not a very reasoning belief, for he was not an intellectual man, but it was unchangeable and solid still in spite of all his past weakness. It bade him do right, blindly, and only because right was right; but it did not open his eyes to the terrible truth that whereas right is right, the Supreme Power, which is always in the right, does not take human life into consideration at all, and that a man is under all circumstances bound to consider the value of life to others, and sometimes its value to himself, when others depend upon him for their happiness, or safety, or welfare.
Animated by the most sincere wish to find the right direction and follow it--perhaps because Aurora had said that she trusted him--yet blind to the dangers that beset his path, there is no knowing how many lives Marcello might not have wrecked by acting on the resolutions he certainly would have made if he had been left to himself another hour.
He was deep in thought, his feet stretched out to the fire, his head leaning back against the leathern cushion of his chair, his eyes half closed, feeling that he was quite alone and beyond the reach of every one, if he chose to sit there until morning wrestling with his psychological problem.
He was roused by the sharp buzz of the telephone instrument which stood on the writing-table. It was very annoying, and he wished he had turned it off before he had sat down, but since some one was calling he got up reluctantly to learn who wanted him at that hour. He glanced at the clock, and saw that it was nearly half-past ten. The instrument buzzed again as he reached the table.
"I want to see Signor Consalvi at once; is it too late?" asked a man's voice anxiously.
"I am Consalvi. Who are you, please?" asked Marcello.
"Kalmon. Is it true that Corbario has left the villa?"
"Yes. He left this afternoon."
"Where is he now?"
"He drove to the railway station. I don't know where he is gone. He left no address." " --railway station--no address--" Marcello heard the words as Kalmon spoke to some other person at his elbow, wherever he was.
"May I come at once?" Kalmon asked.
"Yes. I am alone. I'll have the lower gate opened."
"Thanks. I shall be at the gate in twenty minutes. Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
Marcello hung up the receiver, rang the bell, and gave the order for the gate, adding that the gentleman who came was to be shown in at once. Then he sat down and waited.
It was clear that Kalmon had learned of Corbario's departure from Aurora, perhaps through her mother. He had probably dined with them, for he was intimate at the house, and Aurora had spoken of Marcello's visit. There was no reason why she should not have done so, and yet Marcello wished that she had kept it to herself a little longer. It had meant so much to him, and it suddenly seemed as if it had meant nothing at all to her. She had perhaps repeated to her mother everything that had been said, or almost everything, for she was very fond of her.
Marcello told himself roughly that since he had no right to love her, and was determined not to, he had no claim upon such little delicacies of discretion and silence on her part; and his problem stuck up its head again out of the deep water in which it lived, and glared at him, and shot out all sorts of questions like the wriggling tentacles of an octopus, inviting him to wrestle with them, if only to see how useless all wrestling must be. He rose again impatiently, took a cigar from a big mahogany box on the table, lit it and smoked savagely, walking up and down.
It was half finished when the door opened and Kalmon was ushered in. He held out his hand as he came forward, with the air of a man who has no time to lose.
"I am glad to see you," Marcello said.
"And I am exceedingly glad that you were at home when I called you up," Kalmon answered. "Have you really no idea where Corbario is?"
"Not the slightest. I am only too glad to get rid of him. I suppose the Contessa told you--" "Yes. I was dining there. But she only told me half an hour ago, just as I was coming away, and I rushed home to get at the telephone."
It occurred to Marcello that Kalmon need not have driven all the way to Via Sicilia from the Forum of Trajan merely for the sake of telephoning.
"But what is the hurry?" asked Marcello. "Do sit down and explain! I heard this afternoon that you had strong suspicions as to Folco's part in what happened to me."
"Something more than suspicions now," Kalmon answered, settling his big frame in a deep chair before the tire; "but I am afraid he has escaped."
"Escaped? He has not the slightest idea that he is suspected!"
"How do you know? Don't you see that as he is guilty, he must have soon begun to think that the change in your manner toward him was due to the fact that you suspected him, and that you turned him out because you guessed the truth, though you could not prove it?"
"Perhaps," Marcello admitted, in a rather preoccupied tone. "The young lady seems to have repeated to her mother everything I said this afternoon," he added with evident annoyance. "Did the Contessa tell you why I quarrelled with Folco to-day?"
"No. She merely said that there had been angry words and that you had asked him to leave the house. She herself was surprised, she said, and wondered what could have brought matters to a crisis at last."
Marcello's face cleared instantly. Aurora had not told any one that he had quarrelled with his stepfather about her; that was quite evident, for there were not two more truthful people in the world than the Contessa and Kalmon, whose bright brown eyes were at that moment quietly studying his face.
"Not that the fact matters in the least," said the Professor, resting his feet on the fender and exposing the broad soles of his wet walking-boots to the flame. "The important fact is that the man has escaped, and we must catch him."
"But how are you so sure that it was he that attacked me? You cannot arrest a man on suspicion, without going through a great many formalities. You cannot possibly have got an eye-witness to the fact, and so it must be a matter of suspicion after all, founded on a certain amount of rather weak circumstantial evidence. Now, if it was he that tried to kill me, he failed, for I am alive, and perfectly well. Why not let him alone, since I have got rid of him?"
"For a very good reason, which I think I had better not tell you."
"Why not?"
"I am not sure what you would do if you were told it suddenly. Are your nerves pretty good? You used to be a delicate boy, though I confess that you look much stronger now."
"You need not fear for my nerves," Marcello answered with a short laugh. "If they are sound after what I have been through in the last two years they will stand anything!"
"Yes. Perhaps you had better know, though I warn you that what I am going to say will be a shock to you, of which you do not dream."
"You must be exaggerating!" Marcello smiled incredulously. "You had better tell me at once, or I shall imagine it is much worse than it is."
"It could not be," Kalmon answered. "It is hard even to tell, and not only because what happened was in a distant way my fault."
"Your fault? For heaven's sake tell me what the matter is, and let us be done with it!"
"Corbario wanted to get possession of your whole fortune. That is why he tried to kill you."
"Yes. Is that all? You have made me understand that already."
"He had conceived the plan before your mother's death," said Kalmon.
"That would not surprise me either. But how do you know it?"
"Do you remember that discovery of mine, that I called 'the sleeping death'?"
"Yes. What has that to do with it?" Marcello's expression changed.
"Corbario stole one of the tablets from the tube in my pocket, while I was asleep that night."
"What?" Marcello began to grow pale.
"Your mother died asleep," said Kalmon in a very low voice.
Marcello was transfixed with horror, and grasped the arms of his chair. His face was livid. Kalmon watched him, and continued.
"Yes. Corbario did it. Your mother used to take phenacetine tablets when she had headaches. They were very like the tablets of my poison in size and shape. Corbario stole into my room when I was sound asleep, took one of mine, and dropped in one of hers. Then he put mine amongst the phenacetine ones. She took it, slept, and died."
Marcello gasped for breath, his eyes starting from his head.
"You see," Kalmon went on, "it was long before I found that my tablets had been tampered with. There had been seven in the tube. I knew that, and when I glanced at the tube next day there were seven still. The tube was of rather thick blue glass, if you remember, so that the very small difference between the one tablet and the rest could not be seen through it. I went to Milan almost immediately, and when I got home I locked up the tube in a strong-box. It was not until long afterwards, when I wanted to make an experiment, that I opened the tube and emptied the contents into a glass dish. Then I saw that one tablet was unlike the rest. I saw that it had been made by a chemist and not by myself. I analysed it and found five grains of phenacetine."
Marcello leaned back, listening intently, and still deadly pale.
"You did not know that I was trying to find out how you had been hurt, that I was in communication with the police from the first, that I came to Rome and visited you in the hospital before you recovered your memory. The Contessa was very anxious to know the truth about her old friend's son, and I did what I could. That was natural. Something told me that Corbario had tried to kill you, and I suspected him, but it is only lately that I have got all the evidence we need. There is not a link lacking. Well, when I came to Rome that time, it chanced that I met Corbario at the station. He had come by the same train, and was looking dreadfully ill. That increased my suspicion, for I knew that his anxiety must be frightful, since you might have seen him when he struck you, and might recognise him, and accuse him. Yet he could not possibly avoid meeting you. Imagine what that man must have felt. He tried to smile when he saw me, and said he wished he had one of those sleeping tablets of mine. You understand. He thought I had already missed the one he had taken, though I had not, and that he had better disarm any possible suspicion by speaking of the poison carelessly. Then his face turned almost yellow, and he nearly fainted. He said it was the heat, and I helped him to his carriage. He looked like a man terrified out of his senses, and I remembered the fact afterwards, when I found that one tablet had been stolen; but at the time I attributed it all to his fear of facing you. Now we know the truth. He tried to murder you, and on the same day he poisoned your mother."
Kalmon sat quite still when he had finished, and for a long time Marcello did not move, and made no sound. At last he spoke in a dull voice.
"I want to kill him myself."
The Professor glanced at him and nodded slowly, as if he understood the simple instinct of justice that moved him.
"If I see him, I shall kill him," Marcello said slowly. "I am sure I shall."
"I am afraid that he has escaped," Kalmon answered. "Of course there is a possibility that he may have had some object in deceiving your coachman by driving to the railway station, but it is not at all likely. He probably took the first train to the north."
"But he can be stopped at the frontier!"
"Do you think Corbario is the man to let himself be trapped easily if he knows that he is pursued?" asked Kalmon incredulously. "I do not."
He rose from his chair and began to walk up and down, his hands behind him and his head bent.
Marcello paid no attention to him and was silent for a long time, sitting quite motionless and scarcely seeming to breathe. What he felt he never could have told afterwards; he only knew that he suffered in every fibre of his brain and body, with every nerve of his heart and in every secret recess of his soul. His mother seemed to have been dead so long, beyond the break in his memory. The dreadful truth he had just heard made her die again before his eyes, by the hand of the man whom he and she had trusted.
"Kalmon," he said at last, and the Professor stopped short in his walk. "Kalmon, do you think she knows?"
It was like the cry of a child, but it came from a man who was already strong. Kalmon could only shake his head gravely; he could find nothing to say in answer to such a question, and yet he was too human and kind and simple-hearted not to understand the words that rose to Marcello's lips.
"Then she was happy to the end--then she still believes in him."
Kalmon turned his clear eyes thoughtfully towards Marcello's face.
"She is gone," he answered. "She knows the great secret now. The rest is nothing to the dead. But we are living and it is much to us. The man must be brought to justice, and you must help me to bring him down, if we have to hunt him round the world."
"By God, I will!" said Marcello, in the tone of one who takes a solemn obligation.
He rose and stood upright, as if he were ready, and though he was still pale there was no look of weak horror left in his face, nor any weakness at all.
"Good!" exclaimed Kalmon. "I would rather see you so. Now listen to me, and collect your thoughts, Marcello. Ercole is in Rome. You remember Ercole, your keeper at the cottage by the shore? Yes. I got the last link in the evidence about Corbario's attack on you from him to-day. He is a strange fellow. He has known it since last summer and has kept it to himself. But he is one of those diabolically clever peasants that one meets in the Campagna, and he must have his reasons. I told him to sleep at my house to-night, and when I went home he was sitting up in the entry with his dog. I have sent him to the station to find out whether Corbario really left or not. You don't think he will succeed? I tell you there are few detectives to be compared with one of those fellows when they are on the track of a man they hate. I told him to come here, no matter how late it might be, since he is your man. I suppose he can get in?"
"Of course. There is a night-bell for the porter. Ercole knows that. Besides, the porter will not go to bed as long as you are here. While we are waiting for him, tell me what Ercole has found out."
They sat down again, and Kalmon told Marcello the sailor's story of what his captain had seen from the deck of the brigantine. Marcello listened gravely.
"I remember that there was a small vessel very far in," he said. "Aurora will remember it, too, for she watched it and spoke of it. We thought it must run aground on the bar, it was so very near."
"Yes. She remembers it, too. The evidence is complete."
There was silence again. Marcello threw another log upon the fire, and they waited. Kalmon smoked thoughtfully, but Marcello leaned back in his chair, covering his eyes with one hand. The pain had not begun to be dulled yet, and he could only sit still and bear it.
At last the door opened, and a servant said that Ercole was waiting, and had been ordered to come, no matter how late it was. A moment later he appeared, and for once without his dog.
He stood before the door as it closed behind him waiting to be told to come forward. Marcello spoke kindly to him.
"Come here," he said. "It is a long time since we saw each other, and now we are in a hurry."
Ercole's heavy boots rang on the polished floor as he obeyed and came up to the table. He looked gloomily and suspiciously at both men.
"Well?" said Kalmon, encouraging him to speak.
"He is still in Rome," Ercole answered. "How do I know it? I began to ask the porters and the under station-masters who wear red caps, and the woman who sells newspapers and cigars at the stand, and the man who clips the tickets at the doors of the waiting-rooms. 'Did you see a gentleman, so and so, with a servant, so and so, and much luggage, going away by the train? For I am his keeper from the Roman shore, and he told me to be here when he went away, to give him a certain answer.' So I said, going from one to another, and weeping to show that it was a very urgent matter. And many shook their heads and laughed at me. But at last a porter heard, and asked if the gentleman were so and so. And I said yes, that he was so and so, and his servant was so and so, and that the gentleman was a rich gentleman. And the porter said, 'See what a combination! That is the gentleman who had all his luggage brought in this afternoon, to be weighed; but it was not weighed, for he came back after a quarter of an hour, and took some small things and had them put upon a cab, but the other boxes were left in deposit.' Then I took out four sous and showed them to the porter, and he led me to a certain hall, and showed me the luggage, which is that of the man we seek, and it is marked 'F.C.' So when I had seen, I made a show of being joyful, and gave the porter five sous instead of four. And he was very contented. This is the truth. So I say, he is still in Rome."
"I told you so," said Kalmon, looking at Marcello.
"Excuse me, but what did you tell the young gentleman?" asked Ercole suspiciously.
"That you would surely find out," Kalmon answered.
"I have found out many things," said Ercole gloomily.
His voice was very harsh just then, as if speaking so much had made him hoarse.
"He took some of his things away because he meant to spend the night in Rome," Kalmon said thoughtfully. "He means to leave to-morrow, perhaps by an early train. If we do not find him to-night, we shall not catch him in Rome at all."
"Surely," said Ercole, "but Rome is very big, and it is late."
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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18
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It was still raining when the three men left the villa, and the night was very dark, for the young moon had already set. The wind howled round San Pietro in Montorio and the Spanish Academy, and whistled through the branches of the plane-trees along the winding descent, and furiously tore the withering leaves. They struck Ercole's weather-beaten face as he sat beside the coachman with bent head, with his soft hat pulled down over his eyes, and the rain dripped from his coarse moustache. Kalmon and Marcello leaned as far back as they could, under the deep hood and behind the high leathern apron.
"There is some animal following us," the cabman said to Ercole as they turned a corner.
"It is my dog," Ercole answered.
"It sounds like a calf," said the cabman, turning his head to listen through the storm.
"It is not a calf," answered Ercole gruffly. "It is my dog. Or if you wish it to be the were-wolf, it will be the were-wolf."
The cabman glanced uneasily at his companion on the box, for the were-wolf is a thing of terror to Romans. But he could not see the countryman's features in the gloom, and he hastened his horse's pace down the hill, for he did not like the sound of those galloping feet behind his cab, in that lonely road, in the dark and the rain.
"Where am I to go?" he asked, as he came near the place where a turn to the right leads out of the Via Garibaldi down to the Via Luciano Manara.
But Kalmon knew where they were, even better than Marcello, to whom the road was familiar by day and night, in all weathers.
"We must leave that message first," said the Professor to Marcello. "We are coming to the turning."
"To Santa Cecilia," Marcello called out to the cabman, thrusting his head forward into the rain, "then I will tell you where to go."
"Santa Cecilia," echoed the cabman.
Ercole growled something quite unintelligible, to which his companion paid no attention, and the cab rattled on through the rain down the long paved street. It made such a noise that the dog's feet could not be heard any more. There were more lamps, too, and it seemed less gloomy than up there under the plane-trees, though there were no lights in the windows at that late hour.
"Now to the right," said Ercole, as they reached the back of Saint Cecilia's at the Via Anicia.
"To the right!" Marcello called out a second later from under the hood.
"You seem to know the way," said the cabman to Ercole. "Why don't you give me the address of the house at once and be done with it?"
"I know the house, but not the street, nor the number."
"I understand. Does your dog also know the house?"
To this question Ercole made no answer, for he considered that it was none of the cabman's business, and, moreover, he regretted having shown that he knew where his master was going. Marcello now gave the final direction to the cabman, who drew up before a door in a wall, in a narrow lane, where the walls were high and the doors were few. It was the garden entrance to the little house in Trastevere.
Marcello got out, opened the door with the key he carried, and went in. It was raining hard, and he disappeared into the darkness, shutting the door behind him. It had a small modern lock with a spring latch that clicked sharply as it shut. The cab had stopped with the door on the left, and therefore on the side on which Ercole was sitting. Nino, the dog, came up from behind, with his tongue hanging out, blood-red in the feeble light of the cab's lamp; he put his head up above the low front wheel to have a look at Ercole. Being satisfied, he at once lay down on the wet stones, with his muzzle towards the door.
Two or three minutes passed thus, in total silence. The cab-horse hung his head patiently under the driving rain, but neither stamped on the paving stones nor shook himself, nor panted audibly, for he was a pretty good horse, as cab-horses go, and was not tired.
Suddenly Nino growled without moving, the ominous low growl of a dog that can kill, and Ercole growled at him in turn, making a sound intended to impose silence. There was no reason why Nino should growl at Marcello. But Nino rose slowly upon his quarters, as if he were about to spring at the door, and his rough coat bristled along his back. Then Ercole distinctly heard the latch click as it had done when Marcello went in, and Nino put his muzzle to the crack of the closed door and sniffed up and down it, and then along the stone step. To Ercole it was clear that some person within had opened the door noiselessly a little way and had shut it again rather hurriedly, on hearing the dog and seeing the cab. Whoever it was had wished to see if there were any one outside, without being seen, or perhaps had meant to slip out without being heard by any one in the house.
Kalmon, leaning back inside, had not heard the sound of the latch, and paid no attention to Nino's growl. It was natural that such an animal should growl and snarl for nothing, he thought, especially on a rainy night, when the lamps of a cab throw strange patches of light on the glistening pavement.
There was some reason why Ercole, who had heard, did not get down and tell the Professor, who had noticed nothing. One reason, and a good enough one, was that whoever it was that had opened the door so cautiously, it certainly was not the man they were all hunting that night. Yet since Ercole knew the little house, and probably knew who lived there, and that it belonged to Marcello, it might have been supposed that he would have told the latter, whose footsteps were heard on the gravel a few moments afterwards. But though Marcello stood a moment by the wheel close to Ercole, and spoke across him to the cabman, Ercole said nothing. Nino had not growled at Marcello, even before the latter had appeared, for Nino had a good memory, for a dog, and doubtless remembered long days spent by the Roman shore, and copious leavings thrown to him from luxurious luncheons. Before they had left the villa he had sniffed at Marcello's clothes and hands in a manner that was meant to be uncommonly friendly, though it might not have seemed reassuring to a stranger; and Marcello had patted his huge head, and called him by name.
The young man had given the cabman the address of the office of the Chief of Police, and when he had got in and hooked up the leathern apron, the cab rolled away over the stones through the dark streets, towards the bridge of Saint Bartholomew.
Within the house Regina sat alone, as Marcello had found her, her chin resting on the back of her closed hand, her elbow on her knee, her eyes gazing at the bright little fire that blazed on the polished hearth. Her hair was knotted for the night, low down on her neck, and the loose dressing-gown of dove-coloured silk plush was unfastened at the neck, where a little lace fell about her strong white throat.
She had sprung to her feet in happy surprise when Marcello had entered the room, though it was not two hours since he had left her, and she could still smell the smoke of his last cigarette. She had felt a sudden chill when she had seen his face, for she never saw him look grave and preoccupied without believing that he had grown suddenly tired of her, and that the end had come. But then she had seen his eyes lighten for her, and she had known that he was not tired of her, but only very much in earnest and very much in a hurry.
He had bidden her find out from Settimia where Corbario was, if the woman knew it; he had told her to find out at any cost, and had put a great deal of emphasis on the last words. In answer to the one question she asked, he told her that Corbario was a murderer, and was trying to escape. He had not time to explain more fully, but he knew that he could count on her. She did not love Folco Corbario, and she came of a race that could hate, for it was the race of the Roman hill peasants. So he left her quickly and went on.
But when he was gone, Regina sat quite still for some time, looking at the fire. Settimia was safe in her own room, and was probably asleep. It would be soon enough to wake her when Regina had considered what she should say in order to get the information Marcello wanted. Settimia would deny having had any communication with Corbario, or that she knew anything of his whereabouts. The next step would probably be to tempt her with money or other presents. If this failed, what was to be done? Somehow Regina guessed that a bribe would not have much effect on the woman.
Marcello had wished to send her away long ago, but Regina had persuaded him to let her stay. It was part of her hatred of Corbario to accumulate proofs against him, and they were not lacking in the letters he wrote to Settimia. Regina could not understand the relation in which they stood to each other, but now and then she had found passages in the letters which referred neither to herself nor Marcello, but to things that had happened a good many years ago in another country. She was convinced that the two had once been companions in some nefarious business, of which they had escaped the consequences. It was her intention to find out exactly what the deed had been, and then to bring Corbario to ruin by exposing it. It was a simple scheme, but it seemed a sure one, and Regina was very patient. Corbario had tried to separate her from Marcello, and she had sworn that he should pay her for that; and besides, he had wished to kill Marcello in order to get his money. That was bad, undoubtedly--very bad; but to her peasant mind it was not unnatural. She had heard all her life of crimes committed for the sake of an inheritance; and so have most of us, and in countries that fondly believe themselves much more civilised than Italy. That was extremely wicked, but the attempt had failed, and it sank into insignificance in comparison with the heinous crime of trying to separate two lovers by treachery. That was what Regina would not forgive Corbario.
Nor would she pardon Settimia, who had been Corbario's instrument and helper; and as she meant to include the woman in her vengeance, she would not let her go, but kept her, and treated her so generously and unsuspiciously that Settimia was glad to stay, since Corbario still wished it.
Regina looked at the little travelling-clock that stood on the low table at her elbow, and saw that it was half-past eleven. Behind the drawn curtains she could hear the rain beating furiously against the shutters, but all was quiet within the house. Regina listened, for Settimia's room was overhead, and when she moved about her footsteps could be heard in the sitting-room. Regina had heard her just before Marcello had come in, but there was no sound now; she had probably gone to bed. Regina lit a candle and went into her own room.
On a shelf near the little toilet-table there was a box, covered with old velvet, in which she kept the few simple pins and almost necessary bits of jewellery which she had been willing to accept from Marcello. She took it down, set it upon the toilet-table and opened it. A small silver-mounted revolver lay amongst the other things, for Marcello had insisted that she should have a weapon of some kind, because the house seemed lonely to him. He had shown her how to use it, but she had forgotten. She took it out, and turned it over and over in her hands, with a puzzled look. She did not even know whether it was loaded or not, and did not remember how to open the chamber. She wondered how the thing worked, and felt rather afraid of it. Besides, if she had to use it, it would make a dreadful noise; so she put it back carefully amongst the things.
There were the cheap little earrings she had worn ever since she had been a child, till Marcello had made her take them out and wear none at all. There was a miserable little brooch of tarnished silver which she had bought with her own money at a country fair, and which had once seemed very fine to her. She had not the slightest sentiment about such trifles, for Italian peasants are altogether the least sentimental people in the world; the things were not even good enough to give to Settimia, and yet it seemed wrong to throw them away, so she had always kept them, with a vague idea of giving them to some poor little girl, to whom they would represent happiness. With them lay the long pin she used to stick through her hair on Sundays when she went to church.
It had been her mother's, and it was the only thing she possessed which had belonged to the murdered woman who had given her birth. It was rather a fine specimen of the pins worn by the hill peasant women, and was made like a little cross-hilted sword, with a blade of fire-gilt steel about eight inches long. A little gilt ball was screwed upon the point, intended to keep the pin from coming out after it was thrust through the hair. Regina took the ball off and felt the point, which was as sharp as that of a pen-knife; and she tried the blade with her hands and found that it did not bend easily. It was strong enough for what she wanted of it. She stuck it through the heavy knot of her hair, rather low down at the back of her neck, where she could easily reach it with her right hand; but she did not screw on the ball. It was not likely that the pin would fall out. She was very deliberate in all she did; she even put up her hand two or three times, without looking at herself in the mirror, to be quite sure where to find the hilt of the pin if she should need it. Marcello had told her to get the information he wanted "at any cost."
Then she went back, with her candle, through the cheerful sitting-room, and out through a small vestibule that was now dark, and up the narrow staircase to find Settimia.
She knocked, and the woman opened, and Regina was a little surprised to see that she was still dressed. She was pale, and looked very anxious as she faced her mistress in the doorway.
"What is the matter?" she asked, rather nervously.
"Nothing," Regina answered in a reassuring tone. "I had forgotten to tell you about a little change I want in the trimming of that hat, and as I heard you moving about, I came up before going to bed."
Settimia had taken off her shoes more than half an hour earlier in order to make no noise, and her suspicions and her fears were instantly aroused. She drew her lids together a little and looked over Regina's shoulder through the open door towards the dark staircase. She was not a tall woman, and was slightly made, but she was energetic and could be quick when she chose, as Regina knew. Regina quietly shut the door behind her and came forward into the room, carrying her candle-stick, which she set down upon the table near the lamp.
"Where is that hat?" she asked, so naturally that the woman began to think nothing was wrong after all.
Settimia turned to cross the room, in order to get the hat in question from a pasteboard bandbox that stood on the floor. Regina followed her, and stood beside her as she bent down.
Then without the slightest warning Regina caught her arms from behind and threw her to her knees, so that she was forced to crouch down, her head almost touching the floor. She was no more than a child in the peasant woman's hands as soon as she was fairly caught. But she did not scream, and she seemed to be keeping her senses about her.
"What do you want of me?" she asked, speaking with difficulty.
Policemen know that ninety-nine out of a hundred criminals ask that question when they are taken.
"I want to know several things," Regina answered.
"Let me go, and I will tell you what I can."
"No, you won't," Regina replied, looking about her for something with which to tie the woman's hands, for she had forgotten that this might be necessary. "I shall not let you go until I know everything."
She felt that Settimia's thin hands were cautiously trying the strength of her own and turning a very little in her grasp. She threw her weight upon the woman's shoulders to keep her down, grasped both wrists in one hand, and with the other tore off the long silk cord that tied her own dressing-gown at the waist. It was new and strong.
"You had better not struggle," she said, as she got the first turn round Settimia's wrists and began to pull it tight. "You are in my power now. It is of no use to scream either, for nobody will hear you."
"I know it," the woman replied. "What are you going to do with me?"
"I shall ask questions. If you answer them, I shall not hurt you. If you do not, I shall hurt you until you do, or until you die. Now I am going to tie your wrists to your heels, so that you cannot move. Then I will put a pillow under your head, so that you can be pretty comfortable while we talk a little."
She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, which terrified Settimia much more than any dramatic display of anger or hatred could have done. In a few moments the woman was bound hand and foot. Regina turned her upon her side, and arranged a pillow under her head as she had promised to do. Then she sat down upon the floor beside the pillow and looked at her calmly.
"In this way we can talk," she said.
Settimia's rather stony eyes were wide with fear now, as she lay on her side, watching Regina's face.
"I have always served you faithfully," she said. "I cannot understand why you treat me so cruelly."
"Yes," Regina answered, unmoved, "you have been an excellent maid, and I am sorry that I am obliged to tie you up like the calves that are taken to the city on carts. Now tell me, where is Signor Corbario?"
"How should I know?" whined Settimia, evidently more frightened. "I know nothing about Signor Corbario. I swear that I have hardly ever seen him. How can I possibly know where he is? He is probably at his house, at this hour."
"No. You know very well that he has left the villa. It will not serve to tell lies, nor to say that you know nothing about him, for I am sure you do. Now listen. I wish to persuade you with good words. You and Signor Corbario were in South America together."
Settimia's face expressed abject terror.
"Never!" she cried, rocking her bound body sideways in an instinctive attempt to emphasise her words by a gesture. "I swear before heaven, and the saints, and the holy--" "It is useless," Regina interrupted. "You have not forgotten what you and he did in Salta ten years ago. You remember how suddenly Padilla died, when 'Doctor' Corbario was attending him, and you were his nurse, don't you?"
She fixed her eyes sternly on Settimia's, and the woman turned livid, and ground her teeth.
"You are the devil!" she said hoarsely. "But it is all a lie!" she cried, suddenly trying denial again. "I was never in South America, never, never, never!"
"This is a lie," observed Regina, with perfect calm. "If you do not tell me where Signor Corbario is to-night, I shall go to the police to-morrow and tell all I know about you."
"You know nothing. What is all this that you are inventing? You are a wicked woman!"
"Take care! Perhaps I am a wicked woman. Who knows! I am not a saint, but you are not my confessor. It is the contrary, perhaps; and perhaps you will have to confess to me this night, before going to the other world, if you confess at all. Where is Signor Corbario?"
As she asked the question, she quietly took the long pin from her hair and began to play with the point.
"Are you going to murder me?" groaned the wretched woman, watching the terrible little weapon.
"I should not call it murder to kill you. This point is sharp. Should you like to feel it? You shall. In this way you will perhaps be persuaded to speak."
She gently pressed the point against Settimia's cheek.
"Don't move, or you will scratch yourself," she said, as the woman tried to draw back her face. "Now, will you tell me where Signor Corbario is? I want to know."
Settimia must have feared Corbario more than she feared Regina and the sharp pin at that moment, for she shook her head and set her teeth. Perhaps she believed that Regina was only threatening her, and did not mean to do her any real bodily hurt; but in this she was misled by Regina's very quiet manner.
"I shall wait a little while," said Regina, almost indifferently, "and then, if you do not tell me, I shall begin to kill you. It may take a long time, and you will scream a good deal, but nobody will hear you. Now think a little, and decide what you will do."
Regina laid the pin upon the floor beside her, drew up her knees, and clasped her hands together over them, as the hill women often sit for hours when they are waiting for anything.
Her face hardened slowly until it had an expression which Marcello had never seen. It was not a look of cruelty, nor of fierce anticipated satisfaction in what she meant to do; it was simply cold and relentless, and Settimia gazed with terror on the splendid marble profile, so fearfully distinct against the dark wall in the bright light of the lamp. The strength of the woman, quietly waiting to kill, seemed to fill the room; her figure seemed to grow gigantic in the terrified eyes of her prisoner; the slow, regular heave of her bosom as she breathed was telling the seconds and minutes of fate, that would never reach an hour.
It is bad to see death very near when one is tied hand and foot and cannot fight for life. Most people cannot bear the sight quietly for a quarter of an hour; they break down altogether, or struggle furiously, like animals, though they know it is perfectly useless and that they have no chance. Anything is easier than to lie still, watching the knife and wondering when and where it is going to enter into the flesh.
Regina sat thinking and ready. She wished that she had Corbario himself in her power, but it was something to have the woman who had helped him. She was very glad that she had insisted on keeping Settimia in spite of Marcello's remonstrances. It had made it possible to obtain the information he wanted, and which, she felt sure, was to lead to Corbario's destruction. She was to find out "at any cost"; those had been Marcello's words, and she supposed he knew that she would obey him to the letter. For she said to herself that he was the master, and that if she did not obey him in such a matter, when he seemed so much in earnest, he would be disappointed, and angry, and would then grow quickly tired of her, and so the end would come. "At any cost," as he had said it in his haste, meant to Regina at the cost of blood, and life, and limb, if need were. Corbario was the enemy of the man she loved; it was her lover's pleasure to find out his enemy and to be revenged at last; what sort of woman must she be if she did not help him? what was her love worth if she did not obey him? He had been always kind to her, and more than kind; but it would have been quite the same if he had treated her worse than a dog, provided he did not send her away from him. She belonged to him, and he was the master, to do as he pleased. If he sent her away, she would go; but if not, he might have beaten her and she would never have complained. Now that he had given a simple command, she was not going to disobey him. She had pride, but it was not for him, and in her veins the blood of sixty generations of slaves and serfs had come down to her through two thousand years, the blood of men who had killed when they were bidden to kill by their masters, whose masters had killed them like sheep in war and often in peace, of women who had been reckoned as goods and as chattels with the land on which their mothers had borne them--of men and women too often familiar with murder and sudden death from their cradles to their graves.
The minutes passed and Settimia's terror grew till the room swam with her, and she lost hold upon herself, and did not know whether she screamed or was silent, as her parched lips opened wide upon her parted teeth. But she had made no sound, and Regina did not even look at her. Death had not come yet; there was a respite of seconds, perhaps of minutes.
At last Regina unclasped her hands and took up the pin again. The miserable woman fancied that she already felt the little blade creeping through her flesh and blood on its way to her heart. For Regina had said she would take a long time to kill her. It must have been a strong reason that could keep her silent still, if she knew the answer to the question.
Regina turned her head very slowly and looked coldly down at the agonised face.
"I am tired," she said. "I cannot wait any longer."
Settimia's eyes seemed to be starting from her head, and her dry lips were stretched till they cracked, and she thought she had screamed again; but she had not, for her throat was paralysed with fear. Regina rose upon her knees beside the pillow, with the pin in her right hand.
"Where is Corbario?" she asked, looking down. "If you will not tell I shall hurt you."
Settimia's lips moved, as if she were trying to speak, but no words came from them. Regina got up from the floor, went to the washstand and poured some water into the glass, for she thought it possible that the woman was really unable to utter a sound because her throat was parched with fear. But she could speak a little as soon as Regina left her side, and the last peril seemed a few seconds less near.
"For the love of God, don't kill me yet," she moaned. "Let me speak first!"
Regina came back, knelt down, and set the glass on the floor, beside the pin.
"That is all I want," she said quietly, "that you should speak."
"Water," moaned Settimia, turning her eyes to the glass.
Regina held up her head a little and set the tumbler to her lips, and she drank eagerly. The fear of death is more parching than wound-fever or passion.
"Now you can surely talk a little," Regina said.
"Why do you wish to know where he is?" Settimia asked in a weak voice. "Are the police looking for him? What has he done? Why do you want me to betray him?"
"These are too many questions," Regina answered. "I have been told to make you tell where he is, and I will. That is enough."
"I do not know where he is."
In an instant the point of the sharp little blade was pressing against the woman's throat, harder and harder; one second more and it would pierce the skin and draw blood.
"Stop," she screamed, with a convulsion of her whole body. "He is in the house!"
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With a single movement Regina was on her feet, for she had been taken by surprise, and her first instinct was to be ready for some new and unsuspected danger. In a flash it seemed to her that since Corbario was in the house, he might very possibly enter suddenly and take Settimia's defence. Regina was not afraid of him, but she was only a woman after all, and Corbario was not a man to stop at trifles. He was very likely armed, and would perhaps shoot her, in order to make good his escape with Settimia, unless, as was quite probable, he killed his old accomplice too, before leaving the room.
Regina stood still a moment, reflecting on the dangerous situation. It certainly would not be safe to release Settimia yet; for if Corbario were really in the house, the two together could easily overpower one woman, though she was strong.
"I am sorry that I cannot untie you yet," Regina said, and with a glance at the prostrate figure she took up her candle-stick, stuck her pin through her hair before the mirror, and went to the door.
She took the key from the lock, put it back on the outside, and turned it, and put it into her pocket when she had shut the door after her. Then she slowly descended the stairs, stopping now and then to listen, and shading her candle with her hand so that she could see over it, for she expected to be attacked at any moment. At the slightest sound she would have snatched her pin from her hair again, but she heard nothing, and went cautiously down till she reached the vestibule outside the sitting-room. She entered the latter and sat down to think.
Should she boldly search the house? Settimia could hardly have had any object in lying. If she had meant to frighten Regina, she would have spoken very differently. She would have made out that Corbario was almost within hearing, waiting in a dark corner with a loaded revolver. But her words had been the cry of truth, uttered to save her life at the moment when death was actually upon her. She would have screamed out the truth just as certainly if Corbario had already left Rome, or if he were in some hotel for the night--or even if she had really known nothing. In the last case Regina would have believed her, and would have let her go. There is no mistaking the accent of mortal terror, whether one has ever heard it or not.
Corbario was somewhere in the house, Marcello's enemy, and the man she herself had long hated. A wild longing came over her to have him in her power, bound hand and foot like Settimia, and then to torment him at her pleasure until he died. She felt the strength of half a dozen men in her, and the courage of an army, as she rose to her feet once more. She had seen him. He was not a big man. If she could catch him from behind, as she had caught the woman, she might perhaps overpower him. With the thought of near revenge the last ray of caution disappeared, and from being fearless Regina became suddenly reckless.
But as she rose, she heard a sound overhead, and it was the unmistakable sound of footsteps. She started in surprise. It was simply impossible that Settimia should have loosed the cord that bound her. Regina had been brought up in the low hill country and in the Campagna, and she could tie some of the knots used by Roman muleteers and carters, which hold as well as those men learn at sea. She had tied Settimia very firmly, and short of a miracle the woman could not have freed herself. Yet the footsteps had been distinctly audible for a moment. Since Settimia was not walking about, Corbario must have got into the room. Yet Regina had locked the door, and had the key in her pocket. It was perfectly incomprehensible. She left the sitting-room again, carrying her candle as before; but at the door she turned back, and set the candle-stick upon the table. She would be safer in the dark, and would have a better chance of taking Corbario by surprise.
Poor Regina had not grown up amongst people who had a high standard of honour, and her own ideas about right and wrong were primitive, to speak charitably. But if she had dreamt of the deed that was being done upstairs, her heart would have stood still, and she would have felt sick at the mere thought of such villainy.
She had left the room and locked the door, and while her footsteps had been audible on the stairs no other sound had broken the stillness. But a few seconds later a whispered question came from some person out of sight.
"Is she gone?" the whisper asked.
"Yes," answered Settimia in a very low voice, which she knew Regina could not hear.
Corbario's pale face cautiously emerged from the closet in which he had been hidden, and he looked round the room before he stepped out. Settimia could not turn over to see him, but she heard him coming towards her.
"Cut this cord," she said in an undertone. "Make haste! We can be out of the house in less than half a minute."
Corbario knelt beside her, and took out a handsome English clasp-knife. But he did not cut the cord. He looked down into Settimia's face, and she understood.
"I could not help it," she answered. "She would have killed me!"
Corbario laid his left hand upon her throat.
"If you try to scream I shall strangle you," he said in a whisper. "You have betrayed me, and I cannot afford to trust you again. Do you know what I am going to do?"
She tried to turn her head, but his hand was heavy on her throat. She strained frightfully to move, and her stony eyes lit up with a dying glare of terror.
"Do it quickly!" she gasped.
"Hush!" His hand tightened on her throat. "If you were in Salta, you should die by tenths of inches, if it took all night! That would be too good for you."
He spat in her face as she writhed under his grasp. He looked into her living eyes once more with all the cowardly hate that possessed him, he struck deep and sure, he saw the light break in the pupils, and heard the awful rattle of her last breath.
In an instant he was at the window, and had thrown it wide open. He got out quickly, let himself down with his hands, and pushed himself away from the wall with his feet as he jumped down backwards, well knowing that there was grass below him, and that the earth was as soft as sponge with the long rain. He was sure that he could not hurt himself. Yet before his feet touched the ground he had uttered a low cry of fear.
He was on his legs now and trying to run, but it was too late. There was the flash of a lantern in the wet garden, and between him and the light, and just below it, he saw two points of greenish fire coming at him; for he saw everything then; and he heard the rush of a heavy beast's feet, tearing up the earth with iron claws, and the savage breath, and the loud hiss of a man setting the creature on; for he heard every sound then; and he knew that the thing of terror would leap up with resistless strength and hurl its weight upon him, and bury its jagged fangs in his throat and tear him, in an instant that would seem like an hour of agony, and that the pain and the fear would be as if he were hung up by all the nerves of his body, drawn out and twisted; for he knew everything then; and in that immeasurable time which is nothing, and yet is infinite, he remembered his evil life, his robberies, his murders, and his betrayals, one by one, but he remembered with most frightful clearness how he had tried to kill Marcello, how he had corrupted him from his childhood, with bad counsels very cunningly, and prepared him to go astray, how he had thrust evil in his path and laughed away the good, and had led him on, and poisoned him, and would have brought him to his death and damnation surely, but for one sinning devoted woman that loved him; for he remembered everything then; and from very far away, out of memories of his youth, there came a voice that had once been gentle and kind, but that rang in his ears now, like the blast of the trumpet of the last judgment.
"Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
Far better, indeed, for it all came, when the immeasurable second's length was past, and he was thrown down against the wall, and torn, and shaken like a rat; it all came just as he had felt that it was coming, and it lasted long, a long, long time, while he tried to howl, and the blood only gurgled in his throat. And then, just as many strong hands dragged away the thing of terror, and the light of a lantern and of a lamp flashed in his eyes, he fell asleep in the wet grass.
For they had caught him fairly and brought him, down. Kalmon had watched him long, and had told some of his suspicions to the Chief of Police, and the latter, unknown to Kalmon, had caused him to be watched from time to time. But he, who had been watched before and had once already escaped for his life, had sometimes seen faces near him that he did not trust, and when he had turned back from the station that afternoon he had seen one of those faces; so he had driven away quickly in a cab, by winding ways, so as not to be followed. Yet Kalmon and Marcello, talking as they drove, grew more and more sure that he would wish to see Settimia before he left Rome, the more certainly if he believed himself pursued, as seemed likely from his changing his mind at the station. So they had stopped their cab before they had reached their destination, and had sent Ercole back to Trastevere with the key of the garden gate, bidding him watch, as it was most probable that Corbario would try to get out through the garden; and before long they had come back to the door of the house that opened upon the street, and had let themselves in quietly, just in time to hear the noise of the struggle as the dog threw Corbario to the ground. For the other entrance to the little vestibule opened upon the garden within, at the very spot where Corbario alighted when he jumped from the window.
And now they stood there in the rain round the wounded man, while Marcello held the lantern to his face, and Regina thrust a lamp out of the lower window which she had thrown open.
"Is he dead?" she asked, in the silence that followed when Ercole had got control of the dog again.
At the sound of her voice Ercole started strangely and looked up to her face that was not far above his own, and his eyes fixed themselves upon her so intently that she looked down at him, while she still held out her lamp. She could not remember that she had ever seen him; but he had seen her many times since he had made his visit to the inn on the Frascati road.
"Is he dead?" she repeated, putting the question directly to him as he was nearest.
Still he looked at her in silence, with his deep-set, unwinking eyes. Marcello and Kalmon were bending over Corbario, Marcello holding the lantern, while the Professor listened for the beating of the heart and felt the pulse. They paid no attention to Regina for the moment.
"Why don't you speak?" she asked, surprised by Ercole's silent stare.
"You don't know me," he said slowly, "but I know you."
The rain was beating upon her lamp, and at that moment the shade cracked under the cold drops and fell to pieces, and the wind instantly extinguished the flame of the flaring wick. Regina withdrew into the room to get another light, and Ercole stared after her into the gloom.
"He is alive," said Kalmon, looking up to see why the light had gone out. "We must get him inside at once, or he will die here. Come, Ercole! Make that dog lie down and keep quiet."
Between them they carried Corbario into the house. Nino watched on the step in the rain, but when the door was shut behind him, he crawled down to the wet grass and lapped the blood and water in the dark. They carried Corbario upstairs to an empty room there was, and as they went Regina tried to tell Marcello what she had done. They opened Settimia's door, which was still locked, and they found her quite dead, and the window was wide open; then Regina understood that Corbario had been hidden within hearing, and had killed the woman because she had confessed.
The men who had been sent from the central police station at Kalmon's request arrived a few minutes later. One was at once sent for a surgeon and for more men; the other remained. Soon the little house was full of officials, in uniform and in plain clothes. They examined everything, they wrote rapidly on big sheets of stamped paper; their chief took the first deposition of Regina, and of the three men, and of the surgeon. At dawn a man came with a rough pine coffin. Officials came and went, and were gravely busy. One man spoke of coffee when it was day, and went and made some in the little kitchen, for the two young women who cooked and did the work of the house did not sleep there, and would not come till past seven o'clock.
During the long hours, when Regina and Marcello were not wanted, they were together in the sitting-room downstairs. Regina told Marcello in detail everything she knew about the events of the night, and much which she had found out earlier about Settimia but had never told him. Kalmon came in from time to time and told them what was going on, and that Corbario was still alive; but they saw no more of Ercole. He had made his first deposition, to the effect that he had been set to watch the house, that the murderer had jumped from an upper window, and that the dog had pulled him down. The officials looked nervously at the dog, produced by Ercole in evidence, and were glad when the beast was out of their sight. There were dark stains about the bristles on his jaws, and his eyes were bloodshot; but Ercole laid one hand on his uncouth head, and he was very quiet, and did not even snarl at the policemen.
Regina and Marcello sat side by side, talking in a low voice, and looking at each other now and then. The little house in which they had been happy was turned to a place of death and horror, and both knew that some change was coming to themselves.
"You cannot live here any more," Marcello said at dawn, "not even till to-night."
"Where could I go?" Regina asked. "Why should I not stay here? Do you think I am afraid of the dead woman?"
"No," Marcello answered, "but you cannot stay here."
He guessed what talking and gossiping there would be when the newspapers told what had happened in the little house, how the reporters would hang about the street for a week to come, and how fashionable people would go out of their way to see the place where a murder had been committed by such a well-known person as Corbario, and where he had been taken almost in the very act, and himself nearly killed. Besides all that, there would be the public curiosity about Regina, who had been so intimately concerned in a part of the tragedy, and whose name was everywhere associated with his own.
He would have taken her away from Rome at once, if he could have done so. But he knew that they would both be called upon during the next few days to repeat in court the evidence they had already given in their first deposition. There was sure to be the most frightful publicity about the whole affair, of which reports would be published not only in Rome but throughout Italy, and all over the world. In real life the consequences of events generally have the importance which fiction is obliged to give the events themselves; which is the reason why the things that happen to real people rarely come to any precise conclusion, like those reached by a play or a novel. The "conclusion" lies in the lives of the people, after the tragedy, or the drama, or the comedy has violently upset their existences.
"You cannot stay here," Marcello repeated with conviction.
"You will go on living at your villa," Regina answered. "Why should I not go on living in this house? For a few days I will not go out, that is all. Is it the end of the world because a person has been killed who ought to have died in the galleys? Or because the man who tried to kill you was caught in a place that belongs to you? Tell me that."
"You cannot stay here," Marcello repeated a third time.
For a while Regina was silent. They were both very white and heavy-eyed in the cold daylight, though they could not have slept. At last she looked at him thoughtfully.
"If we were married, we should go on living in our own house," she said. "Is it true, or not? It is because there will be talking that you are ashamed to let me stay where I am, and would like to get me away. This is the truth. I know it."
Marcello knew it too and did not answer at once, for it was not easy to decide what he ought to do. The problem that had seemed so hard to solve a few hours earlier was fast getting altogether beyond solution. There was only one thing to be done in the first present difficulty; he must take Regina to some other place at once. No doubt this was easy enough. He would take an apartment for her elsewhere, as far as possible from the scene of the tragedy, and in a few hours she could be installed there out of the way of annoyance. He could buy a house for her if he chose, for he was very rich. Possibly some house already belonging to him was vacant; his lawyer would know.
But after that, what was to come? If Corbario lived, there would be a sensational trial in which he and Regina would be witnesses together, and Kalmon too, and very surely Aurora and her mother. For Aurora would be called upon to tell what she knew of Marcello's movements on the morning when he had been knocked down near the gap.
Every moment of his past life would be publicly examined, to prove Corbario's guilt. Worse than that, there would be a long inquiry to show that Corbario had murdered his mother. Skilled surgeons were tending the man's wounds and reviving him by every means that science could suggest. Kalmon said that he might live. He was being kept alive in order to be condemned to the expiation of his crimes in penal servitude, since Italian law could not make him pay for them with his life. The man would be watched by day and night, lest he should try to commit suicide, for he was to suffer, if he lived. He was to suffer horribly, without doubt, and it was right and just that he should. But Marcello would suffer too. That was not just. The name of his saintly mother would be in the mouths of all kinds of witnesses, in the columns of all sorts of newspapers. Lawyers would make speeches about her to excite the pity of the jury and to turn the whole tide of feeling against Corbario. Marcello would himself be held up to public commiseration, as one of Corbario's victims. There would be allusions covert and open to Regina and to the position in which she stood to Marcello. There would be talk about Aurora. People would suddenly remember her mother's sad story and gossip about her; people would certainly say that there had been talk about marrying Aurora to Marcello, and that Regina had come between them. Yes, there would be much talk about Aurora; that was certain.
All this was coming, and was not far off, if Corbario lived; and even if he died there would be a vast amount said and written about all the people concerned.
And Regina was there, beside him, telling him that if they were married they could go on living in the little house, just as if nothing had happened. It was not true, but he could not find heart to tell her so. It was the first time that any suggestion of marriage had come from her, who had always told him that marriage was impossible. If she wished it now, could he refuse?
Suddenly he knew that he had reached one of the great cross-roads in his life, and that fate had dragged him violently to it within the last few hours, to make him choose his way. The full-grown character of the man rebelled against being forced to a decision in spite of himself, but revolted at the thought of fearing to do what was right and honourable. He was not hesitating as he sat still in silence after Regina had spoken. He was thinking, with the firm determination to act as soon as he had reached a decision. When a man can do that, his weakness is past.
Regina did not interrupt the current of his thoughts, and as she watched him she forgot all about the present; and they were just together, where they had so often been happy, and she loved him with all her heart. That was her strength. It had nothing to do with right or wrong, honour or dishonour, credit or discredit, or any choice of ways. She had no choice. She loved. It was a very simple thing.
He looked up at last. She was still wearing the loose dressing-gown she had worn all night.
"Could you sleep now?" he asked.
"No."
"Then you must dress," he said. "While you are dressing I will walk up to the villa and give some orders. Then I will come and get you in a closed carriage. Put together what you may need for the day, and I will have all your things moved before night."
"Are you really going to take me away from here?" Regina asked, regretfully.
"Yes. I must. It will be easy to find a place that will please you better. Will you do as I have said?"
"Why do you ask? I go."
She rose and stood beside him a moment while he sat still, and her hand caressed his short fair hair. She bent down and kissed the close waves of it, near his forehead.
"We have been very happy here," she said quietly.
She slipped away as he rose to his feet, with the sudden conviction that something had happened.
"What is it?" he asked quickly, and making a step after her.
"I am going to dress," she answered.
She turned her head and smiled, but there was a touch of sadness in the look, as if she was saying good-bye. He partly understood, and her expression was reflected in his own face. They had been so happy in the little house in Trastevere.
When the door had closed Marcello went to find Kalmon. He met him at the foot of the stairs.
"The fellow is alive, and will probably recover," said the Professor, in answer to the unasked question in Marcello's eyes.
"It would simplify matters if he died," said Marcello. "Will you walk up to the villa with me and have coffee? We cannot get a cab at this hour on this side of the Tiber."
"Thank you," Kalmon answered, "but I must go home. The house is in charge of the police, and there is nothing more to be done here. They have already taken the woman's body to San Spirito, and they will move Corbario in a few hours. He is badly mauled, but no big arteries are torn. I must go home and write a letter. The Contessa must not hear what has happened through the newspapers."
"No. Certainly not. As for me, I am going to take Regina away at once. I shall bring my own carriage down from the villa."
"By the bye," Kalmon said, "I had thought of that. The house in which I live is divided into many small apartments. There is a very good one to let, decently furnished. I thought of taking it myself, and I looked at it yesterday. You might put the young lady there until you can find what you may prefer. She can move in at once."
"Nothing could be better. If you are going home, will you say that I take the place and will be there in an hour? No. 16, Via Sicilia, is it not?"
"Yes. I'll see to it. Shall I take the lease in your name?"
"No. Any name will do better. The reporters would find her at once under mine."
"I'll use my own," said the Professor. "I'll say that she is a lady who has arrived to consult me--I daresay she will--and that I'm responsible for her."
"Thank you," answered Marcello gratefully. "And thank you for all that you have done to help me."
"My dear Marcello," Kalmon said, smiling cheerfully, "in the first place, I have done nothing to help you, and secondly, through excess of zeal, I have got you into a very unpleasant situation, by indirectly causing a woman to be murdered in your house, and the murderer almost mauled to death by that very singular wild beast which your man calls a dog, and which I had often noticed in old times at the cottage. So there is nothing at all to thank me for, though I am most heartily at your service."
The Professor was positively in high spirits just then, and Marcello envied him as they parted and took opposite directions.
Though the Via Sicilia was a long way from the Janiculum, Marcello had been only too glad to accept Kalmon's suggestion at such a moment. Regina would feel that she was protected by Marcello's friend, and though she might rarely see him, it would be better for her than to be lodged in a house where she knew no one. Kalmon was a bachelor and a man of assured position, and it had cost him nothing to undertake to give Regina his protection; but Marcello was deeply grateful. He had already made up his mind as to what he would do next.
It had stopped raining at last, and the wind had fallen to a soft breeze that bore the morning mist gently away towards the sea, and hardly stirred the wet leaves that strewed the road all the way up to San Pietro in Montorio. Marcello found the gate of the villa already open, for it was nearly eight o'clock by the time he got there.
He summoned the servants to the library, told them briefly what had happened, and warned them that they might be summoned as witnesses at the coming trial, as most of them had been in his mother's service. In the days before Corbario had lost his head, and when he had controlled the household, it had been a part of his policy to have really respectable servants about him, and though some of them had never quite trusted him, they had all been devoted to the Signora and to Marcello. They listened in respectful silence now, and waited till he was out of the house before meeting to discuss the tragedy and to decide that Corbario had got his deserts at last.
In a few hours Regina was installed in her new lodging with such belongings as she needed immediately. Kalmon, having finished writing his letter to the Contessa, left nothing undone which could contribute to the comfort of the "lady who had arrived to consult him." He had a respectable old woman servant, who had been with him for years, and who came from his native town. He took her into his confidence to some extent, and placed her in charge of Regina. As she thought that everything he did must be right, she accepted his statement that the young gentleman who would often come to see the young lady was deeply interested in the latter's welfare, and that, as the poor young lady had no relations, he, the Professor, had taken her under his protection while she remained in Rome.
The old servant's name was Teresa, and she belonged to a certain type of elderly old maids who take a very kindly interest in the love affairs of the young. She smiled, shook her head in a very mild disapprobation, and did much more than Kalmon had asked of her; for she took the very first opportunity of informing Regina that the Professor was the greatest, wisest, best, and kindest of mankind; and Regina recognised in her a loyal soul, and forthwith liked her very much.
It was late in the November afternoon when Marcello ascended the stairs and stopped before the door of the little apartment. He realised that he had no key to it, and that he must ring the bell as if he were a mere visitor. It was strange that such a little thing should affect him at all, but he was conscious of a sort of chill, as he pulled the metal handle and heard the tinkling of one of those cheap little bells that feebly imitate their electric betters by means of a rachet and a small weighted wheel. It was all so different from the little house in Trastevere with its bright varnished doors, its patent locks, its smart windows, and its lovely old garden. He wished he had not brought Regina to Via Sicilia, though Kalmon's advice had seemed so good. To Kalmon, who was used to no great luxury in his own life, the place doubtless seemed very well suited for a young person like Regina, who had been brought up a poor child in the hills. But the mere anticipation of the dark and narrow entry, and the sordid little sitting-room beyond, awoke in Marcello a sense of shame, whether for himself or for the woman who loved him he hardly knew.
Old Teresa had gone out for something, and Regina opened the door herself.
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"I have come to see if you need anything," Marcello said, when they were in the sitting-room. "I am sorry to have been obliged to bring you to such a wretched place, but it seemed a good thing that you should be so near Kalmon."
"It is not a wretched place," Regina answered. "It is clean, and the things are new, and the curtains have been washed. It is not wretched. We have been in worse lodgings when we have travelled and stopped in small towns. Professor Kalmon has been very kind. It was wise to bring me here."
He wished she had seemed discontented.
"Have you rested a little?" he asked.
"I have slept two or three hours. And you? You look tired."
"I have had no time to sleep. I shall sleep to-night."
He leaned back in the small green arm-chair and rested his head against a coarse netted antimacassar. His eyes caught Regina's, but she was looking down thoughtfully at her hands, which lay in her lap together but not clasped. Peasant women often do that; their hands are resting then, after hard work, and they are thinking of nothing.
"Look at me," Marcello said after a long time.
Her glance was sad and almost dull, and there was no light in her face. She had made up her mind that something dreadful was going to happen to her, and that the end was coming soon. She could not have told why she felt it, and that made it worse. Her eyes had the indescribable look that one sees in those of a beautiful sick animal, the painful expression of an unintelligent suffering which the creature cannot understand. Regina, roused to act and face to face with danger, was brave, clever, and quick, but under the mysterious oppression of her forebodings she was the Roman hill woman, apathetic, hopeless, unconsciously fatalistic and sleepily miserable.
"What is the matter?" Marcello asked. "What has happened?"
"I shall know when you have told me," Regina answered, slowly shaking her head; and again she looked down at her hands.
"What I have come to tell you will not make you sad," Marcello replied.
"Speak, heart of my heart. I listen."
Marcello leaned forward and laid his hand upon hers. She looked up quietly, for it was a familiar action of his.
"I am going to marry you," he said, watching her, and speaking earnestly.
She kept her eyes on his, but she shook her head again, slowly, from side to side, and her lips were pressed together.
"Yes, I am," said Marcello, with a little pressure of his hand to emphasise the words.
But she withdrew hers, and leaned far back from him.
"Never," she said. "I have told you so, many times."
"Not if I tell you that nothing else will make me happy?" he asked.
"If I still made you happy, you would not talk of marriage," Regina answered.
For the first time since she had loved him he heard a ring of bitterness in her voice. They had reached that first node of misunderstanding in the love relations of men and women, which lies where the one begins to think and act upon a principle while the other still feels and acts from the heart.
"That is not reasonable," Marcello said.
"It is truth," she answered.
"But how?"
"How! I feel it, here!"
Her hands sprang to life and pressed her bosom, her voice rang deep and her eyes flashed, as if she were impatient of his misunderstanding.
He tried to laugh gently.
"But if I want to marry you, it is because I mean never to part from you," he said.
"No!" she cried. "It is because you are afraid that you will leave me, unless you are bound to me."
"Regina!" Marcello protested, by his tone.
"It is as I say. It is because you are honourable. It is because you wish to be faithful. It is because you want to be true. But what do I care for honour, or faith, or truth, if I can only have them of you because you are tied to me? I only want love. That is everything. I want it, but I have never asked it of you, and never shall. Is love money, that you can take it out of your purse and give it? Is love a string, that the priest and the mayor can tie the ends so that they can never come undone? I do not know what it is, but it is not that!"
She laughed scornfully, as if she were angry at the thought. But Marcello had made up his mind, and was obstinate.
"We must be married at once," he said quietly, and fully believing that he could impose his will upon hers. "If I had not been weak and foolish, we should have been married long ago. But for a long time after my illness I had no will of my own. I am sorry. It was my fault."
"It was not your fault, it was the illness, and it was my will. If I had said, any day in those first two years, 'Make me your wife, for I wish to be a real signora,' would you not have done it?"
"You know I would."
"But I would not, and I will not now. I am not a real signora. I am beautiful--yes, I see that. Am I blind when I look into my glass? I am very beautiful. We have not often met any woman in our travels as beautiful as I am. Am I blind? I have black hair, like the common people, but my hair is not coarse, like a mule's tail. It is as fine as silk. My eyes are black, and that is common too; but my eyes are not like those of the buffaloes in the Campagna, as the other women's are where I was born. And I am not dark-skinned; I am as white as the snow on Monte Cavo, as white as the milk in the pan. Also I have been told that I have beautiful feet, though I cannot tell why. They are small, this is the truth, and my hands are like those of a signora. But I am not a real signora, though I have all this. How can you marry me? None of your friends would speak to me, because I have not even been an honest girl. That was for you, but they do not count love. Your servants at the villa would laugh at you behind your back, and say, 'The master has married one of us!' Do you think I could bear that? Tell me what you think! Am I of stone, to bear that people should laugh at you?"
She took breath at last and leaned back again, folding her arms and fixing her splendid eyes on his face, and challenging him to answer her.
"We will go and live in Calabria, at San Domenico, for a while," he said. "We need not live in Rome at all, unless we please, for we have the whole world before us."
"We saw the world together without being married," Regina answered obstinately. "What difference would there be, if we were husband and wife? Do you wish to know what difference there would be? I will tell you. There would be this difference. One day I should see no light in your eyes, and your lips would be like stone. Then I should say, 'Heart of my heart, you are tired of me, and I go.' But you would answer, 'You cannot go, for you are my wife.' What would that be? That would be the difference. Do you understand, or do you not understand? If you do not understand, I can do nothing. But I will not marry you. Have you ever seen a mule go down to the ford in spring, too heavily laden, when there is freshet? He drowns, if he is driven in, because the burden is too heavy. I will not be the burden; but I should be, if I were your wife, because I am not a real signora. Now you know what I think."
"Yes," Marcello answered, "but I do not think in the same way."
He was not sure how to answer her arguments, and he lit a cigarette to gain time. He was quietly determined to have his own way, but in order to succeed he knew that he must persuade her till she agreed with him. He could not drag her to the altar against her will.
Before he had thrown away the match, Regina had risen from her chair. She leaned against the little marble mantelpiece, looking down at him.
"There are things that you do not know," she said. "If you knew them you would not want to marry me. In all the time we have been together, you have hardly ever spoken to me of your mother."
Marcello started a little and looked up, unconsciously showing that he was displeased.
"No," he answered. "Why should I?"
"You were right. Your mother is now one of the saints in Paradise. How do I know it? Even Settimia knew it. I am not going to talk of her now. I am not fit to speak her name in your hearing. Very well. Do you know what my mother was?"
"She is dead," Marcello replied, meaning that Regina should let her memory alone.
"Or my father?" she asked, going on. "They were bad people. I come of a bad race. Perhaps that is why I do wrong easily, for you. My father killed a man and left us, though he was allowed to go free, and I never saw him again. He had reason to kill the man. I was a little girl, but I remember. My mother took other men. They came and went; sometimes they were drunk and they beat us. When I was twelve years old one of them looked upon me with bad eyes. Then my mother cursed him, and he took up a stone and struck her on the head, and she died. They sent him to the galleys, and me to work at the inn, because I had no friends. This is the family of Regina. It is a race of assassins and wicked women. If I were your wife, that would be the family of your wife. If God sent children, that would be the blood they would have of me, to mix with that of your mother, who is one of the saints in heaven. This is the truth. If you think I am telling you one thing for another, let us go to the inn on the Frascati road. Paoluccio and Nanna know. They would laugh if they could see me dressed like a real signora, and they would say, 'This girl is her mother's daughter!' And so I am."
She ceased speaking, and again waited for his answer, but he had none ready, and there was silence. She had put the ugly truth too plainly before him, and he could not shut up his understanding against it; he could not deny what she said, he could never teach himself to believe that it did not matter. And yet, he did not mean to draw back, or give up his purpose, even then. Men of good birth had married peasant women before now. They had given up the society of their old friends, they had lived in remote places, they had become half peasants themselves, their sons had grown up to be rough farmers, and had done obligatory military service in the ranks for years, because they could not pass an easy examination. But was all that so very terrible after all, in the light of the duty that faced him?
The woman had saved his life, had carried him in her arms, had tended him like a child, had stolen food to keep him alive, had faced starvation for him when she had got him to the hospital, had nursed him--had loved him, had given him all she had, and she would have died for him, if there had been need. Now, she was giving him something more, for she was refusing to be his wife because she was sure that sooner or later she must be a burden to him, and that her birth would be a reproach to his children. No woman could do more for a man than she had done. She had been his salvation and his good angel; when she had found out that the life in Paris that amused her was killing him, she had brought him back to himself, she had made him at last fit and able to face those who would have destroyed him. She had loved him like a woman, she had obeyed him and served him like a devoted servant, she had watched over him like a faithful dog; and he had given her nothing in return for all that, not one thing that deserved to be counted. Perhaps he had not even really loved her; most surely his love had been far less large and true and devoted than hers, and he felt that it was so. The reparation he was determined to make was not really for her honesty's sake; it was to be an attempt at repaying a debt that was weighing upon his conscience like a debt of honour.
That was it. He felt that unless he could in some way repay her for what she had done, his man's honour would not be satisfied. That was very well, in its way, but it was not love. It was as if he had said to himself, "I cannot love her as she loves me, but I can at least marry her; and that is better than nothing, and has the merit of being morally right."
She had told him that if she still made him happy he would not talk of marriage. The brutal truth shamed him, now that he knew it from her own lips. It was not the whole truth, but it was a great part of it. If he was happy with her now, when there was nothing to disturb them, it was by force of habit, it was because her beauty appealed to him, it was because her touch was dearer to him than her heart's devotion. Now that he was a grown man, he knew well enough that he craved something else which poor Regina could never give him.
For he felt the want of companionship. Those who have lost what is most worth having, whether by death or by their own fault, or by the other's, miss the companionship of love more than anything else, when the pain of the first wrench is dulled and the heart's blood is staunched, and the dreadful bodily loneliness comes only in dreams. Then the longing for the old sweet intercourse of thought and word makes itself felt and is very hard to bear, though it is not sharp like the first wound; and it comes again and again for years, and perhaps for ever.
But where there is no true companionship while love lasts, there is something lacking, and such love cannot live long. Men seem to want it more than women do; and women, seeing that men want something, often fancy they want flattery, and natter the men they love till they disgust them; and then the end comes suddenly, much to the astonishment of those women.
Regina was too womanly not to feel that Marcello was in real need of something which she had not, and could never have. She had known it from the first, and had almost told him so. She gave what was hers to give, as long as he wanted it; when he wanted it no more, she meant to leave him, and it would make no difference what became of her afterwards.
When she had finished speaking, Marcello was very miserable, because he could find no answer to what she had said, and he felt that she had no right to say it at all. His head ached now, from excitement and want of sleep, and he almost wished that he had put off speaking to Regina about her marriage. He rested his head in his hand as he sat thinking, and she came and stood beside him as she had done in the morning in the little house in Trastevere. But it was not the same now. She hoped that he would put up his other hand to find hers, without looking at her, as he often did, but it gripped his knee as if he did not mean to move it, and he did not raise his head.
She looked up from his bent figure to the window and saw that the light was reddening with the first tinge of sunset. It would soon be night, Marcello would go away, and she would be dreadfully lonely. It was not like being in the little house, knowing that he was near her, in the great villa on top of the hill, hidden from her only by trees. She was in a strange place now, and he would be far away, across the Tiber, and the great dark city would be between her and him.
For an instant her lip quivered, and she thought she was going to cry, though she had never cried in her life, except for rage and when she had been a little girl. She shook her handsome head impatiently at the mere sensation, and held it higher than ever. Then Marcello looked up at last.
As their eyes met they heard the tinkle of the little bell. Regina at once left his side to go and open the door. It was not till she had left the room that Marcello rose, asking himself suddenly why it had not occurred to him to go himself. He realised that he had always allowed her to wait on him without question. Yet if she were his wife, he would not think of letting her do what she was doing now. He would even open the door of the room for her to go out.
He knew why he had never treated her in that way. She was a peasant girl, she had been a servant in an inn; it was natural that she should serve him too. She often brought him his shoes when he was going out, and she would have put them on for him and laced them if he would have let her do it. It seemed natural that she should answer the bell and open the door, as it seemed unnatural that she should ever be his wife. The thought stung him, and again, he was ashamed.
While these things were passing in his mind, he heard a familiar voice in the dark entry.
"Signora, you will excuse me," Ercole was saying. "I asked the Professor and he told me. I beg the favour of a few words."
"Come in," Regina answered, and a moment later they both entered the sitting-room.
Ercole stood still when he saw Marcello, and began to turn his hat in his hands, as if it were a rosary, which he generally did when he was embarrassed. Marcello wondered what the man wanted.
"Were you looking for me?" he asked. "Come in! What is it? Has anything happened?"
"No, sir, nothing new has happened," answered Ercole.
"What is it, then? Why did you come here?"
Ercole had dressed himself for the occasion in his best clothes. He had on a snowy shirt and a new keeper's jacket, and his boots were blacked. Furthermore, he had just been shaved, and his shaggy hair had been cut rather close. He did not carry his gun about with him in the streets of Rome, though he felt that it was slightly derogatory to his dignity to be seen without it, and Nino was not with him, having been temporarily chained to the wall in the court of the stables at the villa.
He stood still, and looked from Marcello to Regina, and back to Marcello again.
"It cannot be done," he said suddenly. "It is useless. It cannot be done."
Without another word he turned abruptly and was going to leave the room, when Marcello stopped him authoritatively.
"Come here, Ercole!" he cried, as the man was disappearing into the entry.
"Did you speak to me, sir?" Ercole inquired, stopping in the doorway.
"Yes. Shut the door and come here." Ercole obeyed with evident reluctance. "Now, then," Marcello continued, "come here and tell me what you want, and what it is that cannot be done."
"I desire a few words with this lady, and I did not know that you were here, sir. Therefore I said, it cannot be done. I mean that while you are here, sir, I cannot speak alone with this lady."
"That is clear," Marcello answered. "You cannot be alone with this lady while I am in the room. That certainly cannot be done. Why do you wish to be alone with her? You can speak before me."
"It will not be so easy, sir. I will come at another time."
"No," Marcello answered, not liking his manner. "You will say what you have to say now, or you will say nothing, for you will not come at another time. The lady will not let you in, if you come again. Now speak."
"It will be a little difficult, sir. I would rather speak to the lady alone."
Regina had stood listening in silence, and looking intently at Ercole's face.
"Let me speak to him," she said to Marcello. "What is your full name?" she asked, turning to Ercole again.
"Spalletta Ercole, to serve you," was the prompt answer.
"Spalletta?" Marcello asked in surprise, for strange as it may seem to any but Italians, it was quite natural that he should never have known Ercole's family name. "Spalletta? That is your own name, Regina! What a strange coincidence!"
"Yes," Ercole said. "I know that the young lady's name is Spalletta. It is for this reason that I desire the favour of a few words with her alone."
"There is no need," Regina answered. "Since we have the same name, there is no doubt. I remember your face now, though until last night I had not seen you since I was a little child. Yes. I know what you have come to say, and it is quite true."
"What?" asked Marcello with some anxiety.
"This man is my father," Regina said, very quietly.
"Your father!" Marcello made half a step backwards in his surprise.
"Yes. I have told you what he did." She turned to Ercole. "What do you want of me? Is it money that you want, perhaps?"
Ercole stiffened himself and seemed to grow taller. His black eyes flashed dangerously, and his heavy eyebrows were suddenly stern and level, as Regina's were.
"You are your mother's daughter," he said slowly. "Did I take money from her? I took blood, and when I was tried for it, I was set free. I was told that it was my right under our law. I do not want money. I have brought you money. There it is. It will buy you some bread when your lover turns you into the street!"
He took out his old sheepskin purse with a quick movement, and laughed harshly as he tossed it at her. Marcello sprang forward and caught him by the collar, to thrust him out of the room; but Ercole was tough and wiry, and resisted.
"Will you hinder me from giving money to my daughter?" he asked fiercely. "It was yours, for you paid it to me; but when I knew, I saved my wages to give them back, for I will not take your money, sir! Take your hands from me, sir! I have a right to be here and to speak. Let me go, I tell you! I am not in your service any longer. I do not eat your cursed bread. I am this woman's father, and I shall say what I will."
Marcello withdrew his hands and pointed to the door.
"Go!" he said, in a voice of command.
Ercole backed away a little, and then stood still again.
"I have to tell you that I have spent five francs of that money," he said, speaking to Regina. "But it was spent for you. I found a good monk, and I gave him the five francs to say three masses for your soul. The masses were said in August, and now it is November, and you are still alive!"
"Go!" cried Marcello, understanding, and advancing upon him once more.
"I go," answered Ercole hoarsely. "Let her live, till you are tired of her, and she dies in a ditch! I told the monk to say the masses for a female. They will do for the woman who was killed last night. One female is worth another, and evil befall them all, as many as they are! Why did the Eternal Father ever create them?"
He had turned before he spoke the last words, and he went out deliberately, shutting the door behind him. They heard him go out upon the landing, and they were alone again. Regina leaned back against the mantelpiece, but Marcello began to walk up and down the room.
"You have seen," she said, in a rather unsteady voice. "Now you know of what blood I am, and that what I said was true. The son of your mother cannot marry the daughter of that man."
"What have you to do with him?" Marcello asked sharply, stopping in his walk.
But Regina only shook her head, and turned away. She knew that she was right, and that he knew it too, or would know it soon.
"You will never see him again," he said. "Forget that you have seen him at all!"
Again she shook her head, not looking at him.
"You will not forget," she answered, "and I shall always remember. He should have killed me, as he meant to do. It would have been the end. It would have been better, and quicker."
"God forbid!"
"Why? Would it not have been better?"
She came close to him and laid one hand upon his shoulder and gazed into his eyes. They were full of trouble and pain, and they did not lighten for her; his brow did not relax and his lips did not part. After a little while she turned again and went back to the fireplace.
"It would have been better," she said in a low voice. "I knew it this morning."
There was silence in the room for a while. Marcello stood beside her, holding her hand in his, and trying to see her face. He was very tender with her, but there was no thrill in his touch. Something was gone that would never come back.
"When all this trouble is over," he said at last, "you shall go back to the little house in Trastevere, and it will be just as it was before."
She raised her head rather proudly, as she answered.
"If that could be, it would be now. You would have taken me in your arms when he was gone, and you would have kissed my eyes and my hair, and we should have been happy, just as it was before. But instead, you want to comfort me, you want to be kind to me, you want to be just to me, instead of loving me!"
"Regina! I do love you! I do indeed!"
He would have put his arms round her to draw her closer to him, in the sudden longing to make her think that there was no change in his love, but she quietly resisted him.
"You have been very good to me, dear," she said, "and I know you will always be that, whatever comes. And I am always yours, dear, and you are the master, whenever you choose to come and see me. For I care for nothing that God has made, except you. But it will never be just as it used to be."
"It shall!" Marcello tried to put conviction into the words. "It shall! It shall!"
"It cannot, my heart," she answered. "I used to say that when this came, I would go away. But I will not do that, unless you bid me to, for I think you would be sorry, and I should be giving you more pain, and you have enough. Only leave me a little while alone, dear, for I am very tired, and it is growing late."
He took her hands and kissed them one after the other, and looked into her face. His own was very weary.
"Promise me that I shall find you here to-morrow," he said.
"You shall find me," she answered softly.
They parted so, and he left her alone, in the dark, for the glow of the sunset had faded and the early November evening was closing in.
Old Teresa came and brought a lamp, and drew the curtains, and gave her a message from Kalmon. If she needed anything she was to send for him, and he would come at once. She thanked Teresa. It was very kind of the Professor, but she needed nothing. Not even a fire; no, she hardly ever felt cold. Teresa brought something to eat, and set the little table for her. She was not hungry, and she was glad when the good soul was gone.
She could open the windows when she was alone, and look out into the silent street. There was moonlight now, and it fell across the walls and trees of the Villa Aurora upon her face. It was a young moon, that would set before midnight, but it was very clear and bright, and the sky was infinitely deep and very clear behind it. Regina fancied that if there were really angels in heaven, she should be able to see them on such a night.
If she had been in Trastevere she would have gone out to walk up and down the old paved paths of the little garden, for she could not sleep, though she was so tired. The lamp disturbed her and she put it out, and sat down by the window again.
It was very quiet now, for it was past nine o'clock. She heard a step, and it almost surprised her. A man with a big dog was walking in the shadow on the other side of the street, and when he was opposite the house he stood still and looked up at her window. He did not move for some time, but the dog came out into the moonlight in a leisurely way, and lay down on the paving stones. All dogs think it is warmer in the light than in the shadow.
Regina rose, got a long black cloak and a dark veil without lighting a candle, and put them on. Then she went out.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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Ercole walked on when he saw some one come out of No. 16, for he did not recognise Regina. She followed him at a distance. Even if he should pass where there might be many people, she would not lose sight of him easily because he had his dog with him. She noticed that his canvas bag was hung over one shoulder and that it seemed to be full, and his gun was slung over the other. He meant to leave Rome that night on foot. He walked fast through the new streets in the upper quarter, turned to the right when he reached the Via Venti Settembre, and went straight on, past the top of the hill, and along the Quirinal Palace; then down and on, down and on, through moonlight and shadow, winding streets and straight, till the Colosseum was in sight. He was going towards the Porta San Sebastiano to take the road to Ardea.
The air was very clear, and the moonlight made the broad space as bright as if there were daylight. Regina walked fast, and began to overtake her father, and the dog turned his head and growled at the tall woman in black. She came up with Ercole by the ruin of the ancient fountain, and the dog snarled at her. Ercole stopped and looked at her sharply, and she raised her veil.
"I have followed you," she said. "We are alone here. We can talk in peace."
"And what am I to say to you?" Ercole asked, in a low and surly voice.
"What you will, little or much, as you please. You shall speak, and I will listen. But we can walk on under the trees there. Then nobody can see us."
Ercole began to go on, and Regina walked on his left side. The dog sniffed at the hem of her long black cloak. They came under the shade of the trees, and Ercole stopped again, and turned, facing the reflection of the moonlight on the vast curve of the Colosseum.
"What do you want of me?" he asked. "Why do you follow me in the night?"
"When you saw that the Signore was with me to-day, you said, 'It cannot be done.' He is not here now."
She stood quite still, looking at him.
"I understand nothing," he said, in the same surly tone as before.
"You wished to kill me to-day," she answered. "I am here. This is a good place."
Ercole looked about him instinctively, peering into the shadows under the trees.
"There is no one," Regina said. "This is a good place."
She had not lifted her veil, but she threw back the collar of her cloak, and with quick fingers undid the fastenings of her dress, opening it wide. Rays of moonlight fell through the trees upon her bosom, and it gleamed like fine ivory newly cut.
"I wait," she said.
She stood motionless before him, expecting the knife, but her father's hands did not move. His eyes were fixed on hers, though he could not see them through the veil.
"So he has left you?" he said slowly.
"No. I am waiting."
Not a fold of her cloak stirred as she stood there to die. It seemed a long time, but his hands did not move. Then he heard the sound of her voice, very low and sweet, repeating a little prayer, but he only heard the last words distinctly. " --now, and in the hour of our death!"
His right hand moved slowly and found something in his pocket, and then there was the sharp click of a strong spring, and a ray of moonlight fell upon steel, and her voice was heard again. " --in the hour of our death. Amen!"
An unearthly sound rent the stillness. The huge dog sat upright on his haunches, his head thrown up and back, his terrible lower jaw trembling as he howled, and howled again, waking great echoes where the roar of wild lions had rung long ago.
Regina started, though she did not move a step; but an unreasoning fear fell upon Ercole. He could not see her face, as the dark veil hung down. She was so motionless and fearless; only the dead could be as fearless of death and as still as she. Her breast was so white; her hands were like marble hands, parting a black shroud upon it. She was something risen from the grave to haunt him in that lonely place and drive him mad; and the appalling howl of the great dog robe deafeningly on the silence and trembled and died away, and began again.
Ercole's hand relaxed, and the knife fell gleaming at his feet. One instant more and he turned and fled through the trees, towards San Gregorio, his dog galloping heavily after him.
Regina's hands fell by her sides, and the folds of her cloak closed together and hung straight down. She stared into the shadowy distance a moment after her father, and saw his figure twice in the light where the trees were wider apart, before he disappeared altogether. She looked down and saw the knife at her feet, and she picked it up and felt the point. It was as sharp as a needle, for Ercole had whetted it often since he had sat by the gate in the early morning last August. It was wet, for the grass under the trees had not dried since the rain.
She felt the point and edge with her hand, and sighed. It would have been better to have felt it in her breast, but she would not take her own life. She was not afraid to do it, and her young hand would have been strong enough and sure enough to do it quickly. It was not the thought of the pain that made her close the knife; it was the fear of hell. Nothing she had done in her life seemed very bad to her, because it had all been for Marcello. If Ercole had killed her, she thought that God would have forgiven her after a time. But if she killed herself she would instantly be seized by devils and thrust into real flames, to burn for ever, without the slightest chance of forgiveness. She had been taught that, and she believed it, and the thought of the fire made her shut the clasp-knife and slip it into her dress with a sigh. It would be a pity to throw it away, for it seemed to be a good knife, and her father could not have had it very long.
She fastened her frock under her mantle and went a few steps down the little slope towards the Colosseum. To go on meant to go home, and she stopped again. The place was very lonely and peaceful, and the light on the great walls was quiet and good to see. Though she had stood so still, waiting to die, and had said her little prayer so calmly, her brave heart had been beating slow and hard as if it were counting the seconds before it was to stop; and now it beat fast and softly, and fluttered a little, so that she felt faint, as even brave people do after a great danger is past. I have seen hundreds of men together, just escaped from destruction by earthquake, moving about listlessly with veiled eyes, yawning as if they were dropping with sleep, and saying childish things when they spoke at all. Man's body is the part of himself which he least understands, unless he has spent half his life in studying its ways. Its many portions can only telegraph to the brain two words, 'pain' and 'pleasure,' with different degrees of energy; but that is all. The rest of their language belongs to science.
Regina felt faint and sat down, because there was no reason for making any effort to go home. Perhaps a cab would pass, returning from some outlying part of the city, and she would take it. From the place where she sat she could see one far off, if any came.
She sank down on the wet ground, and drew up her knees and pulled her cloak round her; and gradually her head bent forward and rested upon her hands, till she sat there like a figure of grief outlined in black against the moonlight on the great wall. She had forgotten where she was, and that there was any time in the world.
Half an hour passed, and the moon sank low, and an hour, and the deadly white mist began to rise in the shadow round the base of the Colosseum, and crept up under the trees; and if any one had come upon her then, he would have seen its dull whiteness crawling round her feet and body, a hand-breadth above the wet ground. But she did not know; she had forgotten everything.
Nothing was real any more. She could have believed that her father had killed her and left her corpse there, strangely sitting, though quite dead.
Then she knew that the light had gone out; and suddenly she felt her teeth chatter, and a chill ran through her bones that was bad to feel. She raised her head and saw that the great walls were dark against the starry sky, and she rose with an effort, as if her limbs had suddenly become lead. But she could walk, though it was like walking in sleep.
She did not afterwards remember how she got home, but she had a vague recollection of having lost her way, and of finding a cab at last, and then of letting herself into the little apartment in the dark.
When she was next aware of anything it was broad daylight, and she was lying on her bed, still dressed and wearing her cloak; and Kalmon was bending over her, his eyes on hers and his fingers on her pulse, while old Teresa watched her anxiously from the foot of the bed.
"I'm afraid it is a 'perniciosa,'" he said. "Put her to bed while I call a regular doctor."
Regina looked up at him.
"I have fever, have I not?" she asked quite quietly.
"Yes. You have a little fever," he answered, but his big brown eyes were very grave.
When Marcello came, an hour later, she did not know him. She stared at him with wide, unwinking eyes, and there were bright patches of colour in her cheeks. Already there were hollows in them, too, and at her temples, for the perniciosa fever is frightfully quick to waste the body. In the Campagna, where it is worst, men have died of it in less than four hours after first feeling it upon them. Great men have discovered wonderful remedies for it, but still it kills.
Kalmon got one of the great men, who was his friend, and they did what they could. A nursing sister came and was installed. Marcello was summoned away soon after noon by an official person, who brought a carriage and said that Corbario was now conscious and able to speak, and that it was absolutely necessary that Marcello should be confronted with him, as he might not live another day. It was easier to go than it would have been if Regina had been conscious, but even so it was very hard. The nun and Teresa stayed with her.
[Illustration: "SHE SAT THERE LIKE A FIGURE OF GRIEF OUTLINED IN BLACK AGAINST THE MOONLIGHT ON THE GREAT WALL."]
She said little in her delirium, and nothing that had any meaning for either of the women. Twice she tried to tear away the linen and lace from her throat.
"I wait!" she cried each time, and her eyes fixed themselves on the ceiling, while she held her breath.
The women could not tell what she was waiting for, and they soothed her as best they could. She seemed to doze after that, and when Marcello came back she knew him, and took his hand. He sent away the nurses and sat by the bedside, and she spoke to him in short sentences, faintly. He bent forward, near the pillow, to catch the words.
She was telling him what she had done last night.
"But you promised that I should find you here to-day!" Marcello said, with gentle reproach.
"Yes. I did not mean to break my word. But I thought he would do it. It seemed so easy."
Her voice was weak with the fever, and sank almost to a whisper. He stroked her hand affectionately, hoping that she would go to sleep; and so a long time passed. Then Kalmon came in with his friend the great doctor. They saw that she was not yet any better; the doctor ordered several things to be done and went away. Kalmon drew Marcello out of the room.
"You can do nothing," he said. "She has good care, and she is very strong. Go home and come back in the morning."
"I must stay here," Marcello answered.
"That is out of the question, on account of the Sister of Charity. But you can send for your things and camp in my rooms downstairs. There is a good sofa. You can telephone to the villa for what you want."
"Thank you." Marcello's voice dropped and shook. "Will she live?" he asked.
"I hope so. She is very strong, and it may be only fever."
"What else could it be?"
"Pneumonia."
Marcello bit his lip and closed his eyes as if he were in bodily pain, and a moment later he turned away and went down to Kalmon's apartment.
The Professor went back to Regina's side, and stood quietly watching her, with a very sad look in his eyes. She opened hers and saw him, and she brought one hand to her chest.
"It burns," she said, almost in a whisper, but with a strange sort of eagerness, as if she were glad.
"I wish I could bear it for you, my poor child," Kalmon answered.
She shook her head, and turned uneasily on the pillow. He did not understand.
"What is it?" he asked gently. "What can I do for you? Tell me."
"I want to see some one very much. How long shall I live?"
"You will get quite well," said Kalmon, in a reassuring tone. "But you must be very quiet." Again she moved her burning cheek on the pillow.
"Do you want to see a priest?" asked the Professor, thinking he had guessed. "Is that it?"
"Yes--there is time for that--some one else--could you? Will you?"
"Yes." Kalmon bent down quickly, for he thought the delirium was coming again. "Who is it?" he asked.
"Aurora--I mean, the Signorina--can you? Oh, do you think you could?"
"I'll try," Kalmon answered in great surprise.
But now the hoarseness was suddenly gone, and her sweet voice was softly humming an old song of the hills, forgotten many years, and the Professor saw that she did not know him any more. He nodded to Teresa, who was in the room, and went out.
He wondered much at the request, but he remembered that it had been made in the full belief that he would say nothing of it to Marcello. If she had been willing that Marcello should know, she would have spoken to him, rather than to Kalmon. He had seen little enough of Regina, but he was sure that she could have no bad motive in wishing to see the young girl. Yet, from a social point of view, it was not exactly an easy thing to propose, and the Contessa would have a right to be offended at the mere suggestion that her daughter should speak to "Consalvi's Regina"; and there could not be anything clandestine in the meeting, if Aurora consented to it. Kalmon was too deeply attached to the Contessa herself to be willing to risk her displeasure, or, indeed, to do anything of which she would not approve.
He went to her house by the Forum of Trajan, and he found her at home. It was late in the afternoon, and the lamp was lighted in the little drawing-room, which did not seem at all shabby to Kalmon's accustomed eyes and not very exigent taste. The Contessa was reading an evening paper before the fire. She put out her hand to the Professor.
"It is a bad business," she said, glancing at the newspaper, which had a long account of Corbario's arrest and of the murder of his old accomplice. "Poor Marcello!"
"Poor Marcello! Yes, indeed! I'm sorry for him. There is something more than is in the papers, and more than I have written to you and told you. Regina has the perniciosa fever, complicated with pneumonia, and is not likely to live."
"I am sorry," the Contessa answered. "I am very sorry for her. But after all, compared with what Marcello has learned about his mother's death--and other things Corbario did--" She stopped, implying by her tone that even if Regina died, that would not be the greatest of Marcello's misfortunes. Besides, she had long foreseen that the relations of the two could not last, and the simplest solution, and the happiest one for the poor devoted girl, was that she should die before her heart was broken. Maddalena dell' Armi had often wished that her own fate had been as merciful.
"Yes," Kalmon answered. "You are right in that. But Regina has made a rather strange request. It was very unexpected, and perhaps I did wrong to tell her that I would do my best to satisfy her. I don't think she will live, and I felt sorry for her. That is why I came to you. It concerns Aurora."
"Aurora?" The Contessa was surprised.
"Yes. The girl knows she is dying, and wishes very much to see Aurora for a moment. I suppose it was weak of me to give her any hope."
The Contessa dropped her newspaper and looked into the fire thoughtfully before she answered.
"You and I are very good friends," she said. "You would not ask me to do anything you would not do yourself, would you? If you had a daughter of Aurora's age, should you let her go and see this poor woman, unless it were an act of real charity?"
"No," Kalmon answered reluctantly. "I don't think I should."
"Thank you for being so honest," Maddalena answered, and looked at the fire again.
Some time passed before she spoke again, still watching the flames. Kalmon sighed, for he was very sorry for Regina.
"On the other hand," the Contessa said at last, "it may be a real charity. Have you any idea why she wishes to see Aurora?"
"No. I cannot guess."
"I can. At least, I think I can." She paused again. "You know everything about me," she continued presently. "In the course of years I have told you all my story. Do you think I am a better woman than Regina?"
"My dear friend!" cried Kalmon, almost angrily. "How can you suggest--" She turned her clear, sad eyes to him, and her look cut short his speech.
"What has her sin been?" she asked gently. "She has loved Marcello. What was mine? That I loved one man too well. Which is the better woman? She, the peasant, who knew no better, who found her first love dying, and saved him, and loved him--knowing no better, and braving the world? Or I, well born, carefully brought up, a woman of the world, and married--no matter how--not braving the world at all, but miserably trying to deceive it, and my husband, and my child? Do you think I was so much better than poor Regina? Would my own daughter think so if she could know and understand?"
"If you were not a very good woman now," Kalmon said earnestly, "you could not say what you are saying."
"Never mind what I am now. I am not as good as you choose to think. If I were, there would not be a bitter thought left. I should have forgiven all. Leave out of the question what I am now. Compare me as I was with Regina as she is. That is how I put it, and I am right."
"Even if you were," Kalmon answered doubtfully, "the situation would be the same, so far as Aurora is concerned."
"But suppose that this poor woman cannot die in peace unless she has asked Aurora's pardon and obtained her forgiveness, what then?"
"Her forgiveness? For what?"
"For coming between her and Marcello. Say that, so far as Regina knows, my daughter is the only human being she has ever injured, what then?"
"Does Aurora love Marcello?" asked Kalmon, instead of answering the question.
"I think she does. I am almost sure of it."
Kalmon was silent for a while.
"But Marcello," he said at last, "what of him?"
"He has always loved Aurora," the Contessa answered. "Do you blame him so much for what he has done? Why do you blame some people so easily, my dear friend, and others not at all? Do you realise what happened to him? He was virtually taken out of the life he was leading, by a blow that practically destroyed his memory, and of which the consequences altogether destroyed his will for some time. He found himself saved and at the same time loved--no, worshipped--by one of the most beautiful women in the world. Never mind her birth! She has never looked at any other man, before or since, and from what I have heard, she never will. Ah, if all women were like her! Marcello, weak from illness, allowed himself to be worshipped, and Corbario did the rest. I understand it all. Do you blame him very much? I don't. With all your strength of character, you would have done the same at his age! And having taken what she offered, what could he do, when he grew up and came to himself, and felt his will again? Could he cast her off, after all she had done for him?"
"He could marry her," observed Kalmon. "I don't see why he should not, after all."
"Marriage!" There was a little scornful sadness in Maddalena's voice. "Marriage is always the solution! No, no, he is right not to marry her, if he has ever thought of it. They would only make each other miserable for the rest of their lives. Miserable, and perhaps faithless too. That is what happens when men and women are not saints. Look at me!"
"You were never in that position. Others were to blame, who made you marry when you were too young to have any will of your own."
"Blame no one," said the Contessa gravely. "I shall give Aurora Regina's message, and if she is willing to go and see her, I shall bring her to-morrow morning--to-night, if there is no time to be lost. The world need never know. Go and tell Regina what I have said. It may comfort her a little, poor thing."
"Indeed it will!"
Kalmon's brown eyes beamed with pleasure at the thought of taking the kindly message to the dying girl. He rose to his feet at once.
"There is no one like you," he said, as he took her hand.
"It is nothing. It is what Marcello's mother would have done, and she was my best friend. All I do is to take the responsibility upon myself, however Aurora may choose to act. I will send you word, in either case. If Aurora will not go, I will come myself, if I can be of any use, if it would make Regina feel happier. I will come, and I will tell her what I have told you. Good-night, dear friend."
Kalmon was not an emotional man, but as he went out he felt a little lump in his throat, as if he could not swallow.
He had not doubted his friend's kindness, but he had doubted whether she would feel that she had a right to "expose her daughter," as the world would say, to meeting such a "person," as the world called Regina--"Consalvi's Regina."
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{
"id": "13932"
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22
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All that night and the following day Regina recognised no one; and it was night again, and her strength began to fail, but her understanding returned. Marcello saw the change, and made a sign to the nurse, who went out to tell Kalmon.
It was about nine o'clock when he entered the room, and Regina knew him and looked at him anxiously. He, in turn, glanced at Marcello, and she understood. She begged Marcello to go and get some rest. Her voice was very weak, as if she were suffocating, and she coughed painfully. He did not like to go away, but Kalmon promised to call him at midnight; he had been in the room six hours, scarcely moving from his seat. He lingered at the door, looked back, and at last went out.
"Will she come?" asked Regina, when he was gone.
"In half an hour. I have sent a messenger, for they have no telephone."
A bright smile lighted up the wasted face.
"Heaven will reward you," she said, as the poor say in Rome when they receive a charity.
Then she seemed to be resting, for her hands lay still, and she closed her eyes. But presently she opened them, looking up gratefully into the big man's kind face.
"Shall I be alone with her a little?" she asked.
"Yes, my dear. You shall be alone with her."
Again she smiled, and he left the nurse with her and went and waited downstairs at the street door, till the Contessa and Aurora should come, in order to take them up to the little apartment. He knew that Marcello must have fallen asleep at once, for he had not rested at all for twenty-four hours, and very little during several days past. Kalmon was beginning to fear that he would break down, though he was so much stronger than formerly.
Marcello had always been grateful to Regina, even when he had convinced himself that he loved her. Love is not very compatible with gratitude. Two people who love each other very much expect everything because they are always ready to give everything, not in return or by way of any exchange, but as if the two were one in giving and taking. A man cannot be grateful to himself. But Marcello had never felt that dear illusion with Regina, because there had been no real companionship; and so he had always been grateful to her, and now that she was perhaps dying, he was possessed by the horribly painful certainty that he could never repay her what he owed, and that this debt of honour must remain unpaid for ever, if she died. There was much more than that in what he felt, of course, for there was his very real affection, tormented by the foreboding of the coming wrench, and there was the profound sympathy of a very kind man for a suffering woman. But all that together was not love like hers for him; it was not love at all.
Kalmon waited, and smoked a little, reflecting on these things, which he understood tolerably well. The quiet man of science had watched Marcello thoughtfully, and could not help asking himself what look there would be in his own eyes, if Maddalena dell' Armi were dying and he were standing by her bedside. It would not be Marcello's look.
A closed cab stopped before the entrance, and almost before he could throw away his cigarette, the Contessa and Aurora were standing beside him on the pavement.
"She is very weak," he said, "but she will not be delirious again for some time--if at all."
Neither of the ladies spoke, and they followed him in silence up the ill-lighted staircase.
"That is where I live," he said, as he passed his own door on the second landing. "Marcello is camping there. He is probably asleep now."
"Asleep!" It was Aurora that uttered the single word, in a puzzled tone.
"He did not go to bed last night," Kalmon explained, going on.
"Oh!" Again the Professor was struck by the young girl's tone.
They reached the third landing, and Kalmon pushed the door, which he had left ajar; he shut it when they had all entered, and he ushered the mother and daughter into the small sitting-room. There they waited a moment while he went to tell Regina that Aurora had come.
The young girl dropped her cloak upon a chair and stood waiting, her eyes fixed on the door. She was a little pale, not knowing what was to come, yet feeling somehow that it was to make a great difference to her ever afterwards. She glanced at her mother, and the Contessa smiled gently, as much as to say that she was doing right, but neither spoke.
Presently Kalmon came out with the Sister of Charity, who bent her head gravely to the two ladies.
"She wishes to see you alone," Kalmon said, in explanation, while he held the door open for Aurora to pass in.
He closed it after her, and the two were together.
When Aurora entered, Regina's eyes were fixed upon her face as if they had already found her and seen her while she had been in the other room. She came straight to the bedside and took the hand that was stretched out to meet hers. It was thin and hot now, and the arm was already wasted. Aurora remembered how strongly it had lifted her to the edge of the rock, far away by Pontresina.
"You are very kind, Signorina," said the faint voice. "You see how I am."
Aurora saw indeed, and kept the hand in hers as she sat down in the chair that stood where Marcello had left it.
"I am very, very sorry," she said, leaning forward a little and looking into the worn face, colourless now that the fever had subsided for a while.
The same bright smile that Kalmon had seen lighted up Regina's features.
"But I am glad!" she answered. "They do not understand that I am glad."
"No, no!" cried Aurora softly. "Don't say you are glad!"
The smile faded, and a very earnest look came into the hollow dark eyes.
"But I have not done it on purpose," Regina said. "I did not know there was fever in that place, or I would not have sat down there. You believe me, Signorina, don't you?"
"Yes, indeed!"
The smile returned very gradually, and the anxious pressure of the hand relaxed.
"You must not think that I was looking for the fever. But since it came, and I am going from here, I am glad. I shall not be in the way any more. That hindrance will be taken out of his life."
"He would not like to hear you speak like this," Aurora said, with great gentleness.
"There is no time for anything except the truth, now. And you are good, so good! No, there is no time. To-morrow, I shall be gone. Signorina, if I could kneel at your feet, I would kneel. But you see how I am. You must think I am kneeling at your feet."
"But why?" asked Aurora, with a little distress.
"To ask you to forgive me for being a hindrance. I want pardon before I go. But I found him half dead on the door-step. What could I do? When I had seen him, I loved him. I knew that he thought of you. That was all he remembered--just your name, and I hated it, because he had forgotten all other names, even his own, and his mother, and everything. He was like a little child that learns, to-day this, to-morrow that, one thing at a time. What could I do? I taught him. I also taught him to love Regina. But when the memory came back, I knew how it had been before."
Her voice broke and she coughed, and raised one hand to her chest. Aurora supported her tenderly until it was over, and when the weary head sank back at last it lay upon the young girl's willing arm.
"You are tiring yourself," Aurora said. "If it was to ask my forgiveness that you wished me to come, I forgave you long ago, if there was anything to forgive. I forgave you when we met, and I saw what you were, and that you loved him for himself, just as I do."
"Is it true? Really true?"
"So may God help me, it is quite true. But if I had thought it was not for himself--" "Oh, yes, it was," Regina answered. "It was, and it is, to the end. Will you see? I will show you. For what the eyes see the heart believes more easily. Signorina, will you bring the little box covered with old velvet? It is there, on the table, and it is open."
Aurora rose, humouring her, and brought the thing she asked for, and sat down again, setting it on the edge of the bed. Regina turned her head to see it, and raised the lid with one hand.
"This is my little box," she said. "What he has given me is all in it. I have no other. Will you see? Here is what I have taken from him. You shall look everywhere, if you do not believe."
"But I do believe you!" Aurora cried, feeling that tears were coming to her eyes.
"But you must see," Regina insisted. "Or perhaps when I am gone you will say to yourself, 'There may have been diamonds and pearls in the little box, after all!' You shall know that it was all for himself."
To please her Aurora took up some of the simple trinkets, simpler and cheaper even than what she had herself.
"There are dresses, yes, many more than I wanted. But I could not let him be ashamed of me when we went out together, and travelled. Do you forgive me the dresses, Signorina? I wore them to please him. Please forgive me that also!"
Aurora dropped the things into the open box and laid both her hands on Regina's, bending down her radiant head and looking very earnestly into the anxious eyes.
"Forgiveness is not all from me to you, Regina," she said. "I want yours too."
"Mine?" The eyes grew wide and wondering.
"Don't you see that but for me he would have married you, and that I have been the cause of a great wrong to you?"
For one instant Regina's face darkened, her brows straightened themselves, and her lip curled. She remembered how, only two days ago, in the very next room, Marcello had insisted that she should he his wife. But as she looked into Aurora's innocent eyes she understood, and the cloud passed from her own, and the bright smile came back. Aurora had spoken in the simplicity of her true heart, sure that it was only the memory of his love for her that had withheld Marcello from first to last; and Regina well knew that it had always been present with him, in spite of his brave struggle to put it away. That memory of another, which Regina had seen slowly reviving in him, had been for something in her refusal to marry him.
With the mysterious sure vision of those who are near death, she felt that it would hurt Aurora to know the truth, except from Marcello himself.
"If you have ever stood between us," she said, "you had the right. He loved you first. There is nothing to forgive in that. Afterwards he loved me a little. No one can take that from me, no one! It is mine, and it is all I have, and though I am going, and though I know that he is tired of me, it is still more than the world. To have it, as I have it, I would do again what I did, from the first."
The voice was weak and muffled, but the words were distinct, and they were the confession of poor Regina's life.
"If he were here," she said, after a moment, "I would lay your hand in his. Only let me take that memory with me!"
The young girl rose and bent over her as she answered.
"It is yours, to keep for ever."
She stooped a little lower and kissed the dying woman's forehead.
* * * * * Under the May moon a little brigantine came sailing up to a low island just within sight of Italy; when she was within half a mile of the reefs Don Antonino Maresca put her about, for he was a prudent man, and he knew that there are just a few more rocks in the sea than are in the charts. It was a quiet night, and he was beating up against a gentle northerly breeze.
When the head yards were swung, and braced sharp up for the other tack, and the little vessel had gathered way again, the mate came aft and stood by the captain, watching the light on the island.
"Are there still convicts on this island, Don Antonino?" the young man asked.
"Yes, there are the convicts. And there is one among them whom I helped to put there. He is an assassin that killed many when he was at liberty. But now he sits for seven years in a little cell alone, and sees no Christian, and it will be thirty years before he is free."
"Madonna!" ejaculated the mate. "When he has been there thirty years he will perhaps understand."
"It is as I say," rejoined the captain. "The world is made so. There are the good and the bad. The Eternal Father has created things thus. Get a little more on the main sheet, and then flatten in those jibs."
Under the May moon, in the small shaft of white light that fell through the narrow grated window, a man sat on the edge of his pallet bed. His face was ghastly, and there were strange scars on his bare throat. His cell was seven feet by six, and the air was hard to breathe, because the wind was not from the south. But the moon was kinder than the sun. He heard the ripple of the cool sea, and he tried to dream that a great stone was hung to his neck, and that he had been thrown into a deep place. Perhaps, some day, the gaoler would forget to take away the coarse towel which was brought with the water in the morning. With a towel he could hang himself.
* * * * * Under the May moon a small marble cross cast its shadow upon young roses and violets and growing myrtle. In the sweet earth below a very loyal heart was at rest for ever. But the flowers were planted and still tended by a woman with radiant hair; and sometimes, when she stooped to train the young roses, bright drops fell quietly upon their bloom. Also, on certain days, a man came there alone and knelt upon the marble border within which the flowers grew. But the man and the woman never came together; and he gave the gardener of that place money, praising him for the care of the flowers.
* * * * * Under the May moon the man and the woman went down from the cottage by the Roman shore to the break in the high bank, and stood still a while, looking out at the peaceful sea and the moon's broad path. Presently they turned to each other, put out their hands, and then their arms, and clasped each other silently, and kissed.
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{
"id": "13932"
}
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1
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The sun of an August afternoon, 1782, was yet blazing upon the rude palisades and equally rude cabins of one of the principal stations in Lincoln county, when a long train of emigrants, issuing from the southern forest, wound its way over the clearings, and among the waving maize-fields that surrounded the settlement, and approached the chief gate of its enclosure.
The party was numerous, consisting perhaps of seven or eight score individuals in all, men, women, and children, the last bearing that proportion to the others in point of numbers usually found in a borderer's family, and thus, with the help of pack-horses, cattle, and a few negroes, the property of the more wealthy emigrants, scattered here and there throughout the assemblage, giving to the whole train the appearance of an army, or moving village, of Vandals in quest of some new home to be won with the edge of the sword. Of the whole number there were at least fifty well-armed; some of these, however, being striplings of fourteen, and, in one or two instances, even of twelve, who balanced the big rifle on their shoulders, or sustained it over their saddle-bows, with all the gravity and dignity of grown warriors; while some few of the negroes were provided with the same formidable weapons. In fact, the dangers of the journey through the wilderness required that every individual of a party should be well armed, who was at all capable of bearing arms; and this was a kind of capacity which necessity instilled into the American frontiersman in the earliest infancy.
Of this armed force, such as it was, the two principal divisions, all well mounted, or at least provided with horses, which they rode or not as the humour seized them, were distributed in military order on the front and in the rear; while scouts, leading in the van, and flanking parties beating the woods on either side, where the nature of the country permitted, indicated still further the presence of a martial spirit on the part of the leaders. The women and children, stowed carefully away, for the most part with other valuable chattels, on the backs of pack-horses, were mingled with droves of cattle in the centre, many of which were made to bear burdens as well as the horses. Of wheeled carriages there was not a single one in the whole train, the difficulties of the road, which was a mere bridle-path, being such that they were never, at that early day, attempted to be brought into the country, unless when wafted in boats down the Ohio.
Thus marshalled, and stealing from the depth of the forest into the clearings around the Station, there was something in the appearance of the train--wild, singular, and striking. The tall and robust frames of the men, wrapped in blanket coats and hunting-frocks,--some of which, where the wearers were young and of gallant tempers, were profusely decked with fringes of yellow, green, and scarlet; the gleam of their weapons, and the tramp of their horses, gave a warlike air to the whole, typical, it might be supposed, of the sanguinary struggle by which alone the desert was to be wrung from the wandering barbarian; while the appearance of their families, with their domestic beasts and the implements of husbandry, was in harmony with what might be supposed the future destinies of the land, when peaceful labour should succeed to the strife of conquest.
The exiles were already in the heart of their land of promise, and many within view of the haven where they were to end their wanderings. Smiles of pleasure lighted their wayworn countenances, as they beheld the waving fields of maize and the gleam of the distant cabins; and their satisfaction was still further increased when the people of the Station, catching sight of them, rushed out, some mounted and others on foot, to meet them, uttering loud shouts of welcome, such as, in that day, greeted every band of new comers; and adding to the clamour of the reception a _feu-de-joie_, which they fired in honour of the numbers and martial appearance of the present company. The salutation was requited, and the stirring hurrahs returned, by the travellers, most of whom pressed forward to the van in disorder, eager to take part in the merry-making ere it was over, or perhaps to seek for friends who had preceded them in the journey through the wilderness. Such friends were, in many instances, found, and their loud and affectionate greetings were mingled with the scarce less cordial welcomes extended by the colonists, even to the unknown stranger. Such was the reception of the emigrants at that period and in that country, where men were united together by a sense of common danger; and where every armed visitor, besides being an accession to the strength of the colonists, brought with him such news of absent friends and still remembered homes as was sure to recommend him to favour.
The only individual who, on this occasion of rejoicing, preserved a melancholy countenance, and who, instead of riding forward, like the others, to shake hands with the people of the Station, betrayed an inclination to avoid their greetings altogether, was a young man, who, from the position he occupied in the band, and from other causes, was entitled to superior attention. With the rank and nominal title of second-captain,--a dignity conferred upon him by his companions, he was, in reality, the commander of the party, the ostensible leader being, although a man of good repute on the Virginia border, entirely wanting in the military reputation and skill which the other had acquired in the armies of the Republics, and of which the value was fully appreciated, when danger first seemed to threaten the exiles on their march. He was a youth of scarce twenty-three years of age; but five of those years had been passed in camps and battles; and the labours, passions, and privations of his profession had antedated the period of manhood. A frame tall and athletic, a countenance which, although retaining the smoothness and freshness of youth, was yet marked with the manly gravity and decision of mature life, added, in appearance, at least six years to his age. He wore a hunting-frock of the plainest green colour, with cap and leggings of leather, such as were worn by many of the poorest or least pretending exiles; like whom also he bore a rifle on his shoulder, with the horn and other equipments of a hunter. There was little, therefore, to distinguish him at the first view, from among his companions; although his erect military bearing, and the fine blooded bay horse which he rode, would have won him more than a passing look. The holsters at his saddle-bow, and the sabre at his side, were weapons not indeed very generally worn by frontiersmen, but still common enough to prevent their being regarded as badges of rank.
With this youthful officer the rear-guard, which he commanded, having deserted him, to press forward to the van, there remained only three persons, two of whom were negro slaves, both mounted and armed, that followed at a little distance behind, leading thrice their number of pack-horses. The third was a female, who rode closely at his side, the rein of her pony being, in fact, grasped in his hand; though he looked as if scarce conscious that he held it,--a degree of insensibility that would have spoken little in his favour to an observer; for his companion was both young and beautiful, and watched his moody countenance on her part with looks of the most anxious and affectionate interest. Her riding-habit, chosen, like his own garments, with more regard to usefulness than beauty, and perhaps somewhat the worse for its encounters with the wind and forest, could not conceal the graceful figure it defended; nor had the sunbeam, though it had darkened the bright complexion exposed to its summer fury, during a journey of more than six weeks, robbed her fair visage of a single charm. There was, in the general cast of features, a sufficient resemblance between the two to indicate near relationship; although it was plain that the gloom seated upon the brow of her kinsmen, as if a permanent characteristic, was an unwelcome and unnatural visitant on her own. The clear blue eye, the golden locks floating over her temples, the ruddy cheek and look of seventeen, and, generally, the frank and open character of her expression, betokened a spirit too joyous and elastic to indulge in those dark anticipations of the future or mournful recollections of the past, which clouded the bosom of her relative. And well for her that such was the cheerful temper of her mind; for it was manifest, from her whole appearance, that her lot, as originally cast, must have been among the gentle, the refined, and the luxurious, and that she was now, for the first time, exposed to discomfort, hardship, and suffering, among companions, who, however kind and courteous of conduct, were unpolished in their habits, conversation, and feelings, and, in every other respect, unfitted to be her associates.
She looked upon the face of her kinsman, and seeing that it grew the darker and gloomier the nearer they approached the scene of rejoicing, she laid her hand upon his arm, and murmured softly and affectionately-- "Roland,--cousin,--brother! --what is it that disturbs you? Will you not ride forward, and salute the good people that are making us welcome?"
"Us!" muttered the young man, with a bitter voice; "who is there on earth, Edith, to welcome us? Where shall _we_ look for the friends and kinsfolk, that the meanest of the company are finding among yonder noisy barbarians?"
"You do them injustice, Roland," said the maiden. "Yesternight we had experience at the Station we left, that these wild people of the woods do not confine their welcomes to kinsmen. Kinder and more hospitable people do not exist in the world."
"It is not that, Edith," said the young man; "I were but a brute to doubt their hospitality. But look, Edith; we are in Kentucky, almost at our place of refuge. Yonder hovels, lowly, mean, and wretched--are they the mansions that should shelter the child of my father's brother? Yonder people, the outcasts of our borders, the poor, the rude, the savage--but one degree elevated above the Indians, with whom they contend,--are they the society from whom Edith Forrester should choose her friends?"
"They are," said Edith, firmly; "and Edith Forrester asks none better. In such a cabin as these, and, if need be, in one still more humble, she is content to pass her life, and dream that she is still in the house of her fathers. From such people, too, she will choose her friends, knowing that, even among the humblest of them, there are many worthy of her regard and affection. What have we to mourn in the world we have left behind us? We are the last of our name and race; fortune has left us nothing to regret. My only relative on earth, saving yourself, Roland,--saving yourself, my cousin, my brother,"--her lip quivered, and, for a moment her eyes were filled with tears,--"my only other living relation resides in this wilderness-land; and she, tenderly nurtured as myself, finds in it enough to engage her thoughts and secure her happiness. Why, then, should not I? Why should not _you_? Trust me, dear Roland, I should myself be as happy as the day is long, could I only know that you did not grieve for me."
"I cannot but choose it," said Roland. "It is to me you owe the loss of fortune and your present banishment from the world."
"Say not so, Roland, for it is not true; no! I never can believe that our poor uncle would have carried his resentment, for such a cause, so far. But supposing that he could, and granting that all were as you say, I am prouder to be the poor cousin of Roland Forrester, who has bled in the battles of his country, than if I were the rich and courted kinswoman of one who had betrayed the memory of his father."
"You are, at least, an angel," said the youth; "and I am but a villain to say or do anything to give you pain. Farewell then to Fell-hallow, to old James River, and all! If you can forget these things, Edith, so will I; at all events, I will try."
"Now," said Edith, "you talk like my true cousin."
"Well, Edith, the world is before us; and shame be upon me, if I, who have health, strength, and youth to back my ambition, cannot provide you a refuge and a home. I will leave you for a while in the hands of this good aunt at the Falls; and then, with old Emperor there for my adjutant, and Sam for my rank and file, I will plunge into the forest, and scatter it as I have seen a band of tories scattered by my old major (who, by the bye, is only three years older than myself), Henry Lee, not many years back. Then, when I have built me a house, furrowed my acres with my martial plough-share (for to that, it appears, my sword must come), and reaped my harvest with my own hands (it will be hard work to beat my horse-pistols into a sickle), then, Edith--" "Then, Roland," said the maiden, with a smile and a tear, "if you should still remember your poor cousin, it will not be hard to persuade her to follow you to your retreat, to share your fortunes of good and of evil, and to love you better in your adversity than she ever expected to love you in your prosperity."
"Spoken like my true Edith!" said the young officer, whose melancholy fled before her soft accents, as the evil spirit of Saul before the tinklings of the Jewish harp,--"spoken like my true Edith; for whom I promise, if fate smile upon my exertions, to rear a new Fell-hallow on the banks of the Ohio, in which I will be, myself, the first to forget that on James River. And now, Edith, let us ride forward and meet yon gay looking giant, whom, from his bustling demeanour, and fresh jerkin, I judge to be the commander of the Station, the redoubtable Colonel Bruce himself."
As he spoke the individual thus alluded to, separating himself from the throng, galloped up to the speaker, and displayed a person which excited the envy even of the manly looking Forrester. He was a man of at least fifty years, but as hale as one of thirty, without a single gray hair to deform the beauty of his raven locks, which fell down in masses nearly to his shoulders. His stature was colossal, and the proportions of his frame as just as they were gigantic; so that there was much in his appearance of real native majesty. Nothing, in fact, could be well imagined more truly striking and grand than his appearance, as seen at the first glance; though the second revealed a lounging indifference of carriage, amounting, at times, to something like awkwardness and uncouthness, which a little detracted from the effect. Such men were oft-times, in those days, sent from among the mountain counties of Virginia, to amaze the lesser mortals of the plains, who regarded them as the genii of the forest, and almost looked, as was said of the victor of the Kenhawa,[1] himself of the race, to see the earth tremble beneath their footsteps. With a spirit corresponding to his frame, he would have been the Nimrod that he seemed. But nature had long before extinguished the race of demigods; and the worthy Commander of the Station was not of them. He was a mortal man, distinguished by little, save his exterior, from other mortal men, and from the crowd of settlers who had followed him from the fortress. He wore, it is true, a new and jaunty hunting-shirt of dressed deer-skin, as yellow as gold, and fringed and furbelowed with shreds of the same substance, dyed as red as blood-root could make them; but was otherwise, to the view, a plain yeoman, endowed with those gifts of mind only which were necessary to his station, but with the virtues which are alike common to forest and city. Courage and hospitality, however, were then hardly accounted virtues, being too universal to be distinguished as such; and courtesy was equally native to the independent borderer.
[Footnote 1: Gen. Andrew Lewis.]
He shook the young officer heartily by the hand, a ceremony which he instantly repeated with the fair Edith; and giving them to understand that he claimed them as his own especial guests, insisted with much honest warmth, that old companionship in arms with one of their late nearest and dearest kinsmen had given him a double right to do so:-- "You must know," said he, "the good old Major your uncle, the brave old Major Roly, as we called him, Major Roland Forrester: well, K'-yaptin,--well, young lady,--my first battle war fought under his command; and an excellent commander he war; it war on the bloody Monongahela, whar the Frenchmen and Injuns trounced us so promiskous. Perhaps you've h'ard him tell of big Tom Bruce,--for so they called me then? I war a copporal in the first company of Rangers that crossed the river. Lord! how the world is turning upside down! I war a copporal then, and now I'm a k'-yunnel; a greater man in commission than war ever my old Major; and the Lord, he nows, I thought my old Major Forrester war the greatest man in all Virginnee, next to the G'-yovernor and K'-yunnel George Washington! Well, you must know, we marched up the g'yully that runs from the river; and bang went the savages' g'-yuns, and smash went their hatchets; and it came to close quarters, a regular rough-and-tumble, hard scratch! And so I war a-head of the Major, and the Major war behind, and the fight had made him as vicious as a wild cat, and he war hungry for a shot; and so says he to me, for I war right afore him, 'Git out of my way, you damned big rascal, till I git a crack at 'em!' And so I got out of his way, for I war mad at being called a damned big rascal, especially as I war doing my best, and covering him from mischief besides. Well! as soon as I jumped out of his way, bang went his piece, and bang went another, let fly by an Injun;--down went the Major, shot right through the hips, slam-bang. And so said I, 'Major,'--for I warn't well over my passion,--'if you'd 'a' taken things easy, I'd 'a' a stopped that slug for you.' And so says he, 'Bang away you big fool, and don't stand talking.' And so he swounded away; and that made me vicious, too, and I killed two of the red niggurs, before you could say Jack Robinson, just by way of satisfaction for the Major; and then I helped to carry him off to the tumbrels. I never see'd my old Major from that day to this; and it war only a month ago that I h'ard of his death. I honour his memory; and so, K'-yaptin, you see, thar's a sort of claim to old friendship between us."
To this characteristic speech, which was delivered with great earnestness, Captain Forrester made a suitable response; and intimating his willingness to accept the proffered hospitality of his uncle's companion in arms, he rode forward with his host and kinswoman towards the Station, of which, when once fairly relieved of the forest, he had a clear view.
It seemed unusually populous, as indeed it was; but Roland, as he rode by, remarked, on the skirts of the village, a dozen or more shooting-targets set up on the green, and perceived it was a gala-day which had drawn the young men from a distance to the fort. This, in fact, he was speedily told by a youth, whom the worthy Bruce introduced to him as his eldest son and namesake, "big Tom Bruce,--the third of that name; the other two Toms,--for two others he had had,--having been killed by the Injuns, and he having changed the boy's name, that he might have a Tom in the family." The youth was worthy of his father, being full six feet high, though scarcely yet out of his teens, and presented a visage of such serene gravity and good-humoured simplicity as won the affections of the soldier in a moment.
"Thar's a boy now, the brute," said Colonel Bruce, sending him off to assist in the distribution of the guests among the settlers, "that comes of the best stock for loving women and fighting Injuns in all Kentucky! And so, captain, if young madam, your sister h'yar, is for picking a husband out of Kentuck, I'll say it, and stand to it, thar's not a better lad to be found than Tom Bruce, if you hunt the district all over. You'd scarce believe it, mom," he continued, addressing Edith herself, "but the young brute did actually take the scalp of a full-grown Shawnee before he war fourteen y'ar old, and that in fa'r fight, whar thar war none to help him. The way of it war this: Tom war out in the range, looking for a neighbour's horse; when what should he see but two great big Shawnees astride of the identicular beast he war hunting! Away went Tom, and away went the bloody villians hard after, one of 'em afoot, the other on the horse. 'Now,' said Tom, this won't do, no how;' and so he let fly at the mounted feller; but being a little skeary, as how could he help it, the young brute, being the first time he ever banged at an Injun, he hit the horse, which dropped down in a flurry; and away comes the red devil over his head, like a rocket, end on to a sapling. Up jumps Tom and picks up the Injun's gun; and bang goes the other Shawnee at him, and jumps to a tree. 'A bird in the hand,' said Tom, 'is worth two in a bush;' and with that he blows out the first feller's brains, just as he is gitting up, and runs into the fort, hard chased by the other. And then to see the fellers, when I asked him why he didn't shoot the Injun that had fired at him, and so make sure of both, the other being in a sort of swound-like from the tumble, and ready to be knocked on the head at any moment? 'Lord!' said Tom, 'I never thought of it, I war such a fool!' and with that he blubbered all night, to think he had not killed them both. Howsomever, I war always of opinion that what he had done war good work for a boy of fourteen. --But, come now, my lovely young mom; we are entering the Station. May you never enter a house where you are less welcome."
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Men and boys had rushed from the fortress together, to greet the new comers, and few remained save the women; of whom not a few, particularly of the younger individuals, were as eager to satisfy their curiosity as their fathers and brothers. The disorderly spirit had spread even among the daughters of the commandant, to the great concern of his spouse; who, although originally of a degree somewhat humbler even than his own, had a much more elevated sense of the dignity of his commission as a colonel of militia, and a due consciousness of the necessity of adapting her manners to her rank. She stood on the porch of her cabin, which had the merit of being larger than any other in the fort, maintaining order among some half dozen or more lasses, the eldest scarce exceeding seventeen, whom she endeavoured to range in a row, to receive the expected guests in state, though every moment some one or other might be seen edging away from her side, as if in the act of deserting her altogether.
"Out on you, you flirting critturs!" said she, her indignation provoked, and her sense of propriety shocked by such unworthy behaviour:--"Stop thar, you Nell! whar you going? You Sally, you Phoebe, you Jane, and the rest of you! ha'nt you no better idea of what's manners for a Cunnel's daughters? I'm ashamed of you,--to run ramping and tearing after the strange men thar, like tom-boys, or any common person's daughters! Laws! _do_ remember your father's a Cunnel in the milishy, and set down in the porch here on the bench, like genteel young ladies; or stand up, if you like that better, and wait till your father, Cunnel Bruce that is, brings up the captains: one of 'em's a rale army captain, with epaulets and broad-sword, with a chance of money, and an uncommon handsome sister,--rale genteel people from old Virginnee: and I'm glad of it,--it's so seldom you sees any body but common persons come to Kentucky. Do behave yourselves: thar's Telie Doe thar at the loom don't think so much as turning her eyes around; she's a pattern for you."
"Law, mother!" said the eldest of the daughters, bridling with disdain, "I reckon I know how to behave myself as well as Telie Doe, or any other girl in the settlement;"--a declaration echoed and re-echoed by her sisters, all of whom bent their eyes towards a corner of the ample porch, where, busied with a rude loom, fashioned perhaps by the axe and knife of the militia colonel himself, on which she was weaving a coarse cloth from the fibres of the flax-nettle, sat a female somewhat younger than the eldest of the sisters, and doubtless of a more humble degree, as was shown by the labour in which she was engaged, while the others seemed to enjoy a holiday, and by her coarse brown garments, worn at a moment when the fair Bruces were flaunting in their best bibs and tuckers, the same having been put on not more in honour of the exiles, whose coming had been announced the day before, than out of compliment to the young men of the settlement, who were wont to assemble on such occasions to gather the latest news from the States.
The pattern of good manners thus referred to, was as unconscious of the compliment bestowed upon her by the worthy Mrs. Bruce as of the glances of disdain it drew from the daughters, being apparently at that moment too much occupied with her work to think of anything else; nor did she lift up her eyes until, the conversation having been resumed between the mother and daughters, one of the latter demanded "what was the name of that army captain, that was so rich and great, of whom her mother had been talking?"
"Captain Roland Forrester," replied the latter; at the sound of which name the maiden at the loom started and looked up with an air of fright, that caused exceeding diversion among the others. "Look at Telie Doe!" they cried, laughing: "you can't speak above your breath but she thinks you are speaking to her; and, sure, you can't speak to her, but she looks as if she would jump out of her skin, and run away for her dear life!"
And so, indeed, the girl did appear for a moment, looking as wild and terrified as the animal whose name she bore, when the first bay of the deer-hound startles her in the deep woodland pastures, rolling her eyes, catching her breath convulsively, shivering, and, in short, betraying a degree of agitation; that would have appeared unaccountable to a stranger; though, as it caused more amusement than surprise among the merry Bruces, it was but fair to suppose that it sprung from constitutional nervousness, or the sudden interruption of her meditations. As she started up in her confusion, rolling her eyes from one laughing maiden to another, her very trepidation imparted an interest to her features, which were in themselves pretty enough, though not so much as to attract observation, when in a state of rest. Then it was that the observer might see, or fancy he saw, a world of latent expression in her wild dark eyes, and trace the workings of a quick and sensitive spirit, whose existence would have been otherwise unsuspected, in the tremulous movement of her lips. And then, too, one might have been struck with the exquisite contour of a slight figure, which even the coarse garments, spun, and perhaps shaped, by her own hands, could not entirely conceal. At such times of excitement, there was something in her appearance both striking and singular--Indian-like, one might almost have said. Such an epithet might have been borne out by the wildness of her looks, the darkness of her eyes, the simple arrangement of her coal-black hair--which instead of being confined by comb or fillet, was twisted round a thorn cut from the nearest locust-tree--and by the smallness of her stature, though the lightness and European tinge of her complexion must have instantly disproved the idea.
Her discomposure dispelled from the bosoms of her companions all the little resentment produced by the matron's invidious comparison; and each now did her best to increase it by cries of "Jump, Telie, the Indians will catch you!" "Take care, Telie, Tom Bruce will kiss you!" "Run, Telie, the dog will bite you!" and other expressions, of a like alarming nature, which, if they did not augment her terror, divided and distracted her attention, till quite bewildered, she stared now on one, now on the other, and at each mischievous assault, started, and trembled, and gasped for breath, in inexpressible confusion. It was fortunate for her that this species of baiting, which from the spirit and skill with which her youthful tormentors pursued it, seemed no uncommon infliction, the reforming mother considered to be, at least at that particular moment, unworthy the daughters of a colonel in the militia.
"Do behave yourselves, you ungenteel critturs," said she; "Phoebe Bruce, you're old enough to know better; don't expose yourself before stranngers. Thar they come now; thar's Cunnel Bruce that is, talking to Captain Forrester that is, and a right-down soldier-looking captain he is, too. I wonder whar's his cocked hat, and feather, and goold epaulets? Thar's his big broad-sword, and--but, Lord above us, ar'nt his sister a beauty! Any man in Kentucky will be proud of her; but, I warrant me, she'll take to nothing under a cunnel!"
The young misses ceased their sport to stare at the strangers, and even Telie Doe, pattern of propriety as she was, had no sooner recovered her equanimity than she turned her eyes from the loom and bent them eagerly upon the train now entering through the main gate, gazing long and earnestly upon the young captain and the fair Edith, who with the colonel of militia, and a fourth individual, parted from it, and rode up to the porch. The fourth person, a sober, and substantial-looking borderer, in a huge blanket-coat and slouched hat, the latter stuck round with buck's tails, was the nominal captain of the party. He conversed a moment with Forrester and the commandant, and then, being given in charge by the latter to his son Tom, who was hallooed from the crowd for this purpose, he rode away, leaving the colonel to do the honours to his second in command. These the colonel executed with much courtesy and gallantry, if not with grace, leaping from his horse with unexpected activity, and assisting Edith to dismount, which he effected by taking her in his arms and whisking her from the saddle with as little apparent effort as though he were handling an infant.
"Welcome, my beautiful young lady," said he, giving her another hearty shake of the hand: "H'yar's a house that shall shelter you; though thar's not much can be said of it, except that it is safe and wholesome. H'yar's my old lady too, and my daughters, that will make much of you; and as for my sons, thar's not a brute of 'em that won't fight for you; but th' ar' all busy stowing away the stranngers; and, I reckon, they think it ar'nt manners to show themselves to a young lady, while she's making acquaintance with the women."
With that the gallant colonel presented the fair stranger to his wife and daughters, the latter of whom, a little daunted at first by her appearance, as a being superior in degree to the ordinary race of mortals, but quickly re-assured by her frank and easy deportment, loaded her with caresses, and carried her into the house, to improve the few hours allowed to make her acquaintance, and to assist her in changing her apparel, for which the means were furnished from sundry bags and packages, that the elder of the two negromen, the only immediate followers of her kinsmen, took from the back of a pack-horse. The mother of the Bruces thought it advisable to follow them, to see, perhaps, in person, that they conducted themselves towards their guest as a colonel's daughter should.
None of the females remained on the porch save Telie, the girl of the loom, who, too humble or too timid to seek the acquaintance of the stranger lady, like the others, had been overlooked in the bustle, and now pursued her labour with but little notice from those who remained.
"And now, Colonel," said the young officer, declining the offer of refreshments made by his host, "allow me, like a true soldier, to proceed to the business with which you heard our commander, Major Johnson, charge me. To-morrow we resume our journey to the Falls. I should gladly myself, for Miss Forrester's sake, consent to remain with you a few days, to recruit our strength a little. But that cannot be. Our men are resolved to push on without delay; and as I have no authority to restrain them, I must e'en accompany them."
"Well," said Colonel Bruce, "if it must be, it must, and I'm not the brute to say 'No' to you. But lord, Captain, I should be glad to have you stay a month or two, war it only to have a long talk about my old friend, the brave old major. And thar's your sister, Captain,--lord, sir, she would be the pet of the family, and would help my wife teach the girls manners. Lord!" he continued, laughing, "you've no idea what grand notions have got into the old woman's head about the way of behaving, ever since it war that the Governor of Virginnie sent me a cunnel's commission. She thinks I ought to w'ar a cocked hat and goold swabs, and put on a blue coat instead of a leather shirt; but I wonder how soon I'd see the end of it, out h'yar in the bushes? And then, as for the girls, why thar's no end of the lessons she gives them;--and thar's my Jenny,--that's the youngest,--came blubbering up the other day, saying, 'she believed mother intended even to stop their licking at the sugar-troughs, she was getting so great and so proud!' Howsomever, women will be women, and thar's the end of it."
To this philosophic remark the officer of inferior degree bowed acquiescence, and recalling his host's attention to the subject of most interest to himself, requested to be informed what difficulties or dangers might be apprehended on the further route to the Falls of Ohio.
"Why, none on 'arth that I know of," said Bruce; "you've as cl'ar and broad a trace before you as man and beast could make--a buffalo-street,[2] through the canes; and, when thar's open woods, blazes as thick as stars, and horse-tracks still thicker: thar war more than a thousand settlers have travelled it this year already. As for danngers, Captain, why I reckon thar's none to think on. Thar war a good chance of whooping and howling about Bear's Grass, last year, and some hard fighting; but I h'ar nothing of Injuns thar this y'ar. But you leave some of your people h'yar: what force do you tote down to the Falls to-morrow?"
[Footnote 2: The bison-paths when very broad, were often thus called.]
"Twenty-seven guns in all: but several quite too young to face an enemy."
"Thar's no trusting to years in a matter of fighting!" said the Kentuckian. "Thar's my son Tom, that killed his brute at fourteen; but, I remember, I told you that story. Howsomever, I hold thar's no Injuns on the road; and if you should meet any, why, it will be down about Bear's Grass, or the Forks of Salt, whar you can keep your eyes open, and whar the settlements are so thick, it is easy taking cover. No, no, Captain, the fighting this year is all on the north side of Kentucky."
"Yet, I believe," said Roland, "there have been no troubles there since the defeat of Captain Estill on Little Mountain, and of Holder at that place,--what do you call it?"
"Upper Blue Licks of Licking," said Bruce; "and war'nt they troubles enough for a season? Two Kentucky captains (and one of them a south-side man, too,) whipped in fa'r fight, and by nothing better than brutish Injuns!"
"They were sad affairs, indeed; and the numbers of white men murdered made them still more shocking."
"The murdering," said the gallant Colonel Bruce, "is nothing, sir: it is the shame of the thumping that makes one feel vicious; thar's the thing no Kentuckian can stand, sir. To be murdered, whar thar's ten Injuns to one white man, is nothing; but whar it comes to being trounced by equal numbers, why thar's the thing not to be tolerated. Howsomever, Captain, we're no worse off in Kentucky than our neighbours. Thar's them five hundred Pennsylvanians that went out in June, under old Cunnel Crawford from Pittsburg, agin the brutes of Sandusky, war more ridiculously whipped by old Captain Pipe, the Delaware, thar's no denying."
"What!" said Roland, "was Crawford's company beaten?"
"Beaten!" said the Kentuckian, opening his eyes; "cut off the _b_, and say the savages made a dinner of 'em, and you'll be nearer the true history of the matter. It's but two months ago; and so I suppose the news of the affa'r hadn't got into East Virginnie when you started. Well, Captain, the long and short of it is,--the cunnel _war_ beaten and exterminated, and that on a hard run from the fight he had hunted hard after. How many ever got back safe agin to Pittsburg, I never could rightly h'ar, but what I know is, that thar war dozens of prisoners beaten to death by the squaws and children, and that old Cunnel Crawford himself war put to the double torture and roasted alive; and, I reckon, if he war'nt eaten, it war only because he war too old to be tender."
"Horrible!" said the young soldier, muttering half to himself, though not in tones so low but that the Kentuckian caught their import; "and I must expose my poor Edith to fall into the power of such fiends and monsters!"
"Ay, Captain," said Bruce, "thar's the thing that sticks most in the heart of them that live in the wilderness and have wives and daughters;--to think of _their_ falling into the hands of the brutes, who murder and scalp a woman just as readily as a man. As to their torturing them, that's not so certain, but the brutes arn't a bit too good for it; and I did h'ar of their burning one poor woman at Sandusky. But now, Captain, if you are anxious to have the young lady, your sister, in safety, h'yar's the place to stick up your tent-poles, h'yar, in this very settlement, whar the Injuns never trouble us, never coming within ten miles of us. Thar's as good land here as on Bear's Grass; and we shall be glad of your company. It is not often we have a rich man to take luck among us. Howsomever, I won't deceive you, if you will go to the Ohio; I hold, thar's no danger on the trace for either man or woman."
"My good friend," said Roland, "you seem to labour under two errors in respect to me which it is fitting I should correct. In the first place, the lady whom you have several times called, I know not why, my sister, claims no such near relationship, being only my cousin."
"Why, sure!" said the colonel, "someone told me so, and thar's a strong family likeness."
"There should be," said the youth, "since our fathers were twin brothers, and resembled each other in all particulars, in body, in mind, and, as I may say, in fortune. They were alike in their lives, alike also in their deaths: they fell together, struck down by the same cannon-ball, at the bombardment of Norfolk, seven years ago."
"May I never see a scalp," said the Kentuckian, warmly grasping the young man's hand, "if I don't honour you the more for boasting such a father and such uncles! You come of the true stock, captain, thar's no denying; and my brave old major's estates have fallen into the right hands; for, if thar's any believing the news the last band of emigrants brought of you h'yar, thar war no braver officer in Lee's corps, nor in the whole Virginnee line, than young Captain Forrester."
"Here," said Roland, looking as if what he said cost him a painful effort, "lies the second error,--your considering me, as you manifestly do, the heir of your old major, my uncle Roland,--which I am not."
"Lord!" said the worthy Bruce, "he was the richest man in Prince-George, and he had thousands of fat acres in the Valley, the best in all Fincastle, as I know very well, for I war a Fincastle man myself; and thar war my old friend Braxley,--he war a lieutenant under the major at Braddock's, and afterwards his steward, and manager, and lawyer-like,--who used to come over the Ridge to see after them. But I see how it is; he left all to the young lady?"
"Not an acre," said Roland.
"What!" said the Kentuckian: "he left no children of his own. Who then is the heir?"
"Your old friend, as you call him, Richard Braxley. And hence you see," continued the youth, as if desirous to change the conversation, "that I come to Kentucky, an adventurer and fortune-hunter, like other emigrants, to locate lands under proclamation-warrants and bounty-grants, to fell trees, raise corn, shoot bisons and Indians, and, in general, do any thing else that can be required of a good Virginian or good Kentuckian."
It was evidently the captain's wish now to leave altogether the subject on which he had thought it incumbent to acquaint his host with so much; but the worthy Bruce was not so easily satisfied; and not conceiving there was any peculiar impropriety in indulging curiosity in matters relating to his old major, however distasteful that curiosity might prove to his guest, he succeeded in drawing from the reluctant young man many more particulars of his story; which, as they have an important connection with the events it is our object to narrate, we must be pardoned for briefly noticing.
Major Roland Forrester, the uncle and godfather of the young soldier, and the representative of one of the most ancient and affluent families on James River (for by this trivial name Virginians are content to designate the noble _Powhatan_), was the eldest of three brothers, of whom the two younger, as was often the case under the _ancien regime_ in Virginia, were left, at the death of their parent, to shift for themselves; while the eldest son inherited the undivided princely estate of his ancestors. This was at the period when that contest of principle with power, which finally resulted in the separation of the American Colonies from the parent State, first began to agitate the minds of the good planters of Virginia, in common with the people of all the other colonies. Men had already begun to take sides, in feeling as in argument; and, as usual, interest had, no doubt, its full share in directing and confirming the predilections of individuals. These circumstances,--the regular succession of the eldest-born to the paternal estate, and the necessity imposed on the others of carving out their own fortunes,--had, perhaps, their influence in determining the political bias of the brothers, and preparing them for contention when the increase of party feeling, and the clash of interests between the government abroad and the colonies at home, called upon all men to avow their principles and take their stands. It was as natural that the one should retain affection and reverence for the institutions which had made him rich and distinguished, as that the younger brothers, who had suffered under them a deprivation of their natural rights, should declare for a system of government and laws more liberal and equitable in their character and operation. At all events, and be the cause of difference what it might, when the storm of the Revolution burst over the land, the brothers were found arrayed on opposite sides--the two younger, the fathers of Roland and Edith, instantly taking up arms in the popular cause, while nothing, perhaps, but helpless feebleness and bodily infirmities, the results of wounds received in Braddock's war, throughout which he had fought at the head of a battalion of "Buckskins," or Virginia Rangers, prevented the elder brother from arming as zealously in the cause of his king. Fierce, uncompromising, and vindictive, however, in his temper, he never forgave his brothers the bold and active part they both took in the contest; and it was his resentment, perhaps, more than natural affection for his neglected offspring, that caused him to defeat his brothers' hopes of succession to his estates, (he being himself unmarried), by executing a will in favour of an illegitimate child, an infant daughter, whom he drew from concealment and acknowledged as his offspring. This child, however, was soon removed, having being burned to death in the house of its foster-mother. But its decease effected little or no change in his feelings towards his brothers, who, pursuing the principles they had so early avowed, were among the first to take arms among the patriots of Virginia, and fell, as Roland had said, at Norfolk, leaving each an orphan child--Roland, then a youth of fifteen, and Edith, a child of ten, to the mercy of the elder brother. Their death effected what perhaps their prayers never would have done. The stern loyalist took the orphans to his bosom, cherished and loved them, or at least appeared to do so, and often avowed his intention to make them his heirs. But it was Roland's ill fate to provoke his ire, as Roland's father had done before him. The death of that father, one of the earliest martyrs to liberty, had created in his youthful mind a strong abhorrence of everything British and loyal; and after presuming a dozen times or more to disclose and defend his hatred, he put the coping-stone to his audacity, by suddenly leaving his uncle's house, two years after he had been received into it, and galloping away, a cornet in one of the companies of the first regiment of horse which Virginia sent to the armies of Congress. He never more saw his uncle. He cared little for his wrath or its effects; if disinherited himself, it pleased his imagination to think he had enriched his gentle cousin. But his uncle carried his resentment further than he had dreamed, or indeed any one else who had beheld the show of affection he continued to the orphan Edith up to the last moment of his existence. He died in October of the preceding year, a week before the capitulation at York-town, and almost within the sound of the guns that proclaimed the fall of the cause he had so loyally espoused. From this place of victory Roland departed to seek his kinswoman. He found her in the house--not of his fathers, but of a stranger--herself a destitute and homeless orphan. No will appeared to pronounce her the mistress of the wealth he had himself rejected; but, in place of it, the original testament in favour of Major Forrester's own child was produced by Braxley, his confidential friend and attorney, who, by it, was appointed both executor of the estate and trustee to the individual in whose favour it was constructed.
The production of such a testament, so many years after the death of the girl, caused no little astonishment; but this was still further increased by what followed, the aforesaid Braxley instantly taking possession of the whole estate in the name of the heiress, who, he made formal deposition, was, to the best of his belief, yet alive, and would appear to claim her inheritance. In support of this extraordinary averment, he produced, or professed himself ready to produce, evidence to show that Forrester's child, instead of being burned to death as was believed, had actually been trepanned and carried away by persons to him unknown, the burning of the house of her foster-mother having been devised and executed merely to give colour to the story of her death. Who were the perpetrators of such an outrage, and for what purpose it had been devised, he affected to be ignorant; though he threw out many hints and surmises of a character more painful to Edith and Roland than even the loss of the property. These hints Roland could not persuade himself to repeat to the curious Kentuckian, since they went, in fact, to charge his own father, and Edith's, with the crime of having themselves concealed the child, for the purpose of removing the only bar to their expectations of succession.
Whatever might be thought of this singular story, it gained some believers, and was enough in the hands of Braxley, a man of great address and resolution, and withal, a lawyer, to enable him to laugh to scorn the feeble efforts made by the impoverished Roland to bring it to the test of legal arbitrament. Despairing, in fact, of his cause, after a few trials had convinced him of his impotence, and perhaps himself almost believing the tale to be true, the young man gave up the contest, and directed his thoughts to the condition of his cousin Edith; who, upon the above circumstances being made known, had received a warm invitation to the house and protection of her only female relative, a married lady, whose husband had, two years before, emigrated to the Falls of Ohio, where he was now a person of considerable importance. This invitation determined the course to be pursued. The young man instantly resigned his commission, and converting the little property that remained into articles necessary to the emigrant, turned his face to the boundless West, and with his helpless kinswoman at his side, plunged at once into the forest. A home for Edith in the house of a relative was the first object of his desires; his second, as he had already mentioned, was to lay the foundation for the fortunes of both.
There was something in the condition of the young and almost friendless adventurers to interest the feelings of the hardy Kentuckian; but they were affected still more strongly by the generous self-sacrifice, as it might be called, which the young soldier was evidently making for his kinswoman, for whom he had given up an honourable profession and his hopes of fame and distinction, to live a life of inglorious toil in the desert. He gave the youth another energetic grasp of hand, and said, with uncommon emphasis,-- "Hark'ee, Captain, my lad, I love and honour ye; and I could say no more, if you war my own natteral born father! As to that 'ar' Richard Braxley, whom I call'd my old friend, you must know, it war an old custom I have of calling a man a friend who war only an acquaintance; for I am for being friendly to all men that ar' white and honest, and no Injuns. Now, I do hold that Braxley to be a rascal,--a precocious rascal, sir! and, I rather reckon, thar war lying and villiany at the bottom of that will; and I hope you'll live to see the truth of it."
The sympathy felt by the Kentuckian in the story was experienced in a still stronger degree by Telie Doe, the girl of the loom, who, little noticed, if at all, by the two, sat apparently occupied with her work, yet drinking in every word uttered by the young soldier with a deep and eager interest, until Roland by chance looking round, beheld her large eyes fastened upon him, with a wild, sorrowful look, of which, however, she herself seemed quite unconscious, that greatly surprised him. The Kentuckian observing her at the same time, called to her,--"What, Telie, my girl, are you working upon a holiday? You should be dressed like the others, and making friends with the stranger lady. And so git away with you now, and make yourself handsome, and don't stand thar looking as if the gentleman would eat you."
"A qu'ar crittur she, poor thing!" said Bruce, looking after her commiseratingly; "and a stranger might think her no more nor half-witted. But she has sense enough, poor crittur! and, I reckon, is just as smart, if she war not so humble and skittish, as any of my own daughters."
"What," said Roland, "is she not then your child?"
"No, no," replied Bruce, shaking his head; "a poor crittur, of no manner of kin whatever. Her father war an old friend, or acquaintance-like; for, rat it, I won't own friendship for any such apostatised villians, no how:--but the man war taken by the Shawnees; and so as thar war none to befriend her, and she war but a little chit no bigger nor my hand, I took to her myself and raised her. But the worst of it is, and that's what makes her so wild and skeary, her father, Abel Doe, turned Injun himself, like Girty, Elliot, and the rest of them refugee scoundrels you've h'ard of. Now _that's_ enough, you see, to make the poor thing sad and frightful; for Abel Doe is a rogue, thar's no denying, and everybody hates and cusses him, as is but his due; and it's natteral, now she's growing old enough to be ashamed of him, she should be ashamed of herself too,--though thar's nothing but her father to charge against her, poor creatur'. A bad thing for her to have an Injunised father; for if it war'nt for him, I reckon, my son Tom, the brute, would take to her, and marry her."
"Poor creature, indeed!" muttered Roland to himself, contrasting in thought the condition of this helpless and deserted girl with that of his own unfortunate kinswoman, and sighing to acknowledge that it was still more forlorn and pitiable.
His sympathy was, however, but short-lived, being interrupted on the instant by a loud uproar of voices from the gate of the stockade, sounding half in mirth, half in triumph; while the junior Bruce was seen approaching the porch, looking the very messenger of good news.
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"What's the matter, Tom Bruce?" said the father, eyeing him with surprise.
"Matter enough," responded the young giant, with a grin of mingled awe and delight; "the Jibbenainosay is up again!"
"Whar?" cried the senior, eagerly,--"not in our limits?"
"No, by Jehoshaphat," replied Tom; "but nigh enough to be neighbourly,--on the north bank of Kentuck, whar he has left his mark right in the middle of the road, as fresh as though it war but the work of the morning!"
"And a clear mark, Tom? --no mistake in it?"
"Right to an iota!" said the young man;--"a reggelar cross on the breast, and a good tomahawk dig right through the skull; and a long-legg'd fellow, too, that looked as though he might have fou't old Sattan himself?"
"It's the Jibbenainosay, sure enough; and so good luck to him!" cried the commander: "thar's a harricane coming!"
"Who is the Jibbenainosay?" demanded Forrester.
"Who?" cried Tom Bruce: "Why, Nick,--Nick of the Woods."
"And who, if you please, is Nick of the Woods?"
"Thar," replied the junior, with another grin, "thar, strannger, you're too hard for me. Some think one thing, and some another; but thar's many reckon he's the devil."
"And his mark, that you were talking of in such mysterious terms,--what is that?"
"Why, a dead Injun, to be sure, with Nick's mark on him,--a knife-cut, or a brace of 'em, over the ribs in the shape of a cross. That's the way the Jibbenainosay marks all the meat of his killing. It has been a whole year now since we h'ard of him."
"Captain," said the elder Bruce, "you don't seem to understand the afta'r altogether; but if you were to ask Tom about the Jibbenainosay till doomsday, he could tell you no more than he has told already. You must know, thar's a creatur' of some sort or other that ranges the woods round about our station h'yar, keeping a sort of guard over us like, and killing all the brute Injuns that ar' onlucky enough to come in his way, besides scalping them and marking them with his mark. The Injuns call him _Jibbenainosay_, or a word of that natur', which them that know more about the Injun gabble than I do, say, means the _Spirit-that-walks_; and if we can believe any such lying devils as Injuns (which I am loath to do, for the truth ar'nt in 'em), he is neither man nor beast, but a great ghost or devil that knife cannot harm nor bullet touch; and they have always had an idea that our fort h'yar in partickelar, and the country round about, war under his friendly protection--many thanks to him, whether he be a devil or not; for that whar the reason the savages so soon left off a worrying of us."
"Is it possible," said Roland, "that any one can believe such an absurd story?"
"Why not?" said Bruce, stoutly. "Thar's the Injuns themselves, Shawnees, Hurons, Delawares, and all,--but partickelarly the Shawnees, for he beats all creation a-killing of Shawnees,--that believe in him, and hold him in such eternal dread, that thar's scarce a brute of 'em has come within ten miles of the station h'yar this three y'ar; because as how, he haunts about our woods h'yar in partickelar, and kills 'em wheresomever he catches 'em,--especially the Shawnees, as I said afore, against which the creatur' has a most butchering spite; and there's them among the other tribes that call him _Shawneewannaween_, or the Howl of the Shawnees, because of his keeping them ever a-howling. And thar's his marks, captain,--what do you make of _that_? When you find an Injun lying scalped and tomahawked, it stands to reason thar war something to kill him?"
"Ay, truly," said Forrester; "but I think you have human beings enough to give the credit to, without referring it to a supernatural one."
"Strannger," said Big Tom Bruce the younger, with a sagacious nod, "when you kill an Injun yourself, I reckon,--meaning no offence--you will be willing to take all the honour that can come of it, without leaving it to be scrambled after by others. Thar's no man 'arns a scalp in Kentucky, without taking great pains to show it to his neighbours."
"And besides, captain," said the father, very gravely, "thar are men among us who have _seen_ the creatur'!" " _That_," said Roland, who perceived his new friends were not well pleased with his incredulity, "is an argument I can resist no longer."
"Thar war Ben Jones, and Samuel Sharp, and Peter Small-eye, and a dozen more, who all had a glimpse of him stalking through the woods, at different times; and, they agree, he looks more like a devil nor a mortal man,--a great tall fellow, with horns and a hairy head like a buffalo-bull, and a little devil that looks like a black b'ar, that walks before him to point out the way. He war always found in the deepest forests, and that's the reason we call him Nick of the Woods; wharby we mean _Old_ Nick of the Woods; for we hold him to be the devil, though a friendly one to all but Injuns. Now, captain, I war never superstitious in my life,--but I go my death on the Jibbenainosay! I never seed the creatur' himself, but I have seen, in my time, two different savages of his killing. It's a sure sign, if you see him in the woods, that thar's Injuns at hand: and it's a good sign when you find his mark without seeing himself, for then you may be sure the brutes are off,--for they can't stand old Nick of the Woods no how! At first, he war never h'ard of afar from our station; but he has begun to widen his range. Last year he left his marks down Salt River in Jefferson; and now, you see, he is striking game north of the Kentucky; and I've h'ard of them that say he kills Shawnees even in their own country; though consarning _that_ I'll not be so partickelar. No, no, Captain, thar's no mistake in Nick of the Woods; and if you are so minded, we will go and h'ar the whole news of him. But, I say, Tom," continued the Kentuckian, as the three left the porch together, "who brought the news?"
"Captain Ralph,--Roaring Ralph Stackpole," replied Tom Bruce, with a knowing and humorous look.
"What!" cried the father, in sudden alarm; "Look to the horses, Tom!"
"I will," said the youth, laughing: "it war no sooner known that Captain Ralph war among us than it was resolved to have six Regulators in the range all night! Thar's some of these new colts (not to speak of our own creaturs), and especially that blooded brown beast of the captain's, which the nigger calls Brown Briery, or some such name, would set a better man than Roaring Ralph Stackpole's mouth watering."
"And who," said Roland, "is Roaring Ralph Stackpole? and what has he to do with Brown Briarens?"
"A proper fellow as ever you saw," replied Tom, approvingly;--"killed two Injuns once, single-handed, on Bear-Grass, and has stolen more horses from them than ar' another man in Kentucky. A prime creatur'! but he has his fault, poor fellow, and sometimes mistakes a Christian's horse for an Injun's, thar's the truth of it!"
"And such scoundrels you make officers of?" demanded the soldier, indignantly.
"Oh," said the elder Bruce, "thar's no reggelar commission in the case. But whar thar's a knot of our poor folks out of horses, and inclined to steal a lot from the Shawnees (which is all fa'r plundering, you see, for thar's not a horse among them, the brutes, that they did not steal from Kentucky), they send for Roaring Ralph and make him their captain; and a capital one he is, too, being all fight from top to bottom; and as for the stealing part, thar's no one can equal him. But, as Tom says, he sometimes _does_ make mistakes, having stolen horses so often from the Injuns, he can scarce keep his hands off a Christian's, and that makes us wrathy."
By this time the speakers had reached the gate of the fort, and passed among the cabins outside, where they found a throng of the villagers, surrounding the captain of horse-thieves, and listening with great edification to, and deriving no little amusement from, his account of the last achievement of the Jibbenainosay. Of this, as it related no more than the young Bruce had already repeated,--namely, that, while riding that morning from the north side, he had stumbled upon the corse of an Indian, which bore all the marks of having been a late victim to the wandering demon of the woods,--we shall say nothing; but the appearance and conduct of the narrator, one of the first, and perhaps the parent, of the race of men who have made Salt River so renowned in story, were such as to demand a less summary notice. He was stout, bandy-legged, broad-shouldered, and bull-headed, ugly, and villanous of look; yet with an impudent, swaggering, joyous self-esteem traced in every feature and expressed in every action of body, that rather disposed the beholder to laugh than to be displeased at his appearance. An old blanket-coat, or wrap-rascal, once white, but now of the same muddy brown hue that stained his visage--and once also of sufficient length to defend his legs, though the skirts had long since been transferred to the cuffs and elbows, where they appeared in huge patches--covered the upper part of his body; while the lower boasted a pair of buckskin breeches and leather wrappers, somewhat its junior in age, but its rival in mud and maculation. An old round fur hat, intended originally for a boy, and only made to fit his head by being slit in sundry places at the bottom, thus leaving a dozen yawning gaps, through which, as through the chinks of a lattice, stole out as many stiff bunches of black hair, gave to the capital excrescence an air as ridiculous as it was truly uncouth; which was not a little increased by the absence on one side of the brim, and by a loose fragment of it hanging down on the other. To give something martial to an appearance in other respects so outlandish and ludicrous, he had his rifle, and other usual equipments of a woodsman, including the knife and tomahawk, the first of which he carried in his hand, swinging it about at every moment, with a vigour and apparent carelessness well fitted to discompose a nervous person, had any such happened among his auditors. As if there was not enough in his figure, visage, and attire to move the mirth of beholders, he added to his other attractions a variety of gestures and antics of the most extravagant kinds, dancing, leaping, and dodging about, clapping his hands and cracking his heels together, with the activity, restlessness, and, we may add, the grace, of a jumping-jack. Such was the worthy, or unworthy, son of Salt River, a man wholly unknown to history, though not to local and traditionary fame, and much less to the then inhabitants of Bruce's Station, to whom he related his news of the Jibbenainosay with that emphasis and importance of tone and manner which are most significantly expressed in the phrase of "laying down the law."
As soon as he saw the commander of the station approaching, he cleared the throng around him by a skip and a hop, seized the colonel by the hand, and doing the same with the soldier, before Boland could repel him, as he would have done, exclaimed, "Glad to see you, cunnel;--same to you, strannger--What's the news from Virginnie? Strannger, my name's Ralph Stackpole, and I'm a ring-tailed squealer!"
"Then, Mr. Ralph Stackpole, the ring-tailed squealer," said Roland, disengaging his hand, "be so good as to pursue your business, without regarding or taking any notice of me." " 'Tarnal death to me!" cried the captain of horse-thieves, indignant at the rebuff, "I'm a gentleman, and my name's _Fight_! Foot and hand, tooth and nail, claw and mudscraper, knife, gun, and tomahawk, or any other way you choose to take me, I'm your man! Cock-a-doodle-doo!" And with that the gentleman jumped into the air, and flapped his wings, as much to the amusement of the provoker of his wrath as of any other person present.
"Come, Ralph," said the commander of the Station, "whar'd' you steal that brown mar' thar?" --a question whose abruptness somewhat quelled the ferment of the man's fury, while it drew a roar of laughter from the lookers-on.
"Thar it is!" said he, striking an attitude and clapping a hand on his breast, like a man who felt his honour unjustly assailed. "Steal! _I_ steal any horse but an Injun's! Whar's the man dar's insinivate that? Blood and massacree-ation! whar's the man?"
"H'yar," said Bruce, very composedly. "I know that old mar' belongs to Peter Harper, on the north side."
"You're right, by Hooky!" cried Roaring Ralph; at which seeming admission of his knavery the merriment of the spectators was greatly increased; nor was it much lessened when the fellow proceeded to aver that he had borrowed it, and that with the express stipulation that it should be left at Bruce's Station, subject to the orders of its owner. "Thar, cunnel," said he, "thar's the beast; take it; and just tell me whar's the one you mean to lend me,--for I must be oft afore sunset."
"And whar are you going?" demanded Bruce.
"To St. Asaphis,"--which was a Station some twenty or thirty miles off,--replied Captain Stackpole.
"Too far for the Regulators to follow, Ralph," said Colonel Bruce; at which the young men present laughed louder than ever, and eyed the visitor in a way that seemed both to disconcert and offend him.
"Cunnel," said he, "you're a man in authority, and my superior officer; wharfo' thar' can be no scalping between us. But my name's Tom Dowdle, the ragman!" he screamed, suddenly skipping into the thickest of the throng, and sounding a note of defiance; "my name's Tom Dowdle, the ragman, and I'm for any man that insults me! log-leg or leather-breeches, green-shirt or blanket-coat, land-trotter or river-roller,--I'm the man for a massacree!" Then giving himself a twirl upon his foot that would have done credit to a dancing-master, he proceeded to other antic demonstrations of hostility, which when performed in after years on the banks of the Lower Mississippi, by himself and his worthy imitators, were, we suspect, the cause of their receiving the name of the mighty alligator. It is said, by naturalists, of this monstrous reptile, that he delights, when the returning warmth of spring has brought his fellows from their holes, and placed them basking along the banks of a swampy lagoon, to dart into the centre of the expanse, and challenge the whole field to combat. He roars, he blows the water from his nostrils, he lashes it with his tail, he whirls round and round, churning the water into foam; until, having worked himself into a proper fury, he darts back again to the shore, to seek an antagonist. Had the gallant captain of horse-thieves boasted the blood, as he afterwards did the name, of an "alligator half-breed," he could have scarce conducted himself in a way more worthy of his parentage. He leaped into the centre of the throng, where, having found elbow-room for his purpose, he performed the gyration mentioned before, following it up by other feats expressive of his hostile humour. He flapped his wings and crowed, until every chanticleer in the settlement replied to the note of battle; he snorted and neighed like a horse; he bellowed like a bull; he barked like a dog; he yelled like an Indian; he whined like a panther; he howled like a wolf; until one would have thought he was a living managerie, comprising within his single body the spirit of every animal noted for its love of conflict. Then, not content with such a display of readiness to fight the field, he darted from the centre of the area allowed him for his exercise, and invited the lookers-on individually to battle. "Whar's your buffalo-bull," he cried, "to cross horns with the roarer of Salt River? Whar's your full-blood colt that can shake a saddle off? h'yar's an old nag can kick off the top of a buck-eye! Whar's your cat of the Knobs? your wolf of the Rolling Prairies? h'yar's the old brown b'ar can claw the bark off a gum tree! H'yar's a man for you, Tom Bruce! Same to you, Sim Roberts! to you, Jimmy Big-nose! to you, and to you, and to you! Ar'n't I a ring-tailed squealer? Can go down Salt on my back, and swim up the Ohio! Whar's the man to fight Roaring Ralph Stackpole?"
Now, whether it happened that there were none present inclined to a contest with such a champion, or whether it was that the young men looked upon the exhibition as a mere bravado meant rather to amuse them than irritate, it so occurred that not one of them accepted the challenge; though each, when personally called on, did his best to add to the roarer's fury, if fury it really were, by letting off sundry jests in relation to borrowed horses and Regulators. [3] That the fellow's rage was in great part assumed, Roland, who was, at first, somewhat amused at his extravagance, became soon convinced; and growing at last weary of it, he was about to signify to his host his inclination to return into the fort, when the appearance of another individual on the ground suddenly gave promise of new entertainment.
[Footnote 3: It is scarce necessary to inform the reader that by this term must be understood those public-spirited citizens, amateur jack-ketches, who administer Lynch-law in districts where regular law is but inefficiently, or not at all, established.]
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"If you're ralely ripe for a fight, Roaring Ralph," cried Tom Bruce the younger, who had shown, like the others, a greater disposition to jest than to do battle with the champion, "here comes the very man for you. Look, boys, thar comes Bloody Nathan!" At which formidable name there was a loud shout set up, with an infinite deal of laughing and clapping of hands.
"Whar's the fellow?" cried Captain Stackpole, springing six feet into the air, and uttering a whoop of anticipated triumph. "I've heerd of the brute, and, 'tarnal death to me, but I'm his super-superior! Show me tho critter, and let me fly! Cock-a-doodle-doo!"
"Hurrah for Roaring Ralph Stackpole!" cried the young men, some of whom proceeded to pat him on the back in compliment to his courage, while others ran forward to hasten the approach of the expected antagonist.
The appearance of the comer, at a distance, promised an equal match to tho captain of horse-thieves; but Roland perceived, from the increase of merriment among the Kentuckians, and especially from his host joining heartily in it, that there was more in Bloody Nathan than met the eye. And yet there was enough in his appearance to attract attention, and to convince the soldier that if Kentucky had shown him, in Captain Stackpole, one extraordinary specimen of her inhabitants, she had others to exhibit not a whit less remarkable. It is on the frontiers, indeed, where adventurers from every corner of the world, and from every circle of society are thrown together, that we behold the strongest contrasts, and the strangest varieties, of human character.
Casting his eyes down the road, or street (for it was flanked by the outer cabins of the settlement, and perhaps deserved the latter name), which led, among stumps and gullies, from the gate of the stockade to the bottom of the hill, Forrester beheld a tall man approaching, leading an old lame white horse, at the heels of which followed a little silky haired black or brown dog, dragging its tail betwixt its legs, in compliment to the curs of the Station, which seemed as hospitably inclined to spread a field of battle for the submissive brute, as their owners were to make ready another for its master. The first thing that surprised the soldier in the appearance of the person bearing so formidable a name, was an incongruity which struck others as well as himself, even the colonel of militia exclaiming, as he pointed it out with his finger, "It's old Nathan Slaughter, to the backbone! Thar he comes, the brute, leading a horse in his hand, and carrying his pack on his own back! But he's a marciful man, Old Nathan, and the horse thar, old White Dobbin, war foundered and good for nothing ever since the boys made a race with him against Sammy Parker's jackass."
As he approached yet higher, Roland perceived that his tall, gaunt figure was arrayed in garments of leather from top to toe, even his cap, or hat (for such it seemed, having several broad flaps suspended by strings, so as to serve the purpose of a brim), being composed of fragments of tanned skins rudely sewed together. His upper garment differed from a hunting shirt only in wanting the fringes usually appended to it, and in being fashioned without any regard to the body it encompassed, so that in looseness and shapelessness, it looked more like a sack than a human vestment; and, like his breeches and leggings, it bore the marks of the most reverend antiquity, being covered with patches and stains of all ages, sizes, and colours.
Thus far Bloody Nathan's appearance was not inconsistent with his name, being uncommonly wild and savage; and to assist in maintaining his claims to the title, he had a long rifle on his shoulder, and a knife in his belt, both of which were in a state of dilapidation worthy of his other equipments; the knife, from long use and age, being worn so thin that it seemed scarce worthy the carrying, while the rifle boasted a stock so rude, shapeless, and, as one would have judged from its magnitude and weight, so unserviceable, that it was easy to believe it had been constructed by the unskilful hands of Nathan himself. His visage, seeming to belong to a man of at least forty-five or fifty years of age, was hollow, and almost as weather-worn as his apparel, with a long hooked nose, prominent chin, a wide mouth exceedingly straight and pinched, with a melancholy or contemplative twist at the corners, and a pair of black staring eyes, that beamed a good-natured, humble, and perhaps submissive, simplicity of disposition. His gait, too, as he stumbled along up the hill, with a shuffling, awkward, hesitating step, was like that of a man who apprehended injury and insult, and who did not possess the spirit to resist them. The fact, moreover, of his sustaining on his own shoulders a heavy pack of deer and other skins, to relieve the miserable horse which he led, betokened a merciful temper, scarce compatible with the qualities of a man of war and contention. Another test and criterion by which Roland judged his claims to the character of a roarer, he found in the little black dog; for the Virginian was a devout believer, as we are ourselves, in that maxim of practical philosophers, namely, that by the dog you shall know the master, the one being fierce, magnanimous, and cowardly, just as his master is a bully, a gentleman, or a dastard. The little dog of Nathan was evidently a coward, creeping along at White Dobbin's heels, and seeming to supplicate with his tail, which now draggled in the mud, and now attempted a timid wag, that his fellow-curs of the Station should not be rude and inhospitable to a peaceful stranger.
On the whole, the appearance of the man was anything in the world but that of the ferocious ruffian whom the nick-name had led Roland to anticipate; and he scarce knew whether to pity him, or to join in the laugh with which the young men of the settlement greeted his approach. Perhaps his sense of the ridiculous would have disposed the young soldier to merriment; but the wistful look with which, while advancing, Nathan seemed to deprecate the insults he evidently expected, spoke volumes of reproach to his spirit, and the half-formed smile faded from his countenance.
"Thar!" exclaimed Tom Bruce, slapping Stackpole on the shoulder, with great glee, "thar's the man that calls himself Dannger! At him, for the honour of Salt River; but take care of his forelegs, for, I tell you, he's the Pennsylvany war-horse!"
"And arn't I the ramping tiger of the Rolling Fork?" cried Captain Ralph; "and can't I eat him, hoss, dog, dirty jacket, and all? Hold me by the tail while I devour him!"
With that, he executed two or three escapades, demivoltes curvets, and other antics of a truly equine character, an galloping up to the amazed Nathan, saluted him with a neigh so shrill and hostile that even White Dobbin pricked up his ears, and betrayed other symptoms of alarm.
"Surely, Colonel," said Roland, "you will not allow that mad ruffian to assail the poor man?"
"Oh," said Bruce, "Ralph won't hurt him; he's never vicious, except among Injuns and horses. He's only for skearing the old feller."
"And who," said Forrester, "may the old fellow be? and why do you call him Bloody Nathan?"
"We call him Bloody Nathan," replied the commander, "because he's the only man in all Kentucky that _won't fight_! and thar's the way he beats us all hollow. Lord, Captain, you'd hardly believe it, but he's nothing more than a poor Pennsylvany Quaker; and what brought him out to Kentucky, whar thar's nar another creatur' of his tribe, thar's no knowing. Some say he war dishonest, and so had to cut loose from Pennsylvany; but I never heerd of his stealing anything in Kentucky; I reckon thar's too much of the chicken about him for that. Some say he is hunting rich lands; which war like enough for anybody that war not so poor and lazy. And some say his wits are unsettled, and I hold that that's the truth of the creatur'; for he does nothing but go wandering up and down the country, now h'yar and now thar, hunting for meat and skins; and that's pretty much the way he makes a living: and once I see'd the creatur' have a fit--a right up-and-down touch of the falling-sickness, with his mouth all of a foam. Thar's them that's good-natur'd that calls him Wandering Nathan, because of his being h'yar and thar, and every whar. He don't seem much afear'd of the Injuns; but, they say, the red brutes never disturbs the Pennsylvany Quakers. Howsomever, he makes himself useful; for sometimes he finds Injun sign whar thar's no Injuns thought of, and so he gives information; but he always does it, as he says, to save bloodshed, not to bring on a fight. He comes to me once, thar's more than three years ago, and instead of saying, 'Cunnel, thar's twenty Injuns lying on the road at the lower ford of Salt, whar you may nab them,' says he, says he, 'Friend Thomas, thee must keep the people from going nigh the ford, for thar's Injuns thar that will hurt them;' and then he takes himself off; whilst I rides down thar with twenty-five men and exterminates them, killing six, and driving the others the Lord knows whar. He has had but a hard time of it amongst us, poor creatur'; for it used to make us wrathy to find thar war so little fight in him that he wouldn't so much as kill a murdering Injun. I took his gun from him once; for why, he wouldn't attend muster when I had enrolled him. But I pitied the brute; for he war poor, and thar war but little corn in his cabin, and nothing to shoot meat with; and so I gave it back, and told him to take his own ways for an old fool."
While Colonel Bruce was thus delineating the character of Nathan Slaughter, the latter found himself surrounded by the young men of the Station, the butt of a thousand jests, and the victim of the insolence of the captain of horse-thieves. It is not to be supposed that Roaring Ralph was really the bully and madman that his extravagant freaks and expressions seemed to proclaim him. These, like any other "actions that a man might play," were assumed, partly because it suited his humour to be fantastic, and partly because the putting of his antic disposition on, was the only means which he, like many of his betters, possessed of attracting attention, and avoiding the neglect and contempt to which his low habits and appearance would have otherwise justly consigned him. There was, therefore, little really hostile in the feelings with which he approached the non-combatant; though it was more than probable, the disgust he, in common with the other warlike personages, entertained toward the peaceable Nathan, might have rendered him a little more malicious than usual.
"Nathan!" said he, as soon as he had concluded his neighing and curvetting, "if you ever said your prayers, now's the time. Down with your pack--for I can't stand deer's ha'r sticking in my swallow, no how!"
"Friend," said Nathan, meekly, "I beg thee will not disturb me. I am a man of peace and quiet."
And so saying, he endeavoured to pass onwards, but was prevented by Ralph, who, seizing his heavy bundle with one hand, applied his right foot to it with a dexterity that not only removed it from the poor man's back, but sent the dried skins scattering over the road. This feat was rewarded by the spectators with loud shouts, all which, as well as the insult itself, Nathan bore with exemplary patience.
"Friend," he said, "what does thee seek of me, that thee treats me thus?"
"A fight!" replied Captain Stackpole, uttering a war-whoop; "a fight, strannger, for the love of heaven!"
"Thee seeks it of the wrong person," said Nathan; "and I beg thee will get thee away," "What!" said Stackpole, "arn't thee the Pennsylvanny war-horse, the screamer of the meeting-house, the ba'r of Yea-Nay-and-Verily?"
"I am a man of peace," said the submissive Slaughter.
"Yea verily, verily and yea!" cried Ralph, snuffling through the nostrils, but assuming an air of extreme indignation: "Strannger, I've heerd of you! You're the man that holds it agin duty and conscience to kill Injuns, the redskin screamers--that refuses to defend the women, the splendiferous creatur's! and the little children, the squall-a-baby d'avs! And wharfo'? Bec'ause as how you're a man of peace and no fight, you superiferous, long-legged, no-souled crittur! But I'm the gentleman to make a man of you. So down with your gun, and 'tarnal death to me, I'll whip the cowardly devil out of you."
"Friend," said Nathan, his humility yielding to a feeling of contempt, "thee is theeself a cowardly person, or thee wouldn't seek a quarrel with one thee knows can't fight thee Thee would not be so ready with thee match."
With that, he stooped to gather up his skins, a proceeding that Stackpole, against whom the laugh was turned by this sally of Nathan's, resisted by catching him by the nape of the neck, twirling him round, and making as if he really would have beaten him.
Even this the peaceful Nathan bore without anger or murmuring; but his patience fled, when Stackpole, turning to the little dog, which was bristling its back and growling, expressed a half inclination to take up its master's quarrel, applied his foot to its ribs with a violence that sent it rolling some five or six yards down the hill, where it lay for a time yelping and whining with pain.
"Friend!" said Nathan, sternly, "thee is but a dog theeself, to harm the creature! What will thee have with me?"
"A fight! a fight, I tell thee!" replied Captain Ralph, "till I teach thy leatherified conscience the new doctrines of Kentucky."
"Fight thee I cannot and dare not," said Nathan; and then added, much to the surprise of Forrester, who, sharing, his indignation at the brutality of his tormentor, had approached to drive the fellow off,--"But if thee must have thee deserts, thee _shall_ have them. --Thee prides theeself upon thee courage and strength--will thee adventure with me a friendly fall?"
"Hurrah for Nathan!" cried the young men, vastly delighted at his unwonted spirit, while Captain Ralph himself expressed his pleasure, by leaping into the air, crowing, and dashing off his hat, which he kicked down the hill with as much good will as he had previously bestowed upon the little dog.
"Off with your leather night-cap, and down with your rifle," he cried, giving his own weapon into the hands of a looker-on, "and scrape some of the grease off your jacket; for, 'tarnal death to me, I shall give you the Virginny lock, fling you head-fo'most, and you'll find yourself, in a twinkling, sticking fast right in the centre of the 'arth!"
"Thee may find theeself mistaken," said Nathan, giving up his gun to one of the young men, but instead of rejecting his hat, pulling it down tight over his brows. "There is locks taught among the mountains of Bedford that may be as good as them learned on the hills of Virginia. --I am ready for thee."
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" cried Ralph Stackpole, springing towards his man, and clapping his hands, one on Nathan's left shoulder, the other on his right hip: "Are you ready?"
"I am," replied Nathan.
"Down, then, you go, war you a buffalo!" And with that the captain of the horse-thieves put forth his strength, which was very great, in an effort that appeared to Roland quite irresistible; though, as it happened, it scarce moved Nathan from his position.
"Thee is mistaken, friend!" he cried, exerting his strength in return, and with an effect that no one had anticipated. By magic, as it seemed, the heels of the captain of the horse-thieves were suddenly seen flying in the air, his head aiming at the earth, upon which it as suddenly descended with the violence of a bomb-shell; and there it would doubtless have burrowed, like the aforesaid implement of destruction, had the soil been soft enough for the purpose, or exploded into a thousand fragments, had not the shell been double the thickness of an ordinary skull.
"Huzza! Bloody Nathan for ever!" shouted the delighted villagers.
"He has killed the man," said Forrester; "but bear witness, all, the fellow provoked his fate."
"Thanks to you, strannger! but not so dead as you reckon," said Ralph, rising to his feet, and scratching his poll, with a stare of comical confusion. "I say, strannger, here's my shoulders,--but whar's my head? --Do you reckon I had the worst of it?"
"Huzza for Nathan Slaughter! He has whipped the ramping tiger of Salt River!" cried the young men of the Station.
"Well, I reckon he has," said the magnanimous Captain Ralph, picking up his hat: then walking up to Nathan, who had taken his dog into his arms, to examine into the little animal's hurts, he cried, with much good-humoured energy,--"Thar's my fo'paw, in token I've had enough of you and want no mo'. But I say, Nathan Slaughter," he added, as he grasped the victor's hand, "it's no thing you can boast of, to be the strongest man in Kentucky, and the most sevagarous at a tussel,--h'yar among murdering Injuns and scalping runnegades,--and keep your fists off their top-knots. Thar's my idear: for I go for the doctrine that every able-bodied man should sarve his country and his neighbours, and fight their foes; and them that does is men and gentlemen, and them that don't is cowards and rascals, that's my idear. And so, fawwell."
Then, executing another demivolte or two, but with much less spirit than he had previously displayed, he returned to Colonel Bruce, saying, "Whar's that horse you promised me, cunnel? I'm a licked man, and I can't stay here no longer, no way no how. Lend me a hoss, cunnel, and trust to my honour."
"You shall have a beast," said Bruce, coolly; "but as to trusting your honour, I shall do no such thing, having something much better to rely on. Tom will show you a horse; and, remember, you are to leave him at Logan's. If you carry him a step further, captain, you'll never carry another. Judge Lynch is looking at you; and so bewar'."
Having uttered this hint, he left the captian of horse-thieves to digest it as he might, and stepped up to Nathan, who had seated himself on a stump, where, with his skins at his side, his little dog and his rifle betwixt his legs, he sat enduring a thousand sarcastic encomiums on his strength and spirit, with as many sharp denunciations of the peaceful principles that robbed the community of the services he had shown himself so well able to render. The doctrine, so eloquently avowed by Captain Ralph, that it was incumbent upon every able-bodied man to fight the enemies of their little state, the murderers of their wives and children, was a canon of belief imprinted on the heart of every man in the district; and Nathan's failure to do so, however caused by his conscientious aversion to bloodshed, no more excused him from contempt and persecution in the wilderness, than it did others of his persuasion in the Eastern republics, during the war of the revolution. His appearance, accordingly, at any Station, was usually the signal for reproach and abuse; the fear of which had driven him almost altogether from the society of his fellowmen, so that he was seldom seen among them, except when impelled by necessity, or when his wanderings in the woods had acquainted him with the proximity of the foes of his persecutors. His victory over the captain of horse-thieves exposed him, on this occasion, to ruder and angrier remonstrances than usual; which having sought in vain to avert, he sat down in despair, enduring all in silence, staring from one to another of his tormentors with lack-lustre eyes, and playing with the silken hair of his dog. The approach of the captain of the Station procured him an interval of peace, which he, however, employed only to communicate his troubles to the little cur, that, in his perplexity, he had addressed pretty much as he would have addressed a human friend and adviser: "Well, Peter," said he, abstractedly, and with a heavy sigh, "what does _thee_ think of matters and things!" To which question, the ridiculousness of which somewhat mollified the anger of the young men, Peter replied by rubbing his nose against his master's hand, and by walking a step or two down the hill, as if advising an instant retreat from the inhospitable Station.
"Ay, Peter," muttered Nathan, "the sooner we go the better; for there are none that makes us welcome. But nevertheless, Peter, we must have our lead and our powder; and we must tell these poor people the news."
"And pray, Nathan," said Colonel Bruce, rousing him from his meditations, "what may your news for the poor people be? I reckon it will be much wiser to tell it to me than that 'ar brute dog. You have seen the Jibbenainosay, perhaps, or his mark thar-away on the Kentucky?"
"Nay," said Nathan. "But there is news from the Injun towns of a great gathering of Injuns with their men of war in the Miami villages, who design, the evil creatures, marching into the district of Kentucky with a greater army than was ever seen in the land before."
"Let them come, the brutes," said the Kentuckian, with a laugh of scorn; "it will save us the trouble of hunting them up in their own towns."
"Nay," said Nathan, "but perhaps they _have_ come; for the prisoner who escaped, and who is bearing the news to friend Clark, the General at the Falls, says they were to march two days after he fled from them."
"And whar did you learn this precious news?"
"At the lower fort of Kentucky, and from the man himself," said Nathan. "He had warned the settlers at Lexington--" "That's piper's news," interrupted one of the young men. "Captain Ralph told us all about that; but he said thar war nobody at Lexington believed the story."
"Then," said Nathan, meekly, "it may be that the man was mistaken. Yet persons should have a care, for there is Injun sign all along the Kentucky. But that is my story. And now, friend Thomas, if thee will give me lead and powder for my skins, I will be gone, and trouble thee no longer."
"It's a sin and a shame to waste them on a man who only employs them to kill deer, b'ar, and turkey," said Bruce, "yet a man musn't starve, even whar he's a quaker. So go you along with my son Dick thar, to the store, and he'll give you the value of your plunder. A poor, miserable brute, thar's no denying," he continued, contemptuously, as Nathan, obeying the direction, followed Bruce's second son into the fortress. "The man has some spirit now and then; but whar's the use of it, while he's nothing but a no-fight quaker? I tried to reason him out of his notions; but thar war no use in trying, no how I could work it. I have an idea about these quakers--" But here, luckily, the worthy Colonel's idea was suddenly put to flight by the appearance of Telie Doe, who came stealing through the throng, to summon him to his evening meal,--a call which neither he nor his guest was indisposed to obey; and taking Telie by the hand in a paternal manner, he ushered the young soldier back into the fort.
The girl, Roland observed, had changed her attire at the bidding of her protector, and now, though dressed with the greatest simplicity, appeared to more advantage than before. He thought her, indeed, quite handsome, and pitying her more than orphan condition, he endeavoured to show her such kindness as was in his power, by addressing to her some complimentary remarks, as he walked along at her side. His words, however, only revived the terror she seemed really to experience, whenever any one accosted her; seeing which, he desisted, doubting if she deserved the compliment the benevolent Bruce had so recently paid to her good sense.
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The evening meal being concluded, and a few brief moments devoted to conversation with her new friends, Edith was glad, when, at a hint from her kinsman as to the early hour appointed for setting out on the morrow, she was permitted to seek the rest of which she stood in need. Her chamber--and, by a rare exercise of hospitality, the merit of which she appreciated, since she was sensible it could not have been made without sacrifice, she occupied it alone--boasted few of the luxuries, few even of the comforts, to which she had been accustomed in her native land, and her father's house. But misfortune had taught her spirit humility; and the recollection of nights passed in the desert, with only a thin mattress betwixt her and the naked earth, and a little tent-cloth and the boughs of trees to protect her from inclement skies, caused her to regard her present retreat with such feelings of satisfaction as she might have indulged if in the chamber of a palace.
She was followed to the apartment by a bevy of the fair Bruces, all solicitous to render her such assistance as they could, and all, perhaps, equally anxious to indulge their admiration, for the second or third time, over the slender store of finery, which Edith good-naturedly opened to their inspection. In this way the time fled amain until Mrs. Bruce, more considerate than her daughters, and somewhat scandalised by the loud commendations which they passed on sundry articles of dress such as were never before seen in Kentucky, rushed into the chamber, and drove them manfully away.
"Poor, ignorant critturs!" said she, by way of apology, "they knows no better: thar's the mischief of being raised in the back-woods. They'll never l'arn to be genteel, thar's so many common persons comes out here with their daughters. I'm sure, I do my best to l'arn 'em."
With these words she tendered her own good offices to Edith, which the young lady declining with many thanks, she bade her good-night, and, to Edith's great relief, left her to herself. A few moments then sufficed to complete her preparations for slumber, which being effected, she threw herself on her knees, to implore the further favour of the orphan's Friend, who had conducted her so far in safety on her journey.
Whilst thus engaged, her mind absorbed in the solemn duty, she failed to note that another visitor had softly stolen into the apartment; and accordingly, when she rose from her devotions, and beheld a female figure standing in the distance, though regarding her with both reverence and timidity, she could not suppress an exclamation of alarm.
"Do not be afraid,--it is only Telie Doe," said the visitor, with a low and trembling voice: "I thought you would want some one to--to take the candle."
"You are very good," replied Edith, who, having scarcely before observed the humble and retiring maid, and supposing her to be one of her host's children, had little doubt she had stolen in to indulge her curiosity, like the others, although at so late a moment as to authorise a little cruelty on the part of the guest. "I am very tired and sleepy," she said, creeping into bed, hoping that the confession would be understood and accepted as an apology. She then, seeing that Telie did not act upon the hint, intimated that she had no further occasion for the light, and bade her good-night. But Telie, instead of departing, maintained her stand at the little rude table, where, besides the candle, were several articles of apparel that Edith had laid out in readiness for the morning, and upon which she thought the girl's eyes were fixed.
"If you had come a little earlier," said Edith, with unfailing good-nature, "I should have been glad to show you anything I have. But now, indeed, it is too late, and all my packages are made up--" "It is not _that_," interrupted the maiden hastily, but with trepidation. "No, I did not want to trouble you. But--" "But what?" demanded Edith, with surprise, yet with kindness, for she observed the agitation of the speaker.
"Lady," said Telie, mustering resolution, and stepping to the bed-side, "if you will not be angry with me, I would, I would--" "You would ask a favour, perhaps," said Edith, encouraging her with a smile.
"Yes, that is it," replied the girl, dropping on her knees, not so much, however, as it appeared, from abasement of spirit, as to bring her lips nearer to Edith's ear, that she might speak in a lower voice. "I know, from what they say, you are a great lady, and that you once had many people to wait upon you; and now you are in the wild woods, among strangers, and none about you but men." Edith replied with a sigh, and Telie, timorously grasping at the hand lying nearest her own, murmured eagerly, "If you would but take _me_ with you, I am used to the woods, and I would be your servant." " _You_!" exclaimed Edith, her surprise getting the better of her sadness. "Your mother would surely never consent to your being a servant?"
"My mother?" muttered Telie,--"I have no mother,--no relations."
"What! Mr. Bruce is not then your father?"
"No,--I have no father. Yes,--that is, I have a father; but he has,--he has turned Indian."
These words were whispered rather than spoken, yet whispered with a tone of grief and shame that touched Edith's feelings. Her pity was expressed in her countenance, and Telie, reading the gentle sympathy infused into every lovely feature, bent over the hand she had clasped, and touched it with her lips.
"I have told you the truth," she said, mournfully: "one like me should not be ashamed to be a servant. And so, lady, if you will take me, I will go with you and serve you; and poor and ignorant as I am, I _can_ serve you,--yes, ma'am," she added, eagerly, "I can serve you more and better than you think,--indeed, indeed I can."
"Alas, poor child," said Edith, "I am one who must learn to do without attendance and service. I have no home to give you."
"I have heard it all," said Telie; "but I can live in the woods with you, till you have a house; and then I can work for you, and you'll never regret taking me,--no, indeed, for I know all that's to be done by a woman in a new land, and you don't; and, indeed, if you have none to help you, it would kill you, it would indeed: for it is a hard, hard time in the woods, for a woman that has been brought up tenderly."
"Alas, child," said Edith, perhaps a little pettishly, for she liked not to dwell upon such gloomy anticipations, "why should you be discontented with the home you have already? Surely, there are none here unkind to you?"
"No," replied the maiden, "they are very good to me, and Mr. Bruce has been a father to me. But then I am _not_ his child, and it is wrong of me to live upon him, who has so many children of his own. And then my father--all talk of my father; all the people here hate him, though he has never done them harm, and I know,--yes, I know it well enough, though they won't believe it,--that he keeps the Indians from hurting them; but they hate him and curse him; and oh! I wish I was away, where I should never hear them speak of him more. Perhaps they don't know anything about him at the Falls, and then there will be nobody to call me the white Indian's daughter."
"And does Mr. Bruce, or his wife, know of your desire to leave him?"
"No," said Telie, her terrors reviving; "but if you should ask them for me, then they would agree to let me go. He told the Captain,--that's Captain Forrester,--he would do any thing for him; and indeed he would, for he is a good man, and he will do what he says."
"How strange, how improper, nay, how ungrateful then, if he be a good man," said Edith, "that you should wish to leave him and his kind family, to live among persons entirely unknown. Be content, my poor maid. You have little save imaginary evils to affect you. You are happier here than you can be among strangers."
Telie clasped her hands in despair: "I shall never be happy here, nor anywhere. But take me," she added eagerly, "take me for your own sake;--for it will be good for you to have me with you in the woods,--it will, indeed it will."
"It cannot be," said Edith, gently. But the maiden would scarce take a refusal. Her terrors had been dissipated by her having ventured so far on speech, and she now pursued her object with an imploring and passionate earnestness that both surprised and embarrassed Edith, while it increased her sympathy for the poor bereaved pleader. She endeavoured to convince her, if not of the utter folly of her desires, at least of the impossibility there was on her part of granting them. She succeeded, however, in producing conviction only on one point. Telie perceived that her suit was not to be granted; of when, as soon as she was satisfied, she left off entreaty, and rose to her feet with a saddened and humbled visage, and then, taking up the candle, she left the fair stranger to her repose.
In the meanwhile, Roland also was preparing for slumber; and finding, as indeed he could not avoid seeing, that the hospitality of his host had placed the males of the family under the necessity of taking their rest in the open air on the porch, he insisted upon passing the night in the same place in their company. In fact, the original habitation of the back-woodsman seldom boasted more than two rooms in all, and these none of the largest; and when emigrants arrived at a Station, there was little attempt made to find shelter for any save their women and children, to whom the men of the settlement readily gave up their own quarters, to share those of their male visitors under the blanket-tents which were spread before the doors. This, to men who had thus passed the nights for several weeks in succession, was anything but hardship; and when the weather was warm and dry, they could congratulate themselves on sleeping in greater comfort than, their sheltered companions. Of this Forrester was well aware, and he took an early period to communicate his resolution of rejecting the unmanly luxury of a bed, and sleeping like a soldier, wrapped in his cloak, with his saddle for a pillow. In this way, the night proving unexpectedly sultry, he succeeded in enjoying more delightful and refreshing slumbers than blessed his kinswoman in her bed of down. The song of the katydid and the cry of the whippoorwill came more sweetly to his ears from the adjacent woods; and the breeze that had stirred a thousand leagues of forest in its flight, whispered over his cheek with a more enchanting music than it made among the chinks and crannies of the wall by Edith's bed-side. A few idle dreams,--recollections of home, mingled with the anticipated scenes of the future, the deep forest, the wild beast, and the lurking Indian,--amused, without harassing, his sleeping mind; and it was not until the first gray of dawn that he experienced any interruption. He started up suddenly, his ears still tingling with the soft tones of an unknown voice, which had whispered in them, "Cross the river by the Lower Ford,--there is danger at the Upper." He stared around, but saw nothing all was silent around him, save the deep breathing of the sleepers at his side. "Who spoke?" he demanded in a whisper, but received no reply. "River,--Upper and Lower Ford,--danger? --" he muttered: "now I would have sworn some one spoke to me; and yet I must have dreamed it. Strange things, dreams,--thoughts in freedom, loosed from the chains of association,--temporary mad-fits, undoubtedly: marvellous impressions they produce on the organs of sense; see, hear, smell, taste, touch, more exquisitely _without_ the organs than _with_ them--What's the use of organs? There's the poser--I think--I--" but here he ceased thinking altogether, his philosophy having served the purpose such philosophy usually does, and wrapped him a second time in the arms of Morpheus. He opened his eyes almost immediately, as he thought; but his morning nap had lasted half an hour; the dawn was already purple and violet in the sky, his companions had left his side, and the hum of voices and the sound of footsteps in and around the Station, told him that his fellow-exiles were already preparing to resume their journey.
"A brave morrow to you, captain!" said the commander of the fortress, the thunder of whose footsteps, as he approached the house with uncommonly fierce strides, had perhaps broken his slumbers. A frown was on his brow, and the grasp of his hand, in which every finger seemed doing the duty of a boa-constrictor, spoke of a spirit up in arms, and wrestling with passion.
"What is the matter?" asked Roland.
"Matter that consarns you and me more than any other two persons in the etarnal world!" said Bruce, with such energy of utterance as nothing-but rage could supply. "Thar has been a black wolf in the pin-fold,--_alias_, as they used to say at the court-house, Captain Ralph Stackpole; and the end of it is, war I never to tell another truth in my life, that your blooded brown horse has absquatulated!" " _Absquatulated!" _ echoed Forrester, amazed as much at the word as at the fierce visage of his friend,--"what is that? Is the horse hurt?"
"Stolen away, sir, by the etarnal Old Scratch! Carried off by Roaring Ralph Stackpole, while I, like a brute, war sound a-sleeping! And h'yar's the knavery of the thing; sir! the unpronounceable rascality, sir! --I loaned the brute one of my own critturs, just to be rid of him, and have him out of harm's way; for I had a forewarning, the brute, that his mouth war a-watering after the Dew beasts in the pinfold, and after the brown horse in partickelar! And so I loaned him a horse, and sent him off to Logan's. Well, sir, and what does the brute do but ride off, for a make-believe, to set us easy; for he knew, the brute, if he war in sight of us, we should have had guards over the cattle all night long; well, sir, down he sot in ambush, till all were quiet; and then he stole back, and turning my own horse among the others, as if to say, 'Thar's the beast that I borrowed,'--it war a wonder the brute war so honest! --picked the best of the gathering, your blooded brown horse, sir! and all the while, I war sleeping like a brute, and leaving the guest in my own house to be robbed by Captain Ralph Stackpole, the villian!"
"If it be possible to follow the rascal," said Roland, giving way to wrath himself, "I must do so, and without a moment's delay. I would to heaven I had known this earlier."
"Whar war the use," said Bruce; "whar was the use of disturbing a tired man in his nap, and he a guest of mine too?"
"The advantage would have been," said Roland, a little testily, "that the pursuit could have been instantly begun."
"And war it _not_?" said the colonel. "Thar war not two minutes lost after the horse war missing, afore my son Tom and a dozen more of the best woodsmen war mounted on the fleetest horses in the settlement, and galloping after, right on the brute's trail."
"Thanks, my friend," said Roland, with a cordial grasp of the hand. "The horse will be recovered?"
"Thar's no denying it," said Bruce, "if a fresh leg can outrun a weary one; and besides, the brute war not content with the best horse, but he must have the second best too, that's Major Smalleye's two-y'ar-old pony. He has an eye for a horse, the etarnal skirmudgeon! but the pony will be the death of him; for he's skeary, and will keep Ralph slow in the path. No, sir; we'll have your brown horse before you can say Jack Robinson. But the intolerability of the thing, sir, is that Ralph Stackpole should steal my guest's horse, sir! But it's the end of his thieving, the brute, or thar's no snakes! I told him Lynch war out, the brute, and I told the boys to take car' I war not found lying; and I reckon they won't forget me! I like the crittur, thar's no denying, for he's a screamer among the Injuns; but thar's no standing a horse-thief! No, sir, thar's no standing a horse-thief!"
The only consequence of this accident which was apprehended, was that the march of the exiles must be delayed until the soldier's horse was recovered, or Roland himself left behind until the animal was brought in; unless, indeed, he chose to accept another freely offered him by his gallant host, and trust to having his own charger restored on some future occasion. He was himself unwilling that the progress of more than a hundred human beings towards the long sighed for land of promise should be delayed a moment on his account; and for this reason he exhorted his nominal superior to hasten the preparations for departure, without thinking of him. His first resolution in relation to his own course, was to proceed with the company, leaving his horse to be sent after him, when recovered. He was loath, however, to leave the highly-prized and long-tried charger behind; and Colonel Bruce, taking advantage of the feeling, and representing the openness and safety of the road, the shortness of the day's journey (for the next Station at which the exiles intended lodging was scarce twenty miles distant), and above all, promising, if he remained, to escort him thither with a band of his young men, to whom the excursion would be but an agreeable frolic, the soldier changed his mind, and, in an evil hour, as it afterwards appeared, consented to remain until Brown Briareus was brought in,--provided this should happen before mid-day; at which time, if the horse did not appear, it was agreed he should set out, trusting to his good fortune and the friendly zeal of his host, for the future recovery and restoration of his charger. Later than mid-day he was resolved not to remain; for however secure the road, it was wiser to pursue it in company than alone; nor would he have consented to remain a moment, had there appeared the least impediment to his joining the companions of his exile before nightfall.
His measures were taken accordingly. His baggage-horses, under the charge of the younger of the two negroes, were sent on with the band; the other, an old and faithful slave of his father, being retained as a useful appendage to a party containing his kinswoman, from whom he, of course, saw no reason to be separated. To Edith herself, the delay was far from being disagreable. It promised a gay and cheerful gallop through the forest, instead of the dull, plodding, funeral-like march to which she had been day after day monotonously accustomed. She assented, therefore, to the arrangement, and, like her kinsman, beheld, in the fresh light of sun-rise, without a sigh, without even a single foreboding of evil, the departure of the train of emigrants, with whom she had journeyed in safety so many long and weary leagues through the desert.
They set out in high spirits, after shaking hands with their hosts at the gates, and saluting them with cheers, which they repeated in honour of their young captain; and, in a few moments, the whole train had vanished, as if swallowed up by the dark forest.
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{
"id": "13970"
}
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6
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Within an hour after the emigrants had set out, the sky, which had previously been clear and radiant, began to be overcast with clouds, dropping occasional rains, which Roland scarcely observed with regret, their effect on the sultry atmosphere being highly agreeable and refreshing. They continued thus to fall at intervals until nine o'clock; when Roland, as he sat on the porch debating with Bruce the probabilities of their continuance, was roused by a shout from the outer village; and looking up, he beheld, to his great delight, Richard Bruce, the second son of his host, a lad of sixteen, ride into the enclosure, leading in triumph his recovered charger.
"Thar's the brute, strannger!" said he, with uncommon glee: "he war too hard a horse for Ralph's riding; and, I reckon, if he hadn't been, you wouldn't have had him so easy, for he's a peeler at a run, trot, or gallop, he is, I tell you! It's bad luck for Stackpole to be flung by man and beast two days hand-running,--first by Bloody Nathan, then by a stolen crittur!"
"And whar _is_ the brute, Stackpole? and what have you done with him?" demanded Bruce.
"Thar, father, you're too hard for me," replied the youth; "but I'll tell you all I know on it. You needn't look at his legs, Captain, for they're all as sound as hickory: the crittur's a bit worried with his morning's work; but that's nothing to speak on."
The lad's story was soon told. The track of the horse-thief had been followed through the woods; and it was soon seen, from its irregularity, that he had made an unlucky selection of beasts, both being so restive and rebellious, that, it was obvious, he had found it no easy matter to urge them along. A place was found where he appeared to have been thrown by the turbulent Briareus, which he seemed afterwards to have pursued, mounted on the pony, in the vain hope of retaking the mettlesome charger, until persuaded of his inability, or afraid, from the direction in which the animal had fled, of being led back again to the settlement. His track, after abandoning the chase, was as plain as that left by the war-horse, and was followed by the main body of pursuers, while Richard and two or three others, taking the latter, had the good fortune to find and recover the animal as he was solacing himself, after his morning adventures, in a grassy wood, scarce two miles from the Station. What had become of Stackpole the lad knew not, but had no doubt, as he added, with a knowing look, "that Lynch's boys would soon give a good account of him; for Major Smalleye war as mad as a beaten b'ar about the two-y'ar-old pony."
"Well," said the father, "I reckon the brute will deserve all he may come by; and thar's no use in mourning him. Thar's as good Injun-fighters as he, left in Kentucky, thar's the comfort; and thar's no denying, men will be much easier about their horses."
With this consoling assurance, in which Roland saw implied the visitation of the deadliest vengeance on the head of the offender, Bruce proceeded to congratulate him on the recovery of Brown Briareus, and to intimate his readiness, after the animal had been allowed a little rest, which it evidently needed, to marshal his band of young men, and conduct him on his way after the exiles. But fate willed that the friendly intention should never be put into execution, and that the young soldier should go forth on his pilgrimage unattended and unprotected.
Within the space of half an hour, the clouds, which seemed previously to have discharged all their moisture, collected into a dense canopy, darkening the whole heaven, and rumbling with thunder, that became every moment louder and heavier. Then came gusts of wind, groaning through the forest, rattling among the dead limbs of the girdled trees, and whistling over the palisades of the fort. These were succeeded by louder peals of thunder, and vivid flashes of lightning, which continued and increased, until the tempest, for such it was, burst in fury, discharging deluges of rain, that fell with unintermitting violence until an hour or more after mid-day.
This was a circumstance which, as it necessarily deferred the moment of his setting out, caused Forrester a little uneasiness; but he soon came to believe he had reason to congratulate himself on its occurrence, since it was scarce possible the band would continue their journey in such a storm; and, indeed, Bruce was of opinion that the day's march would be ended on the banks of the river,--one of the principal forks of the Salt,--but little more than ten miles from his Station; where, if the exiles were wise, they would pitch their camp, waiting for the subsidence of the waters. This was a point that Roland might be expected to reach in a ride of three or four hours at most; which consideration not only satisfied him under the delay, but almost made him resolve to defer his setting-out until the following morning, that his kinswoman might have the advantage of sleeping a second time under the shelter of a roof, rather than be compelled to exchange it for the chill and humid forest.
It was while he was balancing this thought in his mind, and watching with a gladdened eye the first flash of sunshine, breaking through the parted clouds, that a shout, louder than that which had proclaimed the recovery of his steed, but of a wild and mournful character, arose from the outer village, and a horseman, covered with mud, reeking with rain, and reeling in the saddle with fatigue and exhaustion, rode into the fort, followed by a crowd of men, women, and children, all testifying, by their looks and exclamations, that he was the bearer of alarming news. And such indeed he was, as was shown by the first words he answered in reply to Bruce's demand "what was the matter?"
"There are a thousand Indians," he said, "Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, Miamies,--all the tribes of the North,--laying siege to Bryant's Station, and perhaps at this moment they are burning and murdering at Lexington. Men, Colonel Bruce! send us all your men, without a moment's delay; and send off for Logan and his forces: despatch some one who can ride, for I can sit a horse no longer."
"Whar's Dick Bruce?" cried the Kentuckian; and the son answering, he continued, "Mount the roan Long-legs, you brute, and ride to St. Asaph's in no time. Tell Cunnel Logan what you h'ar; and add, that before he can draw girth, I shall be, with every fighting-man in my fort, on the north side of Kentucky. Ride, you brute, ride for your life; and do you take car' _you_ come along with the Cunnel; for it's time you war trying your hand at an Injun top-knot. Ride, you brute, ride!"
"Wah--wah--wah--wah!" whooped the boy, like a young Indian, flying to obey the order, and exulting in the expectation of combat.
"Sound horn, you Samuel Sharp!" cried the father. "You, Ben Jones, and some more of you, ride out and rouse the settlement; and, some of you, hunt up Tom Bruce and the Regulators: it war a pity they hanged Ralph Stackpole; for he fights Injuns like a wolverine. Tell all them that ar'n't ready to start to follow at a hard gallop, and join me at the ford of Kentucky; and them that can't join me thar, let them follow to Lexington; and them that don't find me thar, let them follow to Bryant's, or to any-whar whar thar's Injuns! Hurrah, you brutes! whar's your guns and your horses? your knives and your tomahawks? If thar's a thousand Injuns, or the half of 'em, thar's meat for all of you. Whar's Ikey Jones, the fifer? Let's have Yankee-Doodle and the Rogue's March for, by the etarnal Old Scratch, all them white men that ar'n't a-horse-back in twenty-five minutes, are rogues worse than red Injuns! --Hurrah for Kentucky!"
The spirit of the worthy officer of militia infused animation into all bosoms; and, in an instant, the settlement, late so peaceful, resounded with the hum and uproar of warlike preparation. Horses were caught and saddled, rifles pulled from their perches, knives sharpened, ammunition-pouches and provender-bags filled, and every other step taken necessary to the simple equipment of a border army, called to action in an emergency so sudden and urgent.
In the meanwhile, the intelligence was not without its effects on Roland Forrester, who, seeing himself so unexpectedly deprived of the promised escort,--for he could scarce think, under such circumstances, of withdrawing a single man from the force called to a duty so important,--perceived the necessity of employing his own resources to effect escape from a position which he now felt to be embarrassing. He regretted, for the first time, his separation from the band of emigrants, and became doubly anxious to follow them: for, if it were true that so large a force of Indians was really in the District, there was every reason to suppose they would, according to their known system of warfare, divide into small parties, and scatter over the whole country, infesting every road and path; and he knew not how soon some of them might be found following on the heels of the messenger. He took advantage of the first symptom of returning serenity on the part of his host, to acquaint him with his resolution to set out immediately, the rains having ceased, and the clouds broken up and almost vanished.
"Lord, captain," said the Kentuckian, "I hoped you would have been for taking a brush with us; and it war my idea to send a messenger after your party, in hopes your men would join us in the rusty. Whar will they have such another chance? A thousand Injuns ready cut and dried for killing! Lord, what a fool I war for not setting more store by that tale of Nathan Slaughter's! I never knowed the brute to lie in such a case; for, as he is always ramping about the woods, he's as good as a paid scout. Howsomever, the crittur did'nt speak on his own knowledge; and that infarnal Stackpole was just ripe from the North side. But, I say, captain, if your men will fight, just tote 'em back, stow away the women behind the logs here, and march your guns after me; and, if thar's half the number of red niggurs they speak of to be found, you shall see an affa'r of a skrimmage that will be good for your wholesome,--you will, by the etarnal!"
"If the men are of that mind," said Roland, gallantly, "I am not the one to balk them. I will, at least, see whither their inclinations tend; and that the matter may the sooner be decided, I will set out without delay."
"And we who war to escort you, captain," said the Kentuckian, with some embarrassment: "you're a soldier, captain, and you see the case!"
"I do; I have no desire to weaken your force; and, I trust, no protection is needed."
"Not an iota; the road is as safe as the furrow of a Virginnee corn-field,--at least till you strike the lower Forks; and _thar_ I've heard of no rampaging since last summer: I'll indamnify you against all loss and mischief,--I will, if it war on my salvation!"
"If you could but spare me a single guide," said Forrester.
"Whar's the use, captain? The road is as broad and el'ar as a turnpike in the Old Dominion; it leads you, chock up, right on the Upper Ford, whar thar's safe passage at any moment: but, I reckon, the rains will make it look a little wrathy a while, and so fetch your people to a stand-still. But it's a pot soon full and soon empty, and it will be low enough in the morning."
"The Upper Ford?" said Roland, his dream, for so he esteemed it, recurring to his mind: "is there then a Lower Ford?"
"Ay," replied Bruce; "but thar's no passing it in the freshes; and besides, the place has a bad name. It war thar old John Ashburn pitched his Station, in '78; but the savages made murdering work of him, taking every scalp in the company; and so it makes one sad-like to pass thar, and the more partickelarly that it's all natteral fine ground for an ambush. You'll see the road, when you're six mile deep in the forest, turning off to the right, under a shivered beech-tree. You are then four miles from the river, or tharabouts, and just that distance, I reckon, from your company. No, captain," he repeated, "the road is wide and open, and a guide war mere lumber on your hands."
This was a point, however, on which the young soldier, doubly solicitous on his kinswoman's account, to avoid mistake, was not so easily satisfied: seeing which, the Kentuckian yielded to his importunity,--perhaps somewhat ashamed of suffering his guests to depart entirely alone,--and began to cast about him for some suitable person who could be prevailed upon to exchange the privilege of fighting Indians for the inglorious duty of conducting wayfarers through the forest. This was no easy task, and it was not until he assumed his military authority, as commander of all the enrolled militia-men in his district, empowered to make such disposition of his forces as he thought fit, that he succeeded in compelling the service of one of his reluctant followers, under whose guidance Roland and his little party soon after set out. Their farewells were briefly said, the urgent nature of his duties leaving the hospitable Bruce little opportunity for superfluous speech. He followed them, however, to the bottom of the hill, grasped Roland by the hand; and doing the same thing by Edith, as if his conscience smote him for dismissing her with so little ceremony and such insufficient attendance, he swore that if any evil happened to her on the road, he would rest neither night nor day until he had repaired it, or lost his scalp in the effort.
With this characteristic and somewhat ominous farewell, he took his leave; and the cousins, with their guide and faithful servant, spurred onwards at a brisk pace, until the open fields of the settlement were exchanged for the deep and gloomy woodlands.
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{
"id": "13970"
}
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7
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None
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The sun shone out clearly and brilliantly, and the tree-tops, from which the winds had already shaken the rain, rustled freshly to the more moderate breezes that had succeeded them; and Roland, animated by the change, by the brisk pace at which he was riding, and by the hope of soon overtaking his fellow-exiles, met the joyous look of his kinswoman with a countenance no longer disturbed by care.
And yet there was a solemnity in the scene around them that might have called for other and more sombre feelings. The forest into which they had plunged, was of the grand and gloomy character which the fertility of the soil and the absence of the axe for a thousand years imprint on the western woodlands, especially in the vicinity of rivers. Oaks, elms, and walnuts, tulip-trees and beeches, with other monarchs of the wilderness, lifted their trunks like so many pillars, green with mosses and ivies, and swung their majestic arms, tufted with mistletoe, far over head, supporting a canopy,--a series of domes and arches without end,--that had for ages overshadowed the soil. Their roots, often concealed by a billowy undergrowth of shrubs and bushes, oftener by brakes of the gigantic and evergreen cane, forming fences as singular as they were, for the most part, impenetrable, were yet at times visible, where open glades stretched through the woods, broken only by buttressed trunks, and by the stems of colossal vines, hanging from the boughs like cables, or the arms of an oriental banyan; while their luxuriant tops rolled in union with the leafy roofs that supported them. The vague and shadowy prospects opened by these occasional glades stirred the imagination, and produced a feeling of solitude in the mind, greater perhaps than would have been felt had the view been continually bounded by a green wall of canes.
The road, if such it could be called, through this noble forest was, like that the emigrants had so long pursued through the wilderness, a mere path, designated, where the wood was open, by blazes, or axe-marks on the trees; and, where the undergrowth was dense, a narrow track cut through the canes and shrubs, scarce sufficient in many places to allow the passage of two horsemen abreast; though when, as was frequently the case, it followed the ancient routes of the bisons to fords and salt-licks, it presented, as Bruce had described, a wide and commodious highway, practicable even to wheeled carriages.
The gait of the little party over this road was at first rapid and cheery enough; but by and by, having penetrated deeper into the wood, where breezes and sunbeams were alike unknown, they found their progress impeded by a thousand pools and sloughs, the consequences of the storm, that stretched from brake to brake. These interruptions promised to make the evening journey longer than Roland had anticipated; but he caught, at intervals, the fresh foot-prints of his comrades in the soil where it was not exposed to the rains, and reflected with pleasure, that, travelling even at the slowest pace, he must reach the ford where he expected to find them encamped, long before dark. He felt, therefore, no uneasiness at the delay; nor did he think any of those obstacles to rapid progress a cause for regret that gave him the better opportunity to interchange ideas with his fair kinswoman.
His only concern arose from the conduct of his guide, a rough, dark-visaged man, who had betrayed, from the first moment of starting, a sullen countenance, indicative of his disinclination to the duty assigned him; which feeling evidently grew stronger the further he advanced, nowithstanding sundry efforts Forrester made to bring him to a better humour. He displayed no desire to enter into conversation with the soldier, replying to such questions as were directed at him with a brevity little short of rudeness; and his smothered exclamations of impatience, whenever his delicate followers slackened their pace at a bog or gully, which he had himself dashed through with a manly contempt of mud and mire, somewhat stirred the choler of the young captain.
They had, perhaps, followed him a distance of four miles into the forest, when the occurrence of a wider and deeper pool than ordinary producing a corresponding delay on the part of Roland, who was somewhat averse to plunging with Edith up to the saddle-girths in mire, drew from him a very unmannerly, though not the less hearty execration on the delicacy of "them thar persons who," as he expressed it, "stumped at a mud-hole as skearily as if every tadpole in it war a screeching Injun."
Of this explosion of ill-temper Roland took no notice, until he had, with the assistance of Emperor, the negro, effected a safe passage for Edith over the puddle; in the course of which he had leisure to observe that the path now struck into a wide buffalo-street, that swept away through a wilderness of wood and cane-brake, in nearly a straight line, for a considerable distance. He observed, also, that the road looked drier and less broken than usual; his satisfaction at which had the good effect of materially abating the rage into which he had been thrown by the uncivil bearing of the guide. Nevertheless, he had no sooner brought his kinswoman safely to land, than, leaving her in the charge of Emperor, he galloped up to the side of his conductor, and gave vent to his indignation in the following pithy query:-- "My friend," said he, "will you have the goodness to inform me whether you have ever lived in a land where courtesy to strangers and kindness and respect to women are ranked among the virtues of manhood?"
The man replied only by a fierce and angry stare; and plying the ribs of his horse with his heels, he dashed onwards. But Roland kept at his side, not doubting that a little more wholesome reproof would be of profit to the man, as well as advantageous to his own interests.
"I ask that question," he continued, "because a man from such a land, seeing strangers, and one of them a female, struggling in a bog, would, instead of standing upon dry land, making disrespectful remarks, have done his best to help them through it."
"Strannger," said the man, drawing up his horse, and looking, notwithstanding his anger, as if he felt the rebuke to be in a measure just, "I am neither hog nor dog, Injun nor outlandish niggur, but a man--a man, strannger! outside and inside, in flesh, blood, and spirit, jest as my Maker made me; though thar may be something of the scale-bark and parsimmon about me, I'll not deny; for I've heer'd on it before. I axes the lady's pardon, if I've offended: and thar's the eend on't."
"The end of it," said Forrester, "will be much more satisfactory, if you give no further occasion for complaint. But now," he continued, Edith drawing nigh, "let us ride on and as fast as you like; for the road seems both open and good."
"Strannger," said the guide, without budging an inch, "you have axed me a question; and, according to the fa'r rule of the woods, it's my right to ax you another."
"Very well," said Roland, assenting to the justice of the rule; "ask it, and he brief."
"What you war saying of the road is true; thar it goes, wide, open, cl'ar, and straight, with as good a fence on both sides of it to keep in stragglers, as war ever made of ash, oak, or chestnut rails,--though it's nothing but a natteral bank of cane-brake: and so it runs, jest as cl'ar and wide, all the way to the river."
"I am glad to hear it," was the soldier's reply; "but now for your question?"
"Hy'ar it is," said the man, flinging out his hand with angry energy; "I wants to ax of you, as a sodger, for I've heer'd you're of the reggelar sarvice, whether it's a wiser and more Christian affa'r, when thar's Injuns in the land a murdering of your neighbours' wives and children, and all the settlement's in a screech and a cry, to send an able-bodied man to fight them; or to tote him off, a day's journey thar and back ag'in, to track a road that a blind man on a blind horse could travel, without axing questions of anybody? Thar's my question," he added, somewhat vehemently; "and now let's have a sodger's answer!"
"My good friend," said Roland, a little offended, and yet more embarrassed, by the interrogatory, "none can tell better than yourself how much, or how little occasion I may have for a guide. Your question, therefore, I leave you to answer yourself. If you think your duty calls you to abandon a woman in the wild woods to such guidance as one wholly unacquainted with them can give, you can depart as soon as you think fit; for I cannot--" The guide gave him no time to finish the sentence. "You're right, strannger," he cried; "thar is your road, as plain as the way up a hickory, b'aring to a camp of old friends and acquaintances,--and hy'ar is mine, running right slap among fighting Injuns!"
And with that he turned his horse's head, and flourishing his right hand, armed with the ever constant rifle, above his own, and uttering a whoop expressive of the wild pleasure he felt at being released from his ignoble duty, he dashed across the pool, and galloped in a moment out of sight, leaving Roland and his party confounded at the desertion.
"An outlandish niggur'!" muttered old Emperor, on whom this expression of the guide had produced no very favourable effect; "guess the gemman white man is a niggur himself, and a rogue, and a potater, or whatsomever you call 'em! Leab a lady and a gemman lost in the woods, and neither take 'em on nor take 'em back! --lor-a-massy!"
To this half-soliloquised expression of indignation the soldier felt inclined to add a few bitter invectives of his own; but Edith treating the matter lightly, and affecting to be better pleased at the rude man's absence than she had been with his company, he abated his own wrath, and acknowledged that the desertion afforded the best proof of the safety of the road; since he could not believe that the fellow, with all his roughness and inhumanity, would have been so base as to leave them while really surrounded by difficulties. He remembered enough of Bruce's description of the road, which he had taken care should be minute and exact, to feel persuaded that the principal obstructions were now over, and that, as the guide had said, there was no possibility of wandering from the path. They had already travelled nearly half the distance to the river, and to accomplish the remainder, they had yet four hours of day-light. He saw no reason why they should not proceed alone, trusting to their good fate for a fortunate issue to their enterprise. To return to the fort would be only to separate themselves further from their friends, without ensuring them a better guide, or, indeed, any guide at all, since it was highly probable they would find it only occupied by women and children. In a word, he satisfied himself that nothing remained for him but to continue his journey, and trust to his own sagacity to end it to advantage.
He set out accordingly, followed by Edith and Emperor, the latter bringing up the rear in true military style, and handling his rifle, as if almost desirous of finding an opportunity to use it in the service of his young mistress.
In this manner, they travelled onwards with but little interruption for more than a mile; and Roland was beginning anxiously to look for the path that led to the Lower Ford, when Emperor galloped to the van and brought the party to a halt by reporting that he heard the sound of hoofs following at a distance behind.
"Perhaps,--perhaps," said Edith, while the gleam of her eye, shining with sudden pleasure, indicated how little real satisfaction she had felt at the desertion of their conductor,--"perhaps it is the sour fellow, the guide, coming back, ashamed of his misconduct."
"We will soon see," said Roland, turning his horse to reconnoitre; a proceeding that was, however, rendered unnecessary by the hurried speed of the comer, who, dashing suddenly round a bend in the road, disclosed to his wondering eyes, not the tall frame and sullen aspect of the guide, but the lighter figure and fairer visage of the girl, Telie Doe. She was evidently arrayed for travel, having donned her best attire of blue cloth, with a little cap of the same colour on her head, under which her countenance, beaming with exercise and anxiety, looked, in both Roland's and Edith's eyes, extremely pretty; much more so, indeed, than either had deemed it to be; while, secured behind the cushion or pillion, on which she rode,--for not a jot of saddle had she,--was a little bundle containing such worldly comforts as were necessary to one seriously bent upon a journey. She was mounted upon a sprightly pony, which she managed with more address and courage than would have been augured from her former timorous demeanour; and it was plain that she had put him to his mettle through the woods, with but little regard to the sloughs and puddles which had so greatly embarrassed the fair Edith. Indeed, it appeared that the exercise which had infused animation into her countenance had bestowed a share also on her spirit: for, having checked her horse an instant, and looked a little abashed at the sudden sight of the strangers, she recovered herself in a moment, and riding boldly up, she proceeded, without waiting to be questioned, to explain the cause of her appearance. She had met the deserter, she said, returning to the Station, and thinking it was not right the stranger lady should be left without a guide in the woods, she had ridden after her to offer _her_ services.
"It was at least somewhat surprising," Roland could not avoid saying, "that the fellow should have found you already equipt in the woods?"
At this innuendo, Telie was somewhat embarrassed, but more so, when, looking towards Edith, as if to address her reply to her, she caught the inquiring look of the latter, made still more expressive by the recollection which Edith retained of the earnest entreaty Telie had made the preceding night, to be taken into her service.
"I will not tell you a falsehood, ma'am," she said at last, with a firm voice; "I was not on the road by chance; I came to follow you. I knew the man you had to guide you was unwilling to go, and I thought he would leave you, as he has done. And, besides, the road is not so clear as it seems; it branches off to so many of the salt-licks, and the tracks are so washed away by the rains, that none but one that knows it can be sure of keeping it long."
"And how," inquired Edith, very pointedly,--for, in her heart, she suspected the little damsel was determined to enter her service, whether she would or not, and had actually run away from her friends for the purpose,--"how, after you have led us to our party, do you expect to return again to your friends?"
"If you will let me go with you as far as Jackson's Station" (the settlement at which it was originally determined the emigrants should pass the night), said the maiden humbly, "I will find friends there who will take me home; and perhaps our own people will come for me, for they are often visiting about among the Stations."
This declaration, made in a tone that convinced Edith the girl had given over all hopes of being received into her protection, unless she could remove opposition by the services she might render on the way, pointed out also an easy mode of getting rid of her when a separation should be advisable, and thus removed the only objection she felt to accept her proffered guidance. As for Roland, however, he expressed much natural reluctance to drag a young and inexperienced female so far from her home, leaving her afterwards to return as she might. But he perceived that her presence gave courage to his kinswoman; he felt that her acquaintance with the path was more to be relied upon than his own sagacity; and he knew not, if he even rejected her offered services altogether, how he could with any grace communicate the refusal, and leave her abandoned to her own discretion in the forest. He felt a little inclined, at first, to wonder at the interest she seemed to have taken in his cousin's welfare; but, by and by, he reflected that perhaps, after all, her motive lay in no better or deeper feeling than a mere girlish desire to make her way to the neighbouring station (twenty miles make but a neighbourly distance in the wilderness), to enjoy a frolic among her gadding acquaintance. This reflection ended the struggle in his mind; and turning to her with a smiling countenance, he said, "If you are so sure of getting home, my pretty maid, you may be as certain we will be glad of your company and guidance. But let us delay no longer."
The girl, starting at these words with alacrity, switched her pony and darted to the head of the little party, as if addressing herself to her duty in a business-like way; and there she maintained her position with great zeal, although Roland and Edith endeavoured, for kindness' sake, to make her sensible they desired her to ride with them as a companion, and not at a distance, like a pioneer. The faster they spurred, however, the more zealously she applied her switch, and her pony being both spirited and fresh, while their own horses were both not a little the worse for their long journey, she managed to keep in front, maintaining a gait that promised in a short time to bring them to the banks of the river.
They had ridden perhaps a mile in this manner, when a sudden opening in the cane-brake on the right hand, at a place where stood a beech-tree, riven by a thunderbolt in former years, but still spreading its shattered ruins in the air, convinced Roland that he had at last reached the road to the Lower Ford, which Bruce had so strictly cautioned him to avoid. What, therefore, was his surprise, when Telie, having reached the tree, turned at once into the by-road, leaving the direct path which they had so long pursued, and which still swept away before them, as spacious and uninterrupted, save by occasional pools, as ever.
"You are wrong," he cried, checking his steed.
"This is the road, sir," said the girl, though in some trepidation.
"By no means," said Forrester, "that path leads to the Lower Ford; here is the shivered beech, which the colonel described to me."
"Yes, sir," said Telie, hurriedly; "it is the mark; they call it the Crooked Finger-post."
"And a crooked road it is like to lead us, if we follow it," said Roland. "It leads to the Lower Ford, and is not therefore _our_ road. I remember the Colonel's direction."
"Yes, sir," said Telie, anxiously,--"to take the beech on the right shoulder, and then down four miles, to the water."
"Precisely so," said the soldier; "with only this difference (for, go which way we will, the tree being on the right side of each path, we must still keep it on the right shoulder), that the road to the Upper Ford, which I am now travelling, is the one for our purposes. Of this I am confident."
"And yet, Roland," said Edith, somewhat alarmed at this difference of opinion, where unanimity was so much more desirable, "the young woman should know best."
"Yes!" cried Telie, eagerly; "I have lived here almost seven years, and been across the river more than as many times. This is the shortest and safest way."
"It may be both the shortest and safest," said Forrester, whose respect for the girl's knowledge of the woods and ability to guide him through them, began to be vastly diminished; "but _this_ is the road Mr. Bruce described. Of this I am positive; and to make the matter still more certain, if need be, here are horse-tracks, fresh, numerous, scarcely washed by the rain, and undoubtedly made by our old companions; whereas _that_ path seems not to have been trodden for a twelve-month."
"I will guide you right," faltered Telie, with anxious voice.
"My good girl," said the soldier, kindly, but positively, "you must allow me to doubt your ability to do that,--at least, on that path. Here is our road; and we must follow it."
He resumed it, as he spoke, and Edith, conquered by his arguments, which seemed decisive, followed him; but looking back, after having proceeded a few steps, she saw the baffled guide still lingering on the rejected path, and wringing her hands with grief and disappointment.
"You will not remain behind us?" said Edith, riding back to her: "You see, my cousin is positive: you must surely be mistaken?"
"I am _not_ mistaken," said the girl, earnestly; "and, oh! he will repent that ever he took his own way through this forest."
"How can that be? What cause have you to say so?"
"I do not know," murmured the damsel, in woeful perplexity; "but--but, sometimes, that road is dangerous."
"Sometimes all roads are so," said Edith, her patience failing, when she found Telie could give no better reason for her opposition. "Let us continue: my kinsman is waiting us, and we must lose no more time by delay."
With these words, she again trotted forward, and Telie, after hesitating a moment, thought fit to follow.
But now the animation that had, a few moments before, beamed forth in every look and gesture of the maiden, gave place to dejection of spirits, and even, as Edith thought, to alarm. She seemed as anxious now to linger in the rear as she had been before to preserve a bold position in front. Her eyes wandered timorously from brake to tree, as if in fear lest each should conceal a lurking enemy; and often, as Edith looked back, she was struck with the singularly mournful and distressed expression of her countenance.
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These symptoms of anxiety and alarm affected Edith's own spirits; they did more,--they shook her faith in the justice of her kinsman's conclusions. His arguments in relation to the road were, indeed, unanswerable, and Telie had offered none to weaken them. Yet why should she betray such distress, if they were upon the right one? and why, in fact, should she not be supposed to know both the right and the wrong, since she had, as she said, so frequently travelled both?
These questions Edith could not refrain asking of Roland, who professed himself unable to answer them, unless by supposing the girl had become confused, as he thought was not improbable, or had, in reality, been so long absent from the forest as to have forgotten its paths altogether: which was likely enough, as she seemed a very simple-minded, inexperienced creature. "But why need we," he said, "trouble ourselves to find reasons for the poor girl's opposition? Here are the tracks of our friends, broader and deeper than ever: here they wind down into the hollow; and there, you may see where they have floundered through that vile pool, that is still turbid, where they crossed it. A horrible quagmire! But courage, my fair cousin: it is only such difficulties as these which the road can lead us into."
Such were the expressions with which the young soldier endeavoured to reassure his kinswoman's courage, his own confidence remaining still unmoved; although in secret he felt somewhat surprised at the coincidence between the girl's recommendations of the by-road and the injunctions of his morning dream. But while pondering over the wonder, he had arrived at the quagmire alluded to, through which the difficulties of conducting his cousin were sufficiently great to banish other matters for a moment from his mind. Having crossed it at last in safety, he paused to give such instructions or assistance as might be needed by his two followers; when Edith, who had halted at his side, suddenly laid her hand on his arm, and exclaimed, with a visage of terror,--"Hark, Roland! do you hear? What is that?"
"Heard him, massa!" ejaculated Emperor from the middle of the bog, with voice still more quavering than the maiden's, and lips rapidly changing from Spanish-brown to clayey-yellow; "heard him, massa! Reckon it's an Injun! lorra-massy!"
"Peace, fool," cried Forrester, bending his looks from the alarmed countenance of his kinswoman to the quarter whence had proceeded the sound which had so suddenly struck terror into her bosom.
"Hark, Roland! it rises again!" she exclaimed; and Roland now distinctly heard a sound in the depth of the forest to the right hand, as of the yell of a human being, but at a great distance off. At the place which they had reached, the canes and undergrowth of other kinds had disappeared, and a wide glade, stretching over hill and hollow, swept away from both sides of the road further than the eye could see. The trees, standing wider apart than usual, were, if possible, of a more majestic stature; their wide and massive tops were so thickly interlaced, that not a single sunbeam found its way among the gloomy arcades below. A wilder, more solitary, and more awe-inspiring spot Roland had not before seen; and it was peculiarly fitted to add double effect to sights and sounds of a melancholy or fearful character. Accordingly, when the cry was repeated, as it soon was, though at the same distance as before, it came echoing among the hollow arches of the woods with a wild and almost unearthly cadence, the utterance, as it-seemed, of mortal agony and despair, that breathed a secret horror through the breasts of all.
"It is the Jibbenainosay!" muttered the shivering Telie: "these are the woods he used to range in most; and they say he screams after his prey! It is not too late:--let us go back!"
"An Injun, massa!" said Emperor, stuttering with fright, and yet proceeding both to handle his arms and to give encouragement to his young mistress, which his age and privileged character, as well as the urgency of the occasion, entitled him to do: "don't be afraid, missie Edie; nebber mind;--ole Emperor will fight and die for missie, old massa John's daughter!"
"Hist!" said Roland, as another scream rose on the air, louder and more thrilling than before.
"It is the cry of a human being!" said Edith,--"of a man in distress!"
"It is, indeed," replied the soldier,--"of a man in great peril, or suffering. Remain here on the road; and if anything--Nay, if you will follow me, it may be better; but let it be at a distance. If anything happens to me, set spurs to your horses:--Telie here can at least lead you back to the fort."
With these words, and without waiting to hear the remonstrances, or remove the terrors of his companions, the young man turned his horse into the wood, and guided by the cries, which were almost incessant, soon found himself in the vicinity of the place from which they proceeded. It was a thick grove of beeches of the colossal growth of the west, their stems as tall and straight as the pines of the Alleghanies, and their boughs, arched and pendulous like those of the elm, almost sweeping the earth below, over which they cast shadows so dark that scarce anything was visible beneath them, save their hoary and spectral trunks.
As Roland, followed by his little party, approached this spot, the cries of the unknown, and as yet unseen, sufferer, fearful even at a distance, grew into the wildest shrieks of fear, mingled with groans, howls, broken prayers and execrations, and half-inarticulate expressions, now of fondling entreaty, now of fierce and frantic command, that seemed addressed to a second person hard by.
A thousand strange and appalling conceits had crept into Roland's mind, when he first heard the cries. One while he almost fancied he had stumbled upon a gang of savages, who were torturing a prisoner to death; another moment, he thought the yells must proceed from some unlucky hunter, perishing by inches in the grasp of a wild beast, perhaps a bear or panther, with which animals it was easy to believe the forest might abound. With such horrible fancies oppressing his mind, his surprise may be imagined, when, having cocked his rifle and thrown open his holsters, to be prepared for the worst, he rushed into the grove and beheld a spectacle no more formidable than was presented by a single individual,--a man in a shaggy blanket-coat,--sitting on horseback under one of the most venerable of the beeches, and uttering those diabolical outcries that had alarmed the party, for no imaginable purpose, as Roland was at first inclined to suspect, unless for his own private diversion.
A second look, however, convinced the soldier that the wretched being had sufficient cause for his clamour, being, in truth, in a situation almost as dreadful as any Roland had imagined. His arms were pinioned behind his back, and his neck secured in a halter (taken, as it appeared, from his steed), by which he was fastened to a large bough immediately above his head, with nothing betwixt him and death, save the horse on which he sat,--a young and terrified beast, at whose slightest start or motion, he must have swung off and perished, while he possessed no means of restraining the animal whatever, except such as lay in strength of leg and virtue of voice.
In this terrible situation, it was plain, he had remained for a considerable period, his clothes and hair (for his hat had fallen to the ground) being saturated with rain; while his face purple with blood, his eyes swollen and protruding from their orbits with a most ghastly look of agony and fear, showed how often the uneasiness of his horse, round whose body his legs were wrapped with the convulsive energy of despair, had brought him to the very verge of strangulation.
The yells of mortal terror, for such they had been, with which he had so long filled the forest, were changed to shrieks of rapture, as soon as he beheld help approach in the person of the astonished soldier. "Praised be the Etarnal!" he roared; "cut me loose, strannger! --Praised be the Etarnal, and this here dumb beast! --Cut me loose, strannger, for the love of God!"
Such was Roland's intention; for which purpose he had already clapped his hand to his sabre, to employ it in a service more humane than any it had previously known; when, unfortunately, the voice of the fellow did what his distorted countenance had failed to do, and revealed to Roland's indignant eyes the author of all his present difficulties, the thief of the pinfold, the robber of Brown Briareus,--in a word, the redoubtable Captain Ralph Stackpole.
In a moment, Roland understood the mystery which he had been before too excited to inquire into. He remembered the hints of Bruce, and he had learned enough of border customs and principles to perceive that the justice of the woods had at last overtaken the horse-thief. The pursuing party had captured him,--taken him in the very manner, while still in possession of the 'two-year-old pony,' and at once adjudged him to the penalty prescribed by the border code,--tied his arms, noosed him with the halter of the stolen horse, and left him to swing, as soon as the animal should be tired of supporting him. There was a kind of dreadful poetical justice in thus making the stolen horse the thief's executioner; it gave the animal himself an opportunity to wreak vengeance for all wrongs received, and at the same time allowed his captor the rare privilege of galloping on his back into eternity.
Such was the mode of settling such offences against the peace and dignity of the settlements; such was the way in which Stackpole had been reduced to his unenviable situation; and, that all passers-by might take note that the execution had not been done without authority, there was painted upon the smooth white bark of the tree, in large black letters, traced by a finger well charged with moistened gunpowder, the ominous name--JUDGE LYNCH,--the Rhadamanthus of the forest, whose decisions are yet respected in the land, and whose authority sometimes bids fair to supersede that of all erring human tribunals.
Thus tied up, his rifle, knife, and ammunition laid under a tree hard by, that he might have the satisfaction, if satisfaction it could be, of knowing they were in safety, the executioners had left him to his fate, and ridden away long since, to attend to other important affairs of the colony.
The moment that Roland understood in whose service he was drawing his sword, a change came over the spirit of his thoughts and feelings, and he returned it very composedly to its sheath,--much to the satisfaction of the negro, Emperor, who, recognising the unfortunate Ralph at the same instant, cried aloud, "'Top massa! ' t ar Captain Stackpole, what stole Brown Briery! Reckon I'll touch the pony on the rib, hah! Hanging too good for him, white niggah t'ief, hah!"
With that, the incensed negro made as if he would have driven the pony from under the luckless Ralph; but was prevented by his master, who, taking a second survey of the spectacle, motioned to the horror-struck females to retire, and prepared himself to follow them. " 'Tarnal death to you, captain! you won't leave me?" cried Ralph, in terror. "Honour bright! Help him that needs help--that's the rule for a Christian!"
"Villain!" said Roland, sternly, "I have no help to give you. You are strung up according to the laws of the settlements, with which I have no desire to interfere. I am the last man you should ask for pity."
"I don't ax your pity, 'tarnal death to me,--I ax your _help_.'" roared Ralph; "Cut me loose is the word, and then sw'ar at me atter! I stole your hoss thar:--well, whar's the harm? Didn't he fling me, and kick me, and bite me into the bargain, the cursed savage? and ar'n't you got him ag'in as good as ever? And besides, didn't that etarnal old Bruce fob me off with a beast good for nothing, and talk big to me besides? and warn't that all fa'r provocation? An didn't you yourself sw'ar ag'in shaking paws with me, and treat me as if I war no gentleman? 'Tarnal death to me, cut me loose, or I'll haunt you, when I'm a ghost, I will, 'tarnal death to me!"
"Cut him down, Roland, for Heaven's sake!" said Edith, whom the surprise and terror of the spectacle at first rendered speechless: "you surely,--no, Roland, you surely can't mean to leave him to perish?"
"Upon my soul," said the soldier, and we are sorry to record a speech representing him in a light so unamiable, "I don't see what right I have to release him; and I really have not the least inclination to do so. The rascal is the cause of all our difficulties; and, if evil should happen us, he will be the cause of that too. But for him, we should be now safe with our party. And besides, as I said before, he is hanged according to Kentucky law; a very good law, as far as it regards horse-thieves, for whom hanging is too light a punishment."
"Nevertheless, release him,--save the poor wretch's life," reiterated Edith, to whom Stackpole, perceiving in her his only friend, now addressed the most piteous cries and supplications: "the law is murderous, its makers and executioners barbarians. Save him, Roland, I charge you, I entreat you!"
"He owes his life to your intercession," said the soldier; and drawing his sabre again, but with no apparent good will, he divided the halter by which Ralph was suspended, and the wretch was free.
"Cut the tug, the buffalo-tug!" shouted the culprit, thrusting his arms as far from his back as he could, and displaying the thong of bison-skin, which his struggles had almost buried in his flesh. A single touch of the steel, rewarded by such a yell of transport as was never before heard in those savage retreats, sufficed to sever the bond; and Stackpole, leaping on the earth, began to testify his joy in modes as novel as they were frantic. His first act was to fling his arms round the neck of his steed, which he hugged and kissed with the most rapturous affection, doubtless in requital of the docility it had shown when docility was so necessary to its rider's life; his second, to leap half a dozen times into the air, feeling his neck all the time, and uttering the most singular and vociferous cries, as if to make double trial of the condition of his windpipe; his third, to bawl aloud, directing the important question to the soldier, "How many days has it been since they hanged me? War it to-day, or yesterday, or the day before? or war it a whole year ago? for may I be next hung to the horn of a buffalo, instead of the limb of a beech tree, if I didn't feel as if I had been squeaking thar ever since the beginning of creation! Cock-a-doodle-doo! him that ar'nt born to be hanged, won't be hanged, no-how!" Then running to Edith, who sat watching his proceedings with silent amazement, he flung himself on his knees, seized the hem of her riding-habit, which he kissed with the fervour of an adorer, exclaiming with a vehement sincerity, that made the whole action still more strangely ludicrous, "Oh! you splendiferous creatur'! you angeliferous anngel! here am I, Ralph Stackpole the Screamer, that can whip all Kentucky, white, black, mixed, and Injun; and I'm the man to go with you to the ends of the 'arth, to fight, die, work, beg, and steal bosses for you! I am, and you may make a little dog of me; you may, or a niggur, or a boss, or a door-post, or a back-log, or a dinner,--'tarnal death to me, but you may _eat_ me! I'm the man to feel a favour, partickelarly when it comes to helping me out of a halter; and so jist say the word who I shall lick, to begin on; for I'm your slave jist as much as that niggur, to go with you, as I said afore, to the ends of the 'arth, and the length of Kentucky over?"
"Away with you, you scoundrel and jackanapes," said Roland, for to this ardent expression of gratitude Edith was herself too much frightened to reply.
"Strannger!" cried the offended horse-thief, "you cut the tug, and you cut the halter; and so, though you did it only on hard axing, I'd take as many hard words of you as you can pick out of a dictionary,--I will, 'tarnal death to me. But as for madam thar, the anngel, she saved my life, and I go my death in her sarvice; and now's the time to show sarvice, for thar's danger abroad in the forest."
"Danger!" echoed Roland, his anxiety banishing the disgust with which he was so much inclined to regard the worthy horse-thief; "what makes you say that?"
"Strannger," replied Ralph, with a lengthened visage and a gravity somewhat surprising for him, "I seed the Jibbenainosay! 'tarnal death to me, but I seed him as plain as ever I seed old Salt! I war a-hanging thar, and squeaking and cussing, and talking soft nonsense to the pony, to keep him out of his tantrums, when what should I see but a great crittur come tramping through the forest, right off yander by the fallen oak, with a big b'ar before him--" "Pish!" said the soldier, "what has this to do with danger?"
"Beca'se and because," said Ralph, "when you see the Jibbenainosay, thar's always abbregynes[4] in the cover. I never seed the crittur before, but I reckon it war he, for thar's nothing like him in natur'. And so I'm for cutting out of the forest jist on the track of a streak of lightning,--now hy'yar, now thar, but on a full run without stopping. And so, if anngeliferous madam is willing, thump me round the 'arth with a crab-apple, if I don't holp her out of the bushes, and do all her fighting into the bargain,--I will, 'tarnal death to me!"
[Footnote 4: _Abbregynes_--aborigines.]
"You may go about your business," said Roland, with as much sternness as contempt. "We will have none of your base company."
"Whoop! whoo, whoo, whoo! don't rifle[5] me, for I'm danngerous!" yelled the demibarbarian, springing on his stolen horse, and riding up to Edith. "Say the word, marm," he cried; "for I'll fight for you, or run for you, take scalp or cut stick, shake fist or show leg, anything in reason or out of reason. Strannger thar's as brash[6] as a new hound in a b'ar fight, or a young boss in a corn-field, and no safe friend in a forest. Say the word, marm,--or if you think it ar'nt manners to speak to a strannger, jist shake your little finger, and I'll follow like a dog, and do you dog's sarvice. Or, if you don't like me, say the word, or shake t'other finger, and 'tarnal death to me, but I'll be off like an elk of the prairies!"
[Footnote 5: To _rifle_--to ruffle.]
[Footnote 6: _Brash_--rash, head-strong, over-valiant.]
"You may go," said Edith, not at all solicitous to retain a follower of Mr. Stackpole's character and conversation: "we have no occasion for your assistance."
"Farewell!" said Ralph; and turning, and giving his pony a thump with his fist and a kick with each heel, and uttering a shrill whoop, he darted away through the forest, and was soon out of sight.
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The course of Stackpole was through the woods, in a direction immediately opposite to that by which Roland had ridden to his assistance.
"He is going to the Lower Ford," said Telie, anxiously. "It is not too late for us to follow him. If there are Indians in the wood, it is the only way to escape them!"
"And why should we believe there _are_ Indians in the wood?" demanded Roland; "because that half-mad rogue, made still madder by his terrors, saw something which his fancy converted into the imaginary Nick of the Woods? You must give me a better reason than that, my good Telie, if you would have me desert the road. I have no faith in your Jibbenainosays."
But a better reason than her disinclination to travel it, and her fears lest, if Indians were abroad, they would be found lying in ambush at the upper and more frequented pass of the river, the girl had none to give; and, in consequence, Roland (though secretly wondering at her pertinacity, and still connecting it in thought with his oft-remembered dream), expressing some impatience at the delays they had already experienced, led the way back to the buffalo-road, resolved to prosecute it with vigour. But fate had prepared for him other and more serious obstructions.
He had scarce regained the path, before he became sensible, from the tracks freshly printed in the damp earth, that a horseman, coming from the very river towards which he was bending his way, had passed by whilst he was engaged in the wood liberating the horse-thief. This was a circumstance that both pleased and annoyed him. It was so far agreeable, as it seemed to offer the best proof that the road was open, with none of those dreadful savages about it, who had so long haunted the brain of Telie Doe. But what chiefly concerned the young soldier was the knowledge that he had lost an opportunity of inquiring after his friends, and ascertaining whether they had really pitched their camp on the banks of the river; a circumstance which he now rather hoped than dared to be certain of, the tempest not seeming to have been so violent in that quarter as, of a necessity, to bring the company to a halt. If they had _not_ encamped in the expected place, but, on the contrary, had continued their course to the appointed Station, he saw nothing before him but the gloomy prospect of concluding his journey over an unknown road, after night-fall, or returning to the Station he had left, also by night; for much time had been lost by the various delays, and the day was now declining fast.
These considerations threw a damp over his spirits, but taught him the necessity of activity; and he was, accordingly, urging his little party forward with such speed as he could, when there was suddenly heard at a distance on the rear the sound of fire-arms, as if five or six pieces were discharged together, followed by cries not less wild and alarming than those uttered by the despairing horse-thief.
These bringing the party to a stand, the quick ears of the soldier detected the rattling of hoofs on the road behind, and presently their came rushing towards them with furious speed a solitary horseman, his head bare, his locks streaming in the wind, and his whole appearance betraying the extremity of confusion and terror; which was the more remarkable, as he was well mounted and armed with the usual rifle, knife, and hatchet of the back-woodsman. He looked as if flying from pursuing foes, his eyes being cast backwards, and that so eagerly that he failed to notice the party of wondering strangers drawn up before him on the road, until saluted by a halloo from Roland; at which he checked his steed, looking for an instant ten times more confounded and frightened than before.
"You tarnation critturs!" he at last bawled, with the accents of one driven to desperation, "if there a'n't no dodging you, then there _a'n't_. Here's for you, you everlasting varmints--due your darndest!"
With that he clubbed his rifle, and advanced towards the party in what seemed a paroxysm of insane fury, brandishing the weapon and rolling his eyes with a ferocity that could have only arisen from his being in that happy frame of mind which is properly termed "frightened out of fear."
"How, you villain!" said Roland, in amazement, "do you take us for wild Indians?"
"What, by the holy hokey, and _a'n't_ you?" cried the stranger, his rage giving way to the most lively transports; "Christian men!" he exclaimed in admiration, "and one of 'em a niggur, and two of em wimming! oh hokey! You're Capting Forrester, and I've heerd on you! Thought there was nothing in the wood but Injuns, blast their ugly picturs! and blast him, Sy Jones, as was, that brought me among 'em! And now I'm talking of 'em, Capting, don't stop to ax questions, but run,--cut and run, Capting, for there's an everlasting sight of 'em behind me! --six of 'em, Capting, or my name a'n't Pardon Dodge,--six of 'em,--all except one, and _him_ I shot, the blasted crittur! for, you see, they followed me behind, and they cut me off before: and there was no dodging 'em,--(Dodge's my name, and dodging's my natur')--without getting lost in the woods; and it was either losing myself or my scalp; and so that riz my ebenezer, and I banged the first of 'em all to smash--if I didn't, then it a'n't no matter!"
"What, in Heaven's name," said Roland, overcome by the man's volubility and alarm together,--"what means all this? Are there Indians behind us?"
"Five of 'em, and the dead feller,--shocking long-legged crittur he was; jumped out of a bush, and seized me by the bridle--hokey! how he skeared me! --Gun went off of her own accord, and shot him into bits as small as fourpence-ha'pennies. Then there was a squeaking and squalling, and the hull of e'm let fly at me; and then, I cut on the back track, and they took and took atter; and I calculate, if we wait here a quarter of a minute longer, they will be on us jist like devils and roaring lions. --But where shall we run? You can't gin us a hint how to make way through the woods? --Shocking bad woods to be lost in! Bad place here for talking, Capting,--right 'twixt two fires,--six Injuns behind (and one of 'em dead), and an almighty passel before,--the Ford's full on 'em!"
"What!" said Roland, "did you pass the Ford? and is not Colonel Johnson, with his emigrants, there?"
"Not a man on 'em; saw 'em streaking through the mud, half way to Jackson's. Everlasting lying critturs, them emigrants! told me there was no Injuns on the road! when what should I do but see a hull grist on 'em dodging among the bushes at the river, to surround me, the tarnation critturs. But I kinder had the start on 'em, and I whipped, and I cut, and I run, and I dodged. And so says I, 'I've beat you, you tarnation scalping varmints!' when up jumps that long-legged feller, and the five behind him; and, blast 'em, that riz my corruption. And I--" "In a word," said Roland, impatiently, and with a stern accent, assumed perhaps to reassure his kinswoman, whom the alarming communications of the stranger, uttered in an agony of terror and haste, filled with an agitation which she could not conceal, "you have seen Indians, or you say you have. If you tell the truth, there is no time left for deliberation; if a falsehood--" "Why should we wait upon the road to question and wonder?" said Telie Doe, with a boldness and firmness that at another moment would have excited surprise; "why should we wait here, while the Indians may be approaching? The forest is open, and the Lower Ford is free."
"If you can yet lead us thither," said Roland, eagerly, "all is not yet lost. We can neither advance nor return. On, maiden, for the love of Heaven!"
These hasty expressions revealed to Edith the deep and serious light in which her kinsman regarded their present situation, though at first seeking to hide his anxiety under a veil of composure. In fact, there was not an individual present on whom the fatal news of the vicinity of the redman had produced a more alarming impression than on Roland. Young, bravo, acquainted with war, and accustomed to scenes of blood and peril, it is not to be supposed that he entertained fear on his own account; but the presence of one whom he loved, and whom he would have rescued from danger, at any moment, at the sacrifice of his own life thrice over, was enough to cause, and excuse, a temporary fainting of spirit, and a desire to fly the scene of peril, of which, under any other circumstances, he would have been heartily ashamed. The suddenness of the terror--for up to the present moment he had dreamed of no difficulty comprising danger, or of no danger implying the presence of savages in the forest--had somewhat shocked his mind from its propriety, and left him in a manner unfitted to exercise the decision and energy so necessary to the welfare of his feeble and well-nigh helpless followers. The vastness of his embarrassment, all disclosed at once,--his friends and fellow-emigrants now far away; the few miles which he had, to the last, hoped separated him from them, converted into leagues; Indian enemies at hand; advance and retreat both alike cut off; and night approaching fast, in which, without a guide, any attempt to retreat through the wild forest would be as likely to secure his destruction as deliverance;--these were circumstances that crowded into his mind with benumbing effect, engrossing his faculties, when the most active use of them was essential to the preservation of his party.
It was at this moment of weakness and confusion, while uttering what was meant to throw some little discredit over the story of Dodge, to abate the terrors of Edith, that the words of Telie Doe fell on his ears, bringing both aid and hope to his embarrassed spirits. _She_, at least, was acquainted with the woods; she, at least, could conduct him, if not to the fortified Station he had left (and bitterly now did he regret having left it), to the neglected ford of the river, which her former attempts to lead him thither, and the memory of his dream, caused him now to regard as a city of refuge pointed out by destiny itself.
"You shall have your way, at last, fair Telie," he said, with a laugh, but not with merriment: "Fate speaks for you; and whether I will or not, we must go to the Lower Ford" "You will never repent it," said the girl, the bright looks which she had worn for the few moments she was permitted to control the motions of the party, returning to her visage, and seeming to emanate from a rejoicing spirit;--"they will not think of waylaying us at the Lower Ford."
With that, she darted into the wood, and, followed by the others, including the new-comer, Dodge, was soon at a considerable distance from the road.
"Singular," said Roland to Edith, at whose rein he now rode, endeavouring to remove her terrors, which, though she uttered no words, were manifestly overpowering,--"singular that the girl should look so glad and fearless, while we are, I believe, all horribly frightened. It is, however, a good omen. When one so timorous as she casts aside fear, there is little reason for others to be frighted."
"I hope,--I hope so," murmured Edith. "But--but I have had my omens, Roland, and they were evil ones. I dreamed--You smile at me!"
"I do," said the soldier, "and not more at your joyless tones, my fair cousin, than at the coincidence of our thoughts. _I_ dreamed (for I also have had my visions) last night, that some one came to me and whispered in my ear to 'cross the river at the Lower Ford, the Upper being dangerous.' Verily, I shall hereafter treat my dreams with respect. I suppose,--I hope, were it only to prove we have a good angel in common,--that you dreamed the same thing."
"No,--it was not that," said Edith, with a sad and anxious countenance. "It was a dream that has always been followed by evil. I dreamed--. But it will offend you, cousin?"
"What!" said Roland, "a dream? You dreamed perhaps that I forgot both wisdom and affection, when, for the sake of this worthless beast, Briareus, I drew you into difficulty and peril?"
"No, no," said Edith, earnestly, and then added in a low voice, "I dreamed of Richard Braxley!"
"Curse him!" muttered the youth, with tones of bitter passion: "it is to him we owe all that now afflicts us,--poverty and exile, our distresses and difficulties, our fears and our dangers. For a wooer," he added, with a smile of equal bitterness, "methinks he has fallen on but a rough way of proving his regard. But you dreamed of him. Well, what was it? He came to you with the look of a beaten dog, fawned at your feet, and displaying that infernal will, 'Marry me,' quoth he, 'fair maid, and I will be a greater rascal than before,--I will burn this will, and consent to enjoy Roland Forrester's lands and houses in right of my wife, instead of claiming them in trust for an heir no longer in the land of the living.' Cur! --and but for you, Edith, I would have repaid his insolence as it deserved. But you ever intercede for your worst enemies. There is that confounded Stackpole, now: I vow to heaven, I am sorry I cut the rascal down! --But you dreamed of Braxley! What said the villain?"
"He said," replied Edith, who had listened mournfully, but in silence, to the young man's hasty expressions, like one who was too well acquainted with the impetuosity of his temper to think of opposing him in his angry moments, or perhaps because her spirits were too much subdued by her fears to allow her to play the monitress,--"He said, and frowningly too, 'that soft words were with him the prelude to hard resolutions, and that where he could not win as the turtle, he could take his prey like a vulture;'--or some such words of anger. Now, Roland, I have twice before dreamed of this man, and on each occasion a heavy calamity ensued, and that on the following day. I dreamed of him the night before our uncle died. I dreamed a second time, and the next day he produced and recorded the will that robbed us of our inheritance. I dreamed of him again last night; and what evil is now hovering over us I know not;--but, it is foolish of me to say so,--yet my fears tell me it will be something dreadful."
"Your fears, I hope, will deceive you," said Roland, smiling in spite of himself at this little display of weakness on the part of Edith. "I have much confidence in this girl, Telie, though I can scarce tell why. A free road and a round gallop will carry us to our journey's end by nightfall; and, at the worst, we shall have bright starlight to light us on. Be comforted, my cousin. I begin heartily to suspect yon cowardly Dodge, or Dodger, or whatever he calls himself, has been imposed upon by his fears, and that he has actually seen no Indians at all. The springing up of a bush from under his horse's feet, and the starting away of a dozen frighted rabbits, might easily explain his conceit of the long-legged Indian, and his five murderous accomplices; and as for the savages seen in ambush at the Ford, the shaking of the cane-brake by the breeze, or by some skulking bear, would as readily account for them. The idea of his being allowed to pass a crew of Indians in their lair, without being pursued, or even fired upon, is quite preposterous."
These ideas, perhaps devised to dispel his kinswoman's fears, were scarce uttered before they appeared highly reasonable to the inventor himself; and he straightway rode to Dodge's side, and began to question him more closely than he had before had leisure to do, in relation to those wondrous adventures, the recounting of which had produced so serious a change in the destination of the party. All his efforts, however, to obtain satisfactory confirmation of his suspicion were unavailing. The man, now in a great measure relieved of his terrors, repeated his story with a thousand details, which convinced Roland that it was, in its chief features, correct. That he had actually been attacked, or fired upon by some persons, Roland could not doubt, having heard the shots himself. As to the ambush at the Ford, all he could say was, that he had actually seen several Indians,--he knew not the number,--stealing through the wood in the direction opposite the river, as if on the outlook for some expected party,--Captain Forrester's, he supposed, of which he had heard among the emigrants; and that this giving him the advantage of the first discovery, he had darted ahead with all his speed, until arrested at an unexpected moment by the six warriors, whose guns and voices had been heard by the party.
Besides communicating all the information which he possessed on these points, he proceeded, without waiting to be asked, to give an account of his own history; and a very lamentable one it was. He was from the Down-East country, a representative of the Bay State, from which he had been seduced by the arguments of his old friend Josiah Jones, to go "a pedlering" with the latter to the new settlements in the West; where the situation of the colonists, so far removed from all markets, promised uncommon advantages to the adventurous trader. These had been in a measure realised on the Upper Ohio; but the prospect of superior gains in Kentucky had tempted the two friends to extend their speculations further; and in an evil hour they embarked their assorted notions and their own bodies in a flatboat on the Ohio; in the descent of which it was their fortune to be stripped of every thing, after enduring risks without number, and daily attacks from, Indians lying in wait on the banks of the river, which misadventures had terminated in the capture of their boat, and the death of Josiah, the unlucky projector of the expedition. Pardon himself barely escaping with his life. These calamities were the more distasteful to the worthy Dodge, whose inclinations were of no warlike cast, and whose courage never rose to the fighting point, as he freely professed, until goaded into action by sheer desperation. He had "got enough," as he said, "of the everlasting Injuns, and of Kentucky, where there was such a shocking deal of 'em that a peaceable trader's scalp was in no more security than a rambling scout's;" and cursing his bad luck, and the memory of the friend who had cajoled him into ruin, difficulty, and constant danger, his sole desire was now to return to the safer lands of the East, which he expected to effect most advantageously by advancing to some of the South-eastern stations, and throwing himself in the way of the first band of militia whose tour of duty in the district was completed, and who should be about to return to their native state. He had got enough of the Ohio as well as the Indians; the wilderness-road possessed fewer terrors, and therefore appeared to his imagination the more eligible route of escape.
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Dodge's story, which was not without its interest to Roland, though the rapidity of their progress through the woods, and the constant necessity of being on the alert, kept him a somewhat inattentive listener, was brought to an abrupt close by the motions of Telie Doe, who, having guided the party for several miles with great confidence, began at last to hesitate, and betray symptoms of doubt and embarrassment, that attracted the soldier's attention. There seemed some cause for hesitation: the glades, at first broad and open, through which they had made their way, were becoming smaller and more frequently interrupted by copses; the wood grew denser and darker; the surface of the ground became broken by rugged ascents and swampy hollows, the one encumbered by stones and mouldering trunks of trees, the other converted by the rains into lakes and pools, through which it was difficult to find a path; whilst the constant turning and winding to right and left, to avoid such obstacles, made it a still greater task to preserve the line of direction which Telie had intimated was the proper one to pursue. "Was it possible," he asked of himself, "the girl could be at fault?" The answer to this question, when addressed to Telie herself, confirmed his fears. She was perplexed, she was frightened; she had been long expecting to strike the neglected road, with which she professed to be so well acquainted, and, sure she was, they had ridden far enough to find it. But the hills and swamps had confused her; she was afraid to proceed,--she knew not where she was.
This announcement filled the young soldier's mind with alarm; for upon Telie's knowledge of the woods he had placed his best reliance, conscious that his own experience in such matters was as little to be depended on as that of any of his companions. Yet it was necessary he should now assume the lead himself, and do his best to rescue the party from its difficulties; and this, after a little reflection, he thought he could scarce fail in effecting. The portion of the forest through which he was rambling was a kind of triangle, marked by the two roads on the east, with its base bounded by the long looked for river; and one of these boundaries he must strike, proceed in whatsoever direction he would. If he persevered in the course he had followed so long, he must of necessity find himself, sooner or later, in the path which Telie had failed to discover, and failed, as he supposed, in consequence of wandering away to the west, so as to keep it constantly on the right hand, instead of in front. To recover it, then, all that was necessary to be done was to direct his course to the right, and to proceed until the road was found.
The reasoning was just, and the probability was that a few moments would find the party on the recovered path. But a half-hour passed by, and the travellers, all anxious and doubting, and filled with gloom, were yet stumbling in the forest, winding amid labyrinths of bog and brake, hill and hollow, that every moment became wilder and more perplexing. To add to their alarm, it was manifest that the day was fast approaching its close. The sun had set, or was so low in the heavens that not a single ray could be seen trembling on the tallest tree; and thus was lost the only means of deciding towards what quarter of the compass they were directing their steps. The mosses on the trees were appealed to in vain,--as they will be by all who expect to find them pointing like the mariner's needle to the pole. They indicate the quarter from which blow the prevailing humid winds of any region of country; but in the moist and dense forests of the interior, they are often equally luxuriant on every side of the tree. The varying shape and robustness of boughs are thought to offer a better means of finding the points of the compass; but none but Indians and hunters grown gray in the woods, can profit by _their_ occult lessons. The attempts of Roland to draw instruction from them served only to complete his confusion; and, by and by, giving over all hope of succeeding through any exercise of skill or prudence, he left the matter to fortune and his good horse, riding, in the obstinacy of despair, withersoever the weary animal chose to bear him, without knowing whether it might be afar from danger, or backwards into the vicinity of the very enemies whom he had laboured so long to avoid.
As he advanced in this manner, he was once or twice inclined to suspect that he was actually retracing his steps, and approaching the path by which he had entered the depths of the wood; and on one occasion he was almost assured that such was the fact by the peculiar appearance of a brambly thicket, containing many dead trees, which he thought he had noticed while following in confidence after the leading of Telie Doe. A nearer approach to the place convinced him of his error, but awoke a new hope in his mind, by showing him that he was drawing nigh the haunts of men. The blazes of the axe were seen on the trees, running away in lines, as if marked by the hands of the surveyor; those trees that were dead, he observed, had been destroyed by girdling; and on the edge of the tangled brake where they were most abundant, he noticed several stalks of maize, the relics of some former harvest, the copse itself having once been, as he supposed, a corn-field, "It is only a tomahawk-improvement," said Telie Doe, shaking her head, as he turned towards her a look of joyous inquiry; and she pointed towards what seemed to have been once a cabin of logs of the smallest size--too small indeed for habitation--but which, more than half fallen down, was rotting away, half hidden under the weeds and brambles that grew, and seemed to have grown for years, within its little area; "there are many of them in the woods, that were never settled."
Roland did not require to be informed that a "tomahawk-improvement," as it was often called in those days, meant nothing more than the box of logs in form of a cabin, which the hunter or land-speculator could build with his hatchet in a few hours, a few girdled trees, a dozen or more grains of corn from his pouch-thrust into the soil, with perhaps a few poles laid along the earth to indicate an enclosed field; and that such improvements, as they gave pre-emption rights to the maker, were often established by adventurers, to secure a claim in the event of their not lighting on lands more to their liking. Years had evidently passed by since the maker of this neglected improvement had visited his territory, and Roland no longer hoped to discover such signs about it as might enable him to recover his lost way. His spirits sunk as rapidly as they had risen, and he was preparing to make one more effort to escape from the forest, while the daylight yet lasted, or to find some stronghold in which to pass the night; when his attention was drawn to Telie Doe, who had ridden a little in advance, eagerly scanning the trees and soil around, in the hope that some ancient mark or footstep might point out a mode of escape. As she thus looked about her, moving slowly in advance, her pony on a sudden began to snort and prance, and betray other indications of terror, and Telie herself was seen to become agitated and alarmed, retreating back upon the party, but keeping her eyes wildly rolling from bush to bush, as if in instant expectation of seeing an enemy.
"What is the matter?" cried Roland, riding to her assistance. "Are we in enchanted land, that our horses must be frightened, as well as ourselves?"
"He smells the war-paint," said Telie, with a trembling voice;--"there are Indians near us."
"Nonsense!" said Roland, looking around, and seeing, with the exception of the copse just passed, nothing but an open forest, without shelter or harbour for an ambushed foe. But at that moment Edith caught him by the arm, and turned upon him a countenance more wan with fear than that she had exhibited upon first hearing the cries of Stackpole. It expressed, indeed, more than alarm,--it was the highest degree of terror, and the feeling was so overpowering that her lips, though moving as in the act of speech, gave forth no sound whatever. But what her lips refused to tell, her finger, though shaking in the ague that convulsed every fibre of her frame, pointed out; and Roland, following it with his eyes, beheld the object that had excited so much emotion. He started himself, as his gaze fell upon a naked Indian stretched under a tree hard by, and sheltered from view only by a dead bough lately fallen from its trunk, yet lying so still and motionless that he might easily have been passed by without observation in the growing dusk and twilight of the woods, had it not been for the instinctive terrors of the pony, which, like other horses, and, indeed, all other domestic beasts in the settlements, often thus pointed out to their masters the presence of an enemy.
The rifle of the soldier was in an instant cocked and at his shoulder, while the pedler and Emperor, as it happened, were too much discomposed at the spectacle to make any such show of battle. They gazed blankly upon the leader, whose piece, settling down into an aim that must have been fatal, suddenly wavered, and then, to their surprise, was withdrawn.
"The slayer has been here before us," he exclaimed,--"the man is dead and scalped already!"
With these words he advanced to the tree, and the others following, they beheld with horror the body of a savage, of vast and noble proportions, lying on its face across the roots of the tree, and glued, it might almost be said, to the earth by a mass of coagulated blood, that had issued from the scalp and axe-cloven skull. The fragments of a rifle shattered, as it seemed, by a violent blow against the tree under which he Jay, were scattered at his side, with a broken powder-horn, a splintered knife, the helve of a tomahawk, and other equipments of a warrior, all in like manner shivered to pieces by the unknown assassin. The warrior seemed to have perished only after a fearful struggle; the earth was torn where he lay, and his hands, yet grasping the soil, were dyed a double red in the blood of his antagonist, or perhaps in his own.
While Roland gazed upon the spectacle, amazed, and wondering in what manner the wretched being had met his death, which must have happened very recently, and whilst his party was within the sound of a rifle-shot, he observed a shudder to creep over the apparently lifeless frame; the fingers relaxed their grasp of the earth, and then clutched it again with violence; a broken, strangling rattle came from the throat; and a spasm of convulsion seizing upon every limb, it was suddenly raised a little upon one arm, so as to display the countenance, covered with blood, the eyes retroverted into their orbits, and glaring with the sightless whites. It was a horrible spectacle,--the last convulsion of many that had shaken the wretched and insensible, yet still suffering clay, since it had received the death-stroke. The spasm was the last, and but momentary; yet it sufficed to raise the body of the mangled barbarian, so far that, when the pang that excited it suddenly ceased, and, with it, the life of the sufferer, the body rolled over on the back, and thus lay, exposing to the eyes of the lookers-on two gashes, wide and gory, on the breast, traced by a sharp knife and a powerful hand, and, as it seemed, in the mere wantonness of a malice and lust of blood which even death could not satisfy. The sight of these gashes answered the question Roland had asked of his own imagination; they were in the form of a _cross_; and as the legend, so long derided, of the forest-fiend recurred to his memory, he responded, almost with a feeling of superstitious awe, to the trembling cry of Telie Doe:-- "It is the Jibbenainosay!" she exclaimed, staring upon the corse with mingled horror and wonder:--"Nick of the Woods is up again in the forest!"
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There was little really superstitious in the temper of Captain Forrester; and however his mind might be at first stirred by the discovery of a victim of the redoubted fiend so devoutly believed in by his host of the preceding evening, it is certain that his credulity was not so much excited as his surprise. He sprang from his horse and examined the body, but looked in vain for the mark of the bullet that had robbed it of life. No gun-shot wound, at least none of importance, appeared in any part. There was, indeed, a bullet-hole in the left shoulder, and, as it seemed, very recently inflicted: but it was bound up with leaves and vulnerary herbs, in the usual Indian way, showing that it must have been received at some period anterior to the attack which had robbed the warrior of life. The gashes across the ribs were the only other wounds on the body; that on the head, made by a hatchet, was evidently the one that had caused the warrior's death.
If this circumstance abated the wonder the soldier had at first felt on the score of a man being killed at so short a distance from his own party, without any one hearing the shot, he was still more at a loss to know how one of the dead man's race, proverbial for wariness and vigilance, should have been approached by any merely human enemy so nigh as to render fire-arms unnecessary to his destruction. But that a human enemy had effected the slaughter, inexplicable as it seemed, he had no doubt; and he began straightway to search among the leaves strewn over the ground, for the marks of his foot-steps; not questioning that, if he could find and follow them for a little distance, he should discover the author of the deed, and, which was of more moment to himself, a friend and guide to conduct his party from the forest.
His search was, however, fruitless; for, whether it was that the shadows of the evening lay too dark on the ground, or that eyes more accustomed than his own to such duties were required to detect a trail among dried forest leaves, it was certain that he failed to discover a single foot-step, or other vestige of the slayer. Nor were Pardon Dodge and Emperor, whom he summoned to his assistance, a whit more successful; a circumstance, however, that rather proved their inexperience than the supernatural character of the Jibbenainosay, whose foot-prints, as it appeared, were not more difficult to find than those of the dead Indian, for which they sought equally in vain.
While they were thus fruitlessly engaged, an exclamation from Telie Doe drew their attention to a spectacle, suddenly observed, which, to her awe-struck eyes, presented the appearance of the very being, so truculent yet supernatural, whose traces, it seemed, were to be discovered only on the breasts of his lifeless victims; and Roland, looking up, beheld with surprise, perhaps even for a moment with the stronger feeling of awe, a figure stalking through the woods at a distance, looking as tall and gigantic in the growing twilight, as the airy demon of the Brocken, or the equally colossal spectres seen on the wild summits of the Peruvian Andes. Distance and the darkness together rendered the vision indistinct; but Roland could see that the form was human, that it moved onwards with rapid strides, and with its countenance bent upon the earth, or upon another moving object, dusky and of lesser size, that rolled before it, guiding the way, like the bowl of the dervise in the Arabian story; and, finally, that it held in its hands, as if on the watch for an enemy, an implement wondrously like the fire-lock of a human fighting-man. At first, it appeared as if the figure was approaching the party, and that in a direct line; but presently Roland perceived it was gradually bending its course away to the left, its eyes still so closely fixed on its dusky guide,--the very bear, as Roland supposed, which was said so often to direct the steps of the Jibbenainosay,--that it seemed as if about to pass the party entirely without observation.
But this it made no part of the young soldier's resolutions to permit; and, accordingly, he sprang upon his horse, determined to ride forwards and bring the apparition to a stand, while it was yet at a distance.
"Man or devil, Jibbenainosay or rambling settler," he cried, "it is, at least, no Indian, and therefore no enemy. Holla, friend!" he exclaimed aloud, and dashed forward, followed, though not without hesitation, by his companions.
At the sound of his voice the spectre started and looked up; and then, without betraying either surprise or a disposition to beat a mysterious retreat, advanced to meet the soldier, walking rapidly, and waving his hand all the while with an impatient gesture, as if commanding the party to halt;--a command which was immediately obeyed by Roland and all.
And now it was, that, as it drew nigh, its stature appeared to grow less and less colossal, and the wild lineaments with which fancy had invested it, faded from sight, leaving the phantom a mere man, of tall frame indeed, but without a single characteristic of dress or person to delight the soul of wonder. The black bear dwindled into a little dog, the meekest and most insignificant of his tribe, being nothing less or more, in fact, than the identical Peter, which had fared so roughly in the hands, or rather under the feet, of Roaring Ralph Stackpole, at the Station, the day before; while the human spectre, the supposed fiend of the woods, sinking from its dignity in equal proportion of abasement, suddenly presented to Roland's eyes the person of Peter's master, the humble, peaceful, harmless Nathan Slaughter.
The transformation was so great and unexpected, for even Roland looked to find in the wanderer, if not a destroying angel, at least some formidable champion of the forest, that he could scarce forbear a laugh, as Nathan came stalking up, followed by little Peter, who stole to the rear, as soon as strangers were perceived, as if to avoid the kicks and cuffs which his experience had, doubtless, taught him were to be expected on all such occasions. The young man felt the more inclined to indulge his mirth, as the character which Bruce had given him of Wandering Nathan, as one perfectly acquainted with the woods, convinced him that he could not have fallen upon a better person to extricate him from his dangerous dilemma, and thus relieved his breast of a mountain of anxiety and distress. But the laugh with which he greeted his approach found no response from Nathan himself, who, having looked with amazement upon Edith and Telie, as if marvelling what madness had brought females at that hour into that wild desert, turned at last to the soldier, demanding, with inauspicious gravity,-- "Friend! does thee think thee is in thee own parlour with thee women at home, that thee shouts so loud and laughs so merrily? or does thee know thee is in a wild Kentucky forest, with murdering Injuns all around thee?"
"I trust not," said Roland, much more seriously; "but, in truth, we all took you for Nick of the Woods, the redoubtable Nick himself; and you must allow that our terrors were ridiculous enough, when they could convert a peaceful man like you into such a blood-thirsty creature. That there are Indians in the wood I can well believe, having the evidence of Dodge, here, who professes to have seen six, and killed one, and of my own eyes into the bargain. --Yonder lies one, dead, at this moment, under the walnut-tree, killed by some unknown hand,--Telie Doe says by Nick of the Woods himself--" "Friend," said Nathan, interrupting the young man, without ceremony, "thee had better think of living Injuns than talk of dead ones; for, of a truth, thee is like to have trouble with them!"
"Not now, I hope, with such a man as you to help me out of the woods. In the name of heaven, where am I, and whither am I going?"
"Whither thee is going," replied Nathan, "it might be hard to say, seeing that thee way of travelling is none of the straightest: nevertheless, if thee continues thee present course, it is my idea, thee is travelling to the Upper Ford of the river, and will fetch it in twelve minutes, or thereabouts, and, in the same space, find theeself in the midst of thirty ambushed Injuns."
"Good heavens!" cried Roland, "have we then been labouring only to approach the cut-throats? There is not a moment, then, to lose, and your finding us is even more providential than I thought. Put yourself at our head, lead us out of this den of thieves,--conduct us to the Lower Ford,--to our companions, the emigrants; or, if that may not be, take us back to the Station,--or any where at all, where I may find safety for these females. --For myself, I am incapable of guiding them longer."
"Truly," said Nathan, looking embarrassed, "I would do what I could for thee, but--" "_But! _ Do you hesitate?" cried the Virginian, in extreme indignation: "will you leave us to perish, when you, and you alone, can guide us from the forest?"
"Friend," said Nathan, in a submissive, deprecating tone, "I am a man of peace: and paradventure, the party being so numerous, the Injuns will fall upon us: and, truly, they will not spare me any more than another: for they kill the non-fighting men, as well as them that fight. Truly, I am in much fear for myself: but a single man might escape."
"If you are such a knave, such a mean-spirited, unfeeling dastard, as to think of leaving these women to their fate," said Roland, giving way to rage, "be assured that the first step will be your last;--I will blow your brains out, the moment you attempt to leave us!"
At these ireful words, Nathan's eyes began to widen.
"Truly," said he, "I don't think thee would be so wicked! But thee takes by force that which I would have given with good will. It was not my purpose to refuse thee assistance; though it is unseemly that one of my peaceful faith should go with fighting-men among men of war, as if to do battle. But, friend, if we should fall upon the angry red-men, truly, there will bloodshed come of it; and thee will say to me, 'Nathan, lift up thee gun and shoot;' and peradventure, if I say 'Nay,' thee will call me hard names, as thee did before, saying, 'If thee don't, I will blow thee brains out!' --Friend, I am a man of peace; and if--" "Trouble yourself no longer on that score," said the soldier, who began to understand how the land lay, and how much the meek Nathan's reluctance to become his guide was engendered by his fears of being called on to take a share in such fighting as might occur: "trouble yourself no longer; we will take care to avoid a contest."
"Truly," said Nathan, "that may not be as thee chooses, the Injuns being all around thee."
"If a rencontre should be inevitable," said Roland, with a smile, mingling grim contempt of Nathan's pusillanimity with secret satisfaction at the thought of being thus able to secure the safety of his kinswoman, "all that I shall expect of you will be to decamp with the females, whilst we three, Emperor, Pardon Dodge, and myself, cover your retreat: we can, at least, check the assailants, if we die for it!"
This resolute speech was echoed by each of the other combatants, the negro exclaiming, though with no very valiant utterance, "Yes, massa! no mistake in ole Emperor;--will die for missie and massa,"--while Pardon, who was fast relapsing into the desperation that had given him courage on a former occasion, cried out, with direful emphasis, "If there's no dodging the critturs, then there a'n't; and if I must fight, then I _must_; and them that takes my scalp must gin the worth on't, or it a'n't no matter!"
"Truly," said Nathan, who listened to these several outpourings of spirit with much complacency, "I am a man of peace and amity, according to my conscience; but if others are men of wrath and battle, according to theirs, I will not take it upon me to censure them,--nay, not even if they should feel themselves called upon by hard necessity to shed the blood of their Injun fellow-creatures,--who, it must be confessed, if we should stumble on the same, will do their best to make that necessity as strong as possible. But now let us away, and see what help there is for us; though whither to go, and what to do, there being Injuns before, and Injuns behind, and Injuns all around, truly, truly, it doth perplex me."
And so, indeed, it seemed; for Nathan straightway fell into a fit of musing, shaking his head, and tapping his finger contemplatively on the stock of that rifle, terrible only to the animals that furnished him subsistence, and all the while in such apparent abstraction, that he took no notice of a suggestion made by Roland,--namely, that he should lead the way to the deserted Ford, where, as the soldier said, there was every reason to believe there were no Indians,--but continued to argue the difficulty in his own mind, interrupting the debate only to ask counsel where there seemed the least probability of obtaining it:-- "Peter!" said he, addressing himself to the little dog, and that with as much gravity as if addressing himself to a human adviser, "I have my thoughts on the matter,--what does _thee_ think of matters and things?"
"My friend," cried Roland, impatiently, "this is no affair to be entrusted to the wisdom of a brute dog!"
"If there is any one here whose wisdom can serve us better," said Nathan, meekly, "let him speak. Thee don't know Peter, friend, or thee would use him with respect. Many a long day has he followed me through the forest; and many a time has he helped me out of harm and peril from man and beast, when I was at sore shifts to help myself. For, truly, friend, as I told thee before, the Injuns have no regard for men, whether men of peace or war; and an honest, quiet, peace-loving man can no more roam the wood, hunting for the food that sustains life, without the fear of being murdered, than a fighting-man in search of his prey. --Thee sees now what little dog Peter is doing? He runs to the tracks, and he wags his tail;--truly I am of the same way of thinking!"
"What tracks are they?" demanded Roland, as he followed Nathan to the path which the latter had been pursuing, when arrested by the soldier, and where the little cur was now smelling about, occasionally lifting his head and wagging his tail, as if to call his master's attention. " _What_ tracks!" echoed Nathan, looking on the youth first with wonder, and then with commiseration, and adding,--"It was a tempting of Providence, friend, for _thee_ to lead poor helpless women into a wild forest. Does thee not know the tracks of thee own horses?" " 'Sdeath!" said Roland, looking on the marks, as Nathan, pointed them out in the soft earth, and reflecting with chagrin how wildly he had been rambling, for more than an hour, since they had been impressed on the soil.
"Thee knows the hoof-marks," said Nathan, now pointing with a grin, at other tracks of a different appearance among them; "perhaps thee knows _these_ foot-prints also?"
"They are the marks of footmen," said the soldier, in surprise; "but how came they there I know not, no footmen being of our party."
The grin that marked the visage of the man of peace widened almost into a laugh, as Roland spoke. "Verily," he cried, "thee is in the wrong place, friend, in the forest! If thee had no footmen with thee, could thee have none _after_ thee? Look, friend, here are tracks, not of one man, but of five, each stepping on tiptoe, as if to tread lightly and look well before him,--each with a moccasin on,--each with a toe turned in; each--" "Enough,--they were Indians!" said Roland, with a shudder, "and they must have been close behind us!"
"Now, friend," said Nathan, "thee will have more respect for Peter; for, truly, it was Peter told me of these things, when I was peaceably hunting my game in the forest. He showed me the track of five ignorant persons rambling through the wood, as the hawk flies in the air,--round, round, round, all the time,--or like an ox that has been browsing on the leaves of the buck-eye;[7] and he showed me that five evil-minded Shawnees were pursuing in their trail. So thinks I to myself, 'these poor creatures will come to mischief, if no one gives them warning of their danger;' and therefore I started to follow, Peter showing me the way. And truly, if there can any good come of me finding thee in this hard ease, thee must give all the thanks and all the praise to poor Peter!"
[Footnote 7: The buck-eye, or American horse-chestnut, seems to be universally considered, in the West, a mortal poison, both fruit and leaves. Cattle affected by it are said to play many remarkable antics, as if intoxicated--turning, twisting, and rolling about and around, until death closes their agonies] "I will never more speak ill of a dog as long as I live," said Roland. "But let us away. I thought our best course was to the Lower Ford; but, I find, I am mistaken. We must away in the opposite direction."
"Not so," said Nathan, coolly; "Peter is of opinion that we must run the track over again; and, truly, so am I. We must follow these, same five Injuns: it is as much as our lives are worth."
"You are mad!" said Roland. "This will be to bring us right upon the skulking cut-throats. Let us fly in another direction: the forest is open before us."
"And how long does thee think it will keep open? Friend, I tell thee, thee is surrounded by Injuns. On the south, they lie at the Ford; on the west, is the river rolling along in a flood; and at the east, are the roads full of Shawnees on the scout. Verily, friend, there is but little comfort to think of proceeding in any direction, even to the north, where there are five murdering creatures full before us. But this is my thought, and, I rather think, it is Peter's: if we go to the north, we know pretty much all the evil that lies before us, and how to avoid it; whereas, by turning in either of the other quarters, we go into danger blindfold."
"And how shall we avoid these five villains before us?" asked Roland, anxiously.
"By keeping them before us," replied Nathan; "that is, friend, by following _them_, until such time as they turn where thee turned before them, (and, I warrant me, the evil creatures will turn wheresoever thee trail does); when we, if we have good luck, may slip quietly forward, and leave them, to follow us, after first taking the full swing of all thee roundabout vagaries."
"Take your own course," said Roland; "it may be the best. We can, at the worst, but stumble upon these five; and then (granting that you can, in the meanwhile, bear the females off), I will answer for keeping two or three of the villains busy. Take your own course," he repeated; "the night is darkening around us; we must do something."
"Thee says the truth," cried Nathan. "As for stumbling unawares on the five evil persons thee is in dread of, trust Peter for that; thee shall soon see what a friend thee has in little dog Peter. Truly, for a peaceful man like me, it is needful I should have some one to tell me when dangerous persons are nigh."
With these words, which were uttered with a good countenance, showing how much his confidence in the apparently insignificant Peter preserved him from the fears natural to his character and situation, the man of peace proceeded to marshal the company in a line, directing them to follow him in that order, and earnestly impressing upon all the necessity of preserving strict silence upon the march. This being done, he boldly strode forwards, taking a post at least two hundred paces in advance of the others, at which distance, as he gave Roland to understand, he desired the party to follow, as was the more necessary, since their being mounted rendered them the more liable to be observed by distant enemies. "If thee sees me wave my hand above my head," were his last instructions to the young soldier, who began to be well pleased with his readiness and forecast, "bring thee people to a halt; if thee sees me drop upon the ground, lead them under the nearest cover, and keep them quiet; for thee may then be certain there is mischief, or mischievous people nigh at hand. But verily, friend, with Peter's help, we will circumvent them all."
With this cheering assurance, lie now strode forward to his station, and coming to a halt with his dog Peter, Roland immediately beheld the latter run to a post forty or fifty paces further in advance, when he paused to receive the final orders of his master, which were given with a motion of the same hand that a moment after beckoned the party to follow. Had Roland been sufficiently nigh to take note of proceedings, he would have admired the conduct of the little brute, the unerring accuracy with which he pursued the trail, the soft and noiseless motion with which he stepped from leaf to leaf, casting his eyes ever and anon to the right and left, and winding the air before him, as if in reality conscious of peril, and sensible that the welfare of the six mortals at his heels depended upon the faithful exercise of all his sagacity. These things, however, from the distance, Roland was unable to observe; but he saw enough to convince him that the animal addressed itself to its task with as much zeal and prudence as its master. A sense of security, the first felt for several hours, now began to disperse the gloom that had oppressed his spirits; and Edith's countenance, throughout the whole of the adventure a faithful, though doubtless somewhat exaggerated reflection of his own, also lost much of its melancholy and terror, though without at any moment regaining the cheerful smiles that had decked it at the setting out. It was left for Roland alone, as his mind regained its elasticity, to marvel at the motley additions by which his party had increased in so short a time to twice its original numbers, and to speculate on the prospects of an expedition committed to the guidance of such a conductor as little Peter.
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The distance at which Roland with his party followed the guides, and the gloom of the woods, prevented his making any close observations upon their motions, unless when some swelling ridge, nearly destitute of trees, brought them nearer to the light of the upper air. At other times he could do little more than follow with his eye the tall figure of Nathan, plunging from shadow to shadow, and knoll to knoll, with a pace both free and rapid, and little resembling the shambling, hesitating step with which he moved among the haunts of his contemners and oppressors. As for the dog, little Peter, he was only with difficulty seen when ascending some such illuminated knoll as has been mentioned, when he might be traced creeping along with unabated vigilance and caution.
It was while ascending one of these low, and almost bare swells of ground, that the little animal gave the first proof of that sagacity or wisdom, as Nathan called it, on which the latter seemed to rely for safety so much more than on his own experience and address. He had no sooner reached the summit of the knoll than he abruptly came to a stand, and by and by cowered to the earth, as if to escape the observation of enemies in front, whose presence he indicated in no other way, unless by a few twitches and flourishes of his tail, which, a moment after, became as rigid and motionless as if, with his body, it had been suddenly converted into stone. The whole action, as far as Roland could notice it was similar to that of a well-trained spaniel marking game, and such was the interpretation the soldier put upon it, until Nathan, suddenly stopping, waved his hand as a signal to the party to halt, which was immediately obeyed. The next moment Nathan was seen creeping up the hill, to investigate the cause of alarm, which he proceeded to do with great caution, as if well persuaded there was danger at hand. Indeed, he had not yet reached the brow of the eminence, when Roland beheld him suddenly drop upon his face, thereby giving the best evidence of the existence of peril of an extreme and urgent character.
The young Virginian remembered the instructions of his guide, to seek shelter for his party the moment this signal was given; and, accordingly, he led his followers without delay into a little tangled brake hard by, where he charged them to remain in quiet until the cause of the interruption should be ascertained and removed. From the edge of the brake he could see the guide, still maintaining his position on his face, yet dragging himself upward like a snake, until he had reached the top of the hill and looked over into the maze of forest beyond. In this situation he lay for several moments, apparently deeply engaged with the scene before him; when Forrester, impatient of his silence and delay, anxiously interested in every turn of events, and perhaps unwilling, at a season of difficulty, to rely altogether on Nathan's unaided observations, gave his horse in charge of Emperor, and ascended the eminence himself; taking care, however, to do as Nathan had done, and throw himself upon the ground, when near its summit. In this way, he succeeded in creeping to Nathan's side, when the cause of alarm was soon made manifest.
The forest beyond the ridge was, for a considerable distance, open and free from undergrowth, the trees standing wide apart, and thus admitting a broad extent of vision, though now contracted by the increasing dusk of evening. Through this expanse, and in its darkest corner, flitting dimly along, Roland's eyes fell upon certain shadows, at first vague and indistinct, but which soon assumed the human form, marching one after the other in a line, and apparently approaching the very ridge on which he lay, each with the stealthy yet rapid pace of a wild cat. They were but five in number; but the order of their march, the appearance of their bodies seemingly half naked, and the busy intentness with which they pursued the trail left so broad and open by the inexperienced wanderers, would have convinced Roland of their savage character, had he possessed no other evidence than that of his own senses.
"They are Indians;" he muttered in Nathan's ear.
"Shawnee creatures," said the latter, with edifying coolness;--"and will think no more of taking the scalps of thee two poor women than of digging off thee own."
"There are but five of them, and--" The young man paused, and the gloom that a spirit so long harassed by fears, though fears for another, had spread over his countenance, was exchanged for a look of fierce decision that better became his features. "Harkee, man," he abruptly resumed, "we cannot pass the ridge without being seen by them; our horses are exhausted, and we cannot hope to escape them by open flight."
"Verily," said Nathan, "thee speaks the truth."
"Nor can we leave the path we are now pursuing, without fear of falling into the hands of a party more numerous and powerful. Our only path of escape, you said, was over this ridge, and towards yonder Lower Ford?"
"Truly," said Nathan, with a lugubrious look of assent,--"what thee says is true: but how we are to fly these evil-minded creatures, with poor frightened women hanging to our legs--" "We will not fly them!" said Roland, the frown of battle gathering on his brows. "Yonder crawling reptiles,--reptiles in spirit as in movement,--have been dogging our steps for hours, waiting for the moment when to strike with advantage at my defenceless followers; and they will dog us still, if permitted, until there is no escape from their knives and hatchets for either man or woman. There is a way of stopping them,--there is a way of requiting them!"
"Truly," said Nathan, "there is no such way; unless we were wicked men of the world and fighting men, and would wage battle with them!"
"Why not meet the villains in their own way? There are but five of them,--and footmen too! By heavens, man, we will charge them,--cut them to pieces, and so rid the wood of them! Four strong men like us, fighting, too, in defence of women," "_Four! _" echoed Nathan, looking wonder and alarm together: "does thee think to have _me_ do the wicked thing of shedding blood? Thee should remember, friend, that I am a follower of peaceful doctrines, a man of peace and amity."
"What!" said Roland, warmly, "would you not defend your life from the villains? Would you suffer yourself to be tomahawked, unresisting, when a touch of the trigger under your finger, a blow of the knife at your belt, would preserve the existence nature and heaven alike call on you to protect? Would you lie still, like a fettered ox, to be butchered?"
"Truly," said Nathan, "I would take myself away; or, if that might not be, why then, friend,--verily, friend, if I could do nothing else,--truly, I must then give myself up to be murdered," "Spiritless, mad, or hypocritical!" cried Roland, with mingled wonder and contempt. Then grasping his strange companion by the arm, he cried, "Harkee, man, if you would not strike a blow for yourself,--would you not strike it for another? What if you had a wife, a parent, a child, lying beneath the uplifted hatchet, and you with these arms in your hands,--what! do you tell me you would stand by and see them murdered? --I say, a wife or child! --the wife of your bosom,--the child of your heart? would you see _them_ murdered?"
At this stirring appeal, uttered with indescribable energy and passion, though only in a whisper, Nathan's countenance changed from dark to pale, and his arm trembled in the soldier's grasp. He turned upon him also a look of extraordinary wildness, and muttered betwixt his teeth an answer that betokened as much confusion of mind as agitation of spirits: "Friend," he said, "whoever thee is, it matters nothing to thee what might happen, or has happened, in such case made and provided. I am a man, thee is another; thee has thee conscience, and I have mine. If thee will fight, fight; settle it with thee conscience. If thee don't like to see thee kinswoman murdered, and thee thinks thee has a call to battle, do thee best with sword and pistol, gun and tomahawk; kill and slay to thee liking: if thee conscience finds no fault with thee, neither will I. But as for me, let the old Adam of the flesh stir me as it may, I have no one to fight for,--wife or child, parent or kinsman, I have none: if thee will hunt the world over, thee will not find one in it that is my kinsman or relative."
"But I ask you," said Roland, somewhat surprised at the turn of Nathan's answer, "I ask you, if you _had_ a wife or child--" "But I have _not_," cried Nathan, interrupting him vehemently; "and therefore, friend, why should thee speak of them? Them that are dead, let them rest: they can never cry to me more. --Think of thee own blood, and do what seems best to thee for the good thereof."
"Assuredly I would," said Roland, who, however much his curiosity was roused by the unexpected agitation of his guide, had little time to think of any affairs but his own,--"Assuredly I would, could I only count upon your hearty assistance. I tell you, man, my blood boils to look at yonder crawling serpents, and to think of the ferocious object with which they are dogging at my heels; and I would give a year of my life,--ay, if the whole number of years were but ten,--one whole year of all,--for the privilege of paying them for their villany beforehand."
"Thee has thee two men to back thee," said Nathan, who had now recovered his composure; "and with these two men, if thee is warlike enough, thee might do as much mischief as thee conscience calls for. But, truly, it becomes not a man of peace like me to speak of strife and bloodshed--Yet, truly," he added, hastily, "I think there must mischief come of this meeting; for, verily, the evil creatures are leaving thee tracks, and coming towards us!"
"They stop!" said Forrester, eagerly,--"they look about them,--they have lost the track,--they are coming this way! You will not fight, yet you may counsel. --What shall I do? Shall I attack them? What _can_ I do?"
"Friend," replied Nathan, briskly, "I can't tell what thee can do; but I can tell thee what a man of Kentucky, a wicked fighter of Injuns, would do in such a case made and provided. He would betake him to the thicket where he had hidden his women and horses, and he would lie down with his fighting men behind a log; and truly, if these ill-disposed Injun-men were foolish enough to approach, he would fire upon them with his three guns, taking them by surprise, and perhaps, wicked man, killing the better half of them on the spot: and then--" "And then," interrupted Roland taking fire at the idea, "he would spring on his horse, and make sure of the rest with sword and pistol?"
"Truly," said Nathan, "he would do no such thing, seeing that, the moment he lifted up his head above the log, he would be liker to have an Injun bullet through it than to see the wicked creature that shot it. Verily, a man of Kentucky would be wiser. He would take the pistols thee speaks of, supposing it were his good luck to have them, and let fly at the evil-minded creatures with them also; not hoping, indeed, to do any execution with such small ware, but to make the Injuns believe there were as many enemies as fire-arms: and, truly, if they did not take to their heels after such a second volley, they would be foolisher Injuns than were ever before heard of in Kentucky."
"By Heaven," said Forrester, "it is good advice: and I will take it!"
"Advice, friend! I don't advise thee," said Nathan, hastily: "truly, I advise to nothing but peace and amity. I only tell thee what a wicked Kentucky fighting-man would do,--a man that might think it, as many of them do, as lawful to shoot a prowling Injun as a skulking bear."
"And I would to Heaven," said Roland, "I had but two,--nay, but one of them with me this instant. A man like Bruce were worth the lives of a dozen such scum. --I must do my best."
"Truly, friend," said Nathan, who had listened to the warlike outpourings of the young soldier with a degree of complacency and admiration one would have scarce looked for in a man of his peaceful character, "thee has a conscience of thee own, and if thee will fight these Injun-men from an ambush, truly, I will not censure nor exhort thee to the contrary. If thee can rely upon thee two men, the coloured person and the other, thee may hold the evil creatures exceeding uneasy."
"Alas," said Roland, the fire departing from his eyes, "you remind me of my weakness. My men will _not_ fight, unless from sheer desperation. Emperor I know to be a coward, and Dodge, I fear, is no braver."
"Verily," said Nathan, bluffly, "it was foolish of thee to come into the woods in such company, foolisher still to think of fighting five Injun-men with such followers to back thee; and truly," he added, "it was foolishest of all to put the safe-keeping of such helpless creatures into the hands of one who can neither fight for them nor for himself. Nevertheless, thee is as a babe and suckling in the woods, and Peter and I will do the best we can for thee. It is lucky for thee, that as thee cannot fight, thee has the power to fly; and, truly, for the poor women's sake, it is better thee should leave the woods in peace."
With that, Nathan directed the young man's attention to the pursuing foes, who, having by some mischance, lost the trail, had scattered about in search of it, and at last recovered it; though not before two of them had approached so nigh the ridge on which the observers lay as to give just occasion for fear lest they should cross it immediately in front of the party of travellers. The deadly purpose with which the barbarians were pursuing him Roland could infer from the cautious silence preserved while they were searching for the lost tracks; and even when these were regained, the discovery was communicated from one to another merely by signs, not a man uttering so much as a word. In a few moments, they were seen again, formed in a single file, stealing through the woods with a noiseless but rapid pace, and, fortunately, bending their steps towards a distant part of the ridge, where Roland and his companions had so lately crossed it.
"Get thee down to thee people," said Nathan; "lead them behind the thicket, and when thee sees me beckon thee, carry them boldly over the hill. Thee must pass it, while the Shawnee-men are behind yonder clump of trees, which is so luckily for thee on the very comb of the swell. Be quick in obeying, friend, or the evil creatures may catch sight of thee: thee has no time to lose."
The ardour of battle once driven from his mind, Roland was able to perceive the folly of risking a needless contest betwixt a superior body of wild Indian warriors and his own followers. But had his warlike spirit been at its height, it must have been quelled in a moment by the appearance of his party, left in the thicket, during his brief absence on the hill, to feed their imaginations with terrors of every appalling character; in which occupation, as he judged at a glance, the gallant Dodge and Emperor had been even more industrious than the females, the negro looking the very personification of mute horror, and bending low on his saddle as if expecting every instant a shower of Indian bullets to be let fly into the thicket; while Pardon expressed the state of his feelings by trying aloud, as soon as Rowland appeared, "I say, Capting, if you seed 'em, a'nt there no dodging of 'em no how?"
"We can escape, Roland!" exclaimed Edith, anticipating the soldier's news from his countenance; "the good man can save us?"
"I hope, I trust so," replied the kinsman: "we are in no immediate danger. Be composed, and for your lives, all now preserve silence."
A few words served to explain the posture of affairs, and a few seconds to transfer the party from its ignoble hiding-place to the open wood behind it; when Roland, casting his eyes to where Nathan lay motionless on the hill, awaited impatiently the expected signal. Fortunately, it was soon given; and, in a few moments more, the party, moving briskly but stealthily over the eminence, had plunged into the dark forest beyond, leaving the baffled pursuers to follow afterwards as they might.
"Now," said Nathan, taking post at Roland's side, and boldly directing his course across the track of the enemy, "we have the evil creatures behind us, and, truly, there we will keep them. And now, friend soldier, since such thee is, thee must make thee horses do duty, tired or not; for if we reach not the Old Ford before darkness closes on us, we may find but ill fortune crossing the waters. Hark, friend! does thee hear?" he exclaimed, coming to a pause, as a sudden and frightful yell suddenly rose in the forest beyond the ridge, obviously proceeding from the five foes, and expressing at once surprise, horror, and lamentation: "Did thee not say thee found a dead Injun in the wood?"
"We did," replied the soldier, "the body of an Indian horribly mangled; and, if I am to believe the strange story I have heard of the Jibbenainosay, it was some of his bloody work."
"It is good for thee, then, and the maidens that is with thee," said Nathan; "for, truly, the evil creatures have found that same dead man, being doubtless one of their own scouting companions; and, truly, they say the Injuns, in such cases made and provided, give over their evil designs in terror and despair; in which case, as I said, it will be good for thee and thee companions. But follow, friends, and tarry not to ask questions. Thee poor women shall come to no harm, if Nathan Slaughter or little Dog Peter can help them."
With these words of encouragement, Nathan, bounding along with an activity that kept him ever in advance of the mounted wanderers, led the way from the open forest into a labyrinth of brakes and bogs, through paths traced rather by wolves and bears than any nobler animals, so wild, so difficult, and sometimes, in appearance, so impracticable to be pursued, that Roland, bewildered from the first, looked every moment to find himself plunged into difficulties from which neither the zeal of Nathan nor the sagacity of the unpretending Peter could extricate his weary followers. The night was coming fast, and coming with clouds and distant peals of thunder, the harbingers of new tempests; and how the journey was to be continued, when darkness should at last invest them, through the wild mazes of vine and brake in which they now wandered, was a question which he scarce durst answer. But night came, and still Nathan led the way with unabated confidence and activity, professing a very hearty contempt for all perils and difficulties of the woods, except such as proceeded from "evil-minded Shawnee creatures;" and, indeed, averring that there was scarce a nook in the forest, for miles around, with which he was not as well acquainted as with the patches of his own leathern garments. "Truly," said he, "when I first came to this land, I did make me a little cabin in a place hard by; but the Injuns burned the same; and, verily, had it not been for little Peter, who gave me a hint of their coming, I should have been burned with it. Be of good heart, friend: if thee will keep the ill-meaning Injun-men out of my way, I will adventure to lead thee anywhere thee will, within twenty miles of this place, on the darkest night, and that through the thickest cane, or deepest swamp, thee can lay eyes on,--that is, if I have but little dog Peter to help me. Courage, friend; thee is now coming fast to the river; and, if we have but good luck in crossing it, thee shall, peradventure, find theeself nearer thee friends than thee thinks for."
This agreeable assurance was a cordial to the spirits of all, and the travellers now finding themselves, though still in profound darkness, moving through the open woodlands again, instead of the maze of copses that had so long confined them, Roland took advantage of the change to place himself at Nathan's side, and endeavour to draw from him some account of his history, and the causes that had brought him into a position and way of life so ill suited to his faith and peaceful habits. To his questions, however, Nathan seemed little disposed to return satisfactory answers, except in so far as they related to his adventures since the period of his coming to the frontier; of which he spoke very freely, though succinctly. He had built him cabins, like other lonely settlers, and planted cornfields, from which he had been driven, time after time, by the evil Shawnees, incurring frequent perils and hardships; which, with the persecutions he endured from his more warlike and intolerant neighbours, gradually drove him into the forest to seek a precarious subsistence from the spoils of the chase. As to his past life, and the causes that had made him a dweller of the wilderness, he betrayed so little inclination to satisfy the young man's curiosity, that Roland dropped the subject entirely, not however without suspecting, that the imputations Bruce had cast upon his character might have had some foundation in truth.
But while conning these things over in his mind, on a sudden the soldier stepped from the dark forest into a broad opening, canopied only by the sky, sweeping like a road through the wood, in which it was lost behind him; while, in front, it sank abruptly into a deep hollow or gulf, in which was heard the sullen rush of an impetuous river.
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The roar of the moving flood, for such, by its noise, it seemed, as they descended the river-bank, to which Nathan had so skilfully conducted them, awoke in Roland's bosom a feeling of dismay.
"Fear not," said the guide, to whom he imparted his doubts of the safety of the ford; "there is more danger in one single skulking Shawnee than ten thousand such sputtering brooks. Verily, the ford is good enough, though deep and rough; and if the water should soil thee young women's garments a little, thee should remember it will not make so ugly a stain as the bood-mark of a scalping-savage."
"Lead on," said Pardon Dodge, with unexpected spirit; "I am not one of them 'ere fellers as fears a big river; and my hoss is a dreadful fine swimmer."
"In that case," said Nathan, "if thee consents to the same; I will get up behind thee, and so pass over dry-shod; for the feel of wet leather-breeches is quite uncomfortable."
This proposal, being reasonable enough, was readily acceded to, and Nathan was in the act of climbing to the crupper of Dodge's horse, when little Peter began to manifest a prudent desire to pass the ford dry-shod also, by pawing at his master's heels, and beseeching his notice with sundry low but expressive whinings. Such, at least, was the interpretation which Roland, who perceived the animal's motions, was inclined to put upon them. He was, therefore, not a little surprised when Nathan, starting from the stirrup into which he had climbed, leaped again to the ground, staring around him from right to left with every appearance of alarm.
"Right, Peter!" he at last muttered, fixing his eye upon the further bank of the river, a dark mass of hill and forest that rose in dim relief against the clouded sky, overshadowing the whole stream, which lay like a pitchy abyss betwixt it and the travellers,--"right, Peter! thee eyes is as good as thee nose--thee is determined the poor women shall not be murdered!"
"What is it you see?" demanded Forrester, "and why do you talk of murdering?"
"Speak low, and look across the river," whispered the guide, in reply; "does thee see the light glimmering among the rocks by the roadside?"
"I see neither rocks nor road--all is to my eyes confused blackness; and as for a light, I see nothing--stay! No; 'tis the gleam of a fire-fly."
"The gleam of a fire-fly!" murmured Nathan, with tones that seemed to mingle wonder and derision with feelings of a much more serious character; "it is such a fire-fly as might burn a house, or roast a living captive at the stake:--it is a brand in the hands of a 'camping Shawnee! Look, friend, he is blowing it into a flame; and presently thee will see the whole bank around it in a glow."
It was even as Nathan said. Almost while he was yet speaking, the light, which all now clearly beheld, at first a point as small and faint as the spark of a lampyris, and then a star scarce bigger or brighter than the torch of a jack-o'-lantern, suddenly grew in magnitude, projecting a long and lance-like, though broken, reflection over the wheeling current, and then as suddenly shot into a bright and ruddy blaze, illumining hill and river, and even the anxious countenances of the travellers. At the same time, a dark figure, as of a man engaged feeding the flame with fresh fuel, was plainly seen twice or thrice to pass before it. How many others, his comrades, might be watching its increasing blaze, or preparing for their wild slumbers, among the rocks and bushes where it was kindled, it was impossible to divine. The sight of the fire itself in such a solitary spot, and under such circumstances, even if no attendant had been seen by it, would have been enough to alarm the travellers, and compel the conviction that their enemies had not forgotten to station a force at this neglected ford, as well as at the other more frequented one above, and thus to deprive them of the last hope of escape.
This unexpected incident, the climax of a long series of disappointments, all of a character so painful and exciting, drove the young soldier again to despair; which feeling the tantalising sense that he was now within but a few miles of his companions in exile, and separated from them only by the single obstruction before him, exasperated into a species of fury bordering almost upon frenzy.
"There is but one way of escape," he exclaimed, without venturing even a look towards his kinswoman, or seeking by idle words to conceal the danger of their situation: "we must pass the river, the roar of the water will drown the noise of our foot-steps; we can cross unheard and unlooked for; and then, if there be no way of avoiding them, we can pour a volley among the rascals at their fire, and take advantage of their confusion to gallop by. Look to the women, Nathan Slaughter; and you, Pardon Dodge, and Emperor, follow me, and do as you see me do."
"Truly," said Wandering Nathan, with admirable coolness and complacency, "thee is a courageous young man, and a young man of sense and spirit,--that is to say, after thee own sense of matters and things: and, truly, if it were not for the poor women, and for the blazing fire, thee might greatly confound and harmfully vanquish the evil creatures, there placed so unluckily on the bank, in the way and manner which thee thinks of. But, friend, thee plan will not do: thee might pass unheard indeed, but not unseen. Does thee not see how brightly the fire blazes on the water? Truly, we should all be seen and fired at, before we reached the middle of the stream; and, truly, I should not be surprised if the gleam of the fire on the pale faces of thee poor women should bring a shot upon us where we stand; and, therefore, friend, the sooner we get us out of the way, the better."
"And where shall we betake us?" demanded Roland, the sternness of whose accents but ill-disguised the gloom and hopelessness of his feelings.
"To a place of safety and of rest," replied the guide, "and to one that is nigh at hand; where we may lodge us, with little fear of Injuns, until such time as the waters shall bate a little, or the stars give us light to cross them at a place where are no evil Shawnees to oppose us. And then, friend as to slipping by these foolish creatures who make such bright fires on the public highway, truly, with little Peter's assistance, we can do it with great ease."
"Let us not delay," said Roland; and added sullenly, "though where a place of rest and safety can be found in these detestable woods, I can no longer imagine."
"It is a place of rest, at least for the dead," said Nathan, in a low voice, at the same time leading the party back again up the bank, and taking care to shelter them as he ascended, as much as possible, from the light of the fire, which was now blazing with great brilliancy: "nine human corpses,--father and mother, grandam and children,--sleep under the threshold at the door; and there are not many, white men or Injuns, that will, of their free will, step over the bosoms of the poor murdered creatures, after nightfall; and, the more especially, because there are them that believe they rise at midnight, and roam round the house and the clearings, mourning. Yet it is a good hiding-place for them that are in trouble; and many a night have little Peter and I sheltered us beneath the ruined roof, with little fear of either ghosts or Injuns; though, truly, we have sometimes heard strange and mournful noises among the trees around us. It is but a poor place and a sad one; but it will afford thee weary women a safe resting-place till such time as we can cross the river."
These words of Nathan brought to Roland's recollection the story of the Ashburns, whom Bruce had alluded to, as having been all destroyed at their Station in a single night by the Indians, and whose tragical fate, perhaps, more than any other circumstance, had diverted the course of travel from the ford, near to which they had seated themselves, to the upper, and, originally, less frequented one.
It was not without reluctance that Roland prepared to lead his little party to this scene of butchery and sorrow; for, though little inclined himself to superstitious feelings of any kind, he could easily imagine what would be the effect of such a scene, with its gloomy and blood-stained associations, on the harassed mind of his cousin. But suffering and terror, even on the part of Edith, were not to be thought of, where they could purchase escape from evils far more real and appalling; and he therefore avoided all remonstrance and opposition, and even sought to hasten the steps of his conductor towards the ruined and solitary pile.
The bank was soon re-ascended; and the party, stealing along in silence, presently took their last view of the ford, and the yet blazing-fire that had warned them so opportunely from its dangerous vicinity. In another moment they had crept a second time into the forest, though in the opposite quarter from that whence they had come; making their way through what had once been a broad path, evidently cut by the hands of man, through a thick cane-brake, though long disused, and now almost choked by brambles and shrubs; and, by and by, having followed it for somewhat less than half a mile, they found themselves on a kind of clearing, which, it was equally manifest, had been once a cultivated field of several acres in extent. Throughout the whole of this space, the trunks of the old forest-trees, dimly seen in the light of a clouded sky, were yet standing, but entirely leafless and dead, and presenting such an aspect of desolation as is painful to the mind, even when sunshine, and the flourishing maize at their roots, invest them with a milder and more cheerful character. Such prospects are common enough in all new American clearings, where the husbandman is content to deprive the trees of life, by _girdling_, and then leave them to the assaults of the elements and the natural course of decay; and where a thousand trunks, of the gigantic growth of the West, are thus seen rising together in the air, naked and hoary with age, they impress the imagination with such gloom as is engendered by the sight of ruined colonnades.
Such was the case with the present prospect; years had passed since the axe had sapped the strength of the mighty oaks and beeches; bough after bough, and limb after limb, had fallen to the earth, with here and there some huge trunk itself, overthrown by the blast, and now rotting among weeds on the soil which it cumbered. At the present hour, the spectacle was peculiarly mournful and dreary. The deep solitude of the spot,--the hour itself,--the gloomy aspect of the sky veiled in clouds,--the occasional rush of the wind sweeping like a tempest through the woods, to be succeeded by a dead and dismal calm,--the roll of distant thunder reverberating among-the hills,--but, more than all, the remembrance of the tragical event that had consigned the ill-fated settlement to neglect and desolation, gave the deepest character of gloom to the scene.
As the travellers entered upon the clearing, there occurred one of those casualties which so often increase the awe of the looker-on, in such places. In one of the deepest lulls and hushes of the wind, when there was no apparent cause in operation to produce such an effect, a tall and majestic trunk was seen to decline from the perpendicular, topple slowly through the air, and then fall to the earth with a crash like the shock of an earthquake.
The poet and the moralising philosopher may find food for contemplation in such a scene and such a catastrophe. He may see, in the lofty and decaying trunks, the hoary relics and representatives of a generation of better and greater spirits than those who lead the destinies of his own,--spirits, left not more as monuments of the past than as models for the imitation of the present; he may contrast their majestic serenity and rest, their silence and immovableness, with the turmoil of the greener growth around, the uproar and collision produced by every gust, and trace the resemblance to the scene where the storms of party, rising among the sons, hurtle so indecently around the gray fathers of the republic, whose presence should stay them; and, finally, he may behold in the trunks, as they yield at last to decay, and sink one by one to the earth, the fall of each aged parent of his country,--a fall, indeed, as of an oak of a thousand generations, shocking the earth around, and producing for a moment, wonder, awe, grief, and then a long forgetfulness.
But men in the situation of the travellers have neither time nor inclination for moralising. The fall of the tree only served to alarm the weaker members of the party, to some of whom, perhaps, it appeared as an inauspicious omen. Apparently, however, it woke certain mournful recollections in the brains of both little Peter and his master, the former of whom, as he passed it by, began to snuffle and whine in a low and peculiar manner; while Nathan immediately responded, as if in reply to his counsellor's address, "Ay, truly, Peter! --thee has a good memory of the matter; though five long years is a marvellous time for thee little noddle to hold things. It was under this very tree they murdered the poor old granny, and brained the innocent, helpless babe. Of a truth, it was a sight that made my heart sink within me."
"What!" asked Roland, who followed close at his heels, and over heard the half-soliloquised expressions; "were _you_ present at the massacre!"
"Alas, friend," replied Nathan, "it was neither the first nor last massacre that I have seen with these eyes. I dwelt, in them days, in a cabin a little distance down the river; and these poor people, the Ashburns, were my near neighbours; though, truly, they were not to me as neighbours should be, but held me in dis-favour because of my faith, and ever repelled me from their doors with scorn and ill-will. Yet was I sorry for them, because of the little children they had in the house, the same being far from succour; and when I found the tracks of the Injun party in the wood, as it was often my fate to do, while rambling in search of food, and saw that they were bending their way towards my own little wigwam, I said to myself, 'Whilst they are burning the same, I will get me to friend Ashburn, that he may be warned and escape to friend Brace's Station in time, with his people and cattle.' But, verily, they held my story light, and laughed and derided me: for, in them days, the people hardened their hearts and closed their ears against me, because I held it not according to conscience to kill Injuns as they did, and so refused. And so, friend, they drove me from their doors; seeing which, and perceiving the poor creatures were in a manner besotted, and bent upon their own destruction, and the night coming on fast, I turned my steps and ran with what speed I could to friend Bruce's, telling him the whole story, and advising that he should despatch a strong body of horsemen to the place, so as to frighten the evil creatures away; for, truly, I did not hold it right that there should be bloodshed. But, truly and alas, friend, I fared no better, and perhaps a little worse, at the Station than I had fared before at Ashburn's; wherefore, being left in despair, I said to myself, I will go into the woods, and hide me away, not returning to the river, lest I should be compelled to look upon the shedding-of the blood of the women and little babes, which I had no power to prevent. But it came into my mind, that, perhaps, the Injuns, not finding me in the wigwam, might lie in wait round about it, expecting my return, and so delay the attack upon friend Ashburn's house; whereby I might have time to reach him, and warn him of his danger again; and this idea prevailed with me, so that I rose me up again, and, with little Peter at my side, I ran back again, until I had reached this very field; when Peter gave me to know the Injuns were hard by. Thee don't know little Peter, friend; truly, he has the strongest nose for an Injun thee ever saw. Does thee not fear how he whines and snuffs along the grass? Now, friend, were it not that this is a bloody spot that Peter remembers well, because of the wicked deeds he saw performed, I would know by his whining, as truly as if he were to open his mouth and say as much in words, that there were evil Injuns nigh at hand, and that it behooved me to be up and a-doing. Well, friend, as I was saying,--it was with such words as these that little Peter told me that mischief was nigh; and, truly, I had scarce time to hide me in the corn, which was then in the ear, before I heard the direful yells with which the bloodthirsty creatures, who were then round about the house, woke up its frighted inmates. Verily, friend, I will not shock thee by telling thee what I heard and saw. There was a fate on the family, and even on the animals that looked to it for protection. Neither horse nor cow gave them the alarm; and even the house-dog slept so soundly, that the enemies dragged loose brush into the porch and fired it, before any one but themselves dreamed of danger. It was when the flames burst out that the warwhoop was sounded; and when the eyes of the sleepers opened, it was only to see themselves surrounded by flames and raging Shawnees. Then, friend," continued Nathan, speaking with a faltering and low voice, graduated for the ears of Roland, for whom alone the story was intended, though others caught here and there some of its dismal revealments, "then, thee may think, there was rushing out of men, women, and children, with the cracking of rifles, the crashing of hatchets, the plunge of knives, with yells and shrieks such as would turn thee spirit into ice and water to hear. It was a fearful massacre; but, friend, fearful as it was, these eyes of mine had looked on one more dreadful before: thee would not believe it, friend, but thee knows not what them see who have spent their lives on the Injun border. --Well, friend," continued the narrator, after this brief digression, "while they were murdering the stronger, I saw the weakest of all,--the old grandam, with the youngest babe in her arms, come flying into the corn; and she had reached this very tree that has fallen but now, as if to remind me of the story, when the pursuer,--for it was but a single man they sent in chase of the poor feeble old woman, caught up with her, and struck her down with his tomahawk. Then, friend,--for, truly, I saw it all in the light of the fire, being scarce two rods off,--he snatched the poor babe from the dying woman's arms, and struck it with the same bloody hatchet,--" "And you!" exclaimed Roland, leaning from his horse and clutching the speaker by the collar, for he was seized with ungovernable indignation, or rather fury, at what he esteemed the cold-blooded cowardice of Nathan, "_You_!" he cried, grasping him as if he would have torn him to pieces, "You, wretch! stood by and saw the child murdered!"
"Friend!" said Nathan, with some surprise at the unexpected assault, but still with great submissiveness, "thee is as unjust to me as others. Had I been as free to shed blood as thee theeself, yet could I not have saved the babe in that way, seeing that my gun was taken from me, and I was unarmed. Thee forgets,--or rather I forgot to inform thee,--how, when I told friend Bruce my story, he took my gun from me, saying that 'as I was not man enough to use it, I should not be allowed to carry it,' and so turned me out naked from the fort. Truly, it was an ill thing of him to take from me that which gave me my meat; and truly too, it was doubly ill of him, as it concerned the child; for I tell thee, friend, when I stood in the corn and saw the great brutal Injun raise the hatchet to strike the little child, had there been a gun in my hand, I should--I can't tell thee, friend, what I might have done; but, truly, I should not have permitted the evil creature to do the bloody deed!"
"I thought so, by Heaven!" said Roland, who had relaxed his grasp the moment Nathan mentioned the seizure of the gun, which story was corroborated by the account Bruce had himself given of that stretch of authority,--"I thought so: no human creature, not an Indian, unless the veriest dastard and dog that ever lived, could have had arms in his hand, and, on such an occasion, failed to use them! But you had humanity,--you did something?"
"Friend," said Nathan, meekly, "I did what I could,--but, truly, what could I? Nevertheless, friend, I did, being set beside myself by the sight, snatch the little babe out of the man's hands, and fly to the woods, hoping, though it was sore wounded, that it might yet live. But, alas, before I had run a mile, it died in my arms, and I was covered from head to foot with its blood. It was a sore sight for friend Bruce, whom I found with his people galloping to the ford, to see what there might be in my story: for, it seems, as he told me himself, that after he had driven me away, he could not sleep for thinking that perhaps I had told the truth. And truth enough, he soon found, I had spoken; for galloping immediately to Ashburn's house, he found nothing there but the corses of the people, and the house partly consumed,--for, being of green timber, it could not all burn. There was not one of the poor family that escaped."
"But they were avenged?" muttered the soldier.
"If thee calls killing the killers avenging," replied Nathan, "the poor deceased people had vengeance enough. Of the fourteen murderers, for that was the number, eleven were killed before day-dawn, the pursuers having discovered where they had built their fire, and so taken them by surprise; and of the three that escaped, it was afterwards said by returning captives, that only one made his way home, the other two having perished in the woods, in some way unknown. --But, truly," continued Nathan, suddenly diverting his attention from the tragic theme to the motions of his dog, "little Peter is more disturbed than is his wont. Truly, he has never had a liking to the spot: I have heard them that said a dog could scent the presence of spirits."
"To my mind," said Roland, who had not forgotten Nathan's eulogium on the excellence of the animal's nose for scenting Indians, and who was somewhat alarmed at what appeared to him the evident uneasiness of little Peter, "he is more like to wind another party of cursed Shawnees than any harmless, disembodied spirits."
"Friend," said Nathan, "it may be that Injuns have trodden upon this field this day, seeing that the wood is full of them; and it is like enough that those very evil creatures at the ford hard by have stolen hither, before taking their post, to glut their eyes with the sight of the ruins, where the blood of nine poor white persons was shed by their brothers in a single night; though, truly, in that case, they must have also thought of the thirteen murderers that bled for the victims; which would prove somewhat a drawback to their satisfaction. No, friend; Peter has his likes and his dislikes, like a human being; and this is a spot he ever approaches with abhorrence,--as, truly, I do myself, never coming hither unless when driven, as now, by necessity. But, friend, if thee is in fear, thee shall be satisfied there is no danger before thee; it shall never be said that I undertook to lead thee poor women out of mischief only to plunge them into peril. I will go before thee to the ruin, which thee sees there by the hollow, and reconnoitre."
"It needs not," said Roland, who now seeing the cabin of which they were in search close at hand, and perceiving that Peter's uneasiness had subsided, dismissed his own as being groundless. But notwithstanding, he thought proper, as Nathan advanced, to ride forward himself, and inspect the condition of the building, in which he was about to commit the safety of the being he held most dear, and on whose account, only, he felt the thousand anxieties and terrors he never could have otherwise experienced.
The building was a low cabin of logs, standing, as it seemed, on the verge of an abyss, in which the river could be heard rushing tumultuously, as if among rocks and other obstructions. It was one of those double cabins so frequently found in the west; that is to say, it consisted of two separate cots, or wings, standing a little distance apart, but united by a common roof; which thus afforded shelter to the open hall, or passage, between them; while the roof, being continued also from the eaves, both before and behind, in pent-house fashion, it allowed space for wide porches, in which, and in the open passage, the summer traveller, resting in such a cabin, will almost always find the most agreeable quarters.
How little soever of common wisdom and discretion the fate of the builders might have shown them to possess, they had not forgotten to provide their solitary dwelling with such defences as were common to all others in the land at that period. A line of palisades, carelessly and feebly constructed indeed, but perhaps sufficient for the purpose intended, enclosed the ground on which the cabin stood; and this being placed directly in the centre, and joining the palisades at the sides, thus divided the enclosure into two little yards, one in front, the other in the rear, in which was space sufficient for horses and cattle, as well as for the garrison, when called to repel assailants. The space behind extended to the verge of the river-bank, which, falling down a sheer precipice of forty or fifty feet, required no defence of stakes, and seemed never to have been provided with them; while that in front circumscribed a portion of a cleared field entirely destitute of trees, and almost of bushes.
Such had been the original plan and condition of a fortified private-dwelling, a favourable specimen, perhaps, of the _family-forts_ of the day, and which, manned by five or six active and courageous defenders, might have bidden defiance to thrice the number of barbarians that had actually succeeded in storming it. Its present appearance was ruinous and melancholy in the extreme. The stockade was in great part destroyed, especially in front, where the stakes seemed to have been rooted up by the winds, or to have fallen from sheer decay; and the right wing or cot, that had suffered most from the flames, lay a black and mouldering-pile of logs, confusedly heaped on its floor, or on the earth beneath. The only part of the building yet standing was the cot on the left hand, which consisted of but a single room, and that, as Roland perceived at a glance, almost roofless and ready to fall.
Nothing could be more truly cheerless and forbidding than the appearance of the ruined pile; and the hoarse and dismal rush of the river below, heard the more readily by reason of a deep rocky fissure, or ravine, running from the rear yard to the water's edge, through which the sound ascended in hollow echoes, added double horror to its appearance. It was, moreover, obviously insecure and untenable against any resolute enemy, to whom the ruins of the fallen wing and stockade and the rugged depths of the ravine offered much more effectual shelter, as well as the best place of annoyance. The repugnance, however, that Roland felt to occupy it even for a few hours, was combatted by Nathan, who represented that the ford at which he designed crossing the river, several miles farther down, could not be safely attempted until the rise of the waning moon, or until the clouds should disperse, affording them the benefit of the dim star-light; that the road to it ran through swamps and hollows, now submerged, in which could be found no place of rest for the females, exhausted by fatigue and mental suffering; and that the ruin might be made as secure as the Station the travellers had left; "for truly," said he, "it is not according to my ways or conscience to leave anything to chance or good luck, when there is Injun scent in the forest, though it be in the forest ten miles off. Truly, friend, I design, when thee poor tired women is sleeping, to keep watch round the ruin, with Peter to help me; and if theeself and thee two male persons have strength to do the same, it will be all the better for the same."
"It shall be done," said Roland, as much relieved by the suggestion as he was pleased by the humane spirit that prompted it: "my two soldiers can watch, if they cannot fight, and I shall take care they watch well."
Thus composing the difficulty, preparations were immediately made to occupy the ruin, into which Roland, having previously entered with the Emperor, and struck a light, introduced his weary kinswoman with her companion Telie; while Nathan and Pardon Dodge led the horses into the ravine, where they could be easily confined, and allowed to browse and drink at will, being at the same time beyond the reach of observation from any foe that might yet be prowling through the forest.
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The light struck by the negro was soon succeeded by a fire, for which ample materials lay ready at hand among the ruins; and as it blazed up from the broken and long deserted hearth, the travellers could better view the dismal aspect of the cabin. It consisted, as has been mentioned, of but a single remaining apartment, with walls of logs, from whose chinks the clay, with which they had been originally plastered, had long since vanished, with here and there a fragment of a log itself, leaving a thousand gaps for the admission of wind and rain. The ceiling of poles (for it had once possessed a kind of garret) had fallen down under the weight of the rotting roof, of which but a small portion remained, and that in the craziest condition; and the floor of _puncheons_, or planks of split logs, was in a state of equal dilapidation, more than half of it having rotted away, and mingled with the earth on which it reposed. Doors and windows there were none; but two mouldering gaps in the front and the rear walls, and another of greater magnitude opening, from the side, into what had once been the hall or passage (though now a platform heaped with fragments of charred timber), showed where the narrow entrance and loop-hole windows had once existed. The former was without leaf or defence of any kind, unless such might have been found in three or four logs standing against the wall hard by, whence they could be easily removed and piled against the opening; for which purpose, Roland did not doubt they had been used, and by the houseless Nathan himself. But a better protection was offered by the ruins of the other apartment, which had fallen down in such a way as almost to block up the door, leaving a passage in and out, only towards the rear of the building; and, in case of sudden attack and seizure of this sole entrance, there were several gaps at the bottom of the wall, through one of which, in particular, it would be easy enough to effect a retreat. At this place, the floor was entirely wanting, and the earth below washed into a gully communicating with the rocky ravine, of which it might be considered the head.
But the looks of the soldier did not dwell long upon the dreary spectacle of ruin; they were soon cast upon the countenance of Edith, concealed so long by darkness. It was even wanner and paler than he feared to find it, and her eye shone with an unnatural lustre, as it met his own. She extended her hands and placed them in his, gazed upon him piercingly, but without speaking, or indeed seeming able to utter a single word.
"Be of good heart," he said, replying to the look of inquiry; "we are unfortunate, Edith, but we are safe."
"Thank Heaven!" she exclaimed, but more wildly than fervently: "I have been looking every moment to see you shot dead at my feet! Would I had died, Roland, my brother, before I brought you to this fatal land--But I distress you! Well, I will not be frightened more. But is not this an adventure for a woman that never before looked upon a cut finger without fainting? Truly, Roland,--'truly,' as friend Nathan says,--it is as ridiculous as frightful: and then this cabin, where they killed so many poor women and children,--is it not a ridiculous lodging place for Edith Forrester? a canopy of clouds, a couch of clay, with owls and snakes for my bed-fellows--truly, truly, truly, it is very ridiculous!"
It seemed, for a moment, as if the maiden's effort to exchange her melancholy and terror for a more joyous feeling, would have resulted in producing even greater agitation than before; but the soothing words of Roland, and the encouraging countenance maintained by Telie Doe, who seemed little affected by their forlorn situation, gradually tranquilised her mind, and enabled her the better to preserve the air of levity and mirthfulness, which she so vainly attempted at first to assume. This moment of calm Roland took advantage of to apprise her of the necessity of recruiting her spirits with a few hours' asleep; for which purpose he began to look about him for some suitable place in which to strew her a bed of fern and leaves.
"Why, here is one strewn for me already," she cried, with an affected laugh, pointing to a corner, in which lay a mass of leaves so green and fresh that they looked as if plucked but a day or two before: "truly, Nathan has not invited me to his hiding-place to lodge me meanly (Heaven forgive me for laughing at the poor man; for we owe him our lives!) nay, nor to send me supperless to bed. See!" she added, pointing to a small brazen kettle, which her quick eye detected among the leaves, and which was soon followed by a second that Emperor stirred up from its concealment, and both of them, as was soon perceived, still retaining the odour of a recent savoury stew: "Look well, Emperor: where the kitchen is, the larder cannot be far distant. I warrant we shall find that Nathan has provided us a good supper."
"Such, perhaps, as a woodman only can eat," said Roland, who, somewhat surprised at the superfluous number of Nathan's valuables (for to Nathan, he doubted not, they belonged), had begun stirring the leaves, and succeeded in raking up with his rifle, which he had not laid aside, a little earthen pouch, well stored with parched corn. "A strange fellow, this Nathan," he muttered: "he really spoke as if he had not visited the ruin for a considerable period; whereas it is evident he must have slept here last night. But he seems to affect mystery in all that concerns his own private movements--it is the character of his persuasion."
While Roland, with the females, was thus laying hands, and speculating, upon the supposed chattels of their conductor, Nathan himself entered the apartment, betraying some degree of agitation in his countenance; whilst the faithful Peter, who followed at his side, manifested equal uneasiness, by snuffing the air, whining, and rubbing himself frequently against his master's legs.
"Friends," he cried, abruptly, "Peter talks too plainly to be mistaken: there is mischief nigh at hand, though where, or how it can be, sinner and weak foolish man that I am, I know not: we must leave warm fires and soft beds, and take refuge again in the woods."
This unexpected announcement again banished the blood from Edith's cheeks. She had, on his entrance, caught the pouch of corn from Roland's hands, intending to present it to the guide, with some such light expressions as should convince her kinsman of her recovered spirits; but the visage and words of Nathan struck her dumb, and she stood holding it in her hand, without speaking a word, until it caught Nathan's eye. He snatched it from her grasp, surveying it with astonishment and even alarm, and only ceased to look at it, when little Peter, who had run into the corner and among the bed of leaves, uttered a whine louder than before. The pouch dropped from Nathan's hand as his eye fell upon the shining-kettles, on which he gazed as if petrified.
"What, in Heaven's name, is the matter!" demanded Roland, himself taking the alarm: "are you frighted at your own kettles?"
"Mine!" cried Nathan, clasping his hands, and looking terror and remorse together--"If thee will kill me, friend, thee will scarce do amiss; for, miserable, blind sinner that I am, I have led thee poor luckless women into the very lion's den! into the hiding-place and head-quarters of the very cut-throats that is seeking to destroy thee! Up and away--does thee not hear Peter howling at the door? Hist! Peter, hist! --Truly, this is a pretty piece of business for thee, Nathan Slaughter! --Does thee not hear them close at hand?"
"I hear the hooting of an owl and the answer of his fellow," replied Roland; but his words were cut short by a second howl from Peter, and the cry of his master, "Up, if thee be not besotted; drag thee women by the hands and follow me."
With these words, Nathan was leaping towards the door, when a cry from Roland arrested him. He looked round and perceived Edith had fainted in the soldier's arms. "I will save the poor thing for thee--help thou the other," he cried, and snatching her up as if she had been but a feather, he was again in the act of springing to the door, when brought to a stand by a far more exciting impediment. A shriek from Telie Doe, uttered in sudden terror, was echoed by a laugh, strangely wild, harsh, guttural, and expressive of equal triumph and derision, coming from the door; looking to which the eyes of Nathan and the soldier fell upon a tall and naked Indian, shorn and painted, who, rifle in hand, the grim smile yet writhing on his features, and exclaiming with a mockery of friendly accost, "_Bo-zhoo_,[8] brudders,--Injun good friend!" was stepping that moment into the hovel; and as if that spectacle and those sounds were not enough to chill the heart's blood of the spectators, there were seen over his shoulders, the gleaming eyes, and heard behind his back, the malign laughter of three or four equally wild and ferocious companions.
[Footnote 8: _Bo-zhoo_--a corruption of the French _bon jour_, a word of salutation adopted by Western Indians from the _Voyageurs_ of Canada, and used by them with great zeal by night as well as by day.]
"To the door, if thee is a man,--rush!" cried Nathan, with a voice more like the blast of a bugle than the tone of a frighted man of peace; and casting Edith from his arms, he set the example of attack or flight--Roland scarcely knew which,--by leaping against the breast of the daring intruder. Both fell together across the threshold, and Roland obeying the call with desperate and frantic ardour, stumbled over their bodies, pitching headlong into the passage, whereby he escaped the certain death that otherwise awaited him, three several rifle-shots having been that instant poured upon him from a distance of scarce as many feet.
"Strike, if thee conscience permits thee!" he heard the voice of Nathan cry in his ears, and the next moment, a shot from the interior of the hovel, heralded by a quavering cry from the faithful Emperor,--"Lorra-gor! nebber harm an Injun in my life!" struck the hatchet from the shattered hand of a foeman, who had taken advantage of his downfall to aim a fatal blow at him while rising. A yell of pain came from the maimed and baffled warrior, who, springing over the blackened ruins before the door, escaped the stroke of the clubbed rifle which the soldier aimed at him in return, the piece having been discharged by the fall. The cry of the flying assailant was echoed by what seemed in Roland's ears the yells of fifty supporters, two of whom he saw within six feet of him, brandishing their hatchets, as if in the act of flinging them at his almost defenceless person. It was at this moment that he experienced aid from a quarter whence it was almost least expected; a rifle was discharged from the ravine, and as one of the fierce foes suddenly dropped, mortally wounded upon the floor, he heard the voice of Pardon, the Yankee, crying in tones of desperation, "When there is no dodging 'em, then I'm the man for 'em, or it a'n't no matter!"
"Bravo! bravely done, Emperor and Dodge both!" cried Roland, to whom this happy and quite unexpected display of courage from his followers, and its successful results, imparted a degree of assurance and hope not before felt; for, indeed, up to this moment, his feeling had been the mere frenzy of despair--"Courage, and rush on!" And with these words, he did not hesitate to dash against the remaining foe, striking up the uplifted hatchet with his rifle, and endeavouring with the same effort to dash his weapon into the warrior's face. But the former part only of the manoeuvre succeeded; the tomahawk was indeed dashed aside, but the rifle was torn from his own grasp, and the next moment he was clutched as in the embrace of a bear, and pressed with suffocating force upon the breast of his undaunted adversary.
"Brudder!" growled the savage, and the foam flew from his grinning lips, advanced until they were almost in contact with the soldier's face--"Brudder!" he cried, as he felt his triumph, and twined his arms still more tightly around Roland's frame, "Long-knife nothing! hab a scalp, Shawnee!"
With these words, he sprang from the broken floor of the passage, on which the encounter began, and dragging the soldier along, made as if he would have carried him off alive. But although in the grasp of a man of much superior strength, the resolution and activity of Roland preserved him from a destiny at once so fearful and ignoble. He exerted the strength he possessed at the instant when the bulky captor was springing from the floor to the broken ground beneath, and with such effect, that, though it did not entirely release him from his grasp, it carried them headlong to the earth together; whence, after a brief and blind struggle, both rose together, each clutching at the weapon that promised soonest to terminate the contest. The pistols of the soldier, which, as well as Emperor's, the peaceful Nathan had taken the precaution to carry with him into the ruin, had been forgotten in the suddenness and hurry of the assault; his rifle had been wrested from his hands, and thrown he knew not where. The knife, which, like a true adventurer of the forest, he had buckled in his belt, was ready to be grasped; but the instinct of long habits carried his hand to the broad-sword, which was yet strapped to his thigh; and this, as he rose, he attempted to draw, not doubting that a single blow of the trusty steel would rid him of his brown enemy. But the Shawnee, as bold, as alert, and far more discreet, better acquainted, too, with those savage personal rencontres which, make up so large a portion of Indian warfare, had drawn his knife before he had yet regained his footing; and before the Virginian's sword was half unsheathed, the hand that tugged at it was again seized and held as in a vice, while the warrior, elevating his own free weapon above his head, prepared, with a laugh and whoop of triumph, to plunge it into the soldier's throat. His countenance, grim with warpaint, grimmer with ferocious exultation, was distinctly perceived, the bright blaze of the fire shining through the gaps of the hovel, so as to illuminate every feature; and Roland, as he strove in vain to clutch at the uplifted arm so as to avert the threatened blow, could distinguish every motion of the weapon, and every change of his foeman's visage. But he did not even then despair, for he was, in all circumstances affecting only himself, a man of true intrepidity; and it was only when, on a sudden, the light wholly vanished from the cabin, as if the brands had been scattered and trodden out, that he began to anticipate a fatal result from the advantage possessed by his opponent. But at that very instant, and while, blinded by the sudden darkness, he was expecting the blow which he no longer knew how to avoid, the laugh of the warrior, now louder and more exultant than before, was suddenly changed to a yell of agony. A jet of warm blood, at the same moment, gushed over Roland's right arm; and the savage, struck by an unknown hand, or by a random ball, fell a dead man at his feet, overwhelming the soldier in his fall.
"Up, and do according to thee conscience!" cried Nathan Slaughter; whose friendly arm, more nervous than that of his late foe, at this conjuncture jerked Roland from beneath the body: "for, truly, thee fights like unto a young lion, or an old bear; and, truly, I will not censure thee, if thee kills a whole dozen of the wicked cut-throats! Here is thee gun and thee pistols: fire and shout aloud with thee voice; for, of a verity, thee enemies is confounded by thee resolution: do thee make them believe thee has been reinforced by numbers."
And with that the peaceful Nathan, uplifting his voice, and springing among the ruins from log to log, began to utter a series of shouts, all designed to appear as if coming from different throats, and all expressing such manly courage and defiance, that even Pardon Dodge, who yet lay ensconced among the rocks of the ravine, and Emperor, the negro, who, it seems, had taken post behind the ruins at the door, felt their spirits wax resolute and valiant, and added their voices to the din, the one roaring, "Come on, ye 'tarnal critturs, if you _must_ come!" while the other bellowed, with equal spirit, "Don't care for niggah Injun no way--will fight and die for massa and missie!"
All these several details, from the moment of the appearance of the warrior at the door until the loud shouts of the besieged travellers took the place of the savage whoops previously sounded, passed in fewer moments than we have taken pages to record them. The rush of Nathan against the leader, the discomfiture of one, and the death of his two comrades, were indeed the work of but an instant, as it seemed to Roland; and he was scarce aware of the assault, before he perceived that it was over. The successful, and, doubtless, the wholly unexpected resistance of the little party, resulting in a manner so fatal to the advanced guard of assailants, had struck terror and confusion into the main body, whose presence had been only made known by their yells, not a single shot having yet been fired by them.
It was in this moment of confusion that Nathan sprang to the side of Roland, who was hastily recharging his piece, and catching him by the hand, said, with a voice that betrayed the deepest agitation, though his countenance was veiled in night,--"Friend, I have betrayed thee poor women into danger, so that the axe and scalping-knife is now near their innocent poor heads."
"It needs not to speak of it," said Roland; adding hastily. "The miscreant that entered the cabin--did you kill him?" " _Kill_, friend! _I_ kill!" echoed Nathan, with accents more disturbed than ever; "would thee have me a murderer? Truly, I did creep over him, and leave the cabin."
"And left him in it alive!" cried Roland, who was about to rush into the hovel, when Nathan detained him, saying, "Don't thee be alarmed, friend. Truly, thee may think it was ill of me to fall upon him so violently; but, truly, be must have split his head upon a log, or wounded himself with a splinter;--or perhaps the coloured person stuck him with a knife; but, truly, as it happened his blood spouted on my hand, by reason of the hurt he got; so that I left him clean dead."
"Good!" said Roland; "but, by Heaven, I hoped and believed you had yourself finished him like a man. But time presses: we must retreat again to the woods,--they are yet open behind us."
"Thee is mistaken," said Nathan; and, as if to confirm his words, there arose at that moment a loud whooping, with the crack of a dozen or more rifles, let fly with impotent rage by the enemy, showing plainly enough that the ruin was already actually environed.
"The ravine,--the river!" cried Forrester; "we can swim it with the horses, if it be not fordable."
"It is a torrent that would sweep thee, with thee strongest war-horse, to perdition," muttered Nathan: "does thee not hear how it roars among the rocks and cliffs? It is here deep, narrow, and rocky; and, though, in the season of drought, a child might step across it from rock to rock, it is a cataract in the time of floods. No, friend; I have brought thee into a trap whence thee has no escape, unless thee would desert these poor helpless women."
"Put but them in safety," said Roland, "and care not for the rest. --And yet I do not despair: we have shown what we can do by resolution: we can keep the cut-throats at bay till the morning."
"And what will that advantage thee, except to see thee poor females murdered in the light of the sun, instead of having them killed out of thee sight in darkness? Truly, the first glimmer of dawn will be the signal of death to all; for then the Shawnees will find thee weakness, if indeed they do not find it before."
"Man!" said Roland, "why should you drive me to despair? Give me better comfort,--give me counsel, or say no more. You have brought us to this pass: do your best to save us, or our blood be upon your head!"
To these words of unjust reproach, wrung from the young soldier by the bitterness of his feelings, Nathan at first made no reply. Preserving silence for awhile, he said, at last: "Well, friend, I counsel thee to be of good heart, and to do what thee can, making thee enemies, since thee cannot increase thee friends, as few in numbers as possible;--to do which, friend," he added, suddenly, "if thee will shoot that evil creature that lies like a log on the earth, creeping towards the ruin, I will have no objection!"
With these words, which were uttered in a low voice, Nathan, pulling the young man behind a screen of fallen timbers near to which they stood, endeavoured to point him out the enemy whom his eye had that moment detected crawling towards the hovel, with the subtle motion of a serpent. But the vision of Roland, not yet accustomed to trace objects in the darkness of a wood, failed to discover the approaching foe.
"Truly," said Nathan, somewhat impatiently, "if thee will not consider it as an evil thing of me, and a blood-guiltiness, I will hold thee gun for thee, and thee shall pull the trigger!" which piece of service the man of peace, having doubtless satisfied his conscience of its lawfulness, was actually about to render the soldier, when the good intention was set at naught by the savage suddenly leaping to his feet, followed by a dozen others, all springing, as it seemed, out of the earth, and rushing with wild yells against the ruin. The suddenness and fury of the attack struck dismay to the bosom of the soldier, who, discharging his rifle, and snatching up his pistols, already in imagination beheld the bloody fingers of a barbarian grasped among the bright locks of his Edith; when Nathan, crying, "Blood upon my hands, but not upon my head! --give it to them, murdering dogs!" let fly his own piece upon the throng; the effect of which, together with the discharge of Roland's pistols immediately after, was such as to stagger the assailants, of whom but a single one preserved resolution enough to advance upon the defenders, whooping to his companions in vain to follow. "Thee will remember I fight to save the lives of thee helpless women!" muttered Nathan, in Roland's ear; and then as if the first act of warfare had released him for ever from all peaceful obligations, awakened a courage and appetite for blood superior even to the soldier's, and, in other words, set him entirely beside himself, he rushed against the advancing Shawnee, dealing him a blow with the butt of his heavy stocked rifle that crushed through skull and brain as through a gourd, killing the man on the spot. Then leaping like a buck to avoid the shot of the others, he rushed back to the ruin, and grasping the hand of the admiring soldier, and wringing it with all his might, he cried, "Thee sees what thee has brought me to! Friend, thee has seen me shed a man's blood! --But, nevertheless, friend, the villains shall not kill thee poor women, nor harm a hair of their heads."
The valour of the man of peace was fortunately seconded on this occasion by Dodge and the negro, the former from his hiding place in the ravine, the latter from among the ruins; and the enemy, thus seriously warned of the danger of approaching too nigh a fortress manned by what very naturally appeared to them eight different persons,--for such, including the pistols, was the number of fire-arms,--retired precipitately to the woods, where they expressed their hostility only by occasional whoops, and now and then by a shot fired impotently against the ruins.
The success of this second defence, the spirited behaviour of Dodge and Emperor, but more than all the happy change in the principles and practice of Nathan, who seemed as if about to prove that he could deserve the nickname of Tiger so long bestowed upon him in derision, greatly relieved the spirits of the soldier, who was not without hopes of being able to maintain the contest until the enemy should be discouraged and driven off, or some providential accident bring him succour. He took advantage of the cessation of hostilities to creep into the hovel and whisper words of assurance to his feebler dependents, of whom indeed Telie Doe now betrayed the greatest distress and agitation, while Edith, on the contrary, maintained, as he judged--for the fire was extinguished, and he saw not her countenance--a degree of tranquillity he had not dared to hope. It was a tranquillity, however, resulting from despair and stupor,--a lethargy of spirit, resulting from overwrought feelings, in which she happily remained, more than half unconscious of what was passing around her.
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The enemy, twice repulsed, and on both occasions with severe loss, had been taught the folly of exposing themselves too freely to the fire of the travellers; but although driven back, they manifested little inclination to fly further than was necessary to obtain shelter, and as little to give over their fierce purposes. Concealing themselves severally behind logs, rocks, and bushes, and so disposing their force as to form a line around the ruin, open only towards the river, where escape was obviously impracticable, they employed themselves keeping a strict watch upon the hovel, firing repeated volleys, and as often uttering yells, with which they sought to strike terror into the hearts of the besieged. Occasionally some single warrior, bolder than the rest, would creep near the ruins, and obtaining such shelter as he could, discharge his piece at any mouldering beam, or other object, which his fancy converted into the exposed body of a defender. But the travellers had taken good care to establish themselves in such positions among the ruins as offered the best protection; and although the bullets whistled sharp and nigh, not a single one had yet received a wound; nor was there much reason to apprehend injury so long as the darkness of night befriended them.
Yet it was obvious to all that this state of security could not last long, and that it existed only because the enemy was not yet aware of his advantage. The condition of the ruins was such that a dozen men of sufficient spirit, dividing themselves, and creeping along the earth, might at any moment make their way to any and every part of the hovel without being seen, when a single rush must put it in their power. An open assault indeed from the whole body of besiegers, whose number was reckoned by Nathan at full fifteen or twenty, must have produced the same success, though with the loss of several lives. A random shot might at any moment destroy or disable one of the little garrison, and thus rob one important corner of the hovel, which, from its dilapidated state was wholly indefensible from within of defence. It was indeed, as Roland felt, more than folly to hope that all should escape unharmed for many hours longer. But the worst fear of all was that previously suggested by Nathan: all might survive the perils of the night; but what fate was to be expected when the coming of day should expose the party, in all its true weakness, to the eyes of the enemy? If relief came not before morning, Roland's heart whispered him, it must come in vain. But the probabilities of relief, what were they? The question was asked of Nathan, and the answer went like iron through Roland's soul. They were in the deepest and most solitary part of the forest, twelve miles from Bruce's Station, and at least eight from that at which the emigrants were to lodge; with no other places within twice the distance, from which help could be obtained. They had left, three or four miles behind, the main and only road on which volunteers, summoned from the Western Stations to repel the invasion, of which the news had arrived before Roland's departure from Bruce's village, could be expected to pass; if indeed the strong force of the enemy posted at the Upper Ford had not cut off all communication between the two districts. From Bruce's Station little or no assistance could be hoped, the entire strength of its garrison, as Roland well knew, having long since departed to share in the struggle on the north side of Kentucky. Assistance could be looked for only from his late companions, the emigrants, from whom he had parted in an evil hour. But how were they to be made acquainted with his situation?
The discussion of these questions almost distracted the young man. Help could only come from themselves. Would it not be possible to cut their way through the besiegers? He proposed a thousand wild schemes of escape; now he would mount his trusty steed, and dashing among the enemy, receive their fire, distract their attention, and perhaps draw them in pursuit, while Nathan and the others galloped off with the women in another quarter; and again, he would plunge with them into the boiling torrent below, trusting to the strength of the horses to carry them through in safety.
To these and other frantic proposals, uttered in the intervals of combat, which was still maintained, with occasional demonstrations on the part of the enemy of advancing to a third assault, Nathan replied only by representing the certain death they would bring upon all, especially "the poor helpless women," whose condition, with the reflection that he had brought them into it, seemed ever to dwell upon his mind, producing feelings of remorseful excitement not inferior even to the compunctions which he expressed at every shot discharged by him at the foe. Indeed his conscience seemed sorely distressed and perplexed; now he upbraided himself with being the murderer of the two poor women, and now of his Shawnee fellow-creatures; now he wrung the soldier by the hand, begging him to bear witness that he was shedding blood, not out of malice or wantonness, or even self-defence, but purely to save the innocent scalps of poor women, whose blood would be otherwise on his head; and now beseeching the young man with equal fervour to let the world know of his doings, that the blame might fall, not upon the faith of which he was an unworthy professor, but upon him, the evil-doer and backslider. But with all his remorse and contrition, he manifested no inclination to give over the work of fighting; but, on the contrary, fired away with extreme good-will at every evil Shawnee creature that showed himself, encouraging Roland to do the same, and exhibiting throughout the whole contest the most exemplary courage and good conduct.
But courage and good conduct, although so unexpectedly manifested in the time of need by all his companions, Roland felt could only serve to defer for a few hours the fate of his party. The night wore away fast, the assailants grew bolder; and from the louder yells and more frequent shots coming from them, it seemed as if their numbers, instead of diminishing under his own fire, were gradually increasing by the dropping in of their scouts from the forest. At the same time, he became sensible that his stores of ammunition were fast decreasing.
"Friend," said Nathan, wringing the soldier's hand for the twentieth time, when made acquainted with the deficiency, "it is written, that thee women shall be murdered before thee eyes! Nevertheless I will do my best to save them. Friend, I must leave thee! Thee shall have assistance. Can thee hold out the hovel till morning? But it is foolish to ask thee: thee _must_ hold it out, and with none save the coloured person and the man Dodge to help thee; for I say to thee, it has come to this at last, as I thought it would: I must break through the lines of thee Injun foes, and find thee assistance."
"It is impossible," said Roland in despair; "you will only provoke your destruction."
"It may be, friend, as thee says," responded Nathan; "nevertheless, friend, for thee women's sake, I will adventure it; for it is I, miserable sinner that I am, that have brought them to this pass, and that must bring them out of it again, if man can do it."
At a moment of less grief and desperation, Roland would have better appreciated the magnitude of the service which Nathan thus offered to attempt, and even hesitated to permit what must have manifestly seemed the throwing away of a human life. But the emergency was too great to allow the operation of any but selfish feelings. The existence of his companions, the life of his Edith, depended upon procuring relief, and this could be obtained in no other way. If the undertaking was dangerous in the extreme, he saw it with the eyes of a soldier as well as a lover: it was a feat he would himself have dared without hesitation, could it have promised, in his hands, any relief to his followers.
"Go, then, and God be with you," he muttered, eagerly "you have our lives in your hand. But it will be long, long before you can reach the band on foot. Yet do not weary or pause by the way. I have but little wealth; but with what I have I will reward you."
"Friend," said Nathan proudly, "what I do I do for no lucre of reward, but for pity of thee poor women; for truly I have seen the murdering and scalping of poor women before, and the seeing of the same has left blood upon my head, which is a mournful thing to think of."
"Well, be not offended: do what you can--our lives may rest on a single minute."
"I _will_ do what I can, friend," replied Nathan; "and if I can but pass safely through thee foes, there is scarce a horse in thee company, were it even thee war-horse, that shall run to thee friends more fleetly. But, friend, do thee hold out the house: use thee powder charily; keep up the spirits of thee two men, and be of good heart theeself, fighting valiantly, and slaying according to thee conscience; and then, friend, if it be Heaven's will, I will return to thee, and help thee out of thee troubles."
With these words, Nathan turned from the soldier, setting out upon his dangerous duty with a courage and self-devotion of which Roland did not yet know all the merit. He threw himself upon the earth, and muttering to little Peter, "Now, Peter, as thee ever served thee master well and truly, serve him well and truly now," began to glide away amongst the ruins, making his way from log to log, and bush to bush, close behind the animal, who seemed to determine the period and direction of every movement. His course was down the river, the opposite of that by which the party had reached the ruin, in which quarter the woods were highest, and promised the most accessible, as well as the best shelter; though that could be reached only in the event of his successfully avoiding the different barbarians hidden among the bushes on its border. He soon vanished, with his dog, from the eyes of the soldier; who now, in pursuance of instructions previously given him by Nathan, caused his two followers to let fly a volley among the trees, which had the expected effect of drawing another in return from the foes, accompanied by their loudest whoops of menace and defiance. In this manner Nathan, as he drew nigh the wood, was enabled to form correct opinions as to the different positions of the besiegers, and to select that point in the line which seemed the weakest; while the attention of the foe was in a measure drawn off, so as to give him the better opportunity of advancing on them unobserved. With this object in view, a second and third volley were fired by the little garrison; after which they ceased making such feints of hostility, and left him, as he had directed, to his fate.
It was then that, with a beating heart, Roland awaited the event; and as he began to figure to his imagination the perils which Nathan must necessarily encounter in the undertaking, he listened for the shout of triumph that he feared would, each moment, proclaim the capture or death of his messenger. But he listened in vain,--at least, in vain for such sounds as his skill might interpret into evidences of Nathan's fate: he heard nothing but the occasional crack of a rifle aimed at the ruin, with the yell of the savage that fired it, the rush of the breeze, the rumbling of the thunder, and the deep-toned echoes from the river below. There was nothing whatever occurred, at least for a quarter of an hour, by which he might judge what was the issue of the enterprise; and he was beginning to indulge the hope that Nathan had passed safely through the besiegers, when a sudden yell of a peculiarly wild and thrilling character was uttered in the wood in the quarter in which Nathan had fled; and this, exciting, as it seemed to do, a prodigious sensation among his foes, filled him with anxiety and dread. To his ears the shout expressed fury and exultation such as might well be felt at the sudden discovery and capture of the luckless messenger; and his fear that such had been the end of Nathan's undertaking was greatly increased by what followed. The shots and whoops suddenly ceased, and, for ten minutes or more, all was silent, save the roar of the river, and the whispering of the fitful breeze. "They have taken him alive, poor wretch!" muttered the soldier, "and now they are forcing from him a confession of our weakness!"
It seemed as if there might be some foundation for the suspicion; for presently a great shout burst from the enemy, and the next moment a rush was made against the ruin as if by the whole force of the enemy. "Fire!" shouted Roland to his companions: "if we must die, let it be like men;" and no sooner did he behold the dark figures of the assailants leaping among the ruins, than he discharged his rifle and a pair of pistols which he had reserved in his own hands, the other pair having been divided between Dodge and the negro, who used them with equal resolution, and with an effect that Roland had not anticipated; the assailants, apparently daunted by the weight of the volley, seven pieces having been discharged in rapid succession, instantly beat a retreat, resuming their former positions. From these, however, they now maintained an almost incessant fire; and by and by several of them, stealing cautiously up, effected a lodgment in a distant part of the ruins, whence, without betraying any especial desire to come to closer quarters, they began to carry on the war in a manner that greatly increased Roland's alarm, their bullets flying about and into the hovel so thickly that he became afraid lest some of them should reach its hapless inhabitants. He was already debating within himself the propriety of transferring Edith and her companion from this ruinous and now dangerous abode to the ravine, where they might be sheltered from all danger, at least for a time, when a bolt of lightning, as he at first thought it, shot from the nearest group of foes, flashed over his head, and striking what remained of the roof, stood trembling in it, an arrow of blazing fire. The appearance of this missile, followed, as it immediately was, by several others discharged from the same tow, confirmed the soldier's resolution to remove the females, while it greatly increased his anxiety; for although there was little fear that the flames could be communicated from the arrows to the roof so deeply saturated by the late rains, yet each, while burning, served, like a flambeau, to illuminate the ruins below, and must be expected before long to reveal the helplessness of the party, and to light the besiegers to their prey.
With such fears on his mind, he hesitated no longer to remove his cousin and her companion to the ravine; which was effected with but little risk or difficulty, the ravine heading, as was mentioned before, under the floor of the hovel itself, and its borders being so strewn with broken timbers and planks, as to screen the party from observation. He concealed them both among the rocks and brambles with which the hollow abounded, listened a moment to the rush of the flood as it swept the precipitous bank, and the roar with which it seemed struggling among rocky obstructions above, and smiling with the grim thought, that, when resistance was no longer availing, there was yet a refuge for his kinswoman within the dark bosom of those troubled waters, to which he felt, with the stern resolution of a Roman father rather than of a Christian lover, that he could, when nothing else remained, consign her with his own hands, he returned to the ruins, to keep up the appearance of still defending it, and to preserve the entrance of the ravine.
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{
"id": "13970"
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The flaming arrows were still shot in vain at the water-soaked roof, and the combustibles with which they were armed, burning out very rapidly, produced hut little of that effect in illuminating the ruins which Roland had apprehended, and for which they had been perhaps in part designed; and, in consequence, the savages soon ceased to shoot them. A more useful ally to the besiegers was promised in the moon, which was now rising over the woods, and occasionally revealing her wan and wasted crescent through gaps in the clouds. Waning in her last quarter, and struggling amid banks of vapour, she yet retained sufficient, magnitude and lustre, when risen a few more degrees, to dispel the almost sepulchral darkness that had hitherto invested the ruins, and thus proved a more effectual protection to the travellers than their own courage. Of this Roland was well aware; and he watched the increasing light with sullen and gloomy forebodings; though still exhorting his two supporters to hope and courage, and setting them a constant example of vigilance and resolution. But neither hope nor courage, neither vigilance nor resolution, availed to deprive the foe of the advantage he had gained in effecting a lodgment among the ruins, where four or five different warriors still maintained a hot fire upon the hovel, doing, of course, little harm, as it was entirely deserted, but threatening mischief enough, when it should fall into their hands,--a catastrophe that was deferred only in consequence of the extreme cautiousness with which they now conducted hostilities, the travellers making only a show of defending it, though sensible that it almost entirely commanded the ravine.
It was now more than an hour and a half since Nathan had departed, and Roland was beginning himself to feel the hope he encouraged in the others, that the man of peace had actually succeeded in effecting his escape, and that the wild whoop which he at first esteemed the evidence of his capture or death, and the assault that followed it, had been caused by some circumstance having no relation to Nathan whatever,--perhaps by the arrival of a reinforcement, whose coming had infused new spirit into the breasts of the so long baffled assailants. "If he _have_ escaped," he muttered, "he must already be near the camp:--a strong man and fleet runner might reach it in an hour. In another hour,--nay, perhaps in half an hour, for there are good horses and bold hearts in the band,--I shall hear the rattle of their hoofs in the wood, and the yells of these cursed bandits, scattered like dust under their footsteps. If I can but hold the ravine for an hour! Thank Heaven, the moon is a second time lost in clouds, the thunder is again rolling through the sky! A tempest now were better than gales of Araby,--a thunder-gust were our salvation."
The wishes of the soldier seemed about, to be fulfilled. The clouds, which for half an hour had been breaking up, again gathered, producing thicker darkness than before; and heavy peals of thunder, heralded by pale sheets of lightning that threw a ghastly but insufficient light over objects, were again heard rattling at a distance over the woods. The fire of the savages began to slacken, and by and by entirely ceased. They waited perhaps for the moment when the increasing glare of the lightning should enable them better to distinguish between the broken timbers, the objects of so many wasted volleys, and the crouching bodies of the defenders.
The soldier took advantage of this moment of tranquillity to descend to the river to quench his thirst, and to bear back some of the liquid element to his fainting followers. While engaged in this duty he cast his eyes upon the scene, surveying with sullen interest the flood that cut off his escape from the fatal hovel. The mouth of the ravine was wide and scattered over with rocks and bushes, that even projected for some little space into the water, the latter vibrating up and down in a manner that proved the strength and irregularity of the current. The river was here bounded by frowning cliffs, from which, a furlong or two above, had fallen huge blocks of stone that greatly contracted its narrow channel; and among these the swollen waters surged and foamed with the greatest violence, producing that hollow roar, which was so much in keeping with the solitude of the ruin, and so proper an accompaniment to the growling thunder and the wild yells of the warriors. Below these massive obstructions, and opposite the mouth of the ravine, the channel had expanded into a pool; in which the waters might have regained their tranquillity and rolled along in peace, but for the presence of an island, which, growing up in the centre of the expanse, consolidated by the roots of a thousand willows and other trees that delight in such humid soils, and, in times of flood, covered by a raft of drift timber entangled among its trees, presented a barrier, on either side of which the current swept with speed and fury, though, as it seemed, entirely unopposed by rocks. In such a current, as Roland thought, there was nothing unusually formidable; a daring swimmer might easily make his way to the island opposite, where, if difficulties were presented by the second channel, he might as easily find shelter from enemies firing on him from the banks. He gazed again on the island, which, viewed in the gloom, revealed to his eyes only a mass of shadowy boughs, resting in peace and security. His heart beat high with hope, and he was beginning to debate the chances of success in an attempt to swim his party across the channel on the horses, when a flash of lightning, brighter than usual, disclosed the fancied island a cluster of shaking tree-tops, whose trunks as well as the soil that supported them, were buried fathoms deep in the flood. At the same moment, he heard coming on a gust that repelled and deadened for a time the louder tumult from the rocks above, other roaring sounds, indicating the existence of other rocky obstructions at the foot of the island, among which as he could now see, the same flash having shown him the strength of the current in the centre of the channel, the swimmer must be dashed, who failed to find footing on the island.
"We are imprisoned, indeed," he muttered, bitterly: "Heaven itself has deserted us."
As he uttered these repining words, stooping to dip the canteen with which he was provided, in the water, a little canoe, darting forward with a velocity that seemed produced by the combined strength of the current and the rower, shot suddenly among the rocks and bushes at the entrance of the ravine, wedging itself fast among them, and a human figure leaped from it to the shore. The soldier started back aghast, as if from a dweller of another world; but recovering his courage in an instant, and not doubting that he beheld in the unexpected visitor a Shawnee and foe, who had thus found means of assailing his party on the rear, he rushed upon the stranger with drawn sword, for he had laid his rifle aside, and taking him at a disadvantage, while stooping to drag the boat further ashore, he smote him such a blow over the head, as brought him instantly to the ground, a dead man to all appearance, since, while his body fell upon the earth, his head,--or at least a goodly portion of it, sliced away by the blow,--went skimming into the water.
"Die, dog!" said Roland, as he struck the blow; and not content with that, he clapped his foot on the victim's breast, to give him the _coup-de-grace_ when, wonder of wonders, the supposed Shawnee and dead man opened his lips, and cried aloud, in good choice Salt-River English,--"'Tarnal death to you, white man! what are you after?"
It was the voice, the never-to-be-forgotten voice, of the captain of horse-thieves; and as Roland's sword dropped from his hand in the surprise, up rose Roaring Ralph himself, his eyes rolling, as Roland saw by a second flash of lightning, with thrice their usual obliquity, his left hand scratching among the locks of hair exposed by the blow of the sabre, which had carried off a huge slice of his hat, without doing other mischief, while his right brandished a rifle, which he handled as if about to repay the favour with interest. But the same flash that revealed his visage to the astonished soldier, disclosed also Roland's features to him, and he fairly yelled with joy at the sight. " 'Tarnal death to me!" he roared, first leaping into the air and cracking' his heels together, then snatching at Roland's hand, which he clutched and twisted with the gripe of a bear, and then cracking his heels together again, "'tarnal death to me, sodger, but I know'd it war _you_ war in a squabblification! I heard the cracking and the squeaking; "'Tarnal death to me!' says I, 'thar's Injuns!' And then I thought, and says I, '"Tarnal death to me, who are they after?' and then, 'tarnal death to me, it came over me like a strick of lightning, and says I, 'Tarnal death to me, but its anngelliferous madam that helped me out of the halter!' Strannger!" he roared, executing another demivolte, "h'yar am I, come to do anngelliferous madam's fighting ag'in all critturs human and inhuman, Christian and Injun, white, red, black, and party-coloured. Show me anngelliferous madam, and then show me the abbregynes; and if you ever seed fighting, 'tarnal death to me, but you'll say it war only the squabbling of seed-ticks and blue-bottle flies! I say, sodger, show me anngelliferous madam: you cut the halter, and you cut the tug; but it war madam the anngel that set you on: wharfo', I'm her dog and her niggur from now to etarnity, and I'm come to fight for her, and lick her enemies till you shall see nothing left of 'em but ha'rs and nails!"
Of these expressions, uttered with extreme volubility and the most extravagant gestures, Roland took no notice; his astonishment at the horse-thief's appearance was giving way to new thoughts and hopes, and he eagerly demanded of Ralph how he had got there.
"In the dug-out,"[9] said Ralph; "found her floating among the bushes, ax'd me out a flopper[10] with my tom-axe in no time, jumped in, thought of anngelliferous madam, and came down the falls like a cob in a corn-van--ar'n't I the leaping trout of the waters? Strannger, I don't want to sw'ar; but I reckon if there ar'n't hell up thar among the big stones, thar's hell no other whar all about Salt River! But I say, sodger, I came here not to talk nor cavort[11], but to show that I'm the man, Ralph Stackpole, to die dog for them that pats me. So, whar's anngelliferous madam? Let me see her, sodger, that I may feel wolfish when I jumps among the redskins; for I'm all for a fight, and thar ar'n't no run in me."
[Footnote 9: _Dug-out_--a canoe--because _dug out_ or hollowed with the axe.]
[Footnote 10: _Flopper_--a flapper, a paddle.]
[Footnote 11: _Cavort_--to play pranks, to gasconade.]
"It is well, indeed, if it shall prove so," said Roland, not without bitterness; "for it is to you alone we owe all our misfortunes."
With these words, he led the way to the place, where, among the horses, concealed among brambles and stones, lay the unfortunate females, cowering on the bare earth. The pale sheets of lightning, flashing now with greater frequency, revealed them to Ralph's eyes, a ghastly and melancholy pair, whose situation and appearance were well fitted to move the feelings of a manly bosom; Edith lying almost insensible across Telie's knees, while the latter, weeping bitterly, yet seemed striving to forget her own distresses, while ministering to those of her companion. " 'Tarnal death to me!" cried Stackpole, looking upon Edith's pallid visage and rayless eyes with more emotion than would have been expected from his rude character, or than was expressed in his uncouth phrases, "if that don't make me eat a niggur, may I be tetotaciously chawed up myself! Oh, you anngelliferous madam! jist look up and say the word, for I'm now ready to mount a wild-cat: jist look up, and don't make a die of it, for thar's no occasion: for ar'n't I your niggur-slave, Ralph Stackpole? and ar'n't I come to lick all that's agin you, Mingo, Shawnee, Delaware, and all! Oh, you anngelliferous crittur! don't swound away, but look up, and see how I'll wallop 'em!"
And here the worthy horse-thief, seeing that his exhortations produced no effect upon the apparently dying Edith, dropped upon his knees, and began to blubber and lament over her, as if overcome by his feelings, promising her a world of Indian scalps, and a whole Salt River full of Shawnee blood, if she would only look up and see how he went about it.
"Show your gratitude by actions, not by words," said Roland, who, whatever his cause for disliking the zealous Ralph, was not unrejoiced at his presence, as that of a valuable auxiliary: "rise up, and tell me, in the name of heaven, how you succeeded in reaching this place, and what hope there is of leaving it?"
But Ralph was too much afflicted by the wretched condition of Edith, whom his gratitude for the life she had bestowed had made the mistress paramount of his soul, to give much heed to any one but herself; and it was only by dint of hard questioning that Roland drew from him, little by little, an account of the causes which had kept him in the vicinity of the travellers, and finally brought him to the scene of combat.
It had been, it appeared, an eventful and unlucky day with the horse-thief, as well as the soldier. Aside from his adventure on the beech-tree, enough in all truth to mark the day for him with a black stone, he had been peculiarly unfortunate with the horses to which he had so unceremoniously helped himself. The gallant Briareus, after sundry trials of strength with his new master, had at last succeeded in throwing him from his back; and the two-year-old pony, after obeying him the whole day with the docility of a dog, even when the halter was round his neck, and carrying him in safety until within a few miles of Jackson's Station, had attempted the same exploit, and succeeded, galloping off on the back track towards his home. This second loss was the more intolerable, since Stackpole, having endured the penalty for stealing him, considered himself as having a legal, Lynch-like right to the animal, which no one could now dispute. He therefore returned in pursuit of the pony, until night arrested his footsteps on the banks of the river, which, the waters still rising, he did not care to cross in the dark. He had, therefore, built a fire by the road-side, intending to camp-out till morning.
"And it was your fire, then, that checked us?" cried Roland, at this part of the story,--"it was _your_ light we took for the watch-fire of Indians?"
"Injuns you may say," quoth Stackpole, innocently, "for thar war a knot of 'em I seed sneaking over the ford; and jist as I was squinting a long aim at 'em, hoping I might smash two of 'em at alick, slam-bang goes a feller that had got behind me, 'tarnal death to him, and roused me out of my snuggery. Well, sodger, then I jumps into the cane, and next into the timber; for I reckoned all Injun creation war atter me. And so I sticks fast in a lick; and then to sumtotalise, I wallops down a rock, eend foremost, like a bull-toad: and, 'tarnal death to me, while I war scratching my head, and wondering whar I came from, I heerd the crack of the guns across the river, and thought of anngelliferous madam. 'Tarnal death to me, sodger, it turned me wrong side out! and while I war axing all natur' how I war to get over, what should I do but see the old sugar-trough floating in the bushes,--I seed her in a strick of lightning. So pops I in, and paddles I down, till I comes to the rocks,--and ar'n't they beauties? 'H'yar goes for grim death and massacreation,' says I, and tuck the shoot; and if I didn't fetch old dug-out through slicker than snakes, and faster than a well-greased thunderbolt, niggurs ar'n't niggurs, nor Injuns Injuns: and, strannger, if you axes me why, h'yar's the wharfo'--'twar because I thought of anngelliferous madam! Strannger, I am the gentleman to see her out of a fight; and so jist tell her thar's no occasion for being uneasy; for, 'tarnal death to me, I'll mount Shawnees, and die for her, jist like nothing."
"Wretch that you are," cried Roland, whose detestation of the unlucky cause of his troubles, revived by the discovery that it was to _his_ presence at the ford they owed their last and most fatal disappointment, rendered him somewhat insensible to the good feelings and courage which had brought the grateful fellow to his assistance,--"you were born for our destruction; every way you have proved our ruin: but for you my poor kinswoman would have been now in safety among her friends. Had she left you hanging on the beech, you would not have been on the river, to cut off her only escape, when pursued close at hand by murderous savages."
The reproach, now for the first time acquainting Stackpole with the injury he had, though so unintentionally and innocently, inflicted upon his benefactress; and the sight of her, lying apparently half-dead at his feet, wrought up the feelings of the worthy horse-thief to a pitch of desperate compunction, mingled with fury.
"If I'm the crittur that holped her into the fix, I'm the crittur to holp her out of it. 'Tarnal death to me, whar's the Injuns? H'yar goes to eat 'em!"
With that, he uttered a yell,--the first human cry that had been uttered for some time, for the assailants were still resting on their arms,--and rushing up the ravine, as if well acquainted with the localities of the Station, he ran to the ruin, repeating his cries at every step, with a loudness and vigour of tone that soon drew a response from the lurking enemy.
"H'yar you 'tarnal-temporal, long-legged, 'tater-headed paint-faces!" he roared, leaping from the passage floor to the pile of ruins before the door of the hovel (where Emperor yet lay ensconced, and whither Roland followed him), as if in utter defiance of the foemen whom he hailed with such opprobrious epithets,--"h'yar you bald head, smoke-dried, punkin-eating red-skins! you half-niggurs! you 'coon-whelps! you snakes! you varmints! you raggamuffins what goes about licking women and children, and scar'ring-anngelliferous madam! git up and show your scalp-locks; for 'tarnal death to me, I'm the man to take 'em--cock-a-doodle-doo!"
And the valiant horse-thief concluded his warlike defiance with such a crow as might have struck consternation to the heart not merely of the best game-cock in Kentucky, but of the bird of Jove itself. Great was the excitement it produced among the warriors. A furious hubbub was heard to arise among them, followed by many wrathful voices exclaiming in broken English, with eager haste, "Know him dah! cuss' rascal! Cappin Stackpole! --steal Injun hoss!" And the' "steal Injun hoss!" iterated and reiterated by a dozen voices, and always with the most iracund emphasis, enabled Roland to form a proper conception of the sense in which his enemies held that offence, as well as of the great merits and wide-spread fame of his new ally, whose mere voice had thrown the red-men into such a ferment.
But it was not with words alone they vented their displeasure. Rifle-shots and execrations were discharged together against the notorious enemy of their pinfolds; who nothing daunted, and nothing loath, let fly his own "speechifier," as he denominated his rifle, in return, accompanying the salute with divers yells and maledictions, in which latter he showed himself, to say the truth, infinitely superior to his antagonists. He would even, so great and fervent was his desire to fight the battles of his benefactress to advantage, have retained his exposed stand on the pile of ruins, daring every bullet, had not Roland dragged him down by main force, and compelled him to seek a shelter like the rest, from which, however, he carried on the war, loading and firing his piece with wonderful rapidity, and yelling and roaring all the time with triumphant fury, as if reckoning upon every shot to bring down an enemy.
It was not many minutes, however, before Roland began to fear that the fatality which had marked all his relations with the intrepid horse-thief, had not yet lost its influence, and that Stackpole's present assistance was anything but advantageous to his cause. It seemed, indeed, as if the savages had been driven to increased rage by the discovery of his presence; and that the hope of capturing _him_, the most daring and inveterate of all the hungerers after Indian horseflesh, and requiting his manifold transgressions on the spot, had infused into them new spirit and fiercer determination. Their fire became more vigorous, their shouts more wild and ferocious: those who had effected a lodgment among the ruins crept higher, while others appeared dealing their shots from other quarters close at hand; and in fine, the situation of his little party became so precarious, that Roland, apprehending every moment a general assault, and despairing of being again able to repel it, drew them secretly off from the ruin, which he abandoned entirely, and took refuge among the rocks at the head of the ravine.
It was then,--while unconscious of the sudden evacuation of the hovel, but not doubting they had driven the defenders into its interior, tho enemy poured in half a dozen or more volleys, as preliminaries to the assault which the soldier apprehended,--that he turned to the unlucky Ralph; and arresting him as he was about to fire upon the foe from his new cover, demanded, with much agitation, if it were not possible to transport the hapless females in the little canoe, which his mind had often reverted to as a probable means of escape, to a place of safety. " 'Tarnal death to me," said Ralph, "thar's a boiling-pot above and a boiling pot below; but ar'n't I the crittur to shake old Salt by the fo'-paw? Can take anngelliferous down 'ar a shoot that war ever seed!"
"And why, in Heaven's name," cried the Virginian, "did you not say so before, and relieve her from this horrible situation?" " 'Tarnal death to me, ar'nt I to do her fighting first?" demanded the honest Ralph. "Jist let's have another crack at the villians, jist for madam's satisfaction; and then, sodger, if you're for taking the shoot, I'm jist the salmon to show you the way. But I say, sodger, I won't lie," he continued, finding Roland was bent upon instant escape, while the savages were yet unaware of their flight from the hovel,--"I wont lie, sodger;--thar's rather a small trough to hold madam and the gal, and me and you and the nigger and the white man" (for Stackpole was already acquainted with the number of the party); "and as for the hosses, 'twill be all crucifixion to get 'em through old Salt's fingers."
"Think not of horses, nor of us," said Roland. "Save but the women, and it will be enough. For the rest of us, we will do our best. We can keep the hollow till we are relieved; for, if Nathan be alive, relief must be now on the way." And in a few hurried words, he acquainted Stackpole with his having despatched the man of peace to seek assistance.
"Thar's no trusting the crittur, Tiger Nathan," said Ralph; "though at a close hug, a squeeze on the small ribs, or a kick up of heels, he's all splendiferous. Afore you see his ugly pictur' ag'in, 'tarnal death to me, strannger, you'll be devoured; the red niggurs thar won't make two bites at you. No, sodger,--if we run, we run,--thar's the principle; we takes the water, the whole herd together, niggurs, hosses, and all, particularly the hosses; for, 'tarnal death to me, it's ag'in my conscience to leave so much as a hoof. And so, sodger, if you conscientiously thinks thar has been walloping enough done on both sides, I'm jist the man to help you all out of the bobbery;--though, cuss me, you might as well have cut me out of the beech without so much hard axing!"
These words of the worthy horse-thief, uttered as hurriedly as his own, but far more coolly, animated the spirits of the young soldier with double hope; and taking advantage of the busy intentness with which the enemy still poured their fire into the ruin, he despatched Ralph down the ravine, to prepare the canoe for the women, while he himself summoned Dodge and Emperor to make an effort for their own deliverance.
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The roar of the river, alternating with peals of thunder, which were now loud and frequent, awake many an anxious pang in Roland's bosom, as he lifted his half-unconscious kinswoman from the earth, and bore her to the canoe; but his anxiety was much more increased when he came to survey the little vessel itself, which was scarce twelve feet in length, and seemed ill-fitted to sustain the weight of even half the party. It was, besides, of the clumsiest and worst possible figure, a mere log, in fact, roughly hollowed out, without any attempt having been made to point its extremities; so that it looked less like a canoe than an ox-trough; which latter purpose it was perhaps designed chiefly to serve, and intended to be used for the former only when an occasional rise of the waters might make a canoe necessary to the convenience of the maker. Such a vessel, managed by a skilful hand, might indeed bear the two females, with honest Ralph, through the foaming rapids below; but Roland felt, that to burden it with others would be to insure the destruction of all. He resolved, therefore, that no other should enter it; and, having deposited Telie Doe in it by the side of Edith, he directed Dodge and Emperor to mount their horses, and trust to their strength and courage for a safe escape. To Emperor, whatever distaste he might have for the adventure, this was an order, like all others, to be obeyed without murmuring; and, fortunately, Pardon Dodge's humanity, or his discretion, was so strongly fortified by his confidence in the swimming virtues of his steed, that he very readily agreed to try his fortune on horseback.
"Anything to git round them everlasting varmint,--though it a'n't no sich great circumstance to fight 'em neither, where one's a kinder got one's hand in," he cried, with quite a joyous voice; and added, as if to encourage the others,--"it's my idea, that, if such an old crazy boat can swim the river, a hoss can do it a mortal heap better." " 'Tarnal death to me," said Ralph Stackpole, "them's got the grit that'll go down old Salt on horseback! But it's all for the good of anngelliferous madam: and so, if thar's any hard rubbing, or drowning, or anything-of that synommous natur', to happen, it ar'n't a thing to be holped no how. But hand in the guns and speechifiers, and make ready for a go; for, 'tarnal death to me, the abbrygynes ar' making a rush for the cabin!"
There was indeed little time left for deliberation. While Ralph was yet speaking, a dozen or more flaming brands were suddenly seen flung into the air, as if against the broken roof of the cabin, through which they fell into the interior; and, with a tremendous whoop, the savages, thus lighting the way to the assault, rushed against their fancied prey. The next moment, there was heard a yell of disappointed rage and wonder, followed by a rush of men into the ravine.
"Now, sodger," cried Ralph, "stick close to the trough; and if you ever seed etarnity at midnight, you'll see a small sample now!"
With that, he pushed the canoe into the stream, and Roland, urging his terrified steed with voice and spur, and leading his cousin's equally alarmed palfrey, leaped in after him, calling to Dodge and Emperor to follow. But how they followed, or whether they followed at all, it was not easy at that moment to determine; for a bright flash of lightning, glaring over the river, vanished suddenly, leaving all in double darkness, and the impetuous rush of the current whirled him he knew not whither; while the crash of the thunder that followed, prevented his hearing any other noise, save the increasing and never absent roar of the waters. Another flash illuminated the scene, and during its short-lived radiance he perceived himself flying, as it almost seemed, through the water, borne along by a furious current betwixt what appeared to him two lofty walls of crag and forest, towards those obstructions in the channel, which, in times of flood, converted the whole river into a boiling caldron. They were masses of rock, among which had lodged rafts of drift timber, forming a dam or barrier on either side of the river, from which the descending floods were whirled into a central channel, ample enough in the dry season to discharge the waters in quiet, but through which they were now driven with all the hurry and rage of a torrent. The scene, viewed in the momentary glare of the lightning, was indeed terrific: the dark and rugged walls on either side, the ramparts of timber of every shape and size, from the little willow sapling to the full-grown sycamore piled high above the rocks, and the rushing gulf betwixt them, made up a spectacle sufficient to appal the stoutest heart; and Roland gasped for breath, as he beheld the little canoe whirl into the narrow chasm, and then vanish, even before the light was over, as if swallowed up in its boiling vortex.
But there was little time for fear or conjecture. He cast the rein of the palfrey from his hand, directed Briareus's head towards the abyss, and the next moment, sweeping in darkness and with the speed of an arrow, betwixt the barriers, he felt his charger swimming beneath him in comparatively tranquil waters. Another flash illumined hill and river, and he beheld the little canoe dancing along in safety, scarce fifty yards in advance, with Stackpole waving the tattered fragments of his hat aloft, and yelling out a note of triumph. But the lusty hurrah was unheard by the soldier. A more dreadful sound came to his ears from behind, in a shriek that seemed uttered by the combined voices of men and horses, and was heard even above the din of the torrent. But it was as momentary as dreadful, and if a cry of agony, it was of agony that was soon over. Its fatal cause was soon exhibited, when Roland, awakened by the sound from the trance, which, during the brief moment of his passage through the abyss, had chained his faculties, turned, by a violent jerk, the head of his charger up the stream, in the instinctive effort to render assistance to his less fortunate followers. A fainter flash than before played upon the waters, and he beheld two or three dark masses, like the bodies of horses, hurried by among the waves, whilst another, of lesser bulk and human form, suddenly rose from the depth of the stream at his side. This he instantly grasped in his hand, and dragged half across his saddle-bow, when a broken, strangling exclamation, "Lorra-g-g-gor!" made him aware that he had saved the life of the faithful Emperor. "Clutch fast to the saddle," he cried; and the negro obeying with another ejaculation, the soldier turned Briareus again down the stream, to look for the canoe. But almost immediately his charger struck the ground; and Roland, to his inexpressible joy, found himself landed upon a projecting bank, on which the current had already swept the canoe, with its precious freight, unharmed.
"If that ar'n't equal to coming down a strick of lightning," cried Roaring Ralph, as he helped the soldier from the water, "thar's no legs to a jumping bull-frog! Smash away, old bait!" he continued, apostrophising with great exultation and self-admiration the river whose terrors he had thus so successfully defied; "ar'n't I the gentleman for you? Roar as much as you please;--when it comes to fighting for anngelliferous madam, I can lick you, old Salt, 'tarnal death to me! And so, anngelliferous madam, don't you car' a copper for the old crittur; for thar's more in his bark than his bite. And as for the abbregynes, if I've fout 'em enough for your satisfaction, we'll just say good-bye to 'em, and leave 'em to take the scalp off old Salt."
The consolation thus offered by the worthy captain of horse-thieves was lost upon Edith, who, locked in the arms of her kinsman, and sensible of her escape from the horrid danger that had so long surrounded her, sensible also of the peril from which he had just been released, wept her terrors away upon his breast, and for a moment almost forgot that her sufferings were not yet over.
It was only for an instant that the young soldier indulged his joy. He breathed a few words of comfort and encouragement, and then turned to inquire after Dodge, whose gallant hearing in the hour of danger had conquered the disgust he at first felt at his cowardice, and won upon his gratitude and respect. But the Yankee appeared not, and the loud calls Roland made for him were echoed only by the hoarse roar from the barriers, now left far behind, and the thunder that yet pealed through the sky. Nor could Emperor, when restored a little to his wits, which had been greatly disturbed by his own perils in the river, give any satisfactory account of his fate. He could only remember that the current had borne himself against the logs, under which he had been swept, and whirled he knew not whither until he found himself in the arms of his master; and Dodge, who had rushed before him into the flood, he supposed, had met a similar fate, but without the happy termination that marked his own.
That the Yankee had indeed found his death among the roaring waters, Roland could well believe, the wonder only being how the rest had escaped in safety. Of the five horses, three only had reached the bank, Briareus and the palfrey, which had fortunately followed Roland down the middle of the chasm, and the horse of the unlucky Pardon. The others had been either drowned among the logs, or swept down the stream.
A few moments sufficed to acquaint Roland with several losses; but he took little time to lament them. The deliverance of his party was not yet wholly effected, and every moment was to be improved, to put it, before daylight, beyond the reach of pursuit. The captain of horse-thieves avouched himself able to lead the way from the wilderness, to conduct the travellers to a safe ford below, and thence through the woods, to the rendezvous of the emigrants.
"Let it be anywhere," said Roland, "where there is safety; and let us not delay a moment longer. Our remaining here can avail nothing to poor Dodge."
With these words, he assisted his kinswoman upon her palfrey, placed Telie Doe upon the horse of the unfortunate Yankee, and giving up his own Briareus to the exhausted negro, prepared to resume his ill-starred journey on foot. Then, taking post on the rear, he gave the signal to his new guide; and once more the travellers were buried in the intricacies of the forest.
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It was at a critical period when the travellers effected their escape from the scene of their late sufferings. The morning was already drawing nigh, and might, but for the heavy clouds that prolonged the night of terror, have been seen shooting its first streaks through the eastern skies. Another half hour, if for that half hour they could have maintained their position in the ravine, would have seen them exposed in all their helplessness to the gaze, and to the fire of the determined foe. It became them to improve the few remaining moments of darkness, and to make such exertions as might get them, before dawn, beyond the reach of discovery or pursuit.
Exertions were, accordingly, made; and, although man and horse were alike exhausted, and the thick brakes and oozy swamps through which Roaring Ralph led the way, opposed a thousand obstructions to rapid motion, they had left the fatal ruin at least two miles behind them, or so honest Stackpole averred, when the day at last broke over the forest. To add to the satisfaction of the fugitives, it broke in unexpected splendour. The clouds parted, and, as the floating masses rolled lazily away before a pleasant morning breeze, they were seen lighted up and tinted with a thousand glorious dyes of sunshine.
The appearance of the great luminary was hailed with joy, as the omen of a happier fate than had been heralded by the clouds and storms of evening. Smiles began to beam from the haggard and care-worn visages of the travellers; the very horses seemed to feel the inspiring influence of the change; and as for Roaring Ralph, the sight of his beautiful benefactress recovering her good looks, and the exulting consciousness that it was _his_ hand which had snatched her from misery and death, produced such a fever of delight in his brain as was only to be allayed by the most extravagant expressions and actions. He assured her a dozen times over, "he was her dog and her slave, and vowed he would hunt her so many Injun scalps, and steal her such a 'tarnal chance of Shawnee hosses, thar shorld'nt be a gal in all Kentucky should come up to her for stock and glory:" and, finally, not content with making a thousand other promises of an equally extravagant character, and swearing, that, "if she axed it, he would go down on his knees and say his prayers to her," he offered, as soon as he had carried her safely across the river, to "take the backtrack, and lick, single-handed, all the Injun abbregynes that might be following." Indeed, to such a pitch did his enthusiasm run, that, not knowing how otherwise to give vent to his over-charged feelings, he suddenly turned upon his heel, and shaking his fist in the direction whence he had come, as if against the enemy who had caused his benefactress so much distress, he pronounced a formal and emphatic curse upon their whole race, "from the head-chief to the commoner, from the whisky-soaking warrior down to the pan-licking squall-a-baby," all of whom he anathematised with as much originality as fervour of expression; after which, he proceeded, with more sedateness, to resume his post at the head of the travellers, and conduct them onwards on their way.
Another hour was now consumed in diving amid cane-brakes and swamps, to which Roaring Ralph evinced a decidedly greater partiality than to the open forest, in which the travellers had found themselves at the dawn; and in this he seemed to show somewhat more of judgment and discretion than would have been argued from his hair-brained conversation; for the danger of stumbling upon scouting Indians, of which the country now seemed so full, was manifestly greater in the open woods than in the dark and almost unfrequented cane-brakes: and the worthy horse-thief, with all his apparent love of fight, was not at all anxious that the angel of his worship should be alarmed or endangered, while entrusted to his zealous safe-keeping.
But it happened in this case, as it has happened with better and wiser men, that Stackpole's cunning over-reached itself, as was fully shown in the event; and it would have been happier for himself and all if his discretion, instead of plunging him among difficult and almost impassable bogs, where a precious hour was wasted in effecting a mere temporary security and concealment from observation, had taught him the necessity of pushing onwards with all possible speed, so as to leave pursuers, if pursuit should be attempted, far behind. At the expiration of that hour, so injudiciously wasted, the fugitives issued from the brake, and stepping into a narrow path worn by the feet of bisons, among stunted shrubs and parched grasses, along the face of a lime-stone bed, sparingly scattered over with a similar barren growth, began to wind their way downward into a hollow vale, in which they could hear the murmurs, and perceive the glimmering waters of the river over which they seemed never destined to pass. " _Thar_', 'tarnal death to me!" roared Ralph, pointing downwards with triumph, "arn't that old Salt now, looking as sweet and liquorish as a whole trough-full of sugar-tree? We'll just take a dip at him, anngelliferous madam, jist to wash the mud off our shoes; and then, 'tarnal death to me, farewell to old Salt, and the abbregynes together--cock-a-doodle-doo!"
With this comfortable assurance, and such encouragement as he could convey in the lustiest gallicantation ever fetched from lungs of man or fowl, the worthy Stackpole, who had slackened his steps, but without stopping while he spoke, turned his face again to the descent; when--as if that war-cry had conjured up enemies from the very air,--a rifle bullet, shot from a bush not six yards off, suddenly whizzed through his hair, scattering a handful of it to the winds; and while a dozen or more were, at the same instant, poured upon other members of the unfortunate party, fourteen or fifteen savages rushed out from their concealment among the grass and bushes, three of whom seized upon the rein of the unhappy Edith, while twice as many sprang upon Captain Forrester, and, before he could raise an arm in defence, bore him to the earth, a victim or a prisoner.
So much the astounded horse-thief saw with his own eyes; but before he could make good any of the numberless promises he had volunteered, during the morning journey, of killing and eating the whole family of North American Indians, or exemplify the unutterable gratitude and devotion he had as often professed to the fair Virginian, four brawny barbarians, one of them rising at his side and from the very bush whence the bullet had been discharged at his head, rushed against him, flourishing their guns and knives, and yelling with transport, "Got you _now_, Cappin Stackpole, steal-hoss! No go steal no hoss no more! roast on great big fire!" " 'Tarnal death to me!" roared Stackpole, forgetting everything else in the instinct of self-preservation; and firing his piece at the nearest enemy, he suddenly leaped from the path into the bushes on its lower side, where was a precipitous descent, down which he went rolling and crashing with a velocity almost equal to that of the bullets that were sent after him. Three of the four assailants immediately darted after in pursuit, and their shouts growing fainter and fainter as they descended, were mingled with the loud yell of victory, now uttered by a dozen savage voices from the hill-side.
It was a victory, indeed, in every sense, complete, almost bloodless, as it seemed, to the assailants, and effected at a moment when the hopes of the travellers were at the highest: and so sudden was the attack, so instantaneous the change from freedom to captivity, so like the juggling transition of a dream the whole catastrophe, that Forrester, although overthrown and bleeding from two several wounds received at the first fire, and wholly in the power of his enemies, who flourished their knives and axes in his face, yelling with exultation, could scarce appreciate his situation, or understand what dreadful misadventure had happened, until his eye, wandering among the dusky arms that grappled him, fell first upon the body of the negro Emperor, hard by, gored by numberless wounds, and trampled by the feet of his slayers, and then upon the apparition, a thousand times more dismal to his eyes, of his kinswoman snatched from her horse and struggling in the arms of her savage captors. The frenzy with which he was seized at this lamentable sight endowed him with a giant's strength; but it was exerted in vain to free himself from his enemies, all of whom seemed to experience a barbarous delight at his struggles, some encouraging him, with loud laughter and in broken English, to continue them, while others taunted and scolded at him more like shrewish squaws than valiant warriors, assuring him that they were great Shawnee fighting-men, and he a little Long-knife dog, entirely beneath their notice: which expressions, though at variance with all his preconceived notions of the stern gravity of the Indian character, and rather indicative of a roughly jocose than a darkly ferocious spirit, did not prevent their taking the surest means to quiet his exertions and secure their prize, by tying his hands behind him with a thong of buffalo hide, drawn so tight as to inflict the most excruciating pain. But pain of body was then, and for many moments after, lost in agony of mind, which could he conceived only by him who, like the young soldier, has been doomed, once in his life, to see a tender female, the nearest and dearest object of his affections, in the hands of enemies, the most heartless, merciless, and brutal of all the races of men. He saw her pale visage convulsed with terror and despair,--he beheld her arms stretched towards him, as if beseeching the help he no longer had the power to render,--and expected every instant the fall of the hatchet, or the flash of the knife, that was to pour her blood upon the earth before him. He would have called upon the wretches around for pity, but his tongue clove to his mouth, his brain spun round; and such became the intensity of his feelings, that he was suddenly bereft of sense, and fell like a dead man to the earth, where he lay for a time, ignorant of all events passing around, ignorant also of the duration of his insensibility.
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When the soldier recovered his senses, it was to wonder again at the change that had come over the scene. The loud yells, the bitter taunts, the mocking laughs, were heard no more; and nothing broke the silence of the wilderness save the stir of the leaf in the breeze, and the ripple of the river against its pebbly banks below. He glanced a moment from the bush in which he was lying, in search of the barbarians who had lately covered the slope of the hill, but all had vanished; captor and captive had alike fled; and the sparrow twittering among the stunted bushes, and the grasshopper singing in the grass, were the only living objects to be seen. The thong was still upon his wrists, and as he felt it rankling in his flesh, he almost believed that his savage captors, with a refinement in cruelty the more remarkable as it must have robbed them of the sight of his dying agonies, had left him thus bound and wounded, to perish miserably in the wilderness alone.
This suspicion was, however, soon driven from his mind; for making an effort to rise to his feet, he found himself suddenly withheld by a powerful grasp, while a guttural voice muttered in his ear from behind, with accents half angry, half exultant,--"Long-knife no move;--see how Piankeshaw kill Long-knife's brudders! --Piankeshaw great fighting-man!" He turned his face with difficulty, and saw, crouching among the leaves behind him, a grim old warrior plentifully bedaubed over head and breast with the scarlet clay of his native Wabash, his dark shining eyes bent now upon his rifle which he held extended over Roland's body, now turned upon Roland himself, whom he seemed to watch over with a miser's, or a wild-cat's, affection, and now wandering away up the stony path along the hill-side, as if in expectation of the coming of an object dearer even than rifle or captive to his imagination.
In the confused and distracted state of his mind, Roland was as little able to understand the expressions of the warrior as to account for the disappearance of his murderous associates; and he would have marvelled for what purpose he was thus concealed, among the bushes with his grim companion, had not his whole soul been too busily and painfully occupied with the thoughts of his vanished Edith. He strove to ask the wild barbarian of her fate, but the latter motioned him fiercely to keep silence; and the motion and the savage look that accompanied it being disregarded, the Indian drew a long knife from his belt, and pressing the point on Roland's throat, muttered too sternly and emphatically to be misconceived,--"Long-knife speak, Long-knife die! Piankeshaw fight Long-knife's brudders--Piankeshaw great fighting-man!" from which all that Roland could understand was that there was mischief of some kind still in the wind, and that he was commanded to preserve silence on the peril of his life. What that mischief could be he was unable to divine; but he was not kept long in ignorance.
As he lay upon the ground, his cheek pillowed upon it stone which accident, or perhaps the humanity of the old warrior, had placed under his head, he could distinguish a hollow, pattering, distant sound, in which, at first mistaken for the murmuring of the river over some rocky ledge, and then for the clatter of wild beasts approaching over the rocky hill, his practised ear soon detected the trampling of a body of horse, evidently winding their way along the stony road which had conducted him to captivity, and from which he was but a few paces removed. His heart thrilled within him. Was it, could it be, a band of gallant Kentuckians, in pursuit of the bold marauders, whose presence in the neighbourhood of the settlements had been already made known? or could they be (the thrill of expectation grew to transport, as he thought it) his fellow emigrants, summoned by the faithful Nathan to his assistance, and now straining every nerve to overtake the savages, whom they had tracked from the deserted ruin? He could now account for the disappearance of his captors, and the deathlike silence that surrounded him. Too vigilant to be taken at unawares, and perhaps long since apprised of the coming of the band, the Indians had resumed their hiding-places in the grass and among the bushes, preparing for the new-comers an ambuscade similar to that they had so successfully practised against Roland's unfortunate party. "Let them hide as they will, detestable miscreants," he uttered to himself with feelings of vindictive triumph; "they will not, this time, have frightened women and a handful of dispirited fugitives to deal with."
With these feelings burning in his bosom, he made an effort to turn his face towards the top of the hill, that he might catch the first sight of the friendly band, and glut his eyes with the view of the anticipated speedy discomfiture and destruction of his enemies. In this effort he received unexpected aid from the old warrior, who, perceiving his intention, pulled him round with his own hands, telling him, with the grim complacency of one who desired a witness to his bravery, "Now, you hold still, you see,--you see Piankeshaw old Injun,--you see Piankeshaw kill man, take scalp, kill all Long-knife:--debbil great fighting-man, old Piankeshaw!" which self-admiring assurance, repeated for the third time, the warrior pronounced with extreme earnestness and emphasis.
It was now that Roland could distinctly perceive the nature of the ground on which his captors had formed their ambush. The hill along whose side the bison path went winding down to the river with an easy descent, was nearly bare of trees, its barren soil affording nourishment only for a coarse grass, enamelled with asters and other brilliant flowers, and for a few stunted cedar-bushes, scattered here and there; while, in many places, the naked rock, broken into ledges and gullies, the beds of occasional brooks, was seen gleaming gray and desolate in the sunshine. Its surface being thus broken, was unfit for the operations of cavalry; and the savages being posted, as Roland judged from the position of the old Piankeshaw, midway along the descent, where were but few trees of sufficient magnitude to serve as a cover to assailants, while they themselves were concealed behind rocks and bushes, there was little doubt they could inflict loss upon an advancing body of footmen of equal numbers, and perhaps repel them altogether. But, Roland, now impressed with the belief that the approaching horsemen, whose trampling grew heavier each moment, as if they were advancing at a full trot, composed the flower of his own band, had but little fear of the result of a contest. He did not doubt they would outnumber the savages, who, he thought, could not muster more than fifteen or sixteen guns; and coming from a Station, which he had been taught to believe was of no mean strength it was more than probable their numbers had been reinforced by a detachment from its garrison.
Such were his thoughts, such were his hopes, as the party drew yet nigher, the sound of their hoofs clattering at last on the ridge of the hill; but his disappointment may be imagined, when, as they burst at last on his sight, emerging from the woods above, the gallant party dwindled suddenly into a troop of young men, only eleven in number, who rattled along the path in greater haste than order, as if dreaming of anything in the world but the proximity of an enemy. The leader he recognised at a glance by his tall figure, as Tom Bruce the younger, whose feats of Regulation the previous day had produced a strong though indirect influence on his own fortunes; and the ten lusty youths who followed his heels, he doubted not, made up the limbs and body of that inquisitorial court which, under him as its head, had dispensed so liberal an allowance of border law to honest Ralph Stackpole. That they were now travelling on duty of a similar kind, he was strongly inclined to believe; but the appearance of their horses, covered with foam, as if they had ridden far and fast, their rifles held in readiness in both hands, as if in momentary expectation of being called on to use them, with an occasional gesture from their youthful leader, who seemed to encourage them to greater speed, convinced him they were bent upon more serious business, perhaps in pursuit of the Indians, with whose marauding visitation some accident had made them acquainted.
The smallness of the force, and its almost entire incompetence to yield him any relief, filled the soldier's breast with despair; but, hopeless as he was, he could not see the gallant young men rushing blindly among the savages, each of whose rifles was already selecting its victim, without making an effort to apprize them of their danger. Forgetting, therefore, his own situation, or generously disregarding it, he summoned all his strength, and, as they began to descend the hill, shouted aloud, "Beware the ambush! --Halt"--But before the words were all uttered, he was grasped by the throat with strangling violence, and the old warrior, whose left hand thus choked his utterance, drew his knife a second time, with the other, and seemed for an instant as if he would have plunged it into the soldier's bosom.
But the cry had not been made in vain, and although, from the distance, the words had not been distinguished by the young Kentuckians, enough was heard to convince them the enemy was nigh at hand. They came to an immediate halt, and Roland, whose throat was still held by the warrior and his bosom threatened by the vengeful knife, but whose eyes neither the anguish of suffocation nor the fear of instant death could draw from the little band, saw them leap from their horses, which were given in charge of one of the number, who immediately retired beyond the brow of the hill; while Tom Bruce, a worthy scion of a warlike stock, brandishing his rifle in one hand, and with the other pointing his nine remaining followers down the road, cried, in tones so manly that they came to Roland's ear,--"Now, boys, the women's down _thar_, and the red skins with them! Show fight, for the honour of Kentuck and the love of woman. Every man to his bush, and every bullet to its Injun! Bring the brutes out of their cover!"
This speech, short and homely as it was, was answered by a loud shout from the nine young men, who began to divide, with the intention of obeying its simple final instructions; when the Indians, seeing the design, unwilling to forego the advantage of the first open shot and perhaps hoping by a weak fire to mask their strength, and decoy the young Kentuckians into closer quarters, let fly a volley of six or seven guns from the bushes near to where Roland lay, but without doing much mischief, or even deceiving the young men, as was expected.
"Thar they go, the brutes!" roared Tom Bruce, adding as he sprang with his followers among the bushes, "show 'em your noses, and keep a good squint over your elbows."
"Long-knife big fool,--Piankeshaw eat him up!" cried, the old warrior, now releasing the soldier's throat from durance, but speaking with tones of ire and indignation: "shall see how great Injun fighting-man eat up white man!"
With these words, leaving Roland to endure his bonds, and solace himself as he might, he crept away into the long grass, and was soon entirely lost to sight.
The combat that now ensued was one so different in most of its characteristics from all that Roland had ever before witnessed, that he watched its progress, notwithstanding the tortures of his bonds and the fever of his mind, with an interest even apart from that which he necessarily felt in it, as one whose all of happiness or misery depended upon the issue. In all conflicts in which he had been engaged, the adverse ranks were arrayed face to face, looking upon each other as they fought; but here no man saw his enemy, both parties concealing themselves so effectually in the grass and among the rocks and shrubs, that there was nothing to indicate even their existence, save the occasional discharge of a rifle, and the wreath of white smoke curling up from it into the air. In the battles of regular soldiers, too, men fought in masses, the chief strength of either party arising from the support which individuals thus gave to one another, each deriving additional courage and confidence from the presence of his fellows. Here, on the contrary, it seemed the first object of each individual, whether American or Indian, to separate himself as far from his friends as possible, seeking his own enemies, trusting to his own resources, carrying on the war on his own foundation,--in short, like the enthusiastic Jerseyman, who, without belonging to either side, was found at the battle of Monmouth, peppering away from a fence, at whatever he fancied a foeman--"fighting on his own _hook_" entirely.
It did not seem to Roland as if a battle fought upon such principles, could result in any great injury to either party. But he forget, or rather he was ignorant, that the separation of the combatants, while effecting the best protection not merely to any one individual, but to all his comrades, who must have been endangered, if near him; by every bullet aimed at himself, did not imply either fear or hesitation on his part, whose object, next to that mentioned, was to avoid the shots of the many, while seeking out and approaching a single antagonist, whom he was ever ready singly to encounter.
And thus it happened, that, while Roland deemed the antagonists were manoeuvring over the hill side, dragging themselves from bush to bush and rock to rock, to no profitable purpose, they were actually creeping nigher and nigher to each other every moment, the savages crawling onwards with the exultation of men who felt their superior strength, and the Kentuckians advancing with equal alacrity, as if ignorant of, or bravely indifferent to their inferiority.
It was not a long time, indeed, before the Virginian began to have a better opinion of the intentions of the respective parties; for, by and by, the shots, which were at first fired very irregularly and at long intervals, became more frequent, and, as it seemed, more serious, and an occasional whoop from an Indian, or a wild shout from a Kentuckian, showed that the excitement of actual conflict was beginning to be felt on either side. At the same time, he became sensible, from the direction of the firing, that both parties had gradually extended themselves in a line, reaching, notwithstanding the smallness of their numbers, from the crest of the hill on the one hand, to the borders of the river on the other, and thus perceived that the gallant Regulators, however ignorant of the science of war, and borne by impetuous tempers into a contest with a more numerous foe, were not in the mood to be taken either on the flank or rear, but were resolved, in true military style, to keep their antagonists before them.
In this manner, the conflict continued for many minutes, the combatants approaching nearer and nearer, the excitement waxing fiercer every instant, until shots were incessantly exchanged, and, as it seemed, with occasional effect; for the yells, which grew louder and more frequent on both sides, were sometimes mingled with cries of pain on the one hand, and shouts of triumph on the other; during all which time, nothing whatever was seen of the combatants, at least by Roland, whose mental agonies were not a little increased by his being a compelled spectator, if such he could be called, of a battle in which he was so deeply interested, without possessing the power to mingle in it, or strike a single blow on his own behalf. His fears of the event had been, from the first, much stronger than his hopes. Aware of the greatly superior strength of the savages, he did not doubt that the moment would come when he should see them rush in a body upon the Kentuckians, and overwhelm them with numbers. But that was a measure into which nothing but an uncommon pitch of fury could have driven the barbarians: for with marksmen like those opposed to them, who needed but a glance of an enemy to insure his instant destruction, the first spring from the grass would have been the signal of death to all who attempted it, leaving the survivors, no longer superior in numbers, to decide the contest with men who were, individually, in courage, strength, and skill, at least their equals. Indeed, a proof of the extreme folly of such a course on the part of the Indians was soon shown when the Regulators, fighting their way onwards as if wholly regardless of the superior numbers of the foe, had advanced so nigh the latter as to command (which from occupying the highest ground, they were better able to do) the hiding-places of some of their opponents. Three young warriors, yielding to their fury, ashamed perhaps of being thus bearded by a weaker foe, or inflamed with the hope of securing a scalp of one young Kentuckian who had crept dangerously nigh, suddenly sprung from their lairs, and guided by the smoke of the rifle which he had just discharged, rushed towards the spot, yelling with vindictive exultation. They were the first combatants Roland had yet seen actually engaged in the conflict; and he noted their appearance and act of daring with a sinking heart, as the prelude to a charge from the whole body of Indians upon the devoted Kentuckians. But scarce were their brown bodies seen to rise from the grass, before three rifles were fired from as many points on the hill-side, following each other in such rapid succession that the ear could scarce distinguish the different explosions, each of them telling with fatal effect upon the rash warriors, two of whom fell dead on the spot, while the third and foremost, uttering a faint whoop of defiance and making an effort to throw the hatchet he held in his hand, suddenly staggered and fell in like manner to the earth.
Loud and bold was the shout of the Kentuckians at this happy stroke of success, and laughs of scorn were mingled with their warlike hurrahs, as they prepared to improve the advantage so fortunately gained. Loudest of all in both laugh and hurrah was the young Tom Bruce, whose voice was heard, scarce sixty yards off, roaring, "Hurrah for old Kentuck! Try 'em agin, boys, give it to 'em handsome once more! and then, boys, a rush for the women!"
The sound of a friendly voice at so short a distance fired Roland's heart with hope, and he shouted aloud himself, no Indian seeming nigh, for assistance. But his voice was lost in a tempest of yells, the utterance of grief and fury, with which the fall of their three companions had filled the breasts of the savages. The effect of this fatal loss, stirring up their passions to a sudden frenzy, was to goad them into the very step which they had hitherto so wisely avoided. All sprang from the ground as with one consent, and regardless of the exposure and danger, dashed, with hideous shouts, against the Kentuckians. But the volley with which they were received, each Kentuckian selecting his man, and firing with unerring and merciless aim, damped their short-lived ardour; and quickly dropping again among the grass and bushes, they were fain to continue the combat as they had begun it, in a way which, if it produced less injury to their antagonists, was conducive of greater safety to themselves.
The firing was now hot and incessant on both sides, but particularly on the part of the Regulators, who, inspired by success, but still prudently avoiding all unnecessary exposure of their persons, pressed their enemies with a spirit from which Roland now for the first time drew the happiest auguries. Their stirring hurrahs bespoke a confidence in the result of the fray, infinitely cheering to his spirits; and he forgot his tortures, which from the many frantic struggles he had made to force the thong from his wrists, drawing it at each still further into his flesh, were now almost insupportable, when, amid the din of firing and yelling, he heard Tom Bruce cry aloud to his companions, "Now, boys! one more crack, and then for rifle-butt, knife, and hatchet!" It seemed, indeed, as if the heavy losses the Indians had sustained, had turned the scale of battle entirely in favour of the Kentuckians. It was evident even to Roland, that the former, although yelling and shouting with as much apparent vigour as ever, were gradually giving ground before the latter, and retreating towards their former lairs; while he could as clearly perceive, from Bruce's expressions, that the intrepid Kentuckian was actually preparing to execute the very measure that had caused such loss to his enemies, and which, being thus resolved on, showed his confidence of victory. "Ready, boys!" he heard him shout again, and even nigher than before;--"take the shoot with full pieces, and let the skirmudgeons have it handsome!"
At that conjuncture, and just when Forrester caught his breath with intense and devouring expectation, an incident occurred which entirely changed the face of affairs, and snatched the victory from the hands of the Kentuckians. The gallant Bruce, thus calling upon his followers to prepare for the charge, had scarce uttered the words recorded, before a voice, lustier even than his own, bellowed from a bush immediately on his rear,--"Take it like a butcher's bull-dog, tooth and nail! --knife and skull-splitter, foot and finger, give it to 'em every way,--cock-a-doodle-doo!"
At these words, coming from a quarter and from an ally entirely unexpected, young Bruce looked behind him and beheld, emerging from a hazel bush, through which it had just forced its way, the visage of Roaring Ralph Stackpole, its natural ugliness greatly increased by countless scratches and spots of blood, the result of his leap down the ledge of rocks, when first set upon by the Indians, and his eyes squinting daggers and ratsbane, especially while he was giving utterance to that gallinaceous slogan with which he was wont to express his appetite for conflict, and with which he now concluded his unceremonious salutation.
The voice and visage were alike familiar to Bruce's senses, and neither was so well fitted to excite alarm as merriment. But, on the present occasion, they produced an effect upon the young Regulator's spirits, and through them upon his actions, the most unfortunate in the world; to understand which it must be recollected that the worthy Kentuckian had, twenty-four hours before, with his own hands, assisted in gibbeting honest Ralph on the beech tree, where, he had every reason to suppose, his lifeless body was hanging at that very moment. His astonishment and horror may therefore be conceived, when, turning in some purturbation at the well known voice, he beheld that identical body, the corse of the executed horse-thief, crawling after him in the grass, "winking, and blinking, and squinting," as he was used afterwards to say, "as if the devil had him by the pastern." It was a spectacle which the nerves of even Tom Bruce could not stand; it did what armed Indians could not do,--it frightened him out of his propriety. Forgetting his situation, his comrades, the savages,--forgetting everything but the fact of his having administered the last correction of Lynch-law to the object of his terror, he sprang on his feet, and roaring, "By the etarnal devil, here's Ralph Stackpole!" he took to his heels, running, in his confusion, right in the direction of the enemy, among whom he would have presently found himself, but for a shot, by which, before he had run six yards, the unfortunate youth was struck to the earth.
The exclamation, and the sight of Ralph himself, who also rose to follow the young leader upon what he deemed a rush against the foe, electrified the whole body of the Regulators, who were immediately thrown into confusion; of which the savages took the same advantage they had taken of Bruce's agitation, firing upon them as they rose, and then rushing upon them to end the fray, before they could recover their wits or spirits. It needed but this, and the fall of their leader, to render the disorder of the young men irretrievable; and, accordingly, in less than a moment they were seen,--all, at least, who were not already disabled,--flying in a panic from the field of battle. It was in vain that the captain of horse-thieves, divining at last the cause of their extraordinary flight, roared out that he was a living man, with nothing of a ghost about him whatever; the panic was universal and irremediable, and nothing remained for him to do but to save his own life as quickly as possible. " 'Tarnal death to me!" he bellowed, turning to fly; but a groan from Bruce fell on his ear. He ran to the side of the fallen youth, and catching him by the hand, exclaimed, "Now for the best leg, Tom, and a rush up hill to the bosses!"
"You _ar'n't_ hanged then, after all?" muttered the junior; and then fell back as if unable to rise, adding faintly, "Go;--rat it, I'm done for. --As for the--'l--savages, what I have to say--'l--'l--. But I reckon scalping's not much;--'l--'l--one soon gets used to it!" -- And thus the young Kentuckian, his blood oozing-fast, his mind wandering, his utterance failing, muttered, resigning himself to his fate, ignorant that even Stackpole was no longer at his side to hear him. His fate did indeed seem to be inevitable; for while Stackpole had him by the hand, vainly tugging to get him on his feet, three different Indians were seen running with might and main to quench the last spark of his existence, and to finish Stackpole at the same time. But in that very emergency, the ill-luck which seemed to pursue the horse-thief, and all with whom he was associated, found a change; and destiny sent them doth assistance in a way and by means as unexpected as they were unhoped for. The approach of the savages was noticed by Roaring Ralph, who, not knowing how to save his young executioner, against whom he seemed to entertain no feelings of anger whatever, and whose approaching fate he appeared well disposed to revenge beforehand, clapped his rifle to his shoulder, to make sure of one of the number; when his eye was attracted by the spectacle of a horse rushing up the stony road, neighing furiously, and scattering the Indians from before him. It was the charger Briareus, who had broken from the tree where he had been fastened below, and now came dashing up the hill, distracted with terror, or perhaps burning to mingle in the battle, which he had heard and snuffed from afar. He galloped by the three Indians, who leaped aside in alarm, while Stackpole, taking advantage of the moment, ran up and seized him by the bridle. In another moment, he had assisted the fainting Kentuckian upon the animal's back, leaped up behind him, and was dashing with wild speed up the hill, yelling with triumph, and laughing to scorn the bullets that were shot vainly after.
All this the unhappy Roland beheld, and with a revulsion of feelings, that can only be imagined. He saw, without, indeed, entirely comprehending the cause, the sudden confusion and final flight of the little band, at the moment of anticipated victory. He saw them flying wildly up the hill, in irretrievable rout, followed by the whooping victors, who, with the fugitives, soon vanished entirely from view, leaving the field of battle to the dead and to the thrice miserable captives.
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The conflict, though sharp and hot, considering the insignificant number of combatants on either side, was of no very long duration, the whole time, from the appearance of the Kentuckians until the flight, scarce exceeding half an hour. But the pursuit, which the victors immediately commenced, lasted a much longer space; and it was more than an hour,--an age of suspense and suffering to the soldier,--before the sound of whooping on the hill apprised him of their return. They brought with them, as trophies of success two horses, on each of which sat three or four different Indians, as many indeed as could get upon the animal's back, where they clung together, shouting, laughing, and otherwise diverting themselves, more like joyous schoolboys than stern warriors who had just fought and won a bloody, battle.
But this semblance of mirth and good humour lasted no longer than while the savages were riding from the hill-top to the battle-ground, which having reached, they sprang upon the ground, and running wildly about, uttered several cries of the most mournful character, laments, as Roland supposed, over the bodies of their fallen companions.
But if such was their sorrow while looking-upon their own dead, the sight of their lifeless foemen--of whom two, besides the negro Emperor, who had been tomahawked the moment after he fell, had been unhappily left lying on the field--soon changed it into a fiercer passion. The wail became a yell of fury, loud and frightful; and Roland could see them gathering around each corpse, striking the senseless clay repeatedly with their knives and hatchets, each seeking to surpass his fellow in the savage work of mutilation. Such is the red man of America, whom courage, an attribute of all lovers of blood, whether man or animal; misfortune, the destiny, in every quarter of the globe, of every barbarous race, which contact with, a civilised one cannot civilise; and the dreams of poets and sentimentalists have invested with a character wholly incompatible with his condition. Individual virtues may be, and indeed frequently are, found among men in a natural state; but honour, justice, and generosity, as characteristics of the mass, are refinements belonging only to an advanced stage of civilisation.
In the midst of this barbarous display of unsatisfied rage, several of the savages approached the unfortunate Roland, and among them the old Piankeshaw, who, flourishing his hatchet, already clotted with blood, and looking more like a demon than a human being, made an effort to dash out the soldier's brains; in which, however, he was restrained by two younger savages, who caught him in their arms, and muttered somewhat in their own tongue, which mollified his wrath in a moment causing him to burst into a roar of obstreperous laughter. "Ees,--good!" he cried, grinning with apparent benevolence and friendship over the helpless youth: "no hurt Long-knife; take him Piankeshaw nation; make good friend squaw, papoose--all brudders, Long-knife." With these expressions, of the purport of which Roland could understand but little, he left him, retiring with the rest, as Roland soon saw, to conceal or bury the bodies of his slain comrades, which were borne in the arms of the survivors to the bottom of the hill, and there, carefully and in silence, deposited among thickets, or in crannies of the rock.
This ceremony completed, Roland was again visited by his Piankeshaw friend, and the two young warriors who had saved his life before, and were perhaps still fearful of trusting it entirely to the tender mercies of the senior. It was fortunate for Roland that he was thus attended; for the old warrior had no sooner approached him than he began to weep and groan, uttering an harangue, which although addressed, as it seemed, entirely to the prostrate captive, was in the Indian tongue, and therefore wholly wasted upon his ears. Nevertheless, he could perceive that the Indian was relating something that weighed very heavily upon his mind, that he was warming with the subject, and even working himself up into a passion; and, indeed, he had not spoken very long before his visage changed from grief to wrath, and from wrath to the extreme of fury, in which he began to handle his hatchet as on the previous occasion, making every demonstration of the best disposition in the world to bury it in the prisoner's brain. He was again arrested by the young savages, who muttered something in his ear as before; and again the effect was to convert his anger into merriment, the change being effected with a facility that might well have amazed the prisoner, had his despair permitted him to feel any lighter emotion. "Good!" cried the old warrior, as if in reply to what the others had said; "Long-knife go Piankeshaw nation,--make great sight for Piankeshaw!" And so saying, he began to dance about, with many grimaces of visage and contortions of body, that seemed to have a meaning for his comrades, who fetched a whoop of admiration, though entirely inexplicable to the soldier. Then seizing the latter by the arm, and setting him on his feet, the warrior led or dragged him a little way down the hill, to a place on the road-side, where the victors were assembled, deliberating doubtless upon the fate of their prisoners.
They seemed to have suffered a considerable loss in the battle, twelve being the whole number now to be seen; and most of these, judging from the fillets of rags and bundles of green leaves tied about their limbs, had been wounded, two of them to all appearance very severely, if not mortally, for they lay upon the earth a little apart from the rest, in whose motions they seemed to take no interest.
As Roland approached, he looked in vain amid the throng for his kinswoman. Neither she nor Telie Doe was to be seen. But casting his eye wildly around, it fell upon a little grove of trees not many yards off, in which he could perceive the figures of horses, as well as of a tall barbarian, who stood on its edge, as if keeping guard, wrapped, notwithstanding the sultriness of the weather, in a blanket, from chin to foot, while his head was as warmly invested in the ample folds of a huge scarlet handkerchief. He stood like a statue, his arms folded on his breast, and lost under the heavy festoons of the blanket; while his eyes were fastened upon the group of Indians on the road-side, from which they wandered only to glare a moment upon the haggard and despairing visage of the soldier. In that copse, Roland doubted not, the savages had concealed a hopeless and helpless captive, the being for whom he had struggled and suffered so long and so vainly, the maid whose forebodings of evil had been so soon and so dreadfully realised.
In the meanwhile, the Indians on the road-side began the business for which they had assembled, that seemed to be, in the first place, the division of spoils, consisting of the guns, horses, and clothes of the dead, with sundry other articles, which, but for his unhappy condition, Roland would have wondered to behold: for there were among them rolls of cloth and calico, heaps of hawks'-bells and other Indian trinkets, knives, pipes, powder and ball, and other such articles, even to a keg or two of the fire-water, enough to stock an Indian trading-house. These, wherever and however obtained, were distributed equally among the Indians by a man of lighter skin than themselves,--a half-breed, as Roland supposed,--who seemed to exercise some authority among them, though ever deferring in all things to an old Indian of exceedingly fierce and malign aspect, though wasted and withered into the semblance of a consumptive wolf, who sat upon a stone, buried in gloomy abstraction, from which, time by time, he awoke, to direct the dispersion of the valuables, through the hands of his deputy, with exceeding great gravity and state.
The distribution being effected, and evidently to the satisfaction of all present, the savages turned their looks upon the prisoner, eyeing him with mingled triumph and exultation; and the old presiding officer, or chief, as he seemed to be, shaking off his abstraction, got upon his feet and made him a harangue, imitating therein the ancient Piankeshaw; though with this difference, that, whereas the latter spoke entirely in his own tongue, the former thought fit, among abundance of Indian phrases, to introduce some that were sufficiently English to enable the soldier to guess, at least, a part of his meaning. His oration, however, as far as Roland could understand it, consisted chiefly in informing him that he was a very great chief, who had killed abundance of white people, men, women, and children, whose scalps had, for thirty years and more, been hanging in the smoke of his Shawnee lodge,--that he was very brave, and loved a white man's blood better than whisky, and that he never spared it out of pity,--adding as the cause, and seeming well pleased that he could boast a deficiency so well befitting a warrior, that he had "_no heart_,"--his interior being framed of stone as hard as the flinty rock under his feet. This exordium finished, he proceeded to bestow sundry abusive epithets upon the prisoner, charging him with having put his young men to a great deal of needless trouble, besides having killed several; for which, he added, the Longknife ought to expect nothing better than to have his face blacked and be burnt alive,--a hint that produced a universal grunt of assent on the part of the auditors. Having received this testimony of approbation, he resumed his discourse, pursuing it for the space of ten minutes or more with considerable vigour and eloquence; but as the whole speech consisted, like most other Indian speeches, of the same things said over and over again, those same things being scarce worth the trouble of utterance, we think it needless to say anything further of it; except that, first, as it seemed to Roland, as far as he could understand the broken expressions of the chief, he delivered a furious tirade against the demon enemy of his race, the bloody Jibbenainosay, the white man's War-Manito, whom he declared it was his purpose to fight and kill, as soon as that destroyer should have the courage to face him, the old Shawnee chief, like a human warrior,--and that it inspired several others to get up and make speeches likewise. Of all these the burden seemed to be the unpardonable crime of killing their comrades, of which the young soldier had been guilty; and he judged by the fury of their countenances, that they were only debating whether they should put him to death on the spot, or carry him to their country to be tortured.
The last speaker of all was the old Piankeshaw, whose meaning could be only guessed at from his countenance and gestures, the one being as angry and wo-begone as the latter were active and expressive. He pointed, at least a dozen times over, to two fresh and gory scalps,--the most highly valued trophies of victory,--that lay at the feet of the Shawnee chief, as many times to the horses, and thrice as often at the person of Roland, who stood now surveying his dark visage with a look of sullen despair, now casting his eyes, with a gaze of inexpressible emotion, towards the little copse, in which he still sought in vain a glimpse of his Edith. But if the old warrior's finger was often bent towards these three attractive objects, innumerable were the times it was pointed at the two or three little whisky-kegs, which, not having been yet distributed, lay untouched upon the grass. The words with which he accompanied these expressive gestures seemed to produce a considerable effect upon all his hearers, even upon the ancient chief; who, at the close of the oration, giving a sign to one of his young men, the latter ran to the copse and in an instant returned, bringing with him one of the horses, which the chief immediately handed over, through his deputy, to the orator, and the orator to one of the two young warriors, who seemed to be of his own tribe. The chief then pointed to a keg of the fire-water, and this was also given to the Piankeshaw, who received it with a grin of ecstacy, embraced it, snuffed at its odoriferous contents, and then passed it in like manner to his second follower. The chief made yet another signal, and the deputy, taking Roland by the arm, and giving him a piercing, perhaps even a pitying, look, delivered him likewise into the hands of the Piankeshaw; who, as if his happiness were now complete, received him with a yell of joy, that was caught up by his two companions, and finally joined in by all the savages present.
This shout seemed to be the signal for the breaking up of the convention. All rose to their feet, iterating and reiterating the savage cry, while the Piankeshaw, clutching his prize, and slipping a noose around the thong that bound his arms, endeavoured to drag him to the horse, on which the young men had already secured the keg of liquor, and which they were holding in readiness for the elder barbarian to mount.
At that conjecture, and while Roland was beginning to suspect that even the wretched consolation of remaining in captivity by his kinswoman's side was about to be denied him, and while the main body of savages were obviously bidding farewell to the little band of Piankeshaws, some shaking them by the hands, while others made game of the prisoner's distress in sundry Indian ways, and all uttering yells expressive of their different feelings, there appeared rushing from the copse, and running among the barbarians, the damsel Telie Doe, who, not a little to the surprise even of the ill-fated Roland himself, ran to his side, caught the rope by which he was held, and endeavoured frantically to snatch it from the hands of the Piankeshaw.
The act, for one of her peculiarly timorous spirit, was surprising enough; but a great transformation seemed to have suddenly taken place in her character, and even her appearance, which was less that of a feeble woman engaged in a work of humanity, than of a tigress infuriated by the approach of hunters against the lair of her sleeping young. She grasped the cord with unexpected strength, and her eyes flashed fire as they wandered around, until they met those of the supposed half-breed, to whom she called with tones of the most vehement indignation,--"Oh, father, father! what are you doing? You won't give him up to the murderers? You promised, you promised--" "Peace, fool!" interrupted the man thus addressed, taking her by the arm, and endeavouring to jerk her from the prisoner; "away with you to your place, and be silent."
"I will not, father;--I will not be silent, I will not away!" cried the girl, resisting his efforts, and speaking with a voice that mingled the bitterest reproach with imploring entreaty, "you are a white man, father, and not an Indian; yes, father, you are _no_ Indian; and you promised no harm should be done,--you did, father, you _did_ promise!"
"Away, gal, I tell you!" thundered the renegade parent; and he again strove to drag her from the prisoner. But Telie, as if driven frantic by the act, flung her arms round Roland's body, from which she was drawn only by an effort of strength which her weak powers were unable to resist. But even then she did not give over her purpose; but starting from her father's arms, she ran screaming back to Roland, and would have again clasped him in her own; when the renegade, driven to fury by her opposition, arrested her with one hand, and with the other catching up a knife that lay in the grass, he made as if, in his fit of passion, he would have actually plunged it into her breast. His malevolent visage and brutal threat awoke the terrors of the woman in her heart, and she sank on her knees, crying-with a piercing voice, "Oh, father, don't kill me! don't kill your own daughter!"
"Kill you, indeed!" muttered the outlaw, with a laugh of scorn; "even Injuns don't kill their own children." And taking advantage of her terror, he beckoned to the Piankeshaw, who, as well as all the other Indians, seemed greatly astounded and scandalised at the indecorous interference of a female in the affairs of warriors, to remove the prisoner; which he did by immediately beginning to drag him down the hill. The action was not unobserved by the girl, whose struggles to escape from her father's arms, to pursue, as it seemed, after the soldier, Roland could long see, while her wild and piteous cries were still longer brought to his ears.
As for Roland himself, the words and actions of the girl,--though they might have awakened suspicions, not before-experienced, of her good faith, and even appeared to show that it was less to unlucky accident than to foul conspiracy he owed his misfortunes,--did not, and could not, banish the despair that absorbed his mind, to the exclusion of every other feeling. He seemed even to himself to be in a dream the sport of an incubus, that oppressed every faculty and energy of spirit, while yet presenting the most dreadful phantasms to his imagination. His tongue had lost its function; he strove several times to speak, but tongue and spirit were alike paralysed. The nightmare oppressed mind and body together.
It was in this unhappy condition, the result of overwrought, feelings and intolerable bodily suffering, that he was led by his Piankeshaw masters down the hill to the river, which they appeared to be about to pass; whilst the chief body of marauders were left to seek another road from the field of battle. Here the old warrior descended from his horse, and leaving Roland in charge of the two juniors, stepped a little aside to a place where was a ledge of rocks, in the face of which seemed to be the entrance to a cavern, although carefully blocked up by masses of stone, that had been but recently removed from its foot. The Piankeshaw, taking post directly in front of the hole, began to utter many mournful ejaculations, which were addressed to the insensate rock, or perhaps to the equally insensate corpse of a comrade concealed within. He drew also from a little pouch,--his medicine-bag,--divers bits of bone, wood, and feathers, the most valued idols of his _fetich_, which he scattered about the rock, singing the while, in a highly lugubrious tone, the praises of the dead, and shedding tears that might have been supposed the outpourings of genuine sorrow. But if sorrow it was that thus affected the spirits of the warrior, as it seemed to have done on several previous occasions, it proved to be as easily consolable as before, as the event showed; for having finished his lamentations, and left the rock, he advanced towards Roland, whom he threatened for the third time with his knife; when one of the younger Indians muttering a few words of remonstrance, and pointing at the same time to the keg of fire-water on the horse's back, his grief and rage expired together in a haw-haw, ten times more obstreperous and joyous than any he had indulged before. Then mounting the horse, seemingly in the best humour in the world, and taking the end of the cord by which Roland was bound, he rode into the water, dragging the unfortunate prisoner along at his horse's heels; while the younger Piankeshaws brought up the rear, ready to prevent resistance on the soldier's part, should he prove in any degree refractory.
In this ignominious manner the unhappy Forrester passed the river, to do which had, for twenty-four hours, been the chief object of his wishes. The ford was wide, deep, and rocky, and the current strong, so that he was several times swept from his feet, and being unable to rise would have perished,--happy could he have thus escaped his tormentors--had not the young warriors been nigh to give him assistance. Assistance, in such cases, was indeed always rendered; but his embarrassments and perils only afforded food for mirth to his savage attendants, who, at every fall and dip in the tide, made the hills resound with their vociferous laughter. It is only among children (we mean, of course, _bad_ ones) and savages, who are but grown children, after all, that we find malice and mirth go hand in hand,--the will to create misery and the power to see it invested in ludicrous colours.
The river was at last crossed, and the bank being ascended, the three warriors paused a moment to send their last greeting across to their allies, who were seen climbing the hill, taking their own departure from the battle-ground. Even Roland was stirred from his stupefaction, as he beheld the train, some on foot, some on the captured horses, winding up the narrow road to the hill-top. He looked among them for his Edith, and saw her,--or fancied he saw her, for the distance was considerable,--supported on one of the animals, grasped in the arms of a tall savage, the guard of the grove, whose scarlet turban glittering in the sunshine, and his ample white blanket flowing over the flanks of the horse, made the most conspicuous objects in the train. But while he looked, barbarian and captive vanished together behind the hill, for they were at the head of the train. There remained a throng of footmen, who paused an instant on the crest of the ridge to return the farewell whoop of the three Piankeshaws. This being done, they likewise disappeared; and the Piankeshaws, turning their faces towards the west, dragging the prisoner after them, resumed their journey.
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The agony which Roland suffered from the thong so tightly secured upon his wrists, was so far advantageous as it distracted his mind from the subject which had been at first the chief source of his distress: for it was impossible to think long even of his kinswoman, while enduring tortures that were aggravated by every jerk of the rope, by which he was dragged along; these growing more insupportable every moment. His sufferings, however, seemed to engage little of the thoughts of his conductors; who, leaving the buffalo road, and striking into the pathless forest, pushed onward at a rapid pace, compelling him to keep up with them; and it was not until he had twice fainted from pain and exhaustion, that, after some discussion, they thought fit to loosen the thong, which they afterwards removed altogether. Then, whether it was that they were touched at last with compassion, or afraid that death might snatch the prisoner from their hands, if too severely treated, they proceeded even to take other measures of a seemingly friendly kind, to allay his pangs; washing his lacerated wrists in a little brook, on whose banks they paused to give him rest, and then binding them up, as well as the two or three painful, though not dangerous, wounds he had received, with green leaves, which one of the juniors plucked, bruised, and applied with every appearance of the most brotherly interest; while the other, to equal, or surpass him in benevolence, took the keg of whisky from the horse's back, and filling a little wooden bowl that he drew from a pack, insisted that the prisoner should swallow it. In this recommendation the old Piankeshaw also concurred; but finding that Roland recoiled with disgust, after an attempt to taste the fiery liquid, he took the bowl into his own hands, and despatched its contents at a draught. "Good! great good!" he muttered, smacking his lips with high gusto; "white man make good drink! --Piankeshaw great friend white-man's liquor."
Having thus opened their hearts, nothing could be, to appearance, more friendly and affectionate than the bearing of the savages, at least so long as they remained at the brook; and even when the journey was resumed, which it soon was, their deportment was but little less loving. It is true, that the senior, before mounting his horse, proceeded very coolly to clap the noose, which had previously been placed on Roland's arms, around his neck, where it bade fair to strangle him, at the first false step of the horse; but the young Indians walked at his side, chattering in high good humour; though, as their stock of English extended only to the single phrase, "Bozhoo, brudder," which was not in itself very comprehensible, though repeated at least twice every minute, it may be supposed their conversation had no very enlivening effect on the prisoner.
Nor was the old Piankeshaw much behind the juniors in good humour; though, it must be confessed, his feelings were far more capricious and evanescent. One while he would stop his horse, and dragging Roland to his side, pat him affectionately on the shoulder, and tell him, as well as his broken language could express his intentions, that he would take him to the springs of the Wabash, one of the principal seats of his nation, and make him his son and a great warrior; while at other times, having indulged in a fit of sighing, groaning, and crying, he would turn in a towering rage, and express a resolution to kill him on the spot,--from which bloody disposition, however, he was always easily turned by the interference of the young men.
These capricious changes were perhaps owing in a great measure to the presence of the whisky-keg, which the old warrior ever and anon took from its perch among the packs behind him, and applied to his lips, sorely, as it appeared, against the will of his companion, who seemed to remonstrate with him against a practice so unbecoming a warrior, while in the heart of a foeman's country, and not a little also against his own sense of propriety: for his whole course in relation to the keg was like that of a fish that dallies around the angler's worm, uncertain whether to bite, now looking and longing, now suspecting the hook and retreating, now returning to look and long again, until, finally, unable to resist the temptation, it resolves upon a little nibble, which ends, even against its own will, in a furious bite.
It was in this manner the Piankeshaw addressed himself to his treasure; the effect of which was to render each returning paroxysm of affection and sorrow more energetic than before, while it gradually robbed of their malignity those fits of anger with which he was still occasionally seized. But it added double fluency to his tongue; and, not content with muttering his griefs in his own language, addressing them to his own people, he finally began to pronounce them in English, directing them at Roland; whereby the latter was made acquainted with the cause of his sorrow. This, it appeared, was nothing less than the loss of a son killed in battle with the Kentuckians, and left to moulder, with two or three Shawnee corses, in the cave by the river-side; which loss he commemorated a dozen times over, and with a most piteous voice, in a lament that celebrated the young warrior's virtues: "Lost son," he ejaculated; "good huntaw: kill bear, kill buffalo, catch fish, feed old squaw, and young squaw, and little papoose--good son! mighty good son! Good fighting-man: kill man Virginnee, kill man Kentucky, kill man Injun-man; take scalp, squaw scalp, papoose scalp, man scalp, all kind scalp--debbil good fighting man! No go home no more Piankeshaw nation; no more kill bear; no more kill buffalo; no more catch fish; no more feed old squaw, and young squaw, and little papoose; no more kill man, no more take scalp--lose own scalp, take it Long-knife man Kentucky; no more see old Piankeshaw son,--leave dead, big hole Kentucky; no more see no more Piankeshaw son, Piankeshaw nation!"
With such lamentations, running at times into rage against his prisoner, as the representative of those who had shed the young warrior's blood, the old Piankeshaw whiled away the hours of travel; ceasing them only when seized with a fit of affection, or when some mis-step of the horse sent a louder gurgle, with a more delicious odour, from the cask at his back; which music and perfume together were a kind of magic not to be resisted by one who stood so greatly in need of consolation.
The effect of such constant and liberal visitations to the comforter and enemy of his race, continued for several hours together, was soon made manifest in the old warrior, who grew more loquacious, more lachrymose, and more foolish every moment; until, by and by, having travelled till towards sunset, a period of six or seven hours from the time of setting out, he began to betray the most incontestable evidences of intoxication. He reeled on the horse's back, and finally, becoming tired of the weight of his gun, he extended it to Roland, with a very magisterial, yet friendly nod, as if bidding him take and carry it. It was snatched from him, however, by one of the younger warriors, who was too wise to intrust a loaded carbine in the arms of a prisoner, and who had perhaps noted the sudden gleam of fire, the first which had visited them since the moment of his capture, that shot into Roland's eyes, as he stretched forth his hands to take the weapon.
The old Piankeshaw did not seem to notice who had relieved him of the burden. He settled himself again on the saddle as well as he could, and jogged onwards, prattling and weeping, according to the mood of the moment, now droning out an Indian song, and now nodding with drowsiness; until at last slumber or stupefaction settled so heavily upon his senses that he became incapable of guiding his horse; and the weary animal, checked by the unconscious rider, or stopping of his own accord to browse the green cane-leaves along the path, the Piankeshaw suddenly took a lurch wider than usual, and fell, like a log, to the ground.
The younger savages had watched the course of proceedings on the part of the senior with ill-concealed dissatisfaction. The catastrophe completed their rage, which, however, was fortunately expended upon the legitimate cause of displeasure. They tumbled the unlucky cask from its perch, and assailing it with horrible yells and as much apparent military zeal as could have been exercised upon a human enemy lying in like manner at their feet, they dashed it to pieces with their tomahawks, scattering its precious contents upon the grass.
While they were thus engaged, the senior rose from the earth, staring about him for a moment with looks of stupid inquiry; until beginning at last to comprehend the accident that had happened to him, and perhaps moved by the late of his treasure, he also burst into a fury; and snatching up the nearest gun, he clapped it to his horse's head, and shot it dead on the spot, roaring out, "Cuss' white-man hoss! throw old Piankeshaw! No good nothing! Cuss debbil hoss!"
This act of drunken and misdirected ferocity seemed vastly to incense the young warriors; and the senior waxing as wrathful at the wanton destruction of his liquor, there immediately ensued a battle of tongues betwixt the two parties, who scolded and berated one another for the space of ten minutes or more with prodigious volubility and energy, the juniors expatiating upon the murder of the horse as an act of the most unpardonable folly, while the senior seemed to insist that the wasting of so much good liquor was a felony of equally culpable dye; and it is probable he had the better side of the argument, since he continued to grumble for a long time even after he had silenced the others.
But peace was at last restored, and the savages prepared to resume their journey; but not until they had unanimously resolved that the consequences of the quarrel should be visited upon the head of the captive. Their apparent good-humour vanished, and the old Piankeshaw, staggering up, gave Roland to understand, in an oration full of all the opprobrious epithets he could muster, either in English or Indian, that he, Piankeshaw, being a very great warrior, intended to carry him to his country, to run the gauntlet through every village of the nation, and then to burn him alive, for the satisfaction of the women and children; and while pouring this agreeable intelligence into the soldier's ears, the juniors took the opportunity to tie his arms a second time, heaping on his shoulders their three packs; to which the old man afterwards insisted on adding the saddle and bridle of the horse, though for no very ostensible object, together with a huge mass of the flesh, dug with his knife from the still quivering carcass, which was perhaps designed for their supper.
Under this heavy load, the unhappy and degraded soldier was compelled to stagger along with his masters; but fortunately for no long-period. The night was fast approaching, and having-soon arrived at a little glade in the forest, where a spring of sweet water bubbled from the grass, they signified their intention to make it their camping ground for the night. A fire was struck, the horse flesh stuck upon a fork and roasted, and a share of it tendered to the prisoner; who, sick at heart and feverish in body, refused it with as much disgust as he had shown at the whisky, expressing his desire only to drink of the spring, which he was allowed to do to his liking.
The savages then collected grass and leaves, with which they spread a couch under a tree beside their fire; and here, having compelled the soldier to lie down, they proceeded to secure him for the night with a cruel care, that showed what value the loss of the horse and fire-water, the only other trophies of victory, led them to attach to him. A stake was cut and laid across his breast, and to the ends of this his outstretched arms were bound at both wrist and elbow. A pole was then laid upon his body, to the extremities of which his feet and neck were also bound; so that he was secured as upon, or rather _under_, a cross, without the power of moving hand or foot. As if even this were not enough to satisfy his barbarous companions, they attached an additional cord to his neck; and this, when they lay down beside him to sleep, one of the young warriors wrapped several times round his own arm, so that the slightest movement of the prisoner, were such a thing possible, must instantly rouse the jealous savage from his slumbers.
These preparations being completed, the young men lay down, one on each side of the prisoner, and were soon fast asleep.
The old Piankeshaw, meanwhile, sat by the fire, now musing in drunken revery,--"in cogibundity of cogitation,"--now grumbling a lament for his perished son, which, by a natural licence of affliction, he managed to intermingle with regrets for his lost liquor, and occasionally heaping maledictions upon the heads of his wasteful companions, or soliciting the prisoner's attention to an account, that he gave him at least six times over, of the peculiar ceremonies which would be observed in burning him, when once safely bestowed in the Piankeshaw nation. In this manner, the old savage, often nodding, but always rousing again, succeeded in amusing himself nearly half the night long; and it was not until near midnight that he thought fit, after stirring up the fire, and adding a fresh log to it, to stretch himself beside one of the juniors, and grumble himself to sleep. A few explosive and convulsive snorts, such as might have done honour to the nostrils of a war-horse, marked the gradations by which he sank to repose; then came the deep, long-drawn breath of mental annihilation, such as distinguished the slumber of his companions.
To the prisoner, alone, sleep was wholly denied; for which the renewed agonies of his bonds, tied with the supreme contempt for suffering which usually marks the conduct of savages to their captives, would have been sufficient cause, had there even been no superior pangs of spirit to banish the comforter from his eyelids. Of his feelings during the journey from the river,--which, in consequence of numberless delays caused by the old Piankeshaw's drunkenness, could scarce have been left more than eight or ten miles behind,--we have said but little, since imagination can only picture them properly to the reader. Grief, anguish, despair, and the sense of degradation natural to a man of proud spirit, a slave in the hands of coarse barbarians, kept his spirit for a long time wholly subdued and torpid; and it was not until he perceived the old Piankeshaw's repeated potations, and their effects, that he began to wake from his lethargy, and question himself whether he might not yet escape, and, flying to the nearest settlements for assistance, strike a blow for the recovery of his kinswoman. Weak from exhaustion and wounds, entirely unarmed, and closely watched, as he perceived he was, by the young warriors, notwithstanding their affected friendship, it was plain that nothing could be hoped for, except from caution on his part, and the most besotted folly on that of his captors. This folly was already made perceptible in at least one of the party; and as he watched the oft-repeated visitations of the senior to the little keg, he began to anticipate the period when the young men should also betake themselves to the stupefying draught, and give him the opportunity he longed for with frantic, though concealed, impatience. This hope fell when the cask was dashed to pieces; but hope, once excited, did not easily forsake him. He had heard, and read, of escapes, made by captives like himself, from Indians, when encamped by night in the woods,--nay, of escapes made when the number of captors and the feebleness of the captive (for even women and boys had thus obtained their deliverance), rendered the condition of the latter still more wretched than his own. Why might not _he_, a man and soldier, guarded by only three foemen, succeed, as others had succeeded, in freeing himself?
This question, asked over and over again, and each time answered with greater hope and animation than before, employed his mind until his wary captors had tied him to the stakes, as has been mentioned, leaving him as incapable of motion as if every limb had been solidified into stone. Had the barbarians been able to look into his soul at the moment when he first strove to test the strength of the ligatures, and found them resisting his efforts like bands of brass, they would have beheld deeper and wilder tortures than any they could hope to inflict, ever, at the stake. The effort was repeated once, twice, thrice--a thousand times,--but always in vain: the cords were too securely tied, the stakes too carefully placed, to yield to his puny struggles. He was a prisoner in reality,--without resource, without help, without hope.
And thus he passed the whole of the bitter night, watching the slow progress of moments counted only by the throbbings of his fevered temples, the deep breathings of the Indians, and the motion of the stars creeping over the vista opened to the skies from the little glade, a prey to despair, made so much more poignant by disappointment and self-reproach. Why had he not taken advantage of his temporary release from the cords, to attempt escape by open flight, when the drunkenness of the old Piankeshaw would have increased the chances of success? He had lost his best ally in the cask of liquor; but he resolved,--if the delirious plans of a mind tossed by the most frenzied passions could be called resolutions,--a second day should not pass by without an effort better becoming a soldier, better becoming the only friend and natural protector of the hapless Edith.
In the meanwhile, the night passed slowly away, the moon, diminished to a ghastly crescent, rose over the woods, looking down with a sickly smile upon the prisoner,--an emblem of his decayed fortunes and waning hopes; and a pale streak, the first dull glimmer of dawn, was seen stealing up the skies. But neither moon nor streak of dawn yet threw light upon the little glade. The watch-fire had burned nearly away, and its flames no longer illuminated the scene. The crackling of the embers, with an occasional echo from the wood hard by, as of the rustling of a rabbit, or other small animal, drawn by the unusual appearance of fire near his favourite fountain, to satisfy a timorous curiosity, was the only sound to be heard; for the Indians were in the dead sleep of morning, and their breathing was no longer audible.
The silence and darkness together were doubly painful to Roland, who had marked the streak of dawn, and longed with fierce impatience for the moment when he should be again freed from his bonds, and left to attempt some of those desperate expedients which he had been planning all the night long. In such a frame of mind, even the accidental falling of a half-consumed brand upon the embers, and its sudden kindling into flame, were circumstances of an agreeable nature; and the ruddy glare thrown over the boughs above his head was welcomed as the return of a friend, bringing with it hope, and even a share of his long lost tranquillity.
But tranquillity was not fated to dwell long in his bosom. At that very moment, and while the blaze of the brand was brightest, his ears were stunned by an explosion bursting like a thunderbolt at his very head, but whether coming from earth or air, from the hands of Heaven or the firelock of a human being, he knew not; and immediately after there sprang a huge dark shadow over his body, and there was heard the crash as of an axe falling upon the flesh of the young Indian who slept on his right side. A dismal shriek, the utterance of agony and terror, rose from the barbarian's lips; and then came the sound of his footsteps, as he darted, with a cry still wilder, into the forest, pursued by the sound of other steps; and then all again was silent,--all save groans, and the rustling in the grass of limbs convulsed in the death-throe at the soldier's side.
Astounded, bewildered, and even horror-struck, by these incomprehensible events, the work of but an instant, and all unseen by Roland, who, from his position, could look only upwards towards the boughs and skies, he would have thought himself in a dream, but for the agonised struggles of the young Indian at his side, which he could plainly feel as well as hear: until by and by they subsided, as if in sudden death. Was it a rescue? was that shot fired by a friend? that axe wielded by a human auxiliary? those sounds of feet dying away in the distance, were they the steps of a deliverer? The thought was ecstacy, and he shouted aloud, "Return, friend, and loose me! return!"
No voice replied to the shout; but it roused from the earth a dark and bloody figure, which staggering and falling over the body of the young warrior, crawled like a scotched reptile upon Roland's breast; when the light of the fire shining upon it revealed to his eyes the horrible spectacle of the old Piankeshaw warrior, the lower part of his face shot entirely away, and his eyes rolling hideously, and, as it seemed, sightlessly, in the pangs of death, his hand clutching the knife with which he had so often threatened, and with which he yet seemed destined to take, though in the last gasp of his own, the soldier's life. With one hand he felt along the prisoner's body, as if seeking a vital part, and sustained his own weight, while with the other he made repeated, though feeble and ineffectual, strokes with the knife, all the time rolling, and staggering, and shaking his gory head in a manner most horrible to behold. But vengeance was denied the dying warrior; his blows were offered impotently, and without aim; and becoming weaker at every effort, his left arm at last failed to support him, and he fell across Roland's body; in which position he immediately after expired.
In this frightful condition Roland was left, shocked, although relieved from fear, by the savage's death, crying in vain to his unknown auxiliary for assistance. He exerted his voice, until the woods rang with his shouts; but hollow echoes were the only replies: neither voice nor returning footstep was to be heard; and it seemed as if he had been rescued from the Indians' hands, only to be left, bound and helpless, to perish piecemeal among their bodies. The fear of a fate so dreadful, with the weight of the old Piankeshaw, a man of almost gigantic proportions, lying upon his bosom, was more than his agonised spirits and exhausted strength could endure; and his wounds suddenly bursting out afresh, he lapsed into a state of insensibility, in which, however, it was happily his fate not long to remain.
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When Roland recovered his consciousness, he was no longer a prisoner extended beneath the Indian cross. His limbs were unbound, and he himself lying across the knees of a man who was busily engaged sprinkling his head and breast with water from the little well, to which he had been borne while still insensible. He stared around him with eyes yet filmy and vacant. The first objects they fell on were two lifeless figures, the bodies of his late savage masters, stretched near the half-extinguished fire. He looked up to the face of his deliverer, which could be readily seen, for it was now broad day, and beheld, with such a thrill of pleasure as had not visited his bosom for many weary days, the features of his trusty guide and emissary, honest Nathan Slaughter, who was pursuing the work of resuscitation with great apparent zeal, while little dog Peter stood by wagging his tail, as if encouraging him to perseverance.
"What, Nathan!" he cried, grasping at his hand, and endeavouring, though vainly, to rise from his knee, "do I dream! is it _you_?"
"Verily, thee speaks the truth," replied Nathan;--"it is me,--me and little Peter; and, truly, it is nobody else."
"And I am free again? free, free! --And the savages? the vile, murdering Piankeshaws? Dead! surprised, killed,--every dog of them!"
"Thee speaks the truth a second time," said Nathan Slaughter, snuffling and hesitating in his speech: "thee wicked enemies and captivators will never trouble thee more."
"And who, who was it that rescued me? Hah! there is blood on your face! your hands are red with it! It was _you_, then, that saved me? _you_ that killed the accursed cut-throats? Noble Nathan! brave Nathan! true Nathan! how shall I ever requite the act? how shall I ever forget it?" And as he spoke, the soldier, yet lying across Nathan's knees, for his limbs refused to support him, grasped his preserver's hands with a fervour of gratitude that gave new life and vigour to his exhausted spirits.
"And thee does not think then," muttered Nathan, snuffling twice as much as before, but growing bolder as Roland's gratitude reassured him,--"thee does not think,--that is, thee is not of opinion,--that is to say, thee does not altogether hold it to be as a blood-guiltiness, and a wickedness, and a shedding of blood, that I did take to me the weapon of war, and shoot upon thee wicked oppressors, to the saving of thee life? Truly, friend, it was to save thee life,--thee must remember _that_; it was a thing that was necessary, and not to be helped. Truly, friend, it was my desire to help thee in peace and with a peaceful hand; but, of a truth, there was thee enemies at thee side, with their guns and their knives, ready to start up and knock out thee unfortunate brains. Truly, friend, thee sees it couldn't be helped; and, truly, I don't think thee conscience can condemn me."
"Condemn you indeed!" cried the young man; "it was an act to bind my gratitude for ever,--an act to win you the admiration and respect of the whole world, which I shall take care to make acquainted with it."
"Nay, friend," said Nathan, hastily, "the less thee says of it the better: if thee is theeself satisfied in thee conscience of its lawfulness, it is enough. Do thee, therefore, hold thee tongue on this and all other matters wherein thee has seen me do evil; for truly I am a man of a peaceful faith, and what I have done would be but as a grief and a scandal to the same."
"But my friends,--my poor Edith! --wretch that I am to think of myself or of others, while she is still a captive!" cried Roland, again endeavouring to rise. But his limbs, yet paralysed from the tightness with which thongs had been bound around them, tottered beneath him, and but for Nathan, he must have fallen to the earth. "The emigrants," he continued with incoherent haste;--"you brought them? They are pursuing the savages? they have rescued her? Speak, Nathan,--tell me all; tell me that my cousin is free!"
"Truly, friend," muttered Nathan, his countenance losing much of the equanimity that had begun to cover it, and assuming a darker and disturbed expression, "thee doth confuse both theeself and me with many questions. Do thee be content for awhile, till I chafe thee poor legs, which is like the legs of a dead man, and tie up thee wounds. When thee can stand up and walk, thee shall know all I have to tell thee, both good and bad. It is enough thee is theeself safe."
"Alas, I read it all from your looks," cried the soldier; "Edith is still a prisoner: and I lie here a miserable, crushed worm, incapable of aiding, unable even to die for her! But the emigrants, my friends? _they_ are at least urging the pursuit? there is a hope they will retake her?"
"Truly, friend," said Nathan, "thee shall know all, if thee will have patience, and hold thee tongue. Truly, the many things thee says doth perplex me. If thee loves thee poor kinswoman, and would save her from cruel bondage and sorrow, thee must be quiet till I have put thee again upon thee legs; which is the first thing to be thought about: and after that, thee shall have my counsel and help to do what is good and proper for the maiden's redeeming."
With these words, Nathan again addressed himself to the task of chafing Roland's half-lifeless limbs, and binding up the several light, though painful wounds, which he had received in the conflict; and the soldier submitting in despair, though still entreating Nathan to tell him the worst, the latter began at last to relate his story.
The bold attempt of Nathan to pass the line of besiegers at the ruin, it seemed, he bad accomplished without difficulty, though not without risk; but this part of the narrative he hurried over, as well as his passage of the river at a solitary and dangerous ford in the wildest recesses of the forest. Then striking through the woods, and aiming for the distant Station, he had arrived within but a few miles of it, when it was his fortune to stumble upon the band of Regulators, who, after their memorable exploit at the beech-tree, had joined the emigrants, then on their march through the woods, and convoyed them to the Station. Here passing the night in mirth and frolic, they were startled at an early hour by the alarming intelligence, brought by a volunteer hunter, who had obtained it none could tell how, of the presence of the Indian army on the north side; and leaving their friends to arm and follow as they could, the visitors immediately mounted their horses to return to Bruce's Station, and thence to seek the field of battle. To these unexpected friends, thus opportunely met in the woods, Nathan imparted his story, acquainting them, in the same words, of the presence of enemies so much nearer at hand than was dreamed, and of the unfortunate dilemma of Forrester and his helpless party,--an account that fired the blood of the hot youths as effectually as it could have done if expressed in the blast of a bugle. A council of war being called on the spot, it was resolved to gallop at once to the rescue of the travellers, without wasting time in seeking additional assistance from the emigrants or their neighbours of the Station just left; which indeed, as from Nathan's observations, it did not seem that the numbers of the foe could be more than double their own, the heroic youths held to be entirely needless. Taking Nathan up, therefore, behind him, and bearing him along, to point out the position of the Indians, the gallant Tom Bruce, followed by his equally gallant companions, dashed through the woods, and succeeded by daybreak in reaching the ruin; where, as Nathan averred, so judiciously had they laid their plans for the attack, the Indians, if still there, might have been surprised, entirely worsted, and perhaps the half of them cut off upon the spot; "which," as he rather hastily observed, "would have been a great comfort to all concerned." But the ruin was deserted, besiegers and besieged had alike vanished, as well as the bodies of those assailants who had fallen in the conflict, to find their graves under the ruins, among the rocks, or in the whirling eddies of the river. The tracks of the horses being discovered in the ravine and at the water's edge, it was inferred that the whole party, too desperate, or too wise, to yield themselves prisoners, had been driven into the river, and there drowned; and this idea inflaming the fury of the Kentuckians to the highest pitch, they sought out and easily discovered among the canes, the fresh trail of the Indians, which they followed, resolving to exact the fullest measure of revenge. Nathan, the man of peace, from whom (for he had not thought proper to acquaint the young men with the warlike part he had himself taken in the battles of the night) no further services were expected, was now turned adrift, to follow or protect himself as he might; and the young men betook themselves to the pursuit with as much speed as the wild character of the woods permitted.
But it formed no part of honest Nathan's designs to be left behind. His feelings were too deeply involved in the fate of the unhappy individuals, whose misadventures he could, or thought he could, so clearly trace to his own indiscretion, to suffer him to rest, while it was yet wrapped in obscurity. He had accepted the charge and responsibility of extricating them from their perils; and his conscience could not be appeased until he had determined for himself whether in truth they were yet beyond the reach of assistance. Making his own observations from the appearance of the different tracts in the ravine, and satisfying himself there was among them one more Christian footprint than could be accounted for, he followed after the young men, examining the Indian trail in places where it had not been effaced by the Kentuckians, until he became convinced that the fugitives had, in some unaccountable way, escaped alive from the river, and were still struggling in retreat, led by some friendly guide, although closely pursued by the foe. This discovery, it was also probable, had been made by the Kentuckians, who had in consequence urged their horses to the utmost, and arriving on the hill where the savages lay in ambush, rushed to the attack, and fought and lost the battle, before Nathan could reach them. He met them indeed retreating in full rout before the victors, many wounded, all overcome by panic, and none willing or able to throw any light on the cause of defeat. One indeed, checking his horse a moment to bid the man of peace look to himself and avoid the savages, who were still urging the pursuit, hastily assured him that the defeat was all owing to Captain Ralph's ghost, which had suddenly got among them, yelling for vengeance on his executioners for which reason the conscience-stricken Regulator called Nathan to witness his oath, which he now made, "that he would never Lynch a man again as long as he lived." And the worthy warrior having added, with another oath, which he called a still superior power to attest, "that he had seen Stackpole fly off with Tom Brace's soul on the back of a devil, in shape of a big black horse breathing flames and sulphur," struck spur again into his own charger, not, however, until he had first generously invited Nathan to get up be-him, to escape the savage pursuers, who were now seen close behind. Declining the heroic offer, and bidding the youth effect his own escape, Nathan immediately dived, with his inseparable friend and adviser, little Peter, among the canes; where he lay concealed until well assured the victors had abandoned the pursuit, and returned to the field of battle.
"Then, friend," said the man of peace, who may now be permitted to tell his own story, "I took council of Peter as to what we should do; and truly it was our opinion we should creep after the murdering Shawnee creatures--though verily there was more than Shawnees engaged in this wicked business--and see what had become of thee and thee poor women; seeing that we were in a manner, as I may say, the cause of thee troubles, in carrying thee to the very place where we should not, wicked sinners that we are: that is, wicked sinner that _I_ am, for truly little Peter had nothing to do with that matter, having done his best to keep us from the ruin. Well, friend, as soon as we thought it safe, we crept to the spot on the hill-side; and safe enough it was, the savages having departed, leaving nothing behind them, save two young Kentuckians and the coloured person, whom they had prevailed over and hewn to pieces with their Hatchets; besides four corpses of their own, which they had stuck in a cave, where Peter snuffed them out: truly, friend, thee don't know what a nose little Peter has! Well, friend, I saw then that thee enemies had divided, the main body departing one way over the hill, while a smaller party had crossed the river with a horse and prisoner. Truly it was Peter's opinion that this prisoner was theeself--thee own very self (a thing I could not be so certain of on my part, seeing that I had never tracked thee, save by thee horse-prints only), and that if we followed thee, we might in some way aid thee to escape, thee captivators being so few in number. And so, friend, we waded the river, and followed thee trail until night came, when little Peter undertook to nose thee on in the dark, which he did very successfully, until we reached the place where the savages had killed their horse, and broken their cask of liquor, when truly the scent of the same did so prevail over Peter's nose, that I was in fear he never would smell right again in all his life, which was a great grief to me; for truly Peter's nose is, as I may say, the staff of my life, my defence, and my succour: truly thee don't know the value of little Peter's nose. And, moreover, the savour of the dead horse did somewhat captivate his attention; for truly little Peter is but a dog, and he loves horse-flesh. Well, friend, this was a thing that perplexed me; until, by and by, having brought little Peter to reason in the matter of the horse, and washed his nose in a brook which it was my fortune to discover, he did bethink him what he was after, and so straightway hunt for the track, which being recovered we went on our way until we lighted right on thee captivators' camp-fire, and truly we lighted upon it much sooner than we expected. Well, friend," continued the narrator, "having crept up as near as I durst, I could see how thee was fixed, tied to the poles so thee could not help theeself; and the three savages lying beside thee, with their guns in the hollows of their arms, ready to be seized in a moment. Truly, friend, the sight threw me into another perplexity; and I lay watching thee and thee cruel oppressors for more than an hour, marvelling in what way I could give thee help."
"An hour!" cried Roland; "a friend lying by me during that hour, the most wretched and distracted of my whole existence? Had you but cut the rope, and given me the knife to strike a blow for myself!"
"Truly," said the man of peace, "I did so desire to do, seeing that then thee might have killed the Injuns theeself; which would have been more seemly, as being a thing thee conscience would not disapprove of; whereas mine, as thee may suppose, was quite averse to any such bloody doings on my own part. But, truly, I durst not adventure upon the thing thee speaks of; for, first, I saw by the stick on thee breast, thee was tied so tight and fast, it would be an hour's work to cut thee loose--thee captivators lying by all the while; and, secondly, I knew, by the same reason, thee limbs would be so numb thee could neither stand upon thee legs, nor hold a weapon in thee hand, for just as long a time; and, besides, I feared, in case thee should discover there was help nigh at hand, thee might cry out in thee surprise, and so alarm these sleeping captivators. And so, friend, I was in what thee may call a pucker, not knowing what to do; and so I lay hard by thee, with Peter at the back of me, watching and revolving the matter for that whole hour, as I told thee; when suddenly down fell a stick into the fire, and the same blazing up brightly, I saw two of the savages lying beside thee, their heads so close together thee might have supposed they both grew from the same pair of shoulders, and so nigh to me withal, that, verily, I might have poked them with the muzzle of my gun. Truly, friend," continued Nathan, looking both bewildered and animated, as he arrived at this period of his story, "I can't tell thee how it then happened,--whether it was a sort of nervousness in my fingers' ends, or whether it was all an accident; but, truly, as it happened, my gun went off in my hands, as it might be of its own accord, and, truly, it blew the two evil creatures' brains out! And then, friend, thee sees, there was no stopping, there being the third of thee captivators to look after; and, truly, as I had done so much, I thought I might as well do all,--the killing of three men being but a little worse than the killing of two; and, besides, the creature would have hurt thee, as thee lay at his mercy. And so, friend, I did verily spring upon him, sinner that I am, and strike him a blow with my hatchet, which I had taken from my belt to be ready; whereupon he fled, and I after him, being in great fear lest, if he escaped, he should return upon thee and kill thee, before I could get back to cut thee loose And so, friend, it happened that--that I killed him likewise! --for which I don't think thee can, in thee heart, blame me, seeing that it was all, over and over again, on _thee_ account, and nobody else's. Truly, friend, it is quite amazing, the ill things thee has brought me to!"
"Had there been twenty of the villains, and you had killed them all, I should have held it the noblest and most virtuous act you could have performed," said Roland, too fiercely agitated by his own contending passions to note the strange medley of self-accusing and exculpatory expressions, the shame-faced, conscience-stricken looks, alternating with gleams of military fire and self-complacency, with which the man of peace recounted his bloody exploit, or the adroit attempt, with which he concluded it, to shuffle the responsibility of the crime, if crime it were, from his own to the young Virginian's shoulders. At another moment, the latter might have speculated with as much surprise as approval on the extraordinary metamorphosis of Nathan, the man of amity and good will, into a slayer of Indians, double-dyed in gore; but at that juncture, he had little inclination to dwell on anything save his own liberation and the hapless fate of his cousin.
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{
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By dint of chafing and bathing in the spring, still foul and red with the blood of the Piankeshaws, the limbs of the soldier soon recovered their strength, and he was able to rise, to survey the scene of his late sufferings and liberation, and again recur to the harassing subject of his kinswoman's fate. Again he beset Nathan with questions, which soon recalled the disturbed looks which his deliverer had worn when first assailed with interrogatories. He adjured him to complete the good work he had so bravely begun, by leaving himself to his fate, and making his way to the emigrants, or to the nearest inhabited Station, whence assistance might be procured to pursue the savages and their captives, before it might be too late. "Lead the party first to the battleground," he said: "I am now as a child in strength, but I can crawl thither to meet you; and once on a horse again, be assured no one shall pursue better or faster than I." "If thee thinks of rescuing the maiden," said Nathan-- "I will do so, or die," exclaimed Roland, impetuously; "and would to Heaven I could die twice over, so I might snatch her from the murdering monsters. Alas! had you but followed them, instead of these three curs; and done that service to Edith you have done to me!"
"Truly," said Nathan, "thee talks as if ten men were as easily knocked on the head as ten rabbits. But, hearken, friend, and do thee have patience for a while! There is a thing in this matter that perplexes me; and, verily, there is two or three. Why did thee desert the ruin? and who was it led thee through the canes? Let me know what it was that happened thee; for, of a truth, there is more in this same matter than thee thinks."
Thus called upon, Roland acquainted Nathan with the events that had succeeded his departure from the ruin,--the appearance of Ralph Stackpole, and the flight of the party by the river,--circumstances that moved the wonder and admiration of Nathan,--and with all the other occurrences up to the moment of the defeat of the Kentuckians, and the division of the plunder among the victorious Indians. The mention of these spoils, the rifles, rolls of cloth, beads, bells, and other gewgaw trinkets, produced an evident impression on Nathan's mind; which was greatly increased when Roland related the scene betwixt Telie Doe and her reprobate father, and repeated those expressions which seemed to show that the attack upon the party was by no means accidental, but the result of a previously formed design, of which she was not ignorant.
"Where Abel Doe is, there, thee may be sure, there is knavery!" said Nathan; demanding earnestly if Roland had seen no other white man in the party.
"I saw no other," he replied: "but there was a tall man in a blanket, wearing a red turban, who looked at me from a distance; and I thought he was a half-breed, like Doe,--for so, at first, I supposed the latter to be."
"Well, friend! And he seemed to command the party, did he not?" demanded Nathan, with interest.
"The leader," replied Roland, "was a vile, grim old rascal, that they called Kenauga, or Kenauga, or--" "Wenonga!" cried Nathan, with extraordinary vivacity, his whole countenance, in fact, lighting up with the animation of intense interest,--"an old man tall and raw-boned, a scar on his nose and cheek, a halt in his gait, his left middle-finger short of a joint, and a buzzard's beak and talons tied to his hair? --It is Wenonga, the Black-Vulture. Truly, little Peter! thee is but a dolt and a dog, that thee told me nothing about it!"
The soldier remarked, with some surprise, the change of Nathan's visage, and with still more, his angry reproaches of the trusty animal, the first he had heard him utter.
"And who then is the old Black-Vulture," he asked, "that he should drive from your mind even the thought of my poor wretched Edith?"
"Thee is but a boy in the woods, if thee never heard of Wenonga, the Shawnee," replied Nathan hastily,--"a man that has left the mark of his axe on many a ruined cabin along the frontier, from the Bloody Run of Bedford to the Kenhawa and the Holston. He is the chief that boasts he has no heart: and, truly, he has none, being a man that has drunk the blood of women and children--Friend! thee kinswoman's scalp is already hanging at his girdle!"
This horrible announcement, uttered with a fierce earnestness that proved the sincerity of the speaker, froze Roland's blood in his veins, and he stood speechless and gasping; until Nathan, noting his agitation, and recovering in part from his own ferment of spirits, exclaimed, even more hastily than before--"Truly, I have told thee what is false--thee kinswoman is safe,--a prisoner, but alive and safe."
"You have told me she is dead--murdered by the foul assassins," said Roland; "and if it be so, it avails not to deny it. If it be so, Nathan," he continued, with a look of desperation, "I call Heaven and earth to witness, that I will pursue the race of the slayers with thrice the fury of their own malice,--never to pause, never to rest, never to be satisfied with vengeance, while an Indian lives with blood to be shed, and I with strength to shed it."
"Thee speaks like a man!" said Nathan, grasping the soldier's hand, and fairly crushing it in his gripe,--"that is to say," he continued, suddenly letting go his hold, and seeming somewhat abashed at the fervour of his sympathy, "like a man, according to thee own sense of matters and things. But do thee be content; thee poor maid is alive, and like to be so; and that thee may be assured of it, I will soon tell thee the thing that is on my mind. Friend, do thee answer me a question,--Has thee any enemy among the Injuns? --that is to say, any reprobate white man like this Abel Doe,--who would do thee a wrong?"
The soldier started with surprise, and replied in the negative.
"Has thee no foe, then, at home, whom thee has theeself wronged to that point that he would willingly league with murdering Injuns to take thee life?"
"I have my enemies, doubtless, like all other men," said Roland, "but none so basely, so improbably malignant."
"Verily, then, thee makes me in a perplexity as before," said Nathan; "for as truly as thee stands before me, so truly did I see, that night when I left thee at the ruins, and crawled through the Injun lines, a white man that sat at a fire with Abel Doe, the father of the maid Telie, apart from the rest, and counselled with him how best to sack the cabin, without killing the two women. Truly, friend, it was a marvel to myself, there being so many of the murdering villains, that they did us so little mischief: but, truly, it was because of the women. And, truly, there was foul knavery between these two men; for I heard high words and chaffering between them, as concerning a price or reward which Abel Doe claimed of the other for the help he was rendering him, in snapping thee up, with thee kinswoman. Truly, thee must not think I was mistaken; for seeing the man's red shawl round his head gleaming in the fire, and not knowing there was any one nigh him (for Abel Doe lay flat upon the earth), a wicked thought came into my head; 'for, truly,' said I, 'this man is the chief, and, being alone, a man might strike him with a knife from behind the tree he rests against, and being killed, his people will fly in fear, without any more blood-shed;' but creeping nearer, I saw that he was but a white man in disguise; and so, having listened awhile, to hear what I could, and hearing what I have told thee, I crept away on my journey."
The effect of this unexpected revelation upon the young Virginian was as if an adder had suddenly fastened upon his bosom. It woke a suspicion, involving indeed an improbability such as his better reason revolted at, but full of pain and terror. But wild and incredible as it seemed, it received a kind of confirmation from what Nathan added.
"The rifle-guns, the beads, and the cloth," he said, "that were distributed after the battle,--does thee think they were plunder taken from the young Kentuckians they had vanquished? Friend, these things were a price with which the white man in the red shawl paid the assassin villains for taking thee prisoner,--thee and thee kinswoman. His hirelings were vagabonds of all the neighbouring tribes, Shawnees, Wyandots, Delawares, and Piankeshaws, as I noted well when I crept among them; and old Wenonga is the greatest vagabond of all, having long since been degraded by his tribe for bad luck, drunkenness, and other follies, natural to an Injun. My own idea is, that that white man thirsted for thee blood, having given thee up to the Piankeshaws, who, thee says, had lost one of their men in the battle; for which thee would certainly have been burned alive at their village: but what was his design in captivating thee poor kinswoman that thee calls Edith, truly I cannot divine, not knowing much of thee history."
"You shall hear it," said Roland, with hoarse accents,--"at least so much of it as may enable you to confirm or disprove your suspicions. There is indeed one man whom I have always esteemed my enemy, the enemy also of Edith,--a knave capable of any extremity, yet never could I have dreamed of a villany so daring, so transcendent as this!"
So saying, Roland, smothering his agitation as he could, proceeded to acquaint his rude friend, now necessarily his confidant, with so much of his history as related to Braxley, his late uncle's confidential agent and executor;--a man whom Roland's revelations to the gallant and inquisitive Colonel Bruce, and still more, perhaps, his conversations with Edith in the wood, may have introduced sufficiently to the reader's acquaintance. But of Braxley, burning with a hatred he no longer chose to subdue, the feeling greatly exasperated, also, by the suspicion Nathan's hints had infused into his mind, he now spoke without restraint; and assuredly, if one might have judged by the bitterness of his invectives, the darkness of the colours with which he traced the detested portrait, a baser wretch did not exist on the whole earth. Yet to a dispassionate and judicious hearer it might have seemed that there was little in the evidence to bear out an accusation so sweeping and heavy. Little, indeed, had the soldier to charge against him save his instrumentality in defeating hopes and expectations which had been too long indulged to be surrendered without anger and pain. That this instrumentality, considering all the circumstances, was to be attributed to base and fraudulent motives, it was natural to suspect; but the proofs were far from being satisfactory, as they rested chiefly on surmises and assumptions.
It will be recollected, that on the death of Major Forrester, Braxley had brought to light a testament of undoubted authenticity, but of ancient date, in which the whole estate of the deceased was bequeathed to his own infant child,--an unfortunate daughter, who, however, it had never been doubted, had perished many years before among the flames of the cabin of her foster-mother, but who Braxley had made oath was, to the best of his knowledge, still alive. His oath was founded, he averred, upon the declaration of a man, the husband of the foster-mother, a certain Atkinson, whom tory principles and practices, and perhaps crimes and outrages--for such were charged against him--had long since driven to seek refuge on the frontier, but who had privily returned to the major's house, a few weeks before the latter's death, and made confession that the girl was still living; but, being recognised by an old acquaintance, and dreading the vengeance of his countrymen, he had immediately fled again to the frontier, without acquainting any one with the place of the girl's concealment. The story of Atkinson's return was confirmed by the man who had seen and recognised him, but who knew nothing of the cause of his visit; and Braxley declared he had already taken steps to ferret him out, and had good hopes through his means of recovering the lost heiress.
This story Roland affected to believe a vile fabrication, the result of a deep-laid, and, unfortunately, too successful design on Braxloy's part to get possession, in the name of an imaginary heiress, of the rich estates of his patron. The authenticity of the will, which had been framed at a period when the dissensions between Major Forrester and his brothers were at the highest, Roland did not doubt; it was the non-existence of the individual in whose favour it had been executed, a circumstance which he devoutly believed, that gave a fraudulent character to its production. He even accused Braxley of having destroyed a second will (by which the former was of course annulled, even supposing the heiress were still living), a testament framed a few months before his uncle's death; in which the latter had bequeathed all his possessions to Edith, the child of his adoption. That such a second will had been framed, appeared from the testator's own admissions; at least, he had so informed Edith, repeating the fact on several different occasions. The fact, indeed, even Braxley did not deny; but he averred, that the second instrument had been destroyed by the deceased himself, as soon as the confession of Atkinson had acquainted him with the existence of his own unfortunate daughter. This explanation Roland rejected entirely, insisting that during the whole period of Atkinson's visit, and for some weeks before, his uncle had been in a condition of mental imbecility and unconsciousness, as incapable of receiving and understanding the supposed confession as he was of acting on it. The story was only an additional device of Braxley to remove from himself the suspicion of having destroyed the second will.
But whatever might have been thought of these imputations, it was evident that the young soldier had another cause for his enmity,--one, indeed, that seemed more operative on his mind and feelings than even the loss of fortune. The robber and plunderer, for these were the softest epithets he had for his rival, had added to his crimes the enormity of aspiring to the affections of his kinswoman; whom the absence of Roland and the helpless imbecility of her uncle left exposed to his presumption and his arts. Had the maiden smiled upon his suit, this indeed might have seemed a legitimate cause of hatred on the part of Roland; but Edith had repelled the lover with firmness, perhaps even with contempt. The presumption of such a rival Roland might perhaps have pardoned; but he saw in the occurrences that followed, a bitter and malignant revenge of the maiden's scorn, which none but the basest of villains could have attempted. It was this consideration which gave the sharpest edge to the young man's hatred: and it was his belief that a wretch capable of such a revenge, was willing to add to it any other measure of villany, however daring and fiendish, that had turned his thoughts upon Braxley, when Nathan's words first woke the suspicion of a foeman's design and agency in the attack on his party. How Braxley, a white man and Virginian, and therefore the foe of every western tribe, could have so suddenly and easily thrown himself into the arms of the savages, and brought them to his own plans, it might have been difficult to say. But anger is credulous, and fury stops not at impossibilities. "It is Braxley himself!" he cried, at the close of his narration; "how can it be doubted? He announced publicly his intention to proceed to the frontier, to the Kenhawa settlements, in search of the fabulous heiress, and was gone before our party had all assembled in Fincastle. Thus, then, he veiled his designs, thus concealed a meditated villany. But his objects--it was not my miserable life he sought--what would that avail him? --they aimed at my cousin,--and she is now in his power!"
"Truly, then," said Nathan, who listened to the story with great interest, and now commented on Roland's agitation with equal composure, "thee doth make a great fuss for nothing; for, truly, the maid will not be murdered--Truly, thee has greatly relieved my mind. Thee should not think the man, being a white man, will kill her."
"Kill her!" cried Roland--"Would that twenty bullets had pierced her heart, rather than she should have fallen alive into the hands of Braxley! Miserable wretch that I am! what can I do to save her? We will rescue her, Nathan; we will seek assistance; we will pursue the ravisher;--it is not yet too late. Speak to me--I shall go distracted: what must we do? --what _can_ we do?"
"Truly," said Nathan, "I fear me, we can do nothing. --Don't thee look so frantic, friend; I don't think thee has good sense. Thee talks of assistance--what is thee thinking about? where would thee seek assistance? Has thee forgot the Injun army is on the north side, and all the fighting-men of the Stations gone to meet them? There is nobody to help thee."
"But the emigrants, my friends? they are yet nigh at hand--" "Truly," said Nathan, "thee is mistaken. The news of the Injuns, that brought friend Thomas the younger into the woods, did greatly dismay them, as the young men reported; and, truly, they did resolve to delay their journey no longer, but start again before the break of day, that they might the sooner reach the Falls, and be in safety with their wives and little ones. There is no help for thee. Thee and me is alone in the wilderness, and there is no friend with us. Leave wringing thee hands, for it can do thee no good."
"I am indeed friendless, and there is no hope," said Roland, with the accents of despair; "while we seek assistance, and seek it vainly, Edith is lost,--lost for ever! Would that we had perished together! Hapless Edith! wretched Edith! --Was ever wretch so miserable as I?"
With such expressions, the young man gave a loose to his feelings, and Nathan surveyed, first with surprise and then with a kind of gloomy indignation, but never, as it seemed, with anything like sympathy, the extravagance of his grief.
"Thee is but a madman!" he exclaimed at last, and with a tone of severity that arrested Roland's attention: "does thee curse thee fate, and the Providence that is above thee, because the maid of thee heart is carried into captivity unharmed? Is thee wretched, because thee eyes did not see the Injun axe struck into her brain? Friend, thee does not know what such a sight is; but _I_ do--yes, I have looked upon such a thing, and I will tell thee what it is; for it is good thee should know. Look, friend," he continued, grasping Roland by the arm, as if to command his attention, and surveying him with a look both wild and mournful, "thee sees a man before thee who was once as young and as happy as thee,--yea, friend, happier, for I had many around me to love me,--the children of my body, the wife of my bosom, the mother that gave me birth. Thee did talk of such things to me in the wood,--thee did mention them one and all,--wife, parent, and child! Such things had I; and men spoke well of me--But thee sees what I am! There is none of them remaining,--none only but _me_; and thee sees me what I am! Ten years ago I was another man,--a poor man, friend, but one that was happy. I dwelt upon the frontiers of Bedford--thee may not know the place; it is among the mountains of Pennsylvania, and far away. _There_ was the house that I did build me; and in it there was all that I held dear, 'my gray old mother,'--(that's the way thee did call her, when thee spoke of her in the wood!) --'the wife of my bosom,' and 'the child of my heart,'--the _children_, friend,--for there was five of them, sons and daughters together,--little innocent babes that had done no wrong; and, truly, I loved them well. Well, friend, the Injuns came around us: for being bold, because of my faith that made me a man of peace and the friend of all men, I sat me down far on the border. But the Shawnees came upon me, and came as men of war, and their hands were red with the blood of my neighbours, and they raised them against my little infants. Thee asked me in the wood, what I would do in such case, having arms in my hand? Friend, I _had_ arms in my hand, at that moment,--a gun that had shot me the beasts of the mountain for food, and a knife that had pierced the throats of bears in their dens. I gave them to the Shawnee chief, that he might know I was a friend. --Friend! if thee asks me now for my children, I can tell thee--With my own knife he struck down my eldest boy! with my own gun he slew the mother of my children! --If thee should live till thee is gray, thee will never see the sight I saw that day! When thee has children that Injuns murder, as thee stands by,--a wife that clasps thee legs in the writhing of death,--her blood, spouting up to thee bosom, where she has slept,--an old mother calling thee to help her in the death-struggle:--then, friend, _then_ thee may see--then thee may know--then thee may feel--then thee may call theeself wretched, for thee will be so! Here was my little boy,--does thee see? there his two sisters--thee understands? --there--Thee may think I would have snatched a weapon to help them _then_! Well, thee is right:--but it was too late! --All murdered, friend! --all--all,--all cruelly murdered!"
It is impossible to convey an idea of the extraordinary vehemence, the wild accents, the frantic looks, with which Nathan ended the horrid story, into which he had been betrayed by his repining companion. His struggles to subdue the passions that the dreadful recollections of a whole family's butchery awoke in his bosom, only served to add double distortion to his changes of countenance, which, a better index of the convulsion within than were his broken, incoherent, half-inarticulate words, assumed at last an appearance so wild, so hideous, so truly terrific, that Roland was seized with horror, deeming himself confronted with a raging maniac. He raised his hand to remove that of Nathan, which still clutched his arm, and clutched it with painful force; but while in the act, the fingers relaxed of themselves, and Nathan dropped suddenly to the earth, as if struck down by a thunderbolt, his mouth foaming, his eyes distorted, his hands clenched, his body convulsed,--in short, exhibiting every proof of an epileptic fit, brought on by overpowering agitation of mind. As he fell, little Peter sprang to his side, and throwing his paws on his unconscious master's breast, stood over him as if to protect him, growling at Roland; who, though greatly shocked at the catastrophe, did not hesitate to offer such relief as was in his power. Disregarding the menace of the dog, which seemed at last to understand the purpose was friendly, he raised Nathan's head upon his knee, loosened the neckcloth that bound his throat, and sprinkled his face with water from the spring. While thus engaged, the cap of the sufferer fell from his head, and Roland saw that Nathan carried with him a better cause for the affliction than could be referred to any mere temporary emotion, however overwhelming to the mind. A horrible scar disfigured the top of his head, which seemed to have been, many years before, crushed by the blows of a heavy weapon; and it was equally manifest that the savage scalping-knife had done _its_ work on the mangled head.
The soldier had heard that injuries to the head often resulted in insanity of some species or other; he could now speculate, on better grounds, and with better reason, upon some of those singular points of character which seemed to distinguish the houseless Nathan from the rest of his fellow-men.
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The convulsion was but momentary, and departed with almost the same suddenness that marked its accession. Nathan started half up, looked wildly around him, surveying the bodies of the two Piankeshaws, and the visage of the sympathising soldier. Then snatching up and replacing his hat with one hand, and grasping Roland's with the other, he exclaimed, as if wholly unconscious of what had happened him,-- "Thee has heard it, and thee knows it,--thee knows what the Shawnees have done to me--they have killed them all, all that was of my blood! Had they done so by thee, friend," he demanded with eagerness, "had they done so by _thee_, what would thee have done to them?"
"Declared eternal war upon them and their accursed race!" cried Roland, greatly excited by the story; "I would have sworn undying vengeance, and I would have sought it,--ay, sought it without ceasing. Day and night, summer and winter, on the frontier and in their own lands and villages, I would have pursued the wretches, and pursued them to the death."
"Thee is right," cried Nathan, wringing the hand he still held, and speaking with a grin of hideous approval;--"by night and by day, in summer and in winter, in the wood and in the wigwam, thee would seek for their blood, and thee would shed it;--thee would think of thee wife and thee little babes, and thee heart would be as stone and fire within thee--thee would kill, friend, thee would kill, thee would kill!" And the monosyllable was breathed over and over again with a ferocity of emphasis that showed how deep and vindictive was the passion in the speaker's mind. Then,--with a transition of feeling as unexpected as it was abrupt, he added, still wringing Roland's hand, as if he had found in him a sympathizing friend, whose further kindness he was resolved to deserve, and to repay,--"Thee is right; I have thought about what thee has said--Thee shall have assistance. Thee is a brave man, and thee has not mocked at me because of my faith. Thee enemies shall be pursued, and the maid thee loves shall be restored to thee arms."
"Alas," said Roland, almost fearing from the impetuosity, as well as confidence, with which Nathan now spoke, that his wits were in a state of distraction, "where shall we look for help, since there are none but ourselves in this desert, of whom to ask it?"
"From our two selves it must come, and from none others," said Nathan, briskly. "We will follow the murdering thieves that have robbed thee of thee treasure, and we will recover the maid Edith from their hands."
"What! unaided? alone?"
"Alone, friend, with little Peter to be our guide, and Providence our hope and our stay. Thee is a man of courage, and thee heart will not fail thee, even if thee should find theeself led into the heart of the Injun nation. I have thought of this thing, friend, and I perceive there is good hope we shall prevail, and prevail better than if we had an hundred men to follow at our backs; unless we had them ready with us, to march this very day. Does thee hear me, friend? The Shawnee fighting-men are now in Kentucky, assembled in a great army, scalping and murdering as they come: their villages are left to be guarded by women and children and old men no longer fit for war. Thee understands me? If thee waits till thee collects friends, thee will have to cut thee way with them through fighting-men returned to their villages before thee; if thee proceeds as thee is, thee has nothing to fear that thee cannot guard against with thee own cunning,--nothing to oppose thee that thee cannot conquer with thee own strength and courage."
"And how," cried Roland, too ardent of temper, too ready to snatch at any hope, to refuse his approbation to the enterprise, though its difficulties immediately crowded before his eyes, "how shall we follow a trail so long and cold? where shall we find arms? where--" "Friend," said Nathan, interrupting him, "thee speaks without thought. For arms and ammunition, thee has thee choice among the spoils of these dead villains, thee captivators. For the trail, thee need think nothing of that: lost or found, thee may be certain it leads to the old Vulture's town on the Miami: there thee will find thee cousin, and thither I can lead thee."
"Let us go then, in Heaven's name," cried Roland, "and without further delay; every moment is precious."
"Thee speaks the truth; and if thee feels thee limbs strong enough--" "They are nerved by hope; and while that remains, I will neither faint nor falter. Edith rescued, and one blow--one good blow struck at the villain that wrongs her;--then let them fail me, if Heaven wills it, and fail me for ever!"
Few more words were required to confirm Roland's approval of the project so boldly, and indeed, as it seemed, so judiciously advised by his companion. To seek assistance was, as Nathan had justly said, to cast away the opportunity which the absence of the warriors from their towns opened to his hopes,--an opportunity in which craft and stratagem might well obtain the success not to be won, at a later period, and after the return of the marauders, even by a band of armed men.
Turning to the corses that still lay on the couch of leaves where they expired, Nathan began with little ceremony, and none of the compunction that might have been expected, to rob them of their knives, guns, and ammunition, with which Roland, selecting weapons to his liking, was soon well armed. The pouches of the warriors, containing strips of dried venison and stores of parched corn, Nathan appropriated in the same way, taking care, from the superabundance, to reward the services of little Peter, who received with modest gratitude, but despatched with energetic haste, the meal which his appearance, as well as his appetite, showed was not a blessing of every-day occurrence.
These preparations concluded, Nathan signified his readiness to conduct the young soldier on his way. But as he stepped to the edge of the little glade, and turned to take a last look of the dead Indians, the victims of his own warlike hand, a change came over his appearance. The bold and manly look which he had for a moment assumed, was exchanged for an air of embarrassment and almost timidity, such as marked his visage of old, at the Station. He hesitated, paused, looked at the bodies again, and then at Roland; and finally muttered aloud, though with doubting accents,-- "Thee is a man of war, friend,--a man of war and a soldier! and thee fights Injuns even as the young men of Kentucky fights them; and thee may think it but right and proper, as they do, in such case made and provided, to take the scalps off the heads of these same dead vagabonds! Truly, friend, if thee is of that mind, truly, I won't oppose thee!"
"Their scalps? _I_ scalp them!" cried Boland, with a soldier's disgust; "I am no butcher: I leave them to the bears and wolves, which the villains in their natures so strongly resembled. I will kill Indians wherever I can; but no scalping, Nathan, no scalping from me!"
"Truly, it is just as thee thinks proper," Nathan mumbled out; and without further remark he strode into the wood, following the path which the Piankeshaws had travelled the preceding evening, until, with Roland, he reached the spot where had happened the catastrophe of the keg,--a place but a few hundred paces distant from the glade. Along the whole way he had betrayed symptoms of dissatisfaction and uneasiness, for which Roland could not account; and now, having arrived at this spot, he came to a pause, and revealed the source of his trouble.
"Do thee sit down here and rest thee weary limbs, friend," he said. "Truly, I have left two Injun guns lying open to the day; and, truly, it doth afflict me to think so; for if other Injuns should chance upon this place, they must needs find them, and perhaps use them in killing poor white persons. Truly, I will hide them in a hollow tree, and return to thee in a minute."
With these words, he immediately retraced his path, leaving Roland to wonder and speculate at leisure over the singular intermixture of humane and ferocious elements of which his character seemed compounded. But the speculation was not long indulged; in a few moments Nathan's footsteps were heard ringing along the arched path, and he again made his appearance, but looking a new man. His gait was fierce and confident, his countenance bold and expressive of satisfaction. "Things should never be done by halves," he muttered, but more as if speaking to his own thoughts than to his companion.
With this brief apology, he again led the way through the forest; but not until Roland had observed, or thought he observed, a drop of blood fall from his tattered knife-sheath to the earth. But the suspicion that this little incident, coupled with the change in Nathan's deportment, awoke in Roland's mind, he had no leisure to pursue, Nathan now striding forward at a pace which soon brought his companion to a painful sense of his own enfeebled and suffering condition.
"Thee must neither faint nor flag," said Nathan; "thee enemies have the start of thee by a whole day; and they have thee horses also. Truly, it is my fear, that, with these horses and thee kinswoman, Abel Doe and the man Braxley, thee foeman, may push on for the Injun town with what speed they can, leaving their Injun thieves the footmen, to follow on as they may, or perhaps to strike through the woods for the north side, to join the ramping villains that are there burning and murdering! Thee must keep up thee strength till night-fall; when thee shall have good meat to eat and a long sleep to refresh thee; and, truly, on the morrow thee will be very well, though a little feverish."
With such encouragement, repeated time by time as seemed to him needful, Nathan continued to lead through wood and brake, with a vigour and freshness of step that moved the wonder and envy of Roland, who knew that, like himself, Nathan had been without sleep for two nights in succession; besides, having employed the intervening days in the most laborious exertions. Such an example of untiring energy and zeal, and the reflection that they were displayed in his cause--in the cause of his hapless Edith--supported Roland's own flagging steps; and he followed without murmuring, until the close of the day found him again on the banks of the river that had witnessed so many of his sufferings. He had been long aware that Nathan had deserted the path of the Piankeshaws; but not doubting his superior knowledge of the woods had led him into a shorter path, he was both surprised and concerned, when, striking the river at last, he found himself in a place entirely unknown, and apparently many miles below the scene of conflict of the previous day.
"He that would follow upon the heels of Wenonga," said Nathan, "must walk wide of his footsteps, for fear lest he should suddenly tread on the old reptile's tail. Thee don't know the craft of an old Injun that expects to be followed,--as, truly, it is like the Black-Vulture may expect it now. Do thee be content, friend; there is more paths to Wenonah's town than them that Wenonga follows; and, truly, we may gain something by taking the shortest."
Thus satisfying Roland he had good reasons for choosing his own path, Nathan led the way to the verge of the river; where, leaving the broad buffalo-trace by which he descended the banks, and diving through canes and rocks, until he had left the ford to which the path led, a quarter-mile or more behind, he stopped at last under a grim cliff overgrown with trees and brambles, where a cove or hollow in the rock, of a peculiarly wild, solitary, and defensible character, invited him to take up quarters for the night.
Nor did this seem the first time Wandering Nathan had sought shelter in the place, which possessed an additional advantage in a little spring that trickled from the rock, and collected its limpid stores in a rocky basin hard by; there were divers half-burned brands lying on its sandy floor, and a bed of fern and cane-leaves, not yet dispersed by the winds, that had evidently been once pressed by a human form.
"Thee will never see a true man of the woods," said Nathan, with much apparent self-approval, "build his camp-fire on a roadside, like that unlucky foolish man, Ralph Stackpole by name, that ferried thee down the river. Truly, it was a marvel he did not drown thee all, as well as the poor man Dodge! Here, friend, we can sleep in peace; and, truly, sleep will be good for thee, and me, and little Peter."
With these words, Nathan set about collecting dried logs and branches, which former floods had strown in great abundance along the rocks; and dragging them into the cove, he soon set them in a cheerful blaze. He then drew forth his stores of provender--the corn and dried meat he had taken from the Piankeshaws' pouches,--the latter of which, after a preliminary sop or two in the spring, for the double purpose of washing off the grains of gunpowder, tobacco, and what not, the usual scrapings of an Indian's pocket,--and of restoring its long vanished juices,--he spitted on twigs of cane, and roasted with exceeding patience and solicitude at the fire. To these dainty viands he added certain cakes and lumps of some nondescript substance, as Roland supposed it, until assured by Nathan it was good maple-sugar, and of his own making. "Truly," said he, "it might have been better, had it been better made. But, truly, friend, I am, as thee may see, a man that lives in the woods, having neither cabin nor wigwam, the Injuns having burned down the same, so that it is tedious to rebuild them; and having neither pots nor pans, the same having been all stolen, I did make my sugar in the wooden troughs, boiling it down with hot stones; and, truly, friend, it doth serve the purpose of salt, and is good against hunger in long journeys."
There was little in the dishes, set off by Nathan's cookery, or in his own feelings, to dispose the sick and weary soldier to eat; and having swallowed but a few mouthfuls, he threw himself upon the bed of leaves, hoping to find that refreshment in slumber which neither food nor the conversation of his companion could supply. His body being as much worn and exhausted as his mind, the latter was not doomed to be long tossed by grief and fear; and before the last hues of sunset had faded in the west, slumber had swept from his bosom the consciousness of his own sufferings, with even the memory of his Edith.
In the meanwhile, Nathan had gathered more wood to supply the fire during the night, and added a new stock of cane-leaves for his own bed; having made which to his liking, disposed his arms where they could be seized at a moment's warning, and, above all, accommodated little Peter with a couch at his feet, he also threw himself at length, and was soon sound asleep.
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The morning-star, peeping into the hollow den of the wanderers, was yet bright on the horizon, when Roland was roused from his slumbers by Nathan, who had already risen and prepared a hasty meal resembling in all respects that of the preceding evening. To this the soldier did better justice than to the other: for, although feeling sore and stiff in every limb, he experienced none of the feverish consequences Nathan had predicted from his wounds; and his mind, invigorated by so many hours of rest, was more tranquil and cheerful. The confidence Nathan seemed to feel in the reasonableness and practicability of their enterprise, however wild and daring it might have seemed to others, was his own best assurance of its success; and hope thus enkindled and growing with his growing strength, it required no laborious effort to summon the spirits necessary to sustain him during the coming trials.
This change for the better was not unnoticed by Nathan, who exhorted him to eat freely, as a necessary prelude to the labours of the day; and the rude meal being quickly and satisfactorily despatched, and little Peter receiving his due share, the companions, without further delay, seized their arms, and recommenced their journey. Crossing the river at the buffalo-ford above, and exchanging the road to which it led for wilder and lonelier paths traced by smaller animals, they made their way through the forest, travelling with considerable speed, which was increased, as the warmth of exercise gradually restored their native suppleness to the soldier's limbs.
And now it was, that, as the opening of a glorious dawn, flinging sunshine and life over the whole wilderness, infused still brighter hopes into his spirit, he began to divide his thoughts between his kinswoman and his guide, bestowing more upon the latter than he had previously found time or inclination to do. His strange appearance, his stranger character, his sudden metamorphosis from a timid and somewhat over-conscientious professor of the doctrines of peace and good-will, into a highly energetic and unremorseful, not to say, valiant man of war, were all subjects to provoke the soldier's curiosity; which was still further increased when he pondered over the dismal story Nathan had so imperfectly told him on the past day. Of those dreadful calamities which, in Nathan's own language, "had made him what he was," a houseless wanderer of the wilderness, the Virginian would gladly have known more; but his first allusion to the subject produced such evident disorder in Nathan's mind, as if the recollection were too harrowing to be borne, that the young man immediately repressed his inquiries, and diverted his guide's thoughts into another channel. His imagination supplied the imperfect links in the story: he could well believe that the same hands which had shed the blood of every member of the poor borderer's family, might have struck the hatchet into the head of the resisting husband and father; and that the effects of that blow, with the desolation of heart and fortune which the heavier ones, struck at the same time, had entailed, might have driven him to the woods, an idle, and perhaps aimless, wanderer.
How far these causes might have operated in leading Nathan into those late acts of blood which were at such variance with his faith and professions, it remained also for Roland to imagine; and, in truth, he imagined they had operated deeply and far; though nothing in Nathan's own admissions could be found to sanction any belief save that they were the results, partly of accident, and partly of sudden and irresistible impulse.
At all events, it was plain that his warlike feats, however they might at first have shocked his sense of propriety, now sat but lightly on his conscience; and, indeed, since his confession at the Piankeshaw camp, he ceased even to talk of them, perhaps resting upon that as an all-sufficient explanation and apology. It is certain from that moment he bore himself more freely and boldly, entered no protest whatever against being called on to do his share of such fighting as might occur--a stipulation made with such anxious forethought when he first consented to accompany the lost travellers--nor betrayed any tenderness of invective against the Indians, whom, having first spoken of them only as "evil-minded poor Shawnee creatures," he now designated, conformably to established usage among his neighbours of the Stations, as "thieves and dogs," "bloody villains, and rapscallions;" all which expressions he bestowed with as much ease and emphasis as if he had been accustomed to use them all his life.
With this singular friend and companion Roland pursued his way through the wilderness, committing life, and the hopes that were dearer than life, to his sole guidance and protection; nor did anything happen to shake his faith in either the zeal or ability of Nathan to conduct to a prosperous issue the cause he had so freely and disinterestedly espoused.
As they thridded the lonely forest-paths together, Nathan explained at length the circumstances upon which he founded his hopes of success in their project; and, in doing so, convinced the soldier, not only that his sagacity was equal to the enterprise, but that his acquaintance with the wilderness was by no means confined to the region south of the Ohio; the northern countries, then wholly in the possession of the Indian tribes, appearing to be just as well known to him, the Miami country in particular, in which lay the village of the Black-Vulture. How this knowledge had been obtained was not so evident; for, although he averred he hunted the deer or trapped the beaver on either side the river, as appeared to him most agreeable, it was hardly to be supposed he could carry on such operations in the heart of the Indian nation. But it was enough for Roland that the knowledge so essential to his own present plans, was really possessed by his conductor, and he cared not to question how it had been arrived at; it was an augury of success, of which he felt the full influence.
The evening of that day found him upon the banks of the Kentucky, the wild and beautiful river from which the wilderness around derived its name; and the next morning, crossing it on a raft of logs speedily constructed by Nathan, he trod upon the soil of the north side, famous even then for its beauty and for the deeds of bloodshed almost daily enacted among its scattered settlements, and destined, unhappily, to be rendered still more famous for a tragedy which that very day witnessed, far off among the barren ridges of the Licking, where sixty of the district's best and bravest sons fell the victims less of Indian subtlety than of their own unparalleled rashness. But of that bloody field the travellers were to hear thereafter; the vultures were winging their flight towards the fatal scene; but they alone could snuff, in that silent desert, the scent of the battle that vexed it.
Sleeping that night in the woods, the next day, being the fourth since they left the Piankeshaw camp, beheld the travellers upon the banks of the Ohio; which, seen, for the first time, in the glory of summer, its crystal waters wheeling placidly along amid hills and forests, ever reflected in the bright mirror below, and with the air of virgin solitude which, through so many leagues of its course, it still presents, never fails to fill the beholder's mind with an enchanting sense of its loveliness.
Here a raft was again constructed; and the adventurers pushing boldly across, were soon upon the opposite shore. This feat accomplished, Nathan took the precaution to launch their frail float adrift in the current, that no tell-tale memorial of a white man's visit should remain to be read by returning warriors. The next moment, ascending the bank of the river, he plunged with his companion into the midst of brake and forest; neither of them then dreaming that upon the very spot where they toiled through the tangled labyrinths, a few years should behold the magic spectacle of a fair city, the Queen of the West, uprisen with the suddenness, and almost the splendour, of the _Fata-Morgana_, though, happily, doomed to no such evanescent existence. Then handling their arms, like men who felt they were in a foe-man's country, and knew that every further step was to be taken in peril, they resumed their journey, travelling with such speed and vigour (for Roland's strength had returned apace), that at the close of the day they were, according to Nathan's account, scarce twenty miles distant from the Black-Vulture's village, which they might easily reach the following day. On the following day, accordingly, they resumed their march, avoiding all paths, and stealing through the most unfrequented depths of the woods, proceeding with a caution which was every moment becoming more obviously necessary to the success of their enterprise.
Up to this period their journey had presented nothing of interest, being a mere succession of toil, privation, and occasional suffering, naturally enough to be expected in such an undertaking; but it was now about to be varied by an adventure of no little interest in itself, and, in its consequences, destined to exercise a powerful influence on the prospects of the travellers.
Laying their plans so as to reach the Indian village only about nightfall, and travelling but slowly and with great circumspection, they had not, at mid-day, accomplished much more than half the distance; when they came to a halt in a little dell, extremely wild and sequestered, where Nathan proposed to rest a few hours, and recruit their strength with a warm dinner--a luxury they had not enjoyed for the last two days, during which they had subsisted upon the corn and dried meat from the Indian wallets. Accident had, a few moments before, provided them materials for a more palatable meal. They had stumbled upon a deer that had just fallen under the attack of a catamount; which, easily driven from its yet warm and palpitating quarry, surrendered the feast to its unwelcome visitors. An inspection of the carcass showed that the animal had been first struck by the bullet of some wandering Indian hunter--a discovery that somewhat concerned Nathan, until, after a more careful examination of the wound, which seemed neither severe nor mortal, he was convinced the poor beast had run many long miles, until, in fact, wholly exhausted, before the panther had finished the work of the huntsman. This circumstance removing his uneasiness, he helped himself to the choicest portion of the animal, amputated a hind leg without stopping to flay it, and clapping this upon his shoulder in a very business-like way, left the remainder of the carcass to be despatched by the wild-cat at her leisure.
The little dell, in which Nathan proposed to cook and enjoy his savoury treasure, at ease and in safety, was enclosed by hills; of which the one by which they descended into it fell down in a rolling slope densely covered with trees; while the other, rocky, barren, and almost naked, rose precipitously up, a grim picture of solitude and desolation. A scanty brook, oozing along through the swampy bottom of the hollow, and supplied by a spring near its head, at which the two friends halted to prepare their meal, ran meandering away among alders and other swampy plants, to find exit into a larger vale that opened below, though hidden from the travellers by the winding of the rocky ridge before them.
In this lonely den, Nathan and Roland began straightway to disencumber themselves of arms and provisions, seeming well satisfied with its convenience. But not so little Peter; who, having faithfully accompanied them so far, now following numbly at his master's heels, and now, in periods of alarm or doubt, taking post in front, the leader of the party, uplifted his nose, and fell to snuffing about him in a way that soon attracted his master's notice. Smelling first around the spring, and then giving a look both up and down the glen, as if to satisfy himself there was nothing wrong in either of those quarters, he finally began to ascend the rocky ridge, snuffing as he went, and ever and anon looking back to his master and soliciting his attention by a wag of his tail.
"Truly, thee did once wag to me in vain!" said Nathan, snatching up his gun, and looking volumes of sagacious response at his brute ally, "but thee won't catch me napping again; though, truly, what thee can smell here, where is neither track of man nor print of beast, truly, Peter, I have no idea!"
With these words, he crept up the hill himself, following in little Peter's wake; and Roland, who also grasped his rifle, as Nathan had done, though without perhaps attaching the same importance to Peter's note of warning, thought fit to imitate his example.
In this manner, cautiously crawling up, the two friends reached the crest of the hill; and peering over a precipice of fifty or more feet sheer descent, with which it suddenly dipped into a wild but beautiful little valley below, beheld a scene that, besides startling them somewhat out of their tranquillity, caused both to bless their good fortune they had not neglected the warning of their brute confederate.
The vale below, like that they had left, opened into a wider bottom-land, the bed of a creek, which they could see shining among the trees that overshadowed the rich alluvion; and into this poured a rivulet that chattered along through the glen at their feet, in which it had its sources. The hill on the other side of the little vale, which was of an oval figure, narrowest at its outlet, was rough and precipitous, like that on which they lay; but the two uniting above, bounded the head of the vale with a long, bushy, sweeping slope--a fragment of a natural amphitheatre--which was evidently of an easy ascent, though abrupt and steep. The valley thus circumscribed, though broken, and here and there deeply furrowed by the water-course, was nearly destitute of trees, except at its head, where a few young beeches flung their silver boughs and rich green foliage abroad over the grassy knolls, and patches of papaws drooped their loose leaves and swelling fruit over the stream. It was in this part of the valley, at the distance of three or four hundred paces from them, that the eyes of the two adventurers, directed by the sound of voices, which they had heard the instant they reached the crest of the ridge, fell, first, upon the smoke of a huge fire curling merrily up into the air, and then upon the bodies of no less than five Indian warriors, all zealously and uproariously engaged in an amusement highly characteristic of their race. There was among them a white man, an unfortunate prisoner, as was seen at a glance, whom they had bound by the legs to a tree; around which the savages danced and leaped, yelling now with rage, now in merriment, but all the while belabouring the poor wretch with rods and switches, which, at every turn round the tree, they laid about his head and shoulders with uncommon energy and zest. This was a species of diversion better relished, as it seemed, by the captors than their captive; who, infuriated by his pangs, and perhaps desiring, in the desperation of the moment, to provoke them to end his sufferings with the hatchet, retaliated with his fists, which were at liberty, striking fiercely at every opportunity, and once with such effect as to tumble one of the tormentors to the earth--a catastrophe, however, that the others rewarded with roars of approving laughter, though without for a moment intermitting their own cruelties.
This spectacle, it may be well supposed, produced a strong effect upon the minds of the travellers, who, not without alarm on their own account at the discovery of such dangerous neighbours, could not view without emotion a fellow white man and countryman helpless in their hands, and enduring tortures perhaps preliminary to the more dreadful one of the stake. They looked one another in the face: the Virginian's eyes sparkled with a meaning which Nathan could not misunderstand; and clutching his rifle tighter in his hands, and eyeing the young man with an ominous stare, he muttered,--"Speak, friend,--thee is a man and a soldier--what does thee think, in the case made and provided?"
"We are but two men, and they five," replied Roland, firmly, though in the lowest voice; and then repeated, in the same energetic whisper,--"we are but two men, Nathan; but there is no kinswoman now to unman me!"
Nathan took another peep at the savages before speaking. Then looking upon the young man with an uneasy countenance, he said,--"We are but two men, as thee says, and they five; and, truly, to do what thee thinks of, in open day, is a thing not to be thought on by men that have soft places in their bosoms. Nevertheless, I think, according to thee own opinion, we being strong men that have the wind of the villains, and a good cause to help us, truly, we might snap the poor man they have captivated out of their hands, with considerable much damage to them besides, the murdering rapscallions! --But, friend," he added, seeing Roland give way to his eagerness,--"thee spoke of the fair maid, thee cousin--If thee fights this battle, truly, thee may never see her more."
"If I fall," said Roland,--but he was interrupted by Nathan: "It is not _that_ thee is to think of. Truly, friend, thee may fight these savages, and thee may vanquish them; but unless thee believes in thee conscience thee can kill them every one--truly, friend, thee can hardly expect it?"
"And why should we? It is enough if we can rescue the prisoner."
"Friend, thee is mistaken. If thee attacks the villains, and but one of them escapes alive to the village, sounding the alarm, thee will never enter the same in search of the maid, thee kinswoman. Thee sees the case: thee must choose between the captive there and thee cousin!"
This was a view of the case, and as Roland felt, a just one, well calculated to stagger his resolutions, if not entirely to abate his sympathy for the unknown sufferer. As his hopes of success in the enterprise for which he had already dared and endured so much, evidently depended upon his ability to approach the Indian village without awakening suspicion, it was undeniable that an attack upon the party in the vale, unless resulting in its complete destruction, must cause, to be borne to the Black-Vulture's town, and on the wings of the wind, the alarm of white men in the woods; and thus not only cut him off from it, but actually bring upon himself all the fighting men who might be remaining in the village. To attack the party with the expectation of wholly destroying it, was, or seemed to be, an absurdity. But to desert a wretched prisoner whom he had it perhaps in his power to rescue from captivity, and from a fate still more dreadful, was a dereliction of duty, of honour, of common humanity, of which he could scarce persuade himself to be guilty. He cast his eyes up the glen, and once more looked upon the captive, who had sunk to the ground, as if from exhaustion, and whom the savages, after beating him awhile longer, as if to force him again on his feet, that they might still enjoy their amusement, now fell to securing with thongs. As Roland looked, he remembered his own night of captivity, and hesitated no longer. Turning to Nathan, who had been earnestly reading the struggles of his mind, as revealed in his face, he said, and with unfaltering resolution,--"You say we _can_ rescue that man. --I was a prisoner, like him, bound too,--a helpless, hopeless captive--three Indians to guard me, and but one friend to look upon me; yet did not that friend abandon me to my fate. --God will protect my poor cousin--we must rescue him!"
"Thee is a man, every inch of thee!" said Nathan, with a look of uncommon satisfaction and fire: "thee shall have thee will in the matter of these murdering Shawnee dogs; and, it may be, it will be none the worse for thee kinswoman."
With that he motioned Roland to creep with him beyond the crest of the hill, where they straightway held a hurried consultation of war to determine upon the plan of proceedings in the prosecution of an adventure so wild and perilous.
The soldier, burning with fierce ardour, proposed that they should take post respectively the one at the head, the other at the outlet of the vale, and creeping as nigh the enemy as they could, deliver their fire, and then rushing on, before the savages could recover from their surprise, do their best to finish the affair with their hatchets,--a plan, which, as he justly said, offered the only prospect of cutting off the retreat of those who might survive the fire. But Nathan had already schemed the matter otherwise: he had remarked the impossibility of approaching the enemy from below, the valley offering no concealment which would make an advance in that quarter practicable; whereas the bushes on the slope, where the two walls of the glen united, afforded the most inviting opportunity to creep on the foe without fear of detection. "Truly," said he, "we will get us as nigh the assassin thieves as we can; and, truly, it may be our luck, each of us, to get a brace of them in range together, and so bang them beautiful!" --an idea that was manifestly highly agreeable to his imagination, from which he seemed to have utterly banished all those disgusts and gaingivings on the subject of fighting, which had formerly afflicted it; "or perhaps, if we can do nothing better," he continued, "we may catch the vagabonds wandering from their guns, to pick up sticks for their fire; in which case, friend, truly, it may be our luck to help them to a second volley out of their own pieces: or, if the worst must come, truly, then, I do know of a device that may help the villains into our hands, even to their own undoing!"
With these words, having first examined his own and Roland's arms, to see that all were in proper battle condition, and then directed little Peter to ensconce in a bush, wherein little Peter straightway bestowed himself, Tiger Nathan, with an alacrity of motion and ardour of look that indicated anything rather than distaste to the murderous work in hand, led the way along the ridge, until he had reached the place where it dipped down to the valley, covered with the bushes through which he expected to advance to a desirable position undiscovered.
But a better auxiliary even than the bushes was soon discovered by the two friends. A deep gully, washed in the side of the hill by the rains, was here found running obliquely from its top to the bottom, affording a covered way, by which, as they saw at a glance, they could approach within twenty or thirty yards of the foe entirely unseen; and, to add to its advantages, it was the bed of a little water-course, whose murmurs, as it leaped from rock to rock, assured them they could as certainly approach unheard.
"Truly," muttered Nathan, with a grim chuckle, as he looked, first, at the friendly ravine, and then at the savages below, "the Philistine rascals is in our hands, and we will smite them hip and thigh!"
With this inspiring assurance he crept into the ravine; and Roland following, they were soon in possession of a post commanding, not only the spot occupied by the enemy, but the whole valley.
Peeping through the fringe of shrubs that rose, a verdant parapet, on the brink of the gully, they looked down upon the savage party, now less than forty paces from the muzzle of their guns, and wholly unaware of the fate preparing for them. The scene of diversion and torment was over; the prisoner, a man of powerful frame but squallid appearance, whose hat,--a thing of shreds and patches,--adorned the shorn pate of one of the Indians, while his coat, equally rusty and tattered, hung from the shoulders of a second, lay bound under a tree, but so nigh that they could mark the laborious heavings of his chest. Two of the Indians sat near him on the grass keeping watch, their hatchets in their hands, their guns resting within reach against the trunk of a tree overthrown by some hurricane of former years, and now mouldering away. A third was engaged with his tomahawk, lopping away the few dry boughs that remained on the trunk. Squatting at the fire, which the third was thus labouring to replenish with fuel, were the two remaining savages, who, holding their rifles in their hands, divided their attention betwixt a shoulder of venison roasting on a stick in the fire, and the captive, whom they seemed to regard as destined to be sooner or later disposed of in a similar manner.
The position of the parties precluded the hope Nathan had ventured to entertain of getting them in a cluster, and so doing double execution with each bullet; but the disappointment neither chilled his ardour nor embarrassed his plans. His scheme of attack had been framed to embrace all contingences; and he wasted no further time in deliberation. A few whispered words conveyed his last instructions to the soldier; who, reflecting that he was fighting in the cause of humanity, remembering his own heavy wrongs, and marking the fiery eagerness that flamed from Nathan's visage, banished from his mind whatever disinclination he might have felt at beginning the fray in a mode so seemingly treacherous and ignoble. He laid his axe on the brink of the gully at his side, together with his foraging cap; and then, thrusting his rifle through the bushes, took aim at one of the savages at the fire, Nathan directing his piece against the other. Both of them presented the fairest marks, as they sat wholly unconscious of their danger, enjoying in imagination the tortures yet to be inflicted on the prisoner. But a noise in the gully,--the falling of a stone loosened by the soldier's foot, or a louder than usual plash of water,--suddenly roused them from their dreams; they started up, and turned their eyes towards the hill. --"Now, friend!" whispered Nathan;--"if thee misses, thee loses thee maiden and thee life into the bargain. --Is thee ready?"
"Ready," was the reply.
"Right, then, through the dog's brain,--fire!"
The crash of the pieces, and the fall of the two victims, both marked by a fatal aim, and both pierced through the brain, were the first announcement of peril to their companions; who, springing up, with yells of fear and astonishment, and snatching at their arms, looked wildly around them for the unseen foe. The prisoner, also, astounded out of his despair, raised his head from the grass, and glared around. The wreaths of smoke curling over the bushes on the hill-side, betrayed the lurking place of the assailants; and savages and prisoner turning together, they all beheld at once the spectacle of two human heads,--or, to speak more correctly, two human caps, for the heads were far below them,--rising in the smoke, and peering over the bushes, as if to mark the result of the volley. Loud, furious, and exulting were the screams of the Indians, as with the speed of thought, seduced by a stratagem often practised among the wild heroes of the border, they raised and discharged their pieces against the imaginary foes so incautiously exposed to their vengeance. The caps fell, and with them the rifles that had been employed to raise them; and the voice of Nathan thundered through the glen, as he grasped his tomahawk and sprang from the ditch,--"Now, friend! up with thee axe, and do thee duty!"
With these words, the two assailants at once leaped into view, and with a bold hurrah, and bolder hearts, rushed towards the fire, where lay the undischarged rifles of their first victims. The savages yelled also in reply, and two of them bounded forward to dispute the prize. The third, staggered into momentary inaction by the suddenness and amazement of the attack, rushed forward but a step; but a whoop of exultation was on his lips, as he raised the rifle which _he_ had not yet discharged, full against the breast of Tiger Nathan. But, his triumph was short-lived; the blow, so fatal as it must have proved to the life of Nathan, was averted by an unexpected incident. The prisoner, near whom he stood, putting all his vigour into one tremendous effort, burst his bonds, and, with a yell ten times louder and fiercer than had yet been uttered, added himself to the combatants. With a furious cry of encouragement to his rescuers,--"Hurrah for Kentucky! --give it to 'em good!" he threw himself upon the savage, beat the gun from his hands, and grasping him in his brawny arms, hurled him to the earth, where, rolling over and over in mortal struggle, growling and whooping, and rending one another like wild beasts, the two, still locked in furious embrace, suddenly tumbled down the banks of the brook, there high and steep, and were immediately lost to sight.
Before this catastrophe occurred, the other Indians and the assailants met at the fire; and each singling out his opponent, and thinking no more of the rifles, they met as men whose only business was to kill or to die. With his axe flourished over his head, Nathan rushed against the tallest and foremost enemy, who, as he advanced, swung his tomahawk, in the act of throwing it. Their weapons parted from their hands at the same moment, and with perhaps equal accuracy of aim; but meeting with a crash in the air, they fell together to the earth, doing no harm to either. The Indian stooped to recover his weapon; but it was too late: the hand of Nathan was already upon his shoulder: a single effort of his vast strength sufficed to stretch the savage at his feet; and holding him down with knee and hand, Nathan snatched up the nearest axe. "If the life of thee tribe was in thee bosom," he cried, with a look of unrelenting fury, of hatred deep and ineffaceable, "thee should die the dog's death, as thee does!" And with a blow furiously struck, and thrice repeated, he despatched the struggling savage as he lay.
He rose, brandishing the bloody hatchet, and looked for his companion. He found him upon the earth, lying upon the breast of his antagonist, whom it had been his good fortune to over-master. Both had thrown their hatchets, and both without effect, Roland because skill was wanting, and the Shawnee because, in the act of throwing, he had stumbled over the body of one of his comrades, so as to disorder his aim, and even to deprive him of his footing. Before he could recover himself, Roland imitated Nathan's example, and threw himself upon the unlucky Indian,--a youth, as it appeared, whose strength, perhaps at no moment equal to his own, had been reduced by recent wounds,--and found that he had him entirely at his mercy. This circumstance, and the knowledge that the other Indians were now overpowered, softened the soldier's wrath; and when Nathan, rushing to assist him, cried aloud to him to move aside, that he might "knock the assassin knave's brains out," Roland replied by begging Nathan to spare his life. "I have disarmed him," he cried--"he resists no more--Don't kill him."
"To the last man of his tribe!" cried Nathan, with unexampled ferocity; and, without another word, drove the hatchet into the wretch's brain.
The victors now leaping to their feet, looked round for the fifth savage and the prisoner; and directed by a horrible din under the bank of the stream, which was resounding with, curses, groans, heavy blows, and the plashing of water, ran to the spot, where the last incident of battle was revealed to them in a spectacle as novel as it was shocking. The Indian lay on his back suffocating in mire and water; while astride his body sat the late prisoner, covered from head to foot with mud and gore, furiously plying his fists, for he had no other weapons, about the head and face of his foe, his blows falling like sledge-hammers or battering-rams, with such strength and fury that it seemed impossible any one of them could fail to crush the skull to atoms; and all the while garnishing them with a running accompaniment of oaths and maledictions little less emphatic and overwhelming. "You switches gentlemen, do you, you exflunctified, perditioned rascal? Ar'n't you got it, you niggur-in-law to old Satan? you 'tarnal half-imp, you? H'yar's for you, you dog, and thar's for you, you dog's dog! H'yar's the way I pay you in a small-change of sogdologers!"
And thus he cried, until Roland and Nathan seizing him by the shoulders, dragged him by main force from the Indian, who was found, when they came to examine the body afterwards, actually pommelled to death, the skull having been beaten in as with bludgeons. --The victor sprang upon his feet, and roared his triumph aloud:--"Ar'n't I lick'd him handsome! --Hurrah for Kentucky and old Salt--Cock-a-doodle-doo!"
And with that, turning to his deliverers, he displayed to their astonished eyes, though disfigured by blood and mire, the never-to-be-forgotten features of the captain of horse-thieves, Soaring Ralph Stackpole.
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The amazement of Stackpole at finding to whom he owed his deliverance, was not less than that of the travellers; but it was mingled, in his case, with feelings of the most unbounded and clamorous delight. Nathan he grasped by the hands, being the first upon whom he set his eyes; but no sooner had they wandered to the soldier, than throwing his arms around him, he gave him a hug, neither tender nor respectful, but indicative of the intensest affection and rapture.
"You cut the rope, stranger, and you cut the tug," he cried, "on madam's beseeching! but h'yar's the time you holped me out of a fix without axing! Now, strannger, I ar'n't your dog, 'cause how, I'm anngelliferous madam's: but if I ar'n't your dog, I'm your man, Ralph Stackpole, to be your true-blue through time and etarnity, any way you'll ax me; and if you wants a sodger, I'll 'list with you, I will, 'tarnal death to me!"
"But how, in heaven's name, came you here a prisoner? I saw you escape with my own eyes," said Roland, better pleased, perhaps, at the accession of such a stout auxiliary than with his mode of professing love and devotion.
"Strannger," said Ralph, "if you war to ax me from now till doomsday about the why and the wharfo' I couldn't make you more nor one answer: I come to holp anngelliferous madam out of the hands of the abbregynes, according to my sworn duty as her natteral-born slave and redemptioner! I war hard on the track, when the villians here caught me."
"What!" cried Roland, his heart for the first time warming towards the despised horse-thief, while even Nathan surveyed him with something like complacency, "you are following my poor cousin then? You were not brought here a prisoner?"
"If I war, I wish I may be shot," said Ralph: "it warn't a mile back on the ridge, whar the Injuns snapped me; 'causa how, I jist bang'd away at a deer, and jist then up jumps the rascals on me, afo' I had loaded old speechifier; and so they nabb'd me! And so, sodger, h'yar's the way of it all: You see, d'you see, as soon as Tom Bruce comes to, so as to be able to hold the hoss himself--" "What," said Roland, "was he not mortally wounded?"
"He ar'n't much hurt to speak on, for all of his looking so much like coffin-meat at the first jump: it war a kind of narvousness come over him that men feels when they gets the thwack of a bullet among the narves. And so, you see, d'you see, says I, 'Tom Bruce, do you stick to the critter, and he'll holp you out of the skrimmage;' and, says I, 'I'll take the back-track, and foller atter madam.' And, says he, says he--But, 'tarnal death to me, let's scalp these h'yar dead villians, and do the talking atter! Did you see the licking I gin this here feller? It war a reggular fair knock-down-and-drag-out, and I licked him! Thar's all sorts of ways of killing Injuns; but, I reckon, I'm the only gentleman in all Kentuck as ever took a scalp in the way of natur'! Hurrah for Kentuck! and hurrah for Ralph Stackpole, for he ar' a screamer!"
The violation of the dead bodies was a mode of crowning their victory which Roland would have gladly dispensed with; but such forbearance, opposed to all border ideas of manly spirit and propriety, found no advocate in the captain of horse-thieves, and none, we are sorry to say, even in the conscientious Nathan; who, having bathed his peaceful sword too deep in blood to boggle longer at trifles, seemed mightily inclined to try his own hand at the exercise. But this addition to the catalogue of his backslidings was spared him, Roaring Ralph falling to work with an energy of spirit and rapidity of execution, which showed he needed no assistance, and left no room for competition. --Such is the practice of the border, and such it has been ever since the mortal feud, never destined to be really ended but with the annihilation, or civilisation, of the American race, first began between the savage and the white intruder. It was, and is, essentially a measure of retaliation, compelled, if not justified, by the ferocious example of the red man. Brutality ever begets brutality; and magnanimity of arms can be only exercised in the case of a magnanimous foe. With such, the wildest and fiercest rover of the frontier becomes a generous and even humane enemy.
The Virginian was yet young in the war of the wilderness: and turning in disgust from a scene he could not prevent, he made his way to the fire, where the haunch of venison, sending forth a savoury steam through the whole valley, was yet roasting on the rude Indian spit,--a spectacle which (we record it with shame) quite banished from his mind not only all thoughts of Ralph's barbarism, but even the sublime military ardour awakened by the din and perils of the late conflict. Nor were its effects less potential upon Nathan and Ralph, who, having first washed from their hands and faces the stains of battle, now drew nigh, snuffing the perfume of a dinner with as much ardour as they could have bestowed on the scent of battle. The haunch, cooked to their hands, was straightway removed to a convenient place, where all, drawing their knives, fell foul with an energy of appetite and satisfaction that left them oblivious of most sublunary affairs. The soldier forgot his sorrows, and Nathan forgot little Peter,--though little Peter, by suddenly creeping out of the bushes on the hill, and crawling humbly to the table, and his master's side, made it apparent he had not forgot himself. As for the captain of horse-thieves, he forgot everything save the dinner itself, which he attacked with an appetite well nigh ravenous, having, as he swore, by way of grace over the first mouthful, eaten nothing save roots and leaves for more than three days. It was only when, by despatching at least twice his share of the joint, he began to feel, as he said, "summat like a hoss and a gentleman," that the others succeeded in drawing from him a full account of the circumstances which had attended his solitary inroad into the Indian country and his fall into the clutches of the Shawnee party.
But little had the faithful fellow to impart, beyond what he had already told. Galloping from the fatal hill, the scene of defeat to the young Kentuckians, he sustained Tom Bruce in his arms, until the latter, reviving, had recovered strength enough to provide for his own safety; upon which Ralph, with a degree of Quixotism, that formed a part of his character, and which was, in this instance, strengthened by his grateful devotion to Edith, the saver of his life, declared he would pursue the trail of her captors, even if it led him to their village, nor cease his efforts until he had rescued her out of their hands, or laid down his life in her service. In this resolution he was encouraged by Bruce, who swore on his part, that he would instantly follow with his father, and all the men he could raise, recover the prisoners, and burn the towns of the whole Shawnee nation about their ears; a determination he was perhaps the more readily driven to by the reflection that the unlucky captives were his father's individual guests, and had been snatched away while still, in a manner, under, or relying on, his father's protection. So much he promised, and so much there was no doubt he would, if able, perform; nevertheless, he exhorted Ralph to do his best, in the meanwhile, to help the strangers, vowing, if he succeeded in rendering them any assistance, or in taking a single scalp of the villains that had borne them off, he would not only never Lynch him, himself, but would not even allow others to do it, though he were to steal all the horses in Kentucky, his father's best bay mare included.
Thus encouraged, the valiant horse-thief, bidding farewell to Tom Bruce and Brown Briareus together, commenced making good his words by creeping back to the battle-field; when, arriving before Nathan, he struck the trail of the main party, and immediately pursued it with zeal and courage, but still with the necessary caution and circumspection; his hopes of being able to do something to the advantage of his benefactress, resting principally on his knowledge of several of the outer Indian towns, in every one of which, he boasted, he had stolen horses. Being but poorly provided with food, and afraid to hunt while following so closely on the heels of the marauders, he was soon reduced to want and suffering, which he bore for three days with heroic fortitude; until at last, on the morning of the present day, being in a state of utter starvation, and a buck springing up in his path, he could resist the temptation no longer, and so fired upon it. The animal being wounded, and apparently severely, he set off in pursuit, too eager to lose time by recharging his piece; and it was while he was in that defenceless condition that the five Indians, a detachment and rear-guard, as it proved, of the very party he was dogging, attracted by the sound of his gun, stole upon him unawares and made him a prisoner. This, it seems, had happened but a short distance behind; and there was every reason to suppose that the buck, from whose loins the travellers had filched the haunch that destiny had superseded by a better, was the identical animal whose seducing appearance had brought Stackpole into captivity. He was immediately recognised by his captors, whose exultation was boundless, as indeed was their cruelty; and he could only account for their halting with him in that retired hollow, instead of pushing on to display their prize to the main body, by supposing they could not resist their desire to enjoy a snug little foretaste of the joys of torturing him at the stake, all by themselves,--a right they had earned by their good fortune in taking him. In the valley, then, they had paused, and tying him up, proceeded straightway to flog him to their hearts' content; and they had just resolved to intermit the amusement awhile, in favour of their dinner, when the appearance of his bold deliverers rushing into their camp, converted the scene of brutal merriment into one of retributive vengeance and blood.
The discovery that the five human beings he had contributed so much to destroy, were part and parcel of the very band, the authors of all his sufferings, the captors of his kinswoman, abated some little feelings of compunction with which Roland had begun occasionally to look upon the gory corses around him.
The main body of marauders, with their prisoner, there seemed good reason to suppose, were yet upon their march to the village, though too far advanced to leave any hope of overtaking them, were that even desirable. It is true, that Roland, fired by the thought of being so near his kinswoman, and having before his eyes a proof of what might be done by craft and courage, even against overwhelming numbers, urged Nathan immediately to re-commence the pursuit; the Indians would doubtless halt to rest and refresh, as the luckless five had done, and might be approached and destroyed, now that they themselves had increased their forces by the rescue of Ralph, in the same way: "we can carry, with us," he said, "these Indians' guns, with which we shall be more than a match for the villains;" and he added other arguments, such, however, as appeared much more weighty to himself than to honest Nathan. That the main party should have halted, as he supposed, did not appear at all probable to Nathan: they had no cause to arrest them in their journey, and they were but a few miles removed from the village, whither they would doubtless proceed without delay, to enjoy the rewards of their villany, and end the day in revel and debauch. "And truly, friend," he added, "it will be better for thee, and me, and the maid, Edith, that we steal her by night from out of a village defended only by drowsy squaws and drunken warriors, than if we were to aim at taking her out of the camp of a war-party. Do thee keep thee patience; and, truly, there is no telling what good may come of it." In short, Nathan had here, as in previous instances, made up his mind to conduct affairs his own way; and Roland, though torn by impatience, could do nothing better than submit.
And now, the dinner being at last despatched, Nathan directed that the bodies of the slain Indians should be tumbled into a gully, and hidden from sight; a measure of such evident precaution as to need no explanation. This was immediately done; but not before Ralph and the man of peace had well rummaged the pouches of the dead, helping themselves to such valuables and stores of provender and ammunition as they could lay hands on; in addition to which, Nathan stripped from one a light Indian hunting-shirt, from another a blanket, a woman's shawl, and a medicine bag, from a third divers jingling bundles of brooches and hawk-bells, together with a pouch containing vermilion and other paints, the principal articles of savage toilet; which he made up into a bundle, to be used for a purpose he did not conceal from his comrades. He then seized upon the rifles of the dead (from among which Stackpole had already singled out his own), and removing the locks, hid them away in crannies of the cliffs, concealing the locks in other places;--a disposition which he also made of the knives and tomahawks; remarking, with great justice, that "if honest Christian men were to have no good of the weapons, it was just as well murdering Injuns should be no better off."
These things concluded, the dead covered over with boughs and brambles, and nothing left in the vale to attract a passing and unobservant eye, he gave the signal to resume the march, and with Roland and Captain Ralph, stole from the field of battle.
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The twilight was darkening in the west, when the three adventurers, stealing through tangled thickets, and along lonely ridges, carefully avoiding all frequented paths, looked out at last, from a distant hill, upon the valley in which lay the village of the Black-Vulture. The ruddy light of evening, bursting from clouds of crimson and purple, and shooting down through gaps of the hills in cascades of fire, fell brightly and sweetly on the little prairies, or natural meadow-lands; which, dotted over with clumps of trees, and watered by a fairy river, a tributary of the rapid Miami, winding along from side to side, now hiding beneath the shadow of the hills, now glancing into light, gave an air of tender beauty to the scene better befitting, as it might have seemed, the retreat of the innocent and peaceful sons of Oberon, than the wild and warlike children of the wilderness. Looking further up the vale, the eye fell upon patches of ripening maize, waving along the river; and beyond these, just where the valley winded away behind the hills, at the distance of a mile or more, thin wreaths of smoke creeping from roofs of bark and skins, indicated the presence of the Indian village.
Thus arrived at the goal and haven of their hopes, the theatre in which was to be acted the last scene in the drama of their enterprise, the travellers surveyed it for awhile from their concealment, in deep silence, each speculating in his own mind upon the exploits still to be achieved, the perils yet to be encountered, ere success should crown their exertions, already so arduous and so daring. Then creeping back again into a deep hollow, convenient for their purpose, they held their last consultation, and made their final preparations for entering the village. This Nathan at first proposed to do entirely alone, to spy out the condition of the village, and to discover, if possible, in what quarter the marauders had bestowed the unhappy Edith; and this being a duty requiring the utmost secrecy and circumspection, he insisted it could not be safely committed to more than one person.
"In that case," said valiant Ralph, "I'm your gentleman! Do you think, old Tiger Nathan (and, 'tarnal death to me, I do think you're 'ginnin' to be a peeler of the rale ring-tail specie,--I do, old Rusty, and thar's my fo'paw on it: you've got to be a man at last, a feller for close locks and fighting Injuns that's quite cu'rous to think on, and I'll lick any man that says a word agin you, I will, 'tarnal death to me): But I say, do you think I'm come so far atter madam, to gin up the holping her out of bondage to any mortal two-legg'd crittur whatsomever? I'm the person what knows this h'yar town better nor ar another feller in all Kentucky; and that I stick on,--for, cuss me, I've stole hosses in it!"
"Truly," said Nathan, after reflecting awhile, "thee might make theeself of service to the maid, even in thee own way; but, verily, thee is an unlucky man, and thee brings bad luck wheresoever thee goes; and so I'm afeard of thee."
"Afeard of your nose!" said Ralph, with great indignation; "ar'n't I jist been slicked out of the paws of five mortal abbregynes that had me in the tugs? and ar'n't that luck enough for any feller? I tell you what, Nathan, me and you will snuff the track together: you shall hunt up anngelliferous madam, and gin her my compliments; and, while you're about it, I'll steal her a hoss to ride off on!"
"Truly," said Nathan, complacently, "I was thinking of that; for, they says, thee is good in a horse-pound; and it needs the poor maid should have something better to depend on, in flight, than her own poor innocent legs. And so, friend, if thee thinks in thee conscience thee can help her to a strong animal, without fear of discovery, I don't care if thee goes with me: and, truly, if thee could steal two or three more of the creatures for our own riding, it might greatly advantage the maid."
"Thar you talk like a feller of gumption," said Ralph: "only show me the sight of a bit of skin-rope for halters, and you'll see a sample of hoss-stealing to make your ha'r stand on eend!"
"Of a truth," said Nathan, "thee shan't want for halters, if leather can make them. There is that on my back which will make thee a dozen; and, truly, as it needs I should now put me on attire more suitable to an Injun village, it is a satisfaction thee can put the old garment to such good use."
With these words, Nathan stripped off his coat of skins, so aged and so venerable, and gave it to the captain of horse-thieves; who, vastly delighted with the prize, instantly commenced cutting it into strips, which he twisted together, and fashioned into rude halters; while Nathan supplied its place by the loose calico shirt he had selected from among the spoils of the Indian party, throwing over it, mantle-wise, the broad Indian blanket. His head he bound round with the gaudy shawl which he had also taken from the brows of a dead foe-man; and he hung about his person various pouches and ornamented belts, provided for the purpose. Then, daubing over his face, arms, and breast with streaks of red, black, and green paint, that seemed designed to represent snakes, lizards, and other reptiles; he was, on a sudden, converted into a highly respectable-looking savage, as grim and awe-inspiring as these barbaric ornaments and his attire, added to his lofty stature, could make him. Indeed, the metamorphosis was so complete, that Captain Ralph, as he swore, could scarce look at him without longing, as this worthy personage expressed it, "to be at his top-knot."
In the meanwhile, Forrester had not deferred with patience to an arrangement which threatened to leave him, the most interested of all, in inglorious activity, while his companions were labouring in the cause of his Edith. He remonstrated, and insisted upon accompanying them to the village, to share with them all the dangers of the enterprise.
"If there was danger to none but ourselves, truly, thee should go with us and welcome," said Nathan; representing, justly enough, the little service that Roland, destitute of the requisite knowledge and skill, could be expected to render, and the dangers he must necessarily bring upon the others, in case of any, the most ordinary, difficulties arising in their progress through the village. Everything must now depend upon address, upon cunning and presence of mind; the least indiscretion (and how many might not the soldier, his feelings wound up to a pitch of the intensest excitement, commit?) must of necessity terminate in the instant destruction of all. In short, Roland was convinced, though sorely against his will, that wisdom and affection both called on him to play the part Nathan had assigned him; and he submitted to be ruled accordingly,--with the understanding, however, that the rendezvous, in which he was to await the operations of the others, should be upon the very borders of the village, whence he might, in any pressing emergency, in case of positive danger and conflict, be immediately called to their assistance.
When the twilight had darkened away, and the little river, rippling along on its course, sparkled only in the light of the stars, the three friends crept from their retreat, and descended boldly into the valley; where, guided by the barking of dogs, the occasional yells of a drunken or gamesome savage, and now and then the red glare of a fire flashing from the open crannies of a cabin, they found little difficulty in approaching the Indian village. It was situated on the further bank of the stream, and, as described, just behind the bend of the vale, at the bottom of a rugged, but not lofty hill; which, jutting almost into the river, left yet space enough for the forty or fifty lodges composing the village, sheltering them in winter from the bitter blasts that rush, at that season, from the northern lakes. Beyond the river, on the side towards the travellers, the vale was broader; and it was there the Indians had chiefly planted their corn-fields,--fields enriched by the labour, perhaps also by the tears, of their oppressed and degraded women.
Arriving at the borders of the cultivated grounds, the three adventurers crossed the river, which was neither broad nor deep, and stealing among logs and stumps at the foot of the hill, where some industrious savage had, in former years, begun to clear a field, which, however, his wives had never planted, they lay down in concealment, waiting until the subsiding of the unusual bustle in the village, a consequence manifestly of the excesses which Nathan predicted the victors would indulge in, should render their further advance practicable. But this was not the work of a moment. The savage can drink and dance through the night with as lusty a zeal as his white neighbour; the song, the jest, the merry tale, are as dear to his imagination; and in the retirement of his own village, feeling no longer the restraint of stolid gravity,--assumed in the haunts of the white man, less to play the part of a hero than to cover the nakedness of his own inferiority,--he can give himself up to wild indulgence, the sport of whim and frolic; and, when the fire-water is the soul of the feast, the feast only ends with the last drop of liquor.
It could be scarcely doubted that the Indians of the village were, this night, paying their devotions to the Manito of the rum-keg, and drinking folly and fury together from the enchanted draught, which one of the bravest of the race--its adorer and victim, like Logan the heroic, and Red-Jacket the renowned,--declared could only have been distilled "from the hearts of wild-cats and the tongues of women,--it made him so fierce and so foolish;" nor could it, on the other hand, be questioned that many a sad and gloomy reminiscence, the recollection of wrong, of defeat, of disaster, of the loss of friends and of country, was mingled in the joy of the debauch. From their lurking-place near the village, the three friends could hear many a wild whoop, now fierce and startling, now plaintive and mourning,--the one, as Nathan and Ralph said, the halloo for revenge, the other the whoop of lamentation,--at intervals chiming strangely in with unmeaning shrieks and roaring laughter, the squeaking of women and the gibbering of children, with the barking of curs, the utterance of obstreperous enjoyment, in which the whole village, brute and human, seemed equally to share. For a time, indeed, one might have deemed the little hamlet an outer burgh of Pandemonium itself; and the captain of horse-thieves swore, that, having long been of opinion "the red abbregynes war the rule children of Sattan, and niggers only the grand-boys, he should now hold the matter to be as settled as if booked down in an almanac,--he would, 'tarnal death to him."
But if the festive spirit of the barbarians might have lasted for ever, there was, it appeared, no such exhaustless quality in their liquor; and, that failing at last, the uproar began gradually to decrease; although it was not until within an hour of midnight that Nathan declared the moment had arrived for entering the village.
He then rose from his lair, and repeating his injunctions to Roland to remain where he was, until the issue of his own visit should be known, added a word of parting counsel, which, to Roland's imagination, bore somewhat an ominous character. "The thing that is to come," he said, "neither thee nor me knows anything about; for, truly, an Injun village is a war-trap, which one may sometimes creep into easy enough; but, truly, the getting out again is another matter. And so, friend, if it should be my luck, and friend Ralph's, to be killed or captivated, so that we cannot return to thee again, do thee move by the first blink of day, and do thee best to save thee own life; and, truly, I have some hope that thee may succeed, seeing that, if I should fall, little Peter (which I will leave with thee, for, truly, he would but encumber me among the dogs of the village, having better skill to avoid murdering Injuns than the creatures of his own kind), will make thee his master,--as verily, he can no longer serve a dead one,--and show thee the way back again from the wilderness. Truly, friend, he hath an affection for thee, for thee has used him well; which he can say of no other persons, save only thee and me excepted."
With that, having laid aside his gun, which, as he represented, could be, in such an undertaking, of no service, and directed Stackpole to do the same, he shook Roland by the hand, and, waiting an instant till Ralph had followed his example, and added his farewell in the brief phrase,--"Sodger, I'm atter my mistress; and, for all Nathan's small talk about massacree and captivation, we'll fetch her, with a most beautiful lot of hosses; so thar's no fawwell about it,"--turned to little Peter, whom he addressed quite as gravely as he had done the Virginian. "Now, little dog Peter," said he, "I leave thee to take care of theeself and the young man that is with thee; and do thee be good, and faithful, and obedient, as thee always has been, and have a good care thee keeps out of mischief."
With these words, which Peter, doubtless, perfectly understood, for he squatted himself down upon the ground, without any attempt to follow his master, Nathan departed, with Roaring Ralph at his side, leaving Roland to mutter his anxieties and fears, his doubts and impatience, into the ears of the least presuming of counsellors.
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The night was brilliantly clear, the stars shining with an excess of lustre, with which Nathan would perhaps, at that moment, have gladly dispensed, since it was by no means favourable to the achievement he was now so daringly attempting. Fortunately, however, the Indian village lay, for the most part, in the shadow of the hill, itself covered with majestic maples and tulip-trees, that rose in dark and solemn masses above it, and thus offered the concealment denied in the more open parts of the valley. With Ralph still at his side, he crept round the projecting corner of the hill, and, shrouded in its gloom, drew nigh the village, wherein might be still occasionally heard the halloo of a drunken savage, followed by an uproarious chorus of barking and howling curs.
Whether it was that these sounds, or some gloomy forebodings of his own, awoke the anxieties of Nathan, he did not deign to reveal; but, by and by, having arrived within but a few paces of a wretched pile of skins and boughs, the dwelling of some equally wretched and improvident barbarian, he came to a sudden halt, and withdrawing the captain of horse-thieves aside from the path, addressed him in the following terms:-- "Thee says, friend, thee has taken horses from this very Village, and that thee knows it well?"
"As well," replied Ralph, "as I know the step-mothers on my own thumbs and fingers,--I do, 'tarnal death to me,--that is to say, all the parts, injacent and outjacent, circum-surrounding the boss-stamp; for thar's the place of my visiting. The way to fetch it, old boy, is jist to fetch round this h'yar old skin-pot, whar thar's a whole bee's-nest of young papooses, the size of bull-toads,--from that, up--(I know it, 'cause how, I heerd 'em squallin'; and thar war some one a lickin' 'em); or, if you don't favour taking it so close to the skirmudgeons, then you must claw up the knob h'yar, and then take and take the shoot, till you fetch right among the hosses, whar you h'ar them whinnying down the holler; and thar--" "Friend," said Nathan, cutting him short, "it is on _thee_ doings, more than on them of any others, that the hopes of the maid Edith--" "Call her anngelliferous madam," said Ralph, "for I can't stand any feller being familiar with her,--I can't, no how."
"Well, friend," said Nathan, "it is on thee doings that her escaping the Shawnee villains this night depends. If thee does well, it may be we shall both discover and carry her safe away from captivation: if thee acts as a foolish imprudent man,--and, truly, friend, I have my fears of thee,--thee will both fail to help her theeself, and prevent others doing it, who, it may be, has the power."
"Old boy," said the captain of horse-thieves, with something like a gulp of emotion, "you ar'n't respectable to a feller's feelings. But I'll stand anything from you, 'cause how, you down'd my house in a fa'r tussle, and you helped the captain thar that helped me out of trouble. If you're atter ginning me a bit of wisdom, and all on madam's account, I'm jist the gentleman that h'ars you. State the case, and h'yar stands I confawmable."
"Well, friend," said Nathan, "what I have to advise thee is, that thee stops where thee is, leaving the rest of this matter entirely to me; seeing that, as thee knows nothing of this Injun village, excepting the horse-pound thereof, it will not be safe for thee to enter. Do thee rest where thee is, and I will spy out the place of the maiden's concealing."
"Old feller," said Captain Ralph, "you won't pretend you knows more of the place than me? You don't go for to say you ever stole a hoss here?"
"Do thee be content, friend," said Nathan, "to know there is not a cabin in all the village that is unbeknown to me: do thee be content with that. Thee must not go near the pound, until thee knows for certain the maid thee calls madam can be saved. Truly, friend, it may be we cannot help her to-night, but may do so to-morrow night."
"I see what you're up to," said Ralph: "and thar's no denying it war a natteral piece of nonsense to steal a hoss, afo' madam war ready to ride him. And so, old Nathan, if it ar' your qualified opinion I'll sarve madam better by snuggin' under a log, than by snuffin' atter her among the cabins, I'm jist the gentleman to knock under, accordin' to reason."
This declaration seemed greatly to relieve the uneasiness of Nathan, who recommending him to be as good as his word, and ensconce among some logs lying near the path, awaiting the event of his own visit to the heart of the village, immediately took his leave; though not with the timid and skulking step of a spy. Wrapping his blanket about his shoulders, and assuming the gait of a savage, he stalked boldly forwards; jingling under his mantle the bundle of hawk's-bells which he carried in his hand, as if actually to invite the observation of such barbarians as were yet moving through the village.
But this stretch of audacity, as the listening horse-thief was at first inclined to esteem it, was soon seen to have been adopted with a wise foreknowledge of its effects in removing one of the first and greatest difficulties in the wanderer's way. At the first cabin was a troop of yelling curs, that seemed somewhat disturbed by the stranger's approach, and disposed to contest his right of passing scot-free; but a jerk of the bells settled the difficulty in a moment; and the animals, mute and crest-fallen, slunk nastily away, as if expecting the crash of a tomahawk about their ears, in the usual summary Indian way, to punish their presumption in baying a warrior.
"A right-down natteral, fine conceit!" muttered Captain Ralph, approvingly: "the next time I come a-grabbin' hosses, if I don't fetch a bushel of the jinglers, I wish I may be kicked! Them thar Injun dogs is always the devil."
In the meanwhile, Nathan, though proceeding with such apparent boldness, and relying upon his disguise as all-sufficient to avert suspicion, was by no means inclined to court any such dangers as could be really avoided. If the light of a fire still burning in a wigwam, and watched by wakeful habitants, shone too brightly from its door, he crept by with the greatest circumspection; and he gave as wide a berth as possible to every noisy straggler who yet roamed through the village.
There was indeed necessity for every precaution. It was evident, that the village was by no means so destitute of defence as he had imagined,--that the warriors of Wenonga had not generally obeyed the call that carried the army of the tribes to Kentucky, but had remained in inglorious ease and sloth in their own cabins. There was no other way, at least, of accounting for the dozen or more male vagabonds, whom he found at intervals stretched here before a fire, where they had been carousing in the open air, and there lying asleep across the path, just where the demon of good cheer had dropped them. Making his own inferences from their appearance, and passing them with care, sometimes even, where their slumbers seemed unsound, crawling by on his face, he succeeded at last in reaching the central part of the village; where the presence of several cabins of logs, humble enough in themselves, but far superior to the ordinary hovels of an Indian village, indicated the abiding place of the superiors of the clan, or of those apostate white men, renegades from the States, traitors to their country and to civilisation, who were, at that day, in so many instances, found uniting their fortunes with the Indians, following, and even leading them, in their bloody incursions upon the frontiers. To one of those cabins Nathan made his way with stealthy step; and peeping through a chink in the logs, beheld a proof that here a renegade had cast his lot, in the appearance of some half a dozen naked children, of fairer hue than the savages, yet not so pale as those of his own race, sleeping on mats round a fire, at which sat, nodding and dozing, the dark-eyed Indian mother.
One brief, earnest look Nathan gave to this spectacle; then, stealing away, he bent his steps towards a neighbouring cabin, which he approached with even greater precautions than before. This was a hovel of logs, like the other, but of still better construction, having the uncommon convenience of a chimney, built of sticks and mud, through whose low wide top ascended volumes of smoke, made ruddy by the glare of the flames below. A cranny here also afforded the means of spying into the doings within; and Nathan, who approached it with the precision of one not unfamiliar with the premises, was not tardy to avail himself of its advantages. Bare naked walls of logs, the interstices rudely stuffed with moss and clay,--a few uncouth wooden stools,--a rough table,--a bed of skins,--and implements of war and the chase hung in various places about the room, all illuminated more brilliantly by the fire on the hearth than by the miserable tallow candle, stuck in a lamp of humid clay, that glimmered on the table,--were not the only objects to attract the wanderer's eye. Sitting by the fire were two men, both white; though the blanket and calico shirt of one, and the red shawl which he was just in the act of removing from his brows, as Nathan peeped through the chink, with an uncommon darkness of skin and hair, might have well made him pass for an Indian. His figure was very tall, well proportioned, and athletic; his visage manly, and even handsome; though the wrinkles of forty winters furrowed deeply in his brows, and perhaps a certain repelling gleam, the light of smothered passions shining from the eyes below, might have left that merit questionable with the beholder.
The other was a smaller man, whom Roland, had he been present, would have recognised as the supposed half-breed, who, at the partition of spoils, after the capture of his party, and the defeat of the young Kentuckians, had given him a prisoner into the hands of the three Piankeshaws,--in a word, the renegade father of Telie Doe. Nor was his companion less familiar to Nathan, who beheld in his sombre countenance the features of that identical stranger, seen with Doe at the fire among the assailants at the memorable ruin, whose appearance had awakened the first suspicion that there was more in the attack than proceeded from ordinary causes. This was a discovery well fitted to increase the interest, and sharpen the curiosity, of the man of peace: who peering in upon the pair from the chink, gave all his faculties to the duty of listening and observing. The visage of Doe, dark and sullen at the best, was now peculiarly moody; and he sat gazing into the fire, apparently regardless of his companion, who, as he drew the shawl from his head, and threw it aside, muttered something into Doe's ears, but in a voice too low for Nathan to distinguish what he said. The whisper was repeated once and again, but without seeming to produce any impression upon Doe's ears; at which the other growing impatient, gave, to Nathan's great satisfaction, a louder voice to his discourse: "Hark, you, Jack,--Atkinson,--Doe,--Shanogenaw,--Rattlesnake,--or whatever you may be pleased to call yourself," he cried, striking the muser on the shoulder, "are you mad, drunk, or asleep? Get up, man, and tell me, since you will tell me nothing else, what the devil you are dreaming about?"
"Why, curse it," said the other, starting up somewhat in anger, but draining, before he spoke, a deep draught from an earthen pitcher that stood on the table,--"I was thinking, if you must know, about the youngster, and the dog's death we have driven him to--Christian work for Christian men, eh?"
"The fate of war!" exclaimed the renegade's companion, with great composure; "we have won the battle, boy;--the defeated must bear the consequences."
"Ondoubtedly," said Doe,--"up to the rack, fodder or no fodder: that's the word; there's no 'scaping them consequences; they must be taken as they come,--gantelope, fire-roasting, and all. But, I say, Dick--saving your pardon for being familiar," he added, "there's the small matter to be thought on in the case,--and that is, it was not Injuns, but rale right-down Christian men that brought the younker to the tug. It's a bad business for white men, and it makes me feel oncomfortable."
"Pooh," said the other, with an air of contemptuous commiseration, "you are growing sentimental. This comes of listening to that confounded whimpering Telie."
"No words agin the gal!" cried Doe, sternly; "you may say what you like of me, for I'm a rascal that desarves it; but I'll stand no barking agin the gal."
"Why, she's a good girl and a pretty girl,--too good and too pretty to have so crusty a father,--and I have nothing against her, but her taking on so about the younker, and so playing the devil with the wits and good-looks of my own bargain."
"A dear bargain she is like to prove to all of us," said Doe, drowning his anger, or remorse, in another draught from the pitcher. "She has cost us eleven men already: it is well the bulk of the whelps was Wabash and Maumee dogs, or you would have seen her killed and scalped, for all of your guns and whisky,--you would, there's no two ways about it. Howsomever, four of 'em was dogs of our own, and two of them was picked off by the Jibbenainosay. I tell you what, Dick, I'm not the man to skear at a raw-head-and-bloody-bones; but I do think the coming of this here cursed Jibbenainosay among us, jist as we was nabbing the girl and sodger, was as much as to say there was no good could come of it; and so the Injuns thought too--you saw how hard it was to bring 'em up to the scratch, when they found he had been knifing a feller right among 'em! I do believe the crittur's Old Nick himself!"
"So don't I," said the other; "for it is quite unnatural to suppose the devil would ever take part against his own children."
"Perhaps," said Doe, "you don't believe in the crittur?"
"Good Jack, honest Jack," replied his companion, "I am no such ass."
"Them that don't believe in hell, will natterly go agin the devil," muttered the renegade, with strong signs of disapprobation; and then added earnestly,--"Look you, Squire, you're a man that knows more of things than me, and the likes of me. You saw that 'ere Injun, dead, in the woods under the tree, where the five scouters had left him a living man?"
"Ay," said the man of the turban; "but he had been wounded by the horseman you so madly suffered to pass the ambush at the ford, and was obliged to stop from loss of blood and faintness. What so natural as to suppose the younker fell upon him (we saw the tracks of the whole party where the body lay), and slashed him in your devil's style, to take advantage of the superstitious fear of the Indians?"
"There's nothing like being a lawyer, sartain!" grumbled Doe. "But the warrior right among us, there at the ruin? --you seed him yourself,--marked right in the thick of us! I reckon you won't say the sodger, that we had there trapped up fast in the cabin, put the cross on that Injun too?"
"Nothing more likely," said the sceptic;--"a stratagem a bold man might easily execute in the dark."
"Well, Squire," said Doe, waxing impatient, "you may jist as well work it out according to law that this same sodger younker, that never seed Kentucky afore in his life, has been butchering Shawnees there, ay, and in this d--d town too, for ten years agone. Ay, Dick, it's true, jist as I tell you: there has been a dozen or more Injun warriors struck and scalped in our very wigwams here, in the dead of the night, and nothing, in the morning, but the mark of the Jibbenainosay to tell who was the butcher. There's not a cussed warrior of them all that doesn't go to his bed at night in fear; for none knows when the Jibbenainosay,--the Howl of the Shawnees,--may be upon him. You must know, there was some bloody piece of business done in times past (Injuns is the boys for them things!) --the murdering of a knot of innocent people--by some of the tribe, with the old villain Wenonga at the head of 'em. Ever since that, the Jibbenainosay has been murdering among them; and they hold that it's a judgment on the tribe, as ondoubtedly it is. And now, you see, that's jist the reason why the old chief has turned such a vagabond; for the tribe is rifled at him, because of his bringing such a devil on them, and they won't follow him to battle no more, except some sich riff-raff, vagabond rascals as them we picked up for this here rascality, no how. And so, you see, it has a sort of set the old feller mad: he thinks of nothing but the Jibbenainosay,--(that is, when he's sober, though, cuss him, I believe it's all one when he's drunk, too.) --of hunting him up and killing him, for he's jist a feller to fight the devil, there's no two ways about it. It was because I told him we was going to the woods on Salt, where the crittur abounds, and where he might get wind of him, that he smashed his rum-keg, and agreed to go with us."
"Well, well," said Doe's associate, "this is idle talk. We have won the victory, and must enjoy it. I must see the prize."
"What good can come of it?" demanded Doe, moodily: "the gal's half dead and whole crazy,--or so Telie says. And as for your gitting any good-will out of her, cuss me if I believe it. And Telie says--" "That Telie will spoil all! I told you to keep the girl away from her."
"Well, and didn't I act accordin'? I told her I'd murder her, if she went near her agin--a full-blooded, rale-grit rascal to talk so to my own daughter, an't I? But I should like to know where's the good of keeping the gal from her, since it's all she has for comfort?"
"And that is the very reason she must be kept away," said the stranger, with a look malignly expressive of self-approving cunning: "there must be no hope, no thought of security, no consciousness of sympathy, to make me more trouble than I have had already. She must know where she is, and what she is, a prisoner among wild savages: a little fright, a little despair, and the work is over. You understand me, eh? There is a way of bringing the devil himself to terms; and as for a woman, she is not much more unmanageable. One week of terrors, real and imagined, does the work; and then, my jolly Jack, you have won your wages."
"And I have desarved 'em," said Doe, striking his fist upon the table with violence; "for I have made myself jist the d----dest rascal that was ever made of a white man. Lying, and cheating, and perjuring, and murdering--it's nothing better nor murder, that of giving up the younker that never did harm to me or mine, to the Piankeshaws,--for they'll burn him, they will, d--n 'em! there's no two ways about it. --There's what I've done for you; and if you were to give me had the plunder, I reckon 'twould do no more than indamnify me for my rascality. And so, here's the end on't;--you've made me a rascal, and you shall pay for it."
"It is the only thing the world ever does pay for," said the stranger, with edifying coolness; "and so, don't be afflicted. To be a rascal is to be a man of sense,--provided you are a rascal in a sensible way,--that is, a profitable one."
"Ay," said Doe, "that's the doctrine you have been preaching ever since I knowed you; and _you_ have made a fortun' by it. But as for me, though I've toed the track after your own leading, I'm jist as poor as ever, and ten times more despisable,--I am, d--n me; for I'm a white Injun, and there's nothing more despisable. But here's the case," he added, working himself into a rage,--"I won't be a rascla for nothing,--I'm sworn to it: and this is a job you must pay for to the full vally, or you're none the better on it."
"It will make your fortune," said his companion in iniquity: "there was bad luck about us before; but all is now safe--The girl will make us secure."
"I don't see into it a bit," said Doe, morosely: "you were secure enough without her. The story of the other gal you know of gave you the grab on the lands and vall'ables; and I don't see what's the good to come of this here other one, no how."
"Then have you less brains, my jolly Jack, then I have given you credit for," said the other. "The story you speak of is somewhat too flimsy to serve us long. We must have a better claim to the lands than can come of possession in trust for an heir not to be produced, till we can find the way to Abraham's bosom. We have now obtained it: the younker, thanks to your Piankeshaw cut-throats, is on the path to Paradise; the girl is left alone, sole claimant, and heiress at law. In a word, Jack, I design to marry her;--ay, faith will-she nill-she, I will marry her: and thereby, besides gratifying certain private whims and humours not worth mentioning, I will put the last finish to the scheme, and step into the estate with a clear conscience."
"But the will, the cussed old will?" cried Doe. "You've got up a cry about it, and there's them that won't let it drop so easy. What's an heir at law agin a will? You take the gal back, and the cry is, 'Where's the true gal, the major's daughter?' I reckon, you'll find you're jist got yourself into a trap of your own making!"
"In that case," said the stranger, with a grin, "we must e'en act like honest men, and find (after much hunting and rummaging, mind you!) the major's _last_ will."
"But you burned it!" exclaimed Doe: "you told me so yourself."
"I told you so, Jack; but that was a little bit of innocent deception, to make you easy. I told you so; but I kept it, to guard against accidents. And here it is, Jack," added the speaker, drawing from amid the folds of his blanket a roll of parchment, which he proceeded very deliberately to spread upon the table: "The very difficulty you mention occurred to me; I saw it would not do to raise the devil, without retaining the power to lay him. Here then is the will, that settles the affair to your liking. The girl and the younker are co-heirs together; but the latter dying intestate, you understand, the whole falls into the lap of the former. Are you easy now, honest Jack? Will this satisfy you all is safe?"
"It is jist the thing to an iota," ejaculated Doe, in whom the sight of the parchment seemed to awaken cupidity and exultation together: "there's no standing agin it in any court in Virginnee!"
"Right, my boy," said his associate. "But where is the girl? I must see her."
"In the cabin with Wenonga's squaw, right over agin the Council-house," replied Doe; adding with animation, "but I'm agin your going nigh her, till we settle up accounts jist as honestly as any two sich d--d rascals can. I say, by G--, I must know how the book stands, and how I'm to finger the snacks: for snacks is the word, or the bargain's no go."
"Well,--we can talk of this on the morrow."
"To-night's the time," said Doe: "there's nothing like having an honest understanding of matters afore-hand. I'm not going to be cheated,--not meaning no offence in saying so; and I've jist made up my mind to keep the gal out of your way, till we've settled things to our liking."
"Spoken like a sensible rogue," said the stranger, with a voice all frankness and approval, but with a lowering look of impatience, which Nathan, who had watched the proceedings of the pair with equal amazement and interest, could observe from the chink, though it was concealed from Doe by the position of the speaker, who had risen from his stool, as if to depart, but who now sat down again, to satisfy the fears of his partner in villany. To this he immediately addressed himself, but in tones lower than before, so that Nathan could no longer distinguish his words.
But Nathan had heard enough. The conversation, as far as he had distinguished it, chimed strangely in with all his own and Roland's suspicions; there was, indeed, not a word uttered that did not confirm them. The confessions of the stranger, vague and mysterious as they seemed, tallied in all respects with Roland's account of the villanous designs imputed to the hated Braxley; and it was no little additional proof of his identity, that, in addressing Doe, whom he styled throughout as Jack, he had, once at least, called him by the name of Atkinson,--a refugee, whose connection with the conspiracy in Roland's story Nathan had not forgotten. It was not, indeed, surprising that Abel Doe should possess another name; since it was a common practice among renegades like himself, from some sentiment of shame or other obvious reasons, to assume an _alias_ and _nom de guerre_, under which they acquired their notoriety: the only wonder was, that he should prove to be that person whose agency in the abduction of Edith would, of all other men in the world, go furthest to sustain the belief of Braxley being the principal contriver of the outrage.
Such thoughts as these may have wandered through Nathan's mind; but he took little time to con them over. He had made a discovery at that moment of more stirring importance and interest. Allowing that Edith Forrester was the prisoner of whom the disguised stranger and his sordid confederate spoke, and there was little reason to doubt it, he had learned, out of their own mouths, the place of her concealment, to discover which was the object of his daring visit to the village. Her prison-house was the wigwam of Wenonga, the chief,--if chief he could still be called, whom the displeasure of his tribe had robbed of almost every vestige of authority; and thither Nathan, to whom the vile bargaining of the white-men no longer offered interest, supposing he could even have overheard it, instantly determined to make his way.
But how was Nathan to know the cabin of the chief from the dozen other hovels that surrounded the Council-house. That was a question which, perhaps Nathan did not ask himself: for creeping softly from Doe's hut, and turning into the street (if such could be called the irregular winding space that separated the two lines of cabins composing the village), he stole forward, with nothing of the hesitation or doubt which might have been expected from one unfamiliar with the village.
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While Nathan lay watching at the renegade's hut, there came a change over the aspect of the night, little less favourable to his plans and hopes than even the discovery of Edith's place of concealment, which he had so fortunately made. The sky became suddenly overcast with clouds, and deep darkness invested the Indian village; while gusts of wind, sweeping with a moaning sound over the adjacent hills, and waking the forests from their repose, came rushing over the village, whirring and fluttering aloft like flights of the boding night-raven, or the more powerful bird of prey that had given its name to the chieftain of the tribe.
In such darkness, and with the murmur of the blasts and the rustling of boughs to drown the noise of his footsteps, Nathan no longer feared to pursue his way; and rising boldly to his feet, drawing his blanket close around him, and assuming, as before, the gait of a savage, he strode forwards, and in less than a minute, was upon the public square,--if such we may call it,--the vacant area in the centre of the village, where stood the rude shed of bark and boughs, supported by a circular range of posts, all open, except at top, to the weather, which custom had dignified with the title of Council-house. The bounds of the square were marked by clusters of cabins placed with happy contempt of order and symmetry, and by trees and bushes that grew among and behind them, particularly at the foot of the hill on one side, and, on the other, along the borders of the river; which, in the pauses of the gusts, could be heard sweeping hard by over a broken and pebbly channel. Patches of bushes might even be seen growing in places on the square itself; and here and there were a few tall trees, remnants of the old forest which had once overshadowed the scene towering aloft, and sending forth on the blast such spiritual murmurs, and wild oraculous whispers, as were wont, in ancient days, to strike an awe through soothsayers and devotees in the sacred groves of Dodona.
Through this square, looking solitude and desolation together, lay the path of the spy; and he trode it without fear, although it offered an obstruction that might well have daunted the zeal of one less crafty and determined. In its centre, and near the Council-house, he discovered a fire, now burning low, but still, as the breeze, time by time, fanned the decaying embers into flame, sending forth light enough to reveal the spectacle of at least a dozen savages stretched in slumber around it, with as many ready rifles stacked round a post hard by. Their appearance, without affrighting, greatly perplexed the man of peace; who, though at first disposed to regard them as a kind of guard, to whom had been committed the charge of the village and the peace of the community, during the uproar and terrors of the debauch, found reason, upon more mature inspection, to consider them a band from some neighbouring village, perhaps an out-going war party, which, unluckily for himself, had tarried at the village to share the hospitalities, and take part in the revels, of its inhabitants. Thus, there was near the fire a huge heap of dried corn-husks and prairie-grass, designed for a couch,--a kind of, luxury which Nathan supposed the villagers would have scarce taken the trouble to provide, unless for guests whose warlike pride and sense of honour would not permit them to sleep under cover until they had struck the enemy in his own country, and were returning victorious to their own; and as a proof that they had shared as guests in all the excesses of their hosts, but few of them were seen huddled together on the couch, the majority lying about in such confusion and postures as could only have been produced by the grossest indulgence.
Pausing awhile, but not deterred by the discovery of such undesirable neighbours, Nathan easily avoided them by making the circuit of the square; creeping along from tree to tree, and bush to bush, until he had left the whole group on the rear, and arrived in the vicinity of a cabin, which, from its appearance, might with propriety be supposed the dwelling of the most distinguished demagogue of the tribe. It was a cottage of logs very similar to those of the renegades, who had themselves, perhaps, built it for the chief, whose favour it was so necessary to purchase by every means in their power; but as it consisted of only a single room, and that by no means spacious, the barbarian had seen fit to eke it out by a brace of summer apartments, being tents of skins, which were pitched at its ends like wings, and, perhaps, communicated directly with the interior, though each had its own particular door of mats looking out upon the square.
All these appearances Nathan could easily note, in occasional gleams from the fire, which, falling upon the rude and misshapen lodge, revealed its features obscurely to the eye. It bore an air of solitude that became the dwelling of a chief. The soil around it, as if too sacred to be invaded by the profane feet of the multitude, was left overgrown with weeds and starveling bushes; and an ancient elm, rising among them, and flinging its shadowy branches wide around, stood like a giant watchman, to repel the gaze of the curious.
This solitude, these bushes through which he could crawl unobserved, and the shadows of the tree, offering a concealment equally effectual and inviting, were all circumstances in Nathan's favour; and giving one backward glance to the fire on the square, and then fixing his eye on one of the tents, in which, as the mat at the door shook in the breeze, he could detect the glimmering of a light, and fancied he could even faintly hear the murmur of voices, he crawled among the bushes, scarcely doubting that he was now within but a few feet of the unhappy maid in whose service he had toiled so long and so well.
But the path to the wigwam was not yet free from obstructions. He had scarce pushed aside the first bush in his way, opening a vista into the den of leaves, where he looked to find his best concealment, before a flash of light from the fire, darting through the gap, and falling upon a dark grim visage almost within reach of his hand, showed him that he had stumbled unawares upon a sleeping savage,--a man that had evidently staggered there in his drunkenness, and falling among the bushes, had straightway given himself up to sottish repose.
For the first time, a thrill smote through the bosom of the spy; but it was not wholly a thrill of dismay. There was little indeed in the appearance of the wretched sleeper, at that moment, to inspire terror; for apart from the condition of helpless impotence, to which his ungovernable appetites had reduced him, he seemed to be entirely unarmed,--at least Nathan could see neither knife nor tomahawk about him. But there was that in the grim visage, withered with age, and seamed with many a scar,--in the mutilated, but bony and still nervous hand lying on the broad naked chest,--and in the recollections of the past they recalled to Nathan's brain, which awoke a feeling not less exciting, if less unworthy, than fear. In the first impulse of surprise, it is true, he started backwards, and grovelled flat upon his face, as if to beat an instant retreat in the only posture which could conceal him, if the sleeper should have been disturbed by his approach. But the savage slept on, drugged to stupefaction by many a deep and potent draught; and Nathan, preserving his snake-like position only for a moment, rose slowly upon his hands, and peered over again upon the unconscious barbarian.
But the bushes had closed again around him, and the glimmer of the dying fire no longer fell upon the barbarian. With an audacity of daring that marked the eagerness and intensity of his curiosity, Nathan with his hands pushed the bushes aside, so as again to bring a gleam upon the swarthy countenance; which he perused with such feelings as left him for a time unconscious of the object of his enterprise, unconscious of everything save the spectacle before him, the embodied representation of features which events of former years had painted in indelible hues on his remembrance. The face was that of a warrior, worn with years, and covered with such scars as could be boasted only by one of the most distinguished men of the tribe. Deep seams also marked the naked chest of the sleeper; and there was something in the appearance of his garments of dressed hides, which, though squalid enough, were garnished with multitudes of silver brooches and tufts of human hair, with here and there a broad Spanish dollar looped ostentatiously to the skin, to prove he was anything but a common brave. To each ear was attached a string of silver coins, strung together in regular gradation from the largest to the smallest,--a profusion of wealth which could appertain only to a chief. To prove, indeed, that he was no less, there was visible upon his head, secured to the tiara, or _glory_, as it might be called (for such is its figure) of badgers' hairs, which is so often found woven around the scalp-lock of a North-western Indian, an ornament consisting of the beaks and claws of a buzzard, and some dozen or more of its sable feathers. These, as Nathan had previously told the soldier, were the distinguishing badges of Wenonga, or the Black-Vulture (for so the name is translated); and it was no less a man than Wenonga himself, the oldest, most famous, and, at one time, the most powerful chief of his tribe, who thus lay, a wretched, squalid sot, before the doors of his own wigwam, which he had been unable to reach. Such was Wenonga; such were many of the bravest and most distinguished of his truly unfortunate race, who exchanged their lands, their fathers' graves, and the lives of their people, for the doubtful celebrity which the white man is so easily disposed to allow them.
The spy looked upon the face of the Indian; but there was none at hand to gaze upon his own, to mark the hideous frown of hate, and the more hideous grin of delight, that mingled on, and distorted his visage, as he gloated, snake-like, over that of the chief. As he looked, he drew from its sheath in his girdle his well-worn, but still bright and keen knife,--which he poised in one hand, while feeling, with what seemed extraordinary fearlessness or confidence of his prey, with the other along the sleeper's naked breast, as if regardless how soon he might wake. But Wenonga still slept on, though the hand of the white man lay upon his ribs, and rose and fell with the throbs of his warlike heart. The knife took the place of the hand, and one thrust would have driven it through the organ that had never beaten with pity or remorse; and that thrust Nathan, quivering through every fibre with nameless joy and exultation, and forgetful of everything but his prey, was about to make. He nerved his hand for the blow; but it trembled with eagerness. He paused an instant, and before he could make a second effort, a voice from the wigwam struck upon his ear, and the strength departed from his arm. He staggered back, and awoke to consciousness; the sound was repeated; it was the wail, of a female voice, and its mournful accents, coming to his ear in an interval of the gust, struck a new feeling into his bosom. He remembered the captive, and his errand of charity and mercy. He drew a deep and painful breath, and muttering, but within the silent recesses of his breast, "Thee shall not call to me in vain!" buried the knife softly in its sheath. Then crawling silently away, and leaving the chief to his slumbers, he crept through the bushes until he had reached the tent from which the mourning voice proceeded. Still lying upon his face, he dragged himself to the door, and looking under the corner of the mat that waved before it in the wind, he saw at a glance that he had reached the goal of his journey.
The tent was of an oval figure, and of no great extent; but being lighted only by a fire burning dimly in the centre of its earthen floor, and its frail walls darkened by smoke, the eye could scarcely penetrate to its dusky extremity. It consisted, as has been said, of skins, which were supported upon poles, wattled together like the framework of a crate or basket; the poles of the opposite sides being kept asunder by cross-pieces, which, at the common centre of intersection or radiation, were themselves upheld by a stout wooden pillar. Upon this pillar, and on the slender rafters, were laid or suspended sundry Indian utensils of the kitchen and the field, wooden bowls, earthen pans and Irazen pots, guns, hatchets, and fish-spears, with ears of corn, dried roots, smoked meats, blankets and skins, and many articles that had perhaps been plundered from the Long-knives, such as halters and bridles, hats, coats shawls, and aprons, and other such gear; among which was conspicuous a bundle of scalps, some of them with long female tresses, the proofs of the prowess of a great warrior, who, like the other fighting-men of his race, accounted the golden ringlets of a girl as noble a trophy of valour as the grizzled locks of a veteran soldier.
On the floor of the tent, piled against its sides and farthest extremity, was the raised platform of skins, with rude partitions and curtains of mats, which formed the sleeping-couch, or, perhaps we might say, the sleeping-apartments, of the lodge. But these were in a great measure hidden under heaps of blankets, skins, and other trumpery articles, that seemed to have been snatched in some sudden hurry from the floor, which they had previously cumbered. In fact, there was every appearance that the tent had been for a long time used as a kind of store-room, the receptacle of a bandit's omnium-gatherum, and had been hastily prepared for unexpected inmates. But these particulars, which he might have noted at a glance, Nathan did not pause to survey. There were objects of greater attractions for his eyes in a group of three female figures: in one of whom, standing near the fire, and grasping the hands and garments of a second, as if imploring pity or protection, her hair dishevelled, her visage bloodless, her eyes wild with grief and terror, he beheld the object of his perilous enterprise, the lovely and unhappy Edith Forrester. Struggling in her grasp, as if to escape, yet weeping, and uttering hurried expressions that were meant to soothe the agitation of the captive, was the renegade's daughter, Telie, who seemed herself little less terrified than the prisoner. The third person of the group was an Indian beldam, old, withered, and witch-like, who sat crouching over the fire, warming her skinny hands, and only intermitting her employment occasionally to eye the more youthful pair with looks of malignant hatred and suspicion.
The gale was still freshening, and the elm-boughs rustled loudly in the wind; but Nathan could overhear every word of the captive, as, still grasping Telie by the hand, she besought her, in the language of desperation, "not to leave her, not to desert her, at such a moment;" while Telie, shedding tears, which seemed to be equally those of shame and sorrow, entreated her to fear nothing, and permit her to depart.
"They won't hurt you,--no, my father promised that," she said: "it is the chief's house, and nobody will come nigh to hurt you. You are safe, lady; but, oh! my father will kill me, if he finds me here."
"It was your father that caused it all!" cried Edith, with a vehement change of feeling; "it was _he_ that betrayed us, _he_ that killed, oh! killed my Roland! Go! --I hate you! Heaven will punish you for what you have done; Heaven will never forgive the treachery and the murder--Go, go! they will kill me, and then all will be well,--yes, all will be well!"
But Telie, thus released, no longer sought to fly. She strove to obtain and kiss the hand that repelled her, sobbing bitterly, and reiterating her assurances that no harm was designed the maiden.
"No,--no harm! Do I not know it all?" exclaimed Edith, again giving way to her fears, and grasping Telie's arm. " _You_ are not like your father; if you betrayed me once, you will not betray me again. Stay with me,--yes, stay with me, and I'll forgive you,--forgive you all. That man--that dreadful man! I know him well: he will come--he has murdered my cousin, and he is,--oh Heaven, how black a villain! Stay with me, Telie, to protect me from that man; stay with me, and I'll forgive all you have done."
It was with such wild entreaties Edith, agitated by an excitement that seemed almost to have unsettled her brain, still urged Telie not to abandon her; while Telie, repeating again and again her protestations that no injury was designed or could happen, and that the old woman at the fire was specially deputed to protect her, and would do so, begged to be permitted to go, insisting, with every appearance of sincere alarm, that her father would kill her if she remained,--that he had forbidden her to come near the prisoner, which, nevertheless, she had secretly done, and would do again, if she could this time avoid discovery.
But her protestations were of little avail in moving Edith to her purpose; and it was only when the latter, worn out by suffering and agitation, and sinking helpless on the couch at her feet, had no longer the power to oppose her, that Telie hurriedly, yet with evident grief and reluctance, tore herself away. She pressed the captive's hand to her lips, bathed it in her tears, and then, with many a backward glance of sorrow, stole from the lodge. Nathan crawled aside as she passed out, and watching a moment until she had fled across the square, returned to his place of observation. He looked again into the tent, and his heart smote him with pity as he beheld the wretched Edith sitting in a stupor of despair, her head sunk upon her breast, her hands clasped, her ashy lips quivering, but uttering no articulate sound. "Thee prays Heaven to help thee, poor maid!" he muttered to himself: "Heaven denied the prayer of them that was as good and as lovely; but thee is not yet forsaken!"
He took his knife from its sheath, and turned his eyes upon the old hag, who sat at the fire with her back partly towards him, but her eyes fastened upon the captive, over whom they wandered with the fierce and unappeasable malice, that was in those days seen rankling in the breast of many an Indian mother, and expended upon prisoners at the stake with a savage, nay, a demoniacal zeal that might have put warriors to shame. In truth, the unlucky captive had always more to apprehend from the squaws of a tribe than from its warriors; and _their_ cries for vengeance often gave to the torture wretches whom even their cruel husbands were inclined to spare.
With knife in hand, and murderous thoughts in his heart, Nathan raised a corner of the mat, and glared for a moment upon the beldam. But the feelings of the white-man prevailed; he hesitated, faltered, and dropping the mat in its place, retreated silently from the door. Then restoring his knife for a second time to its sheath, listening awhile to hear if the drunken Wenonga yet stirred in his lair, and taking a survey of the sleepers at the nearly extinguished fire, he crept away, retraced his steps through the village, to the place where he had left the captain of horse-thieves, whom,--to the shame of that worthy be it spoken,--he found fast locked in the arms of Morpheus, and breathing such a melody from his upturned nostrils as might have roused the whole village from its repose, had not that been at least twice as sound and deep as his own.
"Tarnal death to me!" said he, rubbing his eyes when Nathan shook him from his slumbers, "I war nigh gone in a dead snooze! --being as how I ar'n't had a true reggelar mouthful of snortin' this h'yar no-time,--considering I always took it with my hoptical peepers right open. But, I say, Nathan, what's the last news from the abbregynes and anngelliferous madam?"
"Give me one of thee halters," said Nathan, "and do thee observe now what I have to say to thee."
"A halter!" cried Ralph, in dudgeon; "you ar'n't for doing all, and the hoss-stealing too?"
"Friend," said Nathan, "with this halter I must bind one that sits in watch over the maiden; and, truly, it is better it should be so, seeing that these hands of mine have never been stained with the blood of woman."
"And you have found my mistress?" said Ralph, in a rapture. "Jist call the Captain, and let's be a doing!"
"He is a brave youth, and a youth of a mighty heart," said Nathan; "but this is no work for them that has never seen the ways of an Injun village. Now, friend, does thee hear me? The town is alive with fighting-men, and there is a war-party of fourteen painted Wyandotts sleeping on the Council-square. But don't thee be dismayed thereupon; for, truly, these assassin creatures is all besotted with drink; and were there with us but ten stout young men of Kentucky, I do truly believe we could knock every murdering dog of an on the head, and nobody the wiser. Does thee hear, friend? Do but thee own part in this endeavour well, and we will save the young and tender maid thee calls madam. Take theeself to the pound, which thee may do safely, by following the hill: pick out four good horses, fleet and strong, and carry them safely away, going up the valley,--mind, friend, thee must go _up_, as if thee was speeding thee way to the Big Lake, instead of to Kentucky: then, when thee has ridden a mile, thee may cross the brook, and follow the hills, till thee has reached the hiding-place that we did spy from out upon this village. Thee hears, friend? There thee will find the fair maid, Edith; which I will straightway fetch out of her bondage. And, truly, it may be, I have learned _that_, this night, which will make both her and the young man thee calls Captain, which is a brave young man, both rich and happy. And now, friend, thee has heard me; and thee must do thee duty."
"If I don't fetch her the beautifullest hoss that war ever seed in the woods," said Ralph, "thar's no reason, except because the Injuns ar'n't had good luck this year in grabbing! And I'll fetch him round up the holler, jist as you say too, and round about till I strike the snuggery, jist the same way; for thar's the way you show judgematical, and I'm cl'ar of your way of thinking. And so now, h'yar's my fo'-paw, in token thar's no two ways about me, Ralph Stackpole, a hoss to my friends, and a niggur to them that sarves me!"
With these words, the two associates, equally zealous in the cause in which they had embarked, parted, each to achieve his own particular share of the adventure, in which they had left so little to be done by the young Virginian.
But, as it happened, neither Roland's inclination nor fate was favourable to his playing so insignificant a part in the undertaking. He had remained in the place of concealment assigned him, tortured with suspense, and racked by self-reproach, for more than an hour: until, his impatience getting the better of his judgment, he resolved to creep nigher the village, to ascertain, if possible, the state of affairs. He had arrived within earshot of the pair, and without overhearing all, had gathered enough of their conversation to convince him that Edith was at last found, and that the blow was now to be struck for her deliverance. His two associates separated before he could reach them; Ralph plunging among the bushes that covered the hill, while Nathan, as before, stalked boldly into the village. He called softly after the latter, to attract his notice; but his voice was lost in the gusts sweeping along the hill; and Nathan proceeded onwards, without heeding him. He hesitated a moment whether to follow, or return to his station, where little Peter, more obedient, or more prudent than himself, still lay, having resolutely refused to stir at the soldier's invitation to accompany him; until finally, surrendering his discretion to his anxiety, he resolved to pursue after Nathan,--a measure of imprudence, if not of folly, which, at a less exciting moment, no one would have been more ready to condemn than himself. But the image of Edith in captivity, and perhaps of Braxley standing by, the master of her fate, was impressed upon his heart, as if pricked into it with daggers; and to remain longer at a distance, and in inaction, was impossible. Imitating Nathan's mode of advance as well as he could, guided by his dusky figure, and hoping soon to overtake him, he pushed forward and was soon in the dreaded village.
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In the meanwhile, Edith sat in the tent abandoned to despair, her mind not yet recovered from the stunning effect of her calamity, struggling confusedly with images of blood and phantasms of fear, the dreary recollections of the past mingling with the scarce less dreadful anticipations of the future. Of the battle on the hill-side she remembered nothing save the fall of her kinsman, shot down at her feet,--all she had herself witnessed, and all she could believe; for Telie Doe's assurances, contradicted in effect by her constant tears and agitation, that he had been carried off to captivity like herself, conveyed no conviction to her mind: from that moment, events were pictured on her memory as the records of a feverish dream, including all the incidents of her wild and hurried journey to the Indian village. But with these broken and dream-like reminiscences, there were associated recollections, vague, yet not the less terrifying, of a visage that had haunted her presence by day and by night, throughout the whole journey, watching, over her with the pertinacity of an evil genius; and which, as her faculties woke slowly from their trance, assumed every moment a more distinct and dreaded appearance in her imagination.
It was upon these hated features, seen side by side with the blood-stained aspect of her kinsman, she now pondered in mingled grief and terror; starting occasionally from the horror of her thoughts only to be driven back to them again by the scowling eyes of the old crone; who, still crouching over the fire, as if its warmth could never strike deep enough into her frozen veins, watched every movement and every look with the vigilance, and as it seemed, the viciousness of a serpent. No ray of pity shone even for a moment from her forbidding, and even hideous countenance; she offered no words, she made no signs, of sympathy; and, as if to prove her hearty disregard, or profound contempt for the prisoner's manifest distress, she by and by, to while the time, began to drone out a succession of grunting sounds, such as make up a red-man's melody, and such indeed as any village urchin can drum with his heels out of an empty hogshead. The song, thus barbarously chanted, at first startled and affrighted the captive; but its monotony had at last an effect which the beldam was far from designing. It diverted the maiden's mind in a measure from its own harassing thoughts, and thus introduced a kind of composure where all had been before painful agitation. Nay, as the sounds, which were at no time very loud, mingled with the piping of the gale without and the rustling of the old elm at the door, they lost their harshness, and were softened into a descant that was lulling to the senses, and might, like a gentler nepenthe, have, in time, cheated the over-weary mind to repose. Such, perhaps, was beginning to be its effect. Edith ceased to bend upon the hag the wild, terrified looks that at first rewarded the music; she sunk her head upon her bosom, and sat as if gradually giving way to a lethargy of spirit, which, if not sleep, was sleep's most beneficent substitute.
From this state of calm she was roused by the sudden cessation of the music; and looking up, she beheld, with a renewal of all her alarms, a tall man, standing before her, his face and figure both enveloped in the folds of a huge blanket, from which, however, a pair of gleaming eyes were seen riveted upon her own countenance. At the same time, she observed that the old Indian woman had risen, and was stealing softly from the apartment. Filled with terror, she would have rushed after the hag, to claim her protection: but she was immediately arrested by the visitor, who, seizing her by the arm firmly, yet with an air of respect, and suffering his blanket to drop to the ground, displayed to her gaze features that had long dwelt, its darkest phantoms, upon her mind. As he seized her, he muttered, and still with an accent of the most earnest respect,--"Fear me not, Edith; I am not yet an enemy."
His voice, though one of gentleness, and even of music, completed the terrors of the captive, who trembled in his hand like a quail in the clutches of a kite, and would, but for his grasp, as powerful to sustain as to oppose, have fallen to the floor. Her lips quivered, but they gave forth no sound; and her eyes were fastened upon his with a wildness and intensity of glare that showed the fascination, the temporary self-abandonment of her spirit.
"Fear me not, Edith Forrester," he repeated, with a voice even more soothing than before: "You know me;--I am no savage;--I will do you no harm."
"Yes,--yes,--yes," muttered Edith at last, but in the tones of an automaton, they were, at first, so broken and inarticulate, though they gathered force and vehemence as she spoke--"I know you,--yes, yes, I do know you, and know you well. You are Richard Braxley,--the robber, and now the persecutor of the orphan; and this hand that holds me is red with the blood of my cousin. Oh, villain! villain! are you not yet content?"
"The prize is not yet won," replied the other, with a smile that seemed intended to express his contempt of the maiden's invectives, and his ability to forgive them: "I am indeed Richard Braxley,--the friend of Edith Forrester, though she will not believe it,--a rough and self-willed one, it may be, but still her true and unchangeable friend. Where will she look for a better? Anger has not alienated, contempt has not estranged me: injury and injustice still find me the same. I am still Edith Forrester's friend; and such, in the sturdiness of my affection, I will remain, whether my fair mistress will or no. But you are feeble and agitated: sit down and listen to me. I have that to say which will convince my thoughtless fair the day of disdain is now over."
All these expressions, though uttered with seeming blandness, were yet accompanied by an air of decision and even command, as if the speaker were conscious the maiden was fully in his power, and not unwilling she should know it. But his attempt to make her resume her seat upon the pile of skins from which she had so wildly started at his entrance, was resisted by Edith; who, gathering courage from desperation, and shaking his hand from her arm, as if snatching it from the embraces of a serpent, replied with even energy,--"I will not sit down,--I will not listen to you. Approach me not--touch me not. You are a villain and murderer, and I loathe, oh! unspeakably loathe, your presence. Away from me, or--" "Or," interrupted Braxley with the sneer of a naturally mean and vindictive spirit, "you will cry for assistance! From whom do you expect it? From wild, murderous, besotted Indians, who, if roused from their drunken slumbers, would be more like to assail you with their hatchets than to weep for your sorrows? Know, fair Edith, that you are now in their hands;--that there is not one of them, who would not rather see those golden tresses hung blackening in the smoke from the rafters of his wigwam, than floating over the brows they adorn--Look aloft: there are ringlets of young and fair, the innocent and tender, swinging above you! --Learn, moreover, that from these dangerous friends there is none who can protect you, save _me_. Ay, my beauteous Edith," he added, as the captive, overcome by the representation of her perils so unscrupulously, nay, so sternly made, sank almost fainting upon the pile, "it is even so; and you must know it. It is needful you should know what you have to expect, if you reject my protection. But that you will not reject; in faith, you _cannot! _ The time has come, as I told you it would, when your disdainful scruples--I speak plainly, fair Edith! --are to be at an end. I swore to you--and it was when your scorn and unbelief were at the highest--that you should yet smile upon the man you disdained, and smile upon no other. It was a rough and uncouth threat for a lover; but my mistress would have it so. It was a vow breathed in anger: but it was a vow not meant to be broken. You tremble! I am cruel in my wooing; but this is not the moment for compliment and deception. You are _mine_, Edith: I swore it to myself--ay, and to you. You cannot escape. You have driven me to extremities; but they have succeeded. You are mine; or you are--nothing."
"Nothing let it be," said Edith, over whose mind, prone to agitation and terror, it was evident the fierce and domineering temper of the individual could exercise an irresistible control, and who, though yet striving to resist, was visibly sinking before his stern looks and menacing words;--"let it be nothing! Kill me, if you will, as you have already killed my cousin. Oh! mockery of passion, of humanity, of decency, to speak to me thus;--to _me_, the relative, the more than sister of him you have so basely and cruelly murdered!"
"I have murdered no one," said Braxley, with stony composure: "and if you will but listen patiently, you will find I am stained by no crime save that of loving a woman who forces me to woo her like a master, rather than a slave. Your cousin is living and in safety."
"It is false," cried Edith, wringing her hands; "with my own eyes I saw him fall, and fall covered with blood!"
"And from that moment you saw nothing more," rejoined Braxley. "The blood came from the veins of others; he was carried away alive, and almost unhurt. He is a captive,--a captive like yourself. And why? Shall I remind my fair Edith how much of her hostility and scorn I owed to her hot and foolish kinsman? how he persuaded her the love she so naturally bore so near a relative was reason enough to reject the affection of a suitor? how impossible she should listen to the dictates of her own heart, or the calls of her interest, while misled by a counsellor so indiscreet, and yet so trusted? Before that unlucky young man stepped between me and my love, Edith Forrester could listen,--ay, and could smile. Nay, deny it if you will; but hearken. Your cousin is safe; rely upon that; but, rely, also, he will never again see the home of his birth, or the kinswoman whose fortunes he has so opposed, until she is the wife of the man he misjudges and hates. He is removed from my path: it was necessary to my hopes. His life is, at all events, safe; his deliverance rests with his kinswoman. When she has plighted her troth, and surely she _will_ plight it--" "Never! never!" cried Edith, starting up, her indignation for a moment getting the better of her fears: "with one so false and treacherous, so unprincipled and ungrateful, so base and revengeful,--with such a man, with such a villain, never! no, never!"
"I _am_ a villain indeed, Edith," said Braxley, but with exemplary coolness; "all men are so. Good and evil are sown together in our natures, and each has its season and its harvest. In this breast, as in the breast of the worst and the noblest, Nature set, at birth, an angel and a devil, either to be the governor of my actions, as either should be best encouraged. If the devil be now at work, and have been for months, it was because your scorn called him from his slumbers. Before that time Edith, I was under the domination of my angel; who then called, or who deemed me, a villain? Was I then a robber and persecutor of the orphan? Am I _now_? Perhaps so,--but it is yourself that have made me so. For you, I called up my evil genius to my aid; and my evil-genius aided me. He bade me woo no longer like the turtle but strike like the falcon. Through plots and stratagems, through storms and perils, through battle and blood, I have pursued you, and I have conquered at last. The captive of my sword and spear, you will spurn my love no longer; for, in truth, you cannot. I came to the wilderness to seek an heiress for your uncle's wealth; I have found her. But she returns to her inheritance the wife of the seeker! In a word, my Edith,--for why should I, who am now the master of your fate, forbear the style of a conqueror? why should I longer sue, who have the power to command? --you are _mine_,--mine beyond the influence of caprice or change,--mine beyond the hope of escape. This village you will never leave but as a bride."
So spoke the bold wooer, elated by the consciousness of successful villany, and perhaps convinced from long experience of the timorous, and doubtless, feeble, character of the maid, that a haughty and overbearing tone would produce an impression, however painful it might be to her, more favourable to his hopes than the soft hypocrisy of sueing. He was manifestly resolved to wring from her fears the consent not to be obtained from her love. Nor had he miscalculated the power of such a display of bold, unflinching energetic determination in awing, if not bending, her youthful spirit. She seemed indeed, stunned, wholly overpowered by his resolved and violent manner; and she had scarcely strength to mutter the answer that rose to her lips: "If it be so," she faltered out, "this village, then, I must never leave; for here I will die, die even by the hands of barbarians, and die a thousand times, ere I look upon you, base and cruel man, with any but the eyes of detestation. I hated you ever,--I hate you yet."
"My fair mistress," said Braxley, with a sneer that might have well become the lip of the devil he had pronounced the then ruler of his breast, "knows not all the alternative. Death is a boon the savages may bestow, when the whim takes them. But before that, they must show their affection for their prisoner. There are many that can admire the bright eyes and ruddy cheeks of the white maiden; and some one, doubtless, will admit the stranger to a corner of his wigwam and his bosom! Ay, madam, I will speak plainly,--it is as the wife of Richard Braxley or of a pagan savage you go out of the tent of Wenonga. Or why go out of the tent of Wenonga at all? Is Wenonga insensible to the beauty of his guest? The hag that I drove from the fire, seemed already to see in her prisoner the maid that was to rob her of her husband."
"Heaven help me!" exclaimed Edith, sinking again to her seat, wholly overcome by the horrors it was the object of the wooer to accumulate on her mind. He noted the effect of his threat, and stealing up, he took her trembling, almost lifeless hand, adding, but in a softer voice,-- "Why will Edith drive one who adores her to these extremities? Let her smile but as she smiled of yore, and all will yet be well. One smile secures her deliverance from all that she dreads, her restoration to her home and to happiness. With that smile, the angel again awakes in my bosom, and all is love and tenderness."
"Heaven help me!" iterated the trembling girl, struggling to shake off Braxley's hand. But she struggled feebly and in vain; and Braxley, in the audacity of his belief that he had frightened her into a more reasonable mood, proceeded the length of throwing an arm around his almost insensible victim.
But heaven was not unmindful of the prayer of the desolate and helpless maid. Scarce had his arm encircled the waist of the captive, when a pair of arms, long and brawny, infolded his body as in the hug of an angry bear, and in an instant he lay upon his back on the floor, a knee upon his breast, a hand at his throat, and a knife, glittering blood-red in the light of the fire, flourished within an inch of his eyes: while a voice, subdued to a whisper, yet distinct as if uttered in tones of thunder, muttered in his ear,--"Speak, and thee dies!"
The attack, so wholly unexpected, so sudden and so violent, was as irresistible as astounding; and Braxley, unnerved by the surprise and by fear, succumbing as to the stroke of an avenging angel, the protector of innocence, whom his villany had conjured from the air, lay gasping upon the earth without attempting the slightest resistance, while the assailant, dropping his knife and producing a long cord of twisted leather, proceeded, with inexpressible dexterity and speed, to bind his limbs, which he did in a manner none the less effectual for being so hasty. An instant sufficed to secure him hand and foot; in another, a gag was clapped in his mouth and secured by a turn of the rope round his neck; at the third, the conqueror, thrusting his hand into his bosom, tore from it the stolen will, which he immediately after buried in his own. Then, spurning the baffled villain into a corner, and flinging over his body a pile of skins and blankets, until he was entirely hidden from sight, he left him to the combined agonies of fear, darkness, and suffocation.
Such was the rapidity, indeed, with which the whole affair was conducted, that Braxley had scarce time to catch a glimpse of his assailant's countenance; and that glimpse, without abating his terror, took but little from his amazement. It was the countenance of an Indian,--or such it seemed,--grimly and hideously painted over with figures of snakes, lizards, skulls, and other savage devices, which were repeated upon the arms, the half-naked bosom, and even the squalid shirt of the victor. One glance, in the confusion and terror of the moment, Braxley gave to his extraordinary foe; and then the mantles piled upon his body concealed all objects from his eyes.
In the meanwhile, Edith, not less confounded, sat cowering with terror, until the victor, having completed his task, sprang to her side,--a movement, however, that only increased her dismay,--crying, with warning gestures, "Fear not and speak not;--up and away!" when, perceiving she recoiled from him with all her feeble strength, and was indeed unable to rise, he caught her in his arms, muttering, "Thee is safe--thee friends is nigh!" and bore her swiftly, yet noiselessly, from the tent.
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The night was even darker than before, the fire of the Wyandotts on the square had burned so low as no longer to send even a ray to the hut of Wenonga, and the wind, though subsiding, still kept up a sufficient din to drown the ordinary sound of footsteps. Under such favourable circumstances, Nathan (for, as may be supposed, it was this faithful friend who had snatched the forlorn Edith from the grasp of the betrayer) stalked boldly from the hut, bearing the rescued maiden in his arms, and little doubting that, having thus so successfully accomplished the first and greatest step in the enterprise, he could now conclude it in safety, if not with ease.
But there were perils yet to be encountered, which the man of peace had not taken into anticipation, and which, indeed, would not have existed, had his foreboding doubts of the propriety of admitting either of his associates, and honest Stackpole especially, to a share of the exploit, been suffered to influence his counsels to the exclusion of that worthy but unlucky personage altogether. He had scarce stepped from the tent-door before there arose on the sudden, and at no great distance from the square over which he was hurrying his precious burden, a horrible din,--a stamping, snorting, galloping and neighing of horses, as if a dozen famished bears or wolves had suddenly made their way into the Indian pinfold, carrying death and distraction into the whole herd. And this alarming omen was almost instantly followed by an increase of all the uproar, as if the animals had broken loose from the pound, and were rushing, mad with terror, towards the centre of the village.
At the first outbreak of the tumult, Nathan had dropped immediately into the bushes before the wigwam; but perceiving that the sounds increased, and were actually drawing nigh, and that the sleepers were waking on the square, he sprang again to his feet, and, flinging his blanket around Edith, who was yet incapable of aiding herself, resolved to make a bold effort to escape, while darkness and the confusion of the enemy permitted. There was, in truth, not a moment to be lost. The slumbers of the barbarians, proverbially light at all times, and readily broken even when the stupor of intoxication has steeped their faculties, were not proof against sounds at once so unusual and so uproarious. A sudden yell of surprise, bursting from one point, was echoed by another, and another voice; and, in a moment, the square resounded with these signals of alarm, added to the wilder screams which some of them set up, of "Long-knives! Long-knives!" as if the savages supposed themselves suddenly beset by a whole army of charging Kentuckians.
It was at this moment of dismay and confusion, that Nathan rose from the earth, and, all other paths being now cut off, darted across a corner of the square towards the river, which was in a quarter opposite to that whence the sounds came, in hopes to reach the alder-thicket on its banks, before being observed. And this, perhaps, he would have succeeded in reaching, had not Fortune, which seemed this night to give a loose to all her fickleness, prepared a new and greater difficulty.
As he rose from the bushes, some savage, possessed of greater presence of mind than his fellows, cast a decaying brand from the fire into the heap of dried grass and maize-husks, designed for their couches, which, bursting immediately into a furious flame, illuminated the whole square and village, and revealed, as it was designed to do, the cause of the wondrous uproar. A dozen or more horses were instantly seen galloping into the square, followed by a larger and denser herd behind, all agitated by terror, all plunging, rearing, prancing, and kicking, as if possessed by a legion of evil spirits, though driven, as was made apparent by the yells which the Indians set up on seeing him, by nothing more than the agency of a human being.
At the first flash of the flames seizing upon the huge bed of straw, and whirling up in the gust in a prodigious volume, Nathan gave up all for lost, not doubting that he would be instantly seen and assailed. But the spectacle of their horses dashing madly into the square, with the cause of the tumult seen struggling among them, in the apparition of a white man, sitting aloft, entangled inextricably in the thickest of the herd, and evidently borne forward with no consent of his own, was metal more attractive for Indian eyes; and Nathan perceived that he was not only neglected in the confusion by all, but was likely to remain so, long enough to enable him to put the thicket betwixt him and the danger of discovery.
"The knave has endangered us, and to the value of the scalp on his own foolish head;" muttered Nathan, his indignation speaking in a voice louder than a whisper: "but, truly, he will pay the price: and, truly, his loss is the maiden's redeeming!"
He darted forwards as he spoke; but his words had reached the ears of one, who, cowering like himself among the weeds around Wenonga's hut, now started suddenly forth, and displayed to his eyes the young Virginian, who, rushing eagerly up, clasped the rescued captive in his arms, crying,--"Forward now, for the love of Heaven! forward, forward!"
"Thee has ruined all!" cried Nathan, with bitter reproach, as Edith, rousing from insensibility at the well known voice, opened her eyes upon her kinsman, and, all unmindful of the place of meeting, unconscious of everything but his presence--the presence of him whose supposed death she had so long lamented,--sprang to his embrace with a cry of joy that was heard over the whole square, a tone of happiness, pealing above the rush of the winds and the uproar of men and animals. "Thee has ruined all,--theeself and the maid! Save thee own life!"
With these words, Nathan strove to tear Edith from his grasp, to make one more effort for her rescue; and Roland, yielding her to his superior strength, and perceiving that a dozen Indians were running against them, drew his tomahawk, and, with a self-devotion which marked his love, his consciousness of error, and his heroism of character, waved Nathan away, while he himself rushed, back upon the pursuers, not so much, however, in the vain hope of disputing the path, as, by laying down his life on the spot, to purchase one more hope of escape to his Edith.
The act, so unexpectedly, so audaciously bold, drew a shout of admiration from throats which had before only uttered yells of fury: but it was mingled with fierce laughter, as the savages, without hesitating at, or indeed seeming at all to regard his menacing position, ran upon him in a body, and avoiding the only blow they gave him the power to make, seized and disarmed him,--a result that, notwithstanding his fierce and furious struggles, was effected in less space than we have taken to describe it. Then, leaving him in the hands of two of their number, who proceeded to bind him securely, the others rushed after Nathan, who, though encumbered by his burden, again inanimate, her arms clasped around his neck, as they had been round that of her kinsman, made the most desperate exertions to bear her off, seeming to regard her weight no more than if the burden had been a cushion of thistle-down. He ran for a moment with astonishing activity, leaping over bush and gully, where such crossed his path, with such prodigious strength and suppleness of frame, as to the savages appeared little short of miraculous; and, it is more than probable he might have effected his escape, had he chosen to abandon the helpless Edith. As it was, he, for a time, bade fair to make his retreat good. He reached the low thicket that fringed the river, and one more step would have found him in at least temporary security. But that step was never to be taken. As he approached, two tall barbarians suddenly sprang from the cover, where they had been taking their drunken slumbers; and, responding with exulting whoops to the cries of the others, they leaped forward to secure him. He turned aside, running downwards to where a lonely wigwam, surrounded by trees, offered the concealment of its shadow. But he turned too late; a dozen fierce wolf-like dogs, rushing from the cabin, and emboldened by the cries of the pursuers, rushed upon him, hanging to his skirts, and entangling his legs, rending and tearing all the while, so that he could fly no longer. The Indians were at his heels: their shouts were in his ears; their hands were almost upon his shoulders. He stopped, and turning towards them with a gesture and look of desperate defiance, and still more desperate hatred, exclaimed,--"Here, devils! cut and hack! your time has come, and I am the last of them!" And holding Edith at the length of his arm, he pulled open his garment, as if to invite the death-stroke.
But his death, at least at that moment, was not sought after by the Indians. They seized him, and, Edith being torn from his hands, dragged him, with endless whoops, towards the fire, whither they had previously borne the captured Roland, over whom, as over himself, they yelled their triumph; while screams of rage from those who had clashed among the horses after the daring white man who had been seen among them, and the confusion that still prevailed, showed that _he_ also had fallen into their hands.
The words of defiance which Nathan breathed at the moment of yielding, were the last he uttered. Submitting passively to his fate, he was dragged onwards by a dozen hands, a dozen voices around him vociferating their surprise at his appearance even more energetically than the joy of their triumph. His Indian habiliments and painted body evidently struck them with astonishment, which increased as they drew nearer the fire, and could better distinguish the extraordinary devices he had traced so carefully on his breast and visage. Their looks of inquiry, their questions jabbered freely in broken English as well as in their own tongue, Nathan regarded no more than their taunts and menaces, replying to these, as to all, only with a wild and haggard stare, which seemed to awe several of the younger warriors, who began to exchange looks of peculiar meaning. At last, as they drew nearer the fire, an old Indian staggered among the group, who made way for him with a kind of respect, as was, indeed, his due,--for he was no other than the old Black-Vulture himself. Limping up to the prisoner, with as much ferocity as his drunkenness would permit, he laid one hand upon his shoulder, and with the other aimed a furious hatchet-blow at his head. The blow was arrested by the renegade Doe, or Atkinson, who made his appearance at the same time with Wenonga, and muttered some words in the Shawnee tongue, which seemed meant to soothe the old man's fury.
"Me Injun-man!" said the chief, addressing his words to the prisoner, and therefore in the prisoner's language,--"Me kill all white-man! Me Wenonga: me drink white-mans blood! me no heart!" And to impress the truth of his words on the prisoner's mind, he laid his right hand, from which the axe had been removed, as well as his left, on Nathan's shoulder, in which position supporting himself, he nodded and wagged his head in the other's face, with as savage a look of malice as he could infuse into his drunken features. To this the prisoner replied by bending upon the chief a look more hideous than his own, and indeed so strangely unnatural and revolting, with lips so retracted, features so distorted by some nameless passion, and eyes gleaming with fires so wild and unearthly, that even Wenonga, chief as he was, and then in no condition to be daunted by anything, drew slowly back, removing his hands from the prisoner's shoulder, who immediately fell down in horrible convulsions, the foam flying from his lips, and his fingers clenching like spikes of iron into the flesh of two Indians that had hold of him.
Taunts, questions, and whoops were heard no more among the captors, who drew aside from their wretched prisoner, as if from the darkest of their Manitoes, all looking on with unconcealed wonder and awe. The only person, indeed, who seemed undismayed at the spectacle, was the renegade, who, as Nathan shook and writhed in the fit, beheld the corner of a piece of parchment projecting from the bosom of his shirt, and looking vastly like that identical instrument he had seen but an hour or two before in the hands of Braxley. Stooping down, and making as if he would have raised the convulsed man in his arms, he drew the parchment from its hiding-place, and, unobserved by the Indians, transferred it to a secret place in his own garments. He then rose up, and stood like the rest, looking upon the prisoner, until the fit had passed off, which it did in but a few moments, Nathan starting to his feet, and looking around him in the greatest wildness, as if, for a moment, not only unconscious of what had befallen him, but even of his captivity.
But unconsciousness of the latter calamity was of no great duration, and was dispelled by the old chief saying, but with looks of drunken respect, that had succeeded his insane fury--"Me brudder great-medicine white-man! great white-man medicine! Me Wenonga, great Injun-captain, great kill-man-white-man, kill-all-man, man-man, squaw-man, little papoose-man! Me make medicine-man brudder-man! Medicine-man tell Wenonga all Jibbenainosay? --where find Jibbenainosay? How kill Jibbenainosay? kill white-man's devil-man! Medicine-man tell Injun-man why medicine-man come Injun town? steal Injun prisoner? steal Injun hoss? Me Wenonga,--me good brudder medicine-man."
This gibberish, with which he seemed, besides expressing much new-born good will, to intimate that his cause lay in the belief that the prisoner was a great white conjuror, who could help him to a solution of sundry interesting questions, the old chief pronounced with much solemnity and suavity; and he betrayed an inclination to continue it, the captors of Nathan standing by and looking on with vast and eager interest. But a sudden and startling yell from the Indians who had charge of the young Virginian, preceded by an exclamation from the renegade who had stolen among them, upset the curiosity of the party,--or rather substituted a new object for admiration, which set them all running towards the fire, where Roland lay bound. The cause of the excitement was nothing less than the discovery which Doe had just made, of the identity of the prisoner with Roland Forrester, whom he had with his own hands delivered into those of the merciless Piankeshaws, and whose escape from them and sudden appearance in the Shawnee village were events just as wonderful to the savages as the supposed powers of the white medicine-man, his associate.
But there was still a third prodigy to be wondered at. The third prisoner was dragged from among the horses to the fire, where he was almost immediately recognised by half a dozen different warriors, as the redoubted and incorrigible horse-thief, Captain Stackpole. The wonderful conjuror, and the wonderful young Long-knife, who was one moment a captive in the hands of Piankeshaws on the banks of the Wabash, and, the next, an invader of a Shawnee village in the valley of the Miami, were both forgotten: the captain of horse-thieves was a much more wonderful person,--or, at least, a much more important prize. His name was howled aloud and in a moment became the theme of every tongue; and he was instantly surrounded by every man in the village,--we may say, every woman and child, too, for the alarm had brought the whole village into the square; and the shrieks of triumph, the yells of unfeigned delight with which all welcomed a prisoner so renowned and so detested, produced an uproar ten times greater than that which gave the alarm.
It was indeed Stackpole, the zealous and unlucky slave of a mistress whom it was his fate to injure and wrong in every attempt he made to serve her; and who had brought himself and his associates to their present bonds by merely toiling on the present occasion too hard in her service. It seems,--for so he was used himself to tell the tale,--that he entered the Indian pound with the resolution to fulfil Nathan's instructions to the letter; and he accordingly selected four of the best animals of the herd, which he succeeded in haltering without difficulty or noise. Had he paused here, he might have retreated with his prizes without fear of discovery. But the excellence of the opportunity,--the best he had ever had in his life,--the excellence, too, of the horses, thirty or forty in number, "the primest and beautifullest critturs," he averred, "what war ever seed in a hoss-pound," with a notion which now suddenly beset his grateful brain, namely, that by carrying off the whole herd he could "make anngelliferous madam rich in the item of hoss-flesh," proved too much for his philosophy and his judgment; and after holding a council of war in his own mind, he came to a resolution "to steal the lot."
This being determined upon, he imitated the example of magnanimity lately set him by Nathan, stripped off and converted his venerable wrap-rascal into extemporary halters, and so made sure of half a dozen more of the best horses; with which, and the four first selected, not doubting that the remainder of the herd would readily follow at their heels, he crept from the fold, to make his way up the valley, and round among the hills, to the rendezvous. But that was a direction in which, as he soon learned to his cost, neither the horses he had in hand, nor those that were to follow in freedom, had the slightest inclination to go; and there immediately ensued a struggle between the stealer and the stolen, which, in the space of a minute or less, resulted in the whole herd making a demonstration towards the centre of the village, whither they succeeded both in carrying themselves and the vainly resisting horse-thief, who was borne along on the backs of those he had haltered, like a land-bird on the bosom of a torrent, incapable alike of resisting or escaping the flood.
In this manner he was taken in a trap of his own making, as many a better and wiser man of the world has been, and daily is; and it was no melioration of his distress to think he had whelmed his associates in his ruin, and defeated the best and last hopes of his benefactress. It was with such feelings at his heart, that he was dragged up to the fire, to be exulted over and scolded at as long as it should seem good to his captors. But the latter, exhausted by the day's revels, and satisfied with their victory, so complete and so bloodless, soon gave over tormenting him, resolving, however, that he should be soundly beaten at the gantelope on the morrow, for the especial gratification, and in honour, of the Wyandott party, their guests.
This resolution being made, he was, like Roland and Nathan, led away bound, each being bestowed in a different hut, where they were committed to safer guards than had been appointed to watch over Edith; and, in an hour after, the village was again wrapped in repose. The last to betake themselves to their rest were Doe, and his confederate, Braxley, the latter of whom had been released from his disagreeable bonds, when Edith was carried back to the tent. It was while following Doe to his cabin, that he discovered the loss of the precious document upon the possession of which he had built so many stratagems, and so many hopes of success. His agitation and confusion were so great at the time of Nathan's assault, that he was wholly unaware it had been taken from him by this assailant; and Doe, to whom its possession opened newer and bolder prospects, and who had already formed a design for using it to his own advantage, effected to believe that he had dropped it on the way, and would easily recover it on the morrow, as no Indian could possibly attach the least value to it.
Another subject of agitation to Braxley, was the reappearance of his rival; who, however, Doe assured him, was "now as certainly a dead man, as if twenty bullets had been driven through his body." --"He is in the hands of the Old Vulture," said he, grimly, "and he will burn in fire jist as sure as _we_ will, Dick Braxley, when the devil gits us! --that is, unless we ourselves save him!"
"We, Jack!" said the other, with a laugh: "and yet who knows how the wind may blow _you_? But an hour ago you were as remorseful over the lad's supposed death as you are now apparently indifferent what befalls him."
"It is true," replied Doe, coolly: "but see the difference! When the Piankeshaws were burning him,--or when I thought the dogs were at it,--it was a death of _my_ making for him: it was _I_ that helped him to the stake. But here the case is altered. He comes here on his own hook; the Injuns catch him on his own hook; and, d--n them, they'll burn him on his own hook! and so it's no matter of my consarning. There's the root of it!"
This explanation satisfied his suspicious ally; and having conversed a while longer on what appeared to them most wonderful and interesting in the singular attempt at the rescue, the two retired to their repose.
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{
"id": "13970"
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32
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The following day was one of unusual animation and bustle in the Indian village, as the prisoners could distinguish even from their several places of confinement, without, however, being sensible of the cause. Prom sunrise until after mid-day, they heard, at intervals, volleys of fire-arms shot off at the skirts of the town, which, being followed by shrill halloos as from those who fired them, were immediately re-echoed by all the throats in the village--men, women, children, and dogs uniting in a clamour that was plainly the outpouring of savage exultation and delight. It seemed as if parties of warriors, returning victorious from the lands of the Long-knife, were, time after time, marching into and through the village, proclaiming the success of their arms, and exhibiting the trophies of their triumph. The hubbub increased, the shouts became more frequent and multitudinous, and the village for a second time seemed given up to the wildest and maddest revelry, to the sway of unchained demons, or of men abandoned to all the horrible impulses of lycanthropy.
During all this time, the young Virginian lay bound in a wigwam, guarded by a brace of old warriors, who occasionally varied the tedium of watching by stalking to the door, where, like yelping curs paying their respects to passers-by, they up-lifted their voices and vented a yell or two in testimony of their approbation of what was going on without. Now and then, also, they even left the wigwam, but never for more than a few moments at a time; when, having thus amused themselves, they would return, squat themselves down by the prisoner's side, and proceed to entertain him with sundry long-winded speeches in their own dialect, of which, of course, he understood not a word. Wrapped in his own bitter thoughts, baffled in his last hope, and now grown indifferent what might befall him, he lay upon the earthen floor during the whole day, expecting almost every moment to behold some of the shouting crew of the village rush into the hovel and drag him away to the tortures which, at that period, were so often the doom of the prisoner.
But the solitude of his prison-house was invaded only by his two old jailers; and it was not until nightfall that he beheld a third human countenance. At that period, Telie Doe stole trembling into the hut, bringing him food, which she set before him, but with looks of deep grief and deeper abasement, which he might have attributed to shame and remorse for a part played in the scheme of captivity, had not all her actions shown that, although acquainted with the meditated outrage, she was sincerely desirous to avert it.
Her appearance awakened his dormant spirits, and recalled the memory of his kinswoman, of whom he besought her to speak, though well aware she could speak neither hope nor comfort. But scarce had Telie, more abashed and more sorrowful at the question, opened her lips to reply, when one of the old Indians interposed, with a frown of displeasure, and, taking her by the arm, led her angrily to the door, where he waved her away, with gestures that seemed to threaten a worse reception should she presume to return.
Thus thwarted and driven back again upon his own reflections, Roland gave himself up to despondency, awaiting with sullen indifference the fate which he had no doubt was preparing for him. But he was doomed once more to experience the agitations of hope, the tormentor not less than the soother of existence.
Soon after nightfall, and when his mind was in a condition resembling the hovel in which he lay--a cheerless ruin, lighted only by occasional flickerings from a fire of spirit fast smouldering into ashes--he heard a step enter the door, and, by and by, a jabbering debate commenced between the newcomer and his guards, which resulted in the latter presently leaving the cabin. The intruder then stepped up to the fire, which he stirred into a flame; and seating himself full in its light, revealed, somewhat to Roland's surprise, the form and visage of the renegade, Abel Doe, whose acts on the hill-side had sufficiently impressed his lineaments on the soldier's memory. He eyed the captive for awhile very earnestly, but in deep silence, which Roland himself was the first to break.
To the soldier, however, bent upon preserving the sullen equanimity which was his best substitute for resignation, there was enough in the appearance of this man to excite the fiercest emotions of indignation. Others might have planned the villany which had brought ruin and misery upon his head; but it was Doe who, for the bravo's price, and with the bravo's baseness, had set the toils around him, and struck the blow. It was, indeed, only through the agency of such an accomplice that Braxley could have put his schemes into execution, or ventured even to attempt them. The blood boiled in his veins as he surveyed the mercenary and unprincipled hireling, and strove, though in vain, to rise upon his fettered arms, to give energy to his words of denunciation.
"Villain!" he cried, "base, wretched, dastardly caitiff! have you come to boast the fruits of your rascally crime?"
"Right, captain!" replied Doe, with a consenting nod of the head, "you have nicked me on the right p'int: villain's the true word to begin on; and, perhaps, 'twill be the one to end on: but that's as we shall conclude about it, after we have talked the matter over."
"Begone, wretch,--trouble me not," said Roland, "I have nothing to say to you, but to curse you."
"Well, I reckon that's natteral enough, too, that cussing of me," said Doe, "seeing as how I've in a manner deserved it. But there's an end to all things, even to cussing; and, may be, you'll jist take a jump the other way, when the gall's over. A friend to-day, an enemy to-morrow, as the saying is; and you may jist as well say it backwards; for, as things turn up, I'm no sich blasted enemy, jist now, no-way no-how. I'm for holding a peace talk, as the Injuns say, d--n 'em, burying the axe, and taking a whiff or two at the kinnikinick of friendship. So cuss away, if it will do you good; and I'll stand it. But as for being off, why I don't mean it noway. I've got a bargain to strike with you, and it is jist a matter to take the tiger-cat out of you,--it is, d--n it: and when you've heard it, you'll be in no sich hurry to get rid of me. But, afore we begin, I've jist got a matter to ax you: and that is,--how the h---- you cleared the old Piankeshaw and his young uns?"
"If you have anything to propose to me," said Roland, smothering his wrath as well as he could, though scarce hoping assistance or comfort of any kind from the man who had done him so much injury, "propose it, and be brief, and trouble me with no questions."
"Well now," said Doe, "a civil question might as well have a civil answer! If you killed the old feller and the young-uns, you needn't be ashamed of it; for cuss me, I think all the better of you for it; for it's not every feller can kill three Injuns that has him in the tugs, by no means no-how. But, I reckon, the ramscallions took to the liquor? (Injuns will be Injuns, there's no two ways about it!) and you riz on 'em, and so paid 'em up scot and lot, according to their desarvings? You couldn't have done a better thing to make me beholden: for, you see, I had the giving of you up to 'em, and I felt bad,--I did, d--n me, for I knew the butchers would burn you, if they got you to the Wabash--I did, captain, and I had bad thoughts about it. But it was a cussed mad notion of you, following us, it was, there's no denying! Howsomever, I won't talk of that. I jist want to ax you where you picked up that Injun-looking feller that was lugging off the gal, and what his natur'? The Injuns say, he's a conjuror: now I never heerd of conjurors among the whites, like as among the Injuns, afore I cut loose from 'em, and I'm cur'ous on the subject! --I jist ax you a civil question, and I don't mean no harm in it. There's nobody can make the feller out; and, as for Ralph Stackpole, blast him, he says he never seed the crittur afore in his life!"
"If you would have me answer _your_ question," said Roland, in whom Doe's discourse was beginning to stir up many a former feeling, "you must first answer mine. This person you speak of,--what is to be his fate?"
"Why, burning, I reckon: but that's according as he pleases the old Vulture: for, if he can find out what never an Injun Medicine has been able to do, it may be, the old chief will feed him up and make him his conjuror. They say, he's conjuring with the crittur now."
"And Stackpole, what will they do with him?"
"Burn him, sartin! They're jist waiting till the warriors come in from the Licking, where, you must know, they have taken a hundred scalps, or so, at one grab: and then the feller will roast beyond all mention."
"And I, too," said the Virginian, with such calmness us he could, "I, too, am to meet the same fate?"
"Most ondoubtedly," said Doe, with an ominous nod of assent. "There's them among us that speak well of you, as having heart enough to be made an Injun: but there's them that have sworn you shall burn; and burn you _must! _--That is, onless--" But he was interrupted by Roland, exclaiming hurriedly,-- "There is but one more to speak of--my cousin? my poor friendless cousin?"
"There," said Doe, "you needn't be afeard of burning, by no means whatsomever. We didn't catch the gal to make a roast of. She is safe enough; there's one that will take care of her."
"And that one is the villain Braxley! Oh, knave that you are, could you have the heart,--you who have a daughter of your own, could you have committed _her_ into the arms of such a villain?"
"No, by G----, I couldn't!" said Doe, with great earnestness: "but another man's daughter is quite another thing. Howsomever, you needn't take on for nothing; for he means to marry her and take her safe back to Virginny: and, you see, I bargained with him agin all rascality; for I had a gal of my own, and I couldn't think of his playing foul with the poor creatur'. No, we had an understanding about all that, when we was waiting for you on old Salt. All Dick wants is jist a wife that will help him to them lands of the old major. And that, you see, is jist the whole reason of our making the grab on you."
"You confess it, then!" cried Roland, too much excited by the bitterest of passions to be surprised at the singular communicativeness of his visitor: "you sold yourself to the villain for gold! for gold you hesitated not to sacrifice the happiness of one victim of his passions, the life of another! Oh, basest of all that bear the name of man, how could you do this villany?"
"Because," replied Doe, with as much apparent sincerity as emphasis, "because I am a d--d rascal: there's no sort of doubt about it; and we won't be tender the way we talk of it. I was an honest man once, captain, but I am a rascal now; warp and woof, skin-deep and heart-deep, ay, to the bones and marrow,--I am all the way a rascal! But don't look as if you was astonished already. I come to make a clean breast of all sorts of matters, jist, captain, for a little bit of your advantage and my own: and there's things coming that will make you look a leetle of a sight wilder! And, first and foremost, to begin. Have you any particular longing to be out of this here Injun town, and well shut of the d--d fire torture?"
"Have I any desire to be free! Mad question!"
"Well, captain, I'm jist the man, and the only one, that can help you; for them that would, can't, and them that can, won't. And, secondly and lastly, captain, as the parsons say in the settlements, have you any hankering to be the master of the old major, your uncle's lands and houses?"
"If you come to mock and torture me,"--said Roland, but was interrupted by the renegade.
"It is jist to save you from the torture," said he, "that I'm now speaking; for, cuss me, the more I think of it, the more I can't stand it no-how. I'm a rascal, captain, but I'm no tiger-cat, especially to them that hasn't misused me, and there's the grit of a man about you that strikes my feelings exactly. But, you see, captain, there's a bargain first to be struck between us, afore I comes up to the rack--but I'll make tarms easy."
"Make them what you will, and But, alas! where shall I find means to repay you? I who am robbed of everything?"
"Didn't I say I could help you to the major's lands and houses? and a'n't they a fortun' for an emperor?"
"You! _you_ help me? help me to _them_?"
"Captain," said the renegade, with sundry emphatic nods of the head, "I'm a sight more of a rascal than you ever dreamed on! and this snapping of you up by Injun deviltry, that you think so hard of, is but a small part of my misdoings: I've been slaving agin you this sixteen years, more of less, _slaving_ (that's the word, for I made a niggur of myself) to rob you of these here very lands that I'm now thinking of helping you to! You don't believe me, captain! Well, did you ever hear of a certain honest feller of old Augusta, called John Atkinson?"
"Hah!" cried the soldier, looking with new eyes upon the renegade; "you are then the fellow upon whose perjured testimony Braxley relied to sustain his frauds?"
"The identical same man, John Atkinson, or Jack, as they used to call me; but now Abel Doe, for convenience sake," said the refugee, with great composure; "and so, now, you can see into the whole matter. It was _me_ that had the keeping of the major's daughter that you knows of. Well, I was an honest feller in them days, I was, captain, by G----!" repeated the fellow with something that sounded like remorseful utterance, "and jist as contented in my cabin on the mountain as the old major himself in his big house at Felhallow. But Dick Braxley came, d--n him, and there was an end of all honest doings: for Dick was high with the old major, and the major was agin his brothers; and says Dick, says he, 'Put but this little gal,'--meaning the major's daughter,--'out of the way and I'm jist as good as the major's heir; and I'll make your fortun'"-- "Ay! and it was _he_ then, the villain himself," cried Roland, "who devised this horrible iniquity, which, by innuendo at least, he charged upon my father! --You are a rascal indeed! And you murdered the poor child?"
"Murdered! No, rat it, there was no murdering in the case: it was jist hiding in a hole, as you may call it. We burned down the wigwam, and made on as if the gal was burned in it; and then I stumped off to the Injun border, among them that didn't know me, and according to Dick's advice, helped myself to another name, and jist passed off the gal for my own daughter."
"Your own daughter!" cried Roland, starting half up, but being unable to rise on account of his bonds: "the story then is true! and Telie Doe is my uncle's child, the lost heiress?"
"Well, supposing she is?" said Atkinson, "I reckon you'd not be exactly the man to help her to her rights?"
"Ay, by Heaven, but I would though!" said Roland, "if rights they be. If my uncle, upon knowledge that she was still alive, thought fit to alter his intentions with regard to Edith and myself, he would have found none more ready to acknowledge the poor girl's claims than ourselves, none more ready to befriend and assist her."
"Well! there's all the difference between being an honest feller and a rascal!" muttered Atkinson, casting his eyes upon the fire, which he fell to studying for a moment with great earnestness. Then starting up hastily, and turning to the prisoner he exclaimed-- "There's not a better gal in the etarnal world! You don't know it, captain; but that Telie, that poor critter that's afeard of her own shadow, did run all risks, and play all manner of fool's tricks, to save you from this identical same captivation; and the night you was sleeping at Bruce's fort, and we waiting for you at the ford, she cried, and begged, and prayed that I would do you no more mischief; and, cuss her, she threatened to tell you and Bruce, there, the whole affair of the ambush; till I scared her with my tomahawk, like a d----d rascal as I am (but there's nothing will fetch her round but fear of murdering); and so swore her to keep silence. And then, captain, her running away after you in the woods,--why, it was jist to circumvent us,--to lead you to the t'other old road, and so save you; it was, captain, and she owned it: and if you'd a' taken to her leading, as she axed you, she'd 'a' got you out of the snarl altogether. Howsomever, captain," he continued, after making those admissions, which solved all the enigmas of Telie's conduct, "I won't lie in this matter no-how. The gal is no gal of the major's, but my own flesh and blood: the major's little critter sickened on the border, and died off in less than a year; and so there was all our rascally burning and lying for nothing; for, if we had waited a while, the poor thing would have died of her own accord. Well, captain, I'm making a long story about nothing: but the short of it is, I didn't make a bit of a fortun' at all, but fell into troubles; and the end was, I turned Injun, jist as you see me; and a feller there, Tom Bruce, took to my little gal out of charity; and so she was bred up a beggar's brat, with everybody a jeering of her, because of her d----d rascally father. And, you see, this made a wolf of me; for I couldn't bring her among the Injuns, to marry her to a cussed niggur of a savage,--no, captain, I couldn't; for she's my own natteral flesh and blood, and, captain, I love her! And so I goes back to Virginny, to see what Braxley could do for her; and there, d----n him, he puts me up to a new rascality; which was nothing less than setting up my gal for the major's daughter, and making her a great heiress, and marrying of her. Howsomever, this wouldn't do, this marrying; for, first, Dick Braxley was a bigger rascal than myself, and it was agin my conscience to give him the gal, who was a good gal, deserving of an honest husband; and, next the feller was mad after young madam, and there was no telling how soon he might p'ison my gal, to marry the other. And so we couldn't fix the thing then to our liking, no way; but by and by we did. For when the major died, he sends for me in a way I told him of; and here's jist the whole of our rascality. We was, in the first place, jist to kill you off--" "To kill me, villain!" cried Roland, whose interest was already excited to the highest pitch by the renegade's story.
"Not exactly with our own hands; for I bargained agin that: but it was agreed you should be put out of the way of ever returning agin to Virginny. Well, captain, Dick was then to marry the young lady; and then jist step into the major's estate by virtue of the major's will,--the second one you must know, which Dick took good care to hide away, pretending to suppose the major had destroyed it."
"And that will," exclaimed Roland, "the villain, the unparalleled villain is still possessed of!"
"No, rat him,--the devil has turned upon him at last, and it is in better hands!" said Atkinson; and without more ado, he drew the instrument from his bosom and unfolded it before Roland's astonished eyes. "Read it," said Doe, with exulting voice: "I can make nothing of the cursed pot-hooks myself, having never been able to stand the flogging of a school-house; but I know the fixings of it, the whole estate devised equally to you and the young woman, to be divided according as you may agree of yourselves, a monstrous silly way, that; but there's no helping it."
And holding it before the Virginian, in the light of the fire, the latter satisfied himself at a glance that Atkinson had truly reported its contents. It was written with his uncle's own hand, briefly but clearly; and while manifesting throughout, the greatest affection on the part of the testator toward his orphan niece, it contained no expressions indicative either of ill-will to his nephew or disapprobation of the part the young man had chosen to play in the great drama of revolution. And this was the more remarkable as it was dated at a period soon after Roland had so wilfully, or patriotically, fled to fight the battles of his country, and when it might have been supposed the stern old loyalist's anger was at its height. A better and more grateful proof that the young man had neither lost his regard nor confidence, was shown in a final codicil, dated in the year of Roland's majority, in which he was associated with Braxley as executor, the latter worthy having been made to figure in that capacity alone, in the body of the will.
"This is indeed a discovery!" cried Roland, with the agitation of joy and hope. "Cut my bonds, deliver me, with my cousin and companions,--and the best farm in the manor shall reward you:--nay, you shall fix your own terms for your daughter and yourself."
"Exactly," said Atkinson, who, although the prisoner was carefully bound, exhibited a jealous disinclination to let the will come near his hands, and now restored it carefully to his own bosom; "we must talk over that matter of tarms, jist to avoid mistakes. And to begin, captain, I will jist observe, as before, that if you don't take my offer, and close with me hard and fast, you will roast at an Injun stake jist as sartainly as you are now snugging by an Injun fire; you will, d----n me, there's no two ways about it!"
"The terms, the terms?" cried Roland, eagerly: "name them; I will not dispute them."
But the renegade was in no such hurry.
"You see," said he, "I'm a d----d rascal, as I said; and in this matter, I am just as much a rascal as before, for I'm playing foul with Braxley, having bargained to work out the whole thing in his sarvice. Howsomever, there is a kind of fair play in cheating _him_, seeing it was him that made a rascal of me. And moresomever, I have my doubts of him, and there's no way I can hold him up to a bargain. And, lastly, captain, I don't see how he can be of any sarvice to my gal! He can't marry her if he would; and if he could, he shouldn't have her; and as for leaving her to his tender mercies, I would jist as soon think of hunting her up quarters in a bear's den. And as for keeping her among these d----d brutes, the Injuns--for brutes they are captain, there's no denying it--" "Why need you speak of it more? I will find her a home and protection,--a home and protection for both of you."
"As for _me_, captain, thanking' you for the favour, you won't do me no sich thing, seeing as how I don't look for it. There's two or three small matters agin me in the Settlements, which it is no notion of mine to bring up for reckoning. The gal's the crittur to be protected; and I'll take my pay out chiefly in the good you do to her; and for the small matters, not meaning no offence, I can trust best to her; for she's my daughter, and she won't cheat me. Now, captain, a better gal than Telie--her true name's Matilda, but she never heard anything of it but Telie--a better gal was never seen in the woods, for all she's young and timorsome; and it's jist my notion and my desire, that, whatever may become of me, nothing but good shall become of her. And now, captain, here's my tarms; I'll cut you loose from Injun tugs and Injun fires, carry you safe to the Settlements, and give you this here precious sheepskin,--which is jist as much as saying I'll make you the richest man, in farms, flocks, and niggurs, in all Virginny; and you shall marry the gal, and make a lady of her!"
"Marry her!" cried Roland, in amazement and consternation,--"marry her!"
"Ay, captain! that's the word," said Atkinson: "I have an idea you'll make her a good husband, for you're an honest feller, and a brave one--I'll say that for you; and she'll make you a good wife, or I'll give you my scalp on it. I reckon the crittur has a liking for you already; for I never did see any body so beg, and plead, and take on for mortal feller. Marry her's the tarms; and, I reckon, you'll allow, they're easy ones?"
"My good friend, you are surely jesting!" said the Virginian. "I will do for her whatever you can wish, or demand. The best farm in the whole estate shall be hers, and the protection of my kinswoman will be cheerfully and gratefully granted."
"As for jesting, captain," said the renegade, with a lowering brow, "there's not one particle of it about me, from top to toe. I offer you a bargain that has all the good on your side; and I reckoned you'd 'a' jumped at it with a whole hoss-load of thank'ees. I offer you a gal that's the best gal in the whole eternal wood; and I reckon you may count all that this here sheepskin will bring you as jist so much dowry of my giving. A'n't that making tarms easy? --for, as for the small matters for myself, them is things I will come upon the gal for, without troubling you for 'em. Now you see, captain, I'll 'jist argue the matter. You may reckon it strange I should make you such an offer; and ondoubtedly, so it is. But here's the case. First, captain, I'm agin burning you; it makes. me oneasy, to think of it--for you ha'n't done me no harm, and you're a young feller of the rale Virginny grit, jist after my own heart, and I takes to you. And, next, captain, there's the gal--a good gal, captain, that's desarving of all I can do for her, and a heap more. But, captain, what's to become of the crittur when I'am done for? You see, some of these cussed Injuns--or it may be the white men, for they're all agin me--will take the scalp off me some day, sooner or later, there's no two ways about it. Well, then, what's to become of the poor gal, that ha'n't no friend in the big world to care for her? Now, you see, I'm thinking of the gal, and I'm making the bargain for her; and I made it in my own mind jist the minute I seed you were a captive among us, and laid my hand on this here will. Said I to myself, 'I'll save the youngster, and I'll marry my gal to him, and there's jist two good things I'll do for the pair of 'em!' And so, captain, there's exactly the end of it. If you'll take the gal, you shall have her, and you'll make three different critturs greatly beholden to you:--first, the gal, who's a good gal, and a comely gal, and will love and honor you jist as hard as the best madam in the land; next, myself, that am her father, and longs to give her to an honest feller, that won't misuse her, and, last, your own partickelar self;--for the taking of her is exactly the only way you have of gitting hack the old major's lands, and what I hold to be jist as agreeable, dragging clear of a hot Injun fire that will roast you to cinders if you remain in this d--d village two days longer!"
"My friend," cried Roland, driven to desperation, for he perceived Atkinson was making his extraordinary proposal in perfectly good faith and simplicity, as a regular matter of matter of business, "you know not what you ask. Free me and my kinswoman--" "As for young madam there," interrupted the renegade, "don't be at all oneasy. She's in good hands, I tell you; and Braxley'll fetch her straight off to Virginny as soon as he has brought her to reason."
"And your terms," said Roland, smothering his fury as he could, "imply an understanding that my cousin is to be surrendered to him?"
"Ondoubtedly," replied Doe; "there's no two ways about it. I work on my own hook, in the matter of the fortun'--'cause how, Dick's not to be trusted where the play's all in his own hands; but as for cheating him out of the gal, there's no manner of good can come of it, and it's clear agin my own interest. No, captain, here's the case; you takes my gal Telie, and Braxley takes the t'other; and so it's all settled fair between you."
"Hark you, rascal!" cried Roland, giving way to his feelings; "if you would deserve a reward, you must win it, not by saving _me_, but my cousin. My own life I would buy at the price of half the lands which that will makes me master of--for the rescue of Edith from the vile Braxley I would give _all_. Save her--save her from Braxley--and then ask me what you will."
"Well," said Atkinson, "and you'll marry my gal?"
"Death and furies! are you besotted? I will enrich her--ay, with the best of my estate--with all--she shall have it all."
"And you won't have her, then?" cried the renegade, starting up in anger: "you don't think her good enough for you, because you're of a great quality stock, and she's come of nothing but me, John Atkinson, a plain back-woods feller? Or mayhap," he added, more temperately, "you're agin taking her because of my being sich a d--d notorious rascal? Well, now, I reckon that's a thing nobody will know of in Virginny, unless you should tell it yourself. You can jist call her Telie Jones, or Telie Small, or any nickname of that natur', and nobody'll be the wiser; and I shall jist say nothing about it myself--I won't, captain, d--n me; for it's the gal's good I'm hunting after, and none of my own."
"You are mad, I tell you," cried the soldier. "Fix your own terms for her: I will execute any instrument, I will give you any bond--" "None of your cussed bonds for me," said Doe, with great contempt; "I knows the worth of 'em, and I'm jist lawyer enough to see how you could git out of 'em, by swearing they were written under compulsion, or whatsomever you call it. And, besides, who's to stop your cheating the gal that has nobody to take care of her, when you gits her in Virginny, where I darn't follow her? No, captain, there's jist but the one way to make all safe and fair; and that's by marrying her. So marry her, captain; and jist to be short, captain, you must marry her or burn, there's no two ways about it. I make you the last offer; there's no time for another; for to-morrow you must be help'd off, or it's too late for you. Come, captain, jist say the word--marry the gal, and I'll save you."
"You are mad, I tell you again. Marry her I neither can nor will. But--" "There's no occasion for more," interrupted Doe, starting angrily up. "You've jist said the word, and that's enough. And now, captain, when you come to the stake, don't say _I_ brought you there: no, d--n it, don't--for I've done jist all I could do to help you to life and fortun'--I have, d--n me, you can't deny it."
And with these words, uttered with sullen accents and looks, the renegade stole from the hut, disregarding all Roland's entreaties to him to return, and all the offers of wealth with which the latter, in a frenzy of despair, sought to awaken his eupidity and compassion. The door-mats had scarce closed upon his retreating figure before they were parted to give entrance to the two old Indians, who immediately assumed their positions at his side, preserving them with vigilant fidelity throughout the remainder of the night.
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In the meantime, and at the very moment when the renegade was urging his extraordinary proposals to the young Virginian, a scene was passing in the hut of Wenonga, in which one of Roland's fellow-prisoners was destined to play an important and remarkable part. There, in the very tent in which he had struck so daring a blow for the rescue of Edith, but in which Edith appeared no more, lay the luckless Nathan, a victim not so much of his own rashness as of the excessive zeal, not to say folly, of his coadjutors. And thither he had been conducted but a few hours before, after having passed the previous night and day in a prison-house less honoured, but fated, as it proved, to derive peculiar distinction from the presence of such a guest.
His extraordinary appearance, partaking so much of that of an Indian juggler arrayed in the panoply of legerdemain, had produced, as was mentioned, a powerful effect on the minds of his captors, ever prone to the grossest credulity and superstition; and this was prodigiously increased by the sudden recurrence of his disease,--a dreadful infliction, whose convulsions seem ever to have been proposed as the favourite exemplars for the expression of prophetic fury and the demoniacal orgasm, and were aped alike by the Pythian priestess on her tripod and the ruder impostor of an Indian wigwam. The foaming lips and convulsed limbs of the prisoner, if they did not "speak the god," to the awe-struck barbarians, declared at least the presence of the mighty fiend who possessed his body; and when the fit was over, though they took good care to bind him with thongs of bison-hide, like his companions, and led him away to a place of security, it was with a degree of gentleness and respect that proved the strength of their belief in his supernatural endowments. This belief was still further indicated, the next day, by crowds of savages who flocked into the wigwam where he was confined, some to stare at him, some to inquire the mysteries of their fate, and some, as it seemed, with credulity less unconditional, to solve the enigma of his appearance before yielding their full belief. Among these last were the renegade and one or two savages of a more sagacious or sceptical turn than their fellows, who beset the supposed conjuror with questions calculated to pluck out the heart of his mystery.
But questions and curiosity were in vain. The conjuror was possessed by a silent devil; and whether it was that the shock of his last paroxysm had left his mind benumbed and stupefied, whether his courage had failed at last, leaving him plunged in despair, or whether, indeed, his frigid indifference was not altogether assumed to serve a peculiar purpose, it was nevertheless certain that he bestowed not the slightest attention upon any of his questioners, not even upon Doe, who had previously endeavoured to unravel the riddle by seeking the assistance of Ralph Stackpole,--assistance, however, which Ralph, waxing sagacious of a sudden, professed himself wholly unable to give. This faithful fellow, indeed, professed to be just as ignorant of the person and character of the young Virginian; swearing, with a magnanimous resolve, to assume the pains and penalties of Indian ire on his own shoulders, that "the hoss-stealing" (which, he doubted not, would be held the most unpardonable feature in the adventure,) "was jist a bit of a private speculation of his own,--that there was nobody with him,--that he had come on his expedition alone, and knew no more of the other fellers than he did of the 'tarnal tempers of Injun hosses,--not he!" In short, the skeptics were baffled, and the superstitious were left to the enjoyment of their wonder and awe.
At nightfall, Nathan was removed to Wenonga's cabin, where the chief, surrounded by a dozen or more warriors, made him a speech in such English phrases as he had acquired, informing the prisoner, as before, that "he, Wenonga, was a great chief and warrior, that the other, the prisoner, was a great medicine-man; and, finally, that he, Wenonga, required of his prisoner, the medicine-man, by his charms, to produce the Jibbenainosay, the unearthly slayer of his people and curse of his tribe, in order that he, the great chief, who feared neither warrior nor devil, might fight him, like a man, and kill him, so that he, the aforesaid destroyer, should destroy his young men in the dark no longer."
Not even to this speech, though received by the warriors with marks of great approbation, did Nathan vouchsafe the least notice; and the savages despairing of moving him to their purpose at that period, but hoping perhaps to find him in a more reasonable mood at another moment, left him--but not until they had again inspected the thongs and satisfied themselves they were tied in knots strong and intricate enough to hold even a conjuror. They, also, before leaving him to himself, placed food and water at his side, and in a way that was perhaps designed to show their opinion of his wondrous powers; for as his arms were pinioned tightly behind his back, it was evident he could feed himself only by magic.
The stolid indifference to all sublunary matters which had distinguished Nathan throughout the scene, vanished the moment he found himself alone. In fact, the step of the savage the last to depart was yet rustling among the weeds at the Black-Vulture's door, when, making a violent effort, he succeeded in placing himself in a sitting posture, and glared with eager look around the apartment, which was, as before, dimly lighted by a fire on the floor. The piles of skins and domestic utensils were hanging about, as on the preceding night; and indeed, nothing seemed to have been disturbed, except the weapons, of which there had been so many when Edith occupied the den, but of which not a single one now remained. Over the fire,--the long tresses that depended from it swinging and fluttering in the currents of smoke and heated air,--was the bundle of scalps, to which Braxley had so insidiously directed the gaze of Edith, and which was now one of the first objects that met Nathan's eyes.
Having reconnoitered every corner and cranny, and convinced himself that there was no lurking savage watching his movements, he began straightway to test the strength of the thong by which his arms were bound; but without making the slightest impression on it. The cord was strong, the knots were securely tied; and after five or six minutes of struggling in which he made the most prodigious efforts to tear it asunder, without hesitating at the anguish it caused him, he was obliged to give over his hopes, fain could he have, like Thomson's demon in the net of the good Knight, enjoyed that consolation of despair,--to "Sit him felly down, and gnaw his bitter nail."
He summoned his strength, and renewed his efforts again and again, but always without effect; and being at last persuaded of his inability to aid himself, and leaned back against a bundle of skins, to counsel with his own thoughts what hope, if any, yet remained.
At that instant, and while the unuttered misery of his spirit might have been read in his haggard and despairing eyes, a low whining sound, coming from a corner of the tent, but on the outside, with a rustling and scratching, as if some animal were struggling to burrow its way betwixt the skins and the earth, into the lodge, struck his ear. He started, and he stared round with a wild but joyous look of recognition.
"Hist, hist!" he cried, or rather whispered, for his voice was not above his breath; "hist, hist! If thee ever was wise, now do thee show it!"
The whining ceased, the scratching and rustling were heard a moment longer; and, then, rising from the skin wall, under which he had made his way, appeared--no bulky demon, indeed, summoned by the conjuror to his assistance--but little dog Peter, his trusty, sagacious, and hitherto inseparable friend, creeping with stealthy step, but eyes glistening with affection, towards the bound and helpless prisoner.
"I can't hug thee, little Peter!" cried the master, as the little animal crawled to him, wagging his tail, and, throwing his paws upon Nathan's knee, looked into his face with a most meaning stare of inquiry; "I can't hug thee, Peter! Thee sees how it is! the Injuns have ensnared me. But where _thee_ is, Peter, there is hope. Quick, little Peter!" he cried, thrusting his arms out from his back; "thee has teeth, and thee knows how to use them--thee has gnawed me free before--Quick, little Peter, quick! The teeth is thee knives; and with them thee can cut me free!"
The little animal, whose remarkable docility and sagacity have been instanced before, seemed actually to understand his master's words, or, at least, to comprehend, from his gestures the strange duty that was now required of him; and, without more ado, he laid hold with his teeth upon the thong round Nathan's wrists, tugging and gnawing at it with a zeal and perseverance that seemed to make his master's deliverance, sooner or later, sure; and his industry was quickened by Nathan, who all the while encouraged him with whispers to continue his efforts.
"Thee gnawed me loose, when the four Shawnees had me bound by their fire, at night, on the banks of the Kenhawa. (Does thee remember _that_, Peter?) Ay, thee did, while the knaves slept; and from that sleep they never waked, the murdering villains--no, not one of them! Gnaw, little Peter, gnaw hard and fast; and care not if thee wounds me with thee teeth; for, truly, I will forgive thee, even if thee bites me to the bone. Faster, Peter, faster! Does thee boggle at the skin, because of its hardness? Truly, I have seen thee a hungered, Peter, when thee would have cracked it like a marrow-bone! Fast, Peter, fast; and thee shall see me again in freedom!"
With such expressions Nathan inflamed the zeal of his familiar, who continued to gnaw for the space of five minutes or more, and with such effect, that Nathan, who ever and anon tested the brute's progress by a violent jerk at the rope, found, at the fourth or fifth effort, that it yielded a little, and cracked, as if its fibres were already giving way.
"Now, Peter! tug, if thee ever tugged!" he cried, his hopes rising almost to ecstacy: "A little longer, one bite more, a little, but a little longer, Peter, if thee loves thee master! Yea, Peter, and we will walk the woods again in freedom! Now, Peter, now for the last bite!"
But the last bite Peter, on the sudden, betrayed a disinclination to make. He ceased his toil, jostled against his master's side, and uttered a whine, the lowest that could be made audible.
"Hah!" cried Nathan, as, at the same instant, he heard the sound of footsteps approaching the wigwam, "thee speaks the truth, and the accursed villains is upon us! Away with thee, dog--thee shall finish thee work by and by!"
Faithful to his master's orders, or perhaps to his own sense of what was fitting and proper in such a case, little Peter leaped hastily among the skins and other litter that covered half the floor and the sleeping-berths of the lodge, and was immediately out of sight, having left the apartment, or concealed himself in its darkest corner. The steps approached; they reached the door: Nathan threw himself back, reclining against his pile of furs, and fixed his eye upon the mats at the entrance. They were presently parted; and the old chief Wenonga came halting into the apartment,--halting, yet with a step that was designed to indicate all the pride and dignity of a warrior. And this attempt at state was the more natural and proper, as he was armed and painted as if for war, his grim-countenance hideously bedaubed on one side with vermillion, and the other with black; a long scalping-knife, without sheath or cover, swinging from his wampum belt; while a hatchet, the blade and handle both of steel, was grasped in his hand. In this guise, and with a wild and demoniacal glitter of eye, that seemed the result of mingled drunkenness and insanity, the old chief stalked and limped up to the prisoner, looking as if bent upon his instant destruction. That his passions were up in arms, that he was ripe for mischief and blood, was, indeed, plain and undeniable; but he soon made it apparent that his rage was only conditional and alternative, as regarded the prisoner. Pausing within three or four feet of him, and giving him a look that seemed designed to freeze his blood, it was so desperately hostile and savage, he extended his arm and hatchet,--not, however, to strike, as it appeared, but to do what might be judged almost equally agreeable to nine-tenths of his race,--that is, to deliver a speech.
"I am Wenonga!" he cried, in his own tongue, being perhaps too much enraged to think of any other, "I am Wenonga, a great Shawnee chief. I have fought the Longknives, and drunk their blood: when they hear my voice they are afraid; they run howling away, like dogs when the squaws beat them from the fire--who ever stood before Wenonga? I have fought my enemies, and killed them. I never feared a white man: why should I fear a white man's devil? Where is the Jibbenainosay, the curse of my tribe? --the Shawneewannaween, the howl of my people? He kills them in the dark, he creeps upon them while they sleep; but he fears to stand before the face of a warrior! Am I a dog? or a woman? The squaws and the children curse me, as I go by: they say _I_ am the killer of their husbands and fathers; they tell me it was the deed of Wenonga, that brought the white man's devil to kill them; 'if Wenonga is a chief, let him kill the killer of his people!' I am Wenonga; I am a man; I fear nothing: I have sought the Jibbenainosay. But the Jibbenainosay is a coward; he walks in the dark, he kills in the time of sleep, he fears to fight a warrior! My brother is a great medicine-man; he is a white man, and he knows how to find the white man's devils. Let my brother speak for me; let him show me where to find the Jibbenainosay; and he shall be a great chief, and the son of a chief: Wenonga will make him his son, and he shall be a Shawnee!"
"Does Wenonga, at last, feel he has brought a devil upon his people?" said Nathan, speaking for the first time since his capture, and speaking in a way well suited to strike the interrogator with surprise. A sneer, as it seemed, of gratified malice crept over his face, and was visible even through the coat of paint that still invested his features; and to crown all, his words were delivered in the Shawnee tongue, correctly and unhesitatingly pronounced; which was itself, or so Wenonga appeared to hold it, a proof of his superhuman acquirements.
The old chief started, as the words fell upon his ear, and looked around him in awe, as if the prisoner had already summoned a spirit to his elbow.
"I have heard the voice of the dead!" he cried. "My brother is a great Medicine! But I am a chief;--I am not afraid."
"The chief tells me lies," rejoined Nathan, who, having once unlocked his lips, seemed but little disposed to resume his former silence;--"the chief tells me lies: there is no white-devil hurts his people!"
"I am an old man, and a warrior,--I speak the truth!" said the chief, with dignity; and then added, with sudden feeling,--"I am an old man: I had sons and grandsons--young warriors, and boys that would soon have blacked their faces for battle[12]--where are they? The Jibbenainosay has been in my village, he has been in my wigwam--there are none left--the Jibbenainosay killed them!"
[Footnote 12: The young warriors of many tribes are obliged to confine themselves to black paint, during their probationary campaigns.]
"Ay!" exclaimed the prisoner, and his eyes shot fire as he spoke, "they fell under his hand, man and boy--there was not one of them spared--they were of the blood of Wenonga!"
"Wenonga is a great chief!" cried the Indian: "he is childless; but childless he has made the Long-knife."
"The Long-knife, and the son of Onas!" said Nathan.
The chief staggered back, as if struck by a blow, and stared wildly upon the prisoner.
"My brother is a medicine-man,--he knows all things!" he exclaimed. "He speaks the truth: I am a great warrior; I took the scalp of the Quakel[13]--" [Footnote 13: _Quakels_--a corruption of Quakers, whom the Indians of Pennsylvania originally designated as the sons of _Onos_, that being one of the names they bestowed upon Penn.] "And of his wife and children--you left not one alive! --Ay!" continued Nathan, fastening his looks upon the amazed chief, "you slew them all! And he that was the husband and father was the Shawnees' friend, the friend even of Wenonga!"
"The white-men are dogs and robbers!" said the chief: "the Quakel was my brother; but I killed him. I am an Indian--I love white-man's blood. My people have soft hearts; they cried for the Quakel: but I am a warrior with no heart. I killed them: their scalps are hanging to my fire-post! I am not sorry; I am not afraid."
The eyes of the prisoner followed the Indian's hand, as he pointed, with savage triumph, to the shrivelled scalps that had once crowned the heads of childhood and innocence, and then sank to the floor, while his whole frame shivered as with an ague-fit.
"My brother is a great medicine-man," iterated the chief: "he shall show me the Jibbenainosay, or he shall die."
"The chief lies!" cried Nathan, with a sudden and taunting laugh: "he can talk big things to a prisoner, but he fears the Jibbenainosay!"
"I am a chief and warrior. I will fight the white-man's devil!"
"The warrior shall see him then," said the captive, with extraordinary fire. "Cut me loose from my bonds, and I will bring him before the chief."
And as he spoke, he thrust out his legs, inviting the stroke of the axe upon the thongs that bound his ankles.
But this was a favour, which, stupid or mad as he was, Wenonga hesitated to grant.
"The chief," cried Nathan, with a laugh of scorn, "would stand face to face with the Jibbenainosay, and yet fears to loose a naked prisoner!"
The taunt produced its effect. The axe fell upon tho thong, and Nathan leaped to his feet. He extended his wrists. The Indian hesitated again. "The chief shall see the Jibbenainosay!" cried Nathan; and the cord was cut.
The prisoner turned quickly round; and while his eyes fastened with a wild but joyous glare upon his jailer's, a laugh that would have become the jaws of a hyena lighted up his visage, and sounded from his lips. "Look!" he cried, "thee has thee wish! Thee sees the destroyer of thee race,--ay, murdering villain, the destroyer of thee people, and theeself!"
And with that, leaping upon the astounded chief with rather the rancorous ferocity of a wolf than the enmity of a human being, and clutching him by the throat with one hand, while with the other he tore the iron tomahawk from his grasp, he bore him to the earth, clinging to him as he fell, and using the wrested weapon with such furious haste and skill that, before they had yet reached the ground, he had buried it in the Indian's brain. Another stroke, and another, he gave with the same murderous activity and force; and Wenonga trode the path to the spiritland, bearing the same gory evidences of the unrelenting and successful vengeance of the white-man that his children and grand-children had borne before him.
"Ay, dog, thee dies at last! at last I have caught thee!"
With these words, Nathan, leaving the shattered skull, dashed the tomahawk into the Indian's chest, snatched the scalping-knife from the belt, and with one grinding sweep of the blade, and one fierce jerk of his arm, the gray scalp-lock of the warrior was torn from the dishonoured head. The last proof of the slayer's ferocity was not given until he had twice, with his utmost strength, drawn the knife over the dead man's breast, dividing skin, cartilage, and even bone, before it, so sharp was the blade and so powerful the hand that urged it.
Then, leaping to his feet, and snatching from the post the bundle of withered scalps--the locks and ringlets of his own murdered family,--which he spread a moment before his eyes with one hand, while the other extended, as if to contrast the two prizes together, the reeking scalp-lock of the murderer, he sprang through the door of the lodge, and fled from the village; but not until he had, in the insane fury of the moment, given forth a wild, ear-piercing yell, that spoke the triumph, the exulting transport, of long-baffled but never-dying revenge. The wild whoop, thus rising in the depth and stillness of the night, startled many a wakeful warrior and timorous mother from their repose. But such sounds in a disorderly hamlet of barbarians were too common to create alarm or uneasiness; and the wary and the timid again betook themselves to their dreams, leaving the corse of their chief to stiffen on the floor of his own wigwam.
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From an uneasy slumber, into which, notwithstanding his sufferings of mind and body, he had at last fallen, Roland was roused at the break of day by a horrible clamour, that suddenly arose in the village. A shrill scream, that seemed to come from a female voice, was first heard; then a wild yell from the lungs of a warrior, which was caught up and repeated by other voices; and, in a few moments, the whole town resounded with shrieks dismal and thrilling, and expressing astonishment mingled with fear and horror.
The prisoner, incapable of comprehending the cause of such a commotion, looked to his guards, who had started up at the first cry, grasped their arms, and stood gazing upon one another with perturbed looks of inquiry. The shriek was repeated, by one,--twenty,--a hundred throats; and the two warriors, with hurried exclamations of alarm, rushed from the wigwam, leaving the prisoner to solve the riddle as he might. But he tasked his faculties in vain. His first idea--and it sent the blood leaping to his heart--that the village was suddenly attacked by an army of white men,--perhaps by the gallant Bruce, the commander of the Station where his misfortunes had begun,--was but momentary; no lusty hurrahs were heard mingling with the shrieks of the savages, and no explosions of fire-arms denoted the existence of conflict. And yet he perceived that the cries were not all of surprise and dismay. Some voices were uplifted in rage, which was evidently spreading among the agitated barbarians, and displacing the other passions in their minds.
In the midst of the tumult, and while he was yet lost in wonder and speculation, the renegade Doe suddenly rushed into the wigwam, pale with affright and agitation.
"They'll murder you, captain!" he cried, "there's no time for holding back now--Take the gal, and I'll save you. The village is up--they'll have your blood, they're crying for it already--squaws, warriors and all--ay, d----n 'em, there's no stopping 'em now!"
"What in Heaven's name is the matter?" demanded the soldier.
"All etarnity's the matter!" replied Doe, with vehement utterance: "the Jibbenainosay has been in the village, and killed the chief--ay, d----n him,--struck him in his own house, marked him at his own fire! he lies, dead and scalped--ay, and crossed too--on the floor of his own wigwam;--the conjuror gone, snapped up by his devil, and Wenonga stiff and gory! Don't you hear 'em yelling? The Jibbenainosay, I tell you--he has killed the chief; we found him dead in his cabin; and the Injuns are bawling for revenge--they are, d----n 'em, and they'll murder you, burn you, tear you to pieces;--they will, there's no two ways about it: they're singing out to murder the white men, and they'll be on you in no time!"
"And there is no escape!" cried Roland, whose blood curdled, as he listened to the thrilling yells that were increased in number and loudness, as if the enraged barbarians, rushing madly through the village, were gathering arms to destroy the prisoners,--"there is no escape?"
"Take the gal! jist say the word, and I'll save you, or die with you, I will, d----n me!" exclaimed Doe, with fierce energy. "There's hosses grazing in the pastures; there's halters swinging above us: I'll mount you and save you. Say the word, captain, and I'll cut you loose and save you--say it, and be quick; your life depends on it--Hark! the dogs is coming! Hold out your arms till I cut the tug--" "Anything for my life!" cried the Virginian; "but if it can be only bought at the price of marrying the girl, it is lost."
And the soldier would have resisted the effort Doe was making for his deliverance.
"You'll be murdered, I tell you!" re-echoed Doe, with increased vehemence, holding the knife ready in his hand: "they're coming on us: I don't want to see you butchered like an ox. One word, captain! --I'll take your word; you're an honest fellow, and I'll believe in you;--jist one word, captain; I'll help you; I'll fight the dogs for you; I'll give you weapons. The gal, captain! life and the fortun, captain! --The gal! the gal!"
"Never, I tell you, never!" cried Roland, who, faithful to the honour and integrity of spirit which conducted the men of that day, the mighty fathers of the republic, through the vicissitudes of revolution to the rewards of liberty, would not stoop to the meanness of falsehood and deception even in that moment of peril and fear;--"anything but that--but that, never!"
But, whilst he spoke, Doe, urged on by his own impetuous feelings, had cut the thong from his wrists, and was even proceeding to divide those that bound his ankles, disregarding all his protestations and averments, or perhaps drowning them in his own eager exclamations of "The gal, captain,--the word, jist one word!" when a dozen or more savages burst into the hut, and sprang upon the Virginian, yelling, cursing, and flourishing their knives and hatchets, as if they would have torn him to pieces on the spot. And such, undoubtedly, was the aim of some of the younger men, who struck at him several furious blows, that were only averted by the older warriors at the expense of some of their own blood shed in the struggle, which was, for a moment, as fiercely waged over the prisoner as the conflict of enraged hounds over the body of a disabled panther, that are all emulous to worry and tear. One instant of dreadful confusion, of shrieks, blows, and maledictions, and the Virginian was snatched up in the arms of two or three of the strongest men, and dragged from the hut; but only to find himself surrounded by a herd of villagers, men, women, and children, who fell upon him with as much fury as the young warriors had done, beating him with bludgeons, wounding him with their knives, so that it seemed impossible the older braves could protect him much longer. But others ran to their assistance; and forming a circle around him, so as to exclude the mob, he was borne onwards, in temporary security, but destined to a fate to which murder on the spot would have been gentleness and mercy.
The tumult had roused Edith also from her painful slumbers; and the more necessarily, since, although removed from the tent in which she was first imprisoned, she was still confined in Wenonga's wigwam. It was the scream of the hag, the chieftain's wife, who had discovered his body, that first gave the alarm; and the villagers all rushing to the cabin, and yelling their astonishment and terror, there arose an uproar, almost in her ears, that was better fitted to fright her to death than to lull her again to repose. She started from her couch of furs, and with a woman's weakness, cowered away in the furthest corner of the lodge, to escape the pitiless fees, whom her fears represented as already seeking her life. Nor was this chimera banished from her mind when a man, rushing in, snatched her from her ineffectual concealment and hurried her towards the door. But her terrors ran in another channel, when the ravisher, conquering the feeble resistance she attempted, replied to her wild entreaties "not to kill her," in the well-remembered voice of Braxley: "Kill you, indeed!" he muttered, but with agitated tones; "I come to save you; even _you_ are in danger from the maddened villains: they are murdering all! We must fly,--ay, and fast. My horse is saddled,--the woods are open--I will yet save you."
"Spare me! --for my uncle's sake, who was your benefactor, spare me!" cried Edith, struggling to free herself from his grasp. But she struggled in vain. "I aim to save you," cried Braxley; and without uttering another word, bore her from the hut; and, still grasping her with an arm of iron, sprang upon a saddled horse,--the identical animal that had once sustained the weight of the unfortunate Pardon Dodge,--which stood under the elm-tree, trembling with fright at the scene of horror then represented on the square.
Upon this vacant space was now assembled the whole population of the village, old and young, the strong and the feeble, all agitated alike by those passions, which, when let loose in a mob, whether civilised or savage, almost enforce the conviction that there is something essentially demoniac in the human character and composition; as if, indeed, the earth of which man is framed had been gathered only after it had been trodden by the foot of the Prince of Darkness.
Even Edith forgot for a moment her fears of Braxley,--nay, she clung to him for protection,--when her eye fell upon the savage herd, of whom the chief number were crowded together in the centre of the square, surrounding some object rendered invisible by their bodies, while others were rushing tumultuously hither and thither, driven by causes she could not divine, brandishing weapons, and uttering howls without number. One large party was passing from the wigwam itself, their cries not less loud or ferocious than the others, but changing occasionally into piteous lamentations. They bore in their arms the body of the murdered chief,--an object of such horror, that when Edith's eye; had once fallen upon it, it seemed as if her enthralled spirit would never have recovered strength to remove them.
But there was a more fearful spectacle yet to be seen. The wife of Wenonga suddenly rushed from the lodge, bearing a fire-brand in her hand. She ran to the body of the chief, eyed it, for a moment, with such a look as a tigress might cast upon her slaughtered cub, and then, uttering a scream that was heard over the whole square, and whirling the brand round her head, until it was in a flame, fled with frantic speed towards the centre of the area, the mob parting before her, and replying to her shrieks, which were uttered at every step, with outcries scarce less wild and thrilling. As they parted thus, opening a vista to the heart of the square, the object which seemed the centre of attraction to all was fully revealed to the maiden's eyes. Bound to two strong posts near the Council-house, their arms drawn high above their heads, a circle of brush-wood, prairie-grass, and other combustibles heaped around them, were two wretched captives,--white men, from whose persons a dozen savage hands were tearing their garments, while as many more were employed heaping additional fuel on the pile. One of these men, as Edith could see full well, for the spectacle was scarce a hundred paces removed, was Roaring Ralph, the captain of horse-thieves. The other--and _that_ was a sight to rend her eye-balls from their sockets,--was her unfortunate kinsman, the playmate of her childhood, the friend and lover of maturer years,--her cousin,--brother,--her all,--Roland Forrester. It was no error of sight, no delusion of mind: the spectacle was too palpable to be doubted: it was Roland Forrester whom she saw, chained to the stake, surrounded by yelling and pitiless barbarians, impatient for the commencement of their infernal pastime, while the wife of the chief, kneeling at the pile, was already endeavouring, with her brand, to kindle it into flame.
The shriek of the wretched maiden, as she beheld the deplorable, the maddening sight, might have melted hearts of stone, had there been even such among the Indians. But Indians, engaged in the delights of torturing a prisoner, are, as the dead chief had boasted himself, _without_ heart. Pity, which the Indian can feel at another moment, as deeply, perhaps, and benignly as a white man, seems then, and is, entirely unknown, as much so, indeed, as if it had never entered into his nature. His mind is then voluntarily given tip to the drunkenness of passion; and cruelty, in its most atrocious and fiendish character, reigns predominant. The familiar of a Spanish Inquisition has sometimes moistened the lips of a heretic stretched upon the rack,--the Buccaneer of the tropics has relented over the contumacious prisoner gasping to death under his lashes and heated pincers; but we know of no instance where an Indian, torturing a prisoner at the stake, the torture once begun, has ever been moved to compassionate, to regard with any feelings but those of exultation and joy, the agonies of the thrice-wretched victim.
The shriek of the maiden was unheard, or unregarded; and Braxley,--himself so horrified by the spectacle that, while pausing to give it a glance, he forgot the delay was also disclosing it to Edith,--grasping her tighter in his arms, from which she had half leaped in her frenzy, turned his horse's head to fly, without seeming to be regarded or observed by the savages, which was perhaps in part owing to his having resumed his Indian attire. But, as he turned, he could not resist the impulse to snatch one more look at his doomed rival. A universal yell of triumph sounded over the square; the flames were already bursting from the pile, and the torture was begun.
The torture was begun,--but it was not destined long to endure. The yell of triumph was yet resounding over the square, and awakening responsive echoes among the surrounding hills, when the explosion of at least fifty rifles, sharp, rattling, and deadly, like the war-note of the rattle-snake, followed by a mighty hurrah of Christian voices, and the galloping of horse into the village from above, converted the whole scene into one of amazement and terror. The volley was repeated, and by as many more guns; and in an instant there was seen rushing into the square a body of at least a hundred mounted white men, their horses covered with foam and staggering with exhaustion, yet spurred on by their riders with furious ardour; while twice as many footmen were beheld rushing after, in mad rivalry, cheering and shouting, in reply to their leader, whose voice was heard in front of the horsemen thundering out,--"Small change for the Blue Licks! Charge 'em, the brutes! give it to 'em handsome!"
The yells of dismay of the savages, taken thus by surprise, and, as it seemed, by a greatly superior force, whose approach, rapid and tumultuous as it must have been, their universal devotion to the Saturnalia of blood had rendered them incapable of perceiving; the shouts of the mounted assailants, as they dashed into the square and among the mob, shooting as they came, or handling their rifles like maces, and battle-axes; the trampling and neighing of the horses; and the thundering hurrahs of the footmen charging into the town with almost the speed of the horse, made a din too horrible for description. The shock of the assault was not resisted by the Indians even for a moment. Some rushed to the neighbouring wigwams for their guns, but the majority, like the women and children, fled to seek refuge among the rocks and bushes of the overhanging hill; from which, however, as they approached it, a deadly volley was shot upon them by foemen who already occupied its tangled sides. Others again fled towards the meadows and corn-fields, where, in like manner, they were intercepted by bands of mounted Long-knives, who seemed pouring into the valley from every hill. In short, it was soon made apparent that the village of the Black-Vulture was assailed from all sides, and by such an army of avenging white men as had never before penetrated into the Indian territory.
All the savages,--all, at least, who were not shot or struck down in the square,--fled from the village; and among the foremost of them was Braxley, who, as much astounded as his Indian confederates, but better prepared for flight, struck the spurs into his horse, and still retaining his helpless prize, dashed across the river, to escape as he might.
In the meanwhile, the victims at the stake, though roused to hope and life by the sudden appearance of their countrymen, were neither released from bonds nor perils. Though the savages fled, as described, from the charge of the white men, there were some who remembered the prisoners, and were resolved that they should never taste the sweets of liberty. The beldam, who was still busy kindling the pile, roused from her toil by the shouts of the enemy and the shrieks of her flying people, looked up a moment, and then snatching at a knife dropped by some fugitive, rushed upon Stackpole, who was nearest her, with a wild scream of revenge. The horse-thief, avoiding the blow as well as he could, saluted the hag with a furious kick, his feet being entirely at liberty; and such was its violence that the woman was tossed into the air, as if from the horns of a bull, and then fell, stunned and apparently lifeless, to perish in the flames she had kindled with her own breath.
A tall warrior, hatchet in hand, with a dozen more at his back, rushed upon the Virginian. But before he could strike, there came leaping with astonishing bounds over the bodies of the wounded and dying, and into the circle of fire, a figure that might have filled a better and braver warrior with dread. It was the medicine-man, and former captive, the Indian habiliments and paint still on his body and visage, though both were flecked and begrimed with blood. In his left hand was a bundle of scalps, the same he had taken from the tent of Wenonga; the grizzled scalp-lock of the chief, known by the vulture-feathers, beak, and talons, still attached to it, was hanging to his girdle; while the steel battle-axe, so often wielded by Wenonga, was gleaming aloft in his right hand.
The savage recoiled, and with loud yells of "The Jibbenainosay! the Jibbenainosay!" turned to fly, while even those behind him staggered back at the apparition of the destroyer, thus tangibly presented to their eyes; nor was their awe lessened, when the supposed fiend, taking one step after the retreating leader of the gang, drove the fatal hatchet into his brain, with as lusty a whoop of victory as ever came from the lungs of a warrior. At the same moment he was hidden from their eyes by a dozen horsemen that came rushing up, with tremendous huzzas, some darting against the band, while others sprung from their horses to liberate the prisoners. But this duty had been already rendered, at least in the case of Captain Forrester. The axe of Wenonga, dripping with blood to the hilt, divided the rope at a single blow, and then Roland's fingers were crushed in the grasp of his preserver, as the latter exclaimed, with a strange, half-frantic chuckle of triumph and delight,-- "Thee sees, friend! Thee thought I had deserted thee? Truly, truly, thee was mistaken!"
"Hurrah for old Tiger Nathan! I'll never say Q to a quaker agin as long as I live!" exclaimed another voice, broken, feeble, and vainly aiming to raise a huzza; and the speaker, seizing Nathan with one hand, while the other grasped tremulously at Captain Forrester's, displayed to the latter's eyes the visage of Tom Bruce the younger, pale, sickly, emaciated, his once gigantic proportions wasted away, and his whole appearance indicating anything but fitness for a field of battle.
"Strannger!" cried the youth, pressing the soldier's hand with what strength he could, and laughing faintly, "we've done the handsome thing by you, me and dad, thar's no denying! But we went your security agin all sorts of danngers in our beat; and thar's just the occasion. But h'yar's dad to speak for himself: as for me, I rather think breath's too short for wasting."
"Hurrah for Kentucky!" roared Colonel Bruce, as he sprang from his horse, and seized the hand of Roland, wringing and twisting it with a fury of friendship and gratulation, which, at another moment, would have caused the soldier to grin with pain. "H'yar we are, captain!" he cried: "picked you out of the yambers! --Swore to follow you and young madam to the end of creation,--beat up for recruits, sung out 'Blue Lick' to the people, roused the General from the Falls,--whole army, a thousand men; double quick step; found Tiger Nathan in the woods--whar's the creatur'? told of your fixin'; beat to arms, flew ahead, licked the enemy,--and ha'n't we extarminated 'em?"
With these hurried, half-incoherent expressions, the gallant Kentuckian explained, or endeavoured to explain, the mystery of his timely and most happy appearance; an explanation, however, of which the soldier, bewildered by the whirl of events, the tumult of his own feelings, and not less by the uproarious congratulations of his friends, of whom the captain of horse-thieves, released from his post of danger, was not the least noisy or affectionate, heard, or understood not a word. To these causes of confusion were to be added the din and tumult of conflict, the screams of the flying Indians, and the shouts of pursuing and opposing white-men, rising from every point of the compass; for from every point they seemed rushing in upon the foe, whom they appeared to have completely environed. Was there no other cause for the distraction of mind which left the young soldier, while thus beset by friendly hands and voices, incapable of giving them his whole attention? His thoughts were upon his kinswoman, of whose fate he was still in ignorance. But before he could ask the question prompted by his anxieties, it was answered by a cheery hurrah from Bruce's youngest son, Richard, who came galloping into the square and up to the place of torture, whirling his cap into the air, in a frenzy of boyish triumph and rapture. At his heels, and mounted upon the steed so lately bestridden by Braxley, the very animal, which, notwithstanding its uncommon swimming virtues, had left its master, Pardon Dodge, at the bottom of Salt River, was--could Roland believe his eyes? --the identical Pardon Dodge himself, looking a hero, he was so begrimed with blood and gunpowder, and whooping and hurrahing, as he came, with as much spirit as if he had been born on the border, and accustomed all his life to fighting Indians. But Roland did not admire long at the unlooked-for resurrection of his old ally of the ruin. In his arms, sustained with an air of infinite pride and exultation, was an apparition that blinded the Virginian's eyes to every other object;--it was Edith Forrester; who, extending her own arms, as the soldier sprang to meet her, leaped to his embrace with such wild cries of delight, such abandonment of spirit to love and happiness, as stirred up many a womanish emotion in the breast of the surrounding Kentuckians.
"There!" cried Dodge, "there, capting! Seed the everlasting Injun feller carrying her off on the hoss; knowed the crittur at first sight; took atter, and brought the feller to: seed it was the young lady, and was jist as glad to find her as to find my hoss,--if I wa'n't, it a'n't no matter."
"Thar, dad!" cried Tom Bruce, grasping his father's arm, and pointing, but with unsteady finger and glistening eye, at the two cousins,--"that, that's a sight worth dying for!" with which words he fell suddenly to the earth.
"Dying, you brute!" cried the father in surprise and concern: "you ar'n't had a hit, Tom?"
"Not an iota," replied the youth, faintly, "except them etarnal slugs I fetched from old Salt; but, I reckon, they've done for me: I felt 'em a dropping, a dropping inside, all night. And so, father, if you'll jist say I've done as much as my duty, I'll not make no fuss about going."
"Going, you brute!" iterated the father, clasping the hand of his son, while the others, startled by the young man's sudden fall, gathered around, to offer help, or to gaze with alarm on his fast changing countenance; "why, Tom, my boy, you don't mean to make a die of it?"
"If--if you think I've done my duty to the strannger and the young lady," said the young man; and added, feebly pressing the father's hand,--"and to _you_, dad, to you, and mother, and the rest of 'em."
"You have, Tom," said the colonel, with somewhat a husky voice--"to the travelling strannger, to mother, father, and all--" "And to Kentucky?" murmured the dying youth, "To Kentucky," replied the father.
"Well, then, it's no great matter--You'll jist put Dick in my place: he's the true grit; thar'll be no mistake in Dick, for all he's only a young blubbering boy; and then it'll be jist all right, as before. And it's my notion, father--" "Well, Tom, what is it?" demanded Bruce, as the young man paused as if from mingled exhaustion and hesitation.
"I don't mean no offence, father," said he,--"but it's my notion, if you'll never let a poor traveller go into the woods without some dependable body to take care of him--" "You're right, Tom; and I an't mad at you for saying so; and I won't."
"And don't let the boys abuse Nathan,--for, I reckon he'll fight, if you let him take it in his own way. And,--and, father, don't mind Captain Ralph's stealing a hoss or two out of our pound!"
"He may steal the lot of 'em, the villain!" said Bruce, shaking his head to dislodge the tears that were starting in his eyes; "and he shall be none the wuss of it."
"Well, father,--" the young man spoke with greater animation, and with apparently reviving strength,--"and you think we have pretty considerably licked the Injuns h'yar, jist now?"
"We have, Tom,--thar's no doubting it. And we'll lick 'em over and over again, till they've had enough of it."
"Hurrah for Kentucky!" cried the young man, exerting his remaining strength to give energy to the cry, so often uplifted, in succeeding years, among the wild woodlands around. It was the last effort of his sinking powers. He fell back, pressed his father's and his brother's hands, and almost immediately expired,--a victim not so much of his wounds, which were not in themselves necessarily fatal, nor perhaps even dangerous, had they been attended to, as of the heroic efforts, so overpowering and destructive in his disabled condition, which he had made to repair his father's fault; for such he evidently esteemed the dismissing the travellers from the Station without sufficient guides and protection.
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{
"id": "13970"
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Thus fell the young Kentuckian,--a youth endeared to all who knew him, by his courage and good humour; and whose fall would, at a moment of less confusion, have created a deep and melancholy sensation. But he fell amid the roar and tempest of battle, when there was occasion for other thoughts and other feelings than those of mere individual grief.
The Indians had been driven from their village, as described, aiming not to fight, but fly; but being intercepted at all points by the assailants, and met, here by furious volleys poured from the bushy sides of the hill, there by charges of horsemen galloping through the meadows and cornfields, they were again driven back into the town, where, in sheer desperation, they turned upon their foes to sell their lives as dearly as they might. They were met at the edge of the village by the party of horse and footmen that had first dislodged them, with whom, being driven pell-mell among them by the shock of the intercepting bands, they waged a fierce and bloody, but brief conflict; and still urged onwards by the assailants behind, fought their way back to the square, which, deserted almost entirely at the period of young Bruce's fall, was now suddenly seen, as he drew his last gasp, scattered over with groups of men flying for their lives, or struggling together in mortal combat; while the screams of terror-struck women and children gave a double horror to the din.
The return of the battle to their own immediate vicinity produced its effects upon the few who had remained by the dying youth. It fired, in especial, the blood of Captain Ralph, who, snatching up a fallen axe, rushed towards the nearest combatants, roaring, by way of consolation, or sympathy, to the bereaved father, "Don't take it hard, Cunnel,--I'll have a scalp for Tom's sake in no time!" As for Tiger Nathan, he had disappeared long before, with most of the horsemen, who had galloped up to the stake with the younger Bruce and his father, being evidently too fiercely excited to remain idle any longer. The father and brother of the deceased, the two cousins and Pardon Dodge, who lingered by the latter, still on his horse, as if old companionship with the soldier and the service just rendered the maid had attached him to all their interests, were all that remained on the spot. But all were driven from a contemplation of the dead, as the surge of battle again tossed its bloody spray into the square.
"Thar's no time for weeping," muttered Bruce, softly laying the body of the youth (for Tom had expired in his arms) upon the earth: "he died like a man, and thar's the end of it,--Up, Dick, and stand by the lady--Thar's more work for us."
"Everlasting bad work, Cunnel!" cried Dodge; "they're a killing the squaws! hark, dunt you hear 'em squeaking? Now, Cunnel, I can kill your tarnal _man_ fellers, for they've riz my ebenezer, and I've kinder got my hand in; but, I rather calkilate, I han't no disposition to kill wimming!"
"Close round the lady!" shouted Bruce, as a sudden movement in the mass of combatants, and the parting from it of a dozen or more wild Indian figures, flying in their confusion, for they were pursued by thrice their number of white men, right towards the little party at the stake, threatened the latter with unexpected danger.
"I'm the feller for 'em, now that my hand's in!" cried Pardon Dodge; and taking aim with his rifle,--the only one in the group that was charged, at the foremost of the Indians, he shot him dead on the spot,--a feat that instantly removed all danger from the party; for the savages, yelling at the fall of their leader and the discovery of antagonists thus drawn up in front, darted off to the right hand at the wildest speed, as wildly pursued by the greater number of Kentuckians.
And now it was, that, as the wretched and defeated barbarians, scattering at Dodge's fire, fled from the spot, the party at the stake beheld a sight well fitted to turn the alarm they had for a moment felt on their own account, into horror and pity. The savage shot down by Dodge was instantly scalped by one of the pursuers, of whom five or six others rushed upon another man--for a second of the fugitives had fallen at the same moment, but only wounded,--attacking him furiously with knives and hatchets, while the poor wretch was seen with raised arms vainly beseeching for quarter. As if this spectacle was not in itself sufficiently pitiable, there was seen a girlish figure at the man's side, struggling with the assailants, as if to throw herself between them and their prey, and uttering the most heart-piercing shrieks.
"It is Telie Doe!" shouted Forrester, leaping from his kinswoman's side, and rushing with the speed of light to her assistance. --He was followed, at almost as fleet a step, by Colonel Bruce, who recognised the voice at the same instant, and knew by the ferocious cries of the men,--"Kill the cursed tory! kill the renegade villain!" that it was the girl's apostate father, Abel Doe, who was dying under their vengeful weapons.
"Hold, friends, hold!" cried Roland, as he sprang amid the infuriated Kentuckians. His interposition was for a moment successful: surprise arrested the impending weapons; and Doe, taking advantage of the pause, leaped to his feet, ran a few yards, and then fell again to the ground.
"No quarter for turn-coats and traitors! no mercy for white Injuns!" cried the angry men, running again at their prey. But Roland was before them; and as he bestrode the wounded man, the gigantic Bruce rushed up, and, catching the frenzied daughter in his arms, exclaimed, with tones of thunder, "Off, you perditioned brutes! would you kill the man before the eyes of his own natteral-born daughter? Kill Injuns, you brutes,--thar's the meat for you!"
"Hurrah for Cunnel Tom Bruce!" shouted the men in reply; and satisfying their rage with direful execrations, invoked upon "all white Injuns and Injun white men," they rushed away in pursuit of more legitimate objects of hostility, if such were still to be found,--a thing not so certain, for few Indian whoops were now mingled with the white man's cry of victory.
In the meanwhile, Roland had endeavoured to raise the bleeding and mangled renegade to his feet; but in vain, though assisted by the efforts of the unhappy wretch himself; who, raising his hands, as if still to avert the blows of an unrelenting enemy, ejaculated wildly,--"It a'n't nothing,--its only for the gal. Don't murder a father before his own child!"
"You are safe,--fear nothing," said Roland, and at the same moment, poor Telie herself rushed into the dying man's arms, crying, with tones that went to the Virginian's heart,--"They're gone, father, they're gone! Now get up, father, and they won't hurt you no more; the good captain has saved you, father; they won't hurt you, they won't hurt you no more!"
"Is it the Captain?" cried Doe, struggling again to rise, while Bruce drew the girl gently from his arms. "Is it the captain?" he repeated, bending his eager looks and countenance ghastly with wounds upon the Virginian. "They han't murdered you then? I'm glad on it, captain;--I'll die the easier, captain! And the gal, too?" he exclaimed, as his eyes fell upon Edith, who, scarce knowing in her horror what she did, but instinctively seeking the protection of her kinsman, had crept up to the group now around the dying wretch. "It's all right, captain! --But where's Dick? where's Dick Braxley? You han't killed him among you?"
"Think not of the villain," said Roland; "I know naught of him."
"I'm a dying man, captain," exclaimed Doe; "I know'd this would be the end of it. If Dick's a prisoner, jist bring him up and let me speak with him. It will be for your good, captain."
"I know nothing of the scoundrel. Think of yourself," said the Virginian.
"Why, there, don't I see his red han'kercher," cried Doe, pointing to Dodge, who, from his horse, which he had not yet deserted, perhaps, from fear of again losing him, sat looking with soldier-like composure on the expiring renegade, until made conscious that the shawl which he had tied round his waist somewhat in manner of an officer's sash, had become an object of interest to Doe and all others present.
"I took it from the Injun feller," said he, with great self-complacency, "the everlasting big rascal that was a carrying off madam on my own hoss, and madam was jist as dead as a piece of rock. I know'd the crittur, and sung out to the feller to stop, and he wouldn't; and so I jist blazed away at him, right bang at his back,--knocked him over jist like a streak o' lightning, and had the scalp off his 'tarnal ugly head afore you could say John Robinson,--and all the while madam was jist as dead as a piece of rock. Here's the top-knot, and an ugly dirty top-knot it is!" With which words, the valiant Dodge displayed his trophy, a scalp of black hair, yet reeking with blood.
A shiver passed through Edith's frame, she grasped her cousin's arm to avoid falling, and with a countenance as white and ghastly as countenance could be, exclaimed,-- "It was Braxley! --It was he carried me off;--but I knew nothing. It was he! Yes, it was _he_!"
"It war'n't a white man?" cried Dodge, dropping his prize in dismay; while even Roland staggered with horror at the thought of a fate so sudden and dreadful overtaking his rival and enemy.
"Ha, ha!" cried the renegade, with a hideous attempt at laughter; "I told Dick the devil would have us; but I had no idea Dick would be the first afore him! Shot,--scalped,--sarved like a mere dog of an Injun! Well, the game's up at last, and we've both made our fortun's! Captain, I've been a rascal all my life, and I die no better. You wouldn't take my offer, captain;--it's no matter." He fumbled in his breast, and presently drew to light the will, with which he so vainly strove the preceding night to effect his object with Roland; it was stained deeply with his blood. "Take it, captain," he cried, "take it; I give it to you without axing tarms; I leave it to yourself, captain. But you'll remember her, captain? The gal, captain! the gal! I leave it to yourself--" "She shall never want friend or protector," said Roland.
"Captain," murmured the renegade, with his last breath, and grasping the soldier's hand with his last convulsive effort--"you're an honest feller; I'll--yes, captain, I'll trust you!"
These were the renegade's last words; and before Bruce, who muttered, half in reproach, half in kindness, "The gal never wanted friend or protector, till she fled from me, who was as a father to her," could draw the sobbing daughter away, the wretched instrument of a still more wretched principal in villany, had followed his employer to his last account.
In the meanwhile, the struggle was over, the battle was fought and won. The army, for such it was, being commanded in person by the hero of Kaskaskias,[14] the great protector, and almost founder of the West,--summoned in haste to avenge the slaughter at the Blue Licks,--a lamentable disaster, to which we have several times alluded, although it was foreign to our purpose to venture more than an allusion,--and conducted with unexampled speed against the Indian towns on the Miami, had struck a blow which was destined long to be remembered by the Indians, thus for the first time assailed in their own territory. Consisting of volunteers well acquainted with the woods, all well mounted and otherwise equipped, all familiar with battle, and all burning for revenge, it had reached within but ten or twelve miles of Wenonga's town, and within still fewer of a smaller village, which it was the object of the troops first to attack, at sunset of the previous day, and encamped in the woods to allow man and horse, both well nigh exhausted, a few hours' refreshment, previous to marching upon the neighbouring village; when Nathan, flying with the scalp and arms of Wenonga in his hand, and looking more like an infuriated madman than the inoffensive man of peace he had been so long esteemed, suddenly appeared amidst the vanguard, commanded by the gallant Bruce, whom he instantly apprised of the condition of the captives at Wenonga's town, and urged to attempt their deliverance.
[Footnote 14: General George Rogers Clark.]
This was done, and with an effect which has been already seen. The impetuosity of Bruce's men, doubly inflamed by the example of the father and his eldest son, to whom the rescue of their late guests was an object of scarce inferior magnitude even compared with the vengeance for which they burned in common with all others, had in some measure defeated the hopes of the General, who sought, by a proper disposition of his forces, completely to invest the Indian village, so as to ensure the destruction or capture of every inhabitant. As it was, however, very few escaped; many were killed, and more, including all the women and children (who, honest Dodge's misgivings to the contrary notwithstanding, were in no instance designedly injured), taken prisoners. And this, too, at an expense of but very few lives lost on the part of the victors; the Indians attempting resistance only when the fall of more than half their numbers, and the presence of foes on every side, convinced them that flight was wholly impracticable.
The victory was, indeed, so complete, and--as it appeared that several bands of warriors from more distant villages were in the town at the time of the attack--the blow inflicted upon the tribe so much severer than was anticipated even from a series of attacks upon several different towns, as was at first designed, that the victors, satisfied that they had done enough to convince the red-man of the irresistible superiority of the Long-knife, satisfied, too, perhaps, that the cheapness of the victory rendered it more valuable than a greater triumph achieved at a greater loss, gave up at once their original design of carrying the war into other villages, and resolved to retrace their march to the Settlements.
But the triumph was not completed until the village, with its fields of standing corn, had been entirely destroyed--a work of cruel vengeance, yet not so much of vengeance as of policy; since the destruction of their crops, by driving the savages to seek a winter's subsistence for their families in the forest, necessarily prevented their making warlike inroads upon their white neighbours during that season. The maize-stalks, accordingly, soon fell before the knives and hatchets of the Kentuckians; while the wigwams were given to the flames. When the last of the rude habitations had fallen, crashing, to the earth, the victors began their retreat towards the frontier; so that within a very few hours after they first appeared, as if bursting from the earth, amid the amazed barbarians, nothing remained upon the place of conflict and site of a populous village, save scattered ruins and mangled corses.
Their own dead the invaders bore to a distance, and interred in the deepest dens of the forest; and then, with their prisoners, carried with them as the surest means of inducing the tribe to beg for peace, in order to effect their deliverance, they resumed the path, which, in good time, led them again to the Settlements.
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With the battle at the Black-Vulture's town, the interest of our history ceases; and there it may be said to have its end. The deliverance of the cousins, the one from captivity and death, the other from a fate to her more dreadful than death; the restoration of the will of their uncle; and the fall of the daring and unprincipled villain to whose machinations they owed all their calamities, had changed the current of their fortunes, which was now to flow in a channel where the eye could no longer trace obstructions. The last peal of thunder had dissipated the clouds of adversity, and the star of their destiny shone out with all its original lustre. The future was no longer one of mere hope; it presented all the certainty of happiness of which human existence is capable.
Such being the case, it would be a superfluous and unprofitable task to pursue our history further, were it not that other individuals, whose interests were so long intermingled with those of the cousins, have a claim upon our notice. And first, before speaking of the most important of all, the warlike man of peace, the man-slaying hater of blood, the redoubtable Nathan Slaughter, let us bestow a word upon honest Pardon Dodge, whose sudden re-appearance on the stage of life so greatly astonished the young Virginian.
This resuscitation, however, as explained by Dodge himself, was, after all, no such wonderful matter. Swept from his horse by the violence of the flood, in the memorable flight from the ruin, a happy accident had flung him upon the raft of timber that bordered the fatal _chute_; where, not doubting that, from the fury of the current, all his companions had perished, and that he was left to contend alone against the savages, he immediately sought a concealment among the logs, in which he remained during the remainder of the night and the greater part of the following day, until pretty well assured the Indians were no longer in his vicinity. Then, scaling the cliffy banks of the river, and creeping through the woods, it was his good fortune at last to stumble upon the clearings around Brace's Station, at which he arrived soon after the defeated Regulators had effected their return. Here--having now lost his horse, arms, everything but life; having battled away also in the midnight siege some of those terrors that made Indians and border life so hateful to his imagination, and being perhaps seduced by the hope of repairing his losses, and revenging the injuries he had suffered--he was easily persuaded to follow Colonel Bruce and the army of Kentuckians to the Indian territory, where Fate, through his arm, struck a blow so dreadfully yet retributively just at the head of the long-prospering villain, the unprincipled and unremorseful Braxley.
It was mentioned, that when Nathan first burst upon the astonished Bruce, where he lay with his vanguard encamped in the woods, his appearance and demeanour were rather those of a truculent madman than of the simple-minded, inoffensive creature he had so long appeared to the eyes of all who knew him. His Indian garments and decorations contributed somewhat to this effect; but the man, it was soon seen, was more changed in spirit, than in outward attire. The bundle of scalps in his hand, the single one, yet reeking with blood, at his belt, and the axe of Wenonga, gory to the helve, and grasped with a hand not less blood-stained, were not more remarkable evidences of transformation than were manifested in his countenance, deportment, and expressions. His eye beamed with a wild excitement, with exultation, mingled with fury; his step was fierce, active, firm, and elastic, like that of a warrior leaping through the measures of the war-dance; and when he spoke, his words were of battle and bloodshed. He flourished the axe of Wenonga, pointed grimly toward the village, and while recounting the number of warriors who lay therein waiting to be knocked on the head, he seemed, judging his thoughts from his gestures, to be employed in imagination in despatching them with his own hands.
When the march, after a hasty consultation, was agreed upon and resumed, he, although on foot, maintained a position at the head of the army, guiding it along with a readiness and precision which argued extraordinary familiarity with all the approaches to the village; and when the assault was actually commenced, he was still among the foremost, as the reader has seen, to enter the village and the square. To cut the bonds of the Virginian, and utter a fervent expression of delight at his rescue, was not enough to end the ferment in Nathan's mind. Leaving the Virginian immediately to the protection of the younger Bruce, he rushed after the flying Indians, among whom he remained fighting wherever the conflict was hottest, until there remained no more enemies to encounter, achieving such exploits as filled all who beheld him with admiration and amazement.
Nor did the fervour of his fury end altogether even with the battle. He was among the most zealous in destroying the Indian village, applying the fire with his own hands to at least a dozen different wigwams, shouting with the most savage exultation, as each burst into flames.
It was not indeed until the work of destruction was completed, the retreat commenced, and the army once more buried in the woods, that the demon which had thus taken possession of his spirit, seemed inclined to relax its hold, and restore him once more to his wits. It was then, however, that the remarks which all had now leisure to make on his extraordinary transformation, the mingled jests and commendations of which he found himself the theme, began to make an impression on his mind, and gradually wake him as from a dream that had long mastered and distracted his faculties. The fire of military enthusiasm flashed no more from his eyes, his step lost its bold spring and confidence, he eyed those who so liberally heaped praise on his lately acquired courage and heroic actions, with uneasiness, embarrassment, and dismay; and cast his troubled eyes around, as if in search of some friend capable of giving counsel and comfort in such case made and provided. His looks fell upon little Peter, who had kept ever at his side from the moment of his escape from the village, and now trotted along with the deferential humility which became him, while surrounded by so gallant and numerous an assemblage; but even little Peter could not relieve him from the weight of eulogy heaped on his head, nor from the prickings of the conscience which every word of praise and every encomiastic huzza seemed stirring up in his breast.
In this exigency, he caught sight of the Virginian,--mounted once more upon his own trusty Briareus, which the younger Bruce had brought with him to the field of battle,--and remembered on the sudden that he had not yet acquainted the former with the important discovery of the will, which he had so unexpectedly made in the village. The young soldier was riding side by side with his cousin, for whom a palfrey had been easily provided from the Indian pound, and indulging with her many a joyous feeling which their deliverance was so well suited to inspire; but his eye gleamed with double satisfaction as he marked the approach of his trusty associate and deliverer.
"We owe you life, fortune, everything," he cried, extending his hand; "and be assured neither Edith nor myself will forget it. But how is this, Nathan?" he added, with a smile, as he perceived the bundle of scalps, which Nathan, in the confusion or absence of his mind, yet dangled in his hands,--"you were not used so freely to display the proofs of your prowess!"
"Friend," said Nathan, giving one look, ghastly with sorrow and perturbation, to the shaking ringlets, another to the youth, "thee looks upon locks that was once on the heads of my children!" He thrust the bundle into his bosom, and pointed with a look of inexpressible triumph to that of Wenonga, hanging to his belt. "And here," he muttered, "is the scalp of him that slew them! It is enough, friend: thee has had my story,--thee will not censure me. But, friend," he added, hastily, as if anxious to revert to another subject; "I have a thing to say to thee, which it concerns thee and the fair maid, thee cousin, to know. There was a will, friend,--a true and lawful last will and testament of thee deceased uncle, in which theeself and thee cousin was made the sole heirs of the same. Truly, friend, I did take it from the breast of the villain that plotted thee ruin; but, truly, it was taken from me again, I know not how."
"I have it safe," said Roland, displaying it for a moment, with great satisfaction, to Nathan's eyes. "It makes me master of wealth, which you, Nathan, shall be the first to share. You must leave this wild life of the border, go with me to Virginia,--" "I, friend!" exclaimed Nathan, with a melancholy shake of the head; "thee would not have me back in the Settlements, to scandalise them that is of my faith! No, friend; my lot is cast in the woods, and thee must not ask me again to leave them. And, friend, thee must not think I have served thee for the lucre of money or gain: for, truly, these things is now to me as nothing. The meat that feeds me, the skins that cover, the leaves that make my bed, are all in the forest around me, to be mine when I want them; and what more can I desire? Yet, friend if thee thinks theeself obliged by whatever I have done for thee, I would ask of thee one favour, that thee can grant."
"A hundred!" said the Virginian, warmly.
"Nay, friend," muttered Nathan, with both a warning and beseeching look, "all that I ask is, that thee shall say nothing of me that should scandalise and disparage the faith to which I was born."
"I understand you," said Roland, "and will remember your wish."
"And now, friend," continued Nathan, "do thee take theeself to the haunts of thee fellows, the habitations of them that is honest and peaceful,--thee, and the good maiden, thee cousin; for, truly, it is not well, neither for thee nor for her,--and especially for her, that is feeble and fearful,--to dwell nigh to where murdering Injuns abound."
"Yet go with us, good Nathan," said Edith, adding her voice to the entreaties of her kinsman: "there shall be none to abuse or find fault with you."
"Thee is a good maid," said Nathan, surveying her with, an interest that became mournful as he spoke. "When thee goes back to thee father's house, thee will find them that will gladden at thee coming; and hearts will yearn with joy over thee young and lovely looks. Thee will smile upon them, and they will be happy. Such," he added, with deep emotion, "such might have been _my_ fate, had the Injun axe spared me but a single child. But it is not so; there is none left to look upon me with smiles and rejoicing,--none to welcome me from the field and the forest with the voice of love--no, truly, truly,--there is not one,--not one." And as he spoke, his voice faltered, his lip quivered, and his whole countenance betrayed the workings of a bereaved and mourning spirit.
"Think not of this," said Roland, deeply affected, as his cousin also was, by this unexpected display of feeling in the rude wanderer: "the gratitude of those you have so well served, shall be to you in place of a child's affection. We will never forget our obligations. Come with us, Nathan,--come with us."
But Nathan, ashamed of the weakness which he could not resist, had turned away to conceal his emotion; and, stalking silently off, with the ever-faithful Peter at his heels, was soon hidden from their eyes.
The Virginian never saw his wild comrade again. Neither Nathan's habits nor inclinations carried him often into the society of his fellow-men, where reproaches and abuse were sure to meet him. Insult and contumely were, indeed, no longer to be dreaded by the unresisting wanderer, after the extraordinary proofs of courage which he had that day given. But, apparently, he now found as little to relish in encomiums passed on his valour as in the invectives to which he had been formerly exposed. He stole away, therefore, into the woods, abandoning the army altogether, and was no more seen during the march.
But Roland did not doubt be should behold him again at Bruce's Station, where he soon found himself, with his kinswoman, in safety; and where,--now happily able to return to the land of his birth and the home of his ancestors,--he remained during a space of two or three weeks, waiting the arrival of a strong band of Virginia rangers, who (their term of military service on the frontier having expired) were on the eve of returning to Virginia, and with whom he designed seeking protection for his own little party. During all this period he impatiently awaited the re-appearance of Nathan, but in vain; and as he was informed, and indeed, from Nathan's own admissions, knew, that the latter had no fixed place of abode, he saw that it was equally vain to attempt hunting him up in the forest. In short, he was compelled to depart on his homeward journey,--a journey happily accomplished in safety,--without again seeing him; but not until he had left with the commander of the Station a goodly store of such articles of comfort and necessity as he thought would prove acceptable to his solitary friend.
Nor did he take leave without making others of his late associates acquainted with his bounty. The pledge he had given the dying renegade he offered to redeem to the daughter, by bearing her with him to Virginia, and providing her a secure home, under the protection of his cousin; but Telie preferring rather to remain in the family of Colonel Bruce, who seemed to entertain for her a truly parental affection, he took such steps as speedily converted the poor dependent orphan into a person of almost wealth and consequence. His bounty-grants and land-warrants he left in the hands of Bruce, with instructions to locate them to the best advantage in favour of the girl, to whom he assigned them with the proper legal formalities; a few hundred acres, however, being conveyed to Captain Ralph and the worthy Dodge,--of whom the latter had given over all thought of returning to the Bay-State, having, as he said, "got his hand in to killing Injuns, and not caring a fourpence-ha'penny for the whole everlasting set of them."
Thus settling up his accounts of gratitude, he joyously, and with Edith still more joyous at his side, turned his face towards the East and Virginia,--towards Fell-hallow and home: to enjoy a fortune of happiness to which the memory of the few weeks of anguish and gloom passed in the desert only served to impart additional zest.
Nor did he, even in the tranquil life of enjoyment which he was now enabled to lead, lose his interest in the individuals who had shared his perils and sufferings. His inquiries, made wherever, and whenever, intelligence could be obtained, were continued for many years, until, in fact, the District and Wilderness of Kentucky existed no more, but were both merged in a State, too great and powerful to be longer exposed to the inroads of savages. The information which he was able to glean in relation to the several parties, was, however, uncertain and defective, the means of intelligence being, at that early period, far from satisfactory: but such as it was, we lay it before the reader.
The worthy Colonel Bruce continued to live and flourish with his Station, which soon grew into a town of considerable note. The colonel himself, when last heard from, was no longer a colonel, his good stars, his military services, and perhaps the fervent prayers of his wife, having transformed him, one happy day, into a gallant Brigadier. His son Dick trode in the footsteps, and grew into the likeness of his brother Tom, being as brave and good-humoured, and far more fortunate; and Roland heard, a few years after his own departure from Kentucky, with much satisfaction, that the youth was busily occupied, during such intervals of peace as the Indians allowed, in clearing and cultivating the lands bestowed on Telie Doe, whom he had, though scarce yet out of his teens, taken to wife.
No very certain information was ever obtained in regard to the fate of Pardon Dodge; but there was every reason to suppose he remained in Kentucky, fighting Indians to the last, having got so accustomed to that species of pastime as to feel easy while practising it. We are the more inclined to think that such was the case, as the name is not yet extinct on the frontier; and one individual bearing it, has very recently, in one of the fiercest, though briefest of Indian wars, covered it with immortal lustre.
Of Ralph Stackpole, the invader of Indian horse-pounds, it was Captain Forrester's fortune to obtain more minute, though, we are sorry to say, scarce more satisfactory intelligence. The luck, good and bad together, which had distinguished Roaring Ralph, in all his relations with Roland, never, it seems, entirely deserted him. His improvident, harum-scarum habits had very soon deprived him of all the advantages that might have resulted from the soldier's munificent gift, and left him a landless good-for-nothing, yet contented vagabond as before. With poverty returned sundry peculiar propensities which he had manifested in former days; so that Ralph again lost savour in the nostrils of his acquaintance; and the last time that Forrester heard of him, he had got into a difficulty in some respects similar to that in the woods of Salt River from which Roland, at Edith's intercession, had saved him. In a word, he was one day arraigned before a county-court in Kentucky, on a charge of horse-stealing, and matters went hard against him, his many offences in that line having steeled the hearts of all against him, and the proofs of guilt, in this particular instance, being both strong and manifold. Many an angry and unpitying eye was bent upon the unfortunate fellow, when his counsel rose to attempt a defence;--which he did in the following terms: "Gentlemen of the Jury," said the man of law,--"here is a man, Captain Ralph Stackpole, indicted before you on the charge of stealing a horse; and the affa'r is pretty considerably proved on him." --Here there was a murmur heard throughout the court, evincing much approbation of the counsel's frankness. "Gentlemen of the Jury," continued the orator, elevating his voice, "what I have to say in reply, is, first, that that man thar', Captain Ralph Stackpole, did, in the year seventeen seventy-nine, when this good State of Kentucky, and particularly those parts adjacent to Bear's Grass, and the mouth thereof, where now stands the town of Louisville, were overrun with yelping Injun-savages,--did, I say, gentlemen, meet two Injun-savages in the woods on Bear's Grass, and take their scalps, single-handed--a feat, gentlemen of the jury, that a'n't to be performed every day, even in Kentucky!" Here there was considerable tumult in the court, and several persons began to swear. "Secondly, gentlemen of the jury," exclaimed the attorney-at-law, with a still louder voice, "what I have to say, _secondly_, gentlemen of the jury, is, that this same identical prisoner at the bar, Captain Ralph Stackpole, did, on another occasion, in the year seventeen eighty-two, meet another Injun-savage in the woods--a savage armed with rifle, knife, and tomahawk--and met him with--you suppose, gentlemen, with gun, axe, and scalper, in like manner! --No, gentlemen of the jury! --with his _fists_, and" (with a voice of thunder) "licked him to death in the natural way! --Gentlemen of the jury, pass upon the prisoner--guilty or not guilty?" The attorney resumed his seat: his arguments were irresistible. The jurors started up in their box, and roared out, to a man, "_Not guilty! _" From that moment, it may be supposed, Roaring Ralph could steal horses at his pleasure. Nevertheless, it seems, he immediately lost his appetite for horse-flesh; and leaving the land altogether, he betook himself to a more congenial element, launched his broad-horn on the narrow bosom of the Salt, and was soon afterwards transformed into a Mississippi alligator; in which amphibious condition, we presume, he roared on to the day of his death.
As for the valiant Nathan Slaughter--the last of the list of worthies, after whom the young Virginian so often inquired--less was discovered in relation to his fate than that of the others. A month, or more, perhaps, after Roland's departure, he re-appeared at Bruce's Station, where he was twice or thrice again seen. But, whether it was that, as we have once before hinted, he found the cheers and hearty hurrahs, in token of respect for his valiant deeds at Wenonga's town, with which Bruce's people received him, more embarrassing and offensive than the flings and sarcasms with which they used in former days to greet his appearance, or whether he had some still more stirring reason for deserting the neighbourhood, it is certain that he, in a short time, left the vicinity of Salt River altogether, going no man knew whither. He went, and with him his still inseparable friend, little dog Peter.
From that moment the Jibbenainosay ceased to frequent his accustomed haunts in the forest; the phantom Nick of the Woods was never more beheld stalking through the gloom; nor was his fearful cross ever again seen traced on the breast of a slaughtered Indian.
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It was in the month of October, 18--, that the Pacific, a large ship, was running before a heavy gale of wind in the middle of the vast Atlantic Ocean. She had but little sail, for the wind was so strong, that the canvas would have been split into pieces by the furious blasts before which she was driven through the waves, which were very high, and following her almost as fast as she darted through their boiling waters; sometimes heaving up her stern and sinking her bows down so deep into the hollow of the sea, that it appeared as if she would have dived down underneath the waves; but she was a fine vessel, and the captain was a good seaman, who did what he considered best for the safety of his vessel, and then put his trust in that Providence who is ever watchful over us.
The captain stood before the wheel, watching the men who were steering the ship; for when you are running before a heavy gale, it requires great attention to the helm: and as he looked around him and up at the heavens, he sang in a low voice the words of a sea song: "One wide water all around us, All above us one black sky."
And so it was with them;--they were in the middle of the Atlantic, not another vessel to be seen, and the heavens were covered with black clouds, which were borne along furiously by the gale; the sea ran mountains high, and broke into large white foaming crests, while the fierce wind howled through the rigging of the vessel.
Besides the captain of the ship and the two men at the wheel, there were two other personages on deck: one was a young lad about twelve years old, and the other a weather-beaten old seaman, whose grisly locks were streaming in the wind, as he paced aft and looked over the taffrail of the vessel.
The young lad, observing a heavy sea coming up to the stern of the vessel, caught hold of the old man's arm, crying out - "Won't that great wave come into us, Ready?"
"No, Master William, it will not: don't you see how the ship lifts her quarters to it? --and now it has passed underneath us. But it might happen, and then what would become of you, if I did not hold on, and hold you on also? You would be washed overboard."
"I don't like the sea much, Ready; I wish we were safe on shore again," replied the lad. "Don't the waves look as if they wished to beat the ship all to pieces?"
"Yes, they do; and they roar as if angry because they cannot bury the vessel beneath them: but I am used to them, and with a good ship like this, and a good captain and crew, I don't care for them."
"But sometimes ships do sink, and then everybody is drowned."
"Yes; and very often the very ships sink which those on board think are most safe. We can only do our best, and after that we must submit to the will of Heaven."
"What little birds are those flying about so close to the water?"
"Those are Mother Carey's chickens. You seldom see them except in a storm, or when a storm is coming on."
The birds which William referred to were the stormy petrels.
"Were you ever shipwrecked on a desolate island like Robinson Crusoe?"
"Yes, Master William, I have been shipwrecked; but I never heard of Robinson Crusoe. So many have been wrecked and undergone great hardships, and so many more have never lived to tell what they have suffered, that it's not very likely that I should have known that one man you speak of, out of so many."
"Oh! but it's all in a book which I have read. I could tell you all about it--and so I will when the ship is quiet again; but now I wish you would help me down below, for I promised mamma not to stay up long."
"Then always keep your promise like a good lad," replied the old man; "now give me your hand, and I'll answer for it that we will fetch the hatchway without a tumble; and when the weather is fine again, I'll tell you how I was wrecked, and you shall tell me all about Robinson Crusoe."
Having seen William safe to the cabin door, the old seaman returned to the deck, for it was his watch.
Masterman Ready, for such was his name, had been more than fifty years at sea, having been bound apprentice to a collier which sailed from South Shields, when he was only ten years old. His face was browned from long exposure, and there were deep furrows on his cheeks, but he was still a hale and active man. He had served many years on board of a man-of-war, and had been in every climate: he had many strange stories to tell, and he might be believed even when his stories were strange, for he would not tell an untruth. He could navigate a vessel, and, of course, he could read and write. The name of Ready was very well suited to him, for he was seldom at a loss; and in cases of difficulty and danger, the captain would not hesitate to ask his opinion, and frequently take his advice. He was second mate of the vessel.
The Pacific was, as we have observed, a very fine ship, and well able to contend with the most violent storm. She was of more than four hundred tons burthen, and was then making a passage out to New South Wales, with a valuable cargo of English hardware, cutlery, and other manufactures. The captain was a good navigator and seaman, and moreover a good man, of a cheerful, happy disposition, always making the best of everything, and when accidents did happen, always more inclined to laugh than to look grave. His name was Osborn. The first mate, whose name was Mackintosh, was a Scotsman, rough and ill-tempered, but paying strict attention to his duty - a man that Captain Osborn could trust, but whom he did not like.
Ready we have already spoken of, and it will not be necessary to say anything about the seamen on board, except that there were thirteen of them, hardly a sufficient number to man so large a vessel; but just as they were about to sail, five of the seamen, who did not like the treatment they had received from Mackintosh, the first mate, had left the ship, and Captain Osborn did not choose to wait until he could obtain others in their stead. This proved unfortunate, as the events which we shall hereafter relate will show.
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Master William, whom we have introduced to the reader, was the eldest boy of a family who were passengers on board, consisting of the father, mother, and four children: his father was a Mr. Seagrave, a very well-informed, clever man, who having for many years held an office under government at Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, was now returning from a leave of absence of three years. He had purchased from the government several thousand acres of land; it had since risen very much in value, and the sheep and cattle which he had put on it were proving a source of great profit. His property had been well managed by the person who had charge of it during his absence in England, and he was now taking out with him a variety of articles of every description for its improvement, and for his own use, such as furniture for his house, implements of agriculture, seeds, plants, cattle, and many other things too numerous to mention.
Mrs. Seagrave was an amiable woman, but not in very strong health. The family consisted of William, who was the eldest, a clever, steady boy, but, at the same time, full of mirth and humour; Thomas, who was six years old, a very thoughtless but good-tempered boy, full of mischief, and always in a scrape; Caroline, a little girl of seven years; and Albert, a fine strong little fellow, who was not one year old: he was under the charge of a black girl, who had come from the Cape of Good Hope to Sydney, and had followed Mrs. Seagrave to England. We have now mentioned all the people on board of the Pacific: perhaps we ought not to forget two shepherd's dogs, belonging to Mr. Seagrave, and a little terrier, which was a great favourite of Captain Osborn, to whom she belonged.
It was not until the fourth day from its commencement that the gale abated, and then it gradually subsided until it was nearly a calm. The men who had been watching night after night during the gale now brought all their clothes which had been drenched by the rain and spray, and hung them up in the rigging to dry: the sails, also, which had been furled, and had been saturated by the wet, were now loosened and spread out that they might not be mildewed. The wind blew mild and soft, the sea had gone down, and the ship was running through the water at the speed of about four miles an hour. Mrs. Seagrave, wrapped up in a cloak, was seated upon one of the arm-chests near the stern of the ship, her husband and children were all with her enjoying the fine weather, when Captain Osborn, who had been taking an observation of the sun with his sextant, came up to them.
"Well, Master Tommy, you are very glad that the gale is over?"
"I didn't care," replied Tommy, "only I spilt all my soup. But Juno tumbled off her chair, and rolled away with the baby, till papa picked them both up."
"It was a mercy that poor Albert was not killed," observed Mrs. Seagrave.
"And so he might have been, if Juno had not thought only of him and nothing at all about herself," replied Mr. Seagrave.
"That's very true, sir," replied Captain Osborn. "She saved the child, and, I fear, hurt herself."
"I thump my head very hard," said Juno, smiling.
"Yes, and it's lucky that you have a good thick woolly coat over it," replied Captain Osborn, laughing.
"It is 12 o'clock by the sun, sir," said Mackintosh, the first mate, to the captain.
"Then bring me up the latitude, Mr. Mackintosh, while I work out the longitude from the sights which I took this morning. In five minutes, Mr. Seagrave, I shall be ready to prick off over our place on the chart."
"Here are the dogs come up on deck," said William; "I dare say they are as glad of the fine weather as we are. Come here, Romulus! Here, Remus! - Remus!"
"Well, sir," said Ready, who was standing by them with his quadrant in his hand, "I should like to ask you a question. Those dogs of yours have two very odd names which I never heard before. Who were Romulus and Remus?"
"Romulus and Remus," replied Mr. Seagrave, "were the names of two shepherds, brothers, who in ancient days founded the city of Rome, which eventually became the largest and most celebrated empire in the world. They were the first kings of Rome, and reigned together. History says that Remus affronted Romulus by leaping over a wall he had raised, and Romulus, in his anger, took away his life; but the history of early days is not to be depended upon."
"No, nor the brothers either, it appears," replied Ready; "however, it is the old story - two of a trade can never agree. One sometimes hears of Rome now - is that the same place?"
"Yes," replied William, "it is the remains of the old city."
"Well, one lives and learns," said Ready. "I have learnt something to-day, which everyone will to the last day of his life, if he will only ask questions. I'm an old man, and perhaps don't know much, except in the seafaring way; but I should have known much less if I did not ask for information, and was not ashamed to acknowledge my ignorance; that's the way to learn, Master William."
"Very good advice, Ready, - and, William, I hope you will profit by it," said Mr. Seagrave; "never be ashamed to ask the meaning of what you do not understand."
"I always do, papa. Do I not ask you questions, Ready?"
"Yes, you do, and very clever questions for a boy of your age; and I only wish that I could answer them better than I can sometimes."
"I should like to go down now, my dear," said Mrs. Seagrave; "perhaps Ready will see the baby down safe."
"That I will, ma'am," said Ready, putting his quadrant on the capstan: "now, Juno, give me the child, and go down first; - backwards, you stupid girl! how often do I tell you that? Some day or another you will come down with a run."
"And break my head," said Juno.
"Yes, or break your arm; and then who is to hold the child?"
As soon as they were all down in the cabin, the captain and Mr. Seagrave marked the position of the vessel on the chart, and found that they were one hundred and thirty miles from the Cape of Good Hope.
"If the wind holds, we shall be in to-morrow," said Mr. Seagrave to his wife. "Juno, perhaps you may see your father and mother."
Poor Juno shook her head, and a tear or two stole down her dark cheek. With a mournful face she told them, that her father and mother belonged to a Dutch boor, who had gone with them many miles into the interior: she had been parted from them when quite a little child, and had been left at Cape Town.
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{
"id": "1412"
}
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3
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None
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The next morning the Pacific arrived at the Cape and anchored in Table Bay.
"Why do they call this Table Bay, Ready?" said William.
"I suppose it's because they call that great mountain the Table Mountain, Master William; you see how flat the mountain is on the top."
"Yes, it is quite as flat as a table."
"Yes, and sometimes you will see the white clouds rolling down over the top of it in a very curious manner, and that the sailors call spreading the tablecloth: it is a sign of bad weather."
"Then I hope they will not spread the tablecloth while we are here, Ready," said William, "for I shall certainly have no appetite. We have had bad weather enough already, and mamma suffers so much from it. What a pretty place it is!"
"We shall remain here two days, sir," said Captain Osborn to Mr. Seagrave, "if you and Mrs. Seagrave would like to go on shore."
"I will go down and ask Mrs. Seagrave," said her husband, who went down the ladder, followed by William.
Upon the question being put to Mrs. Seagrave, she replied that she was quite satisfied with the ship having no motion, and did not feel herself equal to going on shore; it was therefore decided that she should remain on board with the two younger children, and that, on the following day, Mr. Seagrave should take William and Tommy to see Cape Town, and return on board before night.
The next morning, Captain Osborn lowered down one of the large boats, and Mr. Seagrave, accompanied by Captain Osborn, went on shore with William and Tommy. Tommy had promised his mamma to be very good; but that he always did, and almost always forgot his promise directly he was out of sight. As soon as they landed, they went up to a gentleman's house, with whom Captain Osborn was acquainted. They stayed for a few minutes to drink a glass of lemonade, for it was very warm; and then it was proposed that they should go to the Company's Gardens and see the wild beasts which were confined there, at which William was much delighted, and Tommy clapped his hands with joy.
"What are the Company's Gardens, papa?" inquired William.
"They were made by the Dutch East India Company, at the time that the Cape of Good Hope was in their possession. They are, properly speaking, Botanical Gardens; but, at the same time, the wild animals are kept there. Formerly there were a great many, but they have not been paid attention to lately, for we have plenty of these animals in England now."
"What shall we see?" said Tommy.
"You will see lions, Tommy, a great many in a large den together," said Captain Osborn.
"Oh! I want to see a lion."
"You must not go too near them, recollect."
"No, I won't," said Tommy.
As soon as they entered the gates, Tommy escaped from Captain Osborn, and ran away in his hurry to see the lions; but Captain Osborn caught him again, and held him fast by the hand.
"Here is a pair of very strange birds," said the gentleman who accompanied them; "they are called Secretaries, on account of the feathers which hang behind their heads, as the feather of a pen does when a clerk puts it behind his ear: but they are very useful, for they are snake-killers; indeed, they would, if they could, live altogether upon snakes, which they are very great enemies to, never letting one escape. They strike them with their feet, and with such force as to kill them immediately."
"Are there many snakes in this country?" inquired William.
"Yes, and very venomous snakes," replied Mr. Seagrave; "so that these birds are very useful in destroying them. You observe, William, that the Almighty, in his wisdom, has so arranged it that no animal (especially of a noxious kind) shall be multiplied to excess, but kept under by being preyed upon by some other; indeed, wherever in any country an animal exists in any quantity, there is generally found another animal which destroys it. The Secretary inhabits this country where snakes exist in numbers, that it may destroy them: in England the bird would be of little value."
"But some animals are too large or too fierce to be destroyed by others, papa; for instance, the elephant and the lion."
"Very true; but these larger animals do not breed so fast, and therefore their numbers do not increase so rapidly. For instance, a pair of elephants will not have more than one young one in the space of two years or more; while the rabbits, which are preyed upon and the food of so many other beasts as well as birds, would increase enormously, if they were not destroyed. Examine through the whole of creation, and you will find that there is an unerring hand, which invariably preserves the balance exact; and that there are no more mouths than for which food is provided, although accidental circumstances may for a time occasion a slight alteration."
They continued their walk until they came to the den of the lions. It was a large place, in closed with a strong and high wall of stone, with only one window to it for the visitors to look at them, as it was open above. This window was wide, and with strong iron bars running from the top to the bottom; but the width between the bars was such that a lion could put his paw out with ease; and they were therefore cautioned not to go too near. It was a fine sight to see eight or ten of these noble-looking animals lying down in various attitudes, quite indifferent apparently to the people outside--basking in the sun, and slowly moving their tufted tails to and fro. William examined them at a respectful distance from the bars; and so did Tommy, who had his mouth open with astonishment, in which there was at first not a little fear mixed, but he soon got bolder. The gentleman who had accompanied them, and who had been long at the Cape, was relating to Mr. Seagrave and Captain Osborn some very curious anecdotes about the lion. William and they were so interested, that they did not perceive that Tommy had slipped back to the grated window of the den. Tommy looked at the lions, and then he wanted to make them move about: there was one fine full-grown young lion, about three years old, who was lying down nearest to the window; and Tommy took up a stone and threw it at him: the lion appeared not to notice it, for he did not move, although he fixed his eyes upon Tommy; so Tommy became more brave, and threw another, and then another, approaching each time nearer to the bars of the window.
All of a sudden the lion gave a tremendous roar, and sprang at Tommy, bounding against the iron bars of the cage with such force that, had they not been very strong, it must have broken them. As it was, they shook and rattled so that pieces of mortar fell from the stones. Tommy shrieked; and, fortunately for himself, fell back and tumbled head over heels, or the lion's paws would have reached him. Captain Osborn and Mr. Seagrave ran up to Tommy, and picked him up: he roared with fright as soon as he could fetch his breath, while the lion stood at the bars, lashing his tail, snarling, and showing his enormous fangs.
"Take me away--take me on board the ship!" cried Tommy, who was terribly frightened.
"What did you do, Tommy?" said Captain Osborn.
"I won't throw any more stones, Mr. Lion; I won't indeed!" cried Tommy, looking terrified towards the animal.
Mr. Seagrave scolded Tommy well for his foolish conduct, and by degrees he became more composed; but he did not recover himself until they had walked some distance away from the lion's den.
They then looked at the other animals which were to be seen, Tommy keeping a most respectful distance from every one of them. He wouldn't even go near to a Cape sheep with a broad tail.
When they had seen everything, they went back to the gentleman's house to dinner; and, after dinner, they returned on board.
|
{
"id": "1412"
}
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4
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None
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The following morning the fresh water and provisions were received on board, and once more the Pacific stretched her broad canvas to the winds, and there was every prospect of a rapid voyage, as for many days she continued her passage with a fair wind and flowing sheet. But this did not continue: it fell calm, and remained so for nearly three days, during which not a breath of wind was to be seen on the wide expanse of water; all nature appeared as if in repose, except that now and then an albatross would drop down at some distance from the stern of the vessel, and, as he swam lazily along with his wings half-furled, pick up the fragments of food which had been thrown over the side.
"What great bird is that, Ready?" inquired William.
"It is an albatross, the largest sea-bird we have. Their wings are very long. I have seen them shot, and they have measured eleven feet from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other when the wings have been spread out."
"It is the first one that I have seen," said William.
"Because you seldom meet them north of the Cape, sir: people do say that they go to sleep on the wing, balancing themselves high up in the air."
"Papa," said William, turning to Mr. Seagrave, who stood by, "why is it that one bird can swim and another cannot? You recollect when Tommy drove the hens into the large pond, they flounced about, and their feathers became wet, and would support them no longer, and then they were drowned. Now, how does a sea-bird contrive to remain so long on the water?"
"Because a sea-bird, William, is provided with a sort of oil on purpose to anoint the outside of its feathers, and this oil prevents the water from penetrating them. Have you not observed the ducks on shore dressing their feathers with their bills? They were then using this oil to make their feathers waterproof."
"How odd!"
"Don't say how odd, William; that is not an expression to use when we talk of the wonderful provisions made by the Almighty hand, who neglects not the meanest of his creatures - say rather, how wonderful!"
"That's very true, sir," observed Ready; "but still you must not be too hard upon Master William, for I have heard many a grownup man make use of the same expression."
On the third day of the calm, the barometer fell so low as to induce Captain Osborn to believe that they should have a severe gale, and every preparation was made to meet it, should it come on. Nor was he mistaken: towards midnight the clouds gathered up fast, and as they gathered up in thick piles, heaped one over the other, the lightning darted through them in every direction; and as the clouds rose up, so did the wind, but at first only in heavy gusts, and then lulling again to a calm.
"Ready," said Captain Osborn, "how do you think we shall have the wind?"
"Why, Captain Osborn, to tell you the truth, I don't think it will be steady to one point long. It may at first blow hard from the north, but it's my idea it will shift soon to some other quarter, and blow still harder."
"What think you, Mackintosh?"
"We'll have plenty of it, and a long steady gale, that's my notion; and the sooner we ship the dead lights the better."
Mr. Seagrave, with William, happened to be standing by at the time of this conversation, and at the term dead lights Willie's face expressed some anxiety. Ready perceived it, and said-- "That's a foolish name they give to the shutters which go over the cabin windows to prevent the water from breaking into the cabin when a vessel sails before the wind; you know we had them on the last time that we had a gale."
"But, Ready," said Captain Osborn, "why do you think that we shall have a shift of wind?"
"Well, I don't know; perhaps I was wrong," replied the old man, "and Mr. Mackintosh is right: the wind does seem to come steady from the north-east, that's certain;" and Ready walked away to the binnacle, and looked at the compass. Mr. Seagrave and William then went below, and Mr. Mackintosh went forward to give his orders. As soon as they were all gone, Ready went up again to Captain Osborn and said: "Captain Osborn, it's not for me to contradict Mr. Mackintosh, but that's of little consequence in a time like this: I should have held to my opinion, had it not been that the gentleman passenger and his son were standing by, but now, as the coast is clear, I tell you that we shall have something worse than a gale of wind. I have been in these latitudes before, and I am an old seaman, as you know. There's something in the air, and there has been something during the last three days of calm, which reminds me too well of what I have seen here before; and I am sure that we shall have little better than a hurricane, as far as wind goes - and worse in one point, that it will last much longer than hurricanes generally do. I have been watching, and even the birds tell me so, and they are told by their nature, which is never mistaken. That calm has been nothing more than a repose of the winds previous to their being roused up to do their worst; and that is my real opinion?"
"Well, and I'm inclined to agree with you, Ready; so we must send topgallant yards down on deck, and all the small sails and lumber out of the tops. Get the trysail aft and bent, and lower down the gaff. I will go forward."
Their preparations were hardly complete before the wind had settled to a fierce gale from the north-east. The sea rose rapidly; topsail after topsail was furled; and by dusk the Pacific was flying through the water with the wind on her quarter, under reefed foresail and storm staysail. It was with difficulty that three men at the wheel could keep the helm, such were the blows which the vessel received from the heavy seas on the quarter. Not one seaman in the ship took advantage of his watch below to go to sleep that night, careless as they generally are; the storm was too dreadful. About three o'clock in the morning the wind suddenly subsided; it was but for a minute or two, and then it again burst on the vessel from another quarter of the compass, as Ready had foretold, splitting the foresail into fragments, which lashed and flogged the wind till they were torn away by it, and carried far to leeward. The heavens above were of a pitchy darkness, and the only light was from the creaming foam of the sea on every side. The shift of wind, which had been to the west-north-west, compelled them to alter the course of the vessel, for they had no chance but to scud, as they now did, under bare poles; but in consequence of the sea having taken its run from the former wind, which had been north-east, it was, as sailors call it, cross, and every minute the waves poured over the ship, sweeping all before their weight of waters. One poor man was washed overboard, and any attempt made to save him would have been unavailing. Captain Osborn was standing by the weather gunnel, holding on by one of the belaying-pins, when he said to Mackintosh: "How long will this last, think you?"
"Longer than the ship will," replied the mate gravely.
"I should hope not," replied the captain; "still it cannot look worse. What do you think, Ready?"
"Far more fear from above than from below just now," replied Ready, pointing to the yard-arms of the ship, to each of which were little balls of electric matter attached, flaring out to a point. "Look at those two clouds, sir, rushing at each other; if I--" Ready had not time to finish what he would have said, before a blaze of light, so dazzling that it left them all in utter darkness for some seconds afterwards, burst upon their vision, accompanied with a peal of thunder, at which the whole vessel trembled fore and aft. A crash - a rushing forward - and a shriek were heard, and when they had recovered their eyesight, the foremast had been rent by the lightning as if it had been a lath, and the ship was in flames: the men at the wheel, blinded by the lightning, as well as appalled, could not steer; the ship broached to - away went the mainmast over the side - and all was wreck, confusion, and dismay.
Fortunately the heavy seas which poured over the forecastle soon extinguished the flames, or they all must have perished; but the ship lay now helpless, and at the mercy of the waves beating violently against the wrecks of the masts which floated to leeward, but were still held fast to the vessel by their rigging. As soon as they could recover from the shock, Ready and the first mate hastened to the wheel to try to get the ship before the wind; but this they could not do, as, the foremast and mainmast being gone, the mizenmast prevented her paying off and answering to the helm. Ready, having persuaded two of the men to take the helm, made a sign to Mackintosh (for now the wind was so loud that they could not hear each other speak), and, going aft, they obtained axes, and cut away the mizen-rigging; the mizen-topmast and head of the mizenmast went over the side, and then the stump of the foremast was sufficient to get the ship before the wind again. Still there was much delay and confusion, before they could clear away the wreck of the masts; and, as soon as they could make inquiry, they found that four of the men had been killed by the lightning and the fall of the foremast, and there were now but eight remaining, besides Captain Osborn and his two mates.
|
{
"id": "1412"
}
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5
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None
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Sailors are never discouraged by danger as long as they have any chance of relieving themselves by their own exertions. The loss of their shipmates, so instantaneously summoned away, - the wrecked state of the vessel, - the wild surges burying them beneath their angry waters, - the howling of the wind, the dazzling of the lightning, and the pealing of the thunder, did not prevent them from doing what their necessity demanded. Mackintosh, the first mate, rallied the men, and contrived to fix a block and strap to the still smoking stump of the foremast; a rope was rove through the block, and the main-topgallant sail hoisted, so that the vessel might run faster before the gale, and answer her helm better than she did.
The ship was again before the wind, and comparatively safe, notwithstanding the heavy blows she now received from the pursuing waves. Night again came on, but there was no repose, and the men were worn out with exposure and fatigue.
The third day of the gale dawned, but the appearances were as alarming as ever: the continual breaking of the seas over the stern had washed away the binnacles, and it was impossible now to be certain of the course the ship had been steered, or the distance which had been run; the leaky state of the vessel proved how much she had already suffered from the violent shocks which she had received, and the certainty was apparent, that if the weather did not abate, she could not possibly withstand the force of the waves much longer.
The countenance of Captain Osborn showed great anxiety: he had a heavy responsibility on his shoulders - he might lose a valuable ship, and still more valuable cargo, even if they did not all lose their lives; for they were now approaching where the sea was studded with low coral islands, upon which they might be thrown by the waves and wind, without having the slightest power to prevent it in their present disabled condition.
Ready was standing by him when Captain Osborn said-- "I don't much like this, Ready; we are now running on danger and have no help for it."
"That's true enough," replied Ready: "we have no help for it; it is God's will, sir, and His will be done."
"Amen!" replied Captain Osborn solemnly; and then he continued, after a pause, "There were many captains who envied me when I obtained command of this fine ship, - would they change with me now?"
"I should rather think not, Captain Osborn, but you never know what the day may bring forth. You sailed with this vessel, full of hope - you now, not without reason, feel something approaching to despair; but who knows? it may please the Almighty to rebuke those angry winds and waves, and to-morrow we may again hope for the best; at all events you have done your duty - no man can do more."
"You are right," replied Captain Osborn; "but hold hard, Ready, that sea's aboard of us."
Ready had just time to cling with both hands to the belaying-pins when the sea poured over the vessel, with a volume of water which for some time swept them off their legs: they clung on firmly, and at last recovered their feet.
"She started a timber or two with that blow, I rather think," said Ready.
"I'm afraid so; the best vessel ever built could not stand such shocks long," replied Captain Osborn; "and at present, with our weak crew, I do not see that we can get more sail upon her."
All that night the ship flew in darkness before the gale. At daybreak the wind abated, and the sea went down: the ship was, however, still kept before the wind, for she had suffered too much to venture to put her broadside to the sea. Preparations were now made for getting up jury-masts; and the worn-out seamen were busily employed, under the direction of Captain Osborn and his two mates, when Mr. Seagrave and William came upon deck.
William stared about him: he perceived, to his astonishment, that the tall masts, with all their rigging and sails, had disappeared, and that the whole deck was in a state of confusion and disorder.
"See, my child," said Mr. Seagrave, "the wreck and devastation which are here. See how the pride of man is humbled before the elements of the great Jehovah."
"Ay, Master Willy," said old Ready, "look around you, as you well may. Do you remember the verses in the Bible? - if not, I remember them well, for I have often read them, and have often felt the truth of them: 'They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep'."
"But, father," said Willy, after a pause, "how shall we ever get to Sydney without masts or sails?"
"Why, William," replied Ready, "we must do what we can: we sailors are never much at a loss, and I dare say before night you will find us under some sort of sail again. We have lost our great masts, so we must put up jury-masts, as we call them; that is, little ones, and little sails upon them; and, if it pleases God, we shall see Sydney yet. How is Madam, sir?" continued Ready to Mr. Seagrave. "Is she better?"
"I fear she is very weak and ill," replied Mr. Seagrave; "nothing but fine weather will do her any good. Do you think that it will be fine now?"
"Why, sir, to tell you the truth, I fear we shall have more of it yet: I have not given my thoughts to the captain, as I might be mistaken; but still I think so - I've not been fifty years at sea without learning something. I don't like the gathering of that bank there, Mr. Seagrave, and I shouldn't wonder if it were to blow again from the very same quarter, and that before dark."
"God's will be done," replied Mr. Seagrave, "but I am very fearful about my poor wife, who is worn to a shadow."
"I shouldn't think so much about that, sir, as I really never knew of people dying that way, although they suffer much. William, do you know that we have lost some of our men since you were down below?"
"No - I heard the steward say something outside about the foremast."
"We have lost five of our smartest and best men - Wilson was washed overboard, Fennings and Masters struck dead with the lightning, and Jones and Emery crushed by the fall of the foremast. You are young, Master Willy, but you cannot think too early of your Maker, or call to mind what they say in the burial service, - 'In the midst of life we are in death'."
"Thank you, Ready, for the lesson you have given my son," said Mr. Seagrave; "and, William, treasure it up in your memory."
"Yes, William, they are the words of an old man who has seen many and many a one who was full of youth and spirits called away before him, and who is grateful to God that he has been pleased to preserve his life, and allow him to amend his ways."
"I have been thinking," said Mr. Seagrave, after a silence of a minute or two, "that a sailor has no right to marry."
"I've always thought so, sir," replied Ready; "and I dare say many a poor deserted sailor's wife, when she has listened to the wind and rain in her lonely bed, has thought the same."
"With my permission," continued Mr. Seagrave, "my boys shall never go to sea if there is any other profession to be found for them."
"Well, Mr. Seagrave, they do say that it's no use baulking a lad if he wishes to go to sea, and that if he is determined, he must go: now I think otherwise - I think a parent has a right to say no, if he pleases, upon that point; for you see, sir, a lad, at the early age at which he goes to sea, does not know his own mind. Every high-spirited boy wishes to go to sea - it's quite natural; but if the most of them were to speak the truth, it is not that they so much want to go to sea, as that they want to go from school or from home, where they are under the control of their masters or their parents."
"Very true, Ready; they wish to be, as they consider they will be, independent."
"And a pretty mistake they make of it, sir. Why, there is not a greater slave in the world than a boy who goes to sea, for the first few years after his shipping: for once they are corrected on shore, they are punished ten times at sea, and they never again meet with the love and affection they have left behind them. It is a hard life, and there have been but few who have not bitterly repented it, and who would not have returned, like the prodigal son, and cast themselves at their fathers' feet, only that they have been ashamed."
"That's the truth, Ready, and it is on that account that I consider that a parent is justified in refusing his consent to his son going to sea, if he can properly provide for him in any other profession. There never will be any want of sailors, for there always will be plenty of poor lads whose friends can do no better for them; and in that case the seafaring life is a good one to choose, as it requires no other capital for their advancement than activity and courage."
|
{
"id": "1412"
}
|
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